Red Cell

CHAPTER 12

Kyra had hoped that a walk on the streets would offer the distraction she had needed so much for weeks, but the reality was disappointing. If not for the signs in Mandarin, the neighborhood surrounding the US embassy could have passed for a great number of cities that she had seen. The architecture was all avant-garde, even daring, and certainly impressive to her untrained eye. The city had become a laboratory for architects, and the modern constructions were devouring the sections that still matched Kyra’s notion of what a Chinese city should be. But her first impression of the city she saw from the taxicab had been right. The Chinese were making their home a modern place at a cost that the case officer found depressing.

Mitchell had warned her and Burke about leaving safe ground, ordered them against it really, but Jonathan had buried himself in papers and research and Kyra had had enough of that. Her mind was screaming to do something besides sit at another desk and stare at another monitor. She could have that life anywhere, and Kyra had joined the Agency hoping for something better. Now she was standing in one of the great countries — illegally, she admitted — that all case officers hoped to see in their lifetime. It was the new field where case officers could test their skills against an enemy that was respected, skilled, and persistent. It was the kind of assignment that Kyra had hoped to earn, would probably never have now, and so she was determined that she hadn’t traveled so far to see nothing but the inside of the embassy compound. Throwing her out of the country was the worst penalty Mitchell could lay on her and she’d been through that once. So Kyra checked her rear pocket for her passport and Chinese yuan and slipped out through the south gate past the Marine guard onto An Jia Lou Road. The embassies of South Korea and India sat across the street and the embassies of Israel and Malaysia just beyond with their own guards standing watch over the darkened street. Kyra worked her way south until she passed the Israeli embassy and diplomatic housing complex to the south and the loose pedestrian crowd began to change from Westerners and South Asians to Chinese natives.

Following the map in her mind, she turned southeast when she reached the Liangmaqiao Road and began a long walk. The developed neighborhood of the foreign consulates gave way to a series of half-finished construction projects and then finally to the more traditional Chinese districts that she’d hoped to see. Checking her watch, Kyra decided that she had traveled over two miles; her feet were already hurting. Her sneakers were not designed for long walks. She would have some blisters. She ignored the sore spots and kept up her pace and fixed her eyes on the skyline. The Forbidden City lit up the cityscape in the distance. She doubted that she could make the trip on foot tonight.

The first blow caught her square between her shoulder blades and knocked her into the brick wall to her right. Kyra got her hands up to protect her face before she made contact but still hit hard enough to scrape her palms on the rough stone. Stunned, she turned her head and saw a Chinese man, well dressed in a British-cut suit, average build, just a little taller than herself. He looked at her, stoic, no expression on his face, but he was clearly focused on her. He stood still as the crowd flowed around him.

Kyra twisted her neck in a circle to straighten out the kink that the body check had given her, then stared straight at the man as a strange emotion settled over her. The tear along her arm throbbed as her heart started to pound. She thought for a moment that she should have been furious, but she felt detached… almost unfeeling.

You want to play? she thought.

Kyra turned away from the man and began to walk again. She turned her head briefly to check for the tail. He was barely an arm’s length behind her. She approached the cross street, then stopped and braced herself. It was a good guess. The man walked into her hard enough that she would have sprawled onto the street had she not prepared herself for the hit. This time she didn’t bother to look back.

Something cold rose up inside her chest and her thoughts went blank. The light changed and she began to cross with the small mob. The man behind bumped her again as she approached the opposite sidewalk, a subtle move intended to make it look as though she had tripped trying to step up on the curb. She was agile enough to clear the rise, but the feeling inside her grew stronger and she lost all desire to suppress it.

An alleyway cut into the wall on her right fifteen feet ahead. Kyra quickened her pace just a bit, and a brief glance confirmed that she had managed to put a few pedestrians between her and the man behind. She approached the alley, then made a quick turn and ran into the dark space.

Alpha saw the woman break to the right and sprint into the alley. He pushed a pair of random lovers out of his path and rushed forward to the dark hole between the buildings. He stared into the dark and realized he could see nothing beyond, but there was no light at the end of the alley to suggest another exit. The woman had to be somewhere in front of him, but the streetlamps behind him destroyed his night vision and he wouldn’t recover it until he stepped into the darkness. He took the step and moved into the black space.

The metal rebar caught him flat on the nose and shattered his upper lateral cartilage into pieces. Blood gushed out in an instant into his mouth and throat and he gagged. The pain tore through his head and he couldn’t think. All he managed was the reflex to move his hands to his face to cover the wound.

The blow sent a vibration through the rebar that rebounded through her arm, and Kyra felt a burst of pain try to erupt from her gutted triceps. The Vicodin let her ignore it. Kyra swung for his kneecap next. Her aim was off in the dark and she missed the patella on the first try. The second try connected squarely, dropping Alpha to the concrete and forcing a cry from him despite the blood in his throat leaking from the gusher in the middle of his face.

Kyra was yelling and crying now, had lost all self-control and knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself. The trained part of her mind watched with detachment as she went wild, unable to regain herself. She didn’t understand that she was cursing, and that part of her mind that was quietly observing the scene caught bits of English and Spanish screams directed at the pathetic, crippled figure on the ground curled into the fetal position.

She didn’t know how long it went on. It felt like minutes, certainly, but the beating could only have lasted for a few seconds. Then the rebar slipped from her fingers and fell to the concrete with several loud clangs as the ends took turns hitting the ground faster and faster until it came to rest. She didn’t know why she stopped, but Kyra wasn’t a killer. She stared down at the silhouette for a brief moment, then turned and ran.

She paused at the curtain of light dividing the street from the darkened alley. Her heart was pounding hard and she couldn’t control her breathing. No pedestrians had stopped. The traffic had been loud enough to drown out the noises from the alleyway.

Kyra turned back toward the embassy district and began to run.

“That’s it, Mr. President.” Barron closed the book and set it on the table. There were five printed copies of Mitchell’s plan to exfiltrate Pioneer in existence and they were all in the Oval Office. Stuart, Rhead, Showalter, Cooke, and Barron had copies, all received in that order. Barron would collect them all once the meeting was over, carry them back to Langley in a lockbag, and shred them personally. He found himself hoping that the DNI would demand to keep a copy so he could tell Rhead off in front of the president. Barron despised Michael Rhead for several excellent reasons, but the most important one was sure to come out in the next five minutes. He’d been waiting for this particular fight.

Stuart didn’t close his own leather binder. “It seems too simple.”

Barron nodded. “The more complicated they are, the more likely they are to fail. Simplicity leaves room for flexibility when things don’t go as planned. Besides, with the MSS putting the lockdown on everyone over there, our resources are limited.”

“‘Captains talk strategy, generals talk logistics,’ eh?” Stuart asked.

“It’s the literal truth in this case,” Cooke said. She set her own book on the table next to Barron’s.

“Who’s going to perform the retrieval?” Rhead said. The DNI had been remarkably uncritical of the plan. He seemed almost at peace with Cooke’s decision to proceed with the operation.

Barron watched as Cooke took a breath. “They’ve got blanket coverage on most of the long-term residents that pass through the embassies there, not just our people. It’s—”

“Who?” Rhead repeated.

Cooke looked Rhead straight in the face. “Kyra Stryker,” she said.

Rhead slammed his binder shut and beat the leather book on the coffee table so hard that Cooke feared for its structural integrity. “Are you out of your mind?” the DNI yelled. The Secret Service officer standing by the door shifted his stance automatically in response to the sudden display of aggression.

“Mike!” Stuart shouted at the man. The DNI looked at the president, unapologetic for his show of temper. “There’s only one person who gets to yell at people in this office and you aren’t him. Care to explain yourself?” It was not really a question.

“Kyra Stryker is a case officer I ordered Director Cooke to fire a month ago for incompetence and insubordination. And you”—Rhead leveled a finger at Cooke—“disobeyed that order.”

“And I’d do it again.”

“You’re fired!” Rhead snapped. “I want your resig—”

“Put a lid on it, Mike! I decide who gets fired in here,” Stuart practically yelled at the man. “Kathy, what’s the story on Stryker?”

“Stryker is an excellent case officer, Mr. President,” Cooke started. “She graduated from the Farm last spring with the second-highest score on record. Her first assignment was to Caracas—”

“She botched a clandestine meeting with an asset and almost got herself arrested,” Rhead cut her off. “And you sent her right back into the field, against my orders, to exfiltrate an asset in a city that’s even more hostile! You’re as incompetent as Stryker!”

Stuart silenced Rhead with a look. “Kathy, I’m assuming there’s another side to this story?”

“There is, sir. The meeting in Caracas did go wrong, that’s true, but it was a meeting that Stryker had argued against.”

Barron nodded. “There were clear signs that the asset was a double agent working for the Venezuelans. We determined that he couldn’t have had access to the intelligence he was providing us even though it was checking out. So we decided to terminate the relationship rather than risk our people.” He stopped suddenly, clenched his jaw, and fought the urge to launch out of his seat. Surprised, Cooke saw that he had balled his hands into fists. She’d never seen him so tense. When he finally spoke, he was fighting to keep his demeanor professional. “But the chief of station refused our assessment and ordered the original case officer to maintain the relationship. He refused, so the COS took him off the case and assigned Stryker. He threatened to terminate her assignment if she didn’t go. Even so, she went under protest. She made it to the site and figured in two seconds that the meet was an ambush. There were at least a dozen SEBIN commandos hiding around the bridge. Stryker outran them on foot but she took a bullet in the arm for her trouble. She got to a safe house and had to perform first aid on herself with some hemostatic gauze and morphine and almost overdosed. We evaced her to the States and she’s spent the last two months on medical leave.”

“Your chief of station sounds incompetent,” Stuart said.

“He’s not our chief of station, strictly speaking, sir,” Barron said. “He’s not a CIA officer.”

“Who are we talking about here?” Stuart asked.

“I think Director Rhead should answer that question,” Cooke said. Heads turned in the DNI’s direction.

Cooke sat back and Barron suppressed a smile. Rhead looked like he was suppressing the urge to strangle the CIA director only because the Secret Service officer would have beaten him if he had tried. “Sam Rigdon.”

“Rigdon…,” Stuart said. “Why do I know that name?”

Barron turned to Rhead. “Are you going to tell him, or am I?”

Rhead gritted his teeth. “Because, Mr. President,” he said, “he was your ambassador to Kenya during your first term. And he donated money to your reelection campaign.”

It took almost ten seconds for the implication to register, and then Stuart ran his hands down his face, pale white. “You gave a chief of station slot to a campaign donor?”

“Six months before you nominated me to take over CIA,” Cooke told him. “The acting director at the time had no political leverage to stop the appointment.”

“Rigdon was a CIA analyst for five years before he went to the private sector—,” Rhead started to argue.

“Analysts read reports and give bad PowerPoint briefings,” Stuart said. “They don’t run ops! What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that you had a major contributor with some qualifications who was more interested in playing spy again than in being a diplomat to some rat-hole country that nobody cares about!” Rhead shot back. “We give ambassadorships to donors! Chiefs of stations are just the intel equivalent, they answer to me, and there’s no law that says they have to be CIA bodies.”

“Unbelievable,” Stuart muttered. “Talk about politicizing intelligence.”

“Is he still in Caracas?” Showalter asked.

“Yes,” Cooke said. Barron had done his duty and it was time to get him out of the direct line of fire. “Director Rhead disagreed with our after-action report and refused to let us remove Rigdon. Instead, he decided that Stryker was at fault and ordered her fired.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Rhead snapped.

“Shut up!” Stuart ordered. “I’ve heard enough from you.”

“Harry—,” Rhead started.

“Shut up!” Stuart yelled. Rhead slumped back and closed his mouth. “Get Rigdon out of there right now, Mike. Do it or I’ll have State revoke his passport and he can stay in Caracas. Kathy, put somebody in who can do the job. And I don’t care if we have to give Rigdon his money back; once he lands in Miami, shut him up. I don’t even want to think what the Post headline would read. And don’t get me started on what could happen on the Hill if this gets out. Mike, are there any more Rigdons out there? Don’t talk, just nod.” Rhead shook his head. “Good. Kathy, can Stryker get the job done in Beijing?”

“Yes, sir, we believe she can,” Cooke said. “Nothing’s guaranteed, but we believe that for this assignment, she’ll do as well as anyone else that we could put on it.”

“When will you pull Pioneer out?” Stuart asked.

“We haven’t asked Stryker to take the mission yet,” Cooke said. “We need your approval for the operation first.”

“You trust her?” Stuart asked.

“Absolutely, sir,” Cooke said.

“Then it’s your hide. Tell her godspeed.”

“I will, sir.”

“And Mike?” the president said, turning to his director of national intelligence.

“Yes, Mr. President?” The DNI sounded hesitant.

“You will not pull a Valerie Plame on that girl. If I see Stryker’s name in the Post, so help me, I’ll turn the attorney general loose on you. You understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Resignation this time. Cooke watched the DNI’s shoulders slump down.

Kyra had not wanted Mitchell to be an impressive man. Quite the opposite, she had wanted him to be very much the one kind of station chief she already knew, arrogant and unruly. It would have saved her from the guilt of staying silent about beating a Chinese intelligence officer near to death, and that emotion was hollowing her out. Mitchell clearly was competent and he seemed like a decent man, which almost certainly meant he would send her, and probably Jonathan, to the airport the minute she confessed. But the right thing and the proper thing weren’t the same at the moment.

Mitchell was past his prime, in his midfifties by her guess. His time as a field officer was nearly finished, and clearly it had not been wasted. His office walls weren’t covered with trophies like some station chiefs’, with ceremonial weapons or gifts from foreign intelligence services. Mitchell’s office was far more spare. In fact, he had allowed himself only one significant career decoration, but it told enough of his story to make Kyra feel small. Under the glass covering his cherry desktop was a framed array of some fifty challenge coins collected from military divisions and brigades, foreign and domestic, mingled with a few from foreign intelligence services. It was a modest tribute to a covert career that entitled the man to far more hubris than he had shown her. Mitchell had led the life she wanted for herself. Now denied, she wanted to hate him for it but had no good reason to disrespect the man.

Mitchell interrupted her thoughts as he turned around in his chair and pulled printout from the laser printer that sat behind his desk. “Read this,” he ordered. Kyra took the cable.

Stryker has… full confidence of D/CIA, and D/NCS. She read the phrase again, struggling and failing to say something meaningful.

Mitchell gave her another few moments of silence before he finally spoke. “Are you in?”

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Kyra said.

“Nobody was,” Mitchell said. “If you don’t want to take part, no one will hold it against you. You’re not familiar with the ground here and it’s hostile territory. But Cooke wouldn’t ask if Pioneer wasn’t worth it.”

Kyra nodded. She reread the second paragraph, then nodded her head. “I’m in.”

“You sure?” Mitchell asked. “You understand paragraph three there? Anyone who gets arrested is going to do serious jail time here, maybe a life sentence. Pioneer is that big.”

She tried to weigh the idea of having Mitchell’s life against a long stretch in Chinese prison but found that she couldn’t think. Her logic and her emotions were taking her in different directions. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the world but it didn’t help. Finally she cleared her mind and said what felt right. “I understand,” she replied. “What’s the plan?”

“We have a plan, but conditions out there are forcing us to revise it. The MSS and the other locals have been smothering us. It’s all been deterrence surveillance on long-term residents, so my people have a high probability of getting burned if they try—”

“But I’m disposable,” Kyra said, interrupting.

Mitchell fell silent for a moment before answering. “I don’t use that word. You’re trained, you’re anonymous to the MSS, and you don’t have to worry about your long-term cover here. I went over your file. You would’ve wiped the floor with me at the Farm twenty-five years ago. So you’re not disposable. You’re valuable. Unless you think you can’t handle it.”

Can I? Two hours ago, before beating a man into the ground with a piece of rebar, she wouldn’t have had a doubt. Now she didn’t know. Kyra said nothing.

Mitchell shrugged. “Just speaking truth.” He reached back into the safe and pulled out a black binder. “Here’s the exfil plan. Go over it. We’re going to make some changes in the next few hours, but you need to know what’s in here if you’re going to help us with that. We’ll be meeting in the conference room to go over everything at nineteen thirty.”

Kyra nodded. “What about Jon?”

“Burke? He doesn’t need to know—,” Mitchell started.

“Yes, he does,” she said, more vehement than she’d intended.

Mitchell frowned. “He’s had some training, crash-and-bang, firearms, but nothing like he’d need to help with this.”

“I didn’t ask for his help,” Kyra said. “But he’s read into everything, the same as me. There’s no reason to cut him out.”

“He’s an—”

“‘He’s an analyst’ isn’t good enough. Not this time.”

Mitchell cocked his head, surprised. “What’s this guy to you?”

“Burke can be a jackass, but he’s my partner on this one. You want my help, you tell him what’s going on.”

Mitchell stared at the woman and let out a long, exasperated breath. “Fine.”

The protest was large and loud, but organized in typical Chinese fashion. The protesters carried signs written in a mix of Chinese and English. The grammar for the latter was surprisingly good. Jonathan picked out the CNN camera crew, which was circling the finest-looking female reporter he’d seen in some time. He and Kyra stood at a safe distance and dead center in the reporter’s line of sight, though not close enough to draw her attention. The spot kept them behind the cameras and lights illuminating the darkened square. There was no question that the MSS was watching the feed.

A BBC reporter stood to the east taping a segment, her back to the crowd. Kyra loved a British accent, but she couldn’t hear the words over the chanting locals. Officers of the People’s Armed Police stood around the edges of the square glaring at foreigners but doing nothing to stem the steady flow of natives to the crowd. The protesters were bundled up against the cold and exhaled hundreds of little clouds of freezing breaths as they yelled and chanted. In the center, one man was preaching against the treacherous Taiwanese through a mega-phone, and Kyra wondered whether it was also government-issued. She couldn’t imagine that the man kept one handy in a closet at home just in case a mass protest erupted — not in this country. Maybe in the US, but not in the People’s Republic of China.

Kyra tried to estimate the size of the crowd but couldn’t settle on a number with any degree of confidence and gave up the exercise. Tiananmen Square was the largest open space in Beijing but she didn’t know the actual dimensions, which could have simplified what should have been a simple mathematical problem. The Forbidden City consumed the view across Dongchang’an Jie Street to the north with its massive wall, enclosing a palace almost a kilometer square. The Tiananmen Gate of Heavenly Peace crossed the palace’s perimeter moat to the Taihemen Gate of Supreme Harmony, through which visitors could visit the Imperial Gardens, the Qianqinggong or Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the dozens of other buildings housed inside the complex. The Great Hall of the People stood to the west and Mao’s mausoleum to the south.

It was a clear night and cold, which would make it trivial for one of NRO’s satellites, or even the commercial birds for that matter, to get some clear overhead shots. Calculating the crowd’s size using a high-resolution bird’s-eye photograph would yield a number far more accurate than anything she could guess at, even if she had known the dimensions.

“Fifty thousand at least,” Jonathan said, reading the young woman’s mind.

“You’ve seen protests this large before?”

“A couple of times in the Middle East, usually whenever the Israelis moved on the West Bank. This is all theater. I doubt the masses even know what their signs say.”

Kyra stared at the placards and realized in an instant that more than a few were written not in good English but in perfect English. The grammar was too good to believe the signs had been written by the commoners carrying them, and she wondered which government propaganda department was responsible for cranking out protest signs in foreign languages.

“I’ve seen a few in Washington, on the Downtown Mall,” Kyra said. “A couple of inaugurations and the Fourth of July fireworks.”

“You wouldn’t remember it, but the one here back in eighty-nine got real bloody.” He was lost in thought for the moment and was talking as much to himself as to her. “Deng Xiopeng called out the tanks. The whole city went into lockdown and there were some pretty serious riots in the streets — Molotov cocktails, burning troop transports, the works. The PLA gunned down a few hundred students, maybe as many as a thousand, and they jailed at least that many over the next decade. They never made the final body count public, if they ever bothered to total one up. The party tried to erase the whole event from the history books and they’ve been real skittish about letting anything like it start up again.”

“One of our people should write this one up,” she suggested.

“Don’t bother,” Jonathan said. “Leave the cable writing on this kind of thing to State. Nothing here is worth classifying, and the press is watching, so the Open Source Center will get a report to the analysts. Save your energy for more complicated problems.”

He turned and started walking away from the protest. He said nothing for almost a minute. She smelled street food but could not find a vendor within sight.

“They want me to help with the exfil,” she said quietly.

“I know. I saw the cable,” Jonathan said. That surprised her. She wondered how he’d managed that feat. There was no way that Mitchell would have shared it. “It’s a very bad idea.”

“You’re an expert on covert ops now?” Kyra asked.

“No, but I’m not totally ignorant on the subject. You don’t know the city and you don’t speak the language. You don’t have diplomatic cover and I’m not sure the Chinese would respect it if they caught you.” He stopped himself and Kyra stared up at him, surprised. He never looked at her, just stared straight ahead. He finally started again. “The chances of you getting nabbed and spending a few decades in a Beijing prison seem very high to me.”

“It’s a possibility.” She was hedging, but it was as close as she wanted to come to admitting he was right.

He looked down at her, surprised. “Then why do it?”

Kyra gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and turned away from him as she stopped walking. He said nothing.

“I went for a walk,” she said.

“Outside the embassy?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t smart,” Jonathan said.

“No, it wasn’t. I was followed. Beat up, actually,” she admitted.

Jonathan paused before answering. “And you gave as good as you got.”

I really wish you’d stop reading me like that. Kyra nodded. “Better than I got, actually. I took a piece of rebar to his nose and his knees. It was like I was watching someone else do it.” She finally turned around and looked up at Jonathan.

“Nobody tried to stop you? Did anyone follow you back to the embassy?”

“No, and I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly working a surveillance detection route,” she admitted.

“Then he was the only one following you. If he’d had partners, they’d have nailed you.”

Kyra nodded. She felt numb. “I feel like I’m crippled,” Kyra said. “Or busted.”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder. You should talk to one of the counselors at the Employee Assistance Program,” he said. “It helps.”

“You had PTSD, didn’t you?”

“Once, after Iraq. I was one of the analysts that George Tenet sent over to find all those weapons of mass destruction. I was working inside the Green Zone when some insurgents set up one of those hit-and-run mortar attacks. A round hit near my position.” He frowned faintly at some memory that he decided not to share. “It doesn’t mean that you can’t do your job,” Jonathan assured her. “It does mean that you should think long and hard before you sign on for Mitchell’s op.”

“We need to get Pioneer out.” She winced as she realized that she had spoken the crypt in public. She looked around. No one was in earshot.

“I’m sure Mitchell appreciates your devotion to duty,” he said.

Kyra wanted to swear at the man but she held her tongue. Analysts, it seemed, could use logic to read people as well as case officers could for all their training.

They crossed the street and left the official bounds of the square. The noise of the crowd was slowly fading behind them. “I know that Kathy Cooke asked you. Just because the request came from higher up doesn’t make it any smarter,” Jonathan told her.

“What is it with you two?” Kyra asked, exasperated.

Jonathan frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh please,” Kyra exclaimed. “She could’ve hid me anywhere in the Agency, but she gave me to you and walked down to do it in person. And CIA directors don’t give briefings to line analysts or invite them to hang out and watch Chinese presidents give speeches. She’s done both and it wasn’t my company she was after. You two know each other and it isn’t just professional.”

Jonathan turned his head a bit and looked over at her but said nothing. “I can keep a secret. I work for the CIA,” Kyra said. It felt good to finally have Jonathan on the defensive.

“Those two don’t go together as often as you might think.” He sighed and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Kathy wasn’t playing in that game at the War College when we met. She was deputy director of PACOM’s J-2 intel shop and she was running the game. So she wasn’t thrilled when this civilian decided to work around some of the rules he thought were less than realistic. We ended up talking naval tactics over dinner. She asked me out, if you can believe it. She retired from the Navy after that tour, came back to DC, and started a war-gaming think tank. Offered me a job, which I declined, but we picked up where we’d left off on the personal side. Then Lance Showalter became the SecDef. Kathy worked under him at PACOM, and suddenly she’s on the president’s short list for CIA director. She got the nod and that was that.”

“She shut you down?” Kyra asked.

“‘Bad practice to date subordinates,’ she said. And some of the good old boys like Rhead have been looking to run her out, which makes me a liability she can’t afford.”

“She won’t be running the Agency forever,” Kyra observed.

“George Tenet had the job for seven years, and Kathy Cooke is better than Tenet ever was,” he replied. “And people change.” He fell silent for a half block and didn’t speak again until they reached a corner. “But she’s not here on the ground. Mitchell doesn’t want to lose a major asset on his watch, and you don’t know what he’s telling her. And I doubt that you’re being objective.”

“I have reasons,” Kyra protested. It sounded weak to her. It must have sounded worse to the analyst.

“You don’t have anything to prove,” he said. “Don’t do this for your career. Don’t do it unless you really believe in it.”

Kyra stopped walking. “We owe this man. You’ve read his reports.”

“I have.”

“He’s taken more chances for us than we can count. Twenty-five years and they could have found him and executed him a dozen times. That kind of pressure can break a person, you know? He’s probably so paranoid that he doesn’t know what it’s like to feel normal anymore. What does that say about us if we use someone like that and throw them away because we’re not willing to take a risk?” she asked.

“Smart risks, fine,” he replied. “I’m not sure I’d call this a smart risk.”

“We play the hand we’re given,” she told him. “If he’s willing to gamble with his life every day for us, we have to be willing to do the same for him at least once. If we don’t, we’re no better than the Russians or the Chinese or anyone else who throws assets away when they’re done with them. And we are better than that. This isn’t about logic and odds and doing the smart thing. This is about paying a debt. It’s about doing the honorable thing.”

Jonathan just looked sideways at her. There was no arguing with emotion and particularly not this patriotic kind. But his own thoughts were jumbled up, he couldn’t straighten them out, and it disturbed him. “Just don’t let the honorable thing earn you a star on the wall,” he finally said.

The green phone rang and Cooke lifted the receiver. “Cooke.”

“Barron. I just got the call. Stryker accepted escort duty for Pioneer.”

Cooke nodded despite being alone in the office. She looked up at the clock. “When?”

“They hit the street tomorrow at dusk,” Barron said. “She’ll have a ninety-minute window to get him to the meeting site. Their flight out leaves at twenty-one hundred local time, so they’ll have a few hours to hunker down.”

“The MSS will be all over the airport by then,” Cooke said.

“No help for it,” Barron said. “But, yeah, trust me, I’d love to have the Navy send in a sub and use a SEAL team to extract him by sea.”

“The Navy wouldn’t cut one loose for us. It’s a bad time to have a war,” Cooke said.

“The Chinese forgot to call us first,” Barron admitted. “Awfully inconsiderate.”

“I thought so,” Cooke agreed, smiling for the first time in days.

“I’ll call as soon as we know something.”

“I’ll be here,” Cooke said. She hung the green phone back on its cradle and stared out into the early dawn rising across the George Washington National Forest.