“If so, it would be your duty to find her,” Lavrov countered.
“Oh, no, that is a duty the GRU has accepted, as I recall,” Grigoriyev chided his rival. “And I would hate for you to have to admit that your operation has a nasty blemish that you and your people could not manage.”
“Competence is best shown by how one manages the unexpected,” Lavrov replied.
“Then I look forward to discussing your competence at our next meeting with the president,” Grigoriyev said.
“Oh, Anatoly,” Lavrov said, “when did I lose your support? Your friendship? We were such comrades once. That night on the embassy roof in Berlin was a great moment for us.”
“And a disaster for the Rodina. We began to lose our country that night. You lost my support when you began this madness of selling our technologies to third-world runts who do not have the wisdom to use our knowledge in a useful way. You are giving hammers to children who want nothing more than to swing them at each other.”
“I am only doing what we all promised to do. We agreed to save the Rodina. I regret we could not agree on the way it should be done. Poor Strelnikov became so confused he thought that the Americans were our salvation,” Lavrov intoned.
“You are wrong, Arkady,” Grigoriyev told him. “Strelnikov did not believe the Americans were our salvation. He simply thought they were the only ones who could turn you out of your destructive course. I am not sure that I disagree.”
“Your opinion of me has fallen so low?”
“I think my opinion matters nothing to you,” Grigoriyev replied. “And there is the problem. You take counsel from no one. When you will, I think you will find many ready to stand with you again. Do svidaniya.”
“Do svidaniya,” Lavrov said. He set the phone in the cradle far more gently than he would have preferred, but he didn’t want to fumble the maneuver and let the FSB director hear a physical sign of his frustration.
The GRU chairman leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. Maddening as Grigoriyev was, it was possible that he was right… about the woman. If the woman who had evaded his men during Puchkov’s arrest was CIA, then someone had been missed.
Lavrov frowned. No, there was another possibility, wasn’t there? Perhaps, in the focus on getting all of the CIA’s officers out of the country, another one had come in? And a woman, too, a bold one, capable of facing a Spetsnaz soldier and leaving him a twitching wreck on the pavement.
He had met a woman with such fire recently, hadn’t he? Is that possible? he wondered. That she is here?
Lavrov picked up the phone again and dialed a number he was learning by heart these days. Colonel Sokolov answered after the first ring. “Ya slushayu vas.”
“Anton Semyonovich, this is General Lavrov.”
“Good evening, General. I presume you are calling about today’s action?”
“I am. Please congratulate your men on their successful capture of another traitor to the Rodina,” Lavrov said, his voice warm.
“I will. Thank you, General.”
“I regret that is not the end of the matter,” Lavrov said. “Your report of a possible foreign operator at the site who interfered is worrisome. We need to find the woman in question. Please contact the security offices at all of our international airports within five hundred kilometers around Moscow. I want the passport photographs of all foreign women traveling from Germany admitted to the country in the last seventy-two hours.”
“We will begin immediately,” Sokolov replied. “But it will be a very large number. Any information that could help us narrow the search might provide an answer more quickly.”
Lavrov paused. “Tell them to focus on women coming from Berlin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. And, Anton Semyonovich… I think we must accelerate the operation. If the CIA still has officers in Moscow, they will be trying to save their assets. That cannot be allowed, of course. I will assign you additional men, and you will begin moving against the traitors several at a time. I will provide you the names for the first tranche I want neutralized. Understood?”
There was a short delay before Sokolov answered. “Da, General.”
“Is there a problem, Colonel?”
“Nyet, General. I am just concerned about launching a more ambitious set of raids without the opportunity for new men to train with my team. Unit cohesion can be a delicate thing. We do not want to lose any of the targets due to our own mistakes.”
“There will be no mistakes, I trust,” Lavrov warned. “These men are Spetsnaz, after all… and there is no better way to forge a team than a successful operation.”
“Of course, General. I will keep you informed of our progress.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Lavrov hung up the phone.
Did you follow me here, Miss Stryker? he wondered. What a happy surprise that would be.
The door closed behind Kyra’s truck and the garage went dark. She had taken a winding route back, running surveillance detection as she went, though she was sure she needn’t have bothered. Had the GRU or any of the other security services picked up her tail, they would have swarmed her vehicle as quickly as they could have called in the help.
Kyra had taken three hours to make her way to the safe house and the sun had set more than an hour before. The garage was shrouded in darkness as she killed the headlights. The woman sat back in the seat, not bothering to unbuckle her restraint. Her eyes adjusted to the dark.
Kyra hit the steering wheel with her fist, then again. She pounded on it, as hard as she could. Then she began to yell in anger, cursing the Russians for their brutality and their skill at it, slamming her hands into the wheel as she did. Her hands began to protest, aching more and more with each strike against the truck. Finally she stopped when the pain was too much. Her chest began to heave. Kyra leaned forward, placed her forehead against the steering wheel. She refused to cry, much as she wanted to.
She’d lost track of the time, how long she was in the truck. Kyra finally emerged and walked into the mudroom, letting her keys fall on the floor. The keypad demanded her full attention before letting her into the house, but Kyra’s thoughts disorganized themselves again once she heard the computerized lock open. She entered, the metal door closing itself behind.
The bathroom on the second level was enormous, with a glass-enclosed shower and a tub large enough to disappear in. Kyra thought about cleaning up for the first time since Berlin. She took stock of herself in the mirror. Her right arm ached. She pulled her sleeve up and realized that a massive bruise, black with a green and yellow border, had spread across the muscle. There was ibuprofen in the cabinet and she didn’t bother to count how many of the red oval pills she took. The sink water tasted of metal.
Barron had been right. She was never going to get near any of the Agency’s assets. The Russian knew exactly who they were, had too much manpower, and knew the terrain far better than she ever could. Kyra had no advantage, no angle to play that would let her seize the high ground even for a few minutes.
I don’t think I can do this, Jon, she told her friend, wherever he was.
Maybe not, he agreed. The Russians aren’t amateurs. Fighting them is a team sport on a good day, and this isn’t a good day. You don’t have any help.
I got away, she replied. Again.