Private Moscow

Chapter 92

Thirty-five minutes later, we were heading east along the MKAD, a ten-lane beltway that encircled the outer regions of Moscow. Dense, snow-capped forest lay to our right, but there was a sudden break in the treeline, and I saw a white, twenty-four-story tower block rising above the sea of trees like a headstone.

“That’s it,” Dinara said.

She and I were in the back, dressed in the clothes we’d asked Feo to bring from the Residence. Dinara wore a navy blue dress, and I was in a single-breasted black suit.

A couple of kilometers further on, we left the highway and went south along a winding road that cut through the forest. Only this was no ordinary woodland road. There were camera and sensor towers every hundred meters, and everything about our approach had been logged and tracked before we reached the gatehouse.

A high wire fence marked the perimeter of the huge compound, and beyond it I saw the white tower block, and a shorter but wider building in the shape of two Y’s linked together by their stems.

A guard emerged from the gatehouse and checked Feo and Anna’s police identification. Dinara handed over the credentials Erin Sebold had provided, and the guard ran them through a handheld scanner. My heart skipped a beat when I realized he was checking them against a central database. I held my breath for what seemed an eternity, but nothing bad happened. The guard returned the IDs to Dinara and waved us through.

The CIA must have had someone inside the SVR or access to the central identification database to have created authentic records. There were long-standing rumors the Russians had a back door into the visa systems of western nations, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the Americans had even more sophisticated capabilities to generate false Russian credentials, including intelligence identification. However she’d done it, Erin Sebold had provided us with identities that stood up to official scrutiny.

A little further along the inner access road, another guard in a heavy coat waved us toward a vast parking lot that lay to the east of the sprawling complex.

“This is as far as we go,” Anna said after she’d pulled into a parking space. “A police escort inside the building would raise questions.”

I opened the flight case West had given me, and distributed the gear. Dinara and I each took a tiny in-ear transceiver, and I gave Anna and Feo handheld relay units they could use to talk to us and link to the phone network.

“When we get inside, connect us to the number stored in preset one,” I said, and Anna nodded.

“You ready?” I asked Dinara.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Good luck,” Feo called after us as we left the police car. Dinara and I crossed the parking lot, which was almost completely full.

“It’s busy for a Sunday,” I observed.

“The SVR never sleeps,” Dinara replied.

Each car represented at least one person, and I estimated more than 350 vehicles. There were a lot of people in this complex, and every single one of them had to be considered an enemy.

Dinara produced the pistol Feo had given her. She checked the weapon before putting it back inside her purse.

“If anything goes wrong,” she said, “you need to know I won’t let myself be taken alive.”

With my mind playing out the implications of that grim statement, we headed for the imposing white headstone that loomed high above us.