When they pulled up to DSS headquarters, Marcus got out of the car without a word and walked rather than ran through the deluge to the building. Kailea watched him go in, wondering what in the world had just happened. The challenge was she didn’t really know him yet. That was going to have to change, and fast. But it wasn’t going to be easy. The man wasn’t exactly an open book. And those who knew him well weren’t talking.
When the director of DSS had called Kailea early on Sunday morning, he’d told her that Pete Hwang needed surgery, that Marcus Ryker was going to be her new partner, and that she needed to meet Ryker at Manny’s Diner and take him to Langley to prepare for the trips with General Evans. Beyond that, he’d really only given her two pieces of useful information. The first was that Ryker was a legend in the Secret Service, but she shouldn’t let that intimidate her; Ryker knew nothing about the culture of DSS, and it was her job to get him up to speed. The second was that Ryker was a widower and a borderline burnout who no one was entirely sure was ready to come back.
Late Monday night, after their marathon briefing sessions, after everyone else had gone home, Kailea had stayed at her desk, logged into the DSS mainframe, and pulled up Ryker’s files. She’d spent hours reading about his time in the Marines and his work for the Secret Service. She’d read about his medals and the reasons for each. She’d also read everything she could find on the murder of his wife and only son, including local newspaper accounts in the Washington Post and the Times.
That, however, was where she’d hit a dead end. She was stunned to find that Ryker’s records since then—pretty much everything that had happened in his life since the murders, including how he’d come to work for the State Department—had been classified far above her security clearance. This piqued her curiosity all the more. Who was this guy? Who were the friends he had in such high places? And what secrets were they all hiding?
After a short layover in Frankfurt, the ambassador and his family boarded a United flight to Dulles.
The nine-hour flight would put them on the ground just after 3 p.m. Eastern. By the time they cleared passport control, retrieved their luggage, and met their government driver, Reed figured they could be checked into the apartment State had rented them at the Watergate by six, even if there was traffic. His dinner with Secretary Whitney at the Monocle on Capitol Hill wasn’t until eight. But Reed was dying to know why he’d been recalled to D.C., and that was way too long to wait.
The sun had long since set over the British capital.
“Are you absolutely certain, my love?”
In a sparse, one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the East End, Maxim Sheripov looked into his sister’s eyes, searching for any sign of doubt but finding none.
“I am,” she said. “I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
“There is still time to back out, you know.”
“No,” Amina Sheripov responded with a vehemence her brother had not expected. “We must go through with it, together.”
“Very well,” he said. “The doctor’s waiting.”
Minutes later, the siblings were whisking across town in a hackney carriage—the black taxicab so distinctive to London—that Maxim had been driving for the last several years. Born and raised on the outskirts of Grozny, the forty-nine-year-old veteran of the brutal Chechen civil wars had been ordered by emissaries of Abu Nakba to relocate to the British capital, settle in, lie low, and await further instructions.
A welder by training, Sheripov knew he could not go back to his trade, no matter how well it paid. Operating with forged papers that indicated he was a Catholic from Ukraine, the Muslim mujahideen quickly concluded he needed a job that allowed him to learn the city thoroughly, that gave him access to airports, train stations, and bus terminals, and that allowed him to interact with all kinds of people at all hours of the day. Driving a cab had proven ideal. It had also helped him with his language and covered their living expenses.
Amina had taken their father’s death at the hands of Russian special forces particularly hard. Maxim had vowed revenge, learning how to make roadside bombs and plant them for maximum impact. Amina, by contrast, had become almost immobilized by fear. Six years younger than her only brother, she had rarely ventured out of doors. Rather, she clung to her mother’s side when she wasn’t sitting motionless in her room as their putrid apartment shook from the Russian bombs that fell day and night.
Maxim vividly remembered the frigid December night when that had all changed. Their mother gathered them in the kitchen. The room was lit only by a single candle. It was snowing something fierce. They had almost no food. They no longer had running water. Electricity was available only two or three hours a day in Grozny. They had run out of firewood and were huddled together under thick wool blankets. Amina was twenty-one. Maxim had just turned twenty-seven. And that night their mother told them she had come to the conclusion she must avenge their father’s death.
“Avenge?” asked Amina. “But how? What could you possibly do, Mother?”
“Become a Black Widow, of course, my love,” she replied.
Neither Maxim nor his sister had ever heard the term.
“A Black Widow?” asked Maxim. “What is that?”
“Tomorrow night at this time, I will be smuggled out of Chechnya,” the woman explained, “and taken to Moscow.”
“What will you do in Moscow?” asked Amina.
She replied without a hint of emotion. “You will find out soon enough.”
22
Two months later, Maxim and Amina had learned the truth.
They’d expected to hear through a close friend or operative. Instead, they read about the operation on the front page of the local newspaper.
Their mother had become a suicide bomber. She’d blown herself up just outside the terminal of one of Moscow’s busiest train stations at the height of the afternoon rush hour. The blast had left forty-one Russians dead and another 120 injured, the paper reported. Maxim felt sick to his stomach as he read the account, but it was the last sentence of the article that undid him.
The bomber—an as-yet-unidentified Chechen woman—was decapitated by the blast, and police later found her head on the roof of the train station.
Maxim had begun vomiting uncontrollably. Then he’d bolted out of the apartment and spent all the money in his pockets to drown himself in vodka and the company of a prostitute. Hours later, he’d woken up alone, shivering and without shoes, these having been taken by the woman whose name and face he could not remember.
It was Amina who had found him and brought him home. Maxim assumed his sister would dissolve into unquenchable grief. But their mother’s decision not to die as a wastrel but as a martyr for a cause electrified Amina. She not only snapped out of the depression that had nearly suffocated her, she threw herself into nursing Maxim back to health and hustling to make enough money to put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and even a new pair of shoes on her brother’s feet.
In time, Amina shared with Maxim the wellspring of her newfound grit. She had devoted herself completely to the teachings of the Qur’an. She had been raised a Muslim, to be sure. They both had been. But neither sibling had taken religion seriously. Neither had their mother, really, until their father’s death. Only when racked by immense pain over her husband’s death had she found new admiration for his religious piety and the strength of purpose it had given him in his latter years.
Now Amina was wearing a headscarf and praying five times a day. She joined a group of women in the basement of the bombed-out neighborhood mosque to study the holy writings and implored her brother to follow.
Maxim had been slower to come around. Yet over months of watching his sister tap into such vast reservoirs of courage and fire, Maxim was persuaded to join a men’s study group in the wreckage of the mosque and soon became convinced that Islam was the answer to his problems and that jihad was his path to immortality.
It was dark and late as they pulled into a deserte
d underground parking garage on the other side of London. Upstairs, they found a suite of medical offices tucked away on the ninth floor. The door was locked, so they rang the bell. Soon a woman in a headscarf led them to a waiting room in which no one was waiting. They sat and flipped through old magazines until a phone rang. The woman answered it, then asked the Sheripovs to follow her down a darkened corridor to a small but sterile operating theater. When the receptionist left, in walked a diminutive, swarthy-looking man in his sixties, from India perhaps or maybe from Pakistan.
“Dr. Haqqani?” Maxim asked.
“Please do not use my name,” said the man, scrubbing his hands with hot water and pungent disinfectant.
“Forgive me,” Maxim said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Be sure it does not.”
“Did you receive the wire transfer?” Maxim asked.
“I did,” said the doctor, putting on a pair of sterile nitrile gloves and turning to Amina. “So then, are you ready?”
“I am.”
“I trust you have been told this procedure is irreversible.”
Amina nodded.
“I want to be clear,” said Haqqani. “Once I install the device, it cannot be removed. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“There are no second chances.”
“I want none.”
“And no one is pressuring you?”
“No.”
“Not your brother?”
“No.”
“No one else in your family?”
“I have no other family.”
“No one else in Kairos?”
“No.”
“And knowing everything, you have no reservations?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Very well, then,” replied Haqqani. “My nurses will come in and make preparations. May Allah reward you.”
23
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND
Marcus flashed his government ID and was cleared onto the base.
He found a parking spot for his Nissan Stanza, cut the engine, and then dialed a number from memory. It was a call he should have made Sunday, but he’d simply been too busy.
“Stravinsky & Sons Accounting and Tax Services, may I help you?” said the voice on the other end of the line.
Marcus couldn’t help but smile each time he heard his Russian friend say the words. The man’s name was not Stravinsky. It was Oleg Kraskin. And he was hardly an accountant. He was a Russian mole and an assassin who had taken out both the Russian president and the head of the FSB, then fled his country with a thumb drive containing the Kremlin’s most prized secrets. Now he was living in the U.S. under an assumed name and working for the CIA, known to senior American officials only as “the Raven.” And while his cover story was that he ran a tax preparation service, the truth was the Raven was working on two highly classified projects at the moment, with Marcus as his handler.
For starters, Oleg was helping the CIA identify European members of Parliament, journalists, political analysts, and businessmen who were secretly on the Kremlin’s payroll. Already Oleg had put together a list of forty names of people surreptitiously paid in cash to provide the Kremlin with intelligence on NATO’s military capabilities, steal trade secrets from key European businesses like Airbus, disseminate Russian propaganda, and recruit other people of influence. For weeks Oleg had been combing through the computer files he’d smuggled out of Moscow and building dossiers on each mole with proof of monies paid, means of payment, and what each traitor was tasked to do for the Kremlin.
The CIA had long suspected that both the EU parliament and NATO headquarters had been penetrated by Russian intelligence. Now they had proof. National Security Advisor Evans was urging President Clarke to have these people arrested immediately. Marcus, however, was urging Clarke to let the Agency keep monitoring these folks. Would the new Russian president try to use them? If so, to do what? If that happened—or more likely, when it happened—the president could decide whether to arrest them, feed them disinformation, or flip them into becoming double agents.
CIA director Stephens had sided with Marcus and taken his recommendation to the president, and for now, at least, Clarke agreed.
Then Stephens had asked Marcus to task the Raven with an even more urgent project: sifting through mountains of NSA intercepts, helping to scan for any evidence that Moscow, Pyongyang, and/or Tehran were planning revenge attacks after all the ways the U.S. had thwarted them over the past two months. Oleg had found nothing useful yet, and Marcus was sure Sunday’s attack had hit the Russian hard.
“Hey, it’s me,” Marcus said, careful not to use either of their names.
“I’m so glad you are safe, my friend,” Oleg replied. “I’ve been dying to call, but you gave me strict orders never to contact you except in an emergency.”
Marcus smiled, if only to himself. Surely a man becoming involved in a mass casualty event qualified as an emergency. But he had no time to quibble. “I’m sorry I didn’t call right away.”
“It is I who am sorry. I should have found something, anything, that would have told us this was coming, but—”
“No one saw this coming. That’s why I’m calling.”
“You think it’s just the beginning,” Oleg said.
“Don’t you?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Look—I’m heading to the Mideast tonight.”
“With Evans, the national security advisor?”
“Right.”
“I read about his trip.”
“As has every terrorist,” Marcus said. “So on top of everything else, keep your eye out for signs that any attacks are being planned.”
“I will, my friend. Just watch your back.”
“Will do,” Marcus said, grabbing his bag and hustling to security. “Listen, I gotta catch my ride. Text me if you find anything.”
As it happened, he was the last person up the metal stairs before the door was shut.
The military version of the Boeing 757-200 was painted blue, white, and gold. The words United States of America were emblazoned on both sides of the fuselage in black letters three feet high. The plane bore an American flag on the tail, along with the number 80002. Similar models of the VC-32A were used for the VP and the secretary of state. This one had been assigned to the national security advisor, and over the past two years the man had racked up an impressive number of frequent flyer miles.
As Marcus moved through the cabin to the cheap seats, he nodded to General Evans in the first-class area. The NSA was hunched over a laptop and chatting in a low voice with one of his key deputies, Dr. Susan Davis, the senior director for Near East affairs on the NSC. Evans nodded back. Davis did not.
Kailea was already settled into the window seat next to his. “Thought you’d never make it, grandpa,” she quipped as he settled in. “Trouble with your wheelchair? Or filling up on Geritol at the PX?”
“Good to see you, too, Agent Curtis.”
It was going to be a long flight.
24
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The dark-haired Turkish woman checked her watch.
It was 7:36 in the evening.
She was dressed in ripped blue jeans, a GW sweatshirt, a brown leather jacket, and brown boots—with a canvas courier bag slung over her back. She was only twenty-six years old. But having cut her teeth helping smuggle ISIS operatives through her homeland into northern Syria, she’d been recruited by Kairos early—practically the day of its inception—and she had proven herself reliable.
Positioned at a gas station on the corner of Rock Creek Parkway and Virginia Avenue, next door to the Watergate, she had an unobstructed view of the building’s front door. She bent over and pretended to check the air pressure in the front tire of her BMW motorcycle, then watched as Ambassador Tyler Reed emerged from the building and got into the backseat of a black Chevy Suburban, two DSS agents at his side, a third behind the wheel.
She immediately speed-dialed her commander. “Honey, I’m leaving for the office.”
“Great; see you soon, sweetheart,” the commander of the first cell replied in heavily accented English. “Stay safe.”
As the woman donned her helmet and adjusted the visor, her commander speed-dialed the head of the second cell.
“Morning, Bob—I just got off the phone with Julie. Apparently Tony’s flight just took off and should be on time.”
“I’ll be sure to pick him up when he arrives,” came the reply.
Outside the Watergate, the Turkish woman revved her engine but did not pull out. Instead, a blue Dodge Grand Caravan idling across the street pulled away from the curb, did a quick U-turn, and began heading southeast on Virginia Avenue. The driver could see the Suburban. It was only three cars ahead. Yet when the Chevy made a left on Twenty-Third Street, the Caravan did not turn with it. Instead, it continued straight until it reached Twenty-Second Street, at which point it made a left.
The Suburban with Reed in it headed north, past the Foggy Bottom Metro station on the left and the campus of George Washington University on the right. As it approached Washington Circle, it bore right, flowing with traffic, took the third exit off the circle onto New Hampshire Avenue, and then almost immediately veered right onto L Street, heading east.
The moment the Suburban crossed Twenty-First Street, a white, four-door Ford Festiva pulled out of a driveway. It was also heading east on L Street, four cars back. By the time they crossed Connecticut Avenue, two of the three Kairos vehicles had turned off onto other streets. The Festiva was only one car behind the Suburban. In its front passenger seat sat the commander of the second cell. He could not see through the Chevy’s tinted windows, but he speed-dialed the commander of the first cell and asked, “Just to be clear, is the shop located on Vermont Avenue or Twelfth Street?”
There was no shop. Rather, this was to inform the commander of the first cell that they were about to pass Vermont Avenue. It also signaled that the Festiva should break away from the Suburban, taking a left on Twelfth.
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