by Steve Berry
Up near Constitution Avenue she caught sight of three cabs parked at the curb. One of those would be her chariot. The night air was cold, but thankfully arid. She stuffed her bare hands into her coat pockets and headed for the cab line. DC lingered in an early-morning slumber with little street noise and light traffic. The government buildings all around her sat dark, their business day not beginning for a few more hours. Her job, unfortunately, had never respected the clock. Running the Magellan Billet had been a twenty-four-hour-a-day task, and she could not remember the last time she took an actual vacation.
Many times she’d wondered how it would all end. Never had she imagined that it would simply disintegrate into nothing. Not that she expected any pomp or ceremony, but a simple thank-you would have been appreciated. And not from Danny. She knew how he felt. But from the new people. Seemed like common courtesy would mandate that the AG designee tell her face-to-face. But the ignominious bastard told the press instead and sent Litchfield to do the dirty work. She should not have been surprised. Politics had no memory, and no one cared that the Magellan Billet was gone. If truth be told the other intelligence agencies would be glad to be rid of it. Her relationship with the White House had long been their envy. But she’d earned that trust with proven results, a large part of which was thanks to Cotton. That was why she would see this last operation through, right until the new president finished his oath of office and shook the chief justice’s hand.
A black Cadillac sedan eased to the curb next to her and its rear window whined down. Alarm bells rang in her brain until she recognized a face.
Nikolai Osin.
Supposedly working for the Russian trade mission, Osin’s primary responsibilities were with the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the SVR, the successor to the First Chief Directorate of the now debunked KGB, tasked with all Russian foreign intelligence operations. Osin headed the Washington, DC, rezidentura. And unlike during the Cold War days, the SVR and CIA now routinely identified their chiefs of station, the idea being so they could work faster and better together to counter global terrorism. Russia and the United States were supposedly allies, but tensions remained high, the old distrust never fading entirely. One problem came from simply defining terrorism. Caucasus separatists and Chechens were freedom fighters to the United States, as was Hamas or Hezbollah to Russia. More disagreements than cooperation seemed to exist. Which made Osin’s request, the one that had led to Cotton heading for Lake Baikal, all the more unusual.
She stopped and faced him. “Are you having me watched?”
He smiled. “I drove over after our call, hoping you might be leaving. I wanted to speak with you privately.”
She’d never known this man to play fast and loose. His reputation was one of skill and caution. “About what?”
“Forward Pass.”
How many years had it been since she last heard those words? At least twenty-five. And not far from here. Just a mile or so west on Pennsylvania Avenue. She wondered if the intelligence operation named Forward Pass remained classified. Nearly all of the once sensitive documents from the 1980s had been released, the passage of three decades and the fall of the Soviet Union transforming them from state secrets into historical perspective. Countless books had been written about Reagan and his war on communism. She’d even read a few. Some on target, others close, most missing the mark. But never had she seen the words Forward Pass.
“How do you know about that?” she asked.
“Come now, Stephanie. Ronald Reagan himself gave your operation that name.”
She stared at the president of the United States, having never before been this close to the most powerful man in the world.
“Al Haig tells me you’re a smart lawyer,” Reagan said. “He has great confidence in you.”
They sat in the Oval Office, she on a small settee, Reagan in an armchair, his tall frame perched upright, head high, legs crossed, looking like the actor he’d once been. A late-night call from Secretary of State Haig had told her she was expected at the White House and should head there immediately. A bit unusual to say the least for a lower-level State Department lawyer. She’d been home, about to go to bed, but she’d dressed and caught a cab. Now she was talking alone to the commander in chief.
“I’m told,” Reagan said, “that you came on board during President Carter’s time.”
She nodded. “In 1979. I decided that private practice was not for me. International relations have always interested me, so I applied to the State Department and was hired.”
“Cyrus Vance says you’re top-notch.”
She smiled at the compliment. Her former boss, secretary of state during most of the Carter administration, had become a friend and mentor. Like her, Vance deemed public service a duty and an honor.
“You spoke to Secretary Vance?”
Reagan nodded. “I wanted his assessment. He says you could even be secretary of state one day yourself.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept silent.
“How old are you?” Reagan asked.
She normally dodged that question, but not tonight. “Twenty-seven.”
“So you lived through the 1960s and 1970s. You know what the Cold War means.”
That she did.
“What is your assessment of the Soviet Union?” he asked.
A fair question considering she was assigned to the Soviet division at State. “A system flawed to the core. My father used to say that if you have to build fences to keep people in, you’ve got a serious problem.”
Reagan smiled. “Your father was right. I’m going to end the Soviet Union.”
Bold words, spoken nonchalantly. But not as bragging or bravado, just a simple statement of a purpose he seemed to truly believe in.
“And you’re going to help me.”
Her mind snapped back to the face in the car window. She hadn’t thought about that night at the White House in a long time. The seven years after that had changed her life forever.
“Stephanie,” Osin said, “I have confirmed that the plane your man was flying exploded on the lake.”
Her heart sank.
“But that was after it made a landing. Two bodies were found, burned to nothing. We know they are Russian.”
“No sign of Malone?”
“None. But those two men were probably driving something.”
She agreed, and felt better. Cotton could be on the move.
“Will my second envoy be given free rein?” she asked.
“Of course, just as I said.”
All of this was beyond odd. Only a mile away workers were erecting the scaffolding and platform for the pending inauguration. Years ago that ceremony was held on the eastern side of the Capitol building, but Reagan had wanted to face west, toward California, so every president since had followed suit. Normally, this was the slow time for government, a transition from one administration to another. The old group short on power, the new learning how to acquire it. Little was ever done in this limbo. Yet Russia seemed to need American assistance.
And now a mention of Forward Pass.
“Would you take a ride with me?” he asked.
“You never told me how you learned that code name.”
“It is my business to know such things. You were there, Stephanie. Reagan’s eyes and ears to the Vatican. His special envoy, who helped broker a deal that ended the USSR. That matters not to me. Frankly, I’m glad the regime is gone. But it does matter to another man.”
Finally, something substantive.
“Aleksandr Zorin. He wants revenge.”
CHAPTER TEN
Zorin followed the graveled lane along the lakeshore, then turned inland and drove up toward the odd-looking gray-and-white observatory. The building rose in sharp angles and planes with a long rectangular chute leaning skyward, the whole thing resembling some modern work of art. It had been built twenty years ago for solar research, since Lake Baikal received more than two hundred days of sunshine each year. An
ancillary stellar observatory sat a kilometer away, on an adjacent hill, round with a dome, more reminiscent of what such a place should look like. This time of year no one occupied either facility, the sun too low in the sky, the nights too cloudy. That was why he’d chosen the locale to confront the American.
His talk with Vadim Belchenko had been exhilarating. Other than Anya, Belchenko was now the only other person who knew what he was planning. And it was interesting to learn where the man he sought now lived.
Canada.
For all its power, all its wars won and arrogance across the globe, Canada remained a U.S. failure. Twice it invaded, both times soundly defeated. A bit of inspiration, he’d always thought. It showed that the so-called mighty nation was not invincible. For him, Canada was familiar territory. He served three years there in the 1980s, commanding an expansive KGB intelligence network, milking an army of informants—government officials, journalists, police, factory workers—anyone and everyone who could provide useful intelligence. Incredibly, most of them worked unknowingly for free, their information volunteered simply in answer to a casual inquiry. Canada traditionally stayed neutral on the world stage—especially in the Cold War—which explained the ease of gathering information there. People seemed to talk more freely in a place that wasn’t on either side, and much as in Switzerland and Sweden, that element of detachment had made it the perfect place for espionage.
He’d been headquartered in Ottawa, a midlevel KGB posting, nothing like London, Washington, DC, Paris, or Bonn. No major general was ever assigned, a mere colonel like himself would do, but it wasn’t unimportant. Canada sat right next door to the USSR’s main adversary. And that alone had made it of keen interest to both sides of the Cold War. Resources had been freely allocated to the post, his mission focused on preparations for the inevitable war with America. Like the tens of thousands of other KGB officers around the world he became one of the troops on the invisible front. His bases had been embassies, trade missions, Aeroflot offices, and an assortment of other cover companies. And unlike the military that spent its time drilling, studying, and training soldiers, a KGB operative went to war the moment he or she stepped onto foreign soil.
He stopped the car and climbed out into the frigid air. No fences protected the observatory grounds. Why would they? Nothing here but a few scientists and some unimportant equipment. The perch upon which the building sat overlooked the lake and he stared out at the frozen blue expanse. In the fading winter sunshine he caught sight of an old Lada speeding across the surface. Occasionally he heard the familiar symphony of bangs and snaps as the ice plates shifted, creating new patterns of white lines. Though locked in cold, the water remained alive, never yielding, constantly adapting.
Just like himself.
He wore an overcoat, gloves, boots, and a fur hat. A gray, heavy-knit turtleneck sweater circled under his chin, wreathed by a scarf. Winter always made him think of his childhood in central Russia. His parents were not of the elite, the apparatchiks, whose birthright automatically ensured them a lifetime of official privilege. No luxury apartments, summer dachas, or access to the best goods and services came their way. His father worked as a lumberjack, his mother on a farm. He was the youngest of three sons and his life fundamentally changed at age sixteen when a factory worker handed him some party literature. For the first time he read about Lenin, the Soviets, and a workers’ utopia, beginning then and there to believe. He joined the Communist Youth, at first for the organized games—but he stayed for the politics. As his own family fractured apart, the Soviets became more and more important. His father lived in another town for most of his childhood, his visits back home every few weeks still vivid memories. He would talk about the Great War and his life as a soldier surviving Stalingrad, which not many could claim. Once he’d dreamed of going to war with his father, fighting side by side, but that never came to pass.
His parents always had the highest hopes for their youngest son. They wanted him to be schooled, unlike his two older brothers who’d been forced to go to work early. “I will make you an educated man. What you do with that education is your choice.” And for all his personal shortcomings his father kept that promise, making sure his youngest attended preparatory school where, thanks to his perception, bearing, and organizational talents, he caught the party’s eye. He became one of the nomenklatura, those rewarded for being in political favor with those in charge. He then spent seven years at military school, studying Marxism, Leninism, the Communist party, philosophy, and economics. He changed from a wild, impulsive, somewhat arrogant boy who never accepted a mistake into a smart, patient, and determined man. As Lenin had said, “Give us your child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”
During his final year at school a colonel in the GRU recommended him for the military intelligence agency. He took the entrance exams and passed, eventually gaining admittance to the KGB’s Red Banner Institute in Moscow, equal parts boot camp, university, and spy school. Only three hundred candidates a year were taken. Graduating meant becoming a foreign intelligence operative with possible assignment overseas. The institute taught him about the West and how to speak perfect English. He studied banking, credit cards, mortgages, taxes, all things nonexistent in the USSR but vital to someone living on the outside. He’d also been taught first aid, reconnaissance, Morse code, survival skills, and how to navigate by the sun and stars. He’d learned nuclear, biological, and chemical defense techniques. Parachuting, scuba diving, and flight training, too. He’d first driven a car there and mastered the rules of the road, as few inside the old regime had owned vehicles.
Most students never earned a passing grade, relegated to searching for spies within the Soviet Union, the homeland becoming their safe, warm womb. He earned a passing grade, was commissioned a lieutenant, and assigned to the coveted North American desk. As a further reward he’d been given an apartment near the Kremlin with a private bath, which signified the hopes his superiors held for him. Within three years he was posted overseas. First to Western Europe, then North America. And where many of his colleagues succumbed to the lure—that startling contrast between the image of capitalism pressed back home and the reality of living in the West—he resisted and remained loyal.
The Ministry of Fear.
That was how many once referred to the KGB.
Its twenty directorates had been all-encompassing, yet none of that mattered on December 26, 1991, when Declaration 142-H acknowledged the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States and ending the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev declared the office of general secretary extinct and handed over all power to the new Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.
His stomach turned simply at the thought of Yeltsin.
A drunk—incompetent and corrupt—surrounded by men who stole the country so they could become billionaires. Himself and millions of others felt betrayed by both Yeltsin and the oligarchs who emerged from the ashes, most either relatives or friends of Yeltsin who skimmed off the cream and left sour milk for the rest. At least in the Soviet system there’d been order. None existed in the Russian Federation. Contract killings became big business. The mobsters controlled everything of value, including the banks and many corporations, far more feared than the KGB had ever been. From the first socialist nation in the world emerged a criminal state. Authoritarianism, but without authority. Two failed revolts, one in 1991, the other in 1993, soured the people on communism forever.
He still recalled that December night when the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time, replaced with the Russian tricolor.
And the Cold War ended.
Then the horror started.
Inflation rose 250%. The national economy shrank 15%. Pensions went unpaid, salaries were deferred, money became nearly nonexistent. The end for him came one day when he’d ventured out to buy some bread. At the store he encountered an old man wearing his World War II medals, asking the clerk if he co
uld buy but a quarter loaf, as that was all he could afford. The clerk refused, so he’d stepped forward and offered to buy the man a full loaf, but the veteran brushed him off, saying, “I am still proud.”
As was he.
So he moved east where he no longer had to witness failure.
He rubbed his hands together for warmth and checked his watch.
The American should be here by now.
Twenty years he worked as an officer. Never were the KGB referred to as agents. Always either “officer” or “operative,” which he liked. It had been an honorable job. He’d fought for the motherland without bias or prejudice, preparing for the inevitable fight with the United States. During the 20th century 75 million Soviets died from revolution, conflict, famine, or terror. Not since the mid-19th century had war visited American soil. Russians had been continuously ravaged. He’d been taught that the only way to defeat an enemy was to bring war to its home, and that had been a big part of his mission. The new Russian Federation eventually created its own foreign intelligence arm, the SVR, but it was nothing like its predecessor. Commercial and industrial espionage replaced national security as top priorities. The SVR seemed to exist only to make mobsters rich. He wanted to serve the nation, not criminals, so he resigned. Many of his colleagues did, too, most going to work for the syndicates, which valued their skills. He’d been tempted, but resisted, and for the first time in his life he became unemployed.
He was thrilled when, in 1999, Yeltsin finally resigned. He’d watched on television as the drunken fool had said, “I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes.”
A little late by then.
The damage was irreversible.
To this day he still held a Russian passport and carried his Communist party and KGB pension card, though he never saw a ruble from retirement. Only a few understood how the USSR had truly been brought to its knees. He’d made a point to become one of those, reading everything he could. And Vadim Belchenko, waiting for him back at the dacha, knew every detail, too.