The Learjet was wheels up at 4:17 p.m. local time, and Marcus was on it.
But the pilots did not head straight for Washington. Instead they made a pit stop in Berlin, a mere three-hour flight from Moscow, and there Marcus said his good-byes. Senator Dayton and Annie thanked him profusely. Pete gave him a quick hug and two slaps on the back while Marcus whispered to him, “Good luck with the girl.” Then Marcus shook hands with each member of the security detail, thanked them for a job well done, and asked if he could “borrow” one of their satphones.
Marcus never left the terminal. While he waited for the senator’s plane to be refueled and take off for D.C., he rented a locker and stuffed his suitcase into it along with his wallet and American passport. Well after nightfall he linked up with a team of CIA officers dispatched by Morris, who led him to a Gulfstream business jet for the flight back to Moscow.
The name Marcus Ryker did not appear on the manifest, he knew. When the plane landed in Moscow, Marcus would not be getting off. He would be on the ground already.
They crossed into Polish airspace almost immediately, then flew over Belarus and entered Russian airspace around eleven thirty that evening. Marcus said nothing and talked to no one as he looked out the window at the lights of Smolensk, Yartsevo, Safonovo, and Vyazma in succession. When he felt the plane bank slightly to the north, Marcus checked his watch, waited ten more minutes, then unbuckled his seat belt, got up, walked over to the door, ripped it open, felt the blast of whipping winds and bone-chilling cold, and threw himself into the night air without saying good-bye.
There was no hesitation. In the Marines he’d done it hundreds of times, and it all came back quickly. Just after takeoff, the team from Langley had suited him up in a black military-grade jumpsuit and a black balaclava, Nomex flight gloves, an HGU 55/P ballistic helmet, night vision goggles, a rucksack of clothes, a sidearm, water, a handful of protein bars, and a small first aid kit—everything he might need to survive for the next twenty-four hours if his linkup were delayed for any reason.
Now, as he hurtled toward the ground from forty-five thousand feet, Marcus could not see a thing. The frigid late-September sky was thick with clouds, and there was no moon. There were no cities within fifty miles, no towns or hamlets or lights of any kind. Nor could he hear a sound, save the steady hiss of the oxygen flowing from the tank on his back, and his heart pounding wildly. If someone had told him twenty-four hours earlier he’d be jumping out of a plane anywhere in the world, he would have thought them mad. He’d certainly never imagined jumping into Russia, much less out of the side of a G4. Yet now he felt an exhilaration that had eluded him for far too long.
Marcus flashed back to the first time he’d ever jumped out of a plane. It had been summer. It had been a Cessna. It had been with Elena when they were only seventeen. They had done it without telling their parents and had even forged their parents’ signatures on the permission forms—a move they both admitted had been wrong. Yet nothing the two of them had ever done to that point compared with the rush they’d felt that day.
But Marcus didn’t have time to think about his wife just then. He checked his altimeter. He was already below four thousand feet. It was almost time. Seconds later, he passed below three thousand, then two thousand. Only then did he break through the clouds. Now he could see the clearing they’d chosen and the edges of the forest all around it. The moment he did, he pulled the rip cord and felt the chute eject. The harness tightened under his armpits and groin. The problem was, he was still coming in hard in a densely wooded section of pines. If he didn’t change course, he would likely be impaled on one of the trees or get caught in the branches and find himself stuck four or five stories above the ground.
He did a series of S-turns, pivoting 180 degrees each time, then back again nearly but not quite another 180 degrees, into the wind. This helped him correct his course and aim for the clearing. But it was going to be close. He could see the tops of the pines rushing toward him, and he prayed there might be time for one or two more turns.
There was. When he cleared the edge of the forest, he was at four hundred feet, then three hundred. Through the night vision goggles, he could see the ground rushing up at him. It was grassy but also somewhat hillier than he’d expected. He made one more S-turn as he passed below a hundred feet. Now he was headed for one of the flatter sections of the field. As he reached fifteen feet, it was time to flare. Marcus pulled hard on the toggles above his head, both at the same time. He pulled them down to his waist, radically readjusting the shape of his canopy and thus dramatically slowing his rate of descent. The maneuver worked like a charm. Exactly like he’d been taught. Exactly like he’d done so many times. An instant before touching down, he lifted his feet and literally hit the ground running. His jumpmaster back at Parris Island would have been proud.
Marcus came to a complete stop, pulled off his helmet, and shut off the oxygen tank on his back. Scanning the horizon in every direction and seeing no one, he quickly gathered up his chute and stuffed it back into the pack. Then he powered up the satphone and sent a text to Nick Vinetti consisting simply of the letter X. A moment later came the reply—the letter Y. Satisfied, Marcus stripped off the Nomex flight suit and redressed in gray slacks, a black crewneck sweater, Rockport work shoes, and a black leather jacket he’d stuffed into the rucksack he’d strapped to his chest.
Fifteen minutes later, a midnight-blue Mercedes SUV pulled to the edge of the clearing and killed its lights. Marcus chambered a round in his automatic pistol, waited a moment, then approached the car cautiously. It was a formality, of course. If the driver or its occupants were FSB and had seen his highly illegal descent, he’d probably be dead already. When the driver’s-side door opened, it wasn’t an FSB agent who stepped out. It was Jenny Morris, bundled up in a navy peacoat and beige scarf, and she had news.
65
WESTERN RUSSIA, 150 MILES FROM THE BELARUSIAN BORDER—26 SEPTEMBER
“Luganov’s plane took off two hours ago,” Morris said as she drove.
“Heading east?” Marcus asked as he sipped the coffee she’d brought him in a travel mug.
“Heading east. Pyongyang.”
“Check,” he said, nearly burning his tongue and deciding to wait until the coffee cooled a bit. “What else have you got?”
“Quite a bit,” she said. “NSA has intercepts of communications between various Russian base commanders and logistics officers giving orders that match almost precisely some of the written orders the Raven provided.”
“The Raven?”
“That’s the code name the Agency gave your mole.”
“Randomly generated?”
“Not exactly,” Morris conceded. “When I sent back the eyes-only cable to the director with my write-up of your report, I gave your guy that moniker. Guess it stuck.”
“So why the Raven?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Don’t we have like a two-and-a-half-hour drive to the safe house?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I guess we have plenty of time, Agent Morris, don’t we?”
After bouncing around over some rocky terrain, they turned onto a real road, and the ride smoothed out. Morris glanced at him and smiled. “I guess we do,” she said. “But call me Jenny, okay?”
“Jenny—got it. So why the Raven?”
“It’s a biblical reference, actually,” she said, “but don’t tell anyone at Langley. They probably think it has something to do with Edgar Allan Poe.”