Cauldron

CHAPTER 3 Sentinels

Hydraulics whining, the huge 747 rolled out of its turn and slid downward, thundering low over the green, wooded Virginia countryside. Four thousand miles and nearly seven hours after leaving Great Britain, American Airlines Flight 128 was on final approach to Dulles. Row after row of houses, steepled churches, and flat-roofed shopping malls slipped past beneath the plane’s wings. Many stood empty or unfinished. The world recession had brought even Washington’s suburban sprawl to a grinding halt.

Joseph Ross Huntington III pulled his gaze away from the narrow cabin window and frowned. He saw signs of economic gloom everywhere he looked these days — even on this morning flight from London. More of the airliner’s seats were empty than were occupied, and most of his fellow passengers were weary-looking businessmen. Several years of global trade war had taken their toll. With the nation’s unemployment level locked near twelve percent, few American families had the money or inclination to vacation overseas. Public contempt for “foreigners” was at an all-time high.

Huntington shook his head at that. At least Americans could still put food on their family tables. That made them fortunate compared to most of the world’s population. Africa and both Central and South America lay mired in unpaid debts, deadly disease, utter poverty, and political upheaval. Asia, except for Japan, South Korea, and a few others, wasn’t in much better shape. Even Europe’s proud, industrialized nations teetered on the brink of economic collapse, kept afloat only by frantic government spending, subsidized production, and wishful thinking.

A jarring bounce and the sudden roar of reversed engines interrupted his own depressing thoughts. They were down.

Overhead speakers crackled to life. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington’s Dulles International Airport. On behalf of the captain and your entire flight crew…”

Huntington tuned out the standard announcement he’d heard several hundred times before, waiting patiently while the 747 taxied off the runway toward the soaring steel and glass terminal building that was the airport’s trademark. Patience was a virtue he’d been forced to acquire in late middle age, and he still found his willingness to sit calmly somewhat surprising.

Certainly none of his former employees or shareholders would have described him as a patient man. Far from it. They’d have said he was hard-charging, aggressive, and often painfully blunt. And they would have been right.

Business Week had once called him “the CEO with a linebacker’s body, a first-rate mind, and a sailor’s mouth.” Those characteristics had helped him transform his family’s aging, tradition-riddled machine-tools firm into one of the country’s most profitable small corporations. They’d also nearly killed him.

At forty-nine, he’d been a driving, dynamic businessman. But he’d celebrated his fiftieth birthday in intensive care, felled by a massive heart attack brought on by stress and overwork. His recovery had been slow and painful, and his doctors hadn’t given him many choices. Retire immediately or face a likely sudden death. The frightened look on his wife’s face left him with only one real alternative. He’d turned the CEO slot over to his oldest daughter and settled into what he considered slower, quieter pursuits.

Other men in his position played golf or bridge or took up painting. Ross Huntington had other interests. Political interests.

He was one of the first passengers out the jumbo jet’s forward cabin door. Flying first-class had its compensations, and beating the mad rush through carry-on-bag-choked aisles was the one he prized most. That and the extra legroom it offered. At six feet two inches tall, Huntington believed coach seats could only have been designed with midgets and screaming children in mind. Personal wealth let him indulge his height.

As he left the jetway and headed for customs, a middle-aged man in a dark gray suit intercepted him.

“Mr. Huntington?”

“That’s right.” He slowed his pace, looking down at the man out the corner of his eye. “What can I do for you, Mr.…?”

“Rawlins, sir. Secret Service.” The man fished a wallet-shaped identity card out of his jacket, flipped it open, and showed it to him.

Huntington stopped in the middle of the hallway, standing still while other travelers flowed past him like water around a well-worn rock.

The card showed Rawlins’ picture and looked real enough. He handed it back. “Well?”

The Secret Service agent nodded toward an unmarked exit. “No need to go through customs, sir. We’ve already cleared you. And there’s a car waiting downstairs.”

They wanted him in a hurry, then. Damn. He’d been looking forward to a nap and hot shower at his hotel first. Twenty hours of practically nonstop traveling left their mark on anyone. “What about my bags?”

“All arranged, sir. Our people will deliver them for you.” Rawlins paused. “Was there anything in them you need this afternoon?”

Huntington shook his head. Everything he’d need for this meeting was already crammed into his overtired brain or his scuffed leather briefcase. Unfortunately. He’d left for Europe with high hopes and expectations. And he was coming back with a fat lot of nothing.

The sour knowledge of failure stayed with him all the way to the waiting official car and the White House.

The antechamber outside the Oval Office looked oddly empty. The room was usually crowded — packed with important political contributors, a championship sports team, or a scouting troop waiting their turn for a quick picture with the nation’s chief executive. Now it contained only the President’s personal secretary, busy behind her desk, and his military aide, stiff and formal in full uniform. It took Huntington several seconds to realize what that meant. The President must have cleared his normal afternoon schedule just to hear what he had to say.

Wonderful.

He squared his shoulders and walked straight through the door. Old friend or not, these next few moments weren’t likely to be pleasant.

The President looked up from a mass of paperwork. Two years into his first term, the optimistic, “can do” attitude that had first attracted the American electorate was still there, but it was beginning to look a little frayed around the edges. And the broad shoulders and thick, muscled neck that had served him well as a younger man on the football field were hunched now — bowed down by the weight of constant battles with the same isolationist special interests that had wrecked the economy and sent his predecessor packing. The United States had already had two one-term presidents in this decade. If things didn’t improve soon, he would be the third. Despite that, an easy smile formed on a square-jawed face that still looked boyish beneath his gray hair. “Ross! How was your flight?”

“Long.” Huntington dropped into a chair in front of the desk.

“Yeah. Sorry about the rush. But you may have guessed that I’m kinda curious to hear how things went.” The President stabbed a button on his phone. “Maria? Would you call State for me and ask Thurman to step around later this evening? Nothing formal. Just for a drink or two. Tell him Ross Huntington’s back in town. He’ll know what I mean.”

Huntington eyed him curiously. “You sure that’s wise?”

Harris Thurman, the Secretary of State, was a stickler for protocol and established diplomatic procedure. He hadn’t liked anything about the President’s plan to use a longtime family friend as an unofficial, off-the-record envoy. In fact, Huntington remembered one memo that opened with the phrase “ill-considered” and ended with the dire prediction that “amateur meddling will only make matters worse.”

Straight white teeth flashed as the President grinned. “My esteemed Secretary of State has long since seen the error of his ways. He’s one of your biggest fans now.”

“Oh?”

The President nodded. “I showed him copies of the letters I sent with you. Took the starch right out of him.”

Huntington could understand that. Communications between heads of state were usually wrapped in gauzy, vague phrases of mutual respect and warm admiration. The handwritten note to the French President hadn’t contained anything remotely resembling diplomatic language. Neither had the missive addressed to Germany’s Chancellor. Thurman, undoubtedly horrified by their tone, was probably grateful that they’d been delivered outside official channels and without his sanction.

He grimaced. “I’m not so sure he wasn’t right the first time around. I didn’t get very far.”

“I didn’t really think you would, Ross.” The President cocked his head slightly to one side and nodded toward an antique globe in the Oval Office’s far corner. “We’ve all painted ourselves into corners with this tit-for-tat protectionist crap. We’ve got so many restrictions and retaliatory tariffs on our stuff that it’s amazing anything sells. Nobody’s willing to listen anymore. The major governments are now in power because they promise to ‘protect trade.’ The French. The Germans. The Japanese. Every mother-loving one of us. We’re stuck with a trade war nobody can win.”

He shook his head in disgust. “But nobody wants to back down first. World leaders, hell! We’re all like a bunch of little kids screaming that the other fella threw the first punch.”

“Including you?”

The President snorted. “Especially me! If I even so much as think about relaxing our tariffs or import quotas, I’m gonna have Congress and big labor jumping down my throat with boots on and fangs out! That’s one reason I sent you over to Paris and Berlin, and not somebody carrying a passport stamped ‘U.S. Government Employee.’ If anybody had raised a stink, you’d have just been some overeager private citizen trying a little private diplomacy.”

Huntington arched an eyebrow. “But you still didn’t expect much from my mission?”

“Not really. The trade war’s gone too far for quiet words behind the scenes to have much effect.” The President jabbed a finger at him. “But I did want you to meet my counterparts. I need your firsthand impressions of these men. And your best guesses as to what their next moves might be.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the kind of shrewd, hard-eyed bastard I can trust to give me the straight scoop… without any punches pulled.” The President frowned. “Look, Ross, every other piece of analysis I get is skewed in some damned way. The CIA hems and haws and tries to cover every base from every angle. State’s too busy crawling on its belly to Congress to give me a clear reading. And the rest of my so-called experts can’t make up their minds about what they want for lunch — let alone where Europe’s headed!”

Huntington nodded slowly. Bureaucracies rarely produced anything more than a muddied consensus. The man sitting across from him wouldn’t be the first American president who’d decided to make an end run around the “normal” channels. Or to use a friend and political advisor to do it, either. Woodrow Wilson’s trust in Colonel Edward House and FDR’s use of Harry Hopkins came immediately to mind.

His thoughts twisted away from the comparison. Despite his years of experience in both the domestic and international business arenas, it seemed presumptuous to equate himself with either man. House and Hopkins had helped mold history during two world wars. He only wanted to help his country muddle through its current economic woes. History could look after itself.

He shrugged. “Guesses are about all I can offer, Mr. President. Where would you like me to start?”

“With France.”

The President’s interest in his French counterpart was very keen. Everything both men knew about the European situation pointed to France emerging as the continent’s leading political power. On the surface that seemed illogical. Germany was richer and had a bigger population. It also had Europe’s most powerful army. But the Germans were still stepping somewhat warily — with their economy and industry still weak, they were reluctant to awaken old memories of German military power. While both had economic problems, France had not had the crushing expense of rebuilding half its industry. Their treasury was in better shape, and their industry better established.

Even more important, the French possessed both a substantial nuclear arsenal and a U.N. Security Council veto. That gave them room to maneuver without much fear of foreign interference. And for the moment, at least, Berlin found itself forced to follow the course charted by Paris.

Huntington summoned up a mental image of the French President as he’d last seen him. “Bonnard’s more a figurehead than anything else. He’s too sick and too old to exercise effective control over his own household officials — let alone the country. They say he’s only made ceremonial appearances for the past several months.” He grimaced. “His aides practically had to read your letter to him three or four times before he understood it all.”

The President seemed surprised. “He’s that bad off? I’d read he’s been ill but I hadn’t heard anything like that before.”

“Not many people have, outside the Élysée.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. One, most of the government’s scared to death of showing any signs of weakness. They don’t want the opposition calling for new elections — not right now.”

“Understandable.” No politician with the brains God gave a snail would want to campaign behind a sickly, senile old man. Especially not at a time of growing civil unrest. “And the second reason?”

Huntington leaned forward. “Let’s just say that certain cabinet ministers enjoy operating pretty much on their own.”

The President nodded. Again, that made perfect sense. Ever since the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the French had shown a taste for being ruled by powerful, domineering men. Even under the republic, its presidents functioned more like elected kings than public servants. He could understand why the ambitious officials who often surrounded such leaders would jump at the chance to run their own ministries without interference. “Which ones?”

Huntington ticked them off on his fingers. “The defense chief, Minister of the Interior, head of intelligence, you name it. Practically everyone who controls a powerful department. Bonnard’s Prime Minister is almost as much a nonentity as he is right now.”

“So who’s top dog now? Or are they all still snarling for the honor?”

“Still snarling mostly.” Huntington laughed briefly at the image conjured up by the President’s choice of words. Then he stopped laughing. “But the word is that the intelligence boss seems to be emerging as the first among equals. A man named Nicolas Desaix.”

He remembered the hushed tones his French friends and former business associates had used when discussing Desaix. Their attitude toward the DGSE director had been a strange mixture of unspoken fear and uncomfortable admiration. And if just half the stories they’d told him were true, the man was charming, intelligent, supremely self-confident, and utterly ruthless.

“Will he replace Bonnard?”

“I doubt it.” Huntington shook his head quickly. Everything he’d heard about Desaix suggested the man enjoyed being the eminence behind the throne. He’d be surprised if the French President’s chief puppeteer opted to wear strings around his own arms. “But I do think he’s the man we’ll ultimately have to deal with.”

“Wonderful.” The President looked troubled. “I don’t like the idea of negotiating with somebody I can’t see or talk to directly. Damn it, when I horse-trade with a man, I want to look him right in the eye!”

Huntington agreed with that sentiment. Even in this day of computerized analysis and instantaneous telecommunication, there wasn’t any substitute for the personal touch. Half his success in the business world had come from an ability to size up his competitors, his employees, and his customers: to judge their strengths and weaknesses and to discern their needs and their desires, all in face-to-face meetings.

He rocked back in his chair. “I’d be surprised if Desaix’s interested in real trade talks anyway, Mr. President.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a nationalist to the core. The kind who says ‘France for the French’ and means it. The word is that he’s the driving force behind this crazy foreign worker relocation program of theirs.”

“Great.” The President looked even more worried. News reports from Europe were full of horrific images these days — trainloads of frightened people guarded by soldiers and growling dogs, bloody riots in burning neighborhoods, and all the other warning signs of a rising tide of racism and xenophobia spreading across the continent. Trying to deal with someone who thought all that was a good idea seemed likely to be an exercise in futility.

He glanced out the window toward the White House Rose Garden, almost as though he were seeking solace in its quiet, sun-drenched beauty. Then he sighed heavily and turned back to face his friend. “What about the Germans?”

“Not much better.” Huntington brushed a hand across his overtired eyes and swung into a detailed account of his meetings in Berlin. None had been any more productive than those he’d held in Paris. More of Germany’s business and political leaders wanted an end to the disastrous trade war with the United States, Japan, and Great Britain, but their hands were just as tied by domestic politics and by a need for short-term profits from their captive markets in Eastern Europe. Germany’s eyes and full attention were focused on her growing internal problems, not on the need for fair competition with onetime allies now turned sour trading rivals. Until she could control her massive unemployment, bitter nationalism, and fragmented political spectrum, Germany would be a weak actor on the international stage.

In the western half of the country, high taxes and the loss of overseas markets were slowly strangling key old industries and vital new ones. Protected by strict labor laws, few existing jobs were being lost, but no new ones were being created. As a result, more and more young people were trapped in boredom and state-supported idleness — either on the dole or as “professional” students endlessly pursuing meaningless degrees. They were growing increasingly radical and restless.

The eastern states were in even worse shape. Despite the huge sums invested after reunification, the easterners, the “ossies,” were still poor relations — plagued by continuing high unemployment and by the environmental disasters left by forty-five years of communist misrule. Old tensions were rising as growing numbers of those who’d escaped one form of totalitarianism clamored for another. Though still only a small percentage of the population, neo-Nazi groups were turning bolder and ever more violent. Swastika flags were often openly displayed in smaller villages and in the east’s run-down inner cities.

Attacked from both the right and the left, Germany’s coalition government stood on increasingly shaky ground. The Chancellor and his cabinet were too busy trying to survive almost weekly crises to spend the time, effort, and political capital needed to drop their nation’s protective tariffs and trade barriers.

With all that in mind, Huntington didn’t see any realistic prospect of successful negotiations with either nation. Too many of Europe’s most powerful politicians had too much prestige wrapped up in half-baked economic nationalism and in appeals to growing anti-American sentiment. His dour analysis left the President visibly shaken. Nobody wanted to go down in history as the chief executive who’d held the reins while America and its old allies bickered and squabbled their way into a global depression.

The two men were still talking when the President’s secretary brought coffee in for them an hour later, and neither noticed when she took the empty pot away an hour after that. They were too busy trying to find some way out before the civilized world plunged itself into irreversible economic catastrophe.

Pavel Sorokin stared in consternation at the brown-haired man sitting comfortably across from him.

“Fifty thousand rubles? Per truckload? Have you gone mad?”

The man he knew as Nikolai Ushenko shrugged. “You want the food. I have the food. The price is what we call a marketing decision, Pavel Ilych.”

“Bugger the market!” Sorokin spat out the distasteful word. Despite nearly six years of stunning economic reforms, he still had trouble dealing with the new capitalist reality. “Look, be reasonable, will you? I’ve got a strict budget limit here. Meeting your price would run me out of money long before year’s end.”

Ushenko shrugged again in studied disinterest. “So get your precious marshals to up your budget. The charge is fifty thousand per — not a kopek less. If you don’t want my wheat and beef, I can assure you the boys over at your Foreign Ministry will. They’ve already offered me forty thousand — sight unseen.”

“Those bastards? You know they don’t have that kind of money. Not unless they’ve got a printing press in their basement.” Sorokin ground his teeth in frustration. The way the Ukrainian slurred crisp-edged Russian words into a soft mush was almost as irritating as his tough bargaining stance.

Pavel Sorokin had taken the job as general supply manager for the Ministry of Defense because of the endless opportunities it seemed to offer for a little lucrative graft and corruption. After all, everyone knew how slipshod the military was about minding its money. Unfortunately all that had changed when the old Soviet Union shattered into the Commonwealth and its confusing array of semi-independent republics. The soldiers whose careers had survived the transition were notoriously tightfisted with their limited resources. Now the kind of “private appropriation of state property” that used to be winked at if you were a party member in good standing could land you in prison — all after a fair trial, of course. And the government-owned foodstuffs he sold for private gain had to be carefully hidden in a paperwork maze of “transportation spoilage” reports and falsified inventories. It was all a lot more work than he’d ever bargained for.

He spread his hands. “Come on, Nikolai. This is your old friend Pavel you’re talking to. The diplomats talk a good game, but they’re fickle. They’ll take your goods one week and dump you the next for some other supplier. But you and me, we’ve been doing business for what, almost six months? We can trust each other, true? I’m a guaranteed customer, also true? And that ought to be worth something… say, a five-thousand discount from the forty you’ve been offered.”

Ushenko’s brown eyes brightened as he laughed. “Nice try. But no deal. I couldn’t possibly take anything under forty-five. Not and make a profit.”

Sorokin winced. He needed this shipment badly. Marshals and generals and colonels wouldn’t react well to missing their midday meals because the ministry canteen didn’t have any food to fix. And new jobs for overweight and out-of-date ex-bureaucrats were few and far between.

He tugged at the knot of his gray wool necktie, loosening it. “What you’re asking for is impossible. I just don’t have the money to pay more than forty thousand. Not and keep my job.”

“Too bad, Pavel. It’s been nice chatting with you.” The other man stood up, reaching for his fur-lined jacket. An ice-cold wind already howled down Moscow’s wide avenues, an alarming portent of the winter to come.

“Wait. Wait. Don’t be hasty.” Sorokin half rose, inwardly furious at himself for buckling to this Ukrainian bandit. “There are others in this building who owe me some favors I could call in. So maybe we can make another kind of deal. Cash plus a swap.”

For a long minute, Ushenko stood motionless — as if still undecided about whether to stay or go. Then, with a sigh, he sat down. “What kind of swap? I’m not about to go into the gun-running business, so don’t bother offering me a used tank or two.”

“No, nothing like that.” Sorokin smiled weakly at what he hoped was the other man’s joke. “I’m talking about information.”

“What kind of information?”

Sorokin spread his hands. “How about the relocation timetables and sites for three motor rifle divisions?”

Ushenko snorted. “And what good are those to me? What am I supposed to do, sell them to the Americans? Or the Germans? I’m no traitor.”

“No, no. Of course not.” Sorokin lowered his voice. “But you could find other buyers — some of those entrepreneur friends of yours, for example. Moving that many soldiers means big transportation and big construction contracts. Surely a little advance word of that in the right ears could be worth quite a lot.”

The Ukrainian’s own ears seemed to perk up at that. “Go on.”

And so Sorokin did. In the end it took nearly an hour of heated argument and furious bargaining, but he got his truckloads of food. And all for only forty thousand rubles apiece. Plus a few photocopied folders of Ministry of Defense documents.

Alex Banich strode briskly out of the mammoth ministry building and climbed straight into a blue Mercedes waiting for him at the curb. A parking permit prominently displayed on its dashboard identified it as belonging to the New Kiev Trading Company. His driver, a fair-haired young man named Mike Hennessy, tipped his cigarette out the car window and pulled out onto the New Arbat Road, narrowly dodging an oncoming truck. Both men ignored the blaring horns behind them. Russian drivers were used to living dangerously and driving badly. Defensive driving would have been out of character.

“So how’d it go, boss?”

Banich grinned. “Not bad. We’ll clear a cool ten thousand per load, plus…” He pulled the papers he’d been given out of his jacket. “Sorokin gave me a little present that’ll keep some of Langley’s gophers happy and busy for a few more weeks,”

The information on Russian troop movements would help keep Washington’s picture of the still-strong Russian Army up to date. Best of all, the documents represented a chink in Pavel Sorokin’s armor. His decision to trade one package of relatively low-grade state secrets now would make it that much easier to persuade him to sell more important data later on.

Hennessy matched his smile. “So this guy still thinks you’re plain old Nikolai Ushenko, purveyor of fine foodstuffs?”

“Not a chance.” Banich stuffed the papers back inside his jacket. “He’s convinced I’m Nikolai Ushenko, a spy on the side. But since he thinks I’m only working for a bunch of get-rich-quick Ukrainian businessmen, trading me a few secrets doesn’t bother him much.”

Hennessy nodded. Most Russians still thought of their Commonwealth partners like Ukraine as partly owned subsidiaries of their own republic. Even men in the security services and the armed forces viewed their sister states’ efforts to build independent military and intelligence units with something approaching paternal amusement. That made Banich’s choice of a cover identity positively inspired. Many post-communist Russians still viewed American CIA agents as potential villains for spy thrillers or suspense films — crafty, dangerous, and devious. But Ukrainian spies? Well, they made perfect cutup characters for the new sitcoms pouring out of Moscow’s film and TV studios. Nobody really took them seriously.

And that was a weakness Alex Banich was fully prepared to exploit.

A childhood spent with émigré Ukrainian grandparents and years in the CIA’s intensive language training program let him shift fluidly and easily from English to colloquial Russian to flawless Ukrainian — all in the same sentence. He could pass himself off as anyone from a greedy wheeler-dealer to a stern, self-righteous soldier or policeman. Ten years of successful assignments throughout Eastern Europe had honed his acting and language abilities to a razor’s edge. There were nights when he even dreamed in Russian. All in preparation for what should have been the pinnacle of his active-duty career: assignment as the senior field operative for the CIA’s Moscow Station.

Banich’s grin slipped to one side, becoming a wry smile aimed at his own misplaced ambition. Driven by an unrelenting need to be “the best,” he’d worked hard, sweated blood, and wrecked his marriage to get to Moscow. And for what?

The hard-line communists he’d grown up hating were gone — in prison, dead, or learning how to be good little capitalists. The once-mighty USSR was just as dead. Its successor states seemed too busy trying to survive to cause much trouble for the world. And Moscow Station, once viewed as the CIA’s most challenging posting, was now seen by many as little more than a dirty and cold backwater.

The real action was supposed to be somewhere else to the east or west — in Europe’s great capital cities or in bustling Tokyo. The Agency’s congressional minders were constantly pushing for more data on the French, the Germans, and the Japanese, not the Russians. For Washington’s trendy power elite, nuclear missiles and tank divisions were out. Trade balances and subsidy levels were in.

The effects showed up whenever Langley allocated its annual operations budget and made personnel assignments. Year by year, Moscow Station’s share of both got smaller and smaller.

Banich shook his head. He didn’t see how much further the Agency could shrink its operations here. Not and expect his networks to gather significant amounts of useful information. The Soviet Union’s self-destruction may have made spying inside its former territories easier, but it certainly hadn’t made it any cheaper. These days Russians didn’t pass military or political secrets to America because they hated communism. Communism was dead. Now they sold them — sold them for the money to buy extra food, more heat, or to cover gambling debts or stock market losses.

The shortsighted nature of the continuing cutbacks mandated by Congress gnawed at him every time he risked losing a valuable source by haggling too hard over a price. For all their internal problems, Russia and its partner republics still possessed a formidable stockpile of nuclear warheads, accurate ICBMs, and huge arsenals of conventional weapons. And behind the array of fledgling parliaments and elected presidents, Banich knew there were still dangerous men in high places who harbored imperial ambitions for their nations. Such men should be watched, not ignored.

Unfortunately most of Washington’s policymakers were shortsighted by their very nature. Nations they didn’t view as a near-term threat to America’s security and issues that didn’t threaten their electoral prospects tended to drop off their screens. The usual rule of thumb was: out of congressional sight and interest, out of budget.

Hennessy’s voice summoned him back to more immediate concerns. “I checked your messages while you were inside taking Sorokin to the cleaners.”

“Oh?” Banich leaned forward from the backseat, unable to resist the opening even in his somber mood. “Anything pressing?”

The younger man winced. His boss rarely punned, but when he did they were always awful.

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh.” Hennessy floored the Mercedes, flashing through a crowded intersection narrowly ahead of a surge of oncoming traffic. “Seriously, Kutner wants to see you back at the embassy, yesterday and not tomorrow… if you get my drift.”

“Yeah.” Banich pondered that in silence. The chief of station, Len Kutner, rarely interfered with field operations in progress. Instead, he passed judgment on proposed ops and then ran interference for them against second-guessing by the “goody two-shoes” — the embassy’s State Department regulars. Something fairly important must be in the wind. Something Banich was suddenly sure he wouldn’t like at all.

The two uniformed Russian militiamen standing close to the embassy compound’s main entrance weren’t there on any kind of guard duty. They were just trying to cadge whatever warmth they could from the heated U.S. Marine sentry box right behind the gate. It had been chilly even with the sun high overhead. Now, with night drawing closer and thick black storm clouds piling up in the east, the outside temperature was slipping toward the freezing mark. Some pessimistic forecasters were even predicting Moscow’s first brief snowfall by early morning.

Banich was still crossing the street when one of the marine guards recognized him and opened the gate.

The tallest of the two Russian cops stopped blowing on his ungloved hands long enough to sketch a quick wave. “Hello, Mr. Banich.” His English was pretty good.

“Hi, Pyotr. What’d you and Mischa do to wind up on night duty this close to the river? Screw your sergeant’s grandmother?”

Both men laughed. They were part of the crime-prevention detail assigned to patrol streets near the embassy. Russia’s capital needed all the U.S. aid and investment it could attract, and having American diplomats routinely mugged didn’t strike anyone in Moscow as a particularly good advertisement for the city’s charms.

Banich stepped through the gate and headed for the huge red brick chancery building.

“Hey, Mr. Banich?”

He half turned. “Yes?”

“Got any investment advice for us?”

Banich paused for a moment, pretending to fumble for the right, poorly pronounced Russian words. “Of course. Buy low… and sell high.”

He left them chuckling behind him.

The whole incident had been recorded, of course. Probably by a hidden mike monitored in one of the apartment houses across the street from the embassy. Russia’s Federal Investigative Service didn’t have all the resources or powers of the old KGB, but it still existed to protect the new state from foreign spies. And foreign spies tended to work out of foreign embassies.

FIS surveillance was one of the reasons Banich always carefully changed his outward appearance before coming back from a stint as Nikolai Ushenko. It usually only took a quick stop at the downtown apartment he rented under Ushenko’s name. The Ukrainian’s thick, fur-lined jacket, brown sweater, and American-made blue jeans were gone, replaced by a blue London Fog raincoat, dark gray suit, white shirt, and red silk tie. The stylish pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, a splash of after-shave, and a dab of Jack Daniel’s or wine completed the transformation from plain-spoken, shrewd rustic to lazy, fun-loving, junior-grade diplomat.

When he first arrived in Moscow, Banich had spent more than a month thoroughly playing his part as a mediocre deputy assistant economic attaché firmly committed to doing as little real work as possible. While apparently evaluating sales and investment opportunities for U.S. firms, he’d led FIS watchers on a dizzying round of factory tours, boring business conferences, and marathon pub crawls. The whole booze-tinged process had been well worth it. Day by day, the team of agents tailing him had dwindled, with man after man pulled off to follow more promising suspects — or to nurse long-term hangovers. Now they hardly bothered to keep tabs on him at all.

That technique wouldn’t have worked six or seven years before. The KGB would never have allowed a foreign official, especially an American, to wander at will though Moscow and the surrounding countryside. But the KGB had been torn apart for its complicity in the August 1991 coup. And the fragment tasked with counterespionage, the FIS, spent a lot of its time and resources spying on itself; trying to sniff out the faintest whiff of a renewed hard-line threat to Russia’s elected government. Rumor said the splintered agency’s morale and effectiveness were still at an all-time low.

Of course, that robbed Banich’s own job of some of its challenge. He shrugged the thought off. He’d welcome anything that made intelligence-gathering in this crazy country easier. His own nation’s changing priorities made the job tough enough as it was.

Len Kutner was waiting for him in his cramped, sixth-floor interior office. That was something else Banich liked about the tall, balding chief of station. The man never played phony power games such as holding every meeting on his own turf.

“Alex. Sorry to break in on you like this. Everything okay?”

Banich shook Kutner’s outstretched hand and nodded. “Fine. Hennessy’s faxing shipping orders down to Kiev right now. And I picked up this for our troubles.” He held out the sheaf of Ministry of Defense documents.

The station chief flipped through them rapidly, his forehead wrinkling with effort as he translated technical terms into their English equivalents. “They’re moving three full divisions? Rather expensive, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” Banich pointed to the last few pages in Kutner’s hands. “And they’re moving them back into Belarus from up near the St. Petersburg Military District.”

“Closer to the Polish border? Curioser and curioser.” Kutner looked up from the documents. “Have you heard anything else about this? From your sources in the Parliament, say?”

Banich shook his head. “Not a whisper. Which I find very interesting indeed.”

“Very. Maybe some of the generals are falling back into some bad old habits, eh?”

“Exactly.”

“Right. Put some time in on this one, Alex…” Kutner paused, looking troubled. “Or at least, as much time as you can afford. We’ve received some new marching orders from D.C., through Langley.”

Banich waited for the other man to explain. Now they were getting to why he’d been called out of the field so soon.

Kutner laid the documents down on his subordinate’s file-strewn desk and looked him right in the eye. “It seems there’s a new push on from some damned interagency working group. The Joint Trade Task Force. Whatever in God’s name that is.

“Anyway, they’re complaining that most of our product focuses too much on military and political matters… and not enough on trade and commerce. Stuff they call ‘the real measure of a nation’s strength.’”

“Jesus Christ!”

Kutner nodded bet kept going. “Whatever you or I may think about it, Alex, these folks have real pull with the Congress. And they’ve got backing inside the Agency, too.” He handed Banich a message flimsy. “That came down the satellite link this morning. It lists our new priorities in order of importance.”

Banich scanned the list in growing disbelief. Sales figures and prices for French and German industrial tools and pharmaceuticals? For Japanese automobiles? Evidence of “payoffs” for Russian buyers or government officials? It went on for ten or fifteen more categories, each one growing more obscure and more difficult to dig up. He looked up angrily. “These assholes can’t be serious! We’re trying to keep tabs on a dozen republics spread across eleven time zones and they want us to waste time on this kind of crap?”

Kutner held up a hand to slow him down. “Yes, they do. Look, Alex, I’m pulling in every chit I’ve got to get this reversed or at least trimmed down. But for right now, those are your new targets.”

“Great.” Banich tried unsuccessfully to tone down the bitterness in his voice. “Can you tell me which of my contacts I’m supposed to cut off while I chase down this garbage? The Ministry of Defense? Or maybe my recruits inside the Foreign Ministry?”

Kutner shook his head. “Just do what you can. Nobody’s expecting miracles from you, Alex.”

“Well, that’s good, because I’m fresh out of loaves and fishes.” Banich took a deep breath, fighting to calm down. It wouldn’t do any good to piss Kutner off. He needed all the upper-echelon backing he could get. “Look, Len. I can’t even begin to track half of this junk. Not with the resources we’ve got now. We’re going to need more bodies around here just to get the necessary legwork off the ground.”

“Agreed. I’ll see what I can do.” The taller man patted his shoulder kindly and edged past him out the narrow office door.

Banich sat staring down at his crowded desk till far past midnight, trying to work out how to spin a finely tuned intelligence apparatus onto a completely new tack — all without irretrievably wrecking it.

He was still at it when the first delicate snowflakes began falling on Moscow’s empty streets.