The Fall of Moscow Station (19 page)

“Oh, you're not the one who'll have to worry about getting demoted,” he said. “If you make it out, we'll both be heroes. If you don't, the president will execute me in the Langley courtyard for letting you go.”

That earned him a small laugh from the woman. “So . . . dead or heroes. Isn't that what we really signed up for when we took this job anyway?”

•  •  •

“Here's the safe house,” Barron said, his finger pointing to a street on the Moscow map. “We just set this one up a few months ago, so if there's one that Maines doesn't have on some list, it's that one. Case the place before you go in. Don't assume it's clean. If it is, chances are good you'll have the place as long as you want it, but sanitize the place first so the locals won't find anything sensitive in case they do show up on short notice.”

“And if it's not clean?” Kyra asked.

“Then you turn around and you come home. I want you to play this one by the rules all the way. But if it comes apart, whatever you do, don't run for the embassy. The FSB has the place under surveillance at all times. You'll never get to the front gate if they're looking for you.”

Kyra stared at the map, repeating the address that Barron had scribbled on it until she'd etched the Russian words in her mind. “Any ideas about which assets I should try to contact when I get in-country?”

Barron held out his hand, a folded note between his fingers. Kyra took it, unfolded it. The list was short, scribbled out by hand in cryptic notes on a sheet of flash paper, nitrocellulose that she could immolate in a fraction of a second with the Zippo lighter that Barron had set on the table. “That's it?”

“That's all the ones that I'm going to give you,” Barron replied. “They're the only ones inside the GRU who I think would be in a position to know about any sales of strategic technologies that Lavrov is brokering.” There were only three names, but it was, at that moment, possibly the most sensitive document the CIA had in its possession. Even with Maines in their hands, the Russian government still would have murdered anyone in its path to retrieve it without a moment's thought. “If we're lucky, he might have forgotten or withheld some names, and I'm not about to help him fill in any of the blanks. But if he copied everything onto a thumb drive instead of relying on his memory, chances are pretty good that you'll never get near any of them before Lavrov takes them out. So don't try to contact any of them unless you're ready to bet your life that Lavrov's people aren't watching. You take no chances at all, you got me?”

“I should have a few more possibles, in case I can't reach these,” Kyra protested. “The Russians can't watch everyone.”

“Moscow Rules—you assume that they can. You won't have the time or the resources to focus on anyone else anyway. I don't know how many names Maines might be giving up, but we have to assume he's going to give up all of them. There's no way to even know in what order he might go after them, so we have to assume he'll want to take them all down as fast as he can. The real question is whether the FSB will play ball. If they do, you'll never get to any of them. If they don't, you might have a short window.”

“Why wouldn't the FSB cooperate?” Kyra asked. “They handle counterintelligence in Russia.”

Barron nodded. “They do, but the FSB director is Anatoly Grigoriyev, and he and Lavrov hate each other. Grigoriyev was KGB back in the eighties, Lavrov was Soviet army intelligence and they were both stationed in Berlin when the Wall fell. They stepped on each other's toes plenty in the aftermath. It's an old professional rivalry turned personal. There's nothing either man would love more than to get the other kicked out of the Kremlin.”

Kyra grunted quietly. “That might explain why Lavrov lured Strelnikov to Berlin. He was Lavrov's boy, so it would make sense that Lavrov wouldn't want Grigoriyev to find out about that particular breach until he'd solved the problem.”

“Agreed,” Barron replied. “That sounds to me like Lavrov doesn't want the FSB to know what he's doing. A major GRU operation to take down Maines's entire list of our assets in short order would be impossible to keep quiet. The FSB would hear about it and someone would start asking questions. That's probably your only prayer of getting to any of these people. Lavrov might be taking his time, working down the list nice and slow so he doesn't aggravate Grigoriyev more than necessary. But if Lavrov is looking to plug his own leaks first, these people could be at the top of the list.”

Kyra tried to find some weakness in his logic and failed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “And if Lavrov hates Grigoriyev that much, he could get a lot of leverage over Grigoriyev by releasing the rest of Maines's list to the Kremlin once his own holes are plugged. Watching the GRU identify moles in the FSB would probably finish him.”

“True,” Barron agreed. “And since Lavrov would be the one who cleaned house, he would probably get veto power over the next pick for FSB director after Grigoriyev takes up residence in the gulag. And then there would be no reason not to wrap up everyone on the bottom of the list at once. So all of these people might be dead anyway a lot sooner than we thought.” There was bitterness in his voice.

These were his people
, Kyra realized.
We're going to lose all of these people on his watch.
She wondered how many of the Russian assets had been recruited when Barron had been the Moscow station chief.

The room fell silent. Kyra picked up the list, read it through three times, then opened the Zippo and spun the flint, igniting the tiny fire. She touched it to the flash paper and it vaporized before she could even open her fingers.

“It's oh-five-hundred. You should get moving,” Barron advised.

“Just give me a minute, okay?”

“Don't be long.”

Barron marched out of the room. Kyra leaned forward, resting her folded arms on the table, and she laid her head on them, suddenly more tired than she could ever remember being.
You should have stayed with me, Jon, stayed behind the wall
, she thought.
I need your help, old man.
A flood of anxiety rushed into her chest. She fought it down, but the horrifying thought that maybe, just maybe, she was wrong about everything refused to leave her.

Kyra evicted the thoughts, ignored the angry doubts in her chest, and held herself together long enough to fetch her bag from the hotel. Ten minutes after, she was sitting next to Barron in a SUV, pulling out onto the road for the airport. Kyra watched the Berlin embassy recede and wondered again whether she shouldn't give up the fight.

Meeting Room of the Security Council of the Russian Federation

The Kremlin Senate Building

Moscow, Russia

There were seats for more than twenty-five around the long table, but the real governing quorum numbered far fewer and most of them were not present today.

Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev had never pined for the old Soviet Union, but the room had always struck the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) as too ostentatious, a showpiece that sent the wrong message to the Russian people when the cameras were on. National security was not a subject to be discussed in a place like this.
Too soft
, he thought,
too indulgent
. The people should have seen them meet in a war room, a Spartan place with few comforts that would portray an image of sacrifice and resolve. The floor was dark wood with a geometric parquet pattern running through it. Square columns of dark marble topped with gold capitals stood out against the brown and cream colors that dominated the rest of the room. The front of the room displayed the Russian coat of arms, the two-headed dragon, gold with a red shield mounted high on the wall and flanked on each side by the country's flags. The crowning irony of the place was an ornate chandelier above the table that could have been at home in a czar's palace.

But the cameras were not on, not this time. There were four men in the room and the subject of the meeting was not for anyone's ears but theirs. The president of the Russian Federation, a former FSB director himself, sat at the table's head. The foreign minister and Arkady Lavrov sat to his right. Grigoriyev was quite sure that his position alone on the left side was symbolic.

“Good afternoon, friends,” the president said. Polite responses were uttered. “I believe that we are here at your request, Anatoly?”

“Yes, but I don't need to tell any of you why I have asked to meet, I am sure,” Grigoriyev replied.

“Then there is nothing to discuss, Anatoly,” Lavrov said. “The GRU does not answer—”

“The FSB is responsible for the internal security of the state,” Grigoriyev continued, cutting Lavrov off midsentence. “We perform the counterintelligence mission on Russian soil. This is not in dispute. Therefore, I want to know why I was not informed that the GRU had a source inside the CIA that provided a list of all CIA officers currently in Moscow.”

“Obviously, for reasons of operational security,” Lavrov replied. “Our source is a sensitive one. We could not risk exposing him by sharing the information with the FSB in advance of the announcement.”

“There should have been no announcement without consulting me first!” Grigoriyev protested. “And I want to know why our foreign minister cooperated with Arkady in withholding that information while he instructed our ambassador to Washington to tell the U.S. president that we would be expelling all of those officers from our soil.” In truth, Grigoriyev already knew the answer. The foreign minister was a Lavrov protégé. Grigoriyev simply wanted to see whether the man would have the good sense to appear embarrassed that he'd allowed the GRU chairman to co-opt his ministry so easily. It seemed he did. The minister avoided Grigoriyev's gaze and remained silent.

The president came to his defense. “Anatoly, I think the greater question here is why the GRU had to do the FSB's duty?”

“Are you accusing me of incompetence?” Grigoriyev countered. “You were the FSB director once, you understand that the CIA is not a club of amateurs. Even in the old days, when we were the KGB and recruited Americans abroad, we never had a source who gave up so much at once. I do not know who this source is, but I doubt very much that Arkady recruited him. No, this is not incompetence on the part of my people. I think it is merely good fortune, a volunteer who came to Arkady's doorstep.”

“That does not matter,” Lavrov said, dismissive. “How the man became our asset does not change the fact that such a source must be protected. You have seen the list of people we have expelled. You know that everyone you suspected was a CIA officer was on it, and many more who you did not.”

“Protected?” Grigoriyev snorted in derision. “Do you truly imagine that the Americans do not know exactly who your source is now? And if you are wrong about him being a genuine defector?” Grigoriyev asked. “How have you verified this source and his information? What if he is lying? Do you realize what you have done if this all proves to be falsehoods?”

“It is not—”

“Open the file to me so that I can verify that for myself,” Grigoriyev demanded.

Lavrov exhaled in mock exasperation and shook his head in a display of equally false sympathy. “I think that you are simply concerned that you were made to look the fool, Anatoly,” he said. “The GRU has earned the glory that you think should belong to the FSB and now you want a share of something you haven't earned.”

“What I want is the opportunity for my people to fulfill their duty to protect the
Rodina
and her interests,” Grigoriyev retorted. He turned toward the Russian president. “How can we be sure that this asset was not a dangle or a double agent if we cannot see the file? If that is the case, then expelling all of those Americans will have been a terrible blunder—”

“How so?” the president asked, clearly not interested in the answer.

“The Americans will surely respond in kind. They will expel any number of our people from the United States and disrupt our operations there. If the names that Arkady was given were not, in fact, all CIA officers and merely some easily replaced consular officers, then we could suffer more damage than the Americans—”

“That will not be the case,” Lavrov assured the president. “My asset's information is reliable. By tomorrow evening, the CIA will not have a single officer left on Moscow's soil. They know that we know their identities and none of them will risk arrest and imprisonment by staying. Yes, they will certainly expel some of our people from their country, but not so many. With no comparable asset, they could only guess at who our officers are. Unless they are prepared to expel our entire delegation, which would be unthinkable except in war, whatever damage they inflict on us will be less than what we have done to them, so we will be able to reconstitute our operations more quickly. We will have a significant advantage in intelligence operations for at least a decade to come.”

“I must agree, Anatoly,” the Russian president said. “Do not let your old competition with Arkady blind you to the opportunity that this source presented us. The information that Arkady has given us is truly impressive. We could not wait.”

“
We
could not wait?” Grigoriyev said. “Then you knew also?”

“Of course.”

“This is foolishness,” Grigoriyev groused, the winds sucked neatly from his sails.

“Such sour grapes, Anatoly.” Lavrov smiled. “For now, I think it would be helpful to us all if the FSB could ensure that all of the Americans on the list have left the
Rodina
, and I would consider it the greatest of personal favors if you would inform me when their exodus is complete.”

I am not a bootlicker, like the foreign minister there
, Grigoriyev raged quietly in his mind.
You would throw me crumbs and say I should be grateful for them?