The Fall of Moscow Station (28 page)

The soldier was lying in a reclining bed, an IV in his arm, dripping saline and morphine both at a slow rate. Both of the man's eyes were badly bruised, deep blue, black-and-green circles surrounding them and stretching into his forehead and cheeks. The surgeon had stanched the bleeding, set his nose, and stitched up the torn flesh on the back of his neck. He'd assured Lavrov that the soldier would suffer no permanent damage from the Taser, something about high voltage but low amperage. But the man's face would take weeks to heal up. He'd tried to refuse the painkiller, but the soldier's team leader had finally told him that there would be no shame in taking it. The morphine had hit his system and the wounded commando had slumped into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Lavrov regretted having to wake him, but the soldier would understand, even if the doctor did not. The surgeon had not wanted to lower the man's morphine drip, but Lavrov gave the order. It was too hard to think and focus one's swollen eyes while riding a morphine high.

“This one?” Lavrov asked, holding up a photograph, the tenth in the stack.

“Nyet,”
the soldier replied, his voice strained.

Another photo. “This one?” Lavrov asked again.

“Nyet.”

Lavrov pursed his lips in frustration. Hundreds of women had entered Moscow from Berlin through the international airport in the last two days. The general decided to skip to the one woman he was interested in most. If the soldier didn't identify her, an aide could handle the rest of the stack.

He rifled through the pictures until he found the only one he wanted. He held it up. “This one?”

The soldier stared, trying to focus on the picture. He forced his head to move forward, bring the image an inch closer.
“Da.”

“You are sure?”

“I only saw her for a few seconds, and that while running. She had blond hair, not red, and pulled back away from her face, which was thinner. But it could be the same woman.” The soldier let his head fall back on the pillow.

“Very good,” Lavrov said. “We are most proud of you. You have done your duty.” He was surprised the younger man had recognized the American woman through his haze. It had taken the GRU chairman almost six hours going through the photographs to find the one he imagined could have been the same woman he had met on the embassy roof. He would have preferred to let a subordinate take care of sorting through the photographs, but everyone else who had seen the woman was back in Berlin, except Maines. Lavrov didn't trust Maines to pick her out without the threat of pain, and Lavrov had to reserve that tool for another request he might have to give the traitor if his next inquiry turned up empty.

“No, General,” the soldier protested, “I failed in my duty. She escaped. I want to return to duty and assist in her arrest.”

“Do not worry about that, Captain,” Lavrov assured the injured man. “The operation is not done. We do not reinforce failure, but one failure is not the end. You will yet have your chance.”

“Thank you, General,” the young soldier replied.

Lavrov nodded, patted the young man's hand, then looked at the photograph.
She is here. Miss Stryker is in the
Rodina, he thought. The thought sent a happy thrill up his spine. It was so rare to find an American who was not overly cautious in this business, who was inclined to attack and trust in her skills to finish her mission.

You are a bold one,
devushka
. But where are you?

FSB headquarters

Moscow, Russia

“You humiliate me in front of the president, and now you wish a favor?” Grigoriyev asked, astonished. Lavrov's arrogance was boundless. The FSB director was tempted to cut off the call, but decided that would be unwise. Soothing a wounded ego was a poor excuse for passing up an opportunity to collect some political intelligence that might prove valuable sometime in the future, possibly sooner than he might expect.

“I would not call it a favor,” Lavrov objected. “The FSB is charged with internal security. I merely wish to know if a particular woman has been seen entering the American Embassy here in the city. Surely that is a trivial request for you.” The FSB kept the Western embassies under a constant watch. The GRU director no doubt was pained that he had to come to Grigoriyev for that information after having ridiculed him twice in the last day.

“And yet you are making the request yourself,” Grigoriyev pointed out. “Yes, it would be trivial for me to get you an answer, but not so trivial for you to pose the question. So I presume you have identified the woman who has been putting your men in the hospitals?”

He was sure that Lavrov was frowning on the other side of the phone. “I have,” Lavrov replied, surprising the FSB director. “I know where she entered the country, which flight, and when it landed. But making an arrest would be much easier if I knew whether she was operating out of the American Embassy or that of a U.S. ally.”

“Ah,” Grigoriyev replied. “Of course, we would need all of the information you have on this woman to make any positive identification.”

“Of course,” Lavrov conceded. “I can have a courier ferry the file to your office immediately if you are willing to assist me.”

Assist you?
Grigoriyev thought. The man was infuriating. Even when asking for information, the GRU director could not help but twist the conversation to place himself above the person whose help he needed.
Still, if my people could catch this woman before Lavrov . . . yes, that would do nicely
, he thought. Arresting the lone CIA spy in Moscow would shift the balance of influence that had tipped so very dangerously in Lavrov's favor. “Without question, the FSB stands ready to assist you, General,” Grigoriyev said. “The security of the
Rodina
is more important than our small differences.”

“Without question,” Lavrov replied. “Expect my man to arrive within the hour.”

“I will admit him without delay,” Grigoriyev assured him. “We will have an answer for you as quickly as we can manage.”

“Your assistance is appreciated.”

“
Do svidaniya,
General.”

•  •  •

Lavrov hung up his phone. Losing that small bit of face would be worth the sacrifice if Grigoriyev came back with anything useful. Lavrov's own men were watching the U.S. Embassy, but it was possible that Stryker had entered some other allied embassy, the British or Canadian buildings most likely. His men were not watching those. Grigoriyev's were.

If Stryker was cautious, inclined to self-preservation, the smart move for her would be to leave the country. Her best defense had been secrecy, and the Puchkov operation had stolen that. So it was possible that Grigoriyev's men would catch Miss Stryker trying to escape the
Rodina
. Lavrov doubted she would try to fly out through any of the major airports. With her cover identity blown, she would expect the FSB would be watching all of the major transportation hubs for hundreds of miles around Moscow. No, more likely she would try to cross into one of the border countries in a car, or perhaps even abandon her car and try to hike across. It had been done before and the FSB would be watching.

But he didn't think Stryker would run.

The general retrieved another beer from his small refrigerator, cracked the bottle open, and took a long swig before leaning back in his chair. The young woman knew about his operations. She needed to be neutralized somehow, and Lavrov was prepared to enlist Grigoriyev's help to reach that goal. The FSB director didn't need to know all the details, and he would be happy to have any part in Lavrov's success. So Lavrov would throw him those crumbs. The bigger operation promised glory enough that he could be generous to his old enemy. Besides, being a small part of another's victory could taste more bitter than suffering failure alone, and this game was his and Stryker's to play.

She was a move behind. He had confirmed that she had tried to contact one of the top few names on his list of traitors. Had she tried to contact Topilin? Possibly. Based on the time she had entered the country, he suspected that she wouldn't have been able to get to the now-dead man's dacha before Sokolov had arrested the turncoat. She might have visited the dead man's dacha and found it already sacked. If so, his men might have been able to grab her there, had Sokolov left a sentry team.

Lavrov frowned. That had been a lapse, but an understandable one, he supposed. Sokolov had had no reason to suspect anyone would have been trying to reach Topilin, and Lavrov had told him that there would be more names to come. The colonel likely had wanted to have all his men available for the next arrest, not leaving them in the woods watching a ransacked cabin. But if Stryker had tried to reach Topilin, then it would be a sure sign that Lavrov had assessed her mission correctly and he knew who her next target must be. The only question now was how to steer her where he wanted her to go.

•  •  •

Grigoriyev didn't call for four hours, time enough for Lavrov to finish half a bottle of Viski Kizlyarskoe–brand whiskey, a single malt produced in Daghestan. It helped the afternoon pass more smoothly. The GRU chairman had long since grown tired of vodka, as had most of the elites who could afford better. He swirled the glass, sniffed at it, and smelled . . . what was that?
Honey
, he thought. Lavrov downed the dregs in the glass. Yes, much better than vodka, easier on the throat, if not the liver. He would never admit it, of course. Vodka was the national drink and had the weight of history on its side. His people loved their liquor and vodka had a special place in the Russian mind and heart. The Kremlin had been cracking down on alcohol consumption for years now, trying to keep the people from drinking themselves to death, but the leadership had never seriously considered prohibition. No, that was out of the question. The Americans had tried that once, with feckless results, and they didn't love their alcohol as the Russian people did. It was said that when Russia had been given a choice between Christianity and Islam, it had chosen the former only because the latter prohibited the drinking of spirits.

The secure-line telephone finally sounded. Lavrov set the glass on the desk and answered the call.
“Ya slushayu vas
.”

“Arkady Vladimirovich.” It was the FSB director.

“Thank you for responding so swiftly.”

“Of course, but you will not like the information I have to report,” Grigoriyev advised. “My counterintelligence officer reports that none of our surveillance teams have observed a woman matching the photograph you provided entering the American Embassy during the last week, or any other embassy of any country allied with the Americans. If she is CIA and still on our soil, then she is operating out of some other location. We are reviewing our files now and drawing up a list of possible sites where she could be.”

Lavrov narrowed his eyes. He'd expected that answer but he disliked it all the same. It would make finding the woman more tedious. “You have my thanks, Anatoly.”

“You will, of course, share any information you obtain concerning her whereabouts with me,” Grigoriyev told him. He didn't mean it as a request, though he knew Lavrov would tell him nothing.

“Of course.
Do svidaniya.
”

“Do svidaniya.”
The line went dead. Lavrov cradled the phone, then sat in his chair and tried to think through the whiskey-fueled haze that had settled over his mind. He'd drunk too much waiting for that call and now found it difficult to assemble his thoughts.

Stryker is here, but she is not operating out of her country's embassy or any other
.
A safe house, then.
It had to be, but where?

Grigoriyev's FSB had the information on that, and Lavrov groaned at the thought of calling his adversary back and having to plead with him for access to those particular files. It would pile shame on humiliation.

Lavrov had considered letting her go and making contact with her in the United States, but that seemed too great a risk. Trying to turn a hostile target on her own home soil could backfire in such spectacular fashion. She had to be brought in.

But does she have to die?
Lavrov asked himself. Possibly not. She was an intriguing young lady, and she could be a great help in establishing his own Red Cell in the GRU. He doubted that she would betray her country. She did not seem the type, but he saw no reason not to make her the offer. There was no risk in it for him, and the reward could be a tidy one, however improbable.

But he could not make the pitch until they could talk.
So how to find her?
he wondered. He stared at the phone, thought about dialing Grigoriyev's number. There had to be some other way—

Yes, there was another way, and he would have come to it sooner but for the whiskey twisting his thoughts out of shape. The GRU director wondered if Alden Maines might not be willing to give up the information in exchange for some of that fine drink.
Probably
, Lavrov mused,
but why waste it on him?
He didn't need to bribe the American to talk anymore. Fear of the hammer was enough now. He should have asked the traitor about safe houses before but it had not seemed like a priority. With all of the CIA officers forced out, their covert facilities should have been neutralized, left waiting to be identified and sacked at his leisure.

The only questions now were whether Maines had familiarized himself with his former services' safe-house locations in Moscow, and if the traitor could focus long enough to remember. It was one thing to try to remember information while drinking alcohol. It was another to do so with morphine running through the veins. That brave Spetsnaz officer had done it, but Lavrov suspected that Maines was neither so driven nor so resilient.