Rasputin's Shadow

60

I had to be sure.

I snatched my phone off the desk and called Larisa.

“Agent Reilly,” she answered, sounding surprised.

“We need to talk.”

She hesitated. “Okay, but-sounds like it’s urgent? What’s happened?”

I just said, “Can you come down here?”

“Sure. Where and when?”

Half an hour later, I went downstairs to receive her and took her across the street, to Foley Square, opposite the steps of the State Supreme Court Building.

I dove right into it. “I know all about Jericho and I know who you are. I’ve seen your updates in his case file. You’ve been playing me all along and for what? Just to help you track him down? You could have told me. Things might have turned out differently if I’d known what we were dealing with and how important he is.”

She eyed me with a look of total confusion. “You’re- You’ve lost me.”

She was definitely good, but I really didn’t feel like wasting time. “Okay, you know what?” I pulled out my phone. “Let’s call the consulate. Let me ask your boss there what he thinks. See if he thinks my theory that you’re a CIA double agent has any merit. What do you say?”

She was still staring at me like I was a crackpot, but something had changed in her expression. A couple of worry lines had cracked her pristine face.

I just held up my phone, with a questioning look. Then I moved to dial the number. “Here we go.”

She watched me for a second or two-then she lunged for my phone. “Don’t be stupid,” she snapped.

I held the phone out innocently, like, “What?”

“Hang up, dammit,” she insisted. “This isn’t a joke.”

I put the phone down. “I never said it was. But you guys seem to love playing games.” I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. “What the hell’s going on?”

She stared at me, her face flaring with annoyance. “What do you think? We’re trying to find Shislenko before he gets shipped back to Moscow.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Is that Sokolov’s real name?”

“Yes.” She nodded grudgingly. “Kirill. Kirill Shislenko.”

“And you’re one of ours?”

She nodded again.

“Code name?” I had to make sure. “Grim-”

“Wood,” she completed it pointedly.

She couldn’t have known that any other way. Which meant she was working for us. I wasn’t sure where her ultimate allegiance lay, of course-who really did, with double agents. But she was on the Agency’s payroll and she damn sure didn’t want her Russian bosses getting wind of it.

“How’d you find out?” she asked. “How do you know about Jericho?”

“Confidential sources,” I said tersely. “So why not let me in on it from day one?”

“You need me to tell you what they’d do to me if the SVR ever found out?”

I didn’t need to answer that.

“I can’t risk anyone blowing my cover,” she continued. “It’s a very tightly held secret, even inside the Company.”

I guess I could understand that. “So how’d that happen? What made you come to our side?”

She shrugged. “It was my plan all along. I never bought into the big lie.”

“What do you mean?”

Her expression took on a distant, steely tinge. “My father was a diplomat. He was also KGB, and a brute. Both to me and to my mom. But we lived well. We had a privileged life, with nice houses and chauffeurs and all the food we wanted. His being a diplomat meant I got to see the outside world and live in all kinds of places. Beirut, Rome, London. So I also got to see the outside world for what it really was, which was nothing like the lies the Soviet propaganda machine was pumping out when I was a kid. I grew to hate everything my father and the rest of them stood for.”

She paused, gauging my reaction, a little internal debate clearly going on about how much to tell me.

“Then after the Wall came down,” she continued, “it became even worse. There’s this great myth here in the West that the fall of Communism was a people’s revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, sure, it was a revolution-but the people doing the uprising had no idea who was really pulling the strings and making it all happen. The whole thing was prodded and nursed from within. It was all stage-managed by the KGB.”

“You’re saying the KGB helped bring about the downfall of Communism?”

“They didn’t just help bring it about. They orchestrated it.”

“Why?”

“Because they didn’t have a choice. And because they wanted to get rich. Look, the last guy to rule the Soviet Union was KGB. Our current president-for-life? Also a KGB officer. What does that tell you? Who do you think are the richest people in Russia today? The ones who were running the show before the Wall came down. That’s why they were able to plunder the country’s natural resources and siphon off these colossal fortunes for themselves. Because, like my father, they were the only ones who were allowed to see what was going on outside our borders. They were the only ones who could travel and read foreign newspapers and see for themselves, and they weren’t stupid. They understood that the game was over. They knew Communism was dying. So they prepared for its imminent demise. They set up their own version of democracy, their own version of capitalism.

“People like my father and his friends at the Kremlin partnered with the only people who were doing business under Communism: the black-market bosses, the only people who understood how to actually make money at a time when it was a crime to do so. They all positioned themselves to reap the rewards together when the system collapsed. And they got it right. You think these gangsters were happier before, when a life of privileged luxury meant some crappy Volga limo and a dacha in a remote forest by a frozen lake? Or now, with mansions in London and hundred-million-dollar yachts in Monaco? The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest robbery in history. These guys make Al Capone and Don Corleone look like pickpockets. You think you have a problem with your ‘one percent’? Come to Moscow. See how our ‘one percent’ live. And how they really make their money.”

“And you want to bring them down?”

She laughed. “I can’t bring them down. No one can. But if I can help turn the tide a little bit, if I can score a small victory here and there… at least I’ll have done something.”

I nodded. I was starting to like her. “Tell me something. Your people and us, this constant struggle between us. Is it ever going to end?”

“No.” No hesitation there.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “We will always be jealous of you. Jealous of your economic and industrial success, and frustrated by Russia’s lack of it. Look at everything around you. We don’t produce anything except for basic natural resources that any third-world country can produce. We don’t create anything world-class that we can take pride in. Cars, planes, computers, mobile phones, wine, watches, you name it-we don’t make any of those. The only thing we’re world leaders in is the creation of spam. Spam, theft, and fraud. That’s us.”

“Sounds promising,” I said.

“It’s not,” she grumbled. Then the edges of her eyes creased. “The massacre at Brighton Beach. That was Sokolov, wasn’t it?”

“He wasn’t there. But it was his handiwork. His machine.”

She asked, “What is it?”

Which surprised me. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Who does?”

“I don’t know. Obviously, some people in Moscow must know. The ones who saw his work before he defected. But I don’t know if they’ve shared specifics about it with my boss.”

“What about Langley?” I was dying to throw Frank Fullerton and Reed Corrigan’s names at her to see her reaction, but I held back. Referring to them by their code names-the only names I had for them-would be the wrong move at this point.

“I’m sure some people know more than they’ve told me, but as far as I know, no one really knows what it is or how it works. We just know it’s bad.” She paused, then asked, “What do you think it is?”

I hesitated, unsure about how much to share with her. How much to trust her. But I figured she’d already revealed herself enough to be able to go a bit further.

“He’s built some kind of device in his van. I think it has something to do with manipulating the brain using microwaves. But that’s about all I’ve got.” It was time for me to park my Corrigan quest, as I needed her help on something that was far more important-and urgent. “Who is this ‘Koschey’ we’re dealing with? What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. He’s good.”

“That, I know.”

She frowned. “He’s a top FSB agent. A lieutenant colonel. He works alone. Takes his orders straight from the general in Moscow. We’re instructed to give him any support he needs if and when he calls.”

“We need to find him if we’re going to get Sokolov and his van back. Who’s his contact at the consulate?”

“Vrabinek. The consul. But right now, it’s a dead end. Koschey hasn’t been in touch with him since Wednesday.”

I felt a jab of unease. “So not since he grabbed Sokolov?”

“Exactly.”

This didn’t sound good. “He could already be gone.”

Her glum look mirrored my sinking feeling. “Maybe.”

This felt like a total catastrophe. Like we’d only seen the tip of the iceberg with this thing.

Then my phone rang.

And everything changed.