“Of course.”
“This is foolishness,” Grigoriyev groused, the winds sucked neatly from his sails.
“Such sour grapes, Anatoly.” Lavrov smiled. “For now, I think it would be helpful to us all if the FSB could ensure that all of the Americans on the list have left the Rodina, and I would consider it the greatest of personal favors if you would inform me when their exodus is complete.”
I am not a bootlicker, like the foreign minister there, Grigoriyev raged quietly in his mind. You would throw me crumbs and say I should be grateful for them?
The FSB director shook his head in disgust. The meeting really had been a formality after all. He should have seen it. Lavrov and his lackey would not have expelled so many Americans without the president’s approval. The fact that they had not told him in advance told Grigoriyev where he stood with this group. The path to the president’s chair always had gone through the FSB and its predecessor, the KGB. Now Lavrov’s good fortune had given the GRU chairman a way to steer that river out of its course.
How to steer it back? Grigoriyev asked himself. He did not have an answer now, he admitted, but a solution would present itself. It always had.
“You are not serious,” Cooke said. Years of practice had taught her to keep her tone calm and measured, especially when the world was burning, but she wanted to scream at her subordinate, tell him in profane terms what she thought about the man’s admission. Instead, she gripped the secure phone in her hand and tried to crush it, giving her anger somewhere to go besides her mouth.
“You know better,” Barron replied. “She wants to know what happened to Jon. You and I would want to do the same.”
“Wanting to do something and actually doing it are very, very different things,” Cooke observed. “And the president has ordered everyone out. I’m going to have to tell him that we’re actually sending somebody in. He won’t take it well.” She was being overly polite. She would be fortunate if the man didn’t throw the Oval Office Churchill bust at her.
“Not to split hairs, but he ordered everyone on Lavrov’s list out,” Barron replied. “She’s not on the list. And she’s got cover for action… we really do need someone to sanitize that last safe house. We didn’t have enough time to clean them out before everyone had to leave, and that’s not a lie.”
“What if Maines gave those up to Lavrov?” Cooke asked.
“He might have,” Barron admitted. “I’ve got the Counterintelligence Center checking to see whether he went hunting through those files.”
“That’s something,” Cooke conceded. “Okay, she’s in Moscow. The question is what we can do to support her?”
“Not much.”
“This isn’t a good idea,” Cooke observed.
“Probably not,” Barron finally conceded. “But it’s time we stopped being reactive and started getting ahead of the game. Defense is the art of losing slow, and Maines and Lavrov have been in charge from the start of this. At the very least, we need to start throwing some sand in their gears and slowing them down while we figure out how to get in front of this. If there’s one thing Stryker is good at, it’s wrecking the best-laid plains.”
Cooke didn’t know whether to nod or shake her head.
Sokolov’s secure phone rang. He answered it, waiting the few seconds for the encryption to go live. “Ya slushayu vas.”
“Anton Semyonovich.” It was Lavrov’s voice.
“General,” Sokolov answered, “I stand ready at your service.”
“I have the first name for you,” Lavrov told him. “When can you move on him?”
“At first light, General. The men are here. We will need a few hours to plan the operation. We do not want to give the man any opportunity to slip the net.”
“Very good.” Lavrov gave him the traitor’s name and where he worked. Sokolov’s eyes went wide. The man’s office was not a thousand yards away. “Report to me when he is in your custody, and then when you have resolved the matter. I will then have another name for you.”
“Understood, General.” The line died and Sokolov replaced the headset on its cradle. He stared at the name. And why did you turn against the Rodina? he wondered. He’d studied traitors and their motivations, the better to do his work. There were always so many reasons, but so few noble ones. I pray that you are a noble one, he thought. Perhaps then you will see your death as a fitting end to a life well lived.
CHAPTER SIX
She’d spent the flight declining the flight attendant’s polite questions regarding food and beverages using only hand signals. Kyra couldn’t understand what the flight crew was saying and didn’t want to make a request for English that would’ve announced to the entire plane that she was an American. She honestly did not know whether any of the people around her worked for the Russian security services and the case officer decided that now was as good a time as any to start being paranoid.
She looked out the window as the plane began to descend through the clouds. Moscow looked like any other city at night from the air. Kyra indulged her imagination for a few seconds and let herself think she was landing at Dulles. She and Jon would disembark, say goodbye in the baggage claim. A short walk to the parking garage, load her bag into her truck, and she would be home in Leesburg within a half hour—
— but Jon was not here. The pilot’s announcement in Russian to prepare for landing fully destroyed the illusion without mercy, not least because Kyra didn’t understand a single word.
A sharp wind struck the aircraft sideways and the plane yawed hard just feet off the runway. The pilot held the altitude until he could straighten out the nose. Kyra inhaled deeply when the plane’s tires touched the concrete. Not the best start, she thought.
She was relieved that she was alone. Half of counterintelligence work was making connections between people and places, and Kyra was free of any here. She was a completely random element as far as the Russians were concerned. If they targeted her simply because she was an American, they would break themselves trying to find any clue that connected her to any of the case officers or assets Maines had revealed. There was nothing for them to connect, and that was the only way to play the game against the FSB, the GRU, and all the rest. The CIA had learned through sad experience that mistakes were small when the Russians were playing at their best, and one could never assume that the Russians were at less than their best. That was the first of the cardinal Moscow Rules.
1 Assume nothing.
2 Never go against your gut.
3 Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4 Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.
5 Go with the flow, blend in.
6 Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
7 Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8 Pick the time and place for action.
9 Keep your options open.
10 Don’t harass the opposition.
She had no doubt that she would be breaking several of those rules before this was over, and she was sure she needn’t have bothered learning the last one. Harass the Russians? She couldn’t imagine what case officer would be so stupid even with a full CIA in support to pull them out of trouble. But someone had. Rules were never made until someone had done something that called them into being. Kyra wondered whether the FSB had bashed the offender’s face against the asphalt to teach him some humility. She wouldn’t have faulted them.