The Fall of Moscow Station (31 page)

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.”

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.

It had taken her an hour to carve up the twenty bars of soap she'd found upstairs in the bathroom closet using the box grater that had been in one of the kitchen cabinets, and she had a large bowlful of green shavings to show for her work. A storage can from the garage and a siphon pump had allowed her to extract three gallons of gasoline from the Tiguan. Had it been warmer, she would have used motor oil instead, as gasoline would have started to evaporate after a few hours and reduced the volatility of the end product; but the Russian cold was her friend in that respect.

Napalm had been one of the simpler incendiaries the Agency had taught her to make. It would be harder to make the fuse than the jellied gasoline, but not overly so. The several gallons of household bleach she'd found in the basement would provide her with all of the potassium chlorate she would need for that and there was no shortage of granulated sugar in the pantry.

She'd worried about building an ignitor until she realized that Lavrov's men would provide that for her when they came.

Barron wouldn't be happy with what she was about to do, she was sure, but if Lavrov's men were coming, then the safe house was lost to the Agency anyway. Its only useful purpose now would be to send a message to the general that neither Kyra nor the Agency intended to go out so quietly.

Kyra fetched a large metal pot from its home under the counter and turned on the stove. She uncapped the first bottle of bleach and began to pour it into the pot.

New GRU headquarters

“Your report, Colonel?” Lavrov leaned back in his chair, using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear. Russian breweries had not mastered the art of the twist cap and opening a bottle took both of his hands.

“We have completed raids on four of the homes that your source identified,” Sokolov said. “All were abandoned, all sanitized. If they truly were CIA safe houses, the evidence of it was thoroughly removed before the custodians left. Impressive, given how little time they must have had.”

“Indeed,” Lavrov said. “It does not matter, Colonel. I expect they will all be abandoned and stripped except one, and it is that one you must find.” The bottle top finally came loose and the general took his first taste. The brew inside was bitter and not quite as cold as he liked it.

“There are six more on the list you gave me, General,” Sokolov advised. “It takes several hours to plan and conduct a proper raid on each one to make sure no one evades capture. It will take at least another day, possibly two to target them all.”

“Understood. No delays, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir,” Sokolov said.

Kyra's safe house

Kyra set the plastic bucket down and peeled the latex gloves off her hands. The napalm was plastered in every major room of the house. Running the improvised string fuse to each incendiary site was going to take another half hour. Setting up the front, mudroom, and back doors to ignite the entire system would take less than a minute.

An hour later and the job done, Kyra looked to the clock. She still had twelve hours before she had to go out on the street.

The coffee had long since stopped doing its job and Kyra wanted to stumble back up the stairs to the bedroom. She would need some sleep and then some food in her stomach for what came next. But it was not safe to stay, as tempting as the soft bed was. Kyra might easily wake up to find the Spetsnaz standing over her, or, more likely, the house burning around her if the ignition system worked as she'd planned.

She could sleep in the Tiguan after she'd found some hidden field miles from here. Her last chore here was to turn on the shortwave transmitter, tuned to the frequency she'd used to talk to Lavrov last night, and leave it on. Then she would drive out. The Spetsnaz would come—

A telephone rang.

Her mind hazy from lack of sleep, she needed several seconds to realize that it wasn't any ringtone on her cell. No, it was the house phone.
Headquarters?
she thought. Langley surely had the number, but Barron wouldn't be so stupid as to call her on an open, unencrypted line.

She stumbled off in search of a handset, finally finding one on the sixth or seventh ring, having lost count. The caller ID showed nothing.

Answer it?
she wondered.

Why not?
Jon's voice in her mind said. You're heading out the door anyway and not coming back.

She picked it up, then froze in place, realizing too late that she didn't know how to answer a call in Russian or whether there was any kind of security phrase assigned to this location.

The caller saved her the embarrassment. “You are American?” the man asked. His voice was disguised, digitized somehow.

Kyra said nothing. “You must leave house if you are American,” the voice said, the man's English accented and broken. “They are coming to your safe site. You have maybe one hour, maybe more, but they come and they arrest you. You must leave now.”

She heard a click on the other end, then a dial tone, and she stared at the phone in her hand. Kyra set it back in the cradle.

It had not been some mistaken caller dialing the wrong number. The man had expected that an American would answer, which meant he'd known that he was calling a safe house. That, together with the fact that he had been able to get the telephone number, which was unlisted, yelled that the caller was someone who had access to official information.

But he'd spoken quickly, not waiting for a response from her, but simply had spilled what he knew and cut the call.
Worried that someone might hear him?
she wondered. Then she understood. The caller hadn't merely been someone with access to official information.
No
, counterintelligence
information.

There was a mole in Lavrov's operation. Someone knew about Lavrov's operations against the Agency.

Someone Maines didn't give up? Someone he didn't know about?
she wondered. Or maybe just someone Lavrov hadn't arrested yet, but that seemed unlikely. If there was anyone in a position to know about his counterintelligence operation, Lavrov would have been a fool not to neutralize that traitor first. No, there was someone in the Kremlin, maybe the GRU, who was moving against Lavrov and who wasn't on whatever list Maines had given up.

Kyra checked the caller ID again and cursed the empty display. The caller might have been someone who could help her find out what had happened to Jon. The ID might have given her somewhere to start, some bit of information she could have used to reconnect with the Russian caller, whoever he was.

The quiet of the house seemed hostile to her now, the shadows of the hallway oppressive.
Maybe one hour
, she repeated in her mind.