Her disguise was more superficial than she would have liked, but time hadn’t allowed for better. Given a few days’ notice, the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology could have turned her into an overweight old man missing a limb. As it was, she was still a woman, though her hair was now raven black and longer, her chest larger, and her face rounder courtesy of glasses and small wads inside her cheeks. The acne was her true masterpiece given the lack of time and supplies, and the ill-fitting jacket and skirt were an insult to fashion. Her false ID was a larger worry. It was good enough to pass cursory inspection, but nothing more. There had been no time to manufacture anything better. If the Russian desk officers manning the visa line were as bored as the U.S. State Department officers at their own embassy seemed to be with the same job, the plastic card might pass muster.
The true challenge would lie in convincing the Russians to let her into the same room with Maines. Strelnikov’s file had given her a possible way around that problem, but she would have to find a Russian bureaucrat who wasn’t completely obtuse.
The guards waved her and a few others through the entrance. Kyra walked through the ornate metal doors and wiped her feet on the mat before stepping onto the gray stone floor and taking in the room. The room was more modern than she’d imagined. Her Russian hosts clearly had renovated the space in the recent past. Only the Roman columns standing in the corners hinted at the original architecture. The walls were off-white, with pictures of current Russian officials and the Kremlin breaking up the monochrome. The room was also quiet, with a few Russian staffers speaking German with accents so fierce that even Kyra could tell they were mangling the language.
The line snaked along inside the building for another hour before she finally reached the visa desk. The consulate officer was a young woman with short, dark hair cut in a bob and unfashionable glasses covering green eyes. “Aufenthaltserlaubnis bitte?” she asked. Her German accent was rough, even to Kyra’s unfamiliar ear.
“English?” Kyra asked.
The Russian girl looked up, nonplussed. “English?” she asked. Kyra nodded.
The girl frowned, stood, and walked into another room, leaving Kyra at the desk. Another ten-minute wait gave her time to admire the friezes bordering the ceiling until a Russian man, neatly dressed in a dark suit and equally black tie approached her. “I am told you need assistance in English?” he said. The accent was still strong Russian, no hint of an accent from the UK or any other friendly country.
“I’ve come from the U.S. Embassy. I’m here to speak to Alden Maines,” Kyra told him.
“That is not a Russian name.”
“No, it’s an American name. Mr. Maines has, shall we say, applied to become a resident of the Russian Federation and is living here at the moment.”
The man stared at Kyra in surprise. “I am sorry, I do not know of any such person here,” he said.
“Two days ago, a Russian consulate officer visited FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to tell my government that Mr. Maines was defecting. As proof, he provided a photograph of Mr. Maines taken at the Schönefeld Airport. So he either came here, or someone here knows where he’s staying in Berlin.”
The embassy officer smirked. “I cannot help you. Clearly, your information must be incorrect.”
“Clearly,” Kyra said. “I will need to speak with one of your intelligence officers.”
“I believe you have been misinformed,” the man said after taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “Unlike many other countries, intelligence officers do not work in our embassies.”
Kyra smiled faintly at the brazen lie. “Of course not,” she said, her condescending tone lost on the man. She pulled an index card and a pen from her coat pocket, scribbled a word and four Cyrillic letters on it, and offered it to the man. “Show this to whoever is handling Mr. Maines upstairs. He’ll know what it means. I’ll wait here.”
The consulate officer took the card and stared at it. His face turned sour as he read it, and he turned and left without a word. Kyra smiled at the confused young Russian girl, then walked to an empty chair along the wall and took a seat.
“General Lavrov?” The guards had held the consulate officer in the hallway for a half hour. The doors finally opened and Lavrov and several other men the diplomat didn’t know were emptying into the hallway.
“Yes?”
“My apologies for disturbing you sir,” the consulate officer said, walking alongside the senior official, trying to match his pace. “A young American woman came to the visa desk a short time ago and asked to meet with an ‘Alden Maines.’ When I told her that I did not know of any such man, she asked to see an intelligence officer. I advised her that that would not be possible, and she gave me this. I took it to one of the GRU officers in residence and he told me that I should show it to you, that you would know what it meant.” He held out the index card.
Lavrov stopped, took the card, and read the lettering.
Strelnikov
А Б Ю Я
“Where is the this woman now?” Lavrov asked.
“She said that she would wait by the visa desk for your answer.”
Lavrov exhaled, folded the card in half, and placed it in his shirt pocket. “Escort her upstairs.”
“Where shall I bring her?”
“The roof.”
Kyra hardly needed her talent for reading body language to see the mixture of stunned embarrassment and anger spread across the consular officer’s face as he crossed the room, but she was in no mood to indulge in schadenfreude. A surge of anxiety rose in her chest faster than she could suppress, and her heart began to pound, the adrenaline adding to the tremors that the Red Bull had left in her hands.
“If you will please accompany me?” the Russian said, his language more courteous than his manner. She doubted he knew how to change his voice when speaking English to show irritation.
Kyra stood and followed the man. An embassy guard joined them at the door and walked behind them. She wondered how many CIA officers had ever seen the inside of this building, and this level in particular. It had to be a small club.
The officer and the guard led her to a utility stairwell, which they climbed for several stories until it reached a gray metal door. The officer pushed it open and motioned Kyra through. She stepped onto the roof, the guard followed, and the consulate officer closed the door behind them.
Kyra scanned the open space and saw the British Embassy to the west, the U.S. Embassy just beyond, and the Brandenburg Gate farther west and north. The Russian building on which she stood was larger than both allied embassies together, she realized. I guess you can do that when you own the city around it for fifty years, she thought.
A man stood on the far edge of the roof, looking down at the Unter den Linden traffic below. Maines? No, the man was too old. She began to trudge across the roof, stepping around the larger rain puddles, hands deep in her coat pockets to hide the tremors. Time to play, she told herself.
Arkady Lavrov heard the footsteps and turned to see a young woman making her way across the wet stone. “And you are?” he said. His English was rusty but his accent was still light.