The Fall of Moscow Station

by Mark Henshaw

  “Jon!” He heard Kyra’s voice.

  “Keep going,” Jon said. The pain in his leg was sharp and burning even hotter now. The femur was broken, he could tell that much. If the bullet had struck the deep femoral artery or the great saphenous vein, he would bleed out right there in the dirt maybe before the other Russians could reach him and their comrades. “Get to the truck.”

  He looked at the Glock. The pistol’s slide had locked open on an empty clip. He didn’t know whether Kyra had another clip in her bag or not.

  “No! You’re—”

  He couldn’t see Kyra. She was on the other side of the concrete wall. His voice sounded weaker to his own ears now. He was going into shock. He fought it. There were two more pistols on the ground ahead of him. Jon dropped the useless Glock and tried to stand and his leg collapsed under him. He started to crawl through the dirt toward the closer weapon. “Get moving. You have to go.”

  • • •

  “No!” Kyra yelled at him. She’d seen his head go down behind the wall, hadn’t seen it come back up. The Russians behind her were getting closer. She could hear their shouts. If she ran back a few feet, she could sprint up the wall as Jon had and get to the other side. But he was wounded . . . she could tell that much from his shaky voice. He’d been shot, but where she didn’t know. She couldn’t help him walk and handle the Glock at the same time . . . and the pain of whatever wound Jon had sustained would wreck his aim. In a few moments, he might not even be conscious.

  It didn’t matter. She backed up a few feet to get her running start—

  —something arced over the fence and landed in the dirt, skidding toward her. Kyra looked down.

  It was a pistol . . . not the Glock. A Makarov.

  Jon had taken out the soldiers on the other side of the wall.

  Kyra picked up the Russian firearm. I’m coming, Jon—

  She heard another sound, more feet in the dirt on the other side of the wall. The Spetsnaz soldiers had heard the gunshots from the road and jumped over. There was more shooting from Jon’s position. A different sound from the Glock. Jon had shot two men, which meant there had been two Makarovs. Jon had thrown her one and gotten to the other. The Russians fifty yards behind her on the other side of the wall returned fire. She couldn’t see what was happening.

  “Go!” Jon said from the other side of the wall. His voice was hoarse now, weak.

  Kyra ran to the wall, jumped, and tried to pull herself over with her one empty hand. A bullet hit the stone, sending small shards into her cheek, and Kyra’s reflexes forced her to let go. She fell into the dirt behind the wall, landing hard on her side.

  “Jon!” she yelled.

  He didn’t answer and she heard no more firing from his position. More shouts in Russian came from the road, closer now. She couldn’t make it over the wall. The Spetsnaz would reach Jon in seconds and they would kill her if she came over the wall, Makarov in hand.

  Her training finally took over, crushing her emotions and forcing her to move, her legs refusing her order to stop, instead determined to carry her to safety.

  I’m sorry, Jon.

  Kyra ran. It was what he wanted her to do, and she hated him for it.

  • • •

  She heard the Russians’ voices grow quieter as she moved farther away. There were no sounds of men crashing through the woods behind her now, no sign they were trying to flank her on the road, no more gunshots. Perhaps the Russian soldiers had contented themselves with capturing one American . . . or had they killed him? Kyra’s mind rebelled at the thought, trying to force God or the universe to keep it from being true.

  Her legs kept moving of their own accord, her body flying over and around the obstacles in her path without the help of her mind, which was still focused on the place behind her where her friend was lying.

  She reached the end of the wood line, where the concrete road turned at a right angle to the east. Kyra ran up the wall, pulled herself over, and landed on her feet in the grass on the other side. The truck was down the road another half mile. Her lungs were wheezing, her legs weak rubber. Don’t stop. She heard the order in her head but didn’t know from where it came . . . certainly not her own conscious mind.

  Kyra looked around the corner of the concrete wall back up the road. The sun was behind the trees now, and the shadows had melted into each other. The light would be gone in minutes. She could see no more than an eighth of a mile down the road and there was no one in sight. No yells, no shouts. Kyra pushed herself onto her feet and ran as hard as the adrenaline allowed.

  She saw the truck after another three minutes of running, and she didn’t stop until she was standing by it. She fumbled for the keys, almost dropped them. Her hands were shaking harder than she could ever remember. She got the door open, threw her pack and the Makarov onto the passenger seat, then managed to push the key into the ignition. She locked her shoulder belt and fired up the engine.

  Kyra sat in the seat, hands on the wheel, and looked up the road. Jon was up there, somewhere, dead or alive she didn’t know. She thought for a moment that she might go after him, drive the truck at full speed, and run over anyone in her way.

  Perhaps she could drive back up the road. She wanted to hunt the Spetsnaz, shoot them or run them over. Then she could help Jon crawl into the truck. The nearby village surely had some kind of medical facility, a first-aid kit if nothing else—

  Fool, the thought came. Idiot. The Russian men on the road were trained Special Forces soldiers. They outgunned her, and they could simply jump back over the wall if she tried to run them over . . . no, she wouldn’t even get that close. She’d have to turn the headlights on, to keep from running Jon over on the off chance he was still alive and lying in the road. The Russians would see her coming long before she would see them. One shot into the truck cab and she would be finished.

  Jon had taken out two only because he’d managed to gain the element of surprise. In the dark, she would have no chance against them . . . and Jon wouldn’t have wanted her to try.

  • • •

  Kyra put the truck into gear and U-turned it across the road. She made her way back to the Zehdenicker Strasse road, driving on autopilot, paying no attention to her surroundings. There were no headlights behind her. Her training forced her to notice that much. She turned south onto the highway and continued through the village until she passed the solar farm. Then she found a side road, pulled off, and drove into some farmer’s field, where the truck would be hidden from traffic by more thick woods. Then she stopped, killed the engine, and unbuckled her belt.

  She stared into space at nothing, then got out of the vehicle. Kyra walked three steps before falling forward into the grass. Her body started to convulse and she lost her lunch, spewing bile onto the ground until there was nothing left but dry heaves.

  Then Kyra fell onto her side, curled up, and cried harder than she ever had, great racking sobs that left her shuddering on the ground, until she had no strength left to move at all.

  The “Aquarium”—old GRU headquarters

  Khoroshevskoye shosse 76

  Khodynka, Moscow, Russia

  From the outside, the old headquarters of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, the Main Intelligence Directorate, was remarkable only for its size. The edifice was a decaying nine-story tower encased in glass that loomed over a family of mismatched industrial buildings and the old Khodynka Airfield. There was no beauty in its design or its cold construction, which fact was demonstrated clearly by the new headquarters building to the east. That structure was as modern as any in Moscow, concrete and glass covered in metal, with all the amenities.

  Colonel Anton Semyonovich Sokolov would not have admitted it, but he missed Lubyanka. Not for the finer interior of the upper floors or the larger, cleaner office he’d once used in the KGB’s old headquarters when that organization and his own GRU had worked together in a tenuous alliance. Any man would want those amenities again, but the interrogator’s desire
s ran deeper. It was the spirit of the place that he wished he could recapture here. Lubyanka’s reputation alone had been enough to break most men and women who’d been brought to his room there. Confessions, whether true or not, had been easy to come by then. Not so much now that he had to work in this unremarkable site. “The Aquarium” just didn’t create the same fear in the Russian heart. If his superiors had cared to ask his opinion, he would have admitted that. He would have said that something valuable had been lost, something needed to keep his country orderly and powerful.

  Still, there was a job to do, and if the building could not lend him any help, he would have to push on and find other ways when his services were required. There had been little of that in recent years. The unfortunate clientele who had come this way of late had been activists whose crimes mainly had involved discomfiting the political elites, or businessmen who had made the error of thinking that the buyout offers given by those same elites were invitations to bargain, the start of negotiations and not the end. He did not like plying his trade on such people. They were not true threats to the Rodina.

  The phone on his old metal desk sounded, a shrill electronic ring. An encrypted call, he saw. He lifted the handset. “Ya slushayu vas.” I’m listening to you.

  The caller’s voice was familiar enough. “Anton Semyonovich. You are in good health?”

  “I am, General Lavrov, though I fear the flu is coming soon enough,” Sokolov replied. “I catch it every year.”

  “Then I will tell you vyzdoravlivay skoreye now,” Lavrov replied. “I trust you are not busy?”

  A trick question, always. To say he was unoccupied would have flirted with an admission that he was dispensable. Telling the lie always was safer easier. “Always, but with nothing so pressing today that I cannot shunt it aside if you require my service.”

  “Very good,” Lavrov said. “I am coming home, and I have received some information from a new source that we have some unfaithful colleagues in our ranks. The source is very sensitive and touches on a project of unusual importance. I can trust your discretion?”

  “Always.”

  “I regret that open trials could only threaten the project’s security, so they will not be permitted. I will pass you the names one at a time as I confirm the reliability of the information. I will require you to detain the individuals quickly and with no publicity whatsoever. You will be allowed a small unit of men. I will designate who will assist you with the apprehensions. You will not speak of the operations to anyone, even colleagues within the GRU. This will be entirely compartmented. Your duty will be to locate and detain them, then determine quickly what information they have given up to the Main Enemy. After that, you will be free to dispense justice to each criminal as you see fit, but you will report to me the disposition of each case, after which I will give you the next name.”

  The Main Enemy, Sokolov thought. The United States. The CIA. Almost three decades since the Soviet Union had fallen and his GRU leaders still used the same terms and thought the same ways as before. “Ya ponimayu.” I understand. There was no question that the general’s vision of “justice” would be very narrow despite his promise that the interrogator had the latitude to decide matters for himself.

  “Ochen’ khorosho. You must not delay for any reason. There will be no time for lengthy investigations now. We must repair the project’s security as quickly as you can move.”

  “I can begin today, as soon as you identify the team members. But they must not question my orders, or I will not be able to guarantee you the discretion you desire,” the interrogator warned him.

  “I will tell them personally that they are at your disposal,” Lavrov confirmed. “Stand by. You will have my telex with the first name within the hour.”

  “Can you tell me how many names are on your list?” Sokolov asked.

  “Not yet,” Lavrov admitted. “We are unsure as to the scope of the penetrations. The preliminary information our asset has provided suggests at least three penetrations of the GRU itself, but there could be more. So you must not take on any other tasking from any other officers until I tell you that this operation is complete. But I expect the whole matter should not take more than a few weeks.”

  “Yes, sir. I await your orders.”

  “Do svidaniya,” Lavrov said.

  “Do svidaniya,” Sokolov repeated. The call disconnected, he replaced the phone on its handset and leaned back, already lost in his thoughts. This was all irregular and surely illegal, not that it mattered. There were procedures for dealing with moles, laws for what came after, and Lavrov had just waived them all aside. Why? he wondered. To protect Lavrov’s new source? That was possible. Aldrich Ames, the CIA’s last great traitor, had given up the names of every CIA mole he knew at once, trying to burn anyone who could identify him. The KGB had taken them all out so quickly that the Americans had known immediately what had happened and Ames’s desperate plan had turned on him. His attempt to protect himself had given his CIA colleagues the very evidence they needed to find him. A series of state trials now would surely have the same effect . . . and yet Lavrov had told him to move quickly. No matter how their assets went dark, through public means or private, the CIA surely would realize that its access was being clamped off.

  Did the CIA already know about Lavrov’s source? Was that the reason the old general was demanding such speed and secrecy? That was an intriguing thought. Perhaps Lavrov wanted to catch the moles before the CIA could exfiltrate them or warn them to run, or before some news service could run a story that would warn them just the same.

  A race, then? The CIA and the GRU, both running toward the same set of targets, and he would determine which service reached each mole first.

  Sokolov felt a small surge of guilt rise in his chest. It was one thing to extract a confession of guilt from the accused so they could be moved along to a righteous sentence, but that was not his task here. Lavrov clearly considered the word of his source, whoever that was, as good as a confession. Sokolov’s only job was damage assessment and control. Locate, detain, evaluate, neutralize. Such clinical words.

  His orders were set, but orders and duty were not always the same. Sokolov closed his eyes and began to consider whether his heart and his mind were still one and the same.

  • • •

  Lavrov cradled the phone and stared down at the sheet of paper on his desk. It was double-spaced, neatly typed, two columns that reached halfway down the page. He imagined the CIA would gladly have one of its drones put a missile through his window to destroy the list. He was not yet sure that Maines had given him every name the American knew, but there were enough that the traitor’s former masters in Virginia must be in a panic.

  Where to begin? Every person on the paper would be dealt with, and quickly, but the CIA would be conducting an exercise very much like the one he was performing right now. If they could only save a few before the Russian dragnet fell, who would they choose? Who would they sacrifice that others might live? It was a fascinating puzzle of a kind that Lavrov had never had to tackle before.

  The young woman from the roof—Maines had said her name was Stryker—could have been very useful to him right now, were she cooperative. The concept of a Red Cell fascinated the GRU head . . . a group of analysts who, among other things, imagined themselves to be the enemy and tried to think as the enemy did. It was a concept not unknown to his predecessors. The old spy school at Vinnytsia where KGB officers had lived as Americans, shopped at 7-Eleven, and spoken English in homes where they ate roast beef and cherry pie had been a brilliant idea. Even the CIA had thought so. But such techniques had fallen out of use and Lavrov had no training in them.

  He touched a finger to the first name. Are you more important to the CIA than the next name? Or the last?

  Lavrov shook his head and cleared his mind.

  Stryker, the woman . . . she had seen the test platform at Vogelsang. His men had caught her and her associate emerging from the missile storage bunker.
Had she deduced what he had demonstrated there?

  Assume that she has, Lavrov thought. That was easy enough. It was his natural inclination to consider worst cases.

  If she knew of the EMP, did she know of the other advanced technologies that the Foundation had shared with America’s enemies over the years? It was possible. The Chinese stealth plane had been lost in its first confrontation with the U.S. Navy three years before. The Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group had used a very unusual radar network in the Battle of the Taiwan Strait. Had they been forewarned?

  The nuclear warhead the Iranians had been constructing in Venezuela had been captured last year, the covert facility utterly destroyed with a Massive Ordinance Penetrator as neatly as a tumor excised by a surgeon’s laser. Hosseini Ahmadi, the Iranian program’s leader, had been executed on his own plane at the airport, a single bullet to his forehead. It was still unclear who had pulled that trigger and Lavrov hadn’t thought the Americans were that ruthless, but his own sources in Caracas had confirmed that they had been aboard Ahmadi’s aircraft when he’d climbed the stairs, then left just before his corpse had been carried back down.

  Assume that she does.

  Other operations had come off undisturbed, so the CIA clearly did not know the full scope of the Foundation’s work. But if they knew of the program generally and the EMP specifically, would they not try to stop him from sharing that technology, as they had the others?

  Lavrov focused on the paper again, reading each name. Which of you could tell Miss Stryker and her friends of the EMP? Its design? Its location? How we will deliver it?

  Would those be the people the CIA would try to save?

  Perhaps not . . . but they would be, he supposed, a very good place for him to start.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Oval Office

  Of the innumerable diplomats and foreign leaders that President Daniel Rostow had met, he disliked the Russian ambassador to the U.S. the most. Igor Nikolayevich Galushka smiled so rarely that he frightened most everyone who knew him when he did. The Russian diplomat had come from a background that would have crushed the ambitions of other men in the Kremlin. He was a farmer’s son from Fedyakovoan, an unremarkable village seated two hundred miles east of Moscow on the back of the Volga River, and had no advantages of family or business connections to the men who ruled the country. That he had managed to survive the various political and personal purges of the previous three decades and get himself one of the most important postings in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was more a testament to his lack of ethics than any diplomatic skill. That was fine by him and his superiors. Most important policies between nations were hashed out over the phone between leaders. Ambassadors were used only when the chiefs of state didn’t want to answer unpleasant questions, and Galushka excelled at being the bearer of appalling news.