Jon hunted for Strelnikov’s biography, laid on top of the pile, and started to read again.
The Russian had been well traveled. Afghanistan in the eighties, Berlin when the Wall came down, Serbia in the late nineties, Baghdad during the war, Venezuela in the late aughts when Chávez was cutting deals with Ahmadinejad and the Iranians… all of the hot spots.
The connection to the Iranian program was apparent. Kyra had uncovered Iran’s illegal nuclear device in Venezuela the year before, and Strelnikov had been in that country when the foundation for that ugly partnership had been laid. Maybe he brokered it?
Something else was pulling at his thoughts. What am I not seeing?
Jon stared at the biography for another hour before he saw it. Idiot, he cursed himself. It had been there, on the page in plain sight.
Kyra stood in the drizzle for another fifteen minutes before the door opened again. She heard the rusting hinges squeak in the rain and looked at the new visitor.
Alden Maines trudged across the rooftop toward her, frustration obvious in his features. He thought about stopping, looked backward over his shoulder, saw the black-suited Russian officer guarding the stairwell, dark glasses on his face despite the overcast sky, and decided to keep up his walk.
Kyra’s heart rate picked up again, for a different reason now. The anxiety was gone, and she felt anger flood into her chest to replace it.
Maines slowed for a second when he saw the woman. He frowned, then continued on. “Who’re you?”
“I think you know,” Kyra told him.
The man’s head turned in surprise at the sound of her voice and his eyes flitted in several directions as his memory tried to match the sound with a person. The answer finally came through and Maines’s shoulders slumped.
“Long way from Caracas. I guess Barron sent you? How is the old man?”
“Ready for a family reunion at your earliest convenience.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Maines said. “What do you want, Kyra?”
“You’d have to be very, very stupid not to know the answer to that question.”
“You really had the stones to march into the Russian Embassy so you could ask me to come back with you?” he asked
“I thought I would make things simple for you,” Kyra advised. “Come with me and I’ll tell the Bureau you cooperated. You might get a shot at parole after a couple of decades in prison.”
“Your turn to not be stupid.”
She’d thought she was ready for his hostility, but the delta between the man she remembered from three years before and the dark figure here was wide enough to unnerve her, if just a little. Kyra hid the emotion behind a casual shrug. “I just wanted to confirm that you were here. How you end up back in the States in chains and a jumpsuit isn’t really my problem.”
“The Russians aren’t going to hand me over,” Maines said. Kyra had expected a smirk or a smile, but the man’s expression was cold. “I’ll be good PR for them if nothing else once we get to Moscow.”
“And you come cheap, don’t you? I just had a discussion with one of their intel officers,” Kyra told him. “They refused to pay you, didn’t they? You came here looking for a fat paycheck, but the Russians said they’d burned you and now they want you to give them the family jewels just to stay out of jail. In fact, I think that the reason they decided to let me see you was to prove that they really had burned you, to crank up the pressure in case you were thinking they’d lied.”
Maines laughed, rueful. “You really don’t know why I did this, do you?”
“I really don’t care why. There’s a difference,” she told the man. “You can explain your reasons to Barron and the Bureau. I’m sure they’ll be amused.”
Maines grunted. “You should care.” He wished he had a cigarette or something to hold in his shaking hands. “I did this because of you, in a way.” He laughed, pure contempt and derision. “After we all got reassigned from Caracas and Barron sent me over to Russia House, I thought it was a good place to land. I actually kind of liked it, until last year. One of our people got pulled out for a few days to join a task force. It turns out that two analysts got trapped in Venezuela when the revolution started. Did you know about that?”
Kyra dearly wished, for a single instant, that she could tell him exactly what she knew about it. “I heard something about it” was the answer she gave him.
“Can’t wait for that one to get declassified in twenty-five years. Anyway, Kathy Cooke tasked a group with trying to help those analysts figure out how to infiltrate a military base. It was the most insane thing I’d ever heard. Instead of pulling them out and sending in a real team, the CIA director let an analyst execute the op. And then a day later, the president decided to just blow the base up and dropped a Massive Ordnance Penetrator on the place and almost blew those analysts up along with it. How those two got out alive, I’ll never know, but it got me thinking. We’re just one bad leader away from getting killed, and the Agency is full of ’em. One Seventh Floor moron or one selfish politician makes one bad decision, and we’re all cannon fodder. You know that. That idiot of a station chief almost got you killed. You wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t pulled you out of that safe house in Caracas. So when Barron decided not to make me the chief of Russia House, I just decided that I’m going to get mine before somebody like him gets me or somebody on my team shot.”
“So you’re going to sell out our assets—”
“I haven’t told them anything,” Maines said. “Don’t really plan to either.”
“You gave up Strelnikov.”
“Wasn’t counting him. I didn’t know they’d execute him. Just thought he’d wind up in a gulag.”
Nice confession, Kyra thought. She burned the words into her memory so she’d be able to repeat them for a judge. “So you just don’t count the ones who the Russians execute? And you tried so hard to convince me you weren’t a moron. They drowned him, by the way, in case they didn’t share that tidbit. Took him out to the Müggelsee Lake, held him under, and didn’t bother to pull him out when they were done.”
Maines shrugged, though not dismissive. Fatalistic? Or just a psychopath? Kyra wondered. Thinks it wasn’t his fault? Or really doesn’t care?
He interrupted her thoughts. “If I was giving up assets, they would’ve shut the Agency down in Moscow by now.”
“Again, not my problem,” Kyra replied. “I’m going to leave now. I’m going to walk back to our embassy over there, and I’m going to confirm for FBI that you’re here. After that, the Germans will be obligated to arrest and extradite you if you set foot outside. Sooner or later, the Russians will give you up.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You have a lot of faith in your new friends,” Kyra told him.
“No, I have a lot of faith that you’re going to help get me home.”
“I’d be happy to,” Kyra advised. She didn’t try to keep the contempt out of her voice. “You shut your mouth until tomorrow. I’ll call Barron and have him ask the president to promise to commute your sentence to, say, twenty years in prison. You come home, do your time, and you don’t die in prison.” She had no authority to make a deal, but decided it was worth trying.