by Mark Henshaw
“Yes, you did,” Sokolov told him. “I am always amazed at the shortsightedness of traitors. Did you honestly believe that you would never be found? And of course you knew what would follow if and when you were found. You were an officer of the GRU for twenty years. You took the counterintelligence training. You knew how past traitors were treated. And you still chose this course.”
Zhitomirsky stared at him, the inevitable finally settling in his mind. His head fell, his chin almost to his chest, and great racking sobs exploded out of him. The interrogator had seen it many times. He didn’t judge the man or think him a coward, but neither did he feel pity for him. The prisoner was simply going through the cycle that every condemned man suffered in his closing moments.
“Semyon Petrovich, if you have nothing to say that you want me to carry back out of this room, then I hope you will do me the kind favor of answering a single question,” Sokolov said.
Zhitomirsky raised his head, tears on his cheeks. “What is it?”
“Why did you do it? Surely you had a reason.”
The silence lasted for almost ten seconds before the heaving sobs returned, and it took the prisoner two minutes to compose himself enough to speak again. “I hated my superiors,” he said, finally. “They told me that I would never be promoted to general.”
“And wisely so, it seems,” Sokolov said. “Petty revenge. You had no better reason than petty revenge. To salve your ego, you sold your country. Utter selfishness at its worst. I could have respected you had you shared some noble reason for your actions. If a man is going to betray his country, he should do so for his principles.” He folded the papers, returned them to his pocket, and stood.
“I have done you the favor you asked,” Zhitomirsky said. “Will you do one for me?”
“I will consider it.”
“Let me stand up when you shoot me,” the prisoner asked.
“I regret that I can’t grant that favor,” Sokolov said. It was the truth.
“You would deny me that? Such a small request?”
“I must, because you are not going to be shot.”
Zhitomirsky blinked, and hope passed across his face. “I . . . I am to go to prison?”
“No,” Sokolov said. “I am under orders that you are not to leave this room. But your hated superiors have such contempt for you that they do not wish to waste a bullet on you.” He closed the file, stood, and opened the door.
Two men walked in, both dressed in coveralls. The lead man, a muscular, balding man, reached into a pocket, pulled a Taser, and moved toward the prisoner. His partner, a skinnier, younger man with a military haircut, kept walking toward the incinerator.
Confusion took hold of Zhitomirsky and he stared at the men until he figured out the simple riddle, and his face went pale again. “No!” he shouted, drawing back. The larger man pressed the Taser against Zhitomirsky’s neck, silencing his yell as every muscle in Zhitomirsky’s body seized up. The prisoner convulsed, then fell off the chair onto the floor.
The muscular guard replaced the Taser in his pocket and pulled out two pairs of handcuffs as his comrade opened the incinerator door, which squealed on ungreased iron hinges.
“The stretcher is in the corner behind the furnace,” Sokolov told them as they pulled the table and chair toward the corner to free up space for maneuvering. “Advise me when it is done.” He took up the file and left the room. He’d seen many a man die during his years of service, but one of Zhitomirsky’s superiors must truly have hated the man to have ordered this punishment. I truly wish you had escaped, Sokolov thought. No man deserves this, no matter what he has done or why.
Office of the Director of the Directorate of Operations
The secure phone called for Barron’s attention. He’d come to hate the machine over the years. The mere fact that he needed a phone that could encrypt a conversation was evidence that there were enemies who would listen if they could and use what they learned to hurt his country. Barron had come to that realization early in his career and he’d started to see more such proof everywhere he looked. The guards at the gates, the badge readers at the entrances, metal doors to every vault, locks on every door. But soon he’d seen that it wasn’t just the physical barriers. The training courses, incessant reminders of “need to know” and “honor the oath,” the very artwork on the walls that paid tribute to great operations of the past where Agency officers had done unto others what the Agency desperately was trying to ensure would never happen to its own. Even the classification markings on every sheet of paper that he handled every day, dictating who did and didn’t qualify to read the information . . . all reminders that hatred for the United States was a constant in the world outside.
The head of the Directorate of Operations wished that he’d never had that particular epiphany. Langley was a jail of steel, glass, fiberoptic lines, and paper, and like any true prison, someone who served time became institutionalized . . . accustomed, even dependent on the culture it imposed, unable to adjust to the world outside, where people were free to speak what they knew. So many retired, only to come back as contractors or consultants. Others went downtown to other jobs where they could earn more but stay in CIA’s orbit. Just different prisons in the same system.
Barron had better plans. He’d long since exceeded whatever youthful ambitions he’d harbored and the loftier heights within his reach held no appeal. There was a Montana farm with his name on the deed and the day he gave his blue badge to the security office would be the last time he saw Langley. Whatever neighbors he met north of Billings were never going to know that the man who’d moved in had spent his life fighting Russians and Chinese and terrorists in the dark corners of the world.
The phone sounded for the fourth time, shaking him out of his thoughts. “Barron.”
“This is the Ops Center, sir,” announced the caller. “A secure transmission has come in and you’re going to want to hear it.”
“Bring it in.”
“Yes, sir.”
• • •
The voice on the computer file was Kyra Stryker’s. The young woman, wherever she was, had set up a sat phone, recorded the message on her smartphone, then compressed and encrypted it, and transmitted it in a single upload that likely took less than a minute. The Russians would never have been able to track it. They would have been doing well just to detect it.
“I have reason to believe that all assets in this AOR have been compromised. Whether they have been captured is unknown, but I can confirm that my three priority assets have been neutralized,” she said. Barron listened, pen in hand, but he knew that he would be writing nothing down until he’d listened to the transmission at least twice. “Also, I have no safe way to communicate with any who might have evaded capture. My hosts demonstrated during my last attempt that they knew the details of the assets’ communications plan, so we must assume that all communications methods are compromised. I also must assume that all meeting and dead-drop sites are known. To my knowledge, my safe house is still secure but that may not last indefinitely. I would appreciate any information HQ could provide on that.”
Barron closed his eyes. He’d expected this when the first news of Maines’s treason had reached him, but hearing that the Agency’s Moscow networks had been decimated was one of those pieces of news that no mental preparation could soften. After Lavrov had finished rounding up their assets, he would almost certainly turn his attention to the Agency’s safe houses and other facilities. His people would have to start from zero to rebuild everything, and they would need decades to do it.
“. . . Also, the host country knows my identity. Our former friend appears to have burned me to his new friends. However, I have reason to suspect that our officer believed KIA last week is alive and in host country’s custody,” Kyra reported. Barron’s eyes opened wide at that announcement. “I have no information on his condition or location, but host-country security services has offered to return him in exchange for my agreement to become their asset. I
refused.”
“Good girl,” Barron muttered, nodding. Kyra could have agreed, trying to lure the Russians into a double-agent operation, but that was an exceptionally dangerous game and Lavrov would have prepared for it. Barron suspected that Lavrov’s offer never had been genuine at all, but a baited hook to get Kyra to come in from the field. For what reason, Barron wasn’t sure. He was sure that any answer would have come at a high and ugly cost that Kyra would have been made to pay.
No assets to save, no way to communicate with anyone who might be free, no safe houses, Barron reasoned. No resources. Maines had burned the Agency’s operations to the ground in Moscow. It’s time to come home, Stryker, Barron decided. There was nothing else for her to do. The question now was how to get her out—
“I have an operational plan that I want to propose,” Kyra announced. Barron’s head jerked toward the laptop playing the file. “I am uncertain about chances for success, but at this point, I see no other options. We will need time to reestablish operations in this AOR and creating confusion might be the best we can hope for. Accordingly, I propose that the following . . .”
Barron put pen to paper and began to scribble notes as the woman spoke to him from the Russian countryside. Kyra finished talking and the recording went silent. He played it again and reviewed his notes as she talked, making sure he had missed nothing. When she finished for the second time, he read everything over and sat back in his chair.
You devious woman, Barron thought. Kyra’s admission that she was “uncertain” whether it would work was an understatement . . . he wasn’t even sure what would constitute success or whether he could properly call it covert action. Stryker had been brave even to propose it, but he knew from his own experience that an officer trapped in a hostile country viewed risk and reward very differently from those sitting behind desks in northern Virginia.
And I really am one of those now, aren’t I? he thought. He’d spent most of his own career in the field, and had so often despised those above him, the former case officers who’d gotten so comfortable in the chairs they’d really been chasing all along . . . the ones who liked to claim “I’m one of you, I know what it’s like out there,” but who so clearly had forgotten, who’d never really wanted to be out there at all and whose eyes really had always been focused on a desk on the Agency’s seventh floor.
Barron capped his pen. Not going to be one of those, he decided.
He walked out to the foyer that separated his office from that of the director of analysis twenty feet away. Barron looked down to his secretary. “Julie, I need you to get Kathy Cooke on the line. Whatever she’s doing, tell her office that she’ll want to cut it off and call me.” He paused. His assistant knew better than to ask why he needed to call the deputy director of national intelligence. But Cooke would want to know. “Tell her it’s about Jon.”
The secretary had no idea who Jon was, but answered “yes, sir” anyway and reached for her own phone. Barron returned to his office, closed the door, and waited the hour it took for the deputy DNI to free herself and return his call.
• • •
“You think this has a prayer of working?” Kathy Cooke asked. The deputy DNI stared down at Barron’s notepad, rereading the man’s scrawl as best she could. He made it to her office at Liberty Crossing less than fifteen minutes after she’d returned his call. Barron’s explanation of Kyra’s operational plan had taken another five.
“If it was just her with the resources she has right now, not a prayer,” Barron replied. “With our help and a little bit from the embassy staff in Moscow, maybe. Lots of variables we can’t predict or control. Everyone’s timing will have to be on the money and it’s going to cost us a very nice safe house no matter what happens, but it’s ambitious and we’re desperate enough that I’d love to try it just to find out. If it doesn’t work, every asset we’ve got in Moscow is dead.”
Cooke’s mouth twisted into a wry grin, but Barron knew the woman wasn’t feeling much happiness at the moment. “She’s trying to use mental aikido on the Kremlin. The question is whether she could sell it.”
“It would be an easier sell if she had some serious evidence to prove her own bona fides to the Russians,” Barron suggested. “And someone to vouch for her.”
“Yes, it would,” Cooke agreed. “And she’s sure Jon’s alive.” That was not a question.
“She is. Me, not so much,” Barron admitted. “But if he is, this might be the only way to get him back. I don’t have a better plan and I don’t know anyone else who does. But the beauty of it is that this doesn’t even qualify as covert action . . . no need for the president to sign off. This is just the kind of thing we do every day, with a twist.”
“True, but we’ll have to warn him,” Cooke said. “If it hits the papers, he won’t appreciate the surprise.”
“If it works, it won’t hit the papers. That’s the real beauty of it,” Barron observed. “There’s no way the Kremlin will advertise it.”
Cooke nodded. She stared at the paper, reviewing it all in her mind, and then she looked at her subordinate. “I’ll brief Cyrus.”
“You think he’ll approve?”
“He’s been giving me a very long leash,” Cooke replied. “Sign me up and I’ll sign the check.”
“Will do,” Barron said. “Wheels up at midnight, Dulles Airport. You know the hangar.”
CHAPTER NINE
Moscow, Russia
Kyra had spent the night in the truck. Without blankets or enough clothes, the cab had gotten cold, the temperature easily in the midforties. She had slept a bit, running the engine every hour so the heater could keep her warm, as much for her own morale as for comfort. The cold could sap the spirit along with physical strength, and she was going to need both for what she hoped was coming next.
The sunrise caught her by surprise. Kyra hadn’t realized that she’d slipped back into oblivion, as her dreams had been nothing more than an extension of her worried thoughts. She checked her watch and realized that almost twelve hours had passed since she’d transmitted her opplan to Langley. They would either approve it or order her home. How she could even get home now, she wasn’t sure. Maybe headquarters would give her a route out of the country. In any case, it was time to go. The question was how.
She dismounted the cab and felt the cool morning air rush over her face. Kyra slung the sat-phone strap over her shoulder, shoved her hands down in her pockets, and began to make her way back to the hill. The temperature was climbing a bit now that the sun was up, still cold enough to be unpleasant but just barely so.
She scrambled up the grassy hillside, slipping often on the dew. It took a bit longer to reach the peak this time because of the damp, wet slide under her feet, but she held on as best she could. Her legs and triceps were burning by the end, and she took a few minutes to rest, sitting on a flat rock, before she assembled the phone, positioned the antenna, and made the call.
An encrypted digital file was waiting for her, and she downloaded the message and transferred it to her smartphone. She took a deep breath, then touched the screen.
“GRANITE, good to hear your voice.” Kyra recognized Barron’s own voice dictating the message. “Message received on all counts. Also, several seniors were very happy to receive the good news that your friend may still be kicking around. Roger your report that all assets and facilities in AOR are compromised. We hoped for better but weren’t surprised. We retasked some birds to watch our safe sites and observed one house being raided by your hosts. Your present location shouldn’t be considered safe and you should evacuate as soon as you possibly can.”
There was a short pause in his message, then he switched gears. “Roger receipt of your proposed opplan. Plan approved. We’re contacting friends in your AOR and arranging for transfer of resources. Will advise soonest once they are in place as to how you can access them . . . check back every hour after you receive this message. Also, we’re ordering a change to your plan. We have some friends who will
join you in-country who will be en route by the time you receive this. Details to follow. Stay safe, good hunting.”
Several seniors were happy to receive the good news? Kyra smiled at that. Barron had told Kathy Cooke that Jon might still be alive. She wondered how the woman had taken the news. The case officer supposed that the deputy DNI had been happy enough to approve the proposed operation.
Friends who will join you in-country? That was a surprise. She couldn’t imagine how Barron could get anyone into Russia under the present circumstances. Maybe the Brits were coming to help? Aussies? She doubted either country would want to risk its own people and assets given what the United States had just suffered.
Kyra shook her head and cleared her mind. Speculating would just be a waste of energy that she needed to conserve. She sat on the rock, staring out at the green valley below her position, and passed the time trying to think about nothing at all.
There was no message waiting for her the first time she called back. The second call an hour later yielded another encrypted recording. Kyra didn’t recognize the voice and the message was far longer than Barron’s first message. She listened to it three times, memorizing the key details. Her task done, she broke down the satellite phone, packed up, and walked down the hill to the Tiguan.
Kyra’s safe house
It had taken less than an hour to find all of the supplies she needed in the house except the twine. That had required a trip to a Russian hardware store. She’d managed to fake her way through the purchase without talking and judge more or less correctly the amount of petty cash needed to cover the expenses. Kyra had pulled into the safe-house garage long after dark, the long, winding routes she’d had to take coming and going having added to the time and subtracted from her energy. She drank two cups of the strong Russian coffee, enough to make sure she would stay awake for hours but not enough to make her hands shake. She was going to need some steady hands.