Okay, time for a little reward, Kyra decided. “The U.S. Embassy.”
“So you are American.”
Kyra fought down the urge to roll her eyes and insult the man’s deductive powers. “Yes,” she said, her voice oozing condescension. The Russian’s English accent was heavy enough that Kyra suspected the man wouldn’t understand the emotion when he heard it.
“That is a start,” Sokolov said. “And your name?”
“You don’t need that. Just advise the embassy that you have a U.S. diplomat in your custody.”
Sokolov turned to his Russian subordinates. “Leave,” he ordered in their native language.
The photographer moved immediately to the exit, but the escorts stayed rooted, their faces perplexed. “You will leave,” the Russian ordered a second time. “She is uncooperative. I must apply other measures. You will stand the post outside.”
More hesitation, but the escorts finally obeyed, leaving the Russian alone with Kyra.
The FSB’s current home, strictly speaking, was across the street from old Lubyanka, the home of the KGB before it. If asked, Kathy Cooke would have admitted that the older building was an impressive piece of architecture, a four-story neo-Baroque edifice made of yellow-brick-turned-gray. CIA headquarters was an ugly complex to her eyes, but Lubyanka, originally built to be the home of an insurance company before the 1917 Revolution, had some real old European beauty in its design. It radiated a sense of history to her.
Not the good kind of history, she thought. The artistry of Lubyanka’s design belied the fact that its ground floor had been a prison where thousands had entered and somewhat fewer had emerged. So much of Stalin’s reign of terror had its epicenter in Lubyanka.
“Never thought I’d get this close to it,” Barron admitted.
“Never wanted to,” Cooke replied. “Too many people walked in and never came out. You can feel the ghosts.”
“I never took you for the type to believe in the supernatural,” Barron said.
“I’m not,” she told him. “But I’m just religious enough to think that if the dead are walking the earth anywhere, it’s here. You ever heard of Vasily Blokhin?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“He was the chief executioner of the Soviet Union, handpicked by Stalin himself. It was an actual government position, if you can believe it. Nobody even knows how many people he personally killed, but I’ve seen claims as high as fifty thousand. He oversaw the executions of seven thousand Polish soldiers in one month in 1940,” Cooke recounted. “He set a goal of killing three hundred people every night… brought his own briefcase full of Walther pistols because he didn’t think the Soviet sidearms were reliable enough. The man even had an official executioner’s uniform… leather butcher’s apron, hat, long leather gloves that ran up to his elbows. A guard would march the prisoner into a little antechamber called the ‘Leninist room,’ which Blokhin had designed himself… soundproof walls and a sloping floor with a drain, to make it easier to wash the blood off after each kill. They’d put the prisoner down on his knees and Blokhin would shoot him in the base of the skull. They’d drag out the body and bring in another one. His unit helped him kill them at the rate of one man every three minutes, ten hours every night for a month. Stalin gave Blokhin the Order of the Red Banner for it.” Cooke raised an arm and pointed at Lubyanka. “And he did it all in there. So, yeah, I can believe in ghosts.”
“You know, the Russians probably believe our predecessors were doing the same thing at Langley.”
“We’ve had our share of bad men, but we never had a prison in the basement, and we sure never kidnapped our own citizens,” Cooke replied.
“Yeah, good luck convincing the Russians of that,” Barron said. He felt like the building in front of him had drained the humor from his bones. “How’d Blokhin check out in the end?”
“Lost his job in ’53 after Stalin died,” Cooke recalled. “Became an alcoholic and went insane. The official record says he committed suicide in ’55.”
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Barron mused.
“I’ve never understood how someone can become so indifferent to life.”
“ ‘That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved,’ ” Barron said. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unfortunately, that applies to evil talents as well as good ones. Do something often enough and it becomes banal… ordinary.”
“Maybe,” Cooke said. “But he committed suicide. Maybe it never really became ordinary to him after all.”
“You really believe he killed himself?”
Cooke pondered the question, then nodded. “Actually, yes. Maybe the ghosts of all the people he murdered tortured him until he went mad. That would be justice. A man who kills that many people by his own hand… I can’t imagine what that does to your soul.”
“What soul?” Barron asked. “A man would have nothing left by the end of that.” He shook his head in disbelief. “And we’re going to talk to the successor of guys like that. Makes me think this operation can’t possibly work.”
“Maybe,” Cooke replied. “The question is who Grigoriyev hates worse, us or Lavrov.”
“My money’s on Lavrov. Grigoriyev was the FSB director when I was the station chief here, so I got a pretty good feel for him. He’s a professional. He doesn’t like us, but it’s not personal. We’re not trying to put the old man out to pasture. Lavrov is, and the anger between those two runs deep. If there’s one thing the Russians do well, it’s hold a grudge.”
“You’re right on that score,” Cooke agreed. “You ready to do this?”
Barron shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “You know, the Russians never filed the paperwork to PNG me after that car wreck. We’ve always assumed they know I’m Agency, but they never confirmed it. I guess they’re going to find out now.”
“If you’re going to blow your cover, might as well go big and nuke it hard,” Cooke advised.
“Like Slim Pickens riding the bomb.” He dismounted the car and held the door for Cooke. Churkin and a Russian security detail got out of their own vehicles and formed a cordon around the Americans, leading them toward the visitors’ entrance.
They approached the guard post. The Russian officer held up a hand. “Ostanovites’ i identifitsirovat’ sebya!” Stop and identify yourself!
Barron nodded, reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out his CIA credentials. “This is Kathryn Cooke, deputy director of national intelligence for the United States government. My name is Clark Barron and I’m the director of the CIA Directorate of Operations.” Churkin’s head whipped around in surprise at that revelation, proving conclusively that he spoke very good English. “We’re here to speak to Director Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev,” Barron said in Russian. “He’s expecting us.”
The FSB officer manning the door gawked at the American, took Barron’s credentials, and stared, then picked up the phone.
The conference room to which the escorts delivered them was more ornate than anything Barron had ever seen at Langley. The walls were hardwood, lacquered and polished to a perfect shine, with gold trim around the ceiling. The table in the center had a similar wooden border, the center covered in green leather. The chairs matched the table, with blue-and-white-checked cloth coverings, and Barron thought that the office chair under him was possibly the most comfortable in which he’d ever sat. There was no telephone in the room, no computer, no way to communicate outside. Barron wondered where the cameras were.