The Fall of Moscow Station (6 page)

She had not expected to visit Germany during her career, certainly not during her first ten years anyway. European assignments were so often reserved for senior officers who had served their time in less desirable posts and had the personal connections on Langley's Seventh Floor to lock up the positions they wanted. Getting the truly prized assignments required both a track record and inside help. Kyra knew she could and would be good at it, but three years' working in the Red Cell had left her wondering whether she wanted to try.

Kyra exhaled hard. The man next to her looked at her sideways. “Nervous?” Jonathan Burke, the chief of the Red Cell didn't turn his head to confirm the guess. Jon wore his usual khakis and an oxford shirt, no tie or jacket. He kept both on a hanger behind his office door but she'd never seen him wear them.
Only God and the White House get a coat and tie
, he'd once said, and she'd never seen the middle-aged man break that rule for anyone else. Few noticed. He avoided people as much as they allowed.

“About the mission? No,” Kyra said after a moment's thought, surprising herself. “After you've been shot at, not much else gets the blood pressure up. It's hard to care about what people think after someone's made a serious effort to kill you. But it does get really hard to put up with stupidity.”

“And now you see why people consider me prickly,” Jon said.

“They're not wrong,” she teased.

•  •  •

Both customs and the luggage handlers lived up to the myth of German efficiency, and the analysts were in the city within the hour. Berlin fascinated Kyra as it passed by in the window. She'd seen so many cities that had sacrificed their character for modern amenities, but Berlin had retained a look of old history. There were few true skyscrapers jutting above the stone buildings and rounded domes that looked centuries old. It was impressive, she thought, given how much of skyline had been bombed into wreckage by the Allies during the Second World War and how much had been rebuilt while the city served as the front line of the Cold War. These Germans had survived hell itself for decades and Berlin was now the testament to their endurance.

The hotel was a decent choice, and Kyra had breakfast brought up to her room. She rarely slept on planes and the pilot stubbornly had plowed through a series of Atlantic storms, robbing her of what little rest she might have enjoyed. Jon was always telling her not to substitute caffeine for sleep, but time was a zero-sum game in counterintelligence, always working for the hunter or the prey, but never both. Kyra didn't want to give Alden Maines or the Russians more time. German coffee and energy drinks would solve the jet-lag problem for one day at the cost of shaky hands, but she would manage it.

The U.S. Embassy was close, eight blocks away on foot. The Marine guards ran their IDs and let them pass. Like them, Clark Barron was a visitor with no office in the building of his own. It took some time to find the man and an unused classified space where they could talk.

The conference room was government standard except for the high-backed leather chairs that surrounded the table. The windows gave a view to the north and a small curio case of foreign gifts sat in one of the opposite corners. Relief maps of every continent but their own hung on the walls.

“Good to see you both again. It's been a while since Pioneer and the Farm,” the NCS director said.

“Better times than this,” Jon agreed. “What can we do for you?”

“To keep it short and blunt, we've got a case that makes no sense. And it'll probably be the most tightly compartmented case you'll ever get read into at the Agency.”

Barron set a copy of
Der Spiegel
on the table with a printed translation of one article attached. “Three days ago, the German Federal Criminal Investigation Office pulled a body out of the Großer Müggelsee Lake southeast of Berlin. Forensic investigators identified him as retired lieutenant general Stepan Illarionovich Strelnikov, director of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research, their version of DOD's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The
Moscow Times
ran his obituary today. The Russian government says he drowned while going for a swim.”

Jon pulled the article across the table, turned it around, and scanned the translated page. “It's not every day that a retired Russian flag officer drowns, is it?”

“Not one who's the Russian equivalent of a Navy SEAL.” Barron handed the analysts a folder. The first page was Strelnikov's biography, with a stapled photograph of a man dressed in a Russian general's uniform, portly, with pronounced jowls, dark eyes, and the dour expression that seemed to be a Russian birthright.

Biographical and Leadership Report NC1232

Leadership Division/Office of Assessment

STRELNIKOV, Stepan Illarionovich

Professional Biography

• DoB: 19 Nov 1960

• PoB: Volgograd, Volgograd Oblast, Russia

• 1982: Graduate, Moscow State Technical University imeni Bauman

• 1984: Graduate, KGB Higher Communications School, Kharkov

• 1984: Company Commander, 72nd Independent Radio-Electronic Combat Regiment, Bagram, Afghanistan

• 1985: Deputy Chief of Staff, 413th Special Radio-Electronic Combat Battalion, Group of Soviet Forces Germany, Karl Marx Stadt

• 1986: Executive Officer, 4th Special Warfare Brigade (SPETSNAZ), Kabul, Afghanistan

• 1989–1990: Professional status unknown; stationed at Soviet Embassy, Berlin, Germany

• 1990 (Dec)–1991 (Feb): Defense Attache's office, Baghdad

• 1991–1994: Professional status unknown (Serbia?)

• 1995: Graduate: Military Academy of the General Staff (was: Voroshilov Military Academy)

• 1996: Commander, 11th Radio-Electronic Combat Regiment (Grozhny)

• 1996–1998: Professional status unknown

• 1998–2000: Liaison officer attached to Serbian Army

• 2000–2002: Commander, 7th Independent Undersea Warfare and Special Reconnaissance Regiment, St. Petersburg (SPETSNAZ)

• 2002–2003: Liaison officer (Defense Attache's office), Baghdad

• 2004–2005: Commanding officer, Voronezh Higher Communications Academy

• 2006–2007: Commanding Officer, Second Directorate (USA & Canada) Main Military Administration (GRU)

• 2008–2012: Senior Military Attache, Caracas, Venezuela; retires from active military service with the GRU, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation

• 2013: Listed as Vice President for Communications Security, “Zelyonsoft” [zelyeniy is Russian for “gold”], St. Petersburg. Strelnikov is introduced at UN conference on global Internet governance as Zelensoft Vice President for Strategic Investment; Strelnikov tells UK/SIS officer at conference he is “retired military.”

• 2014–2016: Strelnikov leaves Zelensoft, is named Special Advisor to President Putin for Information Security

• 4 January 2017: Strelnikov named Director, Foundation for Advanced Research.

“He was a new asset, barely a year on the books, and a volunteer,” Barron told them. “We had high hopes for him, until someone gave him up.”

“A mole?” Jon asked.

“A defector,” Barron corrected him. “Kyra, I'm sorry about this one.” The next page showed a photograph of a middle-aged man, midforties, thin, with black hair lightening at the temples. He had bright eyes, green, with a Roman nose and a day's stubble. The man wore a suit and stood before an American flag. Burke recognized it as the kind of photo that senior leaders were privileged to take when they reached sufficient rank. Not every Agency officer got to take one during his career.

“Alden Maines,” Kyra said before Barron could name him.

“You know him?” Jon asked.

“He was deputy chief of station in Caracas when I was there,” she said, her voice flat. “He got me out of the country after I was shot.” She took the file out of Jon's hands, dropped it on the table, and leaned over it, hands in her hair.

“After our station down there was torn to shreds, he couldn't work South America anymore,” Barron added. “He put together the operation to get Kyra out on the fly, and I thought that was worth a reward. I also wanted to see what he could really do, so I brought him back to headquarters and made him deputy chief of Russia House. But I'm told he didn't like the desk. Then the current chief of Russia House retired and Maines applied for the job, but I was having second thoughts about him by then. Maines had been showing contempt for leadership since he got back from Venezuela . . . started abusing the people under him too. I interviewed him and he displayed a nasty mix of narcissism and sadism. So I chose the other candidate. I was going to move Maines to some other assignment, where we could sideline him and he couldn't put ops or people at risk.”

“I guess Alden didn't like that decision,” Kyra observed. “He was never like that in Caracas. I always thought he was one of the good ones.”

“It doesn't look that way,” Barron agreed. “The FBI was tailing a Russian diplomat who was on their list of suspected intel officers. They followed him out to the Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve in Loudoun County, twenty miles west of Dulles Airport, and figured that he was using it as a dead-drop site. They put the area under surveillance. A week later, he loaded the drop. The special agents on the scene were smart enough to let him go, then crack open the package and take pictures. Then they holed up and watched to see who came for it. Maines showed up. Pictures are in the folder.”

Kyra turned Maines's photograph over and found several more underneath, one of a stack of bills, another showing an out-of-focus letter with a transcription clipped onto the back.

Dear friend: welcome!

Acknowledging your letter, we express our sincere joy on the occasion of your contact with us last week. Your information was very helpful and we firmly guarantee you for a necessary financial help. You will find in a package 50.000 dollars. Now it is up to you to give a secure explanation of it.

As to communication plan, we want to share one soonest with you. We have designed a secure and reliable one we will share with you at GLENDA as we have arranged for you in our previous contact. We await your reply and we shall be ready to retrieve your package from BROOKE since 20:00 to 21:00 hours on the 12th of September after we would read you signal (a vertical mark of white adhesive tape of 6–8 cm length) on the gazebo closest to Battlefield Parkway at the Route 15. We shall fill our package in and make up our signal (a horizontal mark of white adhesive tape). After you will clear the drop don't forget to remove our tape that will mean for us—exchange is over.

Please, let us know during the September meeting at GLENDA of your opinion on the proposed place (DD “Amy”). For our part we are very interested to get from you any information about possible actions which may threaten us.

Thank you. Good luck to you.

Sincerely,

Your friends

“That stack of hundreds in the package works out to be something like fifty thousand dollars . . . probably
bona fides
money,” Barron said. “Maines had to give the Russians something juicy to prove that he was a serious turncoat. Most Russian assets get a pittance, if they get anything at all. The last ones they paid that kind of money to were Robert Hannsen and Aldrich Ames.”

“I assume that giving up Strelnikov would've been worth fifty thousand?” Jon asked.

“Ten times that much, easy,” Barron replied. “Maines gave him up cheap. Anyway, FBI Director Menard put a surveillance detail on him and got a warrant for cell-phone and Internet taps. Five days ago, Maines made like he was going to work. Surveillance lost him, he never showed up at headquarters, and he never came home.”

“A deputy chief of Russia House defecting to the Russians could shut us down in Moscow,” Kyra observed.

“He knows about all of our tech ops and key assets,” Barron agreed. “If he's talking to the Kremlin, there's probably not an intel officer in the city from any of the English-speaking countries who's safe, much less our assets. I've suspended all human operations there as of this time yesterday and the chief of station is preparing to exfiltrate our key assets, but it'll take a few weeks to get the resources in place.”

Jon turned the file on the table, looked at Maines's biography, then turned it back. “Sounds like a straightforward greed-and-revenge defector,” he said, the boredom in his voice clear.

“It was until three days ago,” Barron agreed. “First, Strelnikov turns up dead just a few days after Maines fingers him. That's not how the Russians operate. They're methodical. They build airtight cases so they can rip our operations open in a public trial. They watched Oleg Penkovsky for months before they grabbed him and he was giving up nuclear secrets.”

Barron leaned across the table and offered the analysts another photograph. Kyra took the picture . . . Maines standing in a customs line at an airport. “Second, two days ago, the Russian ambassador walked into Main State and gave that up. We've identified the airport where that was taken as Berlin Schönefeld. The ambassador told SecState that Maines was defecting.”

Kyra's eyes grew wide “He's here?” she asked, incredulous.

“Looks that way,” Barron said. “What we can't figure is why the Russians burned him. Maines could've been an incredibly valuable asset to the Russians. There was no good reason to burn him that we can see, and now he won't be worth anything to them in a few months. I would say they were dumb, but I have the feeling someone is getting played and I don't want it to be us.”

“It's not us,” Jon said, his voice flat. “It's Maines.”

“I want to believe that more than you know,” Barron said. “What're you thinking?”