The Fall of Moscow Station

by Mark Henshaw

  But the cameras were not on, not this time. There were four men in the room and the subject of the meeting was not for anyone’s ears but theirs. The president of the Russian Federation, a former FSB director himself, sat at the table’s head. The foreign minister and Arkady Lavrov sat to his right. Grigoriyev was quite sure that his position alone on the left side was symbolic.

  “Good afternoon, friends,” the president said. Polite responses were uttered. “I believe that we are here at your request, Anatoly?”

  “Yes, but I don’t need to tell any of you why I have asked to meet, I am sure,” Grigoriyev replied.

  “Then there is nothing to discuss, Anatoly,” Lavrov said. “The GRU does not answer—”

  “The FSB is responsible for the internal security of the state,” Grigoriyev continued, cutting Lavrov off midsentence. “We perform the counterintelligence mission on Russian soil. This is not in dispute. Therefore, I want to know why I was not informed that the GRU had a source inside the CIA that provided a list of all CIA officers currently in Moscow.”

  “Obviously, for reasons of operational security,” Lavrov replied. “Our source is a sensitive one. We could not risk exposing him by sharing the information with the FSB in advance of the announcement.”

  “There should have been no announcement without consulting me first!” Grigoriyev protested. “And I want to know why our foreign minister cooperated with Arkady in withholding that information while he instructed our ambassador to Washington to tell the U.S. president that we would be expelling all of those officers from our soil.” In truth, Grigoriyev already knew the answer. The foreign minister was a Lavrov protégé. Grigoriyev simply wanted to see whether the man would have the good sense to appear embarrassed that he’d allowed the GRU chairman to co-opt his ministry so easily. It seemed he did. The minister avoided Grigoriyev’s gaze and remained silent.

  The president came to his defense. “Anatoly, I think the greater question here is why the GRU had to do the FSB’s duty?”

  “Are you accusing me of incompetence?” Grigoriyev countered. “You were the FSB director once, you understand that the CIA is not a club of amateurs. Even in the old days, when we were the KGB and recruited Americans abroad, we never had a source who gave up so much at once. I do not know who this source is, but I doubt very much that Arkady recruited him. No, this is not incompetence on the part of my people. I think it is merely good fortune, a volunteer who came to Arkady’s doorstep.”

  “That does not matter,” Lavrov said, dismissive. “How the man became our asset does not change the fact that such a source must be protected. You have seen the list of people we have expelled. You know that everyone you suspected was a CIA officer was on it, and many more who you did not.”

  “Protected?” Grigoriyev snorted in derision. “Do you truly imagine that the Americans do not know exactly who your source is now? And if you are wrong about him being a genuine defector?” Grigoriyev asked. “How have you verified this source and his information? What if he is lying? Do you realize what you have done if this all proves to be falsehoods?”

  “It is not—”

  “Open the file to me so that I can verify that for myself,” Grigoriyev demanded.

  Lavrov exhaled in mock exasperation and shook his head in a display of equally false sympathy. “I think that you are simply concerned that you were made to look the fool, Anatoly,” he said. “The GRU has earned the glory that you think should belong to the FSB and now you want a share of something you haven’t earned.”

  “What I want is the opportunity for my people to fulfill their duty to protect the Rodina and her interests,” Grigoriyev retorted. He turned toward the Russian president. “How can we be sure that this asset was not a dangle or a double agent if we cannot see the file? If that is the case, then expelling all of those Americans will have been a terrible blunder—”

  “How so?” the president asked, clearly not interested in the answer.

  “The Americans will surely respond in kind. They will expel any number of our people from the United States and disrupt our operations there. If the names that Arkady was given were not, in fact, all CIA officers and merely some easily replaced consular officers, then we could suffer more damage than the Americans—”

  “That will not be the case,” Lavrov assured the president. “My asset’s information is reliable. By tomorrow evening, the CIA will not have a single officer left on Moscow’s soil. They know that we know their identities and none of them will risk arrest and imprisonment by staying. Yes, they will certainly expel some of our people from their country, but not so many. With no comparable asset, they could only guess at who our officers are. Unless they are prepared to expel our entire delegation, which would be unthinkable except in war, whatever damage they inflict on us will be less than what we have done to them, so we will be able to reconstitute our operations more quickly. We will have a significant advantage in intelligence operations for at least a decade to come.”

  “I must agree, Anatoly,” the Russian president said. “Do not let your old competition with Arkady blind you to the opportunity that this source presented us. The information that Arkady has given us is truly impressive. We could not wait.”

  “We could not wait?” Grigoriyev said. “Then you knew also?”

  “Of course.”

  “This is foolishness,” Grigoriyev groused, the winds sucked neatly from his sails.

  “Such sour grapes, Anatoly.” Lavrov smiled. “For now, I think it would be helpful to us all if the FSB could ensure that all of the Americans on the list have left the Rodina, and I would consider it the greatest of personal favors if you would inform me when their exodus is complete.”

  I am not a bootlicker, like the foreign minister there, Grigoriyev raged quietly in his mind. You would throw me crumbs and say I should be grateful for them?

  The FSB director shook his head in disgust. The meeting really had been a formality after all. He should have seen it. Lavrov and his lackey would not have expelled so many Americans without the president’s approval. The fact that they had not told him in advance told Grigoriyev where he stood with this group. The path to the president’s chair always had gone through the FSB and its predecessor, the KGB. Now Lavrov’s good fortune had given the GRU chairman a way to steer that river out of its course.

  How to steer it back? Grigoriyev asked himself. He did not have an answer now, he admitted, but a solution would present itself. It always had.

  Office of the Director of the Directorate of Operations

  Seventh Floor, Old Headquarters Building

  CIA headquarters

  “You are not serious,” Cooke said. Years of practice had taught her to keep her tone calm and measured, especially when the world was burning, but she wanted to scream at her subordinate, tell him in profane terms what she thought about the man’s admission. Instead, she gripped the secure phone in her hand and tried to crush it, giving her anger somewhere to go besides her mouth.

  “You know better,” Barron replied. “She wants to know what happened to Jon. You and I would want to do the same.”

  “Wanting to do something and actually doing it are very, very different things,” Cooke observed. “And the president has ordered everyone out. I’m going to have to tell him that we’re actually sending somebody in. He won’t take it well.” She was being overly polite. She would be fortunate if the man didn’t throw the Oval Office Churchill bust at her.

  “Not to split hairs, but he ordered everyone on Lavrov’s list out,” Barron replied. “She’s not on the list. And she’s got cover for action . . . we really do need someone to sanitize that last safe house. We didn’t have enough time to clean them out before everyone had to leave, and that’s not a lie.”

  “What if Maines gave those up to Lavrov?” Cooke asked.

  “He might have,” Barron admitted. “I’ve got the Counterintelligence Center checking to see whether he went hunting through those files.”


  “That’s something,” Cooke conceded. “Okay, she’s in Moscow. The question is what we can do to support her?”

  “Not much.”

  “This isn’t a good idea,” Cooke observed.

  “Probably not,” Barron finally conceded. “But it’s time we stopped being reactive and started getting ahead of the game. Defense is the art of losing slow, and Maines and Lavrov have been in charge from the start of this. At the very least, we need to start throwing some sand in their gears and slowing them down while we figure out how to get in front of this. If there’s one thing Stryker is good at, it’s wrecking the best-laid plains.”

  Cooke didn’t know whether to nod or shake her head.

  The “Aquarium”—old GRU headquarters

  Sokolov’s secure phone rang. He answered it, waiting the few seconds for the encryption to go live. “Ya slushayu vas.”

  “Anton Semyonovich.” It was Lavrov’s voice.

  “General,” Sokolov answered, “I stand ready at your service.”

  “I have the first name for you,” Lavrov told him. “When can you move on him?”

  “At first light, General. The men are here. We will need a few hours to plan the operation. We do not want to give the man any opportunity to slip the net.”

  “Very good.” Lavrov gave him the traitor’s name and where he worked. Sokolov’s eyes went wide. The man’s office was not a thousand yards away. “Report to me when he is in your custody, and then when you have resolved the matter. I will then have another name for you.”

  “Understood, General.” The line died and Sokolov replaced the headset on its cradle. He stared at the name. And why did you turn against the Rodina? he wondered. He’d studied traitors and their motivations, the better to do his work. There were always so many reasons, but so few noble ones. I pray that you are a noble one, he thought. Perhaps then you will see your death as a fitting end to a life well lived.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Domodedovo International Airport

  28 kilometers south of Moscow

  She’d spent the flight declining the flight attendant’s polite questions regarding food and beverages using only hand signals. Kyra couldn’t understand what the flight crew was saying and didn’t want to make a request for English that would’ve announced to the entire plane that she was an American. She honestly did not know whether any of the people around her worked for the Russian security services and the case officer decided that now was as good a time as any to start being paranoid.

  She looked out the window as the plane began to descend through the clouds. Moscow looked like any other city at night from the air. Kyra indulged her imagination for a few seconds and let herself think she was landing at Dulles. She and Jon would disembark, say goodbye in the baggage claim. A short walk to the parking garage, load her bag into her truck, and she would be home in Leesburg within a half hour—

  —but Jon was not here. The pilot’s announcement in Russian to prepare for landing fully destroyed the illusion without mercy, not least because Kyra didn’t understand a single word.

  A sharp wind struck the aircraft sideways and the plane yawed hard just feet off the runway. The pilot held the altitude until he could straighten out the nose. Kyra inhaled deeply when the plane’s tires touched the concrete. Not the best start, she thought.

  She was relieved that she was alone. Half of counterintelligence work was making connections between people and places, and Kyra was free of any here. She was a completely random element as far as the Russians were concerned. If they targeted her simply because she was an American, they would break themselves trying to find any clue that connected her to any of the case officers or assets Maines had revealed. There was nothing for them to connect, and that was the only way to play the game against the FSB, the GRU, and all the rest. The CIA had learned through sad experience that mistakes were small when the Russians were playing at their best, and one could never assume that the Russians were at less than their best. That was the first of the cardinal Moscow Rules.

  1 Assume nothing.

  2 Never go against your gut.

  3 Everyone is potentially under opposition control.

  4 Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.

  5 Go with the flow, blend in.

  6 Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.

  7 Lull them into a sense of complacency.

  8 Pick the time and place for action.

  9 Keep your options open.

  10 Don’t harass the opposition.

  She had no doubt that she would be breaking several of those rules before this was over, and she was sure she needn’t have bothered learning the last one. Harass the Russians? She couldn’t imagine what case officer would be so stupid even with a full CIA in support to pull them out of trouble. But someone had. Rules were never made until someone had done something that called them into being. Kyra wondered whether the FSB had bashed the offender’s face against the asphalt to teach him some humility. She wouldn’t have faulted them.

  The customs officer was disinterested in the American woman to the point of incivility. The lack of attention, forged documents, and her light disguise—this one changing her into a dark redhead, flat-chested, with wide hips and a round face—granted her admittance into the country without getting called into a private room for a special interview.

  Kyra had settled on her method of reaching the safe house before leaving Berlin. Drivers for hire were lined up near the rental car desks. She’d considered one. She didn’t read Cyrillic and the Russians’ refusal to post English highway signs or obey their own traffic laws was going to make navigation problematic. But the Moscow Rules decreed that everyone is potentially under opposition control and she wasn’t going to give herself to the FSB or the GRU so quickly. The embassy would have its own fleet of vehicles, but improvisation was going to be the order of the day for this operation and having a car the Russians didn’t associate with diplomats would prove useful.

  The Russian government allowed foreigners staying less than six months to use their own countries’ driver’s licenses so long as they had a notarized Russian translation attached. Both were forgeries. The Russian police were known to stop drivers here for no reason at all, but she could risk that. An expert would have been hard-pressed to detect fake documents of this quality. No local traffic cop would manage it standing on the road with his own eyes the only tools at his disposal.

  The Volkswagen Tiguan was the last SUV available at the Avis rental desk, and the most expensive transport they had, but Kyra was sure that Langley wasn’t going to quibble over prices. Barron’s checkbook was open for this trip, which was no small favor. The Tiguan was going to swallow petrol like a parched bull drinking water from the trough on a hot Virginia day, but if Kyra was going to risk surveillance and detention by one of the most efficient intelligence services in the world, she wanted a car with four-wheel drive and as much horsepower as she could buy. She’d been chased before. She knew better than to lose one of those races by choosing an underpowered car that was useless off the paved roads.

  She’d memorized the major roads leading into the city on the map in her pack, but she paid for the GPS unit anyway. She didn’t know whether the FSB could track it, but if her memory failed her, she wasn’t going to spend the next week driving the Moscow streets, hoping to stumble across the safe house. To be fair, that level of incompetence might actually convince them that she was not a spy.

  Kyra dropped the handle on her rolling bag, tossed it into the passenger seat, and started the Tiguan. She put her hand on the drive lever and pulled it down, then looked at her dashboard to make sure the truck was in reverse.

  The gauges were labeled in Cyrillic.

  This is not a good idea.

  Kyra exhaled in exasperation as she heard Jon chiding her in her mind. That warning had become his habit and she supposed that he’d never been wrong, technically, despite her successes. Even fools were owed a few victories, she supp
osed, but she was finally coming to see the truth of his adage that bravery was no substitute for wisdom. If there was any operation that would settle the question, it would be this one. The Russian military may have degraded in the years after the Soviet Union had dissolved, but the security services never had. They had changed names and shapes, allegiances and org charts . . . no, in truth they had become the Kremlin, with only the blurred lines between them and organized crime to confuse that fact.

  You shouldn’t have come here, Jon’s voice told her.

  God hates a coward, she told him yet again in her mind.

  Jon hadn’t been a coward. Gonna make you proud, old man, she decided.

  Kyra put the truck in gear and drove out of the rental lot onto the airport road.

  A CIA safe house

  Moscow, Russia

  The safe house was twenty-five miles from the airport, but Kyra’s surveillance detection route had taken four hours to drive. She’d watched the safe house for another two before deciding it was unwatched and undisturbed, but she was still worried the FSB was simply more patient than she was.

  She’d cursed in amazement when she saw it. The last safe house she’d seen had been a small apartment in a Caracas slum. This one was a mansion by Moscow standards. A hand-cut stone walkway curved around on a trim green lawn with shade trees and streetlamps for illumination. The exterior of the house was yellow with white brick at the corners and Roman columns that reached up two stories at the front door. A two-car garage connected at a right angle on the side. A black iron fence and high bushes surrounded the property. The estate would not have been out of place in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Loudoun County in northern Virginia, where she lived almost five thousand miles to the west. Kyra was sure that she’d driven off course somewhere, not believing the Agency’s largesse extended so far, until the front gate accepted the code Barron had given her in Berlin and moved aside for her truck.