by Saul Herzog
Lance thought back to the satellite surveillance Roth had given him. Four vats for production. He could see them through the fence.
“That building’s for drying and milling,” he said.
“How do you know that?” Vasily said.
“CIA footage,” Lance said.
They’d abandoned the bolt cutters at the compound but Lance simply hopped the fence and had Vasily pass him the fuel containers.
“You two stay with the car,” he said to the women.
Vasily hopped the fence and went with Lance to the control building. There were hazmat suits there, and a decontamination shower that was basically a hose and pump connected to a tank of industrial disinfectant.
“They were asking for an accident,” Vasily said. “That fucking Yevchenko. He deserves to be shot.”
The two men then poured a gallon of fuel into each production vat, did the same with the grinding equipment, then set it all on fire.
66
Roth sat next to Tatyana in the back of the Escalade.
“Nervous?” he said.
“Should I be?”
He’d only just met her, but he had to admit, he was charmed.
She was exactly the type of person he’d have hired. Someone with the right stuff.
For a split second he wondered if she’d be good at Laurel’s job, then felt a flood of guilt for having had the thought.
“You’re a GRU agent,” he said, “about to enter the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. That doesn’t make you nervous?”
“To be honest, Levi,” she said, and he thought he couldn’t imagine a more sexy accent, “I’m more nervous every time I step into our building in Moscow than I am here.”
Roth nodded. “I suppose that’s one thing the Kremlin will always have on us.”
“What’s that?”
“No matter how bad things get, no matter how dire the situation, there’s really nothing we can threaten Russia with that doesn’t pale in comparison to what your own government can do to you.”
She nodded. “That’s truer than you know.”
He looked at her and wondered what it was they’d done to her. He’d get a file opened as soon as he could. He had no doubt it would make for interesting reading.
The driver pulled up in front of the building and they got out. Roth had called ahead to get a clearance for Tatyana, he’d described her as a foreign defector who was being debriefed, and the pass was waiting for her in the lobby.
They went through security and he called his receptionist. She met them as they got out of the elevator and Roth told her to escort Tatyana to a secure room.
“Just wait there,” he said to Tatyana. “You’ll be locked in but I’ll have some people come to you as soon as possible.”
Tatyana went with the receptionist and Roth shook his head as he watched them leave.
He’d just brought an agent of the Main Directorate right into his office. He had nothing to lose, his entire network had been hacked, if she could help find the source, any risk was worth it. But if someone had told him a week earlier that he’d be escorting a Russian agent to the sixth floor, he wouldn’t have believed it in a million years.
He went to the tech team and found the two network analysts. They were both young guys, recent MIT graduates, and Roth hadn’t spent a lot of time getting to know them.
“This is your lucky day, boys,” he said.
They looked up from their screens. They’d been working overtime trying to find the source of the breach and both looked a little worse for wear.
“What do you mean?” one of them said.
“Follow me,” Roth said.
He was painfully aware the rat was still out there and didn’t want to say anything that might be overheard.
“Bring your laptops,” he added.
He led them to the secure room and opened the door.
They were both taken aback by the sight before them.
“Boys, this is Tatyana Aleksandrova,” he said, then turning to Tatyana, “You’ll have to forgive their drooling. It appears they’ve never seen a woman before.”
“Sorry,” one of them said, closing his mouth.
“Tatyana is going to help you trace the breach,” Roth said. “She’s a trained GRU agent with experience of the method used against us.”
The techs nodded.
“None of you leaves this room without my permission,” Roth added. “This stays under wraps.”
He left them to it and went to his office, where he shut the door and picked up the phone.
“Levi Roth for the president,” he said into the receiver.
A moment later, he heard the president’s voice.
“What have you got for me, Levi?”
“Sir, I had a visitor waiting at my house tonight.”
“What visitor?”
“The Russian agent we were trying to make contact with.”
“The one who gave us the vial?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She came to you?”
“She did, sir, and she said she can find out who hacked my network.”
“She’s working on it now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you think we can trust her?”
“Yes I do, sir.”
“Well keep an eye on her, Levi. And keep me updated. I want to know who the leak is the second you find out.”
“Very good, sir.”
Roth hung up the phone and went back to the conference room.
“How’s it going?” he said as he opened the door.
The two specialists looked up at him from their screens. Tatyana was typing on the keyboard.
“This is the real deal,” one of the analysts said. “It’ll take some time, but she knew how to find the back door.”
“Will you be able to tell me who planted the device?”
“The device contains timestamps,” Tatyana said. “If we find out exactly when it was planted, we’ll be able to cross reference it with location data for your team members.”
Roth nodded. The idea that one of his team had been betraying him made his blood boil. Now that they were closing in, his heart pounded faster.
He cleared his throat. “Can I get anyone coffee?”
The analysts shook their heads.
“Tatyana?”
“Sure,” she said without looking up.
“How do you take it?”
“Black with sweetener.”
Roth nodded. It was exactly how Laurel took hers. The thought of her sent him to the situation room, where they’d been working round the clock trying to track down her position.
He opened the door and looked inside. Eight people were working round a large table. A screen at the far end of the table had a map up of the greater Moscow area.
Roth looked around the table and wondered if any of them was his leak. He’d know soon enough, and if anything happened to Laurel because of them, there’d be hell to pay.
“What have we got?” Roth said.
He knew they’d have contacted him if they’d found anything major, but he needed an update.
“We got a track on the name you gave us, sir.”
“Timokhin?”
“Yes, sir. His vehicle left GRU headquarters some time ago. We’ve been analyzing traffic cameras all over Moscow to try and find out where it went.”
“How long will it take?”
“We already know he headed north.”
“Where was he going?”
“We’re recreating the trip, sir. There are no exit cameras on the main highway north from the city but we’re pulling in satellite data.”
“Will that take long?”
“We think we’ll have a destination for you soon, boss.”
“I don’t need to remind anyone here that Everlane’s life is on the line.”
“No, sir.”
He let them get back to work. He went to the coffee machine and made two cups, one for Tatyan
a and one for himself, and went back to the secure room.
“Sir,” one of the techs said as soon as he entered. “You need to sit down.”
“What is it?”
“Please, sir. Shut the door.”
Roth shut the door. “All right, boys. Spit it out. We’ve got lives on the line.”
“It’s not a member of the team, sir.”
“What do you mean? That device was found in this building. In my office.”
“Sir, did you have a meeting with Mansfield the night of the system glitch?”
“What are you talking about?” Roth said, trying to cast his mind back to that night. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.
“I don’t think so.”
“He was here, sir. That night.”
“He’s here all the time,” Roth said. “What of it?”
They pulled up security camera footage from the night of the glitch. It showed Mansfield entering the building. It showed him passing security on the ground floor. It showed him signing in on the sixth floor. None of that was suspicious in itself. Mansfield had top-level clearance. He came and went as he pleased.
The tech zoomed in on the guest registry. Mansfield’s reason for visiting was a meeting with Roth.
“We don’t have a meeting with Mansfield on your schedule, sir,” the tech said. “The only item you had that night was a meeting with Laurel Everlane in the main conference room.”
“Yes,” Roth said. “I remember now. Mansfield came by unannounced. I missed the meeting with Laurel because of it.”
“As you know, there’s no surveillance footage inside your office, sir.”
“All right.”
The techs both turned to Tatyana.
“The footage shows you leaving with Mansfield before seven.”
“That’s right. We went to the third floor,” Roth said. “There was an emergency meeting regarding Ukraine. We went together. I was there when the glitch hit.”
“And was Mansfield still with you?” Tatyana said.
Roth looked at her. “I have no idea. Half the leadership was there. I don’t remember if Mansfield was there or not.”
They pulled up more footage, showing Mansfield leaving the briefing on the third floor and going back to the sixth floor.
“What’s he saying there?” Roth said, as Mansfield passed the receptionist.
The tech pulled in on the audio. He had to isolate the other sounds in the office. He cleared it a few times then played it. “Forgot my keys,” Mansfield said, as he passed the reception.
“That son of a bitch,” Roth said.
“The timestamp on the device, Levi. It’s 7:24 PM. It was planted exactly when Mansfield came back for his keys. The glitch occurred immediately afterward. At 7:25 PM. That was because of an error on Mansfield’s part. He probably hadn’t been trained properly with the device.”
“Mansfield’s the leak?” Roth said.
“Yes,” Tatyana said.
Roth looked down at the two cups of coffee that were still in his hands.
“Mansfield’s leading our bioweapon response,” he said. “He’s the president’s most trusted security advisor.”
Tatyana looked at him. “Levi, we’ve got to do something. Now.”
67
Lance, Sofia, Olga, and Vasily went to the only safe place they could think of. The train station.
They needed to get out of the city urgently, and Lance knew Moscow was the most likely place Laurel had been taken. Given that it was over a thousand miles away, he needed to be moving west sooner rather than later.
The airport was too dangerous. There was no way the four of them would slip through security there undetected, especially since Olga, Sofia and Vasily didn’t have fake credentials.
At the train station, they split up so as to be less conspicuous, and bought their tickets to Moscow separately. Once on the train, they would regroup.
“Keep your eyes on the ground. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. Don’t look at police,” Lance said. “Don’t look at each other. Just keep to yourself and get on the train quietly.”
Lance kept an eye on everyone at the train station. He bought his ticket last and then went to the platform. It was fairly busy, the Trans-Siberian to Moscow was an overnight service and an important connection.
He scanned the crowd and found Sofia first. She was sitting on a bench in an outfit that Lance thought was strangely old fashioned for a woman like her. She had the collar up on her coat and was keeping her head down, eyes to the ground, like he’d told her.
In the other direction he found Olga, similarly dressed, also keeping her head down and avoiding eye contact.
Vasily should have been the easiest to spot with his big frame and mane of black hair, but Lance didn’t see him on the platform. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes until the train arrived. He got up and walked up and down the platform. Both Olga and Sofia looked right at him as he passed, which he’d told them not to.
Vasily wasn’t on the platform.
He checked the station’s clock. Just two minutes now, according to it, and the display said the train was running on schedule.
People were beginning to get up from their seats in anticipation of its arrival.
Something wasn’t right. Vasily should have been there.
Lance checked his gun and looked at the clock a last time. One minute until the train arrived.
He took the steps down from the platform to the tunnel that passed under all the tracks. It had steps leading back up to each platform. He was at the last platform and looked down the length of the tunnel back in the direction of the station. It was completely empty.
He started running along he tunnel, checking each set of steps as he passed. Most were empty. In one he saw a couple making out. In another, a woman struggling to get a heavy suitcase up the stairs.
In the next he saw three men. Two were police officers, and they were arguing with the third, who was Vasily.
“Hey,” Lance said.
As the first cop turned, Lance caught him in the groin with his knee, then knocked him out with a blow to the back of the head. Vasily got the second cop with a punch to the face, then finished him with his knee.
“What are you doing?” Lance said. “You’re going to miss the train.”
“I’m not getting on the train.”
“What?”
“I’ve got some unfinished business here.”
“What unfinished business?”
“I saw what happened, Lance. I saw how they backed Sofia into a corner. It was all Yevchenko. And I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“You want to go back for him?”
“A thousand people died in this city because of what he did.”
Lance thought for a second. “Who am I to stop you?” he said.
Vasily looked at him. “Thank you.”
“Take this?” Lance said, handing him the CZ 75 and silencer.
“You’ll need that,” Vasily said. “I know where I can get a gun.”
“It’s not going to be easy, what you’ve decided to do.”
“I can handle myself,” Vasily said.
Lance shook his hand. “Well good luck, Vasily Ustinov.”
Vasily nodded. “Good luck to you, Lance Spector.”
They heard the noise of the Trans-Siberian pulling into the station.
“That’s your train,” Vasily said.
Lance nodded. He turned to leave, then turned back.
“Hey, you think Khabib’s going to win his next fight?”
Vasily laughed. “That’s all anyone cares about.”
“Well?”
“Of course he’s going to win,” Vasily said.
Lance turned and hurried back to the platform. The train was just beginning to pull away and he had to jump on and force the door open to get in.
Once on-board, he found Olga and Sofia. They were sitting in the dining car sipping hot tea.
“Wh
ere’s Vasily?” Sofia said.
“He’s not coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wanted to go back for Yevchenko.”
“And you let him?”
“It was his choice.”
“It’s suicide,” Sofia said.
Lance didn’t know what to say. It was dangerous, but Vasily was his own man. He could handle himself.
Lance sat down but the two women didn’t speak to him. They were angry. He stood up.
“Where are you going?” Olga said.
“To see the conductor. I’m going to upgrade our tickets to a sleeper.”
“Let me go,” Sofia said. “I don’t want your accent giving us away.”
Lance sighed. He looked at Olga.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
Lance sat there for ten minutes before realizing they weren’t coming back for him. He went to the sleeper section and knocked on the first door. It opened and he saw a family getting ready for the night. The next door was answered by a priest.
He knocked on the third and Sofia opened.
“Can I come in?” he said.
She sighed and let him in. The sleeper was a small, self-contained cabin with two sets of bunk beds facing each other and a foldout table by the window. The two women sat on one of the beds, leaving the other for Lance.
They stared at him for a minute before Sofia broke the silence. “I don’t think I can sleep now.”
“Why don’t I go to the bar car and get us something?” Lance said.
She nodded and Lance left. He bought a small bottle of vodka and some Coke.
When he got back to the sleeper, the lights were out and the women were lying in their beds, their blankets pulled up over them.
“I get it,” Lance said, leaving the vodka and coke on the foldout table.
He went back to the bar and ordered a beer.
He sat and watched the last lights of Yekaterinburg go by. Before long, there was nothing out the window but blackness.
He thought about Laurel.
He knew the kind of place they’d have taken her. He also knew the kinds of things they would be doing to her.
This was the first chance he’d had to stop and think. And all he could think of was Laurel and what was happening to her.
If he could have willed the train to go faster, he would have.