The Fall of Moscow Station

CHAPTER TEN

A craft, her father had once explained, is a marriage between science and art. You have to master the science before you can aspire to the art.

Kyra was an analyst now, but she’d been a case officer once and had worked the street before. She understood both the science and the art of it. She’d been in war zones before, had been involved in some serious fights, violence and gunfire coming from plain enemies out to do her harm. Street work was different; it was subtlety and advance planning. There was a learning curve to it, but just knowing the science of a spy’s tradecraft would not be enough here. It was not a place for beginners and Kyra was wondering now whether she truly was ready to face the Kremlin machine. The Russians were efficient and unforgiving. They had practiced on these streets for a century now and Kyra was neither stupid nor arrogant enough to imagine that her experience and intelligence alone put her on equal ground with them anywhere on earth, much less here.

This was their home. They knew it intimately and would defend it. She was the criminal, the invader, the thief come to rob and steal. She was the villain here.

She did have one advantage. The Russian experience gained practicing counterintelligence on their own territory was predicated on the idea that both sides shared the same ideas about success and failure, the same definitions. Kyra hated that anyone ever called it a game, but the contest did have its own rules about how to win and lose. The Russians always assumed that the Americans would send their best people and use their best tradecraft, that they would never make an unforced error. The Americans usually assumed that the Russians had enough manpower and practice that they could be everywhere and see everything, omniscient enough that they could make an unforced error and still recover. They didn’t have to be perfect to win here.

Kyra couldn’t win the old game, but she might be able to win her own game, where a different set of rules decreed that a lack of skill on the street was a tactic, not a weakness.

Kyra’s advantage was that she was both a case officer and an analyst. Jon believed that she would be a better analyst than he one day, or so Marisa Mills had told her before she’d been killed the year before… someone with a foot in both worlds who could fuse the two. She brought practical experience into Jon’s theoretical world. Now, she thought, they might turn the world on its head by doing the reverse.

Why do you always run straight in? Jon’s voice had asked her. She’d found the answer. She had always been thinking like a case officer, always moving, always trying to take the initiative by moving. Now it was time to think like an analyst.

Jon had spent years teaching her where analysts’ mind-sets and biases had led them wrong, where their long experience with one subject had carried them to exactly the wrong analytical conclusion. The Russian mind was no different, she was certain. She could win if she could bring them to a place where their experience dictated exactly the wrong move.

Kyra had left Ettleman’s apartment and abandoned the Tiguan two hours and three miles ago. Most of the equipment it had carried was at the bottom of the Moskva River, including the satellite phone. She’d thought about leaving it all with the State officer, but she had decided against giving the man anything incriminating. The Russians would be in his apartment eventually and she didn’t want to cause him trouble. She didn’t need any of the equipment now. Either the operation would work or it would not. None of the gear she’d carried would make the difference, so she’d laid it to rest at the river’s bottom.

She marched north up the Smolenskaya highway. The Moskva was to her left. Three years ago, she’d been walking by a river like this one in downtown Caracas, the Guaire, a concrete channel that became an artificial river that split the Venezuelan city in half during the rainy season. She’d been shot during that operation. Maines had brought her home. Now the world seemed to be working in reverse. She was out to bring him home, even if he didn’t want to come.

The Moskva turned away from her to the northwest. She’d passed the British Embassy on her right a few minutes before and her own country’s diplomatic outpost was not far ahead. Kyra didn’t know how far out the FSB or the GRU surveillance cordon would reach from that point, but Lavrov would surely have had both embassies under watch. She’d started looking for surveillance a mile before approaching the British compound and had seen nothing, but that was meaningless. The Russians could throw a hundred men and women at her and she would never see the same face twice.

Kyra had come wearing a light disguise, baggy clothes, glasses, a wig, and a hoodie. Some of it she’d scrounged from Ettleman, the rest from stores around his apartment. It wasn’t a very good disguise and therefore it was good enough.

Lavrov would have found a picture of her, from the cameras in customs at the Domodedovo Airport or the embassy in Berlin. His people would have scanned it in, then created a hundred variations on her face, different hair colors and styles, with glasses and without, cheeks fatter or sunken in. He would have distributed them to whichever teams were watching these streets.

They would see a young woman approach. They would sort through the pictures and find one that wasn’t far off her current appearance. Is it her? they would wonder. A small team would start to follow behind. She was walking toward the U.S. Embassy. Was that her destination? Would she turn off?

Are you behind me? she asked the Russians. Did you pick me when I walked past the British Embassy? She was going to be very disappointed if they hadn’t, but they would start to follow her eventually.

She stopped under the overpass where the Kutuzovsky Avenue crossed the Moskva and the Smolenskaya highway. She didn’t bother looking behind. If the Russians weren’t there, she would give them more opportunities to find her. If they were there, so much the better.

Kyra made a show of fumbling with the satchel she was carrying over her right shoulder, then took her time pulling out the fur ushanka hat that she’d kept inside and put it on her head. It was an innocent act, one that thousands of people might do on a cool fall night like this one… or it might be an attempt to change appearance. Security officers were a paranoid lot and Kyra was giving them just enough to keep their attention.

She turned east and walked alongside Kutuzovsky Avenue. Cars roared past on the roadway above. The U.S. Embassy was only a block north but she was going to take the long way around. She looked up at the sky. It was night and she wished she could see the stars. They were all washed out of the sky by the city lights and smog. She kept walking, one block east, the cool air brushing over her face.

She slid the satchel off, then removed her coat and felt the cold air invade her shirt. The coat was reversible, gray on the inside, brown on the outside. She turned it inside out, then put it back on. She practiced the maneuver a thousand times and she had to work now to mess it up.

Kyra reached the intersection and crossed north along the Novinsky road. She walked another block, not bothering to look behind for anyone following.

One block and she turned west, doubling back the way she’d originally come. Come on, she thought. You have to have figured it out by now. You can’t be that dense.

She was still free and approaching the corner. The embassy was a half block to the north. One more to be sure.

There was a Dumpster jutting slightly out of an alley ahead to her right. Kyra gently idled toward it. Within arms’ reach, she reached up and pulled the ushanka hat and the dark wig off her head and dropped them in, a movement that took less than a second. She pulled the jacket’s hood over her hair, and turned right onto the Smolenskaya again.

Kyra heard the van pull up behind her, the side doors opening before it came to a stop.

There we go, she thought. Not looking back, she pushed off and ran.

Four men dismounted on the move. A series of parked cars kept the van away from the sidewalk, giving her six feet to spare from the men spilling out of the vehicle. The first one tried to hurdle one of the cars, caught his foot on the bumper, and went down. Kyra angled away from the street as she picked up speed. The second man made it between the cars, but he overreached trying to lay hands on her and lost his balance stumbling forward and went down on the asphalt. The third man behind hurdled his teammate, but Kyra was accelerating now. She was pulling away. She heard the van speed up and the woman pushed herself, now sprinting as fast as she could go.

The embassy gate was fifty yards ahead. A series of white concrete planter boxes, really barricades, formed a low wall to her left, the parked cars still blocking off the road to her right. She heard the footsteps behind her getting close. Even at her best speed, the men were going to run her down.

A brick wall rose up on her left, the boundary of the embassy compound. She passed a security camera suspended over the sidewalk. Please tell me you saw this, she thought.

The gate would be closed. Embassy security would open it only when approved vehicles approached. Beyond the gate was the small security building.

The wall flew by on Kyra’s left, the bricks melting into a single red blur, and she moved her legs faster than she ever had before. Almost there.

The brick wall fell away and she saw the gated entrance, then the embassy beyond, the American flag flying unfurled in the courtyard, brilliant colors in the high-powered spotlights. She heard the screeching tires of the van chasing behind her.

A man leaned out of the security building door… embassy security. He reached for her, to pull her inside, where she would be safe. They’d seen her running on the camera and opened the door. Barron had told them that she would be coming—

Kyra felt the hit between her shoulder blades, sending her sprawling forward. She got her hands up before hitting the ground, stopping the concrete from stripping the skin from her face, but she went down in a rolling heap. She struggled to pull herself to her feet, then lunged toward the American guard at the door—

The Spetsnaz officer coming out of the van put his shoulder square into her diaphragm, a football tackle that caught Kyra under her center of gravity. She had no leverage against the man, and he was at least half again her weight. He slammed her onto the grass strip in front of the brick wall that extended out from the other side of the security annex.

“American!” she yelled just before the man’s body put her into the ground, driving the wind from her, and she could yell no more.

Hands grabbed both of her arms, lifting them up behind her back until she felt her shoulders begin to scream in pain. Russian shouts that she didn’t understand came from all sides and a camera flash began to blind her every few seconds. A knife came out and cut the shoulder strap from the satchel, and it was pulled from her body.

Kyra closed her eyes and didn’t bother to fight as her wrists were zip-tied together behind her back.

Her attackers kept her prone on the ground for almost a minute, long enough for the cold to seep up from the cement through her clothes. She heard the guard yelling in poor Russian at the men pinning her to the ground, but they held her head down. She couldn’t turn to see it. Finally, they lifted her by her armpits and dragged her stumbling to the van. The U.S. guard was a Marine, she thought, given the quality of the English profanities he was dishing out to the Russians. If the Russians understood any English at all, they would know that much.

Other hands reached out of the darkness in the vehicle and took her, pulling her inside onto a seat. The last Russian turned away from the American guard, who continued to harangue him in vile terms, and crawled inside with his teammates. The side door slammed shut and the van moved away. Kyra stared out the window as she was shackled at the feet to the floor. Through the side window, she saw the United States flag waving in the light of the flood lamps and receding as the van picked up speed. Then a black hood came down over her head and the entire world disappeared.

The Russian liaison was waiting at the customs exit for Cooke and Barron. He knew the woman on sight, doubtless from the photograph of her that the FSB kept in a dossier somewhere. “Director Cooke, men-ya za-voot Vitaly Leontyevich Churkin. Zdras-tvooy-tyeh. Dobro pozhalovat’ v Rossiyu,” the man said. My name is Vitaliy Churkin. Greetings and welcome to Russia.

Cooke spoke no Russian, and so let the former chief of station Moscow handle the pleasantries. “It is our honor to meet you,” Barron said in the other man’s native language. “We are most grateful to Director Grigoriyev for his willingness to meet us on short notice.”

“In light of recent events, he felt that a discussion with a counterpart of Miss Cooke’s stature would be most illuminating,” Churkin replied.

“I assure you, it will be,” Barron advised. “However, we need to visit our embassy here before meeting with the director. Last-minute instructions from the president, that sort of thing.”

“Of course,” Churkin agreed. “I believe your embassy has sent you a driver who is waiting for you. Of course, we will be happy to give you an escort to the embassy, and from there to Lubyanka.”

“Many thanks,” Barron told him.

“Everything okay?” Cooke asked, her voice quiet.

“Just the usual pleasantries,” Barron replied, switching back to English. “Welcome, we’re going to follow you everywhere, don’t be stupid and try any operational acts, that sort of thing.”

Cooke smiled. “Of course not.”

The van drove for a half hour by Kyra’s estimation, one violent turn after another, and she assumed that the driver wasn’t obligated to obey traffic laws. The hands holding her arms never let her go and the men inside never said a word.

The van finally stopped, Kyra heard the door open, and she felt movement around her. Someone unlocked the shackles binding her legs to the van and the hands on her arms pulled hard, dragging her out. She stumbled getting out, unable to judge the distance to the ground and falling to one knee. The unseen hands pulled her up and led her roughly along.

She felt the warm air of a building on her face and the sound of men’s shoes changed from a rough scrape on concrete to the softer sounds of rubber rustling across carpet to an echo inside the closed walls of an elevator. The doors closed and the car took several seconds to think about whether to move or not before finally ascending. The ride was smooth, the passengers silent, and Kyra couldn’t tell how many floors they’d passed before the car stopped.

Kyra was led out and guided down another hallway, then finally into a room where her captors seated her in a chair. The zip ties binding her wrists were cut, freeing her arms at last. She wasn’t foolish enough to try removing the black hood cutting off her sight. She sat still, hands in her lap, listening to the conversation around her and trying to pick out any words she recognized. That proved to be a feckless exercise.

Another five minutes passed before the hood finally came off of Kyra’s head. The world appeared, blinding and bright, and Kyra squinted until her eyes could adjust. The room around her was nondescript, painted concrete walls, no other furniture than the chair on which she was sitting, nothing to give her any clue as to where she was.

The contents of Kyra’s satchel were laid out on a table in front of her. Some functionary was using a Nikon camera to document the captured gear… a Moscow tour map, an envelope, a passport, a ziplock bag with a disguise kit sealed inside, a pair of English paperback novels, some power bars, and several stacks of euros, the paper bands removed.

Kyra’s escorts took their places by the gray metal door. A photographer aimed the camera in her direction and began taking pictures.

A Russian colonel stood behind the table separating them. “Good evening,” Sokolov said. “Your name, please?” The command being in English, Kyra had no doubts that it was intended for her. She said nothing. The Russian officer looked at her for several seconds, studying her, then leaned forward, putting his face only inches from hers. “Your name?”

“I am a diplomat,” Kyra said, lying. “I’m not required to answer your question. There are rules governing the interrogation of diplomats and you know them. You will advise my embassy of my whereabouts immediately.”

“A diplomat,” Sokolov said. Kyra furrowed her brow. There was no venom in the Russian’s voice, no sarcasm. “We know the kind of diplomacy that Americans practice with tools such as these. But I think you do not understand that diplomatic immunity does not apply right now.”

The Russian escort cars peeled away, blocking off the street. The security gate slid open, the embassy car pulled through into the compound, and Cooke felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease. She was still a stranger in a hostile land, but there was a feeling here, a tangible spirit that hovered over this little spit of American-held territory that made it feel very much like home.

Her traveling companion had a fool’s grin on his face. “Your old playground?” she teased him.

Barron nodded. “Three years, until the FSB almost killed me,” he replied. “They did kill one of mine. That stupid car accident I told you about a few years ago. The locals here always did play the surveillance game a little too rough.”

“You don’t have to come with me to Lubyanka. You could stay here, preserve your cover.”

“Nope,” Barron said. “I’m almost ready to retire anyway and I want to see how this all turns out.”

They stared down at the monitor as the embassy security chief restarted the video from the beginning and watched the replay for a second time. The time index on the screen showed the video was two hours old now. On the screen, Kyra came sprinting into the picture, reaching for the security guard’s outstretched hand as a Russian chased her down, pushed her from behind, and the young woman tumbled to the white concrete. She pushed herself up, tried to get to the gate, only to be tackled. “American!” she yelled, clearly audible on the footage. Then three men were on her, the American guard helpless to step off U.S. territory onto Russian land and do anything. The Russians pinned her arms up, zip-tied her hands, and wrestled her into a waiting van as the U.S. Marine screamed profanities at the smug Russian standing between him and their captive. Then the Russians piled into the vehicle, closed the door, and pulled away. The entire incident had taken less than one minute.

“The question is which one got her,” Barron said. “FSB or GRU? Any clues?”

“I gave a copy to some of the FBI special agents here,” the security chief replied. “It’s not much to go on… we’re trying to match the license plate or the van, but good luck with that. The FSB would have to cooperate and they won’t tell us jack just on general principles. But my gut tells me they weren’t FSB. Military haircuts, and there are a few frames here where it looks like one of them is carrying a Makarov pistol in his holster, but I could be wrong. And the FSB doesn’t usually play it like this, but I couldn’t prove anything right now if I had to.”

Cooke nodded. “That’s okay. If the FSB grabbed her, they’ll tell us. If they don’t, we know who has her.”

“You ready to head out?” Barron asked his superior.

“Yeah. Let’s get this done.”

“Explain, please, why you were in possession of this?” Sokolov asked, his voice loud for the recorders, waving his hand toward the table.

“I am a diplomat,” Kyra repeated. “I’m not required to answer your questions. You will advise my embassy of my whereabouts immediately.”

“That answer is tiring.” Sokolov picked up the envelope. The seal was broken, leaving no question that he already knew what was inside. Still he made the dramatic show of pulling out the letter, printed in neat Cyrillic.

“For who was this letter?” Sokolov asked. Kyra winced slightly at the man’s stiff accent, but said nothing in response. “We were most grateful to receive your last communication,” he read from the page. “You are trying to reach a spy in our government, and an important one, I’m sure.” He hefted one of the stacks of euros and made a show of flipping through the bills. “A quarter million. Fine wages for a mole, but I suppose a rich country like the United States can afford to pay such amounts for traitors.” It was not a question.

Kyra held her peace. Sokolov picked up the passport and opened the cover, then shoved the front page at her face. The Russian pointed to the photograph. “Who is this? The Foreign Ministry assures me that they have issued no passport with this number, nor does the photograph match any on file.”

Kyra just looked at him. Sokolov pushed the disguise kit across the table at her. “There is no reason not to tell me. It is a very good forgery, done by a skilled artist. But the false attachments in this bag—” He held up the ziplock pouch. “They are the same as the beard and glasses and other additions to the man’s face in this picture. Do you think we have no computer experts? One of our best technicians is erasing them from the picture so we can see what the man looks like without them. We will find this man. You cannot save him by refusing to answer.”

“As I told you, I’m a diplomat and not required to answer your questions,” Kyra said.

The Russian sighed in mock resignation. “You are very calm,” he observed. “I have seen many people in that chair, where you are now. Few have shown such reserve. You’ve had training, I think. Yes. You’ve been taught how to handle an interrogation. But we understand the way to drive a woman past her limits. You know that as well, I am sure, but I respect your discipline. You have done your duty and this does not need to be unfriendly. We understand the business of intelligence services. You spy on us, we spy on you. We are professionals about this, are we not? In the end, you will answer the questions, so I will not think less of you for choosing to avoid the agony.”

Nice show, Kyra thought. “I want to speak to a representative from my embassy,” she said.

“I can make that happen,” Sokolov assured her. “But your refusal to cooperate with me can only delay that process. How can I tell them who has requested their assistance if you will not give me your name? You had no identification with you when you were detained. You must give me some information about yourself or I cannot help you. I do not even know which embassy to contact,” he said.

Okay, time for a little reward, Kyra decided. “The U.S. Embassy.”

“So you are American.”

Kyra fought down the urge to roll her eyes and insult the man’s deductive powers. “Yes,” she said, her voice oozing condescension. The Russian’s English accent was heavy enough that Kyra suspected the man wouldn’t understand the emotion when he heard it.

“That is a start,” Sokolov said. “And your name?”

“You don’t need that. Just advise the embassy that you have a U.S. diplomat in your custody.”

Sokolov turned to his Russian subordinates. “Leave,” he ordered in their native language.

The photographer moved immediately to the exit, but the escorts stayed rooted, their faces perplexed. “You will leave,” the Russian ordered a second time. “She is uncooperative. I must apply other measures. You will stand the post outside.”

More hesitation, but the escorts finally obeyed, leaving the Russian alone with Kyra.

The FSB’s current home, strictly speaking, was across the street from old Lubyanka, the home of the KGB before it. If asked, Kathy Cooke would have admitted that the older building was an impressive piece of architecture, a four-story neo-Baroque edifice made of yellow-brick-turned-gray. CIA headquarters was an ugly complex to her eyes, but Lubyanka, originally built to be the home of an insurance company before the 1917 Revolution, had some real old European beauty in its design. It radiated a sense of history to her.

Not the good kind of history, she thought. The artistry of Lubyanka’s design belied the fact that its ground floor had been a prison where thousands had entered and somewhat fewer had emerged. So much of Stalin’s reign of terror had its epicenter in Lubyanka.

“Never thought I’d get this close to it,” Barron admitted.

“Never wanted to,” Cooke replied. “Too many people walked in and never came out. You can feel the ghosts.”

“I never took you for the type to believe in the supernatural,” Barron said.

“I’m not,” she told him. “But I’m just religious enough to think that if the dead are walking the earth anywhere, it’s here. You ever heard of Vasily Blokhin?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“He was the chief executioner of the Soviet Union, handpicked by Stalin himself. It was an actual government position, if you can believe it. Nobody even knows how many people he personally killed, but I’ve seen claims as high as fifty thousand. He oversaw the executions of seven thousand Polish soldiers in one month in 1940,” Cooke recounted. “He set a goal of killing three hundred people every night… brought his own briefcase full of Walther pistols because he didn’t think the Soviet sidearms were reliable enough. The man even had an official executioner’s uniform… leather butcher’s apron, hat, long leather gloves that ran up to his elbows. A guard would march the prisoner into a little antechamber called the ‘Leninist room,’ which Blokhin had designed himself… soundproof walls and a sloping floor with a drain, to make it easier to wash the blood off after each kill. They’d put the prisoner down on his knees and Blokhin would shoot him in the base of the skull. They’d drag out the body and bring in another one. His unit helped him kill them at the rate of one man every three minutes, ten hours every night for a month. Stalin gave Blokhin the Order of the Red Banner for it.” Cooke raised an arm and pointed at Lubyanka. “And he did it all in there. So, yeah, I can believe in ghosts.”

“You know, the Russians probably believe our predecessors were doing the same thing at Langley.”

“We’ve had our share of bad men, but we never had a prison in the basement, and we sure never kidnapped our own citizens,” Cooke replied.

“Yeah, good luck convincing the Russians of that,” Barron said. He felt like the building in front of him had drained the humor from his bones. “How’d Blokhin check out in the end?”

“Lost his job in ’53 after Stalin died,” Cooke recalled. “Became an alcoholic and went insane. The official record says he committed suicide in ’55.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Barron mused.

“I’ve never understood how someone can become so indifferent to life.”

“ ‘That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved,’ ” Barron said. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unfortunately, that applies to evil talents as well as good ones. Do something often enough and it becomes banal… ordinary.”

“Maybe,” Cooke said. “But he committed suicide. Maybe it never really became ordinary to him after all.”

“You really believe he killed himself?”

Cooke pondered the question, then nodded. “Actually, yes. Maybe the ghosts of all the people he murdered tortured him until he went mad. That would be justice. A man who kills that many people by his own hand… I can’t imagine what that does to your soul.”

“What soul?” Barron asked. “A man would have nothing left by the end of that.” He shook his head in disbelief. “And we’re going to talk to the successor of guys like that. Makes me think this operation can’t possibly work.”

“Maybe,” Cooke replied. “The question is who Grigoriyev hates worse, us or Lavrov.”

“My money’s on Lavrov. Grigoriyev was the FSB director when I was the station chief here, so I got a pretty good feel for him. He’s a professional. He doesn’t like us, but it’s not personal. We’re not trying to put the old man out to pasture. Lavrov is, and the anger between those two runs deep. If there’s one thing the Russians do well, it’s hold a grudge.”

“You’re right on that score,” Cooke agreed. “You ready to do this?”

Barron shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “You know, the Russians never filed the paperwork to PNG me after that car wreck. We’ve always assumed they know I’m Agency, but they never confirmed it. I guess they’re going to find out now.”

“If you’re going to blow your cover, might as well go big and nuke it hard,” Cooke advised.

“Like Slim Pickens riding the bomb.” He dismounted the car and held the door for Cooke. Churkin and a Russian security detail got out of their own vehicles and formed a cordon around the Americans, leading them toward the visitors’ entrance.

They approached the guard post. The Russian officer held up a hand. “Ostanovites’ i identifitsirovat’ sebya!” Stop and identify yourself!

Barron nodded, reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out his CIA credentials. “This is Kathryn Cooke, deputy director of national intelligence for the United States government. My name is Clark Barron and I’m the director of the CIA Directorate of Operations.” Churkin’s head whipped around in surprise at that revelation, proving conclusively that he spoke very good English. “We’re here to speak to Director Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev,” Barron said in Russian. “He’s expecting us.”

The FSB officer manning the door gawked at the American, took Barron’s credentials, and stared, then picked up the phone.

The conference room to which the escorts delivered them was more ornate than anything Barron had ever seen at Langley. The walls were hardwood, lacquered and polished to a perfect shine, with gold trim around the ceiling. The table in the center had a similar wooden border, the center covered in green leather. The chairs matched the table, with blue-and-white-checked cloth coverings, and Barron thought that the office chair under him was possibly the most comfortable in which he’d ever sat. There was no telephone in the room, no computer, no way to communicate outside. Barron wondered where the cameras were.

Grigoriyev stared hard at Barron, murder in his eyes. “You have lived in Russia before, Mr. Barron,” he said. “My men retrieved our old file on you. It said nothing about you being a CIA officer.”

“I lived here for three years,” Barron confirmed. “I’d like to think I was good at the business.”

“It appears you were. But you were in a terrible car accident,” the Russian noted.

“Some of your counterintelligence boys were tailing me and one of my officers,” Barron told him. “They got a little aggressive and ran into us… flipped our car and killed the young woman who was with me.”

“They thought they were trailing diplomats and thought they could intimidate you. It was a new team and they were reckless. My condolences, though such accidents do happen from time to time. For their stupidity, the team responsible was reassigned to some very unpleasant duty in our far northeast, if that gives you any satisfaction at all.” Grigoriyev’s tone announced that he could not have cared less about a dead American spy. He turned to the senior U.S. officer in the room. “I was quite surprised to receive your request for a meeting, Miss Cooke. It is rare for American intelligence officers to meet with us at all, and when it does happen, months of planning occur in advance. Rushed meetings are rare things, so you must forgive my suspicions and concerns about your honesty right now.”

“Not at all, Director,” Cooke said. “I would feel the same if I was sitting on your side of the table.”

“So we understand each other,” Grigoriyev agreed. “Then why did you wish to meet with me?”

“There is a situation with one of our assets here in Moscow that has gone out of our control and we need your assistance to resolve it,” Cooke replied.

Sokolov leaned in to Kyra, close enough to whisper. “I turned cameras off, so they cannot hear us, before they came in with you. Will look like equipment failure. You know where you are, yes? This building is old GRU headquarters, but GRU does not handle counterintelligence in the Rodina. That is FSB. They don’t know you are here and Lavrov will not tell them or your embassy. FSB would turn you over to your embassy and expel you from country after making you a… what is the word… spectacle? But FSB does not know about what Lavrov is doing here and he does not want them to know. So if you want me to tell your embassy that you are here so they can tell FSB to come, you must give me your name.”

Kyra looked at the man in disbelief. “I have wanted to work for your people, long time now,” Sokolov said.

Kyra stared at him, watching him twitch. The arrogance had disappeared so quickly and completely that she wasn’t sure it hadn’t been an act all along. “I don’t believe you,” she finally said, cautious. He was showing none of the physical signs of deceit, but he was a Russian intelligence officer after all. The GRU trained its men to hide them, she was sure.

Sokolov saw her expression. “For thirty years, I am interrogator for GRU,” he said. “I am good at it, but I am sick of it. Seeing people brought to me who have done nothing but make angry or insult some senior man. Then our Soviet Union falls and I had hope we would be a better country. We are a better country, for a few years. They do not bring people to me in here for long time. Then Putin takes over and I see him and his friends taking us back, making us again what we were. And then they start bringing people to me again—” He stopped talking, almost in midsentence, choking on whatever he was going to say next.

Kyra didn’t try to fill the silence. Finally, Sokolov looked up. “And I am a coward,” he said, self-loathing in his voice. “They bring these men to me… sometimes women, sometimes journalists who try to solve murders done by government… officers and spies who tell superiors that they are evil men… sometimes just businessmen who do not want to sell things to the Kremlin at prices the Kremlin wants to pay. And I ask them questions, and if they do not give me answers that my bosses want to hear, then I step outside and let guards come in and beat them until they give me answers that my bosses want to hear. And I am afraid to say no because I know the names of so many people that my bosses kill. I am afraid that if I stop, they kill me too.”

The Russian colonel slumped, resting his backside on the heavy metal table. “So I think maybe I can be a spy, but I never volunteer because I am afraid. And then Lavrov tells me that he has source who is going to give him names of Russians who I need to kill. And I think, if names come from his source, then Russians brought to me must be working for CIA, yes? And I think, maybe I can warn the men who the source names, so they can maybe escape. So Lavrov gives me the name, I find the person, and I make private phone call and tell them to run. But my unit, they are too good and catch them anyway, and I have to act like I am pleased and do my duty so they do not kill me.”

He had hardly looked at Kyra during his explanation, but he raised his head and looked at the analyst’s face. “But now Lavrov brings me Americans, you and the other man. He will not talk and I have to try to make him. Lavrov does not want me to kill him, but I think maybe it would be better. If you do not talk, maybe Lavrov will tell me to do to you the things I had to do to him. I do not want to hurt you. I hope you can tell your bosses about me and help me escape my country. Will you help me? Will you help my family? If you say yes, I try to save you. I cannot get you out of the building. The escorts have orders from Lavrov. The only way to get you outside is to tell FSB. Grigoriyev hates Lavrov and to hear that Lavrov is holding and torturing diplomats will give him a chance to hurt Lavrov. But FSB, they will contact your embassy first to confirm you are diplomat. They will need your name to do that. If your embassy agrees, FSB will come—”

The door opened behind them. Sokolov’s face switched from one of depression and despair to a mask of nonemotion in an instant. He turned around.

General Arkady Lavrov stood at the door. “I am told that we have an American guest,” he said, in English.

“Yes, General,” Sokolov replied in the same language. “I am asking her questions, but she says only that she is diplomat and will not answer questions. She wants us to tell U.S. embassy—”

“Yes, yes,” Lavrov said, waving the explanation away. “You are dismissed.”

“I—” Sokolov started. Then he decided that silence was the better course, looked at Kyra, and retreated from the room. The door closed behind him.

“And this ‘situation’… who does it concern?” Grigoriyev asked.

Play it up, Cooke thought. People believe what they want to believe… even Russians.

“Three of our officers and GRU Chairman Arkady Lavrov,” Barron said.

Grigoriyev held up a hand. “You have never admitted to having intelligence officers on Russian soil.”

“And we’re not admitting it now. You understand how this is all played, Director,” Barron told him.

“I do. But to the best of my knowledge, Arkady Lavrov and the foreign minister have expelled all of your people. Are you telling me now that they missed some?”

“We’re not at liberty to confirm or deny whether any of the people Lavrov had expelled were intelligence officers,” Cooke countered. “They’re not the issue. The officers that Lavrov is holding is the issue.”

Grigoriyev frowned. “The GRU has no authority to detain foreign citizens for espionage. Such arrests are strictly the purview of the FSB.”

“Director Grigoriyev, there’s a very good reason that Chairman Lavrov hasn’t told you about the arrests,” Barron told him.

“And that would be…?”

“Because he was working for us,” Barron replied.

Grigoriyev furrowed his brow. “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.”

“The proof is sitting in a cell at GRU headquarters,” Cooke said.

“When my subordinates told me that they had caught an American spy trying to take sanctuary in her country’s embassy, I had so hoped it would be the young woman I met in Berlin at the embassy,” Lavrov said, exultant.

“I think I’m a little young for you,” Kyra replied, deadpan.

“There is no such thing,” Lavrov said. “But you are a woman of deeper morals, then?”

“More than you, apparently.”

Lavrov laughed at her response. “Yes, I think that is true. But we are both spies, and it is also true that the longer one is a spy, the fewer morals are left to her.”

“Only if she’s weak,” Kyra replied. “If she’s strong, the longer she’s a spy, the more devoted she becomes to the morals she believes in.”

“You are a thinker, then? Very good.” Lavrov chuckled. “But you do not know me—”

“You’re Arkady Lavrov, chairman of the GRU,” Kyra said. “And for the last twenty years, you’ve been selling strategic military technologies to foreign buyers. You sold stealth materials to the Chinese recovered from the wreckage of an F-117 Nighthawk shot down in Serbia in 1999. You sold nuclear weapons designs to the Iranians and have been helping them with uranium enrichment and nuclear waste reprocessing to manufacture plutonium. And now you’re trying to sell an electromagnetic pulse weapon to the Syrians, probably for use against Israel.” Kyra grinned. “I could be wrong about that last one.”

Lavrov smiled in surprise, nicotine-stained teeth showing between his lips. “And why do you think I do these things? Do you think I do it to destroy your country?”

“Actually, I think that would just be a bonus for you,” Kyra replied.

“Again, very good.” Lavrov looked down at her. “Destroying countries is the grandiose ambition of lunatics, movies, and fiction books,” he said. The man’s English was refined, very smooth compared to Sokolov’s diction. “But if that were my goal, I would need do nothing. Your own politicians are doing it efficiently enough. The irony is that you’re doing to yourselves what you once did to us. Your leaders are wasting your wealth, spending more on your military than the next ten countries combined, trying to keep the world in a bottle. But I promise you, I am very interested in building up your country.”

Kyra frowned. “You’ll forgive me if I think you’re a liar.”

“Of course,” Lavrov replied. “But I am quite telling the truth when I say that I have a proposal for you.”

“Such as?”

“I would like you to work for me.”

“If Lavrov is one of your assets, why would he be holding your officers?” Grigoriyev said, disbelieving.

“That’s complicated—” Barron started. He was playing the idiot, giving Cooke’s more generous answers greater credibility.

“I am not a stupid man,” Grigoriyev cut him off.

“No, you’re not,” Cooke replied. “Lavrov was a volunteer, but not for ideological reasons. Simply put, he was feeding us information about you, sir, and the FSB. I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that he’s wanted to remove you from your post for a long time. To that end, he gave us information about FSB operations that let us protect our operations and undercut your efforts. In short, Lavrov wanted to neutralize you.”

Grigoriyev gave no reaction to the accusation. “Continue,” he said, his voice showing no emotion.

“We were happy to cooperate with that effort until we learned about some of Lavrov’s own operations. I presume you know about the Chinese stealth plane that the U.S. Navy shot down over the Taiwan Strait two years ago?” Cooke asked.

“Yes.”

“Lavrov sold the engine and stealth technologies to the Chinese to make that plane. Its engine designs matched those of Russia’s fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi T-50,” Barron said.

Grigoriyev frowned. “Those engines are not for export and the plans are classified.”

“And you also know about the Iranian nuclear warhead that we recovered in Venezuela last year?” Cooke asked.

“Yes,” Grigoriyev said.

Cooke extended a USB thumb drive to the Russian. “It was a Russian design, last generation.”

Grigoriyev took the thumb drive. “That cannot be true. That would be treason of the highest order, unless the order came from the president himself.”

“Yes, it would,” Cooke said.

“Work for you?” Kyra asked. It was the least subtle pitch for treason she’d ever heard. “Like Maines?”

“I thought Mr. Maines could understand my views. But when he arrived in Berlin, he proved to me that his interest was money above anything else. I knew then that he was not the person I needed inside the CIA. So I refused to give him anything,” Lavrov countered. “But I have greater hopes for you, young lady. Our conversation on the embassy roof… you showed me then that you see things in a different way. Shall I explain?”

“Oh, please, by all means,” Kyra told him. “I want to hear this.”

Lavrov dragged a chair over toward his captive and set his bulk on the seat. “Some years ago, Vladimir Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the disaster of the century, and he was correct. He was thinking of the plight that faced the Russian people in the years after, but he failed to see the plight that our collapse left for yours.”

“I think being the world’s only superpower worked out pretty well for us,” Kyra observed.

“Then you have been blind,” Lavrov told her, his voice suddenly cold. “There must be opposition in all things, don’t you think? For almost fifty years, your country faced nuclear annihilation at our hand, but that did not break your spirit, your sense of who you were… quite the opposite, in fact. But you spent so long fighting us that when we could no longer fight, you found yourselves without direction. Then September eleventh. Terrorists are vicious people, to be sure, but hardly a threat to your national existence. But how did your leaders respond? They dropped expensive bombs on people who lived in caves and huts. They kidnapped and tortured. They tried to control chaos with tools designed to fight an organized enemy.”

Kyra said nothing. She wanted to tell the man that he was wrong, but she wasn’t sure that he was.

“During the Cold War, two great powers offered a single choice to every country in the world… whose side will you join? And the world was more stable for it.” Lavrov stopped talking, ran his hand through his thinning gray hair. “Do you see it?” he asked. “Two fallen countries that could be great again… but neither without the other. We need our enemies, devushka. That is why I don’t want to destroy your country. I only want to build mine up, but it cannot rise to its full stature without yours to oppose it. We will draw other countries back into our arms—”

“So you can take them over again?” Kyra asked. She didn’t try to hide her contempt.

“Not so much. That did not work so well for us before… but weaker countries do turn to stronger ones for guidance. That is to be expected. And it is the nature of almost every person, as soon as they gain a little power, that they begin to exercise it to control those around them. No, it is better, I think, to offer them something they want and attach conditions to receiving it. Better to bribe than to bully or butcher. People will fight to the death for their freedoms, but they will sell them quick and cheap for something they want.”

“Like weapons?” Kyra accused him.

Lavrov shrugged. “There is no moral law of the universe that says the Chinese may not have stealth planes or the Iranians can have no nuclear weapons, or the Syrians no EMP bombs. You only want to stop these because they scare you.”

“We’re afraid? You’re the one hiding from us,” Kyra replied. “You don’t sell your technology out in the open.”

“Privacy is good business. Surely the United States doesn’t make public all of its weapons sales? And there is nothing I have sold to other countries that your country has not. Stealth, nuclear weapons, EMPs… have you held any of these back from your allies? No.”

“We demanded that General Lavrov stop his proliferation activities immediately,” Cooke continued. “He refused, saying that he was making more from that business than he was from us. The fact is, we can’t get approval to pay him the kind of money that he’s making from proliferating strategic technologies to foreign buyers. President Rostow is afraid it would set a precedent and he doesn’t want to reward men who traffic in illegal arms. So we told General Lavrov that we would burn him ourselves by reporting him to you. Whether your president had approved or not, he would have to stop Lavrov to protect his own interests.”

“Then Lavrov killed Strelnikov to protect himself,” Barron added. “He could blame all of his activities on Strelnikov and say that he’d already found and executed the mole himself. It was a stalemate. So we decided to negotiate a truce. We sent a CIA officer named Alden Maines to Berlin to meet with Lavrov. Maines’s cover story was that he was defecting and had burned Strelnikov to prove his bona fides. The general detained him. We sent two more officers to find out what happened to Maines and Lavrov grabbed one of them. The other escaped, but we believe the general is holding our two officers at GRU headquarters. The U.S Embassy also informed us a short while ago that he arrested a third officer just this evening, a young woman who was investigating Maines’s detention.”

Girgoriyev frowned. “As I told you, the GRU has no authority to detain foreign citizens engaged in unlawful actions on our soil. That is the duty of the FSB.”

“We have the security footage,” Barron replied. “It’s on that thumb drive. Feel free to confirm it. I won’t be surprised if the men in the video don’t work for you.”

Grigoriyev stared at the thumb drive in his hand. Cooke couldn’t tell whether he could separate the truth from the lies. “So you believe he is trying to neutralize everyone who could confirm his treason, whether Russian or American,” he said.

“We’re not sure, but that’s our working theory,” Barron agreed. “And we think he’s tried to push the point by evicting mass numbers of U.S. citizens from the country, probably hoping that we’d back off. At this point, Lavrov is beyond our control, has undermined our operations, and could kill three of our officers. Since he’s broken Russian laws by detaining foreign citizens on Russian soil without valid legal authority, we’re going to the only person with the authority and resources to stop him.”

“But we know that some of the people who Lavrov evicted from the Rodina were CIA officers, not diplomats. We are very good at counterintelligence,” Gregoriyev replied.

“Some were,” Barron conceded. “Mostly senior officers who were already nearing the end of their rotations in Moscow. The rest were just State Department employees.”

“So the bulk of your officers, they are still in Moscow?” Grigoriyev asked, suspicious.

“That I cannot confirm nor deny,” Barron replied.

Grigoriyev leaned back, clasped his hands together, and stared at the Americans.

Lavrov leaned back in the chair, looking suddenly tired. “So I ask you, the final time… work for me. I will not insult your loyalty by offering you money, though I can and will arrange that if you agree. You spoke the truth when you said you were a moral woman, and I need such a person. In return, I can give you the intelligence you need to win some battles and rise through the ranks. I will give you what you need to become one of the CIA’s leaders. You will be in a position to influence presidents. Help me to rebuild my country so that yours can be strong again.”

Kyra stared at him, trying to read his face, his movements, to get some look into his mind. “Will you answer one question?”

“Perhaps.”

“How much money have you made selling technology to other countries?” she asked.

Lavrov’s smile froze and melted in seconds. He turned to the table where the contents of Kyra’s pack were still organized. He picked up the letter and showed it to her. “They showed me a photocopy of this letter. Who was it meant for?” he asked.

Kyra refused to answer and Lavrov read the letter aloud. “We regret the actions you had to take with regard to your friend, but we concur with your decision. While he was valuable to us, you have proven yourself more so and your protection is paramount.” He looked back at the analyst. “I think this letter is not meant for anyone,” Lavrov offered. “I think this letter is a forgery, a prop for a play on a stage, and we are the actors. I believe you wanted to get caught, hoping that this letter would reach the highest levels of the FSB. Grigoriyev would read it and think that I am a CIA asset. Grigoriyev hates me, as I am sure you know, and he would use this as an excuse to denounce and jail me… possibly execute me.”

Kyra gave him no reaction. “But you did not think that the GRU might detain you instead of the FSB. A shame, it was clever.” He pulled a lighter out of his pocket, ignited it, and touched it to the paper. He held it until the fire reached his fingers, and he dropped it. Then he picked up the stacks of euros. “But I will keep the money, for which I thank you.”

“So it is all about money,” Kyra said.

“No, devushka,” Lavrov said. “It truly is as I said. I want my country to be great and I need your country to stand against it for that to happen. But great men deserve great rewards. Your country thinks so. Why else do so many of your politicians become wealthy in the service of your nation?”

He sighed. “I regret that we could not come to an accommodation.” Lavrov walked to the door and opened it. “You have your orders?” he asked the guards.

“Da,” they said, not quite in unison.

“Very well. I will be at the Khodynka Airfield. Let me know when you are finished.” Lavrov turned into the hallway and walked out of Kyra’s sight.

Director Grigoriyev’s car was one of the most comfortable armored vehicles in which Kathy Cooke had ever traveled. The U.S. president’s limousine was a finer ride, but not by much.

The FSB director himself sat in the facing double seat across from Cooke and Barron, holding a conversation in Russian with the station chief. Two guards sat in the front of the car, and chase cars bracketed them ahead and behind. The motorcade was ignoring traffic lights and laws with abandon. Grigoriyev has better job perks than I do, Cooke thought.

Grigoriyev and Barron reached some break in their conversation and the Russian senior officer pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and placed a call. Cooke leaned over to the station chief. “Where are we going?” she asked, her voice low.

“GRU headquarters,” Barron said.

“Oh, joy,” Cooke said, deadpan. “Did Grigoriyev believe us? Or is he just using us to shiv Lavrov?”

“I don’t know,” Barron admitted. “Could be either one. I wouldn’t put it past him to be playing both sides. You should read his leadership profile sometime. He’s not one to pass up an opportunity.”

“Fine by me either way,” Cooke replied, approving. “I don’t care if he uses us, as long as he’s letting us use him.”

“Let’s hope he’s looking at it the same way,” Barron advised. “It’s one thing to be strange bedfellows. But Russians love their chess and I’m not sure who the pawns are here.”

Lavrov took the long way to the hangar, driving his jeep slowly past the small boneyard of retired MiGs and Sukhois and Ilyushins that sat in a line on the eastern half of the field. He could see them all from his office window, decaying reminders of what Russia had once been. It was an infuriating sight to him. Each of those planes had had its day, the finest aircraft in the world of its time, a terrifying reminder that his country could exert its will where and how it chose. Now they were rusting in place, never to grace the sky again. Oh, the president was making a show of pouring money into new weapons, trying to show the world that the Kremlin was not to be ignored. He was a fool. It was simply more of what Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev had all done, and look where that had taken the Rodina. The president had learned nothing from history, grasped no lessons.

Such as this field… there was such history here in this field. Fourteen hundred people had been trampled to death here during a celebration of the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in 1896, soaking the field in the blood of peasants. The czar had cared so little for the massacre that he hadn’t bothered to cancel his coronation ball that evening. It was a day remembered less than two decades later when the Bolsheviks rose up. The man who had shown so little regard for his people found that his people had none for him when the day of execution came. Did the Kremlin even remember what had happened here, and what had sprung from it? Lavrov was sure they did not, else this field would not have been left strewn with weeds and rusting metal and broken asphalt. It would have been a monument, not a boneyard.

Lavrov shook his head. It was a cruel thing, to have a vision that no one shared. To have to manipulate others and fool them into joining a cause was maddening. Why did no one else see what he saw? Grigoriyev did not see it. Maines certainly did not see it. He had hoped that the devushka, Kyra Stryker, would see it. He was not sure why, but that one pained him the most of all. Their conversation on the embassy roof in Berlin had given him such hope. She had read his operation against Maines like a voodoo witch reading the tarot cards. She had divined his entire campaign to strengthen America’s enemies by selling them technologies… but she had disappointed him at the critical moment. She should have seen him for the man that he was, not a greedy arms dealer.

He would go on. All of the great Russian leaders had been lonely men. He supposed that he had been a fool to expect better for himself.

Lavrov’s jeep slowed as it rolled into the hangar, the cargo truck trailing behind carrying men and crates. He killed the engine and stared up at the Mil Mi-26 cargo helicopter being serviced. The truck continued around him to the unloading station and men began leaping from the bed before the vehicle had stopped. The general dismounted and walked across the bright concrete floor to the rear cargo ramp to find the crew chief. The soldier was inside the cavernous metal stomach of the helo, checking the chains and straps binding the cargo boxes to the floor. “How long?” Lavrov asked the man.

The crew chief saluted the general, then rubbed a hand across his face, stretching out the leathery skin wrinkled before its time from abuse of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. “Another hour, I think, General. The cargo is ready, but we have to finish the maintenance checks and then top off the tank. But we will be ready on schedule.”

Lavrov nodded. “Very good. A Syrian friend of mine is waiting for this delivery and he is the impatient kind. I will be in the maintenance office.”

“Yes, sir.” Lavrov trudged down the ramp and exhaled, depressed in his spirit. He looked at his watch and wondered how much longer it would take Sokolov and his men to kill the woman and the other Americans.

The drive from Lubyanka took eighteen minutes. There had been traffic, but Grigoriyev’s motorcade had used lights and sirens to force its way past the civilian traffic and ignored whatever inconvenient laws would have slowed the trip. Cooke saw an airfield to her right, the sun glinting off a series of decrepit fighter planes lined up in a sloppy row. There was no movement on the tarmac, no trucks, no planes fueling. There were no lights in any of the buildings save one hangar near the center, and she wondered why the Russians had let a military airfield in the heart of Moscow sit unused and decaying.

The car turned left and slowed as it approached a security gate. The driver rolled down the window and showed his identification. Cooke heard them exchange words in Russian, then heated arguments mixed with several phrases she was sure were insults. The guard began waving wildly at the line of SUVs and cars behind Grigoriyev’s own.

The FSB director rolled down his own window and motioned the guard to come over. Barron leaned over and began whispering to Cooke, translating the conversation.

“You know who I am?” Grigoriyev asked.

“Yes,” the guard asked.

“Good. Open the gate.”

“Director, I must call my superiors for orders—”

“No, you do not. I am not a military officer, but I am in charge of the security of the Rodina and there are men inside your building who are traitors to your homeland and mine. So you will open this gate and allow this entire motorcade into this facility, and you will not warn anyone about it. If you fail to follow those orders, you will be arrested as a co-conspirator along with anyone else I decide to detain in the next hour, and no military officer in your chain of command will save you. Do you understand?”

The guard nodded, mute.

“Good. Now, again, open the gate.”

The guard returned to his post and spoke to his comrades. Cooke saw the young men look at their car, fear on their young faces. The guard pressed an unseen button and the gate opened, the barricade lowering beyond. Grigoriyev’s driver eased the car forward and the other vehicles behind rolled forward to follow.

“I never thought that fear of Lubyanka Prison would work in our favor,” Cooke whispered.

“Enjoy it,” Barron advised. “I suspect it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

“I am sorry,” Sokolov said. “I cannot help you now. Lavrov knows you are a prisoner and expects me to execute you and your friends. If I do not, he will execute me, I am sure.”

Kyra stared up at the man, trying to judge whether his sorrow was genuine. She thought it was, but she wasn’t sure that Russians expressed their emotions in quite the same way as her own countrymen. “Can you tell me what time it is?” she asked.

Sokolov looked at her, surprised, then at his watch. “It is nineteen forty hours.”

Kyra tipped her head back a bit and stared at the ceiling as she did the math. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to wait an hour.”

“Wait? You ask this as last request?”

“Do Russian prisoners get a last request?”

Sokolov shrugged. “No.”

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not Russian. But if you’ll wait an hour, I don’t think you’ll have to follow General Lavrov’s orders,” Kyra advised. “That would be worth your time, if you really are sick of killing good people.”

Sokolov furrowed his brow in confusion. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that sometime in the next hour, I think there will be some visitors coming and they’ll want to see me.”

“Visitors? From where?” Sokolov demanded.

“The FSB,” Kyra replied. I hope, she thought.

Grigoriyev stomped ahead of his security detail, much to his protective officers’ frustration. Cooke and Barron kept pace twenty feet behind. The deputy DNI looked over at her subordinate. Barron was smiling, happier than she’d ever seen him. “You’re enjoying this?”

“Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to see the inside of this place when I was the station chief here? Getting here would’ve been like walking into the holy of holies. Besides, I think we’re about to see one wild show from the expensive seats.”

Grigoriyev pushed the main doors open to GRU headquarters and stormed the building, his detail behind. Cooke and Barron stepped inside. The front lobby was brightly lit, with white marble walls and a marble parquet floor. The center of the floor was decorated with the GRU seal, which looked for all the world like Batman’s symbol.

The guards at the entry post rose in confusion. “You men will sit down,” Grigoriyev ordered, pointing a leathery finger at the junior officers. “I am Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev, director of the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. Where is General-Major Arkady Lavrov?”

They had recognized Grigoriyev before he’d identified himself. The head of the FSB, like his KGB predecessors, was always an infamous figure among his countrymen. “Sir,” one of the guards replied, “I… we do not know. We are not privy to the general’s schedule. But if you could wait here, we can try to—”

Grigoriyev marched over to the security desk and stared down at the young guard, a boy of twenty perhaps. “You will call upstairs to the general’s staff and determine his location in the next five minutes. You will not report who has made the request.” The FSB director pulled a set of photographs out of the inside pocket of his overcoat and laid them on the desk. “Also, these Americans are being detained somewhere in this facility. You will find out where they are being held, also in the next five minutes. If you do not meet my deadline, I will have you arrested and dragged in chains to Lubyanka, and then I will give the same order to your replacement and we will try again. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Director!” the guard said, trying desperately not to stammer out the words.

“Very good. When you have fulfilled my request, you will then escort me to the general, and you will provide an escort for a detachment to wherever the Americans are being held. Do all of this and you will go home free men tonight.”

“Yes, Director!”

“I’ll say this for the Russians,” Barron whispered. “Intimidation is an art form over here.”

“First lesson, don’t bluff,” Cooke said. “I don’t know what he just told that boy, but I’m sure he meant every word.”

“He did,” Barron confirmed. “If this was the warm-up, it was worth blowing my cover to see what’s coming when he finds Lavrov.”

“I do not think that General Lavrov will wait so long for me to call,” Sokolov said. “He will call others to come and see why—”

An insistent pounding on the door interrupted the interrogator’s apology. Sokolov frowned, moved to the door, and opened it. A conscript stood in the hallway outside, looking nervous. He saluted the senior officer. “Colonel Sokolov! The director of the FSB is at the main entrance. He is demanding to see the American.”

Sokolov’s eyes grew larger and he looked over his shoulder at Kyra. “Neveroyatno!” he muttered. “I am under orders from General Lavrov himself to expedite the… the interrogation.”

“I… I don’t know what to tell you, sir,” the conscript stammered. “General Lavrov is our ranking officer… but the FSB!”

“I know,” Sokolov replied. “Very well. Bring Director Grigoriyev here.”

“Yes, sir!” The conscript saluted again, then fled down the hallway as fast as he could run.

Sokolov turned back to Kyra. “I think you have gotten your wish,” he told her. “I think I will not have to kill you after all. This makes me very happy.”

You and me both, Kyra thought.

Grigoriyev and his entourage made the walk to the interrogation room in five minutes almost to the second. The FSB director stormed into the room without announcing his arrival, paying no attention to Sokolov. Kyra’s clothing and restraints made it clear what role she was playing. She saw Kathy Cooke and Clark Barron stride into the room, surrounded by Russian officers, and she exhaled long and slow with relief.

“I am Anatoly Grigoriyev, director of the FSB,” the man said to her in English. “You are the American, Kyra Stryker?”

“I am, Director,” she replied.

Grigoriyev muttered a curse and turned his gaze on Sokolov. “Under what authority is this woman being detained by the GRU?” he demanded in Russian.

“I cannot answer that question,” Sokolov admitted. “She was detained and brought to me under direct orders from General Lavrov. I have been following his orders. One does not question orders.”

“I want to see any effects that were on her person when she was detained.”

Sokolov pointed at the nearby table. “Her equipment is there.”

Grigoriyev leaned over and examined the contents of Kyra’s pack. “This is everything?”

“No, Director. There were two other items, a letter and a considerable quantity of euros.”

“And why are they not here?” Grigoriyev demanded.

“General Lavrov took the euros and burned the letter,” Sokolov said. “But our photographer documented everything. He can show you a digital picture of the original letter.”

“I want to see it. Bring it to me now.”

“Yes, Director.” Sokolov stepped out of the room.

Barron and Cooke stepped over to Kyra’s side. “Good to see you,” Barron said. “You’re in one piece?”

“More or less,” Kyra confirmed.

“Have you seen Jon?” Cooke asked.

“No,” Kyra replied. “They brought me straight here and I haven’t been out of this room. The colonel there was under orders from Lavrov to execute me. He wasn’t anxious to do it, but I don’t think he was going to wait much longer.”

“Lavrov was here?” Barron asked.

“Yeah,” Kyra confirmed. “He pitched me to work for him again. I turned him down.”

“Good choice,” Barron said. “After Grigoriyev is finished tonight, I don’t think Lavrov’s people are going to have much job security.”

Sokolov reentered the room, a tablet computer in his hand. “This was the letter,” he announced in Russian.

Grigoriyev took the tablet, pulled reading glasses from his overcoat, and put them on using one hand, then stared at the screen. He said nothing for almost a minute. “And Lavrov burned this letter?”

“He did.”

“You handled it?”

“Da,” Sokolov confirmed.

“In your opinion, was it genuine?” Grigoriyev asked.

Sokolov looked at Kyra, a look of concentration on his face. If you want to switch sides, now’s the time, Kyra thought. Back me up if you want to get out from under Lavrov.

The colonel turned back to the FSB director, still thinking. Then he straightened his spine and looked Grigoriyev in the eyes. “Da, Director Grigoriyev. I believe it was.”

Kyra tightened her fists, channeling all of her adrenaline and excited energy into her hands.

“And he talked to your prisoner?”

“Da,” Sokolov confirmed.

“You heard the conversation?”

“I did not. The general ordered me out of the room.”

“I want to see the security tapes,” Grigoriyev ordered.

“There are none,” Sokolov said.

“Why not?”

“Because General Lavrov ordered me to have them switched off,” Sokolov lied. “He said that an operation that required detaining the Americans was too sensitive to record any related interrogation on the tapes.”

“So, the general came in, ordered you out of the room and the cameras turned off, then had a private conversation with an American spy, burned a letter that appears to incriminate him as a CIA asset, and walked out with a large amount of euros that this woman had on her person and which the letter said were for his services. Is that accurate?”

“It is,” Sokolov said, trying to look embarrassed. He was finding his footing now.

“Colonel, you are a fool. You will release this woman into my custody immediately,” Grigoriyev ordered. “And you will do the same with any other Americans you are holding in this facility.”

“I think General Lavrov will dispute your request—” Sokolov protested, not very hard.

“General Lavrov will be very fortunate if he does not end his night in Lubyanka!” Grigoriyev snapped. “The question of this moment is whether you will share a seat next to him. The answer to that question will depend on the amount of cooperation you offer me in the next few seconds.”

Sokolov pulled back, apparently intimidated. “There are two others,” he said. “Two men. They are in the infirmary under guard.”

Grigoriyev pointed at Cooke and Barron. “You will release her and take us to them. You will also tell me where General Lavrov is.”

“He is at the Khodynka Airfield,” Sokolov said. “He left here a half hour ago. If he is not there now, I do not know where he might be.”

Grigoriyev made a curt nod toward Kyra, and Sokolov unfastened her restraints. “I am pleased that you will leave this place,” he told her, almost a whisper. “I did not want you to die tonight.” He stood up and helped Kyra to her feet. “If you follow, I take you to the infirmary.”

Kyra followed Sokolov down the stairwell, afraid to say anything to the man. She saw security cameras at every turn, but wasn’t sure whether the Aquarium hallways and stairwells weren’t filled with audio taps and bugs in every corner. She didn’t want to say anything that would incriminate the man. The colonel had just set up his commanding officer as a traitor to his country and she didn’t want Lavrov to find some way to lay the same crime at Sokolov’s feet.

The infirmary was in the new GRU headquarters and the crossover between the old and new buildings was unmistakable. The Aquarium had smelled of old must, its architecture a testament to Soviet design. The new building was clean and modern, brightly lit with new carpet and light-colored walls. Kyra could have mistaken it for a U.S. government facility had the lettering on the signs not been in Cyrillic.

Sokolov turned a corner and slowed. He pointed at the door ahead. “They are inside,” he said. “The man who came with Lavrov from Berlin, the traitor, he was injured before he came here. They break his hand with hammers. The other, they shoot him in his leg. I know the men they left with him. They are efficient and lose any pity for others long time ago.”

“Thank you,” Kyra said.

Barron pushed open the door to the infirmary.

It looked like any doctor’s office, with a nurses’ station, a waiting room, and a hallway leading back into private offices and other rooms. A faint antiseptic smell pervaded the air and Kyra’s stomach churned a bit.

Grigoriyev filed in behind her, approached the nurse on duty, and had a short conversation with her. She hesitated, saw the armed men behind the FSB director, and decided that compliance was the wiser course. She pointed down the hall.

Grigoriyev marched ahead, Kyra and the other Americans behind. The Russian made a few turns, then stopped. A pair of guards, hard young men, flanked the last door on the left. Kyra’s instincts told her they were Spetsnaz.

“You know me?” Grigoriyev asked in Russian, approaching the soldiers.

“Yes, sir,” one of the guards confirmed.

“Good. Open the door.”

“Nyet, Director. We have orders from general—”

“General Lavrov’s orders do not apply to me. I am in charge of counterintelligence and internal security in the Rodina. The men in that room are American civilians, and therefore the GRU has no jurisdiction here. Open the door.”

“Nyet, Director. We cannot without orders from the general.”

Grigoriyev’s patience snapped. He barked an order in Russian that Kyra didn’t catch. Grigoriyev’s men drew their sidearms and leveled them at the Spetsnaz guards, who drew their own weapons on instinct and pointed them at the FSB director, both sides yelling at each other, frenzied orders demanding each side surrender their pistols.

The guns hadn’t cleared the holsters before Kyra felt Barron’s hands grab her from behind, and the man almost threw her and Cooke into a doorway, then positioned himself between them and the guards.

Grigoriyev raised his hand and his men fell quiet. His eyes tore into the GRU officers. “You are outnumbered and there is nowhere in this hallway to take cover. If you shoot me, it will be a race to see whether my body or yours reaches the carpet first.” The guards stared at the half-dozen guns pointed at their heads. “The Americans are coming with me. Lower your guns and I will report to your superiors that you did your duty. No charges will be brought against you.”

The Spetsnaz took another five seconds to consider the offer and work out the math. They lowered their Makarovs, replacing them in their holsters.

“A good decision. Now step aside.”

The room was small, barely larger than an average patient’s room in any American hospital, the equipment similar except for the strange lettering on every console. The lighting was dim and it took several seconds for Kyra’s eyes to adjust, her night vision coming to bear.

Alden Maines lay in the first bed, unconscious, a large clear bag of morphine running into his forearm through an IV drip. He was handcuffed to the bed rail, which saved Kyra the trouble of asking Grigoriyev to take care of that piece of business.

A curtain hanging from a sliding rail separated the American criminal from the patient in the far bed. Kyra stepped forward, her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. She took the white cloth in her hand and pulled it aside.

Jonathan Burke was lying in the bed, dressed in hospital scrubs, an IV drip of his own attached to his arm. Kyra rushed forward, kneeling down by his bed. He turned his head to the side, saw Kyra, and he smiled a bit. “Heard the yelling. Figured it was you. Didn’t think anyone else could make Russians want to shoot each other,” he said, his words slurring together. Whatever drug they were feeding into him was industrial grade and she thought it was amazing that he was awake. A few minutes more and she might see him fade back into sleep.

She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “You idiot.”

“Good to see you too—” His eyes shifted and looked behind her. Kyra heard a gasp, then felt Kathy Cooke push in next to her. Kyra stood and moved to the side. “Hi, Kathy—” Jon started.

“Shut up, Jon,” Cooke said. She leaned over, her eyes playing over his face, and then she kissed him.

Grigoriyev pushed his way over to the end of Jon’s bed and lifted the clipboard hanging off the end. He scanned the page, then handed it to Barron. “What’s it say?” Kyra asked.

“Gunshot wound to the leg,” Barron said. “Looks like whoever shot him treated him on site with some coagulant, the Russian equivalent of QuikClot. Surgeons here sewed that up. But…” He paused. “They tortured him.”

“Hurt too,” Jon muttered.

“What did they do to him?” Cooke asked. Her voice was cold, venom in her tone like Barron had never heard.

“He’s been treated for dehydration and pinpoint burns, probably from electric shocks,” he said, reading off the paper. “Kathy… they crushed his knee.”

Kyra looked down at the sheet. Jon’s right leg formed a strange angle under the white cloth. “Didn’t work,” he muttered. “Asperger’s gives me a low pain threshold. I kept passing out. So they gave me painkillers to keep me awake, but I couldn’t feel anything so I didn’t care what they did. Drove ’em crazy.” He laughed quietly.

“I don’t know what they’re giving him, but whatever it is, I want some,” Barron said. “That must be some quality stuff, and judging by the drip rate, he’s getting plenty.”

Cooke did not smile at the joke. “Director Grigoriyev,” she said, “I expect you to help us evacuate this man to the United States immediately, where he can receive proper medical attention under the supervision of our own doctors.” Her voice left no doubt that she was not asking a question.

Grigoriyev nodded. “We will move him to our best hospital. Our surgeons there will examine and treat him until an arrangement for a medical flight can be made,” he said. “If you are satisfied, I need to find General Lavrov.” He stared at Kyra. “And you are coming.”

“No, she’s not,” Barron objected.

“I need her there,” Grigoriyev said. “Lavrov ordered her execution because she is a witness to his illegal arrests of Russian citizens. When he sees that she is with me, he will know that I have the evidence to remove him from command of the GRU. If she is not there, he might not believe that she lives and will resist arrest.”

“He might resist anyway,” Barron told him.

“He might,” Grigoriyev conceded. “But if she comes, he might surrender.”

“I’ll go with her,” Barron replied. “That’s not a request.”

“That will be acceptable.”

“Clark, I’ll stay here with Jon,” Cooke said. “Director Grigoriyev, I do not speak Russian. I will need an officer who speaks English to help me coordinate the medical flight and other arrangements.”

“I believe Colonel Sokolov speaks English. He will help you.” The FSB director put his hand in his coat and felt the sidearm he was carrying. “Now, we go to Khodynka.”

The hour had passed and Sokolov still had not called. Had the man forgotten? Lavrov doubted that. Even if a soldier could forget a direct order so easily, the colonel had always been an efficient officer, a man who paid attention to the details. He would have remembered. Something was amiss at the Aquarium, but there were no sirens, no alerts. The general stepped outside the hangar and looked past the line of barracks to the old headquarters. The skyline of buildings looked like they always had in the dark.

Lavrov pulled out his own cell phone and dialed the number to Sokolov’s office. There was no answer. He tried the GRU operator and had him connect the call to the interrogation room. That phone stubbornly continued ringing until Lavrov disconnected. What is going on over there?

“General Lavrov.” The crew chief approached, saluted, then nodded toward the Mi-26 helicopter. “Maintenance is finished, the tank is full, and the cargo loaded. We will tow it out and it will be ready to travel once your pilot arrives and performs his preflight check”

“Very good.” Lavrov said. “The pilot… he should have been here by now, correct?”

The crew chief wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “He was due five minutes ago. No one has called to explain the delay—” He stopped, looked out into the darkness, and pointed. “Maybe that is him.”

Lavrov twisted his head, following the imaginary line from the crew chief’s finger out onto the tarmac. A line of cars was crossing the runway in front of the boneyard. “No,” Lavrov said. “There are too many cars.” He stared at the approaching convoy, then turned back to the hangar. Whoever was coming was no friend.

I have friends of my own here, he thought.

“There.” Grigoriyev’s driver pointed to the open hangar. “There is a transport still inside.”

Grigoriyev answered nothing. The driver accelerated a bit, closed the distance to the metal building, and finally stopped, parking the car to block the Mi-26 from being towed outside. The other four cars fanned out, parking in a staggered formation behind the director’s vehicle.

Lavrov looked out through the helicopter’s windshield and counted a dozen men stepping out of the cars, none wearing a military uniform. Grigoriyev. He saw the old FSB director dismount and stand, hands in his overcoat, his breath visible in the cooling air.

There was a woman with them. Lavrov cursed. Stryker. Grigoriyev had stopped the colonel from carrying out his orders. This would be a problem.

The general turned to the Spetsnaz squad standing behind him, carbines suspended from their vests. “You understand the orders?” he asked. The Special Forces soldiers nodded in silent agreement. “Very good.” Lavrov turned and walked down the cargo ramp.

“Arkady!” Grigoriyev called out. “We must talk.”

There was no answer before the GRU chairman came around from behind the transport. He approached the FSB chief and stopped, making a show of counting the men behind him. His eyes lingered on Kyra. “Why are you here, Anatoly?”

“I am here to arrest you.”

“I think not.”

“You are a traitor to the Rodina, Arkady. You have sold yourself to the CIA for money and you killed Stepan to cover your perfidy. I do not care that you tried to extort the Americans for more money, but you made illegal arrests and executions of Russian citizens to prove your leverage. Your CIA ‘source’ was actually a dangle that you swallowed. The people you expelled were just common diplomats. The CIA cadre here in Moscow remains intact, while you have given the U.S. government an excuse to expel our officers from Washington, including our ambassador, and move against every intelligence operation we are running on their soil. You have left us at a severe disadvantage that will cripple us for years and the price you paid for this failure was the blood of loyal Russian citizens. Therefore, you are charged with treason and murder,” Grigoriyev said.

“The president will not agree—” Lavrov began. He shook his head slightly, a laugh of derision escaping him.

“I saw the letter, Arkady… the letter which you burned. And he will see it.”

Lavrov’s eyes narrowed. “It was a falsehood, created to implicate me. I burned it so that would not happen.”

“Or so there would be less evidence of your treason.”

“Less evidence?”

“Your Colonel Sokolov tells me that you took the quarter-million euros that were recovered with the note, which Miss Stryker admitted under questioning was meant for you. Why would you do that, Arkady, unless you considered it payment due for services rendered?”

“Money recovered from spies is put to other purposes. You know that,” Lavrov protested.

“Indeed. So I presume you took it directly to your chief of staff and ordered him to account for it and have it deposited?”

Lavrov pursed his lips and said nothing for several seconds. “No,” he finally admitted.

“I know,” Grigoriyev told him. “We asked the man. If my men search your jeep and this helicopter, will they find it?”

“I presume she told you those lies?” He nodded at Kyra.

Lavrov’s eyes turned on Kyra, hatred visible on his face now. “What are they saying?” she asked Barron.

“Grigoriyev is twisting the shiv,” the NCS director replied. “Nice work on the setup. Everything he did has two explanations and our friend here is running with the one that makes him look like a sellout.”

“They hate each other,” Kyra said, her voice a whisper. “It’s easy to think the worst about someone when you’ve already primed.”

“You are under arrest, Arkady. You will surrender—”

“I will not,” Lavrov told him. He raised his hand.

A thunderous avalanche of boots on metal echoed inside the hangar, sounding like a battalion of soldiers storming in from all sides. A squad of Spetsnaz officers exploded out from behind the helicopter, moving to covered positions behind the Mi-26, carbines raised. Grigoriyev’s men began yelling, fanning out, and pulling their own sidearms. Barron grabbed Kyra’s arm and pointed toward Lavrov’s jeep, still parked a few dozen feet from the help. “Go!” he ordered. She sprinted for the vehicle, the senior officer and a pair of FSB officers behind. The Russians knelt at the corners of the vehicle, handguns raised.

Grigoriyev and Lavrov stood unmoved in the middle of it, staring at each other.

“What now, Arkady?” Grigoriyev asked.

“You are outnumbered and outgunned,” Lavrov told him, explaining the obvious. “I would think the wiser choice would be apparent.”

“And what would you have me do? Let you leave here with a fortune in euros and technology for sale to anyone ready to pay your prices?”

“I would have you believe that I am not a traitor.”

“Threatening to have me shot is no argument in your favor,” Grigoriyev noted. “You will surrender yourself and order the GRU to cooperate with my investigation. If you are innocent, you will be freed—”

“You will ensure I am proven guilty, Anatoly. What I have actually done will not matter—” Lavrov said.

The Spetsnaz officer crouching on the extreme left of the his team’s firing line was the youngest man on the squad, new to the Special Forces and the least experienced. He had not intended to position himself on the flank, preferring to leave that to one of the more senior officers, but there had been little time to coordinate their movements before Lavrov had raised his hand to call them out. There was little space behind the helicopter and several men were bunched together, almost pushing him out from behind cover. It would not take much to find himself exposed here.

He scanned the hangar. Most of the FSB officers had managed to find good cover behind equipment and other cargo stacks, but the helicopter denied them any good line of fire. The two who had moved behind Lavrov’s jeep were a problem. They were far enough over so that they would be able to flank his team’s position. That needed fixing.

A pallet of cargo boxes was stacked a few meters to his left, a forklift waiting next to it, the tines lowered to the ground. From there, he could hold them down if things turned unpleasant. It would be a short run. He might even be able to move farther over and gain a line of fire on some of the other hostiles. He could trade his current position for better cover and expose the enemy in the process.

He took a breath, released it, and pushed off, running for the forklift.

Kyra saw movement in her peripheral vision. The FSB officer to Kyra’s right jerked his head, swung his pistol out of reflex, yelled, and fired.

The 9x19mm Parabellum round punched through the soldier’s upper thigh, just missing the pelvic bone and breaking the femur near the upper joint. Blood spurted from his leg and the man went down with a scream. His teammates heard the shot’s report, saw their colleague drop, and returned fire.

Kyra yelled as bullets tore into Lavrov’s jeep, shattering the windows and spewing glass in every direction. The Spetsnaz were carrying AEK-919s, automatic submachine guns for which the FSB’s pistols were a poor match. The volume of fire that erupted from behind the helicopter was deafening, streams of lead pouring out in every direction at once. Lavrov and Grigoriyev both fled for cover, the general around the side of the aircraft, the FSB director back toward a low wall of metal boxes.

The FSB unit fired their Grachs as fast as they could. The sound of metal punching through metal added an ugly melody to the fight, low thumps mixing with the higher-pitched whine of ricochets and the angry snapping of the guns.

The tires on Lavrov’s jeep blew out, tilting the vehicle to one side. Barron pushed Kyra behind the front wheel well, then moved back and took up the same position to the rear, putting solid metal in front of her feet and his. The Russian to her right fired three more rounds, then screamed and pitched over, clutching at his shattered hand where a bullet had smashed into the fingers closed around his pistol’s grip, nearly amputating one of his digits. Kyra lunged to the side, grabbed his coat, and pulled the man back to cover. He curled up in the fetal position, trying to suppress his own screams.

His Grach sat in the open where it had landed, ten feet beyond her reach.

Lavrov pushed himself up to a kneeling position behind a metal crate, drew his Makarov, and looked for a target. Grigoriyev gave him nothing, hiding as he was behind his own makeshift parapet of cargo boxes. Lavrov unloaded three rounds at an FSB officer who raised up to fire, the second bullet catching the man in the sternum and rendering him unable to scream as the air in his lungs flooded out through the hole in his windpipe.

Kyra picked up a piece of shattered mirror and used it to look around the jeep’s hood. The Spetsnaz officer covering his team’s flank fired his 919, and the weapon ran dry. She saw him raise it to eject the clip.

Kyra dropped the mirror, pushed off, and sprinted low to the fallen Grach, keeping her eyes focused on the gun.

“No!” Barron yelled, but the woman was already in motion. He started to move toward the front of the car she had just abandoned, but a shattering window above made him think better of it. The Russian beside him raised up in a half crouch, fired, then toppled back as a 9mm round tore through his head. The man’s own Grach clattered onto the ground, still behind the vehicle. Barron scrambled over to retrieve it.

Kyra slowed just long enough to grab for the Grach, and felt the grooved handle of the pistol in her palm as her hand wrapped around it. She picked up speed again, closed the distance to the next pallet of cargo in less than a second, and threw herself behind the metal boxes.

She lowered herself onto one knee and looked around the crates. The Spetsnaz were behind cover, several in a line almost at a right angle to her position.

The soldier at the end of the line finished loading the clip into his weapon, looked up, and saw Kyra’s head before she could pull back. He racked the slide on his carbine, loading the first round, and raised it—

— Kyra’s rounds caught him high in the shoulder, smashing his collarbone and knocking him to the floor, his gun clattering on the concrete as he landed.

Kyra’s pistol locked open. She stared at the Grach in disbelief? Two rounds? I ran for a gun that had two rounds? She was a sitting target if the Russian soldiers moved on her position.

She looked over, saw Barron firing a pistol over the trunk of Lavrov’s jeep. He looked back over at her. “I’m out!” she yelled.

Barron cursed the woman for having left her position. He drew himself down behind the vehicle, set his Grach on the ground, and threw open the jacket of the dead Russian at his feet. The man had been carrying two spare clips in pouches on his belt. Barron pulled them both out, held one up for Kyra to see, and threw it across the floor to her.

The clip skittered over and Kyra stopped it with her foot. She ejected the empty, loaded the replacement, and jacked the slide. She raised herself up to fire again, then dropped back when bullets began tearing into the crates. The Spetsnaz team had seen their comrade go down and was not going to give her the chance to fire again.

Barron looked over the trunk and saw one of the soldiers firing on Kyra’s position. The woman was crouching low behind the crates, but she was pinned down. The soldier couldn’t tell how many people had moved around the flank and he was chewing into the metal barricade as hot and fast as his gun allowed.

The soldier was focused on the threat to his flank and had lost track of his own position. His head leaned forward, exposed from behind the crate hiding him.

Barron swung his pistol onto the trunk, took half a second to line up the shot, and pulled the trigger.

The 9mm round punched through the soldier’s head, spraying blood as it left an open hole behind. The soldier fell sideways, his rifle clattering on the ground as he crumpled over.

Kyra peeked over, saw the man pitch sideways, blood flying out from his shattered skull in a red mist. The enemy’s flank exposed, she raised herself up, bringing her own fully loaded weapon to bear, and began pulling the trigger.

Lavrov heard Spetsnaz officers scream, one after another as bullets tore into arms and legs, a torso. Two of his men tried to move around the other side of the helicopter for cover and the lead soldier went down as FSB officers watching that side opened up. The second man grabbed his comrade by his drag collar and tried to pull him out of the field of fire, but he went down, a bullet in his leg.

“Inside! Inside!” Lavrov ordered, pointing at the helicopter’s open cargo door. The Spetsnaz called out their acknowledgments, then began laying down covering fire as men dragged and carried their wounded up the ramp to the safety. Lavrov saw Kyra look around from behind her barricade and sent three rounds in her direction. The woman jerked her head back.

The last of the Russian soldiers scrambled up the metal incline and Lavrov followed, stepping through the line of four men covering the entrance.

The hangar fell quiet, a disturbing stillness after the wild chaos of the single minute the firefight had lasted. Grigoriyev and his men looked up, weapons still raised. The FSB director pointed his men forward, and they began to move toward the aircraft in a low crouch. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number.

Barron, head down, ran to Kyra’s position. “They would’ve eaten us alive if you hadn’t threatened their flank,” he said. “I thought it was stupid to make the run, but I won’t argue with the result.”

“Good, ’cause I’m out again.” She held up the Grach, which was locked open on an empty chamber again. “Never thought I’d help the FSB shoot other Russians.”

“I hope you enjoyed it, because we’re done. This is not what we signed up for when we agreed to come here to help arrest Lavrov. This is Grigoriyev’s problem now.” Barron waved over to the FSB director and motioned for the man to send reinforcements. Three officers crouching near their director saw the signal and moved without orders. “Come on, we’re moving,” Barron ordered.

He led Kyra back behind Lavrov’s vehicle, then around to Grigoriyev. The Russian ended his call and replaced his cell phone in his coat. “An exciting evening, I think,” he said.

“A little too much for our taste,” Barron advised. “This is your problem, not ours.”

“Mr. Barron, I think you will want to stay. The more exciting part is still coming.” Grigoriyev turned back to the helicopter and switched to his native language. “Arkady!” he yelled. “It is time to surrender. You cannot stay inside.”

Lavrov heard Grigoriyev’s voice and cursed him under his breath. The man’s arrogance was maddening. He could not have forgotten that GRU headquarters was a stone’s throw from the hangar. “You should leave now, Anatoly,” he called back. “We are in my backyard. One radio call and a battalion of men will arrive here in five minutes.”

Grigoriyev shook his head. “Send your battalion, Arkady. Send a division! It will not matter. I have already made my call. We will have a visitor soon. You might kill us before he arrives, but you will not be able to hide what you have done.”

“And who is coming?” Lavrov yelled back, contempt thick in his voice.

“The one who will settle this.” Grigoriyev turned back to the Americans. “You must forgive my lack of hospitality, but I must confiscate those guns and place you under arrest. A temporary measure only, but you are American spies in the Rodina and his security detail might shoot you on sight. Foreigners with guns on our soil make them unhappy… and it would look very bad to him if he saw that you were not only free but helping to suppress an armed insurrection.”

“Look bad to who?” Barron asked.

“Who do you think, devushka?” Grigoriyev asked.

Kyra smiled. “The only one who can settle this,” she said.

“And that is…?” Barron asked her.

“The president of the Russian Federation.” She handed Grigoriyev the Grach pistol she was holding, then offered both arms for the handcuffs.

The motorcade arrived on Grigoriynv’s schedule, a half-dozen Volkswagen Caravelles surrounding a heavy stretch limousine, an armored black Mercedes Benz S-class with solid rubber tires, dark windows, and a motor that growled low under the weight it carried. The small fleet pulled to a stop fifty meters from the hangar and men spilled out of the vans, every one carrying a carbine.

Kyra watched the team leader confer with Grigoriyev in Russian, then walk toward the cargo helicopter, his hands raised high in the air. Lavrov yelled something back and the man made his way around and disappeared up the cargo ramp. He was inside the aircraft for two minutes, then reappeared, Lavrov walking beside him.

“Are you ready to talk, Arkady?” Grigoriyev asked.

“Your men fired first,” Lavrov noted. “But as a demonstration of my innocence, I have ordered them to surrender their weapons.” He looked at Kyra, murder in his eyes. “If anyone is to visit Lubyanka tonight—”

“He will decide who visits Lubyanka tonight,” Grigoriyev said. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed the same number as before, and shared a few words with the caller on the other end before disconnecting. The FSB director looked back at the parked motorcade.

The driver dismounted, opened the rear passenger door, and the president of the Russian Federation stepped onto the tarmac.

His dark suit was bespoke, impeccable, and expensive. The man was shorter than Kyra had expected, but built solid across the chest and arms. Kyra couldn’t determine the color of his eyes in the hangar light, but she saw they were cold. He approached the small group, slowing only slightly when he saw the two Americans standing by Grigoriyev, in restraints and under guard. He reached the FSB director, stopped, and scanned the hangar, taking note of the bullet holes that seemed to cover every flat surface in sight. He sniffed the air, smelled the odor of burned gunpowder that still wafted through the open space.

“Anatoly Maksimovich,” he said. “I see that you were not wasting my time when you asked me to come.”

“I would not, sir,” Grigoriyev said.

“Very good. You have arrested some American spies, I’m told.”

“I have, but the matter is more complicated than that. There is evidence that these spies were working with one of our own,” Grigoriyev told him.

“And you have detained this traitor?”

“That is why I came here, to detain the man.” Grigoriyev turned and looked at the Russian general. “But Arkady Vladimirovich would not surrender. He ordered his men to abet his attempt to resist arrest. I have several wounded men, some seriously.”

“An extraordinary accusation,” the Russian president noted. “I presume you have extraordinary evidence. Arkady has done much for the Rodina over the years.”

“More for himself, I think,” Grigoriyev replied.

President Daniel Rostow looked up from the file in his hands, the FBI’s summary of the Russian ambassador’s departure from the country. “It’s a start,” he said. “Not a good one, but I’ll take something over nothing.” He closed the file and passed it back to the FBI director. “I’d be a happier man if I was sure that more of these Russian diplomats lined up at the ticket counter at Dulles were really intelligence officers.”

“Yes, sir.” Isaac Menard’s tone was an unhappy mix of embarrassment and resolution, heavy on the former. “We listed everyone who we ever imagined was a spy and plenty more who were just abusing their diplomatic immunity to get out of driving violations. We have a second tranche who are members of the Russian delegation to the UN in New York City under review, so we’ll be able to hit them up there if this goes on.”

“Good,” Rostow encouraged him. “And I want you back here tomorrow for lunch. I’m calling down the House and Senate Intel Committee chairs. I want to discuss hiking your counterintelligence budget—”

The telephone on the Resolute desk sounded, calling for Rostow’s attention. He touched the button. “What is it, Vickie?”

“Mr. President, the Watch Office has the deputy director of national intelligence on the line. She’s asking to speak with you.”

“Kathy Cooke?” Rostow rolled his eyes and looked to Menard. “What’s it about?”

“They didn’t say, but she is calling from Moscow,” the secretary replied.

“Moscow? Put her on.” The line went mute as the secretary began to connect the call. “How did Kathy Cooke get into Russia?”

“No idea,” Menard said, shaking his head. “They stopped approving visas for any of our people the minute this started. Maybe she called someone senior over there.”

“I don’t like this—”

“Mr. President, now connecting you with Deputy DNI Cooke,” the secretary announced.

“Kathy?” Rostow asked. “What are you doing in Moscow?”

“Sir.” The distance delayed Cooke’s answer a second, and the president found even that short wait intolerable. “I came over yesterday with Clark Barron from CIA to meet with FSB Director Anatoly Grigoriyev. We’ve recovered our analyst who was abducted in Germany, and Alden Maines is presently in my custody—”

“Kathy,” Menard interrupted, “it’s Isaac. You have Maines?”

“Technically, he’s in FSB custody, but they’re going to release him to us,” Cooke told him. “I’ll need as many of the Bureau’s special agents at the embassy as you can muster to report to GRU headquarters as fast as they can get over here.”

“How did you manage that?” Rostow asked, incredulous.

“This is an unsecured line, Mr. President, so I can’t explain the details here. I’ll call you from the embassy as soon as I can. But we need someone to arrange a medical evac flight for two seriously wounded officers. Maines and Jonathan Burke were both tortured by the GRU. I want to evac them to Rammstein for treatment.”

“I’ll have the Pentagon set it up,” Rostow confirmed. “I want to hear back from you in a half hour.”

“I can do that, if Isaac’s people can get over here and take over for me,” Cooke replied.

“I’m on it.” Menard’s hand was on the Oval Office door and he was setting his course for the White House Watch Office before Rostow disconnected the call.

“Can you explain this, Arkady?” The Russian president stared down at the quarter-million euros filling the satchel retrieved from Lavrov’s car. Bullets had struck the bag and perforated several stacks of the bills.

“My officers retrieved the funds from this woman—” Lavrov pointed at Kyra. “She is a CIA officer detained by my men when she attempted to enter her embassy.”

“A partial truth,” Grigoriyev added. He held out his smartphone, Sokolov’s picture of Kyra’s letter on the screen. The president took the phone and stared at the photograph, zooming and scrolling as he read. “Arkady, this could refer to you.”

“I am not named—”

“Of course not!” the president snapped. “The CIA is not stupid enough to name an asset in a communiqué like this one! I was the FSB director once! You think I do not know how assets are run?”

“No, sir—” Lavrov started.

“Enough!” The president turned to Grigoriyev. “Is this all?”

“No. I have a GRU interrogator in custody who has confirmed that the general personally interviewed this woman alone, outside the presence of witnesses and with the cameras turned off on his order. General Lavrov personally destroyed that letter, not realizing that a photographic copy had been taken. Then he left with the money in hand and did not deliver it to his staff for accounting.”

The Russian president frowned and returned the smartphone to its owner. “And then you resisted when Anatoly asked you to come with him to explain yourself. This looks very bad, Arkady.”

“He wants to remove me from my post,” Lavrov protested. “You know this.”

“Politics is no defense for this,” the president replied, anger flashing in his eyes.

“This is a deception operation!” Lavrov yelled, thrusting his finger at Kyra and Barron again. “I have gutted their operations and now they are trying to undo me!”

“And yet you killed General Strelnikov without discussing the matter with Anatoly or myself. You have executed three other Russian citizens without trial or any evidence of their guilt other than the word of a source who you have allowed no one to interview.” The president shook his head. “I believe I have given you too much latitude, Arkady. Your successes in straining the Main Enemy by providing technology to our allies blinded me to your excesses.”

“Mr. President—”

“No, I will hear no more from you here. You will surrender yourself to Anatoly. He will investigate your actions and then we will decide what to do. You are relieved of your command of the GRU and your Foundation for Advanced Research will cease all its dealings with foreign buyers until I decide otherwise.” The president nodded to Grigoriyev, who waved his hand. An FSB officer approached the Russian general and pulled his arms behind his back.

“Sir, we have his alleged source and the wounded CIA officer he kidnapped in Germany in our custody. That matter needs our attention,” Grigoriyev said.

“What would you suggest?”

“We have no grounds to hold the kidnapped officer. His forced extradition to Russia was entirely illegal and would complicate our relations with Europe. I believe he should be sent home,” Grigoriyev offered. “As for the general’s source, his information cannot be trusted. At this moment, we do not know whether he truly is a traitor to his country or a loyal officer who Lavorv tortured for information. But in either case, he committed no crime on our soil, none that we would want to bring to public trial anyway. I suggest he be sent home as well.”

The president nodded. “See to it. And these two? Do they have diplomatic immunity?” he asked, nodding at Kyra and Barron.

“Technically, no,” Grigoriyev admitted. “But I think that consigning them to prison would be to waste an advantage.”

The president looked at his FSB director, considering the implication. He turned to the head of his security detail. “Fetch me the secure phone from my car.”

“Mr. President?” It was the second time in ten minutes that his secretary had asked for his attention and Rostow was already getting tired of the woman’s voice.

“Yes, Vickie?”

“Sir, it’s the Watch Office again. The president of the Russian Federation is standing by to speak to you.”

Rostow’s eye’s widened at the news. “Put him on.”

The connection took almost ten seconds. “Daniel, how are you this morning?” The Russian president’s English was quite good, his accent strong but his diction still understandable.

“I’m doing well. And yourself?”

“My health is good. What more can I ask?” the Russian replied. “There have been several unpleasant exchanges between our two countries of late. That is unfortunate. This business of expelling so many of each other’s diplomats? The great powers should not be so hostile to each other.”

“I agree,” Rostow said. “How can we mend our fences?” What are you selling? he wondered.

“There has been an incident here in Moscow this evening… very unpleasant business. Two of your intelligence officers have been detained by the FSB, neither with diplomatic immunity, and the GRU has two others in its infirmary. I believe that one is wanted by your FBI. As an act of my good faith, I would like to return the injured men to you after we treat them in our finest hospital.”

“That would be a very gracious act. On behalf of the American people, I would like to thank you for your concern and generosity.”

“It is my pleasure. As for the other two, they are more problematic. Without immunity, it would be our standard practice to try them and consign them to prison. But I believe that a better solution might be possible,” the Russian offered.

“I would be pleased to hear any proposal you would care to offer,” Rostow said. He wanted to gag on the words. The American president was skilled at the language of diplomats and had no issue with the hypocrisy behind it, but he hated to ever look like he was at the mercy of others.

“We have both expelled a number of the other’s diplomats from our respective countries these past days. You have sent our ambassador home and we were preparing to do the same to yours. This has all been very disruptive. I would suggest a trade. If you will agree to withdraw the expulsion of a select number of our diplomats, I would be pleased to do the same for an equal number of yours. I will send these two home as an incentive. They would be persona non grata to us forever, of course.”

“Of course,” Rostow replied. He let the silence hang for a few moments. The Russian would know that he wasn’t really thinking things over, but appearances had to be maintained for the benefit of the security officers on both sides who were listening in. You want to send some intel officers back to the U.S., we get to send back some of ours. Whoever went back in on either side would spend at least a year under intense surveillance, but the CIA wouldn’t lose its entire brain trust in Moscow. It’ll still take ’em a couple of years to get back on their feet, but that’s less than the alternative. We’ll have to get some new people over there to work the street, but at least they’ll have experienced people running things from the office.

“I think that’s a very generous offer. On behalf of the United States, I accept,” Rostow said. “Please let Ambassador Galushka know that he can return to Washington at his convenience. I will have our ambassador in Moscow provide you with a list of our people we would like restored as soon as I can discuss the matter with him and the secretary of state.” And the director of national intelligence, he didn’t add.

“Excellent!” the Russian exclaimed. “I am gratified that this matter will conclude in an agreeable way. I do hope that we can avoid any such unpleasant quarrels in the future.”

“As do I,” Rostow replied. “Good night, Mr. President.”

“Do svedaniya, Daniel.” The line died, and Rostow set his own handset on the cradle. Kathy is going to have to explain what in heaven’s name just happened, he thought.

The Russian president turned off the phone and looked at Barron and Kyra. “You will be returned home,” he announced. “You will have to spend the evening in Lubyanka, of course. There are protocols we must follow. You are also persona non grata to the Russian people and will never set foot in our country again.”

“We understand,” Barron said.

“Then this matter is concluded, for you anyway.” The Russian president turned to Grigoriyev. “I leave this in your hands, Anatoly Maksimovich. I regret that I did not listen to your advice sooner. I will take it as a lesson that the wisdom of FSB men is not to be discounted so lightly.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Grigoriyev said. The Russian president turned away and began the walk across the tarmac back to his car. The FSB director stared at the group. “The FSB will not charge the Spetsnaz officers who participated in this affair with any crime. You may return to your duties and deliver your wounded to your infirmary. You were only following your orders and did not realize that the man giving them had betrayed you.” He turned to his own men. “Take the general and the Americans to Lubyanka, separate cars. Also, advise their embassy of the need for the medical flight. These two are being expelled from the country and will leave on that aircraft. They may have escaped prison, but we do not have to allow them the luxury of a soft seat on a commercial flight for their trip home.”

“Always wanted to see Lubyanka,” Barron muttered.

“Just so long as we get to walk back out again,” Kyra replied.