The Fall of Moscow Station

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Russian ambassador to the United States had not expected to be summoned to the White House again so quickly. He had thought President Rostow would have licked his wounds for at least a week as he consulted with his advisers on how best to respond to the Kremlin’s expulsion of so many American spies from Moscow’s streets. It had been an unprecedented act, but the act of a great power, Galushka thought. Rostow had hidden his reaction to the news reasonably well, but Galushka had read the man’s face. The young president had been stunned, even confused. Oh, to have heard the words he had spoken to his staff after the Russian left the Oval Office! Galushka cursed his colleagues in the intelligence services for not being able to tell him that. Instead, he would have to wait a few decades until the American press made their documentaries and wrote their histories to find it out. But he knew what history’s judgment of it all would be. The expulsion order would be seen as the starkest evidence yet that the United States was no longer a nation to be feared, and Galushka would be always remembered as the man who had delivered it. Without question, it would stand as the most glorious day of his career thus far, and perhaps the one that opened the door for him to ascend to the Kremlin’s highest posts.

Now Galushka could not stop wondering whether the swift summons was not a sign that all of that was being threatened. Like a jury sent out of a courtroom to deliberate a case, a swift verdict was rarely good news for the accused. Now Rostow was being unpredictable. The young president should have accepted his humiliation. Of course, it was expected he would expel a few Russians from Washington in a weak bid to save face. Reagan had expelled fifty-five diplomats in 1986 as retaliation for Gorbachev’s eviction of five CIA spies, the kind of disproportionate act the Russian people had come to expect from the cowboy president. Bush the younger had expelled fifty in 2001 after Robert Hannsen’s treachery was revealed, but to be fair, that traitor’s work had allowed the Kremlin to execute several CIA assets.

But Rostow was no Bush, much less a Reagan, and the man was running for reelection. Politicians like him preferred to rely on the electorate’s short memories and bury such embarrassments as deep as they could, and the American president was not following that model. Galushka was concerned. He replayed the secretary of state’s call through his mind, asking him to return to the White House. The Russian had asked to know why and the secretary had refused to tell him. The Russian had frowned at that, but no one around him had noticed, the expression being too close to the ambassador’s usual appearance.

The chauffeur opened his door and Galushka dismounted onto the asphalt outside the East Wing entrance. The Russian followed the usual security escorts, expecting to be taken to the Oval Office, which route he knew well. His only notice that he would not be following that route came when the man ahead of him slowed to direct him into a room to the north from the center hall. The Russian, focused on his own thoughts, had not been watching his escort and stumbled into him.

Galushka walked through the open door. He’d not been here before, but he came to recognize the White House library, remembering it vaguely from some photograph he’d seen years before. It was a small space, perhaps twenty feet by thirty, decorated in the style of the late Federal period, with soft gray and rose tones coloring the wall panels. It was dimly lit at the moment, the fire in the hearth illuminating the room as much as the gilded wood chandelier above the round table in its center. Galushka was sure that the many books on the shelves were American classics, if any tome written by Western authors ever could be called such. He’d never cared enough to read any of them. Russia’s own literary tradition was too rich and deep for him to waste his time on the scribblings produced by so young a country.

The Secret Service escort closed the door behind Galushka and took up a position in the corner to watch the husky diplomat. The Russian waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light. He wasn’t a young man anymore and they didn’t make the change as quickly as they once had.

“Do you know what this room was used for, originally?” Galushka finally saw President Daniel Rostow standing before the east wall, looking up at a row of books on one of the shelves.

“Mr. President,” Galushka acknowledged, “I do not. I have never been in this room.”

“It was the White House laundry,” Rostow explained. “For almost exactly a hundred years, this is where the staff cleaned up dirty clothes.”

Galushka looked around at his surroundings. “It is a more useful space now, I think.”

“Oh, yes,” Rostow agreed. “Though occasionally it still serves its old purpose.”

Galushka frowned, unsure what the young president meant by that. Rostow turned around, made his way to one of two facing chairs before the fireplace, and directed the Russian ambassador to the other. “I’m sure you know why I asked you to come tonight, Igor Nikolayevich.”

“You wish to respond to our expulsion of your cadre of spies in Moscow,” Galushka replied. He wanted to smile but it would not have been diplomatic, and he was out of practice anyway.

“That’s right, Igor, I do,” Rostow concurred. The president of the United States reached over to the table, picked up a large manila envelope, and offered it to the Russian ambassador. “In response to your unprecedented expulsion of so many U.S. diplomats and their families from your soil without provocation, the United States government hereby requires the Russian Federation to withdraw the following individuals and their families from our soil within the next five days. The secretary of state will deliver the formal paperwork to your embassy in the morning, but I wanted to personally give you the advance notice so the people on the list could start packing up tonight.”

Galushka opened the envelope and withdrew the contents, surprised to find two pieces of folded paper inside. He straightened them and his eyes widened. Both papers were filled with names, top to bottom, split into two columns on each. He tried to estimate the full total. “There are over two hundred names here,” the ambassador protested.

“Two hundred twenty if you’d like to count,” Rostow said. “Most work at your embassy here on Wisconsin Avenue, but some are stationed at your consulates in New York, Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle.”

Galushka scanned the list. Several names he recognized as GRU and SVR officers under official cover, but he couldn’t identify most of them. “This will damage relations between our two countries most severely, Mr. President. It is a shame that you chose this course in an effort to divert the world’s attention from the scale of your own intelligence activities and failure. A better course would have been to resolve this matter through private channels and special contacts,” he said. “Unfortunately, as you have chosen another way, this step cannot be regarded as anything but a political one.”

Rostow smiled. “Well, Ambassador, for the record, you can tell your government that I truly do look forward to finding a way to smooth this matter over and rebuild a productive relationship with the Russian Federation. But unlike some of the previous presidents from my party, I’m a realist. And right now, after your country’s unprovoked diplomatic slap, allowing an enormous Russian diplomatic presence on U.S. soil just isn’t a good signal to the rest of the world about the kind of relations I want to have with your country. We are equals, after all. It wouldn’t do to have your delegation outnumber ours, and asking the Kremlin to approve a lengthy list of replacements for ours would just make me look weak to the rest of the world. Cutting yours down to size is easier and makes me look stronger. So I get to insult you, look stronger for it, get our countries back on equal terms all at once, and boost my poll numbers at home. We Americans call that ‘multitasking.’ ”

The president leaned forward and looked Galushka in the eyes. “Off the record, you can inform your government that the United States of America is not done ‘resolving this matter,’ ” he advised. “And I regret that I must say farewell to you, Igor.”

“I am prepared to leave the White House at any time,” the Russian replied, offended.

“Not just the White House, Mr. Ambassador,” Rostow told him. “Your name is on the list, too. I realize it will cause the Russian Federation some inconvenience to replace its ambassador here, but if the Kremlin wants to make a fresh start with me, they can begin by putting forward a fresh face. But do let your president know that I can expel people just as fast as he can. So you might want to ask him just how far he wants to take this.”

Galushka stared down at the papers again, reading the names and finding his own on at the top of the second page. Rostow stood and walked to the door, opened it, and a pair of Secret Service agents stepped inside. “Good-bye, Igor. Do have a safe flight home. I look forward to reading your memoirs.” He looked at the senior security officer. “Please see Ambassador Galushka to his car.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Russian ambassador watched the president of the United States walk out into the central hall and turn left, heading for the West Wing. The Secret Service officer extended his arm, showing Galushka the door, his expression clear that he was not going to be patient with him. The overweight Russian grunted and shuffled out of the library. He knew he wouldn’t see the inside of the White House again.

Major Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov pulled around the wrecked cars blocking the leftmost lane of the Leningradskoye Highway and mashed the gas pedal to the floor, determined to recover the speed and time she’d lost to the snarl of traffic she’d just escaped. She seen the now-wrecked car pass her a minute before it had sideswiped a delivery truck. The driver had been drunk, she figured, judging by the lack of control. Not that she minded a bit of inebriation, but the moron should have waited until he got home to chase his stupor. It was early in the evening yet, and the drunk had reaped what his stupidity had sown.

Angry though she was, she could hardly condemn the man. Puchkov had been tempted to pass the evening with a pub crawl of her own, a bad habit she’d picked up during a tour at her country’s embassy in London. It had been too long since she’d killed time on a stool at the Bar Strelka by the old Krasny Oktyabr chocolate factory on the man-made island of Bolotny Ostrov. To see the Moskva River at night, lit up by the lights of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with a bottle of twelve-year-old Green Mark in her hands would be a fine way to forget this ugly day. She was not a Christian, but she could still appreciate the beauty of the buildings the believers erected as an act of worship.

But then the Kremlin itself sat just across the Moskva to the north. Walk the wrong way along the Sofiskaya road while drunk, she would see those spires instead, and Puchkov’s loose tongue would be tempted to say something unfortunate. That particular behavior was a luxury she’d indulged in her youth, like most Russian college students. She knew she was a talkative drunk and that was an unfortunate weakness for a CIA mole.

So she’d given it up, but she was at peace with that. Puchkov would do that much for Alexsandr. Her old boyfriend from university had settled on journalism as his calling and he’d been good at it. They’d broken up before the Novaya Gazeta newspaper had hired him, but she’d followed his progress, reading his articles and happy that he was making his mark. The Novaya Gazeta had been a harsh critic of Putin, enough to draw a charge of violating anti-extremism laws, and Alexsandr had been as daring as any of his peers there. He became a favorite of the Kremlin’s opponents, outspoken and never subtle in his writing.

Then he’d turned his talents to writing on corruption in the Kremlin. His new portfolio lasted only four months before his neighbors found his body in the elevator of his apartment building. Two shots to the chest, one to the head, the official report said. The Kremlin had issued a statement decrying his death and promising to find the murderer, but no detectives were ever assigned and no arrests were ever made.

Puchkov had found the Kremlin true-but-unofficial report on Alexsandr’s death after a monthlong search in the GRU’s files. The folder had included surveillance reports noting Alexsandr’s daily schedule. Either they’d killed him or they’d watched while someone did.

Puchkov had volunteered to work for the CIA the next day. Ten years on, her desire to hurt the wicked oligarchs who’d snuffed out her country’s brief glimpse of freedom hadn’t been satisfied and the GRU major was sure it never would be. Revenge didn’t heal the soul, she’d learned. She wished that she could call her actions by some more respectable word, justify them as a covert fight against overt corruption, illegal acts made righteous by evil men who had perverted the law. But, no, it was revenge she wanted, nothing more. Puchkov was at least honest with herself about that.

But now the Americans were in no position to help her. News of the expulsions had raced through the GRU. She had cheered with her colleagues — her finest acting on display — but fear dogged her now. How had General Lavrov identified the American intelligence officers? Would the same source or method let him identify her as a CIA asset? No one had any details that would help her determine this, so all she could do was act as normal as possible and pray that no one came for her at home after dark.

Her cell phone rang in her coat pocket. Puchkov cursed as her lap belt made it a struggle to extract the device. She finally got it out, and took her eyes off the road to look at the screen. The caller ID showed a number she didn’t recognize and no name at all. Surely it was someone at work calling. She pressed a button. “Ya slushayu vas,” she said.

“You are Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov?” the caller asked. The voice sounded odd, digitized. It was not encrypted… her phone lacked that capability. Someone was using a voice changer.

“Da.”

“They are coming for you,” the voice said. “The GRU knows that you are a traitor. If you wish to live, you will go into hiding. Do not go home.”

Puchkov’s heart began to race, pounding hard enough to hurt her chest. Despite the distortion, she could tell that the caller was Russian. The Muscovite accent was strong enough to survive the digital masking. Not CIA, she thought. Not my handler calling to warn me. The Agency had another, more secure way to contact her in case of such an emergency. Was this a GRU trap? Part of a counterintelligence investigation, a gambit to see if she would panic and run, confirming her guilt.

That wasn’t one of the GRU’s normal methods for hunting moles. Then who was this? This man was a Russian, but no other Russian knew that she was a CIA asset. Puchkov couldn’t make sense of it.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Puchkov lied. “I am not a spy.”

“You must believe me,” the voice said. “They know what you have done.”

“I am not a traitor to the Rodina,” Puchkov retorted. “This is a very poor joke. If you do not leave me alone, I will have this call traced—”

The line went dead. Puchkov set the phone on the passenger seat.

She drove on, her mind paying no attention to the busy road. What to do? Was it possible the caller had told the truth? Would the CIA even know if she’d been identified? Perhaps the caller was another CIA asset?

Puchkov knew of only one way to confirm the possibility. She took the next right turn, which led her away from her apartment, less than a mile away.

The market was a small, square one-story affair that butted up against the circular red-brick wing of an apartment complex. The file said that the exfiltration signal was to be a chalked diagonal line on a particular brick at the residential building’s corner closest to the point where the two buildings met. A line running from the upper left to the lower right was CIA’s signal to Puchkov that she needed to run. Puchkov’s confirmation was a line from the upper right to the lower left. Puchkov had suggested the site to her handler. The major came here often enough to buy her groceries that a trip would raise no suspicions.

Kyra checked the GPS unit again. She’d been driving for three hours, watching the rearview mirror, and the device finally insisted that she was near the address she had copied from Puchkov’s file. She unbuckled her restraint and checked her pocket for the piece of chalk. She would walk a short surveillance detection route, make the mark, retreat to her car, then spend most of the night waiting for Puchkov at the exfiltration site. She couldn’t actually get Puchkov out, but she could at least warn the woman and tell her to hide until the CIA could put resources in place to bring her out.

Whether Puchkov knew anything that could help her find Jon or confirm his death was another matter entirely.

There was an unsettled feeling in her chest, and she did not have to guess what it was. Weird not having you here, Jon, she thought.

She was sure she heard Jon’s voice in her mind. This is not a good idea, he told her.

“Yeah, I know,” Kyra said aloud, surprising herself. She was gambling that the Russians would be relaxing their security, thinking that all of the CIA officers had left the country.

But only the CIA officers are gone. The Russians know that there are other spies still in the country. They’ll still be watching. Jon spoke to her again. And if Lavrov’s boys are here, at the market, you’re screwed. Nothing I can do to help you… not that I’d get out of the car to save your tail anyway.

After a three-hour surveillance detection route, I’d think you’d want any excuse to stretch your legs, Kyra chided her absent partner.

If I was going to get out of the car, it would be to run away from the men with the guns, not toward them, Jon’s voice in her head replied.

I’m clean, Kyra reassured him and herself. Three hours looking in the mirror and never saw the same car twice.

Here’s to hoping, her absent partner replied, and then he was silent. Kyra opened the door and put her foot down on the asphalt. She was two hundred yards from the site.

Puchkov pulled her car into the very small parking lot to the south of the market, past the store’s own lot, and turned the engine off. She sat inside, working through the rough plan in her mind. She’d parked away from the market so she could walk past the corner where an exfiltration signal would be marked. Whether the signal was there or not, she would go inside, buy some bread and beer, and return to her car. The only question would be where she would go after. If there was no mark, she would go home. If the chalk line was present, she would never see her apartment again. She would drive to the exfiltration point her handler had identified, and fate willing, she would be on United States soil within two days.

Puchkov stepped out of her car, shut the door, and set the locks. She looked for approaching cars. Seeing none, she walked north toward the market.

All she had to do was look at the brick, nothing more.

No one was following. Kyra was a hundred yards from the market when her stomach twisted inward. Her instincts began to scream, and she stopped moving. She swept the scene in front of her, her mind dissecting the picture.

There was very little to see. The only person in sight was a woman, boyish dark hair, short, and a little overweight. She was fifty yards from Kyra’s position, but her profile at this distance matched the photograph Kyra had seen in the file. Puchkov.

Kyra still wouldn’t move, not until she had found the source of her anxiety. She stared at her surroundings.

Finally, she saw it. This is a supermarket, she thought. Where is everyone?

Kyra’s gut twisted.

In that instant, Kyra knew that Major Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov was a dead woman.

Puchkov slowed on the sidewalk and turned her head, looking away from the market doors toward the corner where the store met the apartment building. There was no line.

Puchkov was seventy-five yards from her car now, too far to make it back when the trap sprang closed. The Spetsnaz soldiers erupted out of the market, nearby cars, two other buildings. There were at least two dozen of them, maybe more. Every direction in which Puchkov might have run had been identified and blocked off. The Russian woman would have no chance to fight her way out against any one of the men in the circle collapsing around her position.

Kyra wanted to scream at Puchkov, tell her to run anyway, but she knew it was futile. There was no help for the GRU officer now. She would be detained, interrogated, and executed. Kyra could see it, as though it had already happened.

One soldier was moving in a different direction, away from Puchkov—

— toward her. He was yelling in Russian, probably commands to stop, she was sure, but her mind refused to focus on the man’s orders. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the Russian woman, watching as the dragnet shrank around her.

The soldier running in her direction was fifty yards away, her car two hundred yards behind her. Kyra’s legs refused to move.

Her mind tore the world around her apart, time slowing down for the few seconds she had before the soldier reached her position.

The Spetsnaz had cordoned off the area earlier, before either she or Puchkov had arrived. How was that possible? Even if they had followed her, they couldn’t have known where she was going.

There was only one answer. The Russians had known where the CIA would leave a mark to signal Puchkov. Maines had given that to them. The locals had seen the Spetsnaz arrive and known enough to stay away.

Puchkov had been expected, but Kyra’s arrival had surprised them, just a stroke of bad timing for her and good for them. Whether she was a random Russian shopper or had some connection to Puchkov, they wouldn’t know, but they would detain her for questioning to find out.

It would take them exactly one question to figure out that she couldn’t speak Russian and that would settle the issue. They wouldn’t accept that it was a coincidence that an American had blundered into their raid site. They would search the airport customs files and security footage to identify her. Eventually, they would know that she was not who her passport claimed she was and whatever had happened to Jon would happen to her.

The first Spetsnaz soldiers reached Puchkov and knocked the woman onto the sidewalk, her face smashing into the concrete, tearing the skin from her cheek. Two men pulled her arms up behind her back, like the spread wings of a chicken, while another forced a rope into her mouth. Two others began stripping her coat and shirt off to remove any means of suicide she might have hidden away. The rest drew their sidearms on the woman, approaching more slowly, ready to put her down in case she had some way of resisting they couldn’t see.

The other soldiers circled around her and Kyra lost sight of the GRU major.

Another yell in Russian ripped Kyra’s focus away from the arrest and back to the man running at her. He was thirty yards away now.

Kyra’s legs finally moved.

She spun around and ran for her car, but she knew that she wouldn’t make it. She’d seen how fast the soldier was. By the time she could get up to a full sprint, he could only be a few yards behind her and could run her down on foot, even if he didn’t shoot her first. Kyra had no Glock concealed in her waistband under her coat, and it would have been no help anyway. Even had she won a gunfight, which was unlikely, the report of a shot would draw the attention of the soldier’s team. With Puchkov down, the rest would be free to lay down fire on her position and she would die. They were a hundred yards from the raid site now. The distance would make for a very long pistol shot, but some of the men would have rifles, and even two hundreds yards wouldn’t be a long shot for a Special Forces soldier.

She turned her head to look behind and saw that the soldier had cut the distance in half.

Kyra had trained in Krav Maga, knew how to disarm an attacker, but the man ten yards away had combat training of his own, equal to hers at least, and he was surely at least twice as strong as her if not more. She couldn’t take him hand-to-hand. He would put her down like Puchkov and the outcome would be the same.

He was ten yards back and still picking up speed. He was drawing his gun. There was no good cover between her and the car. A few parked cars, some trees, nothing truly defensible.

Kyra had one option left.

She skidded to stop, her hand touching the ground for balance. He was six yards away.

The Spetsnaz officer got his Makarov clear of the holster. Running hard, he had trouble finding the safety. He glanced down at his sidearm. For a second, his eyes were off Kyra and on his weapon.

She rushed toward the soldier, trying to close the distance between them before the Russian raised his gun. Her hand was in her own coat pocket.

The soldier’s speed running played against him now and he was unable to stop himself before Kyra got inside his firing arc. The safety was off, the first round in the chamber and the pistol came up, but Kyra was past the end of his outstretched arm. She was going to hit him running full speed.

Kyra pulled the Taser from her coat, flipping off the safety in the same motion.

Foolish woman, the soldier started to think. He was twice her weight, would knock her backward, flipping her over and slamming her down on her spine, probably breaking vertebrae or cracking her pelvis. Either would leave her screaming in agony. He wouldn’t even have to waste a bullet—

— the woman veered slightly at the last second before they hit. Her hand came up, something black and thin in her grip, and he heard the loud, machine-gun-clicking of an active electrical current.

Kyra touched the firing trigger on the Taser and raised her right arm the instant before they hit, both moving fast, left shoulders colliding. The soldier was solid muscle, granite in motion. He’d started to turn his shoulder into her. She felt him hit, her lighter body giving way to his solid mass—

— Kyra felt her right shoulder almost dislocate when she slammed into the bulky soldier and the impact sent her spinning, her right arm coming around as she spun left. She saw the dark outline of the soldier through her blurred vision, and she pulled the trigger.

The Taser fired less than a foot from the man’s neck, two metal probes exploding from the plastic panel covering the barrel, both trailing thin wires. Kyra’s aim was high. She’d meant to shoot him in the back. Instead, the barbs punched through the skin below the base of his skull, digging into the muscle underneath and completing the electrical circuit with the gun.

Five thousand volts arced through the soldier’s nervous system, pulsing down his spine, and his body seized up in an instant. The man wanted to howl in pain, but what emerged from his paralyzed vocal cords sounded more like a long, loud grunt as every muscle contracted, his face contorting in agony.

The world blurred and Kyra hit the asphalt hard on the same arm that the man had nearly knocked out of its socket, the same one that a bullet had torn open three years before. She gritted her teeth against the pain, managed not to cry out, but the wind coming out of her forced a grunt from her anyway.

The soldier’s inertia carried him forward at full speed but his legs had locked up and he pitched forward, his face slamming against the concrete, shattering his nose. His head bounced up from the hard surface, then gravity pulled him down again, his face connecting with the ground a second time.

His finger was already on his pistol’s trigger. The muscles in his right hand contracted and the Makarov fired into the ground. The bullet ricocheted on the asphalt, flying off in some odd direction. It struck a tire, punching a hold in the rubber, and the sound of rushing air sounded in his ears.

The Spetsnaz team had the traitor on the ground. The rope was in her mouth and two men were holding her arms behind her back and stripping off her coat.

The team leader hadn’t expected Puchkov to show. He’d thought for certain the primary team would detain her at her home, where Colonel Sokolov was commanding the detail. The other four teams, including his, were covering sites Sokolov had said were communication points used by the turncoat, but with all of the CIA officers in Moscow expelled, he hadn’t expected any of the secondary units to act. But here she was, and the glory of Puchkov’s capture belonged to his team.

Colonel Sokolov’s information, whatever the source, had been accurate—

Somewhere, a Makarov fired.

The team leader’s head jerked around. Puchkov was lying helpless on the cold dirt in front of him, so whichever of his men had fired had not been shooting at her. Where? Who fired?

Kyra heard the gunshot. Pain erupted in her right shoulder again as she tried to push herself up. She ignored it and rolled over, trying to get her bearings. Her vision started to focus again.

The soldier was on the ground, still unable to control himself. The Taser was five seconds into a thirty-second cycle, and it was holding the Spetsnaz officer down, his body as hard as the ground it was lying on. His nose was gushing blood.

Kyra pushed herself to her knees and grabbed the Taser off the ground. She didn’t know how long the man would need to recover once the weapon stopped disrupting his nervous system, but he was still able to grunt one unbroken, guttural cry of pain.

Kyra let the electrical current flow into him as she searched for the rest of the soldiers. She found them when she heard another shout in Russian. Several of the soldiers surrounding Puchkov were now pointing in her direction.

In a flash of anger, Kyra tried to rip the barbs out of the man’s neck. One came out, tearing flesh and drawing more blood for the pavement, but the other probe was stubborn. Kyra ejected the cartridge connecting the probes to the pistol. The circuit broken, the man’s body sagged like his bones had melted, muscles still twitching from the residual current firing through his nerves. Then he was still and silent.

Kyra picked up his Makarov. She shoved the Taser back into her pocket, then looked back toward the market where Puchkov had gone down.

More soldiers were now running her way, guns drawn. She heard one fire, then another, bullets hitting cars, the sound of metal punching through metal. They’d seen her.

Kyra pushed off, keeping her head low, running for the Tiguan fifty yards away. The men running toward her position were fast, but they were too far away to catch her now.

She heard more shots, hitting closer to her now. One round missed her by less than a foot, hitting a car as she ran by, a deeper sound than the Makarov rounds, a higher-caliber bullet. Someone had resorted to a rifle now.

Kyra skidded to a stop behind a car, a tiny red Lada Riva that was older than she was. She raised the Makarov and, for the first time on Russian soil, fired a weapon in anger. She sent five rounds downrange, shattering two cars windows and forcing the soldiers to move to cover. Kyra didn’t stop. She couldn’t spring now. She could only scramble low for the next car, five yards closer to her Tiguan, turn, and send three more rounds back to their original owners.

The Spetsnaz returned fire almost immediately, half shooting while the forward element moved up, then the lead group giving cover fire for the rear unit to catch up. Kyra saw it, and the rounds coming in on her position began to hit the cars around her in a constant rattle. She fired again, keeping low.

Just like Venezuela, Jon. Remember? Kyra thought. I was trapped against the fence, two hundred soldiers coming in. Then you showed up, on the hill with that big Barrett of yours, like a god with a gun, killing jeeps and lights.

Kyra was surprised at her own calm. Panic should have set in by now. Jon wasn’t here to lay down cover fire for her this time.

The Tiguan was twenty yards away now, the soldiers almost a hundred in the other direction. Kyra fired the Makarov again. She couldn’t have more than a few shots left now.

She was almost on her hands and knees, working her way around the last parked cars between her and the SUV. The Spetsnaz had lost track of her for the moment. They knew she was directly ahead, but she hadn’t put her head up for almost thirty seconds.

Their target hadn’t fired on them for just as long, and their firing grew sporadic as they saved their ammunition for a target they could see. They began to move forward in a low crouch, weapons raised to eye level.

Kyra finally reached her vehicle. She inhaled deep, filling her lungs, then aimed the Makarov and emptied the rest of the clip at the Russians. The soldiers ducked down, scrambling for cover again as their target reappeared.

Kyra pulled the Tiguan’s door open, threw herself inside, and closed it up again, putting a layer of metal between her and the enemy. She slammed the keys into the ignition, ordered the truck to life, and it obeyed with a roar. She put it in gear, put the accelerator to the floor, and the wheels began spinning fast, trying to grab the asphalt. White smoke erupted from under the truck.

The soldiers heard the Tiguan come to life, then saw the smoke rising from the ground. They stood and began firing almost in unison.

The wheels finally took hold of the road and the SUV picked up speed, putting distance between Kyra and the soldiers now running in her direction. The sound of bullets perforating the tailgate sounded in the cab, like sharp thumps, rain on a metal roof. She kept her head down until she was at least three hundred yards distant.

The road bordered the residential complex in a rounded square. Whatever the speed limit was, Kyra went fast enough to break it, hoping the scream of the engine would be warning enough for anyone walking the streets outside the Spetsnaz cordon to stay clear. She pulled to the outside edge of the road, slowed a bit, then accelerated into the turn. The road straightened out for five hundred feet. Three more turns and Kyra was on the Kurkinskoye road again, pushing the SUV as hard as it would go.

Her eyes went to the rearview mirror, and she saw a black sedan pull onto the road a half mile behind her, taking the turn hard enough to convince Kyra that it was a chase car. A second car followed behind, an identical model but for its blue color, and both vehicles accelerated faster than any normal car could have managed. Upgraded engines, Kyra decided. She ran the Tiguan’s accelerometer into the red. The chase cars were still closing distance.

Splitting her attention between the rearview and the road ahead, she marked off a passing tree, then began counting seconds. Kyra kept her eyes locked on the mirror, watching until the cars behind reached the mark. Thirty seconds, she decided. They’ll catch up in thirty seconds.

Side road? She considered the option, but she didn’t know where any of them would take her. The probability that she would encounter a dead end or get blocked off by the Spetsnaz seemed high.

The main road bent to the right, leading out of the residential area into a more wooded, undeveloped landscape, and the highway began curving gently back and forth. That would slow down her pursuers and buy her a few seconds.

She couldn’t continue on this road. The men behind her would have radios, they would be calling for help, and eventually she would find a roadblock in her path or a helicopter overhead that she would never evade. She needed to break contact and get out of the chase cars’ line of sight.

The road straightened out again. She saw empty green fields to both sides, with long tree lines at the far side of each. Kyra searched for a break in the woods, anywhere she could take the SUV that their street cars behind couldn’t follow. She saw nothing.

She looked in the mirror. The cars were within a few lengths of the Tiguan. She was out of time. Within a few seconds, they would draw guns and take out her rear tires.

There was one maneuver she could try, the one her trainers in the Agency’s “Crash and Bang” course had drawn up on the whiteboard, but refused to let the students practice, citing its lethal potential. She’d never tried it before, didn’t know if it would work.

What do you think, Jon? she asked.

This is not a good idea, the absent man replied.

You always say that, she countered. You got a better idea?

There was no answer. That’s a no. “C’mon,” she muttered, looking at the Russian cars in the mirror.

Kurkinskoye was a two-lane road. A car passed in the opposite direction, and Kyra saw both lanes ahead were clear for at least a mile. She let the Tiguan drift to the right, almost onto the shoulder, so the lead car could see open path. The driver bit hard on that bait, pulled to the left, and accelerated. Kyra saw the black sedan’s front passenger window begin to roll down as it passed into her blind spot. Someone inside would be lining up for a shot.

Kyra tapped her brakes, dumping a little speed and letting the lead car shoot ahead. A pistol shot from inside the other vehicle went wide as the gunner hurried the shot and missed her Tiguan completely. Then she poured on the gas, pulling up and putting her front left tire even with the hostile car’s right rear quarter.

Bye bye, she thought.

Kyra turned her steering wheel hard left and the Tiguan’s front bumper struck the Russians’ rear tire, pushing hard against the black vehicle.

The sedan’s back end skewed and all four tires lost their grip on the asphalt. White smoke began pouring out as the rubber turned molten from the friction. The car’s front end spun into Kyra’s lane, and she slowed enough to let it rotate until the entire vehicle was sliding sideways down the road at a right angle to her. The SUV shuddered as the passenger-side doors struck her front. She steered her truck left and the car finally spun out. The driver had no control now, his attempts to steer useless as the car slid on pools of liquid made of its own melting tires. The car rotated until it was facing the opposite direction. Kyra stomped on the gas and pulled past it.

The black sedan kept rotating until it was almost crossways in the road again. The blue car’s driver had seen Kyra push the other vehicle, watched as it spun until Kyra’s SUV blocked it from his view. Thinking that Kyra would swerve right and his teammates’ car would come to a spinning halt on the left, he’d swerved to the right side of the road to avoid the coming wreck. But he was following too closely behind to react when the black car appeared in front of him. The lead chase car had pinwheeled across the entire road.

The blue sedan’s driver spun his own steering wheel, desperately trying to avoid his black twin, but there was nowhere left to go. The darker car was still spinning, white smoke blinding them both to anything coming ahead. He pushed the brakes to the floor, a mistake that forced the blue sedan’s tires to lock up. They too went liquid from the friction as the car’s inertia forced it to keep rushing down the road.

The cars slammed into each other, the front of the blue sedan connecting with the driver’s door of the black vehicle, crumpling both. The black sedan driver’s left arm and leg were shattered on contact, his ribs snapping like kindling from a dead oak tree. Steam and black smoke erupted from the blue car’s engine. Fluids gushed out of the undercarriage, leaving a stream of oil on the road and marking the death skid of its owner.

The weight of the black sedan finally dragged the blue car to a stop, its front end still crushed into the lead car’s side. The black smoke rising up from engine oil burning on the hot engine block mixed with the white fog of the melting tires and steaming radiators, filling the air with a noxious gray concoction that blocked their view of the Kurkinskoye.

Kyra accelerated until she was out of the Russian soldiers’ line of sight, then took the first right turn she found. Five more random turns and she found herself approaching a major highway. She could still see the faint pillar of smoke rising from the Spetsnaz cars now over a mile away.

She maneuvered the Tiguan onto the major artery, and only then asked the GPS unit to show her the way back to the safe house.

Sokolov opened the folder and stared down at the paperwork, still filled out with manual typewriters. Computers were a danger to security and he used them as little as possible. “Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov. You had a fine record of service, Major.”

The woman in handcuffs across the table kept her mouth closed and didn’t look up. She was a pretty thing, not the most attractive woman he’d ever seen, a little short, a bit overweight, black hair cut to a bob. The file said she was divorced, almost forty, childless, though he wondered whether that was by choice or nature’s cruelty. The latter, he hoped. The Rodina needed strong children and the president of the Russian Federation had all but declared a refusal to bear them an act of disloyalty to the country. Not a crime, technically speaking, but some men would have called it another act of treason to add to the paper stack on the table.

“Have you nothing to say?” he asked.

“Would it matter if I denied the charge?”

“I think not.” The interrogator lifted an open box from the floor and set it on the table, then emptied the contents one object at a time. An encryption pad, edible paper, a SRAC transmitter, and other electronics took their places in the space between the two people. “These were recovered from your home. They would seem to establish very clearly that you have been working for the CIA.”

“What would you have me say?” Puchkov asked, her voice cracking with anger.

Surprising, Sokolov thought. No fear, only hostility. Few people in her place had that reaction. For many, the main obstacle to extracting a confession was the prisoner’s anxiety. Terror was nature’s most effective paralytic. But the hostile ones, getting a confession from them often was just a matter of touching the nerve that had spawned and fed their outrage. An angry person was usually very willing to explain herself. “The truth. That is all I need.”

“What does the truth matter?” she asked. “We both know that I would not be here in shackles”—she held up her hands—“if our superiors had not already decided what the truth is for themselves. What I tell you will make no difference in what happens to me.”

Sokolov was confused. So angry, but unwilling to say why? That was unusual. He pushed again, trying to find a trigger that would elevate her hostility to a level that would override her self-control. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But you can still be of service to your country. Surely you still feel some loyalty—”

“Loyalty?” she hissed. “Loyalty to the country that is going to put a bullet in my head? If you were in this chair, you would find that the condemned cannot feel loyalty toward the executioners.”

“Or remorse, I suppose.”

“No,” Puchkov said. She turned her head and looked away, falling silent.

Sokolov frowned. If she wouldn’t explain herself in anger, perhaps she might respond to a kinder approach. “Then I ask you, in honesty, why did you commit treason? What was your reason? I truly would like to understand.”

“Why? So you can help the GRU become more efficient at spotting a Judas before he can kiss one of the generals on the cheek?”

A Christian? Sokolov wondered. The file said nothing about her being a woman of faith. Were her motivations somehow religious? Sokolov exhaled. “No, not that. I have my own reasons. If you will tell me yours, I promise you, I will not put them in my final report.”

“I don’t believe you,” Puchkov said, her voice flat.

“I understand, but as there has been no trial, I think you will understand when I say that those who have ordered your death have no interest in understanding your motives. I could record them, but no one would read them. Anything I record here will be boxed away in some warehouse where no one will see the papers for a hundred years. Or perhaps they will be burned… I don’t know. So I am being quite honest with you when I say that I want to know your motives only for myself.”

Puchkov stared at him for long seconds, studying his face, trying to decide whether she believed his claims. The interrogator said nothing, giving her all the time she wanted. The woman finally spoke after two minutes had passed. “Because our country is lost,” she said. “We could have had a free country. We had our moment… and we let the oligarchs and the organized criminals come back, and now we are a tyranny again. Now our leaders kill anyone who leaves and speaks out. Girenko, Novikov, Yushenkov, Kozlov, Litvinenko, Markelov? How many others? How many reporters and writers? They hunt them and shoot them in the street or feed them polonium tea. Even if I left the Rodina, if I spoke my conscience, they would come and find me and do the same to me. So tell me, how can I betray a country that feels no loyalty for me? Impossible. You can only betray those who care for you.”

A true believer, he thought. Topilin had committed treason for money; he’d seen others do it for ego or excitement, some because they felt slighted by superiors or colleagues. But Puchkov had done it because her morality had driven her to it. But there was a vehemence behind the words. This was no mere ideologue. No, the Kremlin had hurt this woman, hurt her in a very personal way. Who did we kill, Major? Sokolov wondered. A family member? A best friend? A lover? He doubted she would tell him. Such personal pain was not to be shared with those who had caused it.

“I understand,” Sokolov said. “And I do not judge you. You are not alone in thinking as you do. So please believe that you have my respect.”

Puchkov glared at him. “And what does that earn me now?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Sokolov admitted. “But the most honorable acts aren’t those that we perform for ourselves, are they? It is only when we serve others that we become the best of men and women.”

“That depends on who we choose to serve,” Puchkov said. “And you serve evil men.”

Sokolov repressed a smile and closed Puchkov’s file. “I am not a religious man, Major Puchkov. And where there is no god to tell us right from wrong, evil becomes simply a matter of perspective.”

“I am told that several of your people were injured today, Arkady.” Lavrov wanted to slam the phone onto its cradle, but he refused to acknowledge any setback to Grigoriyev. The old FSB director was known for his mind games. He had neutralized more than one opponent by pricking their egos and goading them into mistakes.

“Such things are not unexpected,” Lavrov replied.

“They are when your people are engaged in illegal operations,” Grigoriyev told him, his voice turning cold in an instant. “It is one thing for you to twist the foreign minister’s strings and convince the president to expel Americans. It is quite another for you to perform your own counterintelligence operations on our own soil. That is the duty of the FSB.”

“That is true,” Lavrov conceded. “But our source has given us the names of CIA moles within our own government. We cannot release those names to you without endangering the source, so it has become necessary for us to take on the responsibility to arrest the traitors. Call the president and discuss the matter with him if you wish.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s what you are doing, Arkady,” Grigoriyev chided. “In fact, I think that there is some other reason you want to keep this all hidden from me. I think you don’t want the FSB looking into your operations at all.”

“I have nothing to hide from you.”

“Quite the opposite, I think,” Grigoriyev said. “I am told that your people tried to arrest another person at the scene, a woman. And this woman not only escaped arrest, but she took down one of your Spetsnaz soldiers as she did so, and then left two of your men’s cars wrecked in a ditch. Three people were hospitalized.”

Lavrov restrained a curse. The old man had his own spies inside the GRU. Lavrov had suspected that, but hadn’t been able to confirm it. It wasn’t unexpected. The FSB was the spawn of the KGB, and if there was one thing that organization had excelled at, it was spying on its own citizens.

“So I have a theory,” Grigoriyev goaded him. “I think that your source did not give you the names of every CIA officer in Russia. I think there is still one out there, probably more, and you don’t know who she is.”

“If so, it would be your duty to find her,” Lavrov countered.

“Oh, no, that is a duty the GRU has accepted, as I recall,” Grigoriyev chided his rival. “And I would hate for you to have to admit that your operation has a nasty blemish that you and your people could not manage.”

“Competence is best shown by how one manages the unexpected,” Lavrov replied.

“Then I look forward to discussing your competence at our next meeting with the president,” Grigoriyev said.

“Oh, Anatoly,” Lavrov said, “when did I lose your support? Your friendship? We were such comrades once. That night on the embassy roof in Berlin was a great moment for us.”

“And a disaster for the Rodina. We began to lose our country that night. You lost my support when you began this madness of selling our technologies to third-world runts who do not have the wisdom to use our knowledge in a useful way. You are giving hammers to children who want nothing more than to swing them at each other.”

“I am only doing what we all promised to do. We agreed to save the Rodina. I regret we could not agree on the way it should be done. Poor Strelnikov became so confused he thought that the Americans were our salvation,” Lavrov intoned.

“You are wrong, Arkady,” Grigoriyev told him. “Strelnikov did not believe the Americans were our salvation. He simply thought they were the only ones who could turn you out of your destructive course. I am not sure that I disagree.”

“Your opinion of me has fallen so low?”

“I think my opinion matters nothing to you,” Grigoriyev replied. “And there is the problem. You take counsel from no one. When you will, I think you will find many ready to stand with you again. Do svidaniya.”

“Do svidaniya,” Lavrov said. He set the phone in the cradle far more gently than he would have preferred, but he didn’t want to fumble the maneuver and let the FSB director hear a physical sign of his frustration.

The GRU chairman leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. Maddening as Grigoriyev was, it was possible that he was right… about the woman. If the woman who had evaded his men during Puchkov’s arrest was CIA, then someone had been missed.

Lavrov frowned. No, there was another possibility, wasn’t there? Perhaps, in the focus on getting all of the CIA’s officers out of the country, another one had come in? And a woman, too, a bold one, capable of facing a Spetsnaz soldier and leaving him a twitching wreck on the pavement.

He had met a woman with such fire recently, hadn’t he? Is that possible? he wondered. That she is here?

Lavrov picked up the phone again and dialed a number he was learning by heart these days. Colonel Sokolov answered after the first ring. “Ya slushayu vas.”

“Anton Semyonovich, this is General Lavrov.”

“Good evening, General. I presume you are calling about today’s action?”

“I am. Please congratulate your men on their successful capture of another traitor to the Rodina,” Lavrov said, his voice warm.

“I will. Thank you, General.”

“I regret that is not the end of the matter,” Lavrov said. “Your report of a possible foreign operator at the site who interfered is worrisome. We need to find the woman in question. Please contact the security offices at all of our international airports within five hundred kilometers around Moscow. I want the passport photographs of all foreign women traveling from Germany admitted to the country in the last seventy-two hours.”

“We will begin immediately,” Sokolov replied. “But it will be a very large number. Any information that could help us narrow the search might provide an answer more quickly.”

Lavrov paused. “Tell them to focus on women coming from Berlin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. And, Anton Semyonovich… I think we must accelerate the operation. If the CIA still has officers in Moscow, they will be trying to save their assets. That cannot be allowed, of course. I will assign you additional men, and you will begin moving against the traitors several at a time. I will provide you the names for the first tranche I want neutralized. Understood?”

There was a short delay before Sokolov answered. “Da, General.”

“Is there a problem, Colonel?”

“Nyet, General. I am just concerned about launching a more ambitious set of raids without the opportunity for new men to train with my team. Unit cohesion can be a delicate thing. We do not want to lose any of the targets due to our own mistakes.”

“There will be no mistakes, I trust,” Lavrov warned. “These men are Spetsnaz, after all… and there is no better way to forge a team than a successful operation.”

“Of course, General. I will keep you informed of our progress.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” Lavrov hung up the phone.

Did you follow me here, Miss Stryker? he wondered. What a happy surprise that would be.

The door closed behind Kyra’s truck and the garage went dark. She had taken a winding route back, running surveillance detection as she went, though she was sure she needn’t have bothered. Had the GRU or any of the other security services picked up her tail, they would have swarmed her vehicle as quickly as they could have called in the help.

Kyra had taken three hours to make her way to the safe house and the sun had set more than an hour before. The garage was shrouded in darkness as she killed the headlights. The woman sat back in the seat, not bothering to unbuckle her restraint. Her eyes adjusted to the dark.

Kyra hit the steering wheel with her fist, then again. She pounded on it, as hard as she could. Then she began to yell in anger, cursing the Russians for their brutality and their skill at it, slamming her hands into the wheel as she did. Her hands began to protest, aching more and more with each strike against the truck. Finally she stopped when the pain was too much. Her chest began to heave. Kyra leaned forward, placed her forehead against the steering wheel. She refused to cry, much as she wanted to.

She’d lost track of the time, how long she was in the truck. Kyra finally emerged and walked into the mudroom, letting her keys fall on the floor. The keypad demanded her full attention before letting her into the house, but Kyra’s thoughts disorganized themselves again once she heard the computerized lock open. She entered, the metal door closing itself behind.

The bathroom on the second level was enormous, with a glass-enclosed shower and a tub large enough to disappear in. Kyra thought about cleaning up for the first time since Berlin. She took stock of herself in the mirror. Her right arm ached. She pulled her sleeve up and realized that a massive bruise, black with a green and yellow border, had spread across the muscle. There was ibuprofen in the cabinet and she didn’t bother to count how many of the red oval pills she took. The sink water tasted of metal.

Barron had been right. She was never going to get near any of the Agency’s assets. The Russian knew exactly who they were, had too much manpower, and knew the terrain far better than she ever could. Kyra had no advantage, no angle to play that would let her seize the high ground even for a few minutes.

I don’t think I can do this, Jon, she told her friend, wherever he was.

Maybe not, he agreed. The Russians aren’t amateurs. Fighting them is a team sport on a good day, and this isn’t a good day. You don’t have any help.

I got away, she replied. Again.

Dumb luck, he chided her. That soldier draws his gun a little faster and you’re dead. You miss with that Taser and you’re dead. One of that guy’s teammates has a little better aim with a pistol at a hundred yards and you’re dead. You didn’t plan for any contingencies. You didn’t even scout the area before you went in. You shouldn’t be sitting here.

I had to try to reach Puchkov. She was my best chance to find an asset who could help me find you, Kyra protested to the voice in her head. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. How am I supposed to figure out where you are, or if you’re even still alive, if I can’t get to any of our assets inside the GRU before the Russians?

You’re not thinking, Jon’s voice replied.

What do you mean? she asked.

Why do you always run straight in? he asked.

Kyra’s mind focused in a single moment. Run straight in? It was true. She’d done it every time, in Caracas when she’d gotten shot… in Beijing, when she’d been asked to save the Agency’s most valuable asset… at the CAVIM chemical plant near Morón when the president had wanted to know what the Iranians had smuggled into Venezuela. She’d gone in each time, always finding a way to go through the enemy’s security, and always being discovered before she could get back out. Training, Jon, and more dumb luck than she deserved had gotten her home, but she’d had to fight her way out every time. Now she’d finally come up against an enemy that was too skilled to fight. Kyra could go straight at the Russians, but she would never be able to get in.

I’m no coward, she reminded Jon.

Bravery and intelligence are not the same thing, he countered. And neither one matters without a plan.

So how do I do this? she asked. How do I find out what happened to you? How do I stop Lavrov?

She could almost see her partner smile, that arrogant look he couldn’t suppress when he’d figured out the answer before everyone else. That soldier you took down with the Taser. Did you notice anything about him?

Kyra sat back and stared at the ceiling, hands behind her head. Military haircut, hard as steel… he carried a Makarov sidearm.

And who uses Makarov pistols? Jon’s voice asked her.

The pistol was the same as the ones the men at Vogelsang had carried. Spetsnaz, Kyra realized. The GRU control the Spetsnaz. Those were Lavrov’s men at the market.

Don’t you think it’s interesting that the GRU is arresting traitors on Russian soil? Isn’t that the FSB’s job? he seemed to say.

Kyra cocked her head. That was interesting. Grigoriyev, the FSB director, hated Lavrov, the GRU chairman. Why would he let Lavrov run the operations to capture all of the CIA’s assets? she wondered.

What makes you think Grigoriyev even knows what Lavrov is doing? Or that he’s cooperating? Jon asked. What did I teach you about analyzing the enemy?

Never assume the enemy is monolithic, she replied, answering her absent partner’s question. Never assume that he knows everything that his own people are doing.

Kyra stared into the mirror, not seeing anything as she tried to focus her mind. She needed to think, but the stress of the past days had cost her all of the energy she had. The fog of sleep deprivation and jet lag was closing in on her. She needed to think. Rest was the only good answer for that, but for now she would have to rely on the false energy of caffeine and adrenaline. She didn’t know how long she would sleep if she closed her eyes and she didn’t want to give free time away to Lavrov.

Kyra stumbled over to the kitchen and fired up the coffeemaker on the counter. The Russian brands in the cabinet were black and bitter, and Kyra drained three cups to the dregs once the machine started to produce. She poured a fourth mug, set it down on the kitchen table, and looked at her list. There was only one name left on it.

Her hands were shaking hard, her eyes fighting her attempts to focus on the page, and her mind jumping from idea to idea every few seconds. When the caffeine finally passed through her system, Kyra knew that she had reached her limits. The dark living room was close and the couch looked soft, but she refused to surrender so completely. She stumbled up the stairs to the second level, wandered into the first bedroom on the right, fell on the bed, and let the oblivion take her without a fight.