by Mark Henshaw
Leading with your heart is a fine way to get killed? she thought. You’re wrong, Jon. It’s the only real edge we ever have in this business. Training and tools could always be countered, but the will to act, to keep pushing on against the enemy . . . that was harder to match.
So it was ironic, she thought, that she was pushing against the enemy by standing still. Kyra leaned against one of the trees that lined the wide median between the opposing lanes of the Unter Den Linden, ignoring the tourists and locals walking behind her. Cars rolled past, almost within arm’s reach, but she never moved or looked away from the embassy. The wind picked up, imparting a chill to the air.
Kyra zipped up the red jacket.
There were German Bundeskriminalamt officers hiding in tourists’ clothing at both ends of the block, ready to seal off both ends of the street and take Maines into custody after he walked out the front door. The president of the United States had refused to offer a pardon to Alden Maines, but Maines didn’t know that. With that realization in hand, Kyra had thought she might be able to shut down Maines’s threat before nightfall. All he had to do was believe that his deal was within reach.
You asked for me, Maines, she thought. Get out here.
• • •
Alden Maines stared at the embassy sidewalk from the conference room window, failing to repress a smile. The president signed off, and I get to go home, he thought. Maines had sold out his country, made $50 million in the process, and the president himself had agreed to forgive it all. The world was dancing on his strings.
“It is a good view,” he heard Lavrov say. Maines turned and saw the Russian general come up behind him. “Not so nice as it was before the Wall came down, but it still has much to recommend it.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Maines said. He had nothing left to say to the man.
Lavrov smiled, a small one. “She is quite a pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“Who?”
“The young lady in the red coat down on the street,” Lavrov said. “The one I allowed you to meet yesterday.”
“Not my type,” Maines said. “I don’t like the pudgy ones.” I’ve got my pardon now, you moron, he thought. You don’t want to pay, you get nothing.
“Oh, surely you recognize a disguise when you see one,” Lavrov protested. “Hers was a very good one, but I suspect that she is much prettier without it. She would make a most agreeable companion for an evening out, and good entertainment after if she were persuaded. But I doubt she would entertain any such notions with you. I’m told that she left you clutching yourself on the roof.”
Maines gritted his teeth but refused to look at the Russian. Of course Lavrov knew about his humiliation. Another reason to spit in Stryker’s face when he walked out the front door of this building in a few minutes. You won’t be so full of yourself then, General.
“A woman of intelligence, beauty, and spirit,” Lavrov said, approving. “I would like to know her name.”
“She didn’t tell me.” It was technically true.
“Perhaps, but I think you know who she is,” Lavrov suggested. He held out a large manila envelope.
Maines opened it and pulled out the contents, three photographs, medium resolution, clearly stills taken from security-camera footage. The first was an image from the roof, Stryker arguing with him yesterday, then driving her knee into his crotch. The time stamp confirmed what Maines’s own memory told him.
The second picture was grainy, poor resolution with odd lighting. Even so, the detail was enough for the American to see that it was Stryker again, no disguise, dressed casual. She was handing something, likely her passport, to an airport customs officer. China, he thought, from the Mandarin lettering on a wall sign, Beijing, he supposed.
“This picture was taken in Beijing two years ago. Our facial recognition software says that there is a very high probability that it is the same woman despite the differences,” Lavrov said, confirming the guess. “Our Chinese friends sent it to us after the incident in the Taiwan Strait with the U.S. Navy, asking for help identifying the woman. Some days after this was taken, she helped a Chinese intelligence officer escape surveillance, likely as part of an operation to bring the man to the United States. She assaulted one Chinese officer during the escape, and another on the street some days earlier. That one spent a significant amount of time in a hospital after she beat him with a steel bar.”
Maines stared at the woman’s picture. You landed on your feet after Caracas better than I did, he realized, and he felt a hatred for the woman welling up inside him. She’d moved on to lead a key operation while he had sat rotting at headquarters, even after he had saved her. Should’ve been me.
“The man she helped escape had shared information on a research program that the People’s Liberation Army had been running for seventeen years with my assistance,” Lavrov continued. “A few days later, your country’s navy destroyed a unique stealth plane that was the focus of that project. The radar telemetry collected during the battle shows that your navy had established a system to detect the plane.”
Maines stared at the picture again. “Sorry,” he lied. “Still don’t recognize her.”
Lavrov tapped the third photograph. It showed Stryker at another customs desk, this one in some Latin American country, judging by the Spanish signage. The picture was higher quality. Stryker was blond again, no glasses, athletic build, not a short, overweight brunette with bad eyesight like yesterday—
—then he recognized the place. Caracas.
“Our Venezuelan friends shared this with us last year. The woman infiltrated a munitions factory near Puerto Cabello and was instrumental in stealing the nuclear device that the Iranians were building there with the help of their hosts. She assaulted the Venezuelan national intelligence director inside the base and later in an airport hangar. She crushed his nose and shattered his cheekbones with a rifle butt, and she detached one of his retinas. He identified her some days later from the airport security footage after his eyes could begin to focus again. Apparently, she had been in his country before and was wounded in a counterintelligence operation he had led. She seemed to take it quite personally.”
Maines gaped at the photograph and cursed silently in amazement. Kyra broke into that military base last year? He’d been wrong. It hadn’t been an analyst who Cooke had tapped for that operation. He’d just assumed that Kyra had joined the Red Cell later. You went back to Caracas. He might have been impressed had his anger not been crushing every other feeling in his head.
Still, Lavrov had insulted him and Maines was in no mood to give the man free information, or even show that he was unhappy. “Yeah, I bet. Still can’t help you,” he repeated.
“She is a concern. You see, the Chinese and the Iranians were both clients of an ongoing project that I oversee. This woman appeared and both efforts were disrupted within a few days. I do not believe that is a coincidence.” Lavrov pointed to yesterday’s photograph. “And now she is here.”
Maines shrugged and dropped the picture on the desk.
Lavrov studied Maines, ran his eyes over the American’s face, looking for some signal of deceit. There was no reason to bluff and Maines let the Russian watch him. “You are lying to me, Mr. Maines,” Lavrov finally announced. “One woman has disrupted two critical GRU operations that we were running in concert with important allies, and now she is here in Berlin while you and I are here while I am advancing a third. I think that your Agency knows about my operations, and I believe you know her name. You wish to say that is not the case?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” Maines protested. “Look, if the Agency is on to you, they figured it out some other way because I never heard a whisper about your big operation, whatever it is.”
Lavrov nodded slowly, took the pictures back, and replaced them in the folder. “It will be a shame to disappoint such a woman.”
Maines frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She’s wearing a red jacket. I believe that
was the signal she was to give you if your country accepted the proposal made to her,” Lavrov said, as though a child should have understood his meaning.
Maines understood it perfectly well, and his eyes widened. Lavrov saw it. “Of course, we heard everything. Surely you knew that?” the Russian asked, his question entirely rhetorical. Whether Maines had thought of the possibility or not was moot now. “I would like to hear the story about how you saved her from a safe house in Caracas, but at this moment I have an operation that is waiting for your information to proceed. So please don’t lie to me again about whether you know her name.”
“You want to know what I know? The president of the United States just agreed to pay me fifty million dollars not to tell you jack, including her name,” Maines said, pointing toward the street at Kyra. “So if you want me to talk, that’s the bid to beat.”
Lavrov frowned. “Such obstinance. But I will counter the offer. I will give you my bid . . . eight hundred rubles.”
“Eight hundred rubles?” He did the math in his head. Twelve dollars?
Lavrov raised a hand and motioned with two fingers. Three younger men, all muscular, entered the room, one carrying a small bag. Two of them took Maines by the arms and forced him to the table, ignoring his curses and protests. The American struggled, but he was in no shape to hold his own against either of the men, much less both together. They forced his arms out, putting his hands palm down on the brown oak.
Lavrov pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat down, looking Maines in the eyes. “Yes, eight hundred rubles . . . the price in Moscow for a good Russian-made hammer.” Lavrov nodded to the man carrying the bag. The younger Russian opened the satchel and pulled out a small club mallet.
“No! You can’t—” Maines started. Without hesitation, the Russian swung the small metal sledge and slammed it down on Maines’s outstretched hand.
Maines screamed as the hammer shattered his metacarpal bones into fragments. On reflex, he tried to rip his crippled hand away from the two men holding him down, but they had expected him to fight and kept him pinned. The hammer slammed down again, this time just behind where the first blow had landed, and the crunch of grinding carpals in his wrist was heard for a brief second before Maines’s howl of agony drowned it out.
“She will not be disappointed when you don’t come out to meet her . . . more angry, I think,” Lavrov told him. “So she will go back to her embassy and report to her superiors that you refused the deal, which I suspect will not be extended a second time. They will believe that you never intended to accept any deal, and perhaps will think that you were only buying time to let us act on your information. You were clever to try to build a bridge home after I burned your ships back. But now I am burning your bridge too.” He nodded to the Russian holding the tool and the man swung it down without hesitation.
Five more strikes with the hammer made sure there were no more unbroken bones in Maines’s right hand. The two assistants at his sides let him go and Maines hardly moved. He tried to lift his arm and moaned in pain as the agony of bits of bone grinding into his muscles and skin sent new spasms of agony cutting through his brain. He whimpered, trying not to cry, only just succeeding, and he squeezed his right arm at the wrist as though he could bottle the pain up in his hand and keep it from passing through the nerves up into his mind.
Lavrov stared at the pathetic sight. “Now, Mr. Maines, you have lied to me, but I must confess that I also lied to you. You must forgive me for that. My time is not unlimited, as I suggested, and your grace period is gone. You have information that I need and you will give it to me now. There is morphine in the infirmary waiting for you, but you don’t know where that is, do you? These men will be happy to show you the way after I am satisfied. But for every minute you make me wait to begin from this moment, you will get the hammer. We will save your spine for last if you are still intransigent, but I think you will not let matters go so far.”
Lavrov took a small notebook out of his jacket pocket, then a Montblanc pen. He opened the notebook and laid it on the table, then uncapped the pen and laid it on the first blank page. He looked at his watch and marked the time. “Now, Mr. Maines, shall we talk? First, I want the name of the young woman outside on the street. Second, I want the names of all of the CIA officers currently stationed in Moscow. And third, I want you to tell me everything you know about this CIA unit you call the Red Cell.”
• • •
Kyra’s own watch confirmed that she’d waited an hour and a half on the bench, more than fifteen minutes after Maines’s deadline. He’s not coming, she concluded. Why not? Did he know there really was no deal? That was unlikely, she thought. There were only five people who even knew about the traitor’s proposal, including the president and Maines himself, and she refused to believe that either Jon or Barron was a turncoats himself. The Russians found a way to tap our secure phones? That thought was almost more upsetting than the first, and the notion seemed just as unlikely.
Maybe he’s dead. That would be more good fortune than she could expect, and she couldn’t assume the possibility anyway, given the price to her country if she was wrong.
Was he trying to buy time for the GRU to move on our assets? A deception operation would explain why the old Russian had been so willing to let her see Maines the day before. And if Maines had cooperated with it, then the man’s treason had gone beyond simply giving up names to the enemy.
Kyra started walking west and pulled an encrypted cell phone from her pocket and dialed a preprogrammed number. The call took thirty seconds to connect and encrypt.
“Barron.”
“It’s me,” Kyra announced. “He didn’t show.”
“That wasn’t unexpected, but good try,” Barron said. “I doubt his new friends would let him walk out the front door even if he wanted to.”
“Probably not,” Kyra agreed. “I’m headed back to the embassy. You should thank our friends here for being ready to help. I’m sorry they came out for nothing.”
“They’ll understand.” The call disconnected, Kyra replaced the phone in her coat and started the short walk to the west.
U.S. Embassy
Berlin, Germany
Barron cradled the phone. “Well, that’s that, I guess. Maines didn’t come out.”
“Nothing is ever so easy,” Jon mused.
“No, but sometimes the universe smiles.” Barron hunched over the table, his weight on his fists, his head down, thinking. He looked up at the analyst. “I guess the question now is what Lavrov is doing? You said we might be able to save some assets if we figured that out, but I don’t know where to even start with that.”
“I think the starting point is obvious,” Jon told the NCS director.
Barron furrowed his brow. “You and I have very different definitions of ‘obvious.’ ”
“Strelnikov was killed three days ago, and Maines showed up the day after,” Jon observed. “They could have taken off for Moscow anytime after that. So why is Lavrov still here?”
“You think he came to Berlin for another reason?”
“All of his obvious reasons for being here are finished,” Jon noted. “Maybe Lavrov lured both Strelnikov and Maines to Berlin because he was already going to be here.”
“Good thought, but where do we start with that?”
“You’re a case officer,” Jon said. “And you were the station chief in Moscow once upon a time. So why did you ever travel outside of Russia?”
“Right now I came here to meet with the Germans to confirm Strelnikov’s death,” Barron replied. “But that’s a weird case. Usually I traveled foreign to meet an asset someplace the Russians wouldn’t be watching.”
“So let’s assume that Strelnikov was here to meet someone. Any candidates?” Jon asked.
Barron pondered the question. “When I first met with the Bundeskriminalamt about Strelnikov, we talked suspects. They did say that a Syrian army officer managed to evade surveillance on a drive no
rth of the city. That would’ve been a day or so before they found Strelnikov’s body floating in the lake, and the day after Lavrov came to town. But they found the Syrian coming back into Berlin along the same road later in the day.”
“How long was he gone?”
“Less than four hours,” Barron said.
“All right, let’s assume Lavrov was meeting with the Syrian somewhere up north,” Jon said. “Assuming they talked for at least an hour, that would mean their meeting site would be within a ninety-minute drive of Berlin.”
“That’s still a big search area.”
“Yes, it is,” Jon conceded. “I don’t suppose the Germans were following Lavrov.”
“The chairman of the GRU? Yeah, they’d follow him anywhere and everywhere. But a guy like that could find a way out of the Russian Embassy without being seen if he really wanted to.”
Jon nodded. “The only other angle we can work is Strelnikov’s murder itself. The Germans didn’t find any forensic evidence that could identify where he was killed?”
“They didn’t mention anything,” Barron replied. “Between the rain that week and the body being in the lake for a few days, anything useful probably got washed away, but I’ll check with them again.”
“Ask about anything unusual, no matter how minor,” Jon suggested.
“Will do.”
• • •
Barron took three hours to respond. “The Germans have nothing,” he told Jon, the man’s voice slightly broken up by interference on the cellular network. “It was a straight-up drowning. Toxicology was clean and no signs of defensive wounds or bruises on him. Assuming he really didn’t drown going for a swim, whoever took him out was a professional.”
Jon frowned. “There must be something to grab on to.”
“Afraid not,” Barron said. “The only unusual thing about Strelnikov’s death was that his was the second body they’d pulled out of the Müggelsee in a month.”