by Mark Henshaw
“Da,” they said, not quite in unison.
“Very well. I will be at the Khodynka Airfield. Let me know when you are finished.” Lavrov turned into the hallway and walked out of Kyra’s sight.
Moscow, Russia
Director Grigoriyev’s car was one of the most comfortable armored vehicles in which Kathy Cooke had ever traveled. The U.S. president’s limousine was a finer ride, but not by much.
The FSB director himself sat in the facing double seat across from Cooke and Barron, holding a conversation in Russian with the station chief. Two guards sat in the front of the car, and chase cars bracketed them ahead and behind. The motorcade was ignoring traffic lights and laws with abandon. Grigoriyev has better job perks than I do, Cooke thought.
Grigoriyev and Barron reached some break in their conversation and the Russian senior officer pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and placed a call. Cooke leaned over to the station chief. “Where are we going?” she asked, her voice low.
“GRU headquarters,” Barron said.
“Oh, joy,” Cooke said, deadpan. “Did Grigoriyev believe us? Or is he just using us to shiv Lavrov?”
“I don’t know,” Barron admitted. “Could be either one. I wouldn’t put it past him to be playing both sides. You should read his leadership profile sometime. He’s not one to pass up an opportunity.”
“Fine by me either way,” Cooke replied, approving. “I don’t care if he uses us, as long as he’s letting us use him.”
“Let’s hope he’s looking at it the same way,” Barron advised. “It’s one thing to be strange bedfellows. But Russians love their chess and I’m not sure who the pawns are here.”
Khodynka Military Airfield
One quarter mile northeast of GRU headquarters
Lavrov took the long way to the hangar, driving his jeep slowly past the small boneyard of retired MiGs and Sukhois and Ilyushins that sat in a line on the eastern half of the field. He could see them all from his office window, decaying reminders of what Russia had once been. It was an infuriating sight to him. Each of those planes had had its day, the finest aircraft in the world of its time, a terrifying reminder that his country could exert its will where and how it chose. Now they were rusting in place, never to grace the sky again. Oh, the president was making a show of pouring money into new weapons, trying to show the world that the Kremlin was not to be ignored. He was a fool. It was simply more of what Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev had all done, and look where that had taken the Rodina. The president had learned nothing from history, grasped no lessons.
Such as this field . . . there was such history here in this field. Fourteen hundred people had been trampled to death here during a celebration of the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in 1896, soaking the field in the blood of peasants. The czar had cared so little for the massacre that he hadn’t bothered to cancel his coronation ball that evening. It was a day remembered less than two decades later when the Bolsheviks rose up. The man who had shown so little regard for his people found that his people had none for him when the day of execution came. Did the Kremlin even remember what had happened here, and what had sprung from it? Lavrov was sure they did not, else this field would not have been left strewn with weeds and rusting metal and broken asphalt. It would have been a monument, not a boneyard.
Lavrov shook his head. It was a cruel thing, to have a vision that no one shared. To have to manipulate others and fool them into joining a cause was maddening. Why did no one else see what he saw? Grigoriyev did not see it. Maines certainly did not see it. He had hoped that the devushka, Kyra Stryker, would see it. He was not sure why, but that one pained him the most of all. Their conversation on the embassy roof in Berlin had given him such hope. She had read his operation against Maines like a voodoo witch reading the tarot cards. She had divined his entire campaign to strengthen America’s enemies by selling them technologies . . . but she had disappointed him at the critical moment. She should have seen him for the man that he was, not a greedy arms dealer.
He would go on. All of the great Russian leaders had been lonely men. He supposed that he had been a fool to expect better for himself.
Lavrov’s jeep slowed as it rolled into the hangar, the cargo truck trailing behind carrying men and crates. He killed the engine and stared up at the Mil Mi-26 cargo helicopter being serviced. The truck continued around him to the unloading station and men began leaping from the bed before the vehicle had stopped. The general dismounted and walked across the bright concrete floor to the rear cargo ramp to find the crew chief. The soldier was inside the cavernous metal stomach of the helo, checking the chains and straps binding the cargo boxes to the floor. “How long?” Lavrov asked the man.
The crew chief saluted the general, then rubbed a hand across his face, stretching out the leathery skin wrinkled before its time from abuse of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. “Another hour, I think, General. The cargo is ready, but we have to finish the maintenance checks and then top off the tank. But we will be ready on schedule.”
Lavrov nodded. “Very good. A Syrian friend of mine is waiting for this delivery and he is the impatient kind. I will be in the maintenance office.”
“Yes, sir.” Lavrov trudged down the ramp and exhaled, depressed in his spirit. He looked at his watch and wondered how much longer it would take Sokolov and his men to kill the woman and the other Americans.
GRU headquarters
The drive from Lubyanka took eighteen minutes. There had been traffic, but Grigoriyev’s motorcade had used lights and sirens to force its way past the civilian traffic and ignored whatever inconvenient laws would have slowed the trip. Cooke saw an airfield to her right, the sun glinting off a series of decrepit fighter planes lined up in a sloppy row. There was no movement on the tarmac, no trucks, no planes fueling. There were no lights in any of the buildings save one hangar near the center, and she wondered why the Russians had let a military airfield in the heart of Moscow sit unused and decaying.
The car turned left and slowed as it approached a security gate. The driver rolled down the window and showed his identification. Cooke heard them exchange words in Russian, then heated arguments mixed with several phrases she was sure were insults. The guard began waving wildly at the line of SUVs and cars behind Grigoriyev’s own.
The FSB director rolled down his own window and motioned the guard to come over. Barron leaned over and began whispering to Cooke, translating the conversation.
“You know who I am?” Grigoriyev asked.
“Yes,” the guard asked.
“Good. Open the gate.”
“Director, I must call my superiors for orders—”
“No, you do not. I am not a military officer, but I am in charge of the security of the Rodina and there are men inside your building who are traitors to your homeland and mine. So you will open this gate and allow this entire motorcade into this facility, and you will not warn anyone about it. If you fail to follow those orders, you will be arrested as a co-conspirator along with anyone else I decide to detain in the next hour, and no military officer in your chain of command will save you. Do you understand?”
The guard nodded, mute.
“Good. Now, again, open the gate.”
The guard returned to his post and spoke to his comrades. Cooke saw the young men look at their car, fear on their young faces. The guard pressed an unseen button and the gate opened, the barricade lowering beyond. Grigoriyev’s driver eased the car forward and the other vehicles behind rolled forward to follow.
“I never thought that fear of Lubyanka Prison would work in our favor,” Cooke whispered.
“Enjoy it,” Barron advised. “I suspect it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
• • •
“I am sorry,” Sokolov said. “I cannot help you now. Lavrov knows you are a prisoner and expects me to execute you and your friends. If I do not, he will execute me, I am sure.”
Kyra stared up at the man, trying to judge whether his sorrow was genui
ne. She thought it was, but she wasn’t sure that Russians expressed their emotions in quite the same way as her own countrymen. “Can you tell me what time it is?” she asked.
Sokolov looked at her, surprised, then at his watch. “It is nineteen forty hours.”
Kyra tipped her head back a bit and stared at the ceiling as she did the math. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to wait an hour.”
“Wait? You ask this as last request?”
“Do Russian prisoners get a last request?”
Sokolov shrugged. “No.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m not Russian. But if you’ll wait an hour, I don’t think you’ll have to follow General Lavrov’s orders,” Kyra advised. “That would be worth your time, if you really are sick of killing good people.”
Sokolov furrowed his brow in confusion. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that sometime in the next hour, I think there will be some visitors coming and they’ll want to see me.”
“Visitors? From where?” Sokolov demanded.
“The FSB,” Kyra replied. I hope, she thought.
• • •
Grigoriyev stomped ahead of his security detail, much to his protective officers’ frustration. Cooke and Barron kept pace twenty feet behind. The deputy DNI looked over at her subordinate. Barron was smiling, happier than she’d ever seen him. “You’re enjoying this?”
“Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to see the inside of this place when I was the station chief here? Getting here would’ve been like walking into the holy of holies. Besides, I think we’re about to see one wild show from the expensive seats.”
Grigoriyev pushed the main doors open to GRU headquarters and stormed the building, his detail behind. Cooke and Barron stepped inside. The front lobby was brightly lit, with white marble walls and a marble parquet floor. The center of the floor was decorated with the GRU seal, which looked for all the world like Batman’s symbol.
The guards at the entry post rose in confusion. “You men will sit down,” Grigoriyev ordered, pointing a leathery finger at the junior officers. “I am Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev, director of the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. Where is General-Major Arkady Lavrov?”
They had recognized Grigoriyev before he’d identified himself. The head of the FSB, like his KGB predecessors, was always an infamous figure among his countrymen. “Sir,” one of the guards replied, “I . . . we do not know. We are not privy to the general’s schedule. But if you could wait here, we can try to—”
Grigoriyev marched over to the security desk and stared down at the young guard, a boy of twenty perhaps. “You will call upstairs to the general’s staff and determine his location in the next five minutes. You will not report who has made the request.” The FSB director pulled a set of photographs out of the inside pocket of his overcoat and laid them on the desk. “Also, these Americans are being detained somewhere in this facility. You will find out where they are being held, also in the next five minutes. If you do not meet my deadline, I will have you arrested and dragged in chains to Lubyanka, and then I will give the same order to your replacement and we will try again. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Director!” the guard said, trying desperately not to stammer out the words.
“Very good. When you have fulfilled my request, you will then escort me to the general, and you will provide an escort for a detachment to wherever the Americans are being held. Do all of this and you will go home free men tonight.”
“Yes, Director!”
• • •
“I’ll say this for the Russians,” Barron whispered. “Intimidation is an art form over here.”
“First lesson, don’t bluff,” Cooke said. “I don’t know what he just told that boy, but I’m sure he meant every word.”
“He did,” Barron confirmed. “If this was the warm-up, it was worth blowing my cover to see what’s coming when he finds Lavrov.”
• • •
“I do not think that General Lavrov will wait so long for me to call,” Sokolov said. “He will call others to come and see why—”
An insistent pounding on the door interrupted the interrogator’s apology. Sokolov frowned, moved to the door, and opened it. A conscript stood in the hallway outside, looking nervous. He saluted the senior officer. “Colonel Sokolov! The director of the FSB is at the main entrance. He is demanding to see the American.”
Sokolov’s eyes grew larger and he looked over his shoulder at Kyra. “Neveroyatno!” he muttered. “I am under orders from General Lavrov himself to expedite the . . . the interrogation.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to tell you, sir,” the conscript stammered. “General Lavrov is our ranking officer . . . but the FSB!”
“I know,” Sokolov replied. “Very well. Bring Director Grigoriyev here.”
“Yes, sir!” The conscript saluted again, then fled down the hallway as fast as he could run.
Sokolov turned back to Kyra. “I think you have gotten your wish,” he told her. “I think I will not have to kill you after all. This makes me very happy.”
You and me both, Kyra thought.
• • •
Grigoriyev and his entourage made the walk to the interrogation room in five minutes almost to the second. The FSB director stormed into the room without announcing his arrival, paying no attention to Sokolov. Kyra’s clothing and restraints made it clear what role she was playing. She saw Kathy Cooke and Clark Barron stride into the room, surrounded by Russian officers, and she exhaled long and slow with relief.
“I am Anatoly Grigoriyev, director of the FSB,” the man said to her in English. “You are the American, Kyra Stryker?”
“I am, Director,” she replied.
Grigoriyev muttered a curse and turned his gaze on Sokolov. “Under what authority is this woman being detained by the GRU?” he demanded in Russian.
“I cannot answer that question,” Sokolov admitted. “She was detained and brought to me under direct orders from General Lavrov. I have been following his orders. One does not question orders.”
“I want to see any effects that were on her person when she was detained.”
Sokolov pointed at the nearby table. “Her equipment is there.”
Grigoriyev leaned over and examined the contents of Kyra’s pack. “This is everything?”
“No, Director. There were two other items, a letter and a considerable quantity of euros.”
“And why are they not here?” Grigoriyev demanded.
“General Lavrov took the euros and burned the letter,” Sokolov said. “But our photographer documented everything. He can show you a digital picture of the original letter.”
“I want to see it. Bring it to me now.”
“Yes, Director.” Sokolov stepped out of the room.
Barron and Cooke stepped over to Kyra’s side. “Good to see you,” Barron said. “You’re in one piece?”
“More or less,” Kyra confirmed.
“Have you seen Jon?” Cooke asked.
“No,” Kyra replied. “They brought me straight here and I haven’t been out of this room. The colonel there was under orders from Lavrov to execute me. He wasn’t anxious to do it, but I don’t think he was going to wait much longer.”
“Lavrov was here?” Barron asked.
“Yeah,” Kyra confirmed. “He pitched me to work for him again. I turned him down.”
“Good choice,” Barron said. “After Grigoriyev is finished tonight, I don’t think Lavrov’s people are going to have much job security.”
Sokolov reentered the room, a tablet computer in his hand. “This was the letter,” he announced in Russian.
Grigoriyev took the tablet, pulled reading glasses from his overcoat, and put them on using one hand, then stared at the screen. He said nothing for almost a minute. “And Lavrov burned this letter?”
“He did.”
“You handled it?”
“Da,” Sokolov confirmed.
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“In your opinion, was it genuine?” Grigoriyev asked.
Sokolov looked at Kyra, a look of concentration on his face. If you want to switch sides, now’s the time, Kyra thought. Back me up if you want to get out from under Lavrov.
The colonel turned back to the FSB director, still thinking. Then he straightened his spine and looked Grigoriyev in the eyes. “Da, Director Grigoriyev. I believe it was.”
Kyra tightened her fists, channeling all of her adrenaline and excited energy into her hands.
“And he talked to your prisoner?”
“Da,” Sokolov confirmed.
“You heard the conversation?”
“I did not. The general ordered me out of the room.”
“I want to see the security tapes,” Grigoriyev ordered.
“There are none,” Sokolov said.
“Why not?”
“Because General Lavrov ordered me to have them switched off,” Sokolov lied. “He said that an operation that required detaining the Americans was too sensitive to record any related interrogation on the tapes.”
“So, the general came in, ordered you out of the room and the cameras turned off, then had a private conversation with an American spy, burned a letter that appears to incriminate him as a CIA asset, and walked out with a large amount of euros that this woman had on her person and which the letter said were for his services. Is that accurate?”
“It is,” Sokolov said, trying to look embarrassed. He was finding his footing now.
“Colonel, you are a fool. You will release this woman into my custody immediately,” Grigoriyev ordered. “And you will do the same with any other Americans you are holding in this facility.”
“I think General Lavrov will dispute your request—” Sokolov protested, not very hard.
“General Lavrov will be very fortunate if he does not end his night in Lubyanka!” Grigoriyev snapped. “The question of this moment is whether you will share a seat next to him. The answer to that question will depend on the amount of cooperation you offer me in the next few seconds.”