The Fall of Moscow Station

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lavrov had never seen one of his Spetsnaz look so battered outside of a training accident. The man’s comrades had brought him to the hospital themselves rather than trusting him to an ambulance crew, and the Botkin was one of the better hospitals in Moscow. It was the facility to which most foreigners in the country came for treatment and was well equipped by Russian standards.

The soldier was lying in a reclining bed, an IV in his arm, dripping saline and morphine both at a slow rate. Both of the man’s eyes were badly bruised, deep blue, black-and-green circles surrounding them and stretching into his forehead and cheeks. The surgeon had stanched the bleeding, set his nose, and stitched up the torn flesh on the back of his neck. He’d assured Lavrov that the soldier would suffer no permanent damage from the Taser, something about high voltage but low amperage. But the man’s face would take weeks to heal up. He’d tried to refuse the painkiller, but the soldier’s team leader had finally told him that there would be no shame in taking it. The morphine had hit his system and the wounded commando had slumped into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Lavrov regretted having to wake him, but the soldier would understand, even if the doctor did not. The surgeon had not wanted to lower the man’s morphine drip, but Lavrov gave the order. It was too hard to think and focus one’s swollen eyes while riding a morphine high.

“This one?” Lavrov asked, holding up a photograph, the tenth in the stack.

“Nyet,” the soldier replied, his voice strained.

Another photo. “This one?” Lavrov asked again.

“Nyet.”

Lavrov pursed his lips in frustration. Hundreds of women had entered Moscow from Berlin through the international airport in the last two days. The general decided to skip to the one woman he was interested in most. If the soldier didn’t identify her, an aide could handle the rest of the stack.

He rifled through the pictures until he found the only one he wanted. He held it up. “This one?”

The soldier stared, trying to focus on the picture. He forced his head to move forward, bring the image an inch closer. “Da.”

“You are sure?”

“I only saw her for a few seconds, and that while running. She had blond hair, not red, and pulled back away from her face, which was thinner. But it could be the same woman.” The soldier let his head fall back on the pillow.

“Very good,” Lavrov said. “We are most proud of you. You have done your duty.” He was surprised the younger man had recognized the American woman through his haze. It had taken the GRU chairman almost six hours going through the photographs to find the one he imagined could have been the same woman he had met on the embassy roof. He would have preferred to let a subordinate take care of sorting through the photographs, but everyone else who had seen the woman was back in Berlin, except Maines. Lavrov didn’t trust Maines to pick her out without the threat of pain, and Lavrov had to reserve that tool for another request he might have to give the traitor if his next inquiry turned up empty.

“No, General,” the soldier protested, “I failed in my duty. She escaped. I want to return to duty and assist in her arrest.”

“Do not worry about that, Captain,” Lavrov assured the injured man. “The operation is not done. We do not reinforce failure, but one failure is not the end. You will yet have your chance.”

“Thank you, General,” the young soldier replied.

Lavrov nodded, patted the young man’s hand, then looked at the photograph. She is here. Miss Stryker is in the Rodina, he thought. The thought sent a happy thrill up his spine. It was so rare to find an American who was not overly cautious in this business, who was inclined to attack and trust in her skills to finish her mission.

You are a bold one, devushka. But where are you?

“You humiliate me in front of the president, and now you wish a favor?” Grigoriyev asked, astonished. Lavrov’s arrogance was boundless. The FSB director was tempted to cut off the call, but decided that would be unwise. Soothing a wounded ego was a poor excuse for passing up an opportunity to collect some political intelligence that might prove valuable sometime in the future, possibly sooner than he might expect.

“I would not call it a favor,” Lavrov objected. “The FSB is charged with internal security. I merely wish to know if a particular woman has been seen entering the American Embassy here in the city. Surely that is a trivial request for you.” The FSB kept the Western embassies under a constant watch. The GRU director no doubt was pained that he had to come to Grigoriyev for that information after having ridiculed him twice in the last day.

“And yet you are making the request yourself,” Grigoriyev pointed out. “Yes, it would be trivial for me to get you an answer, but not so trivial for you to pose the question. So I presume you have identified the woman who has been putting your men in the hospitals?”

He was sure that Lavrov was frowning on the other side of the phone. “I have,” Lavrov replied, surprising the FSB director. “I know where she entered the country, which flight, and when it landed. But making an arrest would be much easier if I knew whether she was operating out of the American Embassy or that of a U.S. ally.”

“Ah,” Grigoriyev replied. “Of course, we would need all of the information you have on this woman to make any positive identification.”

“Of course,” Lavrov conceded. “I can have a courier ferry the file to your office immediately if you are willing to assist me.”

Assist you? Grigoriyev thought. The man was infuriating. Even when asking for information, the GRU director could not help but twist the conversation to place himself above the person whose help he needed. Still, if my people could catch this woman before Lavrov… yes, that would do nicely, he thought. Arresting the lone CIA spy in Moscow would shift the balance of influence that had tipped so very dangerously in Lavrov’s favor. “Without question, the FSB stands ready to assist you, General,” Grigoriyev said. “The security of the Rodina is more important than our small differences.”

“Without question,” Lavrov replied. “Expect my man to arrive within the hour.”

“I will admit him without delay,” Grigoriyev assured him. “We will have an answer for you as quickly as we can manage.”

“Your assistance is appreciated.”

“Do svidaniya, General.”

Lavrov hung up his phone. Losing that small bit of face would be worth the sacrifice if Grigoriyev came back with anything useful. Lavrov’s own men were watching the U.S. Embassy, but it was possible that Stryker had entered some other allied embassy, the British or Canadian buildings most likely. His men were not watching those. Grigoriyev’s were.

If Stryker was cautious, inclined to self-preservation, the smart move for her would be to leave the country. Her best defense had been secrecy, and the Puchkov operation had stolen that. So it was possible that Grigoriyev’s men would catch Miss Stryker trying to escape the Rodina. Lavrov doubted she would try to fly out through any of the major airports. With her cover identity blown, she would expect the FSB would be watching all of the major transportation hubs for hundreds of miles around Moscow. No, more likely she would try to cross into one of the border countries in a car, or perhaps even abandon her car and try to hike across. It had been done before and the FSB would be watching.

But he didn’t think Stryker would run.

The general retrieved another beer from his small refrigerator, cracked the bottle open, and took a long swig before leaning back in his chair. The young woman knew about his operations. She needed to be neutralized somehow, and Lavrov was prepared to enlist Grigoriyev’s help to reach that goal. The FSB director didn’t need to know all the details, and he would be happy to have any part in Lavrov’s success. So Lavrov would throw him those crumbs. The bigger operation promised glory enough that he could be generous to his old enemy. Besides, being a small part of another’s victory could taste more bitter than suffering failure alone, and this game was his and Stryker’s to play.

She was a move behind. He had confirmed that she had tried to contact one of the top few names on his list of traitors. Had she tried to contact Topilin? Possibly. Based on the time she had entered the country, he suspected that she wouldn’t have been able to get to the now-dead man’s dacha before Sokolov had arrested the turncoat. She might have visited the dead man’s dacha and found it already sacked. If so, his men might have been able to grab her there, had Sokolov left a sentry team.

Lavrov frowned. That had been a lapse, but an understandable one, he supposed. Sokolov had had no reason to suspect anyone would have been trying to reach Topilin, and Lavrov had told him that there would be more names to come. The colonel likely had wanted to have all his men available for the next arrest, not leaving them in the woods watching a ransacked cabin. But if Stryker had tried to reach Topilin, then it would be a sure sign that Lavrov had assessed her mission correctly and he knew who her next target must be. The only question now was how to steer her where he wanted her to go.

Grigoriyev didn’t call for four hours, time enough for Lavrov to finish half a bottle of Viski Kizlyarskoe — brand whiskey, a single malt produced in Daghestan. It helped the afternoon pass more smoothly. The GRU chairman had long since grown tired of vodka, as had most of the elites who could afford better. He swirled the glass, sniffed at it, and smelled… what was that? Honey, he thought. Lavrov downed the dregs in the glass. Yes, much better than vodka, easier on the throat, if not the liver. He would never admit it, of course. Vodka was the national drink and had the weight of history on its side. His people loved their liquor and vodka had a special place in the Russian mind and heart. The Kremlin had been cracking down on alcohol consumption for years now, trying to keep the people from drinking themselves to death, but the leadership had never seriously considered prohibition. No, that was out of the question. The Americans had tried that once, with feckless results, and they didn’t love their alcohol as the Russian people did. It was said that when Russia had been given a choice between Christianity and Islam, it had chosen the former only because the latter prohibited the drinking of spirits.

The secure-line telephone finally sounded. Lavrov set the glass on the desk and answered the call. “Ya slushayu vas.”

“Arkady Vladimirovich.” It was the FSB director.

“Thank you for responding so swiftly.”

“Of course, but you will not like the information I have to report,” Grigoriyev advised. “My counterintelligence officer reports that none of our surveillance teams have observed a woman matching the photograph you provided entering the American Embassy during the last week, or any other embassy of any country allied with the Americans. If she is CIA and still on our soil, then she is operating out of some other location. We are reviewing our files now and drawing up a list of possible sites where she could be.”

Lavrov narrowed his eyes. He’d expected that answer but he disliked it all the same. It would make finding the woman more tedious. “You have my thanks, Anatoly.”

“You will, of course, share any information you obtain concerning her whereabouts with me,” Grigoriyev told him. He didn’t mean it as a request, though he knew Lavrov would tell him nothing.

“Of course. Do svidaniya.”

“Do svidaniya.” The line went dead. Lavrov cradled the phone, then sat in his chair and tried to think through the whiskey-fueled haze that had settled over his mind. He’d drunk too much waiting for that call and now found it difficult to assemble his thoughts.

Stryker is here, but she is not operating out of her country’s embassy or any other. A safe house, then. It had to be, but where?

Grigoriyev’s FSB had the information on that, and Lavrov groaned at the thought of calling his adversary back and having to plead with him for access to those particular files. It would pile shame on humiliation.

Lavrov had considered letting her go and making contact with her in the United States, but that seemed too great a risk. Trying to turn a hostile target on her own home soil could backfire in such spectacular fashion. She had to be brought in.

But does she have to die? Lavrov asked himself. Possibly not. She was an intriguing young lady, and she could be a great help in establishing his own Red Cell in the GRU. He doubted that she would betray her country. She did not seem the type, but he saw no reason not to make her the offer. There was no risk in it for him, and the reward could be a tidy one, however improbable.

But he could not make the pitch until they could talk. So how to find her? he wondered. He stared at the phone, thought about dialing Grigoriyev’s number. There had to be some other way—

Yes, there was another way, and he would have come to it sooner but for the whiskey twisting his thoughts out of shape. The GRU director wondered if Alden Maines might not be willing to give up the information in exchange for some of that fine drink. Probably, Lavrov mused, but why waste it on him? He didn’t need to bribe the American to talk anymore. Fear of the hammer was enough now. He should have asked the traitor about safe houses before but it had not seemed like a priority. With all of the CIA officers forced out, their covert facilities should have been neutralized, left waiting to be identified and sacked at his leisure.

The only questions now were whether Maines had familiarized himself with his former services’ safe-house locations in Moscow, and if the traitor could focus long enough to remember. It was one thing to try to remember information while drinking alcohol. It was another to do so with morphine running through the veins. That brave Spetsnaz officer had done it, but Lavrov suspected that Maines was neither so driven nor so resilient.

He picked up his telephone. “Please tell Mr. Maines that we need to have another conversation in my office. When is he due for his next dose of medication? Very good. Withhold it from him, and let him know that it will be waiting for him when our discussion is done.” Lavrov hung up the phone and retrieved a box of pushpins and a map of greater Moscow from his desk. He wondered how many locations Maines was going to mark down for him.

She had driven for more than an hour into the countryside with the GPS turned off. If she didn’t know where she was, she figured the Russians wouldn’t be able to predict her path either. They were going to try to triangulate on the signal she was about to send and she didn’t want them to have any kind of head start if they had any clue what neighborhood the safe house was in. Kyra’s sense of direction was good and always had been. It was one of the blessings granted by a childhood growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where back roads were plentiful and the sun and landmarks were hidden more often than not by the forests that swallowed the gravel roads where she’d learned to drive. Moscow was behind her to the east, and Kyra was reminded how similar the world always looked when there were no signs in foreign languages to remind her that she wasn’t home.

She stopped the truck on some side road, barely a dirt trail that probably belonged to some farmer, and sat in the cab until the sun slipped down below the horizon and the world around her went dark. The Russian stars looked no different from those she’d watched in Virginia as a girl. She was in the right hemisphere to see the familiar constellations. In a few hours, the same sky would hover over her home in the United States, but the thought did nothing to calm her anxiety. The darkness felt oppressive, like it was Lavrov’s personal ally.

She spent the afternoon in the cab of the truck, sleeping on and off, her mind unwilling to let her go for more than an hour at a time. She stepped outside, stretched, ate what little food was in her pack, and then sat in the grass, trying to reason her way through the situation. In truth, there was only one course of action. She only had the name of one final asset and only one means of communicating with him. Kyra crawled back into the cab and lay on the seat. The hours passed by slowly, and she faded out in the truck again, a deep sleep this time. She awoke to see the Milky Way above her head, a sight that was always washed out back home by the light pollution of Leesburg. Stars were everywhere, the sky alive with a picture of the entire galaxy that stretched out above her in all directions. The sight was peaceful and she stared at it for an hour before deciding to move.

Kyra loaded the shortwave transmitter into the backpack, extending the rubber antenna through the port on the top of the pack. She pulled out an LED light and turned it on, pushing the night away from her path and wincing at how bright the beam was. The woman looked around, but saw no lights anywhere in the distance that could suggest another person was anywhere within her line of sight.

There was a hill a quarter mile beyond and she hiked through the grass until she reached it. It was steep but not especially high, less than two hundred feet to the summit, with rocks and roots bursting out of the dirt. Kyra reached the top in less than thirty minutes, checking her watch at a constant rate as she climbed. She was almost out of time and she wanted to get as much altitude as possible before she had to reach out to the asset.

The man’s name was Colonel Semyon Petrovich Zhitomirsky. The file said that he was a GRU chief of staff in some office whose name meant nothing to her, but which had some dealings with the Foundation for Advanced Research. Kyra honestly did not know what kind of access the man might have, but he was her last hope as far as she could see. The other assets on the now-vaporized list were all positioned further and further from the Foundation that seemed to be the center of Lavrov’s operation. If Zhitomirsky could not help her, she was out of options.

Kyra set herself and the backpack on the grass. Crossing her legs, she opened up the pack and turned on the shortwave transmitter. The screen lit up the darkness. The communications plan Zhitomirsky’s handler had set up for him five years earlier called for him to monitor a shortwave frequency once a month using a small radio the Agency had provided. Once a month, on the day corresponding to the number of the month—1 January, 2 February, 3 March, until year’s end — the Russian would turn on his radio for one hour beginning at nine o’clock. The handler would speak only one word, a woman’s name, either “Olga,” “Anna,” or “Nina,” each of which would tell the man which meeting site they would use.

The fourth name, “Valery,” would trigger an emergency meeting two hours after the transmission at a prearranged site. Kyra hadn’t bothered to memorize any of the sites tied to the other names.

She twisted the knob, tuning the transmitter to the frequency that she’d memorized from the encrypted file on the classified computer on the receiver. Her earpiece barraged her with a cacophony of broadcasts… an American broadcaster discussing the coming End of Days… a political broadcast in Spanish denouncing U.S. interference in Venezuela… a Frenchman singing off-key some folk song… some Chinese broadcast that sounded like a news report from the speaker’s tone of voice, but Kyra really couldn’t tell. She finally pulled the earpiece out to save her ears until the screen reported she had arrived at 26770 kilohertz.

Kyra replaced the earpiece and checked her watch. She had to wait three minutes, and then held off two more for good measure in case Zhitomirsky was late. Then she picked up the microphone and depressed the button on the microphone.

“Valery,” she said. Kyra released the button, waiting to hear for Zhitomirsky’s response. There was none.

Kyra stared at her watch, waiting until one minute had passed, then pressed the button and repeated the name.

“So you are here, devushka.”

It was Lavrov’s voice.

Despair tore through Kyra like the claws on a bear might rip through her skin. She grimaced hard, squeezing the microphone in her hand until her knuckles wanted to crack and she had to hold back a sob.

Lavrov had Zhitomirsky. She didn’t even know when or how the general had arrested the asset. He must’ve had multiple teams, running multiple operations at once. She was one officer, operating in the black. She couldn’t even begin to keep up.

She’d been a fool to come, to think she could make any difference at all.

I failed, Jon, she told her missing partner. I can’t beat him. He’s everywhere.

Are you going to quit? the voice inside her head asked.

Kyra opened her eyes, and anger rushed into her, taking over. She pushed the button on the mic again. “Yes, I’m here.”

“I had so hoped we could talk again,” Lavrov said. “I would have preferred to see you when we did, but I can accept this for now.”

“And why would you want to talk to me?” Kyra asked, not trying to keep the disgust out of her voice. She wondered who else might be hearing their conversation.

“Because I admire you, young lady,” Lavrov said, not bothering to hide the pleasure in his own. “You are a bold one. I have worked in our business for a long time, longer, I think, than you have been alive, and never have I met one such as you. To walk into our embassy and demand to see a turncoat? How could I not reward such initiative? And then you came here, rushing in when all of your comrades were scurrying out because I told them to. A woman who will not be cowed? Oh, that is its own kind of beauty, and so rare. It must be appreciated… but I must ask… why did you come here? When all of those who could help you went home, what reason did you have for running toward the sound of the guns?”

“You killed my partner,” Kyra accused, the words escaping through clenched teeth. She wondered how many people around the world heard the accusation. The transmission was unencrypted and shortwave signals broadcast at night could reflect off the ionosphere, traveling over the horizon for thousands of miles. In her fury, she didn’t really care now.

There was a pause before Lavrov spoke. “The man taken at Vogelsang? Oh, he was a brave one too, that one. To throw himself at two of my best men? He must have cared about you very much to do that. I should like to have known him better, but I have little spare time and he is not a talker.”

Kyra’s breath caught in her throat.

Is?

Lavrov was a Russian. Had he misspoken, chosen the wrong word as he translated his speech from his native language into hers? No, the man’s English was too good… no broken sentences, no dropped words, too many rhetorical flourishes.

Jon was alive. Or was Lavrov playing on her emotions, trying to unsettle her thinking, get her to make a mistake?

The despair in her mind vanished and Kyra felt the adrenaline begin to take over. She gathered her thoughts, then lifted the microphone to her mouth again. “He’s a talker, if he likes you,” Kyra corrected him. “But he doesn’t like many people.”

“A sensible man, then,” Lavrov said. “Perhaps I shall try again with him. In any case, I do wish you to understand that my admiration for you is quite real.”

“I don’t care what you think about me,” Kyra told the man.

“Oh, I do know that,” Lavrov replied. “Courage and disdain for the opinions of others grow together. You could not be what I admire so much if my thoughts and desires matter to you at all.” There was a pause in his speech, and then Lavrov spoke again. “But now you must care what I think, devushka. I have a choice to present and you will make it. I want you to work for me. The other gentleman you met on the embassy roof that day is no longer in a position to feed me useful information, but you could return home and fill that role. Agree, and I will release your partner to you. You will go home, a hero who pulled her partner out of the ashes. Refuse, and I cannot let you go free. I will catch you. The Rodina is my home, my battlefield, and you will lose. So I offer you the only way out that exists. Go home with your friend but in my debt, or not at all, Miss Stryker.”

Kyra stared down at the microphone in her hand in horror. Lavrov had called her by name, her true name, not the one listed on her passport and other identification papers. Maines gave me up, she fumed, anger burning hot in her chest. She should have expected it. The man had given up every other bit of information in his head, why not her name too?

She shook her head. No time for that, she ordered. He wants you confused, angry, off balance, so you’ll say or do something stupid. She had to focus on Lavrov’s choice.

No, not Lavrov’s choice… a Hobson’s choice, she thought.

No, he wants you to think it’s a Hobson’s choice. He still doesn’t know where you are. He has Jon, so he thinks he has leverage over you. He thinks he knows what choice you will make. Kyra thought for a moment that it was Jon’s voice, but realized that it was her own.

He hadn’t really spoken to her since Vogelsang, she knew. It had always been her own thoughts. So what are you going to do? Become another Maines? An Aldrich Ames? A Robert Hannsen?

Kyra searched her own feelings. It took her only a few seconds to settle on the answer she had really known all along.

“Moln labé, General,” Kyra told Lavrov.

“Ah, an educated woman,” Lavrov said. “We are at the pass at Thermopylae, you are Leonidas and I am Xerxes, am I? ‘Having come, take?’ But you came here, to me.”

“We say things a little different back home. ‘Come and get me.’ ”

“You do not like to let others set the rules of the game, do you, devushka?” Lavrov replied. “You will reconsider… but my patience is not infinite. You can contact me on this frequency any night at this time.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll meet you soon,” she told him.

“Indeed,” Lavrov said. “I do look forward to it, Miss Stryker.”

Kyra turned off the transmitter and the screen faded. Assume Lavrov isn’t lying. He has Jon, but Jon’s alive, she told herself again. Where are they holding him? How do I find him? Even if I can find him, how do I get in and get him out? How—

Why do you always run straight in? Jon’s voice repeated in her head. Find a better way for once.

Kyra lay on her back in the grass, staring up at the stars. She did not move until the answer came.

When it did, she pulled out her smartphone, launched the secure recording app, and began to talk. “This is GRANITE. I have reason to believe that all assets in this AOR have been compromised…”

Sokolov pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to the incinerator room. He pulled it wide open and held it as the guards led the accused in. The man shuffled along as best he could with the shackles keeping him from taking a full stride. The interrogator was patient and let the prisoner move at his own pace. There was no hurry now.

Sokolov dismissed the guards. “Stand outside until I call you, please,” he said. They nodded, took up their places in the hall, and closed the door. He pulled out a chair for the prisoner. “Please, sit,” he said to the man in chains. “I’m sure that it was a difficult walk.”

The prisoner looked at him, suspicious, but reclined in the chair.

Sokolov reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the folded papers he’d carried there. “You are Semyon Petrovich Zhitomirsky,” he said.

“I am,” the prisoner replied.

“And you were a colonel?”

“I am,” Zhitomirsky said.

“You were,” Sokolov said. “Your commission in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye has been revoked, I’m afraid. That is the first and least punishment given to traitors to the Rodina.”

“I have been convicted of nothing. I have confessed to nothing,” Zhitomirsky countered.

“It does not matter,” the interrogator told his prisoner. “You have been identified as a spy for the United States of America. The source who revealed you is unimpeachable, or so I’m told, and the evidence found in your dacha leaves you guilty beyond question.”

“Lies. I am innocent.”

“You did not even try to run.”

“As I told you, I am innocent.”

“And you have proof of your innocence?” Sokolov asked.

“I cannot prove a negative. Neither can I prove that our fellow officers planted their evidence in my home—”

“Please, sir, you insult me,” Sokolov scolded him. “The evidence was neither planted nor fabricated and we both know it. You are not here to defend yourself. Your guilt has been confirmed to the satisfaction of the highest authorities and there will be neither a trial nor appeal. You are here because I am offering you a chance to heal your conscience, if you still have one. If you are a religious man, you may think of me as a priest to whom you can confess your sins. If you are not, you may share with me any words you might care to have recorded. Beyond that, there truly is nothing to say.”

Even in the harsh fluorescent light, Sokolov could see Zhitomirsky’s face turn white, almost the color of his dress shirt. “No!” the shackled Russian protested. “This is not the Soviet Union! Not anymore! The old ways… we don’t—”

Sokolov sighed as the prisoner ranted, then waved his hand in the air, signaling for silence. “Sir, protesting to me is pointless. Even if I had the authority to release you or alter your sentence, I would not because then our superiors would execute me in your place. But you are here because you chose to be here—”

“I did not!” Zhitomirsky objected.

“Yes, you did,” Sokolov told him. “I am always amazed at the shortsightedness of traitors. Did you honestly believe that you would never be found? And of course you knew what would follow if and when you were found. You were an officer of the GRU for twenty years. You took the counterintelligence training. You knew how past traitors were treated. And you still chose this course.”

Zhitomirsky stared at him, the inevitable finally settling in his mind. His head fell, his chin almost to his chest, and great racking sobs exploded out of him. The interrogator had seen it many times. He didn’t judge the man or think him a coward, but neither did he feel pity for him. The prisoner was simply going through the cycle that every condemned man suffered in his closing moments.

“Semyon Petrovich, if you have nothing to say that you want me to carry back out of this room, then I hope you will do me the kind favor of answering a single question,” Sokolov said.

Zhitomirsky raised his head, tears on his cheeks. “What is it?”

“Why did you do it? Surely you had a reason.”

The silence lasted for almost ten seconds before the heaving sobs returned, and it took the prisoner two minutes to compose himself enough to speak again. “I hated my superiors,” he said, finally. “They told me that I would never be promoted to general.”

“And wisely so, it seems,” Sokolov said. “Petty revenge. You had no better reason than petty revenge. To salve your ego, you sold your country. Utter selfishness at its worst. I could have respected you had you shared some noble reason for your actions. If a man is going to betray his country, he should do so for his principles.” He folded the papers, returned them to his pocket, and stood.

“I have done you the favor you asked,” Zhitomirsky said. “Will you do one for me?”

“I will consider it.”

“Let me stand up when you shoot me,” the prisoner asked.

“I regret that I can’t grant that favor,” Sokolov said. It was the truth.

“You would deny me that? Such a small request?”

“I must, because you are not going to be shot.”

Zhitomirsky blinked, and hope passed across his face. “I… I am to go to prison?”

“No,” Sokolov said. “I am under orders that you are not to leave this room. But your hated superiors have such contempt for you that they do not wish to waste a bullet on you.” He closed the file, stood, and opened the door.

Two men walked in, both dressed in coveralls. The lead man, a muscular, balding man, reached into a pocket, pulled a Taser, and moved toward the prisoner. His partner, a skinnier, younger man with a military haircut, kept walking toward the incinerator.

Confusion took hold of Zhitomirsky and he stared at the men until he figured out the simple riddle, and his face went pale again. “No!” he shouted, drawing back. The larger man pressed the Taser against Zhitomirsky’s neck, silencing his yell as every muscle in Zhitomirsky’s body seized up. The prisoner convulsed, then fell off the chair onto the floor.

The muscular guard replaced the Taser in his pocket and pulled out two pairs of handcuffs as his comrade opened the incinerator door, which squealed on ungreased iron hinges.

“The stretcher is in the corner behind the furnace,” Sokolov told them as they pulled the table and chair toward the corner to free up space for maneuvering. “Advise me when it is done.” He took up the file and left the room. He’d seen many a man die during his years of service, but one of Zhitomirsky’s superiors must truly have hated the man to have ordered this punishment. I truly wish you had escaped, Sokolov thought. No man deserves this, no matter what he has done or why.

The secure phone called for Barron’s attention. He’d come to hate the machine over the years. The mere fact that he needed a phone that could encrypt a conversation was evidence that there were enemies who would listen if they could and use what they learned to hurt his country. Barron had come to that realization early in his career and he’d started to see more such proof everywhere he looked. The guards at the gates, the badge readers at the entrances, metal doors to every vault, locks on every door. But soon he’d seen that it wasn’t just the physical barriers. The training courses, incessant reminders of “need to know” and “honor the oath,” the very artwork on the walls that paid tribute to great operations of the past where Agency officers had done unto others what the Agency desperately was trying to ensure would never happen to its own. Even the classification markings on every sheet of paper that he handled every day, dictating who did and didn’t qualify to read the information… all reminders that hatred for the United States was a constant in the world outside.

The head of the Directorate of Operations wished that he’d never had that particular epiphany. Langley was a jail of steel, glass, fiberoptic lines, and paper, and like any true prison, someone who served time became institutionalized… accustomed, even dependent on the culture it imposed, unable to adjust to the world outside, where people were free to speak what they knew. So many retired, only to come back as contractors or consultants. Others went downtown to other jobs where they could earn more but stay in CIA’s orbit. Just different prisons in the same system.

Barron had better plans. He’d long since exceeded whatever youthful ambitions he’d harbored and the loftier heights within his reach held no appeal. There was a Montana farm with his name on the deed and the day he gave his blue badge to the security office would be the last time he saw Langley. Whatever neighbors he met north of Billings were never going to know that the man who’d moved in had spent his life fighting Russians and Chinese and terrorists in the dark corners of the world.

The phone sounded for the fourth time, shaking him out of his thoughts. “Barron.”

“This is the Ops Center, sir,” announced the caller. “A secure transmission has come in and you’re going to want to hear it.”

“Bring it in.”

“Yes, sir.”

The voice on the computer file was Kyra Stryker’s. The young woman, wherever she was, had set up a sat phone, recorded the message on her smartphone, then compressed and encrypted it, and transmitted it in a single upload that likely took less than a minute. The Russians would never have been able to track it. They would have been doing well just to detect it.

“I have reason to believe that all assets in this AOR have been compromised. Whether they have been captured is unknown, but I can confirm that my three priority assets have been neutralized,” she said. Barron listened, pen in hand, but he knew that he would be writing nothing down until he’d listened to the transmission at least twice. “Also, I have no safe way to communicate with any who might have evaded capture. My hosts demonstrated during my last attempt that they knew the details of the assets’ communications plan, so we must assume that all communications methods are compromised. I also must assume that all meeting and dead-drop sites are known. To my knowledge, my safe house is still secure but that may not last indefinitely. I would appreciate any information HQ could provide on that.”

Barron closed his eyes. He’d expected this when the first news of Maines’s treason had reached him, but hearing that the Agency’s Moscow networks had been decimated was one of those pieces of news that no mental preparation could soften. After Lavrov had finished rounding up their assets, he would almost certainly turn his attention to the Agency’s safe houses and other facilities. His people would have to start from zero to rebuild everything, and they would need decades to do it.

“… Also, the host country knows my identity. Our former friend appears to have burned me to his new friends. However, I have reason to suspect that our officer believed KIA last week is alive and in host country’s custody,” Kyra reported. Barron’s eyes opened wide at that announcement. “I have no information on his condition or location, but host-country security services has offered to return him in exchange for my agreement to become their asset. I refused.”

“Good girl,” Barron muttered, nodding. Kyra could have agreed, trying to lure the Russians into a double-agent operation, but that was an exceptionally dangerous game and Lavrov would have prepared for it. Barron suspected that Lavrov’s offer never had been genuine at all, but a baited hook to get Kyra to come in from the field. For what reason, Barron wasn’t sure. He was sure that any answer would have come at a high and ugly cost that Kyra would have been made to pay.

No assets to save, no way to communicate with anyone who might be free, no safe houses, Barron reasoned. No resources. Maines had burned the Agency’s operations to the ground in Moscow. It’s time to come home, Stryker, Barron decided. There was nothing else for her to do. The question now was how to get her out—

“I have an operational plan that I want to propose,” Kyra announced. Barron’s head jerked toward the laptop playing the file. “I am uncertain about chances for success, but at this point, I see no other options. We will need time to reestablish operations in this AOR and creating confusion might be the best we can hope for. Accordingly, I propose that the following…”

Barron put pen to paper and began to scribble notes as the woman spoke to him from the Russian countryside. Kyra finished talking and the recording went silent. He played it again and reviewed his notes as she talked, making sure he had missed nothing. When she finished for the second time, he read everything over and sat back in his chair.

You devious woman, Barron thought. Kyra’s admission that she was “uncertain” whether it would work was an understatement… he wasn’t even sure what would constitute success or whether he could properly call it covert action. Stryker had been brave even to propose it, but he knew from his own experience that an officer trapped in a hostile country viewed risk and reward very differently from those sitting behind desks in northern Virginia.

And I really am one of those now, aren’t I? he thought. He’d spent most of his own career in the field, and had so often despised those above him, the former case officers who’d gotten so comfortable in the chairs they’d really been chasing all along… the ones who liked to claim “I’m one of you, I know what it’s like out there,” but who so clearly had forgotten, who’d never really wanted to be out there at all and whose eyes really had always been focused on a desk on the Agency’s seventh floor.

Barron capped his pen. Not going to be one of those, he decided.

He walked out to the foyer that separated his office from that of the director of analysis twenty feet away. Barron looked down to his secretary. “Julie, I need you to get Kathy Cooke on the line. Whatever she’s doing, tell her office that she’ll want to cut it off and call me.” He paused. His assistant knew better than to ask why he needed to call the deputy director of national intelligence. But Cooke would want to know. “Tell her it’s about Jon.”

The secretary had no idea who Jon was, but answered “yes, sir” anyway and reached for her own phone. Barron returned to his office, closed the door, and waited the hour it took for the deputy DNI to free herself and return his call.

“You think this has a prayer of working?” Kathy Cooke asked. The deputy DNI stared down at Barron’s notepad, rereading the man’s scrawl as best she could. He made it to her office at Liberty Crossing less than fifteen minutes after she’d returned his call. Barron’s explanation of Kyra’s operational plan had taken another five.

“If it was just her with the resources she has right now, not a prayer,” Barron replied. “With our help and a little bit from the embassy staff in Moscow, maybe. Lots of variables we can’t predict or control. Everyone’s timing will have to be on the money and it’s going to cost us a very nice safe house no matter what happens, but it’s ambitious and we’re desperate enough that I’d love to try it just to find out. If it doesn’t work, every asset we’ve got in Moscow is dead.”

Cooke’s mouth twisted into a wry grin, but Barron knew the woman wasn’t feeling much happiness at the moment. “She’s trying to use mental aikido on the Kremlin. The question is whether she could sell it.”

“It would be an easier sell if she had some serious evidence to prove her own bona fides to the Russians,” Barron suggested. “And someone to vouch for her.”

“Yes, it would,” Cooke agreed. “And she’s sure Jon’s alive.” That was not a question.

“She is. Me, not so much,” Barron admitted. “But if he is, this might be the only way to get him back. I don’t have a better plan and I don’t know anyone else who does. But the beauty of it is that this doesn’t even qualify as covert action… no need for the president to sign off. This is just the kind of thing we do every day, with a twist.”

“True, but we’ll have to warn him,” Cooke said. “If it hits the papers, he won’t appreciate the surprise.”

“If it works, it won’t hit the papers. That’s the real beauty of it,” Barron observed. “There’s no way the Kremlin will advertise it.”

Cooke nodded. She stared at the paper, reviewing it all in her mind, and then she looked at her subordinate. “I’ll brief Cyrus.”

“You think he’ll approve?”

“He’s been giving me a very long leash,” Cooke replied. “Sign me up and I’ll sign the check.”

“Will do,” Barron said. “Wheels up at midnight, Dulles Airport. You know the hangar.”