The Fall of Moscow Station

by Mark Henshaw

The main road bent to the right, leading out of the residential area into a more wooded, undeveloped landscape, and the highway began curving gently back and forth. That would slow down her pursuers and buy her a few seconds.

  She couldn’t continue on this road. The men behind her would have radios, they would be calling for help, and eventually she would find a roadblock in her path or a helicopter overhead that she would never evade. She needed to break contact and get out of the chase cars’ line of sight.

  The road straightened out again. She saw empty green fields to both sides, with long tree lines at the far side of each. Kyra searched for a break in the woods, anywhere she could take the SUV that their street cars behind couldn’t follow. She saw nothing.

  She looked in the mirror. The cars were within a few lengths of the Tiguan. She was out of time. Within a few seconds, they would draw guns and take out her rear tires.

  • • •

  There was one maneuver she could try, the one her trainers in the Agency’s “Crash and Bang” course had drawn up on the whiteboard, but refused to let the students practice, citing its lethal potential. She’d never tried it before, didn’t know if it would work.

  What do you think, Jon? she asked.

  This is not a good idea, the absent man replied.

  You always say that, she countered. You got a better idea?

  There was no answer. That’s a no. “C’mon,” she muttered, looking at the Russian cars in the mirror.

  Kurkinskoye was a two-lane road. A car passed in the opposite direction, and Kyra saw both lanes ahead were clear for at least a mile. She let the Tiguan drift to the right, almost onto the shoulder, so the lead car could see open path. The driver bit hard on that bait, pulled to the left, and accelerated. Kyra saw the black sedan’s front passenger window begin to roll down as it passed into her blind spot. Someone inside would be lining up for a shot.

  Kyra tapped her brakes, dumping a little speed and letting the lead car shoot ahead. A pistol shot from inside the other vehicle went wide as the gunner hurried the shot and missed her Tiguan completely. Then she poured on the gas, pulling up and putting her front left tire even with the hostile car’s right rear quarter.

  Bye bye, she thought.

  Kyra turned her steering wheel hard left and the Tiguan’s front bumper struck the Russians’ rear tire, pushing hard against the black vehicle.

  • • •

  The sedan’s back end skewed and all four tires lost their grip on the asphalt. White smoke began pouring out as the rubber turned molten from the friction. The car’s front end spun into Kyra’s lane, and she slowed enough to let it rotate until the entire vehicle was sliding sideways down the road at a right angle to her. The SUV shuddered as the passenger-side doors struck her front. She steered her truck left and the car finally spun out. The driver had no control now, his attempts to steer useless as the car slid on pools of liquid made of its own melting tires. The car rotated until it was facing the opposite direction. Kyra stomped on the gas and pulled past it.

  The black sedan kept rotating until it was almost crossways in the road again. The blue car’s driver had seen Kyra push the other vehicle, watched as it spun until Kyra’s SUV blocked it from his view. Thinking that Kyra would swerve right and his teammates’ car would come to a spinning halt on the left, he’d swerved to the right side of the road to avoid the coming wreck. But he was following too closely behind to react when the black car appeared in front of him. The lead chase car had pinwheeled across the entire road.

  The blue sedan’s driver spun his own steering wheel, desperately trying to avoid his black twin, but there was nowhere left to go. The darker car was still spinning, white smoke blinding them both to anything coming ahead. He pushed the brakes to the floor, a mistake that forced the blue sedan’s tires to lock up. They too went liquid from the friction as the car’s inertia forced it to keep rushing down the road.

  The cars slammed into each other, the front of the blue sedan connecting with the driver’s door of the black vehicle, crumpling both. The black sedan driver’s left arm and leg were shattered on contact, his ribs snapping like kindling from a dead oak tree. Steam and black smoke erupted from the blue car’s engine. Fluids gushed out of the undercarriage, leaving a stream of oil on the road and marking the death skid of its owner.

  The weight of the black sedan finally dragged the blue car to a stop, its front end still crushed into the lead car’s side. The black smoke rising up from engine oil burning on the hot engine block mixed with the white fog of the melting tires and steaming radiators, filling the air with a noxious gray concoction that blocked their view of the Kurkinskoye.

  • • •

  Kyra accelerated until she was out of the Russian soldiers’ line of sight, then took the first right turn she found. Five more random turns and she found herself approaching a major highway. She could still see the faint pillar of smoke rising from the Spetsnaz cars now over a mile away.

  She maneuvered the Tiguan onto the major artery, and only then asked the GPS unit to show her the way back to the safe house.

  The “Aquarium”—old GRU headquarters

  Sokolov opened the folder and stared down at the paperwork, still filled out with manual typewriters. Computers were a danger to security and he used them as little as possible. “Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov. You had a fine record of service, Major.”

  The woman in handcuffs across the table kept her mouth closed and didn’t look up. She was a pretty thing, not the most attractive woman he’d ever seen, a little short, a bit overweight, black hair cut to a bob. The file said she was divorced, almost forty, childless, though he wondered whether that was by choice or nature’s cruelty. The latter, he hoped. The Rodina needed strong children and the president of the Russian Federation had all but declared a refusal to bear them an act of disloyalty to the country. Not a crime, technically speaking, but some men would have called it another act of treason to add to the paper stack on the table.

  “Have you nothing to say?” he asked.

  “Would it matter if I denied the charge?”

  “I think not.” The interrogator lifted an open box from the floor and set it on the table, then emptied the contents one object at a time. An encryption pad, edible paper, a SRAC transmitter, and other electronics took their places in the space between the two people. “These were recovered from your home. They would seem to establish very clearly that you have been working for the CIA.”

  “What would you have me say?” Puchkov asked, her voice cracking with anger.

  Surprising, Sokolov thought. No fear, only hostility. Few people in her place had that reaction. For many, the main obstacle to extracting a confession was the prisoner’s anxiety. Terror was nature’s most effective paralytic. But the hostile ones, getting a confession from them often was just a matter of touching the nerve that had spawned and fed their outrage. An angry person was usually very willing to explain herself. “The truth. That is all I need.”

  “What does the truth matter?” she asked. “We both know that I would not be here in shackles”—she held up her hands—“if our superiors had not already decided what the truth is for themselves. What I tell you will make no difference in what happens to me.”

  Sokolov was confused. So angry, but unwilling to say why? That was unusual. He pushed again, trying to find a trigger that would elevate her hostility to a level that would override her self-control. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But you can still be of service to your country. Surely you still feel some loyalty—”

  “Loyalty?” she hissed. “Loyalty to the country that is going to put a bullet in my head? If you were in this chair, you would find that the condemned cannot feel loyalty toward the executioners.”

  “Or remorse, I suppose.”

  “No,” Puchkov said. She turned her head and looked away, falling silent.

  Sokolov frowned. If she wouldn’t explain herself in anger, perhaps she might respond to a kinder approach. “Then I
ask you, in honesty, why did you commit treason? What was your reason? I truly would like to understand.”

  “Why? So you can help the GRU become more efficient at spotting a Judas before he can kiss one of the generals on the cheek?”

  A Christian? Sokolov wondered. The file said nothing about her being a woman of faith. Were her motivations somehow religious? Sokolov exhaled. “No, not that. I have my own reasons. If you will tell me yours, I promise you, I will not put them in my final report.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Puchkov said, her voice flat.

  “I understand, but as there has been no trial, I think you will understand when I say that those who have ordered your death have no interest in understanding your motives. I could record them, but no one would read them. Anything I record here will be boxed away in some warehouse where no one will see the papers for a hundred years. Or perhaps they will be burned . . . I don’t know. So I am being quite honest with you when I say that I want to know your motives only for myself.”

  Puchkov stared at him for long seconds, studying his face, trying to decide whether she believed his claims. The interrogator said nothing, giving her all the time she wanted. The woman finally spoke after two minutes had passed. “Because our country is lost,” she said. “We could have had a free country. We had our moment . . . and we let the oligarchs and the organized criminals come back, and now we are a tyranny again. Now our leaders kill anyone who leaves and speaks out. Girenko, Novikov, Yushenkov, Kozlov, Litvinenko, Markelov? How many others? How many reporters and writers? They hunt them and shoot them in the street or feed them polonium tea. Even if I left the Rodina, if I spoke my conscience, they would come and find me and do the same to me. So tell me, how can I betray a country that feels no loyalty for me? Impossible. You can only betray those who care for you.”

  A true believer, he thought. Topilin had committed treason for money; he’d seen others do it for ego or excitement, some because they felt slighted by superiors or colleagues. But Puchkov had done it because her morality had driven her to it. But there was a vehemence behind the words. This was no mere ideologue. No, the Kremlin had hurt this woman, hurt her in a very personal way. Who did we kill, Major? Sokolov wondered. A family member? A best friend? A lover? He doubted she would tell him. Such personal pain was not to be shared with those who had caused it.

  “I understand,” Sokolov said. “And I do not judge you. You are not alone in thinking as you do. So please believe that you have my respect.”

  Puchkov glared at him. “And what does that earn me now?”

  “Perhaps nothing,” Sokolov admitted. “But the most honorable acts aren’t those that we perform for ourselves, are they? It is only when we serve others that we become the best of men and women.”

  “That depends on who we choose to serve,” Puchkov said. “And you serve evil men.”

  Sokolov repressed a smile and closed Puchkov’s file. “I am not a religious man, Major Puchkov. And where there is no god to tell us right from wrong, evil becomes simply a matter of perspective.”

  New GRU headquarters

  Khoroshevskoye shosse 76

  Moscow, Russia

  “I am told that several of your people were injured today, Arkady.” Lavrov wanted to slam the phone onto its cradle, but he refused to acknowledge any setback to Grigoriyev. The old FSB director was known for his mind games. He had neutralized more than one opponent by pricking their egos and goading them into mistakes.

  “Such things are not unexpected,” Lavrov replied.

  “They are when your people are engaged in illegal operations,” Grigoriyev told him, his voice turning cold in an instant. “It is one thing for you to twist the foreign minister’s strings and convince the president to expel Americans. It is quite another for you to perform your own counterintelligence operations on our own soil. That is the duty of the FSB.”

  “That is true,” Lavrov conceded. “But our source has given us the names of CIA moles within our own government. We cannot release those names to you without endangering the source, so it has become necessary for us to take on the responsibility to arrest the traitors. Call the president and discuss the matter with him if you wish.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s what you are doing, Arkady,” Grigoriyev chided. “In fact, I think that there is some other reason you want to keep this all hidden from me. I think you don’t want the FSB looking into your operations at all.”

  “I have nothing to hide from you.”

  “Quite the opposite, I think,” Grigoriyev said. “I am told that your people tried to arrest another person at the scene, a woman. And this woman not only escaped arrest, but she took down one of your Spetsnaz soldiers as she did so, and then left two of your men’s cars wrecked in a ditch. Three people were hospitalized.”

  Lavrov restrained a curse. The old man had his own spies inside the GRU. Lavrov had suspected that, but hadn’t been able to confirm it. It wasn’t unexpected. The FSB was the spawn of the KGB, and if there was one thing that organization had excelled at, it was spying on its own citizens.

  “So I have a theory,” Grigoriyev goaded him. “I think that your source did not give you the names of every CIA officer in Russia. I think there is still one out there, probably more, and you don’t know who she is.”

  “If so, it would be your duty to find her,” Lavrov countered.

  “Oh, no, that is a duty the GRU has accepted, as I recall,” Grigoriyev chided his rival. “And I would hate for you to have to admit that your operation has a nasty blemish that you and your people could not manage.”

  “Competence is best shown by how one manages the unexpected,” Lavrov replied.

  “Then I look forward to discussing your competence at our next meeting with the president,” Grigoriyev said.

  “Oh, Anatoly,” Lavrov said, “when did I lose your support? Your friendship? We were such comrades once. That night on the embassy roof in Berlin was a great moment for us.”

  “And a disaster for the Rodina. We began to lose our country that night. You lost my support when you began this madness of selling our technologies to third-world runts who do not have the wisdom to use our knowledge in a useful way. You are giving hammers to children who want nothing more than to swing them at each other.”

  “I am only doing what we all promised to do. We agreed to save the Rodina. I regret we could not agree on the way it should be done. Poor Strelnikov became so confused he thought that the Americans were our salvation,” Lavrov intoned.

  “You are wrong, Arkady,” Grigoriyev told him. “Strelnikov did not believe the Americans were our salvation. He simply thought they were the only ones who could turn you out of your destructive course. I am not sure that I disagree.”

  “Your opinion of me has fallen so low?”

  “I think my opinion matters nothing to you,” Grigoriyev replied. “And there is the problem. You take counsel from no one. When you will, I think you will find many ready to stand with you again. Do svidaniya.”

  “Do svidaniya,” Lavrov said. He set the phone in the cradle far more gently than he would have preferred, but he didn’t want to fumble the maneuver and let the FSB director hear a physical sign of his frustration.

  The GRU chairman leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. Maddening as Grigoriyev was, it was possible that he was right . . . about the woman. If the woman who had evaded his men during Puchkov’s arrest was CIA, then someone had been missed.

  Lavrov frowned. No, there was another possibility, wasn’t there? Perhaps, in the focus on getting all of the CIA’s officers out of the country, another one had come in? And a woman, too, a bold one, capable of facing a Spetsnaz soldier and leaving him a twitching wreck on the pavement.

  He had met a woman with such fire recently, hadn’t he? Is that possible? he wondered. That she is here?

  Lavrov picked up the phone again and dialed a number he was learning by heart these days. Colonel Sokolov answered after the first ring. “Ya slushay
u vas.”

  “Anton Semyonovich, this is General Lavrov.”

  “Good evening, General. I presume you are calling about today’s action?”

  “I am. Please congratulate your men on their successful capture of another traitor to the Rodina,” Lavrov said, his voice warm.

  “I will. Thank you, General.”

  “I regret that is not the end of the matter,” Lavrov said. “Your report of a possible foreign operator at the site who interfered is worrisome. We need to find the woman in question. Please contact the security offices at all of our international airports within five hundred kilometers around Moscow. I want the passport photographs of all foreign women traveling from Germany admitted to the country in the last seventy-two hours.”

  “We will begin immediately,” Sokolov replied. “But it will be a very large number. Any information that could help us narrow the search might provide an answer more quickly.”

  Lavrov paused. “Tell them to focus on women coming from Berlin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good. And, Anton Semyonovich . . . I think we must accelerate the operation. If the CIA still has officers in Moscow, they will be trying to save their assets. That cannot be allowed, of course. I will assign you additional men, and you will begin moving against the traitors several at a time. I will provide you the names for the first tranche I want neutralized. Understood?”

  There was a short delay before Sokolov answered. “Da, General.”

  “Is there a problem, Colonel?”

  “Nyet, General. I am just concerned about launching a more ambitious set of raids without the opportunity for new men to train with my team. Unit cohesion can be a delicate thing. We do not want to lose any of the targets due to our own mistakes.”

  “There will be no mistakes, I trust,” Lavrov warned. “These men are Spetsnaz, after all . . . and there is no better way to forge a team than a successful operation.”

  “Of course, General. I will keep you informed of our progress.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.” Lavrov hung up the phone.