The news of the government’s decision to evict so many diplomats from the country by itself had been frightful. Such things were rare and usually reserved for spies caught in the very act of plying their trade. It was not possible the FSB had caught so many CIA officers at once. How, then, had they decided who to expel? Were they all spies? Was the Kremlin merely lashing out at random? It seemed unlikely. There had been no rumors among his GRU coworkers of any kind of confrontation with the Main Enemy, as they still called the U.S., that would lead to mass expulsion. A secret source, then? Some GRU asset who had fingered the CIA’s forces in the Rodina? And if such a source could access that kind of information, could he not also identify the moles working for the Agency?
That concern had cost Topilin his night’s sleep, and his wife had questioned whether he was contracting the flu. He’d denied it, not wanting her to pressure him to stay home from work. Absence might create suspicion, would it not? So he’d risen at the usual hour, trying to hide his anxiety by speaking to his wife as little as possible. He’d shaved, showered, consumed a breakfast of sausage, black bread, and blacker tea. Then his telephone had sounded… not his cell phone, but the landline in his home.
“Ya slushayu vas,” he’d answered.
“You are Adolf Viktorovich Topilin?” the voice had asked him.
“Da.”
“They are coming for you,” the voice had said. “The GRU knows that you are a traitor. You will leave now if you value your life.” The call had ended there, with Topilin looking at the phone, terror in his soul like he’d never known in all his life. He’d gathered every bit of equipment the CIA had ever given him, thrown it into a box, and loaded it all into the trunk of his wife’s car while ignoring her fearful questions and protests.
Topilin pressed the pedal harder and the Mondeo protested, but obeyed.
The irony was that the Mondeo would have been beyond his means to buy had he not been a traitor to his country. His CIA handler had warned him against spending the money and making a show of affluence that he could not explain away, but Adolf Topilin’s wife was a relentless woman in her tastes. She had never been happy with the salary the GRU paid him, no matter how high he had climbed. The Russian military was not a generous employer except to its highest leaders and Topilin knew he would never reach those exalted heights. He lacked the personal connections to get such promotions and appointments. In the end, he knew that he would have to leave his job or find some other income to satisfy Nina, or she might leave him for some wealthier man.
But he was an electrical engineer for the Foundation for Advanced Research, had been since its founding, and the Central Intelligence Agency had been happy to give him that outside income in exchange for information. Three years of deliveries to his handler combined with compound interest had given him a sizable escrow account. He’d started tapping into the money in the vain hope that some spending would pacify Nina, but she was insatiable. The more he spent, the more the money fed her tastes. Even buying the dacha here had only quieted her for a year before she had started to demand better furnishings and Western electronics for it. He hadn’t wanted to buy it. Topilin knew that he could never explain it away to his superiors. Peredelkino had been a colony for Russia’s cultural elites, the writers and poets in the years after the war with the Nazis. Boris Pasternak, one of the Rodina’s greatest poets and author of Doctor Zhivago had lived here. Now the writers had left for more affordable boroughs and Peredelkino had become a country retreat for the bankers and businessmen. But Nina had her heart, or her avarice, set on this neighborhood and the social status that it would confer.
Another turn and Topilin finally slowed the car. The driveway was to the left and finally he saw the dacha. Two stories, a small, renovated barn with a short deck on the second level. He hated the building, and knew that Nina had no real love for it, only for what it represented. And Topilin had never been able to accept the truth that Nina would leave him when she met some other man better able to pay for the life she really wanted. He had learned in the last hour that loyalty bought was not loyalty at all.
But all that was irrelevant at the moment. What mattered was that the dacha had a wood stove. He would burn everything, then retrieve from the charred metal any devices the fire couldn’t consume and throw them into the woods along the drive back at random intervals.
Topilin stopped the Mondeo, killed the engine, and pressed the button to open the trunk. He dismounted and scrambled around to the back to fetch the box. He cursed when he saw the contents spilled out across the carpeting. He grabbed for the small digital camera and the notebook of dead-drop and signal site instructions and tossed them back into the box. It took him a few seconds of searching to find the Short-Range Agent Communications (SRAC) transmitter where it had slid behind the can of kerosene that he’d brought. The onetime pads, the shortwave radio, demodulator unit, the USB thumb drives… did he have everything? He swore at himself for not making a list before leaving, and then wondered how he could be so stupid as to think that such a list would have been a good idea. An inventory of equipment used for treason would have been a fine present for the security services—
“I must confess, Adolf Viktorovich, that is a very fine car. However did you afford it?”
Topilin spun around and saw the man standing behind him. He was middle-aged, clean-shaven, his hair still thick and brown, with a few gray hairs around the ears. His overcoat was unbuttoned, hanging open, and Topilin could see there was no paunch around his waist, but he did not seem overly athletic. His face showed no emotion other than weariness, from what exertion, Topilin had no idea. “Who are you?”
“My name is unimportant,” Anton Sokolov said. “What matters here is that you are a traitor to the Rodina.”
“I…” Topilin’s protest died in his mouth. His brain was churning, considering lies and excuses, and discarding them all. One sentence from this average-looking man had cut through every possible cover story Topilin could dredge up to explain away the CIA equipment in his trunk. “No, I… you see—”
The man waved a hand. “There is no point in talking here. We know what you have done. You will come with us.”
“ ‘With us’?” Topilin looked around, and finally saw the dozen other men scattered around the dacha. A pair of cars moved out of a side road in the woods and came up the driveway, cutting the Mondeo off from the road. Half of the men, all fit soldiers, entered the dacha without asking his permission. He saw them through the front windows, watched them fan out inside the building. They would search every square inch, Topilin knew. There was nothing inside for them to find, but it hardly mattered. The worst evidence was in his car, hidden by nothing better than a blanket.
The man approached him. “As I said, a very fine car. And a very fine dacha,” he said. “I took the liberty of granting myself a tour of the grounds as we waited. It is a pretty little estate. You really must explain to me how you afforded it on your salary. But there will be time for that. If you would come with me to the van?”
“Where will you take me?”
“To the Aquarium.”
“GRU headquarters?” Topilin asked. His legs felt suddenly weak, as though the bones had disappeared, and panic surged in his chest.
Sokolov nodded. “I will be your interrogator. I have some questions, and I would be most grateful to hear your answers.”
“What… what questions?” Topilin stammered, afraid of the answer.