The Fall of Moscow Station

CHAPTER THREE

The etched metal plate by the gated entrance displayed an imperial eagle with two heads, both crowned, holding a scepter and orb, under the words Botschaft der Russischen Föderation. Kyra spoke no German, but the words were plain enough.

The devil’s den, she thought. Are you in there, Maines?

She had waited in the rain two hours to get this far in the queue. Every few minutes the line shuffled forward a few feet, and most of the supplicants kept silent. The couple in front of her had said enough to identify themselves as Russians, the family behind her, German. She heard no English. The natives walked past the granite complex without a glance, leaving only the tourists to stare at the building, a mix of trepidation and amazement on their faces. Probably the way the Russians like it, Kyra thought.

Her disguise was more superficial than she would have liked, but time hadn’t allowed for better. Given a few days’ notice, the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology could have turned her into an overweight old man missing a limb. As it was, she was still a woman, though her hair was now raven black and longer, her chest larger, and her face rounder courtesy of glasses and small wads inside her cheeks. The acne was her true masterpiece given the lack of time and supplies, and the ill-fitting jacket and skirt were an insult to fashion. Her false ID was a larger worry. It was good enough to pass cursory inspection, but nothing more. There had been no time to manufacture anything better. If the Russian desk officers manning the visa line were as bored as the U.S. State Department officers at their own embassy seemed to be with the same job, the plastic card might pass muster.

The true challenge would lie in convincing the Russians to let her into the same room with Maines. Strelnikov’s file had given her a possible way around that problem, but she would have to find a Russian bureaucrat who wasn’t completely obtuse.

The guards waved her and a few others through the entrance. Kyra walked through the ornate metal doors and wiped her feet on the mat before stepping onto the gray stone floor and taking in the room. The room was more modern than she’d imagined. Her Russian hosts clearly had renovated the space in the recent past. Only the Roman columns standing in the corners hinted at the original architecture. The walls were off-white, with pictures of current Russian officials and the Kremlin breaking up the monochrome. The room was also quiet, with a few Russian staffers speaking German with accents so fierce that even Kyra could tell they were mangling the language.

The line snaked along inside the building for another hour before she finally reached the visa desk. The consulate officer was a young woman with short, dark hair cut in a bob and unfashionable glasses covering green eyes. “Aufenthaltserlaubnis bitte?” she asked. Her German accent was rough, even to Kyra’s unfamiliar ear.

“English?” Kyra asked.

The Russian girl looked up, nonplussed. “English?” she asked. Kyra nodded.

The girl frowned, stood, and walked into another room, leaving Kyra at the desk. Another ten-minute wait gave her time to admire the friezes bordering the ceiling until a Russian man, neatly dressed in a dark suit and equally black tie approached her. “I am told you need assistance in English?” he said. The accent was still strong Russian, no hint of an accent from the UK or any other friendly country.

“I’ve come from the U.S. Embassy. I’m here to speak to Alden Maines,” Kyra told him.

“That is not a Russian name.”

“No, it’s an American name. Mr. Maines has, shall we say, applied to become a resident of the Russian Federation and is living here at the moment.”

The man stared at Kyra in surprise. “I am sorry, I do not know of any such person here,” he said.

“Two days ago, a Russian consulate officer visited FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to tell my government that Mr. Maines was defecting. As proof, he provided a photograph of Mr. Maines taken at the Schönefeld Airport. So he either came here, or someone here knows where he’s staying in Berlin.”

The embassy officer smirked. “I cannot help you. Clearly, your information must be incorrect.”

“Clearly,” Kyra said. “I will need to speak with one of your intelligence officers.”

“I believe you have been misinformed,” the man said after taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “Unlike many other countries, intelligence officers do not work in our embassies.”

Kyra smiled faintly at the brazen lie. “Of course not,” she said, her condescending tone lost on the man. She pulled an index card and a pen from her coat pocket, scribbled a word and four Cyrillic letters on it, and offered it to the man. “Show this to whoever is handling Mr. Maines upstairs. He’ll know what it means. I’ll wait here.”

The consulate officer took the card and stared at it. His face turned sour as he read it, and he turned and left without a word. Kyra smiled at the confused young Russian girl, then walked to an empty chair along the wall and took a seat.

“General Lavrov?” The guards had held the consulate officer in the hallway for a half hour. The doors finally opened and Lavrov and several other men the diplomat didn’t know were emptying into the hallway.

“Yes?”

“My apologies for disturbing you sir,” the consulate officer said, walking alongside the senior official, trying to match his pace. “A young American woman came to the visa desk a short time ago and asked to meet with an ‘Alden Maines.’ When I told her that I did not know of any such man, she asked to see an intelligence officer. I advised her that that would not be possible, and she gave me this. I took it to one of the GRU officers in residence and he told me that I should show it to you, that you would know what it meant.” He held out the index card.

Lavrov stopped, took the card, and read the lettering.

“Where is the this woman now?” Lavrov asked.

“She said that she would wait by the visa desk for your answer.”

Lavrov exhaled, folded the card in half, and placed it in his shirt pocket. “Escort her upstairs.”

“Where shall I bring her?”

“The roof.”

Kyra hardly needed her talent for reading body language to see the mixture of stunned embarrassment and anger spread across the consular officer’s face as he crossed the room, but she was in no mood to indulge in schadenfreude. A surge of anxiety rose in her chest faster than she could suppress, and her heart began to pound, the adrenaline adding to the tremors that the Red Bull had left in her hands.

“If you will please accompany me?” the Russian said, his language more courteous than his manner. She doubted he knew how to change his voice when speaking English to show irritation.

Kyra stood and followed the man. An embassy guard joined them at the door and walked behind them. She wondered how many CIA officers had ever seen the inside of this building, and this level in particular. It had to be a small club.

The officer and the guard led her to a utility stairwell, which they climbed for several stories until it reached a gray metal door. The officer pushed it open and motioned Kyra through. She stepped onto the roof, the guard followed, and the consulate officer closed the door behind them.

Kyra scanned the open space and saw the British Embassy to the west, the U.S. Embassy just beyond, and the Brandenburg Gate farther west and north. The Russian building on which she stood was larger than both allied embassies together, she realized. I guess you can do that when you own the city around it for fifty years, she thought.

A man stood on the far edge of the roof, looking down at the Unter den Linden traffic below. Maines? No, the man was too old. She began to trudge across the roof, stepping around the larger rain puddles, hands deep in her coat pockets to hide the tremors. Time to play, she told herself.

Arkady Lavrov heard the footsteps and turned to see a young woman making her way across the wet stone. “And you are?” he said. His English was rusty but his accent was still light.

“My name isn’t important,” Kyra told him. “I’m with the U.S. Embassy—”

“I think not, but that is not important at this moment,” Lavrov replied. “Why are you here?”

“I think my request to your people was clear.”

“It was,” Lavrov said. “Quite forward of you to come here and make such a demand.”

“You’re the ones who told us he was defecting and sent a photo to prove it. You had to know that we’d figure out which airport he was in,” Kyra replied.

“Of course,” Lavrov mused. That had never been in doubt. That the Americans would be so brazen as to walk into the embassy and demand to see their most recent Judas was the real surprise. But the FSB general was a soldier and appreciated the willingness to take the initiative. “Still, walking in and asking to see a potential defector is hardly the customary way of handling such affairs.” He held up the card Kyra had passed to the embassy functionary. “Nor is admitting that you know the dead-drop signals we had assigned to the asset.”

“Diplomatic protocols in matters such as these can be tedious, and tedium costs time. I know that yours is valuable, and it would benefit both our countries to resolve this matter quickly,” Kyra advised.

Lavrov turned his head and stared at the woman, as though the American had lit some spark of interest in him. “If Mr. Maines has requested asylum in my country, then it is a matter for the Foreign Ministry, not for an intelligence service,” he said. There was a playful tone in his voice, as though he was enjoying some new game.

“That would depend on why Mr. Maines requested asylum and what he’s offering for it,” Kyra replied. She clenched her hands and ordered her heart to slow down. It disobeyed.

“Any man who would draw such a bold response from your organization would surely have much to offer us. So the question naturally must turn to the counteroffer your friends would be willing to make.”

“Oh, I think that’s premature,” Kyra disagreed. “Obviously, we couldn’t determine that until we confirm his location and what… assets he may have already used to establish his value.” You show me yours and I’ll show you ours.

“I understand that desire, truly, but you realize that I must consider any future opportunities we may have to attract talented individuals from your organization in the future. It would become difficult if prospective converts knew we were open to returning them to their home countries for a price.”

Kyra nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Forgive me, sir, but you appear to be an older gentleman. Did you spend any time here in Berlin before the Wall came down?”

“I did,” Lavrov said. Did this American know who he was, know his biography? If so, this game would be far more interesting than he had thought. “I was here the very night that the Wall fell; on this roof, in fact. We could see the Wall there, to the west of the Gate.” Lavrov pointed toward the Brandenburg Gate, waving a gloved hand to the northwest. “The plaza was full, people were on the Wall itself. To shoot them would have started a massacre. I saw that much, but I could not understand why the guards would not pull them down at least.” He dropped his hand. “That was the night the Warsaw Pact fell, you know. The historians say that came later, but it was that night. The Wall coming down was a shot to the belly… a painful death, and a lingering one.”

“I’m sure it was a memorable night for you,” Kyra said, speaking directly for a moment. She’d been a toddler when it had happened. “So you knew about the East German practice of having the Stasi arrest political prisoners and ransom them back to the West as a way to generate hard currency?”

Lavrov shrugged. “I heard that such things happened. Why do you mention it?” He’d helped arrange a few such kidnappings-for-ransom in his youth. Did this woman know? If so, how? Had the CIA uncovered something in the old East German archives?

“Only to point out that ransom payments aren’t unheard of in our business.” She wondered if this man would give up Maines for money. Not likely, but stranger things had happened between intelligence agencies.

The Russian didn’t bite the hook. “But if Mr. Maines has applied for asylum, then he is no hostage,” Lavrov noted. “Quite the opposite would be true.”

“I doubt that,” Kyra said. “Your country told mine that Mr. Maines was defecting. That act made Maines a fugitive from justice in the United States. You invited him here, then closed his door back. Now he can’t set foot on the street here without risking arrest and extradition, leaving him no real leverage for any bargain. So you don’t have to pay him one ruble to make him talk, do you? You can extort him for everything he knows just by threatening to run him out the front door and calling the German police ten minutes before you do. So I think if Maines is here, he’s very much your hostage.”

Kyra studied the man, hoping that the Russian’s body language would scream his thoughts and emotions to her, but his control was practiced and very precise. She could only divine small glimpses, but for the moment, his pleasure was obvious.

“Zamechatel’nyy!” he muttered. “I truly wish you would tell me your name, young miss.”

“I must disappoint you,” Kyra said. The Russian might find out anyway. She’d seen at least three security cameras here on the roof and doubtless they’d passed a few dozen on the way here. They would have her picture and her disguise was not total.

“But you intrigue me so very much, devushka,” Lavrov said. “I will consider what you have to say. But for the moment, I suggest you enjoy the view from our rooftop. The view of the Gate is quite nice.”

Kyra stared at Lavrov, tried to read his face, and finally gave up, unable to tell what he was hiding behind his smile. That had almost never happened to her. “Most kind of you.”

Lavrov bowed slightly. “Until our next meeting.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the rooftop door.

Strelnikov’s file was spread out on the table, the man’s photograph pinned to the wall.

Jon had been staring at the papers since Kyra had left for the Russian Embassy. Research was his preferred remedy for anxiety and his younger partner was a bottomless source of it. He’d wondered sometimes if she wasn’t an adrenaline junkie, an addict whose preferred fix was risk. She’d almost succumbed to alcoholism two years back and he suspected that her addictive personality was always seeking another outlet. But there was nothing he could do for it at this moment. She was inside the Russian building and he could hardly go charging in after her.

Kyra had been right that the file was thin, but the reports officer who had assembled it had been organized and thorough. The Russian’s grandfather had been Jewish, Lithuanian by birth, and a farmer until the Nazis had invaded from the west. No requests for money, personally wealthy, so he didn’t commit treason out of greed. Retired at flag rank and made the head of the Foundation for Advanced Research a year ago… so you’re not like Maines, not angry because some superior didn’t give you your due, Jon thought. Ideological defector? Soft spot for Israel? He checked the date of the first report. Ten days after Kyra found Iran’s nuke in Venezuela, he realized.

Ideological defectors want to make a difference, to protect something they love or cripple something they hate, he reasoned. A Russian GRU general, even a retired one, would have had access to a huge amount of material, but another pass through Strelnikov’s reports showed that the Russian had given up nothing that wasn’t directly related to the Foundation. You wanted to protect Israel, but you didn’t want to hurt Mother Russia? Jon reasoned. So assume he’s ideological. No way for Strelnikov to make a difference in Iran’s nuke program unless the Foundation is involved in the program. Even so, the general’s tranche of reports revealed nothing about the Foundation’s actual research projects. The man had restricted himself to revealing its organization, budget, manpower, areas of interest, but nothing that would have allowed CIA to cripple a specific program. Perhaps the good general’s conscience had been putting up a fight.

Jon hunted for Strelnikov’s biography, laid on top of the pile, and started to read again.

The Russian had been well traveled. Afghanistan in the eighties, Berlin when the Wall came down, Serbia in the late nineties, Baghdad during the war, Venezuela in the late aughts when Chávez was cutting deals with Ahmadinejad and the Iranians… all of the hot spots.

The connection to the Iranian program was apparent. Kyra had uncovered Iran’s illegal nuclear device in Venezuela the year before, and Strelnikov had been in that country when the foundation for that ugly partnership had been laid. Maybe he brokered it?

Something else was pulling at his thoughts. What am I not seeing?

Jon stared at the biography for another hour before he saw it. Idiot, he cursed himself. It had been there, on the page in plain sight.

Kyra stood in the drizzle for another fifteen minutes before the door opened again. She heard the rusting hinges squeak in the rain and looked at the new visitor.

Alden Maines trudged across the rooftop toward her, frustration obvious in his features. He thought about stopping, looked backward over his shoulder, saw the black-suited Russian officer guarding the stairwell, dark glasses on his face despite the overcast sky, and decided to keep up his walk.

Kyra’s heart rate picked up again, for a different reason now. The anxiety was gone, and she felt anger flood into her chest to replace it.

Maines slowed for a second when he saw the woman. He frowned, then continued on. “Who’re you?”

“I think you know,” Kyra told him.

The man’s head turned in surprise at the sound of her voice and his eyes flitted in several directions as his memory tried to match the sound with a person. The answer finally came through and Maines’s shoulders slumped.

“Long way from Caracas. I guess Barron sent you? How is the old man?”

“Ready for a family reunion at your earliest convenience.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Maines said. “What do you want, Kyra?”

“You’d have to be very, very stupid not to know the answer to that question.”

“You really had the stones to march into the Russian Embassy so you could ask me to come back with you?” he asked

“I thought I would make things simple for you,” Kyra advised. “Come with me and I’ll tell the Bureau you cooperated. You might get a shot at parole after a couple of decades in prison.”

“Your turn to not be stupid.”

She’d thought she was ready for his hostility, but the delta between the man she remembered from three years before and the dark figure here was wide enough to unnerve her, if just a little. Kyra hid the emotion behind a casual shrug. “I just wanted to confirm that you were here. How you end up back in the States in chains and a jumpsuit isn’t really my problem.”

“The Russians aren’t going to hand me over,” Maines said. Kyra had expected a smirk or a smile, but the man’s expression was cold. “I’ll be good PR for them if nothing else once we get to Moscow.”

“And you come cheap, don’t you? I just had a discussion with one of their intel officers,” Kyra told him. “They refused to pay you, didn’t they? You came here looking for a fat paycheck, but the Russians said they’d burned you and now they want you to give them the family jewels just to stay out of jail. In fact, I think that the reason they decided to let me see you was to prove that they really had burned you, to crank up the pressure in case you were thinking they’d lied.”

Maines laughed, rueful. “You really don’t know why I did this, do you?”

“I really don’t care why. There’s a difference,” she told the man. “You can explain your reasons to Barron and the Bureau. I’m sure they’ll be amused.”

Maines grunted. “You should care.” He wished he had a cigarette or something to hold in his shaking hands. “I did this because of you, in a way.” He laughed, pure contempt and derision. “After we all got reassigned from Caracas and Barron sent me over to Russia House, I thought it was a good place to land. I actually kind of liked it, until last year. One of our people got pulled out for a few days to join a task force. It turns out that two analysts got trapped in Venezuela when the revolution started. Did you know about that?”

Kyra dearly wished, for a single instant, that she could tell him exactly what she knew about it. “I heard something about it” was the answer she gave him.

“Can’t wait for that one to get declassified in twenty-five years. Anyway, Kathy Cooke tasked a group with trying to help those analysts figure out how to infiltrate a military base. It was the most insane thing I’d ever heard. Instead of pulling them out and sending in a real team, the CIA director let an analyst execute the op. And then a day later, the president decided to just blow the base up and dropped a Massive Ordnance Penetrator on the place and almost blew those analysts up along with it. How those two got out alive, I’ll never know, but it got me thinking. We’re just one bad leader away from getting killed, and the Agency is full of ’em. One Seventh Floor moron or one selfish politician makes one bad decision, and we’re all cannon fodder. You know that. That idiot of a station chief almost got you killed. You wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t pulled you out of that safe house in Caracas. So when Barron decided not to make me the chief of Russia House, I just decided that I’m going to get mine before somebody like him gets me or somebody on my team shot.”

“So you’re going to sell out our assets—”

“I haven’t told them anything,” Maines said. “Don’t really plan to either.”

“You gave up Strelnikov.”

“Wasn’t counting him. I didn’t know they’d execute him. Just thought he’d wind up in a gulag.”

Nice confession, Kyra thought. She burned the words into her memory so she’d be able to repeat them for a judge. “So you just don’t count the ones who the Russians execute? And you tried so hard to convince me you weren’t a moron. They drowned him, by the way, in case they didn’t share that tidbit. Took him out to the Müggelsee Lake, held him under, and didn’t bother to pull him out when they were done.”

Maines shrugged, though not dismissive. Fatalistic? Or just a psychopath? Kyra wondered. Thinks it wasn’t his fault? Or really doesn’t care?

He interrupted her thoughts. “If I was giving up assets, they would’ve shut the Agency down in Moscow by now.”

“Again, not my problem,” Kyra replied. “I’m going to leave now. I’m going to walk back to our embassy over there, and I’m going to confirm for FBI that you’re here. After that, the Germans will be obligated to arrest and extradite you if you set foot outside. Sooner or later, the Russians will give you up.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You have a lot of faith in your new friends,” Kyra told him.

“No, I have a lot of faith that you’re going to help get me home.”

“I’d be happy to,” Kyra advised. She didn’t try to keep the contempt out of her voice. “You shut your mouth until tomorrow. I’ll call Barron and have him ask the president to promise to commute your sentence to, say, twenty years in prison. You come home, do your time, and you don’t die in prison.” She had no authority to make a deal, but decided it was worth trying.

Maines smirked. “Kyra, you be a good girl and go tell Barron my terms for a deal. He convinces the president to give me a pardon and fifty million in the bank, and I won’t give the Russians another name or tell them about a single operation. I don’t get that and I’ll tell them everything I know.”

“How about I throw you off this roof instead?” Kyra proposed.

“I don’t think my friends would let you.”

“I guess you would need your friends,” Kyra spit back. “You’re a coward.”

Enraged, Maines lunged forward, hands out, reaching for Kyra’s neck. He’d saved this ungrateful woman’s life and she—

Kyra pivoted on her feet and hips, turning sideways, and she swept her right arm across her body in an arc, guiding his arms to the side. She brought her arm over his, holding them down for the second she needed to bring up her left to hold his away. Kyra’s right came back up, fingers turned in, and she clawed his face hard enough to draw blood. The man screeched, his hands coming up to protect his face from another assault. Kyra pivoted again, facing Maines head-on, and she grabbed his shirt, and pulled hard. Her forehead smashed into his nose. His head snapped back, stunned, the blood starting to flow from his nose. She pulled again, Maines stumbled forward, off balance, and she drove her knee into his groin hard enough to lift him onto his toes. The traitor fell back, then dropped onto his knees, the blood rushing out of his face.

The Russian guard by the door moved to run toward them, but saw Kyra make no further move toward her victim and stopped.

Maines cursed… and then the real pain hit him, erupting out of his pelvis like a fire burning through his nerves and stealing his breath. He curled up on the ground in a twitching heap, groaning and gasping for air.

Kyra stepped back, far enough that he couldn’t grasp or kick her. “I’d tell the Bureau to add assault to your indictment, but it’s already a long list.” She squatted down so he could see her face. “I’ll tell Barron about your offer, but you’re not going to get your deal. And even if you do get to Moscow, CIA defectors have a bad habit of falling down long staircases after they’re not useful to their Russian friends anymore. So I wouldn’t plan on a peaceful retirement, back home or in Moscow.”

“Uh-uh,” Maines grunted. “Full… full pardon… and fifty… million.” He sucked in some air, then pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Kyra didn’t move, ready to defend herself again. “I get that,” he wheezed, “I keep my mouth shut. I don’t… and I tell the Russians everything… take my chances.”

“If you want the president or anyone else to take your offer seriously, you need to give something up first.”

“What’s that?”

“The name of your handler,” Kyra told him.

“I don’t think… he’d like that,” Maines said, his chest rising and falling rapidly. The pain between his legs was fading enough to manage. He pushed himself back onto one knee. “If Barron gets me the deal, you stand out front of the embassy tomorrow at noon… wear a red jacket. If you’re there, I come out. If you’re not, I take care of myself.” He was catching his breath now, but his legs were still too shaky for him to stand.

“Either way, I’ll be seeing you pretty soon.” Kyra turned around and walked toward the door.

“I should’ve left you in that safe house,” Maines said, his voice still weak from the abuse she’d dealt to his crotch. “I see you again and I’ll kill you.”

Kyra made an obscene gesture without looking back.

Kyra turned to the last page of the photo album and stared at the surveillance photos, giving each a few seconds of her attention. It was wasted time. None of the men in the color pictures was a match for the one in her memory. She closed the book and set it on the stack of four others she’d already reviewed. “He’s not here,” she said. Who are you, old man? She leaned back, stared at the ceiling, and dissected her own thoughts.

“That’s all of the mug books that we’ve got on the Russians stationed here,” Barron replied.

“Then it must be someone who’s not stationed here,” Jon advised. “The books don’t include pictures of short-term visitors.”

There’s your faulty assumption, Kyra realized. Maines’s handler had convinced him to come to Berlin, but that didn’t mean his handler was stationed in Berlin itself. “The Russians might have sold it to Maines as an out-of-country meeting,” she said. “Assume the Russians considered him a high-value asset,” Kyra started. “His case file would be compartmented. Not everyone would know about him. The man I talked to on the roof was older, a graybeard. He had to be a senior officer. Maybe somebody who came from Moscow just to meet with Maines?” The Russian Embassy to Berlin was enormous, large enough to shelter a thousand intelligence officers. So the man from the roof either was new enough to Berlin that the Germans and CIA officers here had no photograph of him yet or he had never been recognized as an intelligence officer at all, she decided. A short-term visitor senior enough to be read into Maines’s compartment… at least senior enough to be running him. But which intel service? The Russians had eleven, not so many as her own country, but enough to complicate the problem.

“Maybe,” Barron agreed. “But if he’s an intel officer, he would have to be from one of the Russian services that runs foreign assets abroad,” he said, following her silent line of thinking. “That eliminates most of them.”

“The two largest that qualify would be the SVR and the GRU,” Kyra added. The Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki was Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service and the one that seemed the most likely. But there was still the GRU, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian military. Far larger than the SVR and, she’d heard, more ruthless, if that was possible. She suspected it was. The GRU controlled the Spetsnaz, for the most part. Kyra dearly hoped that she would never have to tangle with one of the Kremlin’s Special Forces soldiers. There were few men in the world trained so well in the dark arts of covert military operations. She had been in a few fights during her short career and come out of them well enough. The Agency had trained her in self-defense and she’d studied Krav Maga and some other disciplines on her own time and dime, but she had no illusions how long she would fare in a fight with one of Russia’s most elite soldiers.

“Strelnikov was GRU,” Barron said. “He was Spetsnaz, once upon a time, and the GRU controlled a lot of the Spetsnaz units back in the old days.”

Kyra picked up Maines’s file and looked through the papers twice, but nothing caught her attention. She looked at the dead-drop letter again.

The answer finally broke through her subconscious mind. “Do we know who left Maines’s dead drop in the woods at Banshee Reeks? It’s not in the file.”

“Yes, a GRU officer, Russian military intelligence,” Barron replied. “The Bureau’s going to pick him up the next time he leaves their embassy grounds. He’s probably got diplomatic immunity, so State’s going to declare him persona non grata and send him home. I don’t remember his name… those Russian names all sound alike to me. But I can look it up.”

“Actually, it wasn’t his name I needed, just the intel service.”

Jon nodded. “Bring up the files on the GRU leadership,” he suggested. “There are probably hundreds on the list, but might as well start at the top and work down.”

Kyra complied, and after a few minutes of searching, she opened the first file…

… and fell back in her chair, eyes wide. “That’s him.” Kyra paused and stared at the photograph again, to be certain there was no mistake or trick of the light.

“Unbelievable,” Barron muttered. “Arkady Lavrov. Chairman of the GRU.”

“What’s the word?” Cooke asked.

“Maines’s here,” Kyra said. The audio quality of STU secure phones had improved in recent years, but the static and noise mixing with Kyra’s voice showed that the Agency’s speakerphones had not. “I met with him.”

“What did you find out?”

“The Russians definitely are trying to screw him over,” Kyra replied. “I think that’s why they let me see him, to ratchet up the pressure on him. But he admitted burning Strelnikov, but claimed that he hasn’t given up anything since, and he’s offering us a deal. He says that he’ll walk out of the embassy and come home if he gets a full pardon from POTUS and fifty million in the bank. We don’t deliver and he’ll burn every operation we have in Moscow to the ground.”

“Amazing,” Cooke muttered. “He thinks he can burn an asset, then blackmail us and walk away?”

“Might be worth it.” Cooke recognized Barron’s voice. “If they bleed him for what he knows and we get shut down in Moscow, it’ll take us a decade and a lot more than fifty million to get things started back up.”

“True, but it’s not our call,” Cooke said. “And it’s extortion. We pay this and it won’t be the last time. Every narcissistic slacker with a security clearance will think he can run a protection racket on us. Make us pay up to keep our assets safe. We can’t do business like that. So I’ll be stunned if the president approves it, but we have to give him the option.”

“Kathy, if I may?” It was Jonathan’s voice now.

“What is it, Jon?”

“I’ve been studying General Strelnikov’s file. I think there’s a bigger problem than just Maines burning our Moscow operations to the ground.”

“As if that wasn’t enough. What’s your theory?” Cooke asked.

Jon’s explanation took ten minutes. Cooke said nothing in response for almost another minute. “Jon, stay by the phone. I want you to explain that to the president. Then everyone hold tight until I get back from the White House.”

“Yes, sir,” Barron said. He pressed a button to disconnect the call from his end.

Kyra grinned at her partner. “You going to brief POTUS,” she said.

“At least I don’t have to put on a tie,” Jon replied, deadpan.

She nudged him gently. “You’ll kill it. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to go shopping.”

“For what?” Barron asked, incredulous.

“A jacket,” she said. “Something in red today, I think.”

It took Barron a few seconds to absorb the implications. “You won’t need it. The president isn’t going to go for the deal,” he said, as though explaining it to a child.

“Maines doesn’t know that,” she said.

Kyra had expected that the president wouldn’t approve a pardon for Maines, and he had neither surprised nor disappointed her. Jon wasn’t happy about President Rostow’s obstinance, but her partner was a logical man and the refusal wouldn’t bother him for long. Jon was simply doing what he did, deconstructing a problem into the simplest parts to find the most efficient solution. Jon was very nearly a misanthrope and people were just variables to him at such times. If the best solution to a problem allowed one person to profit or suffer unfairly, that was just the price to be paid. He simply wanted the puzzles solved, and when his variables failed to make the decisions that would resolve matters, Jon would curse their stupidity and then look for an alternate pathway. It was a rare thing for him to care about such things on a personal level.

But Jon had never been a case officer, had never felt protective of an asset. Kyra had been responsible for a man’s life. She had run through the streets of a hostile city, trying to fulfill the Agency’s debt of honor and save a person from execution. The case officer unchanged by that didn’t deserve the job. A man who was willing to see them executed for his own gain deserved the electric chair, Kyra thought, so just bruising Maines’s ego and his manhood hadn’t even come close to sating her sense of justice. Hunting traitors was never a business of cold calculation. There was always a layer of passion and hatred underneath it all.

Leading with your heart is a fine way to get killed? she thought. You’re wrong, Jon. It’s the only real edge we ever have in this business. Training and tools could always be countered, but the will to act, to keep pushing on against the enemy… that was harder to match.

So it was ironic, she thought, that she was pushing against the enemy by standing still. Kyra leaned against one of the trees that lined the wide median between the opposing lanes of the Unter Den Linden, ignoring the tourists and locals walking behind her. Cars rolled past, almost within arm’s reach, but she never moved or looked away from the embassy. The wind picked up, imparting a chill to the air.

Kyra zipped up the red jacket.

There were German Bundeskriminalamt officers hiding in tourists’ clothing at both ends of the block, ready to seal off both ends of the street and take Maines into custody after he walked out the front door. The president of the United States had refused to offer a pardon to Alden Maines, but Maines didn’t know that. With that realization in hand, Kyra had thought she might be able to shut down Maines’s threat before nightfall. All he had to do was believe that his deal was within reach.

You asked for me, Maines, she thought. Get out here.

Alden Maines stared at the embassy sidewalk from the conference room window, failing to repress a smile. The president signed off, and I get to go home, he thought. Maines had sold out his country, made $50 million in the process, and the president himself had agreed to forgive it all. The world was dancing on his strings.

“It is a good view,” he heard Lavrov say. Maines turned and saw the Russian general come up behind him. “Not so nice as it was before the Wall came down, but it still has much to recommend it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Maines said. He had nothing left to say to the man.

Lavrov smiled, a small one. “She is quite a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“The young lady in the red coat down on the street,” Lavrov said. “The one I allowed you to meet yesterday.”

“Not my type,” Maines said. “I don’t like the pudgy ones.” I’ve got my pardon now, you moron, he thought. You don’t want to pay, you get nothing.

“Oh, surely you recognize a disguise when you see one,” Lavrov protested. “Hers was a very good one, but I suspect that she is much prettier without it. She would make a most agreeable companion for an evening out, and good entertainment after if she were persuaded. But I doubt she would entertain any such notions with you. I’m told that she left you clutching yourself on the roof.”

Maines gritted his teeth but refused to look at the Russian. Of course Lavrov knew about his humiliation. Another reason to spit in Stryker’s face when he walked out the front door of this building in a few minutes. You won’t be so full of yourself then, General.

“A woman of intelligence, beauty, and spirit,” Lavrov said, approving. “I would like to know her name.”

“She didn’t tell me.” It was technically true.

“Perhaps, but I think you know who she is,” Lavrov suggested. He held out a large manila envelope.

Maines opened it and pulled out the contents, three photographs, medium resolution, clearly stills taken from security-camera footage. The first was an image from the roof, Stryker arguing with him yesterday, then driving her knee into his crotch. The time stamp confirmed what Maines’s own memory told him.

The second picture was grainy, poor resolution with odd lighting. Even so, the detail was enough for the American to see that it was Stryker again, no disguise, dressed casual. She was handing something, likely her passport, to an airport customs officer. China, he thought, from the Mandarin lettering on a wall sign, Beijing, he supposed.

“This picture was taken in Beijing two years ago. Our facial recognition software says that there is a very high probability that it is the same woman despite the differences,” Lavrov said, confirming the guess. “Our Chinese friends sent it to us after the incident in the Taiwan Strait with the U.S. Navy, asking for help identifying the woman. Some days after this was taken, she helped a Chinese intelligence officer escape surveillance, likely as part of an operation to bring the man to the United States. She assaulted one Chinese officer during the escape, and another on the street some days earlier. That one spent a significant amount of time in a hospital after she beat him with a steel bar.”

Maines stared at the woman’s picture. You landed on your feet after Caracas better than I did, he realized, and he felt a hatred for the woman welling up inside him. She’d moved on to lead a key operation while he had sat rotting at headquarters, even after he had saved her. Should’ve been me.

“The man she helped escape had shared information on a research program that the People’s Liberation Army had been running for seventeen years with my assistance,” Lavrov continued. “A few days later, your country’s navy destroyed a unique stealth plane that was the focus of that project. The radar telemetry collected during the battle shows that your navy had established a system to detect the plane.”

Maines stared at the picture again. “Sorry,” he lied. “Still don’t recognize her.”

Lavrov tapped the third photograph. It showed Stryker at another customs desk, this one in some Latin American country, judging by the Spanish signage. The picture was higher quality. Stryker was blond again, no glasses, athletic build, not a short, overweight brunette with bad eyesight like yesterday—

— then he recognized the place. Caracas.

“Our Venezuelan friends shared this with us last year. The woman infiltrated a munitions factory near Puerto Cabello and was instrumental in stealing the nuclear device that the Iranians were building there with the help of their hosts. She assaulted the Venezuelan national intelligence director inside the base and later in an airport hangar. She crushed his nose and shattered his cheekbones with a rifle butt, and she detached one of his retinas. He identified her some days later from the airport security footage after his eyes could begin to focus again. Apparently, she had been in his country before and was wounded in a counterintelligence operation he had led. She seemed to take it quite personally.”

Maines gaped at the photograph and cursed silently in amazement. Kyra broke into that military base last year? He’d been wrong. It hadn’t been an analyst who Cooke had tapped for that operation. He’d just assumed that Kyra had joined the Red Cell later. You went back to Caracas. He might have been impressed had his anger not been crushing every other feeling in his head.

Still, Lavrov had insulted him and Maines was in no mood to give the man free information, or even show that he was unhappy. “Yeah, I bet. Still can’t help you,” he repeated.

“She is a concern. You see, the Chinese and the Iranians were both clients of an ongoing project that I oversee. This woman appeared and both efforts were disrupted within a few days. I do not believe that is a coincidence.” Lavrov pointed to yesterday’s photograph. “And now she is here.”

Maines shrugged and dropped the picture on the desk.

Lavrov studied Maines, ran his eyes over the American’s face, looking for some signal of deceit. There was no reason to bluff and Maines let the Russian watch him. “You are lying to me, Mr. Maines,” Lavrov finally announced. “One woman has disrupted two critical GRU operations that we were running in concert with important allies, and now she is here in Berlin while you and I are here while I am advancing a third. I think that your Agency knows about my operations, and I believe you know her name. You wish to say that is not the case?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” Maines protested. “Look, if the Agency is on to you, they figured it out some other way because I never heard a whisper about your big operation, whatever it is.”

Lavrov nodded slowly, took the pictures back, and replaced them in the folder. “It will be a shame to disappoint such a woman.”

Maines frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She’s wearing a red jacket. I believe that was the signal she was to give you if your country accepted the proposal made to her,” Lavrov said, as though a child should have understood his meaning.

Maines understood it perfectly well, and his eyes widened. Lavrov saw it. “Of course, we heard everything. Surely you knew that?” the Russian asked, his question entirely rhetorical. Whether Maines had thought of the possibility or not was moot now. “I would like to hear the story about how you saved her from a safe house in Caracas, but at this moment I have an operation that is waiting for your information to proceed. So please don’t lie to me again about whether you know her name.”

“You want to know what I know? The president of the United States just agreed to pay me fifty million dollars not to tell you jack, including her name,” Maines said, pointing toward the street at Kyra. “So if you want me to talk, that’s the bid to beat.”

Lavrov frowned. “Such obstinance. But I will counter the offer. I will give you my bid… eight hundred rubles.”

“Eight hundred rubles?” He did the math in his head. Twelve dollars?

Lavrov raised a hand and motioned with two fingers. Three younger men, all muscular, entered the room, one carrying a small bag. Two of them took Maines by the arms and forced him to the table, ignoring his curses and protests. The American struggled, but he was in no shape to hold his own against either of the men, much less both together. They forced his arms out, putting his hands palm down on the brown oak.

Lavrov pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat down, looking Maines in the eyes. “Yes, eight hundred rubles… the price in Moscow for a good Russian-made hammer.” Lavrov nodded to the man carrying the bag. The younger Russian opened the satchel and pulled out a small club mallet.

“No! You can’t—” Maines started. Without hesitation, the Russian swung the small metal sledge and slammed it down on Maines’s outstretched hand.

Maines screamed as the hammer shattered his metacarpal bones into fragments. On reflex, he tried to rip his crippled hand away from the two men holding him down, but they had expected him to fight and kept him pinned. The hammer slammed down again, this time just behind where the first blow had landed, and the crunch of grinding carpals in his wrist was heard for a brief second before Maines’s howl of agony drowned it out.

“She will not be disappointed when you don’t come out to meet her… more angry, I think,” Lavrov told him. “So she will go back to her embassy and report to her superiors that you refused the deal, which I suspect will not be extended a second time. They will believe that you never intended to accept any deal, and perhaps will think that you were only buying time to let us act on your information. You were clever to try to build a bridge home after I burned your ships back. But now I am burning your bridge too.” He nodded to the Russian holding the tool and the man swung it down without hesitation.

Five more strikes with the hammer made sure there were no more unbroken bones in Maines’s right hand. The two assistants at his sides let him go and Maines hardly moved. He tried to lift his arm and moaned in pain as the agony of bits of bone grinding into his muscles and skin sent new spasms of agony cutting through his brain. He whimpered, trying not to cry, only just succeeding, and he squeezed his right arm at the wrist as though he could bottle the pain up in his hand and keep it from passing through the nerves up into his mind.

Lavrov stared at the pathetic sight. “Now, Mr. Maines, you have lied to me, but I must confess that I also lied to you. You must forgive me for that. My time is not unlimited, as I suggested, and your grace period is gone. You have information that I need and you will give it to me now. There is morphine in the infirmary waiting for you, but you don’t know where that is, do you? These men will be happy to show you the way after I am satisfied. But for every minute you make me wait to begin from this moment, you will get the hammer. We will save your spine for last if you are still intransigent, but I think you will not let matters go so far.”

Lavrov took a small notebook out of his jacket pocket, then a Montblanc pen. He opened the notebook and laid it on the table, then uncapped the pen and laid it on the first blank page. He looked at his watch and marked the time. “Now, Mr. Maines, shall we talk? First, I want the name of the young woman outside on the street. Second, I want the names of all of the CIA officers currently stationed in Moscow. And third, I want you to tell me everything you know about this CIA unit you call the Red Cell.”

Kyra’s own watch confirmed that she’d waited an hour and a half on the bench, more than fifteen minutes after Maines’s deadline. He’s not coming, she concluded. Why not? Did he know there really was no deal? That was unlikely, she thought. There were only five people who even knew about the traitor’s proposal, including the president and Maines himself, and she refused to believe that either Jon or Barron was a turncoats himself. The Russians found a way to tap our secure phones? That thought was almost more upsetting than the first, and the notion seemed just as unlikely.

Maybe he’s dead. That would be more good fortune than she could expect, and she couldn’t assume the possibility anyway, given the price to her country if she was wrong.

Was he trying to buy time for the GRU to move on our assets? A deception operation would explain why the old Russian had been so willing to let her see Maines the day before. And if Maines had cooperated with it, then the man’s treason had gone beyond simply giving up names to the enemy.

Kyra started walking west and pulled an encrypted cell phone from her pocket and dialed a preprogrammed number. The call took thirty seconds to connect and encrypt.

“Barron.”

“It’s me,” Kyra announced. “He didn’t show.”

“That wasn’t unexpected, but good try,” Barron said. “I doubt his new friends would let him walk out the front door even if he wanted to.”

“Probably not,” Kyra agreed. “I’m headed back to the embassy. You should thank our friends here for being ready to help. I’m sorry they came out for nothing.”

“They’ll understand.” The call disconnected, Kyra replaced the phone in her coat and started the short walk to the west.

Barron cradled the phone. “Well, that’s that, I guess. Maines didn’t come out.”

“Nothing is ever so easy,” Jon mused.

“No, but sometimes the universe smiles.” Barron hunched over the table, his weight on his fists, his head down, thinking. He looked up at the analyst. “I guess the question now is what Lavrov is doing? You said we might be able to save some assets if we figured that out, but I don’t know where to even start with that.”

“I think the starting point is obvious,” Jon told the NCS director.

Barron furrowed his brow. “You and I have very different definitions of ‘obvious.’ ”

“Strelnikov was killed three days ago, and Maines showed up the day after,” Jon observed. “They could have taken off for Moscow anytime after that. So why is Lavrov still here?”

“You think he came to Berlin for another reason?”

“All of his obvious reasons for being here are finished,” Jon noted. “Maybe Lavrov lured both Strelnikov and Maines to Berlin because he was already going to be here.”

“Good thought, but where do we start with that?”

“You’re a case officer,” Jon said. “And you were the station chief in Moscow once upon a time. So why did you ever travel outside of Russia?”

“Right now I came here to meet with the Germans to confirm Strelnikov’s death,” Barron replied. “But that’s a weird case. Usually I traveled foreign to meet an asset someplace the Russians wouldn’t be watching.”

“So let’s assume that Strelnikov was here to meet someone. Any candidates?” Jon asked.

Barron pondered the question. “When I first met with the Bundeskriminalamt about Strelnikov, we talked suspects. They did say that a Syrian army officer managed to evade surveillance on a drive north of the city. That would’ve been a day or so before they found Strelnikov’s body floating in the lake, and the day after Lavrov came to town. But they found the Syrian coming back into Berlin along the same road later in the day.”

“How long was he gone?”

“Less than four hours,” Barron said.

“All right, let’s assume Lavrov was meeting with the Syrian somewhere up north,” Jon said. “Assuming they talked for at least an hour, that would mean their meeting site would be within a ninety-minute drive of Berlin.”

“That’s still a big search area.”

“Yes, it is,” Jon conceded. “I don’t suppose the Germans were following Lavrov.”

“The chairman of the GRU? Yeah, they’d follow him anywhere and everywhere. But a guy like that could find a way out of the Russian Embassy without being seen if he really wanted to.”

Jon nodded. “The only other angle we can work is Strelnikov’s murder itself. The Germans didn’t find any forensic evidence that could identify where he was killed?”

“They didn’t mention anything,” Barron replied. “Between the rain that week and the body being in the lake for a few days, anything useful probably got washed away, but I’ll check with them again.”

“Ask about anything unusual, no matter how minor,” Jon suggested.

“Will do.”

Barron took three hours to respond. “The Germans have nothing,” he told Jon, the man’s voice slightly broken up by interference on the cellular network. “It was a straight-up drowning. Toxicology was clean and no signs of defensive wounds or bruises on him. Assuming he really didn’t drown going for a swim, whoever took him out was a professional.”

Jon frowned. “There must be something to grab on to.”

“Afraid not,” Barron said. “The only unusual thing about Strelnikov’s death was that his was the second body they’d pulled out of the Müggelsee in a month.”

“Do tell,” Jon said, interest in his voice.

“Late August, the local police pulled a guy out of the water on the other side of the lake, British kid. I’ve got the name… hang on…” Jon heard the rustling pages of a notebook over the receiver. “Graham Longstreet.”

Jon scribbled the name on an index card and handed it to Kyra. She read the name, leaned over a laptop, and began typing. “Okay. That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Barron said. “On my way back.”

The call ended and Jon hung up. “You think the Russians took out this British kid too?” Kyra asked.

Jon shrugged. “Could be a coincidence,” he admitted. “Got anything?”

“The obituary,” Kyra said. She pulled up the web page detailing the young man’s demise and scanned the report. “It says he drowned, names the usual surviving family, loved hiking and environmental causes.”

“He loved hiking,” Jon said, his voice quiet. “Did he have a web page? A blog? Facebook or Instagram accounts?”

Kyra clicked the computer’s mouse a few times. “Yeah, a web page… looks like he was one of those guys who likes exploring abandoned sites. He’s got pictures here from the Six Flags park in New Orleans, the one that got wiped out by Hurricane Katrina a decade ago. Here’s some from Pripyat, Ukraine. That was a whole city that got abandoned after Chernobyl in ’86. I would’ve run from that one, too. There’s a bunch of others here… Willard Asylum in New York, Canfranc Rail Station in Spain, Château Miranda in Belgium.” Kyra scrolled through the online album, disbelieving. “I guess everyone needs a hobby, but this is morbid. These places look like sets for horror movies.”

Jon leaned in over her shoulder. “Any abandoned sites like that in Germany on his list?”

Kyra scanned through the entire list. “None that he visited.” She looked up at her mentor. “Maybe he was here to correct that little problem.”

Jon smiled at her. “Search it.”

Kyra turned back to the keyboard and began typing.

The search results appeared and Kyra scrolled through the list. “Amazing how many places just get left to rot,” she said, awe in her voice. “Half of these sites were built by the Russians during the Cold War and then abandoned after the Wall fell in ’89.”

“Any within an hour’s drive north of Berlin?” Jon asked.

Kyra needed five minutes to find the answer. “Vogelsang Soviet Military Base. It’s enormous. They housed fifteen thousand men and their families there, and somehow the Agency and every other Western intel agency missed it for years. Looks like the kind of place where an abandoned-site junkie would have on his bucket list.”

“And every other sane person on the planet would want to avoid,” Jon said. “A hundred dollars says that Lavrov was assigned to Vogelsang at some point when he was younger.”

“I’m not a GS-14 like you, so I don’t get paid enough to gamble,” Kyra replied. “So Longstreet goes to Vogelsang a month ago, stumbles across Lavrov or his people, and they kill him to protect whatever they’re doing. They dump the body in the Müggelsee, which is a good two hours away, so nobody comes looking for him around the base,” she offered. “Then, a month later, Strelnikov gets lured out there, and they follow the same procedure.”

“Not a bad theory,” Jon agreed. “It’s pretty thin on the evidence.”

“We know how to fix that, don’t we?” Kyra asked.

Daniel Rostow had been in this office less than three years, but his youth already was paying the price for his ambition. The end of his first term was still little more than a year out and the man’s brown hair already was streaked through with white. The dark circles under the eyes disappeared only when a makeup artist covered them up before he went before cameras or Congress, and his frame had thinned since his inauguration despite the personal chef and Navy stewards at his disposal. Barron had heard rumors that the doctors were worried about his weight loss and confirmations that Rostow hadn’t seen the inside of the White House gym in over a year. The presidency offered no true downtime, no matter how often the occupant went to Camp David or the putting green or the movie theater in the White House. Aides came and went with tidbits and papers to be signed with no regard for personal time, phone calls had to be taken when they came. Rostow’s schedule was parsed in five-minute increments, with thirty-second meetings scheduled for the times he would be walking from one room to another.

Kathryn Cooke wondered if the man wasn’t suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. She had known many subordinates who endured that. The White House had been sending her case officers into war zones at a rapid clip for more than a decade now, and more than a few had been forced to fire weapons in anger. But any severe, prolonged stress could lead a man down that same road and there was no question that the commander in chief’s job included a daily serving of that. If Rostow had joined that particular club, Cooke was sure the man’s stress evaporated only when he could finally escape into the oblivion of sleep, and then only on the few nights it wouldn’t follow him into his dreams. Her own time struggling to justify to herself the condition her orders had imposed on her people had left Cooke with her own theory as to why so many presidents had affairs. The world thought such dalliances were about power and indulgence. Cooke was sure they were seeking new forms of stress relief.

She wondered whether the paper in Rostow’s hand would send the man off in search of some.

Rostow stared at the cable report in his hand and read it twice before looking up. “Having trouble keeping the house in order?”

Cooke ignored the dig. “Defectors are an occupational hazard, but a rare one.”

“Rare?” Rostow asked, disbelieving. “Last I heard, the intelligence community’s had a few dozen moles since ’47.”

“Moles, yes,” Cooke replied. “Defectors, not so many. There’s a difference.”

“Not much,” Rostow scolded. “After Snowden practically burned Fort Meade to the ground, I would’ve thought that you people would’ve locked Langley down tight. But no, you’ve got not just a mole, but a defector, and somebody in your shop or Langley or the Bureau will leak it to the Post. Half the country will think I can’t protect national security, and the other half will hail Maines as a hero and call me an unethical tyrant who likes killing children with drones. And that’s assuming Maines doesn’t leak it himself. It used to be that defectors had the decency to at least slink off and spend their golden years hiding out in a slum somewhere. Now they literally wrap themselves in a flag and get on the cover of Wired. So now my entire domestic agenda running into the election season is going to get blown out of the papers because one of your people ran off and will start spewing classified information to the press any day now.” He tossed the Maines cable across the Resolute desk toward her.

I suppose you want leaking classified information to remain your prerogative, Cooke thought.

“You know,” Rostow continued, “the last time the director of national intelligence was in this room, he threatened to resign if I didn’t promote you. I agreed on the one condition that you never set foot in my office again.”

“I wouldn’t know about any of that, Mr. President,” Cooke said, certain that a refusal to be baited would do more to upset the man than any retort she could conjure up.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference if he had,” Cooke said. “I’d still be here. I volunteered to come.”

The president frowned. “Why?”

“Alden Maines was one of mine when I was CIA director,” Cooke replied. “I promoted him. I put him in the position where he had access to the information he’s giving to the Russians. So I want to deal with the problem. The DNI shouldn’t have to take the political heat for this.”

“You want me to take Maines’s deal,” Rostow said.

“I can’t recommend a decision one way or another,” Cooke reminded him. “I can only explain what we think are the opportunities and implications of decisions.”

“Not much difference,” Rostow groused.

“Sir, if I may?” The words erupting out of the speakerphone on the Resolute desk were polite, making them a mismatch for the tone of the voice.

“What was your name again?” Rostow frowned.

“Jonathan Burke, sir.”

“Mr. Burke is the chief of CIA’s Red Cell,” Cooke said in Jon’s defense. “He’s also one of the two officers who recovered the Iranian nuclear warhead last year.”

Rostow froze. “You were in Venezuela?”

“I was,” Jon confirmed, trying to keep his voice as neutral as he could manage. And you almost got me killed. He would’ve known better than to say it even without Kyra’s coaching. “Sir, I believe that this isn’t just about preserving our operations in Moscow. There’s a larger problem here.”

“Which is?” Rostow asked. The condescension had drained from his voice.

“I’ve been looking at Strelnikov’s biography. You have a copy in your file.” He heard some rustling of paper and he suspected that Cooke had had to help the president find the right page. “Note that Strelnikov was a liaison officer to the Serb Army in ’99.”

“I see it,” Rostow said. His irritation was entirely lost on Jon.

“That was the year the Serbs shot down one of our F-117 Nighthawks,” Jon explained. “We know some of the wreckage was sold to the Chinese, but the Serbs were in Russia’s pocket. We’ve got pictures of Serb military escorts walking Russian generals around the crash site. The Serbs wouldn’t have sold so much as a screw to the PLA without Russian approval. Then, three years ago, the PLA sent an experimental stealth plane against the USS Abraham Lincoln during the Battle of the Taiwan Strait.”

“The ‘Assassin’s Mace,’ ” Cooke said, her voice quieter. The deputy DNI must have been sitting across the desk from the president, putting her farther away from the speakerphone’s mic.

“The stealth technology wasn’t the only interesting bit,” Jon said. “After the Navy shot the plane down, U.S. and Taiwanese engineers reconstructed the wreckage they were able to pull out of a crater on Penghu Island. The engines were similar to the design found in the Russian T-50, which is a fifth-generation fighter. The PLA has struggled with sophisticated engine design. They couldn’t have developed that engine without help.”

“Any evidence that they bought ’em?” Rostow asked.

“The engines were too badly damaged to confirm whether the Chinese built them, but there was no question that the design was a major advance for them,” Jon confirmed. “Now look at the bio, five lines further down.”

“Senior Military Attaché, Caracas, Venezuela,” Rostow read off the page, more curious than annoyed now. “The back half of the last decade.”

“That was the same period when Hugo Chávez was forging partnerships with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranians, and with the Russians. Chávez bought four billion dollars in Russian weapons during that period… fighter planes, naval vessels, small arms, you name it. Chávez was Russia’s biggest weapons customer in 2011. And last year, we recover an illegal warhead that Tehran and Caracas built together on Venezuelan soil. The engineers at Los Alamos National Labs tore it apart and found that it was a two-stage fusion-boosted design… much more sophisticated than any of the plans peddled by A. Q. Khan, the North Koreans, or any of the other candidates likely to sell blueprints to the mullahs. The Iranians only figured out how to enrich uranium to weapons-grade a decade ago. They couldn’t have developed that kind of warhead on their own.”

Rostow cocked his head. “Two cases of technology transfer.”

“Both of which depended on prior events at which Strelnikov was present,” Jon noted.

“So Strelnikov was an arms dealer—” Rostow began.

“Not just an arms dealer,” Jonathan cut in. “A strategic military technology dealer. My theory is that he was selling research and materials that hostile countries need to build next-generation weapons that they couldn’t build on their own for another decade or longer.”

Rostow sat back in his Gunlocke chair, crossed his arms, and looked down at the paper. “Even if that’s right, he couldn’t have done it on his own, or at least without a lot of people looking the other way.”

“I would agree,” Jon said. “It’s one thing to sell some guns and old tanks. Plenty of Russian officers did that after the Soviet Union fell apart. Moscow didn’t even know what it had in the warehouses. But stealth tech and nuclear weapons designs? That stuff goes missing or shows up in some other country and very important people start getting unhappy and asking questions. And they sure don’t put the thief in charge of their Foundation for Advanced Research unless they’re happy with his track record and want to expand his efforts.”

“Then Strelnikov got to the Foundation, saw what they were working on, and it scared him enough to come to us,” Cooke added. “But Maines burned him before he could give up the really good stuff.”

“Mr. President,” Jon continued. “Selling guns… that’s just about money. Selling technology is about balance of power. When Vladimir Putin set up the Foundation back in 2012, he said its purpose was to get Russian weapon R and D back on par with ours. But if the part of its raison d’être is getting other Russian military allies on par with us, then we have a more serious problem… and General Strelnikov’s death leaves Maines as our best source of information on General Lavrov’s current operations. Anything Maines knows about Lavrov’s dealings could be critical.”

Rostow looked at the phone, replied nothing, then looked away. He pushed himself back from the desk, crossed his hands in his lap. “And you’re sure about this connection with Arkady Lavrov?” he asked.

“We have a high level of confidence in that assessment,” Cooke concurred. “The woman who met with Lavrov on the roof of the Russian Embassy was Jon’s partner, Kyra Stryker. She was the other officer who recovered the Iranian warhead last year, by the way.” That bit of news heightened Rostow’s discomfort. She wished that Jon and Kyra could have seen it. “NSA says that Lavrov signed Strelnikov’s travel orders to Berlin. Then Lavrov flew to Berlin the day before Strelnikov left, requesting emergency counterterrorism meetings with the German Federal Intelligence Service… some crap story about Chechen rebels trying to smuggle arms through Berlin. Given Lavrov’s connections, he probably could have faked that if he needed cover for the trip.”

Rostow nodded, almost unconsciously. Cooke studied the commander in chief’s face, trying to divine some clue as to his thoughts. He’s actually taking CIA seriously. It was a rare thing.

But Rostow’s face hardly moved and Barron could do nothing but listen to the white noise coming from the phone speaker as Jon held his peace four thousand miles away. Rostow stared down at his desk for a full five minutes, saying nothing.

The president finally looked up. “No.”

“Sir?” Cooke asked.

“No deal. No pardon, no money, no nothing,” Rostow said. “Maines can enjoy life in Moscow until the Russians off him or he can come home and take his chances.”

Jon was smart enough not to protest over the phone. Cooke took her time assembling her thoughts and finding the most politic way to tell Rostow what she thought of the young president’s decision.

“Mr. President, Jon was correct when he said we can tell you about the implications of decisions, and it’s my duty to tell you now the implications of the one you’ve just made. Sir, if we don’t make this deal with Maines, people will start dying in short order, ours and theirs. The FSB or the GRU will begin arresting Russians working for us, one after another, and they will be executed, without exception. We will be forced to try to exfiltrate as many as we can, but we will fail to save most of them. We won’t have the time, the people, or the resources, so we will be forced to improvise. But we will be operating on Russian soil and the Russians have, without question, the most efficient, skilled, and ruthless counterintelligence operation in the world. So our creativity will fall short, and some of our people will be captured and arrested. They will be paraded on Russian television and photographed for Russian newspapers. The secretary of state and the U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation will be forced to negotiate for their release. No matter what we do, our operations in Moscow will be gutted for years to come and the United States will be humiliated on a global stage.” Cooke finally stopped speaking. Jon was afraid to add anything at all.

Rostow nodded. The president seemed calm and serious. Arrogance was the one emotion Cooke could read well and Rostow had no shortage of it, but she saw none in him at the moment. The man was trying to be sincere, or at least as honest as he could be. “Kathy, I don’t doubt anything you said. Not one word,” Rostow said. “But the people who sit on this side of this desk don’t get to think small, and cutting big deals with hostile nations to save a person here and there is almost always a mistake. I give Maines a pardon and the next Snowden wannabe will see it and think he can jump ship for Russia or China or who-knows-where the next time his agency does something to offend his sensibilities because he’ll expect us to forgive everything just to shut him up.”

Across the Atlantic, six answers formed in Jon’s mind to rebut the president. He considered what Kyra would say, and fought down the urge to speak.

“I’m not a fan of CIA,” Rostow continued. “I’ve never made that a secret, but I’m not stupid enough to think that this country doesn’t need it or NSA or any of the other agencies, no matter what sins you people have committed in the past. But you can’t run an intelligence community where every officer in it thinks he can toss his secrecy oath out with his classified trash in a burn bag. So Maines gets nothing. And if men die and it goes public, the next Snowdon disciple won’t have any doubts about the price he’ll have to pay for switching teams. Do your best to save our people and our assets. If you can’t, I won’t hold you responsible.”

Cooke didn’t believe he meant the last sentence, but kept her face still. “Yes, sir.”

Cooke said nothing on the walk to the Agency car waiting outside on West Executive Avenue. She closed the door and the armored vehicle began to move. She picked up the secure phone mounted between the front seats and dialed a number she had learned by heart in the last two days.

“That was not what I was expecting,” Jon said, no pleasantries first. The crypto played games with his voice, stripping it of what little warmth she’d ever heard in it.

“You thought he’d make the deal?” Cooke asked.

“No. Turning us down, that I expected. I didn’t expect Rostow to actually listen to us.”

“He didn’t, until I told him you helped capture that nuke last year,” Cooke said. “Presidents don’t often talk to the people whom they almost killed with their stupidity. That was probably the first time he’s ever shared words with someone his political ambitions directly hurt. I don’t know if it will last, but at least he made his decision on the merits for once.” Cooke watched a class of schoolchildren cross Constitution Avenue, making their way to the Lincoln Memorial.

“So did he turn us down because he really believes in the decision, or is he just trying to put a shank in your ribs?”

“The former, I think. He’s probably right, about not making the deal,” she said. “It would be the clean, easy solution now, but it would set us up for more trouble later.”

“Doesn’t matter now either way,” Jon replied. “And there will always be another Edward Snowden or Edward Lee Howard whether we cut a deal with Maines or not.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Cooke agreed, rueful. “But it’s not the future traitors we have to worry about now, just the one in Berlin today.” She exhaled hard and looked out the car window. The trees along the George Washington Parkway had exploded into their full palette of reds, oranges, and yellows. Along with the temperature, the leaves would start falling soon. “I want you and Kyra to work with Barron and figure out which assets are likely to be first on the Kremlin’s list. Prioritize who needs to be saved—”

“And who we hang out in the wind?” Jon interrupted.

“Something like that,” Cooke admitted. “It might help if we knew what kind of technology Lavrov is selling now, and who the customer is.”

“We’re working on that.”