But to get that far, she could not be caught — and the Americans were very good at catching.
She’d gone for a long run through Glover Park near the embassy as soon as she’d ended her secure video call with Dudko. The run stilled her nerves and allowed her to work through the specifics of a plan — and choose her team.
The meeting tonight had to happen someplace neutral. A hotel she’d never used to meet another operative, or to administer a polygraph to a potential foreign agent. It had to be someplace not frequented by spies — no small task for an area like D.C., where spying was the national pastime.
Elizaveta had taken three hours to drive out of D.C., picking a random Hampton Inn off Interstate 81 north of Winchester after a meandering journey to Front Royal and through the Shenandoah forest that was sure to scrape off the FBI agents who routinely followed her. There were several who rotated through, but she called them Bullwinkle and Rocky, no matter who they happened to be at the moment.
Once she’d chosen the Hampton Inn, she used a prepaid phone to call and inform her two most trusted men of the location. She’d made no specific plans in advance, so the Americans would have nothing to intercept and no idea where to plant listening devices in advance of her meeting. Even so, she spoke in code, using a one-time pad so only her men could understand. The only way the FBI would have the single-use codebook is if one of these two men had turned. If that was the case, she was lost anyway. Once she was in the hotel room, mobile phones would go in the mini-fridge and all appliances would be unplugged.
If it had been possible to conduct the meeting on the surface of the moon, she would have done so. This assignment was beyond sensitive.
It was madness.
Bobkova had no moral qualms against killing. Some would say she had neither morals nor qualms. She had no problem at all giving some pesky reporter a shove or inducing a toxic reaction in a traitor, but one fact of espionage was so bold as to be outlined in crimson in the operational training manuaclass="underline" Murder of the opposing team was bad business. There was nothing like losing one of their own that galvanized either side into hunting moles and rooting out spies. The FBI would devote hundreds, even thousands, of agents to find the culprit. Smert shpionam—Stalin’s NKVD motto of “Death to spies”—became an all-too-real possibility. Notions of righteous vengeance gave everyone itchy trigger fingers. Beyond that, the real work would grind to a halt. The added scrutiny after a killing would make intelligence gathering next to impossible. Even if Bobkova was somehow able to hide her involvement in an assassination, expulsion was a foregone conclusion for anyone remotely suspected — and she did not want to leave the West. Capitalism was the “main enemy,” but it provided for a comfortable apartment and fresh fruit all year round.
There were ways to stay, but they were unthinkable. Were they not?
She looked at the two men across from her in the dim hotel lighting and slid a sheet of thin onionskin paper across the faux-leather ottoman before leaning back in the rolling desk chair. The men would take a moment to read the instructions. She was ninety-nine percent sure that there were no listening devices in the room, but one percent was enough to blow up in her face, so she remained careful. The fewer words they spoke out loud regarding the actual plan the better.
The men smelled of heavily scented Russian soap and a shellacking of American cologne. The combination might have worked in other circumstances, but the tight confines of the hotel room had quickly taken on the assaultive odor of an airport duty-free shop. They both had mild crushes on Bobkova, and she assumed the cologne was for her benefit. It did not matter. They wouldn’t be here long. And Bobkova did not plan to get any closer to either of these men than she already was. Maybe Gorev. He was young and muscular and knew how to shave his ears. But that would have to be later. To do anything now would show favoritism, which would just piss off Pugin. Even he was not entirely unpleasant to look at, not handsome, but he would have been okay with a little grooming.
Both were fit, battle-hardened, and wise to the ways of the street. Experienced intelligence operatives, possessed of the added brutish edge that made them valuable for this type of idiotic mission. She would beat the shit out of that fool Dudko for forcing her into this. If he got her sent back to Russia, she would kill him. Perhaps she would kill him anyway.
Gorev rose from his stool and walked to the bathroom without speaking. He had buzz-cut blond hair and a sad smile that belied his thuggish skills. She heard him flush the toilet. There was hardly any need. The flimsy paper would disintegrate the moment it touched moisture of any kind. Even the humid air of Washington, D.C., would render it unreadable mush in a matter of days. Gorev came into the short hall and leaned against the wall and waited for his partner to finish reading over his own briefing paper for the second time. At forty, Viktor Pugin was older than Gorev by ten years, with dark eyes on a pie-pan face. Far too many black hairs sprouted from his ears for Elizaveta’s taste, but his extra years had brought with them a certain contemplative nature that she respected. He was quick and careful, with just the right measure of each.
She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, looking at each man in turn, studying them to gauge their mood.
“An interesting choice of objectives,” Gorev said, idly bouncing his head softly against the frame of the bathroom door.
Pugin peered at her over the top of his paper, putting a finer point on the matter. “The plan is workable, but the objective is insanity. May I ask where this work order came from?”
Bobkova used her feet to swivel the hotel desk chair while she considered how much to tell them.
“This comes from the highest level,” she said.
Pugin gave a soft chuckle. “The highest level always has deniability.”
She wanted to take a comb to the man’s wild eyebrows, but his directness was refreshing. Gone were the days of the Soviet assassin, ready to blindly march out and do wet work for the Rodina with no questions asked, dutifully waiting for some other Soviet assassin to come along and do the same to him if he messed up — or even if he did not. Had killing someone become more difficult? No, that was not it. But getting caught was certainly easier these days.
“It comes from high enough,” she said.
31
“Not very subtle.” President Ryan tossed a pile of eight-by-ten photographs on the desk and rubbed exhausted eyes. He wore a pair of faded jeans and the gray T-shirt he’d been sleeping in, under a dark blue jacket with the presidential seal on the chest.
Bob Burgess, Mary Pat, Scott Adler, and Arnie van Damm were also present in the Oval. The rest of the National Security Council principals were already scheduled to arrive at the middle-of-the-night meeting, but Burgess had gotten Ryan up early to brief him on developments in Russia.
“They don’t have to be,” the SecDef said. “It’s no great secret that Eastern Ukraine is de facto Russian territory. Crimea gave Moscow fifty percent more claimed coastline on the Sea of Azov, and more of an excuse to patrol it. Yermilov loyalists run a couple of false-flag operations against Russian citizens and he can send in his troops to protect them.”
“That makes sense,” Scott Adler said. “The Ministry of Defense issued a statement this morning describing this as a combination military exercise and peacekeeping force. I spoke to Foreign Minister Zubov this morning. He assures me there is nothing to worry about.”
Burgess scoffed. “I’m sure he did.”
Ryan flipped through the satellite photos in front of him again. Russian troops had been on the border with Ukraine for years, but thousands more had arrived in the past ten hours, along with attendant armored personnel carriers and mechanized artillery units. Numerous destroyers and frigates had convoyed off the coast in the Sea of Azov while more appeared to be en route. One photo alone showed the missile cruiser Moskva, the destroyer Priazovye, and the reconnaissance ship Panteleyev of the Mediterranean Fleet moving through the Turkish Straits into the Black Sea.