The driver made the final turn and Maines was surprised at the destination. He’d expected a safe house.
The Russian Embassy in Berlin was a great stone slab of Stalinist design, hollowed out in the center and surrounded by a low rock parapet and wrought-iron gates. The white walls and trees in the courtyard at the building’s front tried to persuade onlookers that the embassy wasn’t some granite pustule erupting out of Berlin’s underside, but the pilasters and parapets above advertised the building’s cold, austere spirit. The enormous complex violated German laws governing the height of buildings along the Unter den Linden highway, but East Germany had been in no position during construction to ask its Soviet masters to obey regulations.
The car passed through gates manned by Russian guards and pulled into an underground garage. The driver gestured for Maines to follow and the two worked their way through back hallways and little-used stairwells. He supposed that his sponsors didn’t want the staff to see an American expatriate walking the corridors, but the small office where the sentry finally delivered him was disappointing. After he’d made peace with being at the embassy, he’d assumed that the meeting would take place in one of the finely furnished conference rooms on the building’s top floor. Maines had owned a larger office at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, and the chairs in this one hardly qualified as comfortable, much less ornate. The light was harsh, the walls concrete, and the pipes in the ceiling exposed. It was hardly a place to fete a man who could provide the information he held.
They made him wait another hour, the driver standing at the door to make sure he didn’t wander, and his temper was at a full rolling boil when his patron finally approached.
“Spasibo.” Arkady Lavrov ignored the American in favor of the sentry. “Pozhaluysta zakroyte dver.” The escort nodded and closed the door as he’d been asked after Lavrov stepped inside. The Russian GRU director went to his seat on the other side of the small desk, then leaned back and studied the American sitting across from him. “Mr. Maines, it is a shame that you are here. Do you love your country?”
Maines’s brow furrowed and he stared at the Russian. “I… of course I do.” What idiocy was this?
“That is unfortunate.”
Maines drew his head back. “General, I’m here to help my country.” He’d told himself that enough to believe it. “Relations between us have suffered because my president is a moron. Our two nations will benefit from having someone like me who can explain to you what my leaders are thinking—”
“You have no access to President Rostow,” Lavrov observed.
“I’ve been with the CIA for twenty years. I know how the White House and the Agency operate.”
“No doubt. But I question whether you understand what this will cost you.”
Maines’s features twisted in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m concerned about your soul, Mr. Maines.” Lavrov leaned forward, clasped his hands, and rested his arms on the desk. “I truly wish you were a mercenary, just giving up your country for money. It would make the new arrangement that I will propose easier on you. I have seen more than a few men commit that treason, some for money, others for revenge or ego, a few for reasons of conscience. The ones who do it out of principle, like yourself, almost go mad from the shame and the homesickness, once they are discovered and have to live in exile. Even the ones who do it for less honorable reasons and are beyond feeling guilt simply never know another day without fear, another peaceful night. They wonder whether this won’t be the day that the knock comes at their door. The money or the vengeance or the excitement never can cure that. So I fear for you, Mr. Maines. If you truly are doing this for principle, then I wish that you had been faithful to your country.”
“I fingered a traitor to your country,” Maines protested. The anger was starting to rise in his chest now. He’d run this meeting through his mind over and over, and no imaginary version of it had ever followed this course. “I helped you neutralize a serious threat to your operations to prove my sincerity—”
“Yes, you did,” Lavrov said. “I almost wish you hadn’t. General Strelnikov had been my very good friend for a long time. It hurt me deeply to know that he had been unfaithful to us. You are correct that he was jeopardizing our work, but it saddened me all the same. He thought he was helping a country that he loved. It’s just unfortunate that he loved two countries and imagined that he could divide his loyalties. I know how he would have suffered for that through the years had you not told us what he had done.”
“ ‘Would have suffered’?” Maines asked.
“He was executed.”
“Huh,” Maines grunted in surprise. He should’ve expected that, wasn’t sure why he hadn’t, but it didn’t rankle him much. Men had been sacrificed before to prevent hostilities between nations, and the leaders who’d sacrificed them were hailed for it later. The masses sometimes needed a few years to realize the wisdom of the choice, but the historians were usually kind.
“He cannot hurt the Rodina anymore, for which I am glad, and now his conscience will not torture him, for which I am also glad. But you will come to regret what you have done, I think,” Lavrov said.
Maines fought the urge to roll his eyes at the man’s stupidity. The entire conversation had left him off balance. The casual way that Lavrov had denied him control of the discussion, deflecting every attempt to seize the initiative from the outset, was maddening. Get on with the business, he thought, but did not say. He pushed ahead. “General, if you don’t want my information, I’m sure there are others in your government who would appreciate what I have to offer,” he said. “But I don’t know why you would be stubborn about security or money. You already paid me fifty thousand dollars.”
“That will not be necessary,” Lavrov told him. “You are here and your information will be useful. So I am prepared to hear what you have to tell me. As for money, you will receive none.”
Maines frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“After your flight to Berlin had left America’s airspace, I had one of our people in Washington inform your FBI that you were defecting to the Russian Federation.”
“You… what? I don’t—”
“Like Cortés in Mexico, I burned your ship after you landed in the New World, as it were.” Lavrov reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a sheet, and slid it across to the American. “You will not be going home, Mr. Maines.”
Maines looked at the sheet and started to rock back in surprise before he caught himself. He stared at the paper, a copy of an Interpol Blue Notice with his photograph… the one from his Agency badge, in fact.
Present family name: Maines
Forename: Alden
Sex: Male
Date of birth: 10/09/1980 (39 years old)
Place of birth: Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Language(s) spoken: English, Russian, Spanish