“But if Jon’s alive—”
“If he’s alive, you’ll never get near him,” Barron told her, his voice soft. “You’ll never even get the Russians to admit they’ve got him. They’d be confessing to the illegal rendition and detention of a U.S. citizen, not that we have the moral high ground on that score anymore. They’d probably kill him and you both before they’d admit it if you did find out he was still alive. So you go in and you might die sooner than you think.”
Kyra turned her head away from him. “Even if I can’t find him, somebody needs to work the EMP problem. We need to find out where it is, where it’s going, how Lavrov is going to deliver it—”
“That’s not our problem—”
“Yes, it is. Jon was the one who figured out that Lavrov is selling strategic technologies. We’re the only ones who have the whole picture. Sure, the Israelis might catch the EMP coming into Syria, but Lavrov will still be running loose. He’ll keep selling the tech and there will always be a buyer out there—”
“And how do you think you’re going to stop the head of the GRU from running a global covert op?” Barron pronounced the letters of the acronym slow and precise. “That’s like one Russian case officer trying to take on the whole CIA.”
“Maybe, but when you think about it, we do that all the time. We’re all really on our own when we’re on the street anyway. We plan things out, talk through radios, sometimes tell each other to go this way or that, but when the plan comes apart, it’s one officer against a whole country, running for a safe house,” Kyra observed, not really talking to him. “I’ve always made it to the safe house. I can do it again.”
Barron frowned. “You want to be station chief Moscow that bad?”
“You can keep the title. I just want to get reimbursed for my travel expenses.”
Barron smiled. It was a small joke, but he would take whatever emotion he could get from her. “You’re insane. You really are.”
“No, I’m just motivated. But you can demote me when I get home if it makes you feel better.”
“Oh, you’re not the one who’ll have to worry about getting demoted,” he said. “If you make it out, we’ll both be heroes. If you don’t, the president will execute me in the Langley courtyard for letting you go.”
That earned him a small laugh from the woman. “So… dead or heroes. Isn’t that what we really signed up for when we took this job anyway?”
“Here’s the safe house,” Barron said, his finger pointing to a street on the Moscow map. “We just set this one up a few months ago, so if there’s one that Maines doesn’t have on some list, it’s that one. Case the place before you go in. Don’t assume it’s clean. If it is, chances are good you’ll have the place as long as you want it, but sanitize the place first so the locals won’t find anything sensitive in case they do show up on short notice.”
“And if it’s not clean?” Kyra asked.
“Then you turn around and you come home. I want you to play this one by the rules all the way. But if it comes apart, whatever you do, don’t run for the embassy. The FSB has the place under surveillance at all times. You’ll never get to the front gate if they’re looking for you.”
Kyra stared at the map, repeating the address that Barron had scribbled on it until she’d etched the Russian words in her mind. “Any ideas about which assets I should try to contact when I get in-country?”
Barron held out his hand, a folded note between his fingers. Kyra took it, unfolded it. The list was short, scribbled out by hand in cryptic notes on a sheet of flash paper, nitrocellulose that she could immolate in a fraction of a second with the Zippo lighter that Barron had set on the table. “That’s it?”
“That’s all the ones that I’m going to give you,” Barron replied. “They’re the only ones inside the GRU who I think would be in a position to know about any sales of strategic technologies that Lavrov is brokering.” There were only three names, but it was, at that moment, possibly the most sensitive document the CIA had in its possession. Even with Maines in their hands, the Russian government still would have murdered anyone in its path to retrieve it without a moment’s thought. “If we’re lucky, he might have forgotten or withheld some names, and I’m not about to help him fill in any of the blanks. But if he copied everything onto a thumb drive instead of relying on his memory, chances are pretty good that you’ll never get near any of them before Lavrov takes them out. So don’t try to contact any of them unless you’re ready to bet your life that Lavrov’s people aren’t watching. You take no chances at all, you got me?”
“I should have a few more possibles, in case I can’t reach these,” Kyra protested. “The Russians can’t watch everyone.”
“Moscow Rules — you assume that they can. You won’t have the time or the resources to focus on anyone else anyway. I don’t know how many names Maines might be giving up, but we have to assume he’s going to give up all of them. There’s no way to even know in what order he might go after them, so we have to assume he’ll want to take them all down as fast as he can. The real question is whether the FSB will play ball. If they do, you’ll never get to any of them. If they don’t, you might have a short window.”
“Why wouldn’t the FSB cooperate?” Kyra asked. “They handle counterintelligence in Russia.”
Barron nodded. “They do, but the FSB director is Anatoly Grigoriyev, and he and Lavrov hate each other. Grigoriyev was KGB back in the eighties, Lavrov was Soviet army intelligence and they were both stationed in Berlin when the Wall fell. They stepped on each other’s toes plenty in the aftermath. It’s an old professional rivalry turned personal. There’s nothing either man would love more than to get the other kicked out of the Kremlin.”
Kyra grunted quietly. “That might explain why Lavrov lured Strelnikov to Berlin. He was Lavrov’s boy, so it would make sense that Lavrov wouldn’t want Grigoriyev to find out about that particular breach until he’d solved the problem.”
“Agreed,” Barron replied. “That sounds to me like Lavrov doesn’t want the FSB to know what he’s doing. A major GRU operation to take down Maines’s entire list of our assets in short order would be impossible to keep quiet. The FSB would hear about it and someone would start asking questions. That’s probably your only prayer of getting to any of these people. Lavrov might be taking his time, working down the list nice and slow so he doesn’t aggravate Grigoriyev more than necessary. But if Lavrov is looking to plug his own leaks first, these people could be at the top of the list.”
Kyra tried to find some weakness in his logic and failed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “And if Lavrov hates Grigoriyev that much, he could get a lot of leverage over Grigoriyev by releasing the rest of Maines’s list to the Kremlin once his own holes are plugged. Watching the GRU identify moles in the FSB would probably finish him.”
“True,” Barron agreed. “And since Lavrov would be the one who cleaned house, he would probably get veto power over the next pick for FSB director after Grigoriyev takes up residence in the gulag. And then there would be no reason not to wrap up everyone on the bottom of the list at once. So all of these people might be dead anyway a lot sooner than we thought.” There was bitterness in his voice.
These were his people, Kyra realized. We’re going to lose all of these people on his watch. She wondered how many of the Russian assets had been recruited when Barron had been the Moscow station chief.
The room fell silent. Kyra picked up the list, read it through three times, then opened the Zippo and spun the flint, igniting the tiny fire. She touched it to the flash paper and it vaporized before she could even open her fingers.