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Overview
When a body with Russian military tattoos is found floating in a lake outside Berlin, the CIA immediately takes notice. The body is identified as the director of Russia’s Foundation for Advanced Nuclear Research, who is also a CIA asset. And the murder coincides with the defection of one of the CIA’s upper-level officers.
Alden Maines is jaded after years in the CIA cleaning up the messes of incompetent political appointees in dangerous foreign posts. When he is passed over for promotion, Maines crosses the Rubicon and decides to cash in as a double agent for Russia.
But while Maines dreams of off-shore bank accounts and a new secret life, Arkady Lavrov of Russia’s intelligence service (GRU) has other plans. He immediately announces Maines’s defection to the world and then pumps him for every last ounce of intel, including the names of every agent in the CIA’s Moscow Station and their assets working in the Kremlin. But why would Lavrov burn an asset whose intel and access could pay dividends for years to come? What is Lavrov up to?
Traveling from Langley to Berlin and finally Moscow—working black without backup—analyst Jonathan Burke and agent Kyra Stryker are up against their most formidable enemy yet, and their lives and the fate of America’s most important assets in the New Cold War hang in the balance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781501100321 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Gallery Books |
| Publication date: | 01/19/2016 |
| Series: | Kyra Stryker & Jonathan Burke Series , #3 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 118,739 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Mark Henshaw is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a decorated CIA analyst with more than sixteen years of service. In 2007, Henshaw was awarded the Director of National Intelligence Galileo Award for innovation in intelligence analysis. A former member of the Red Cell think tank, Henshaw is the author of Red Cell, Cold Shot, The Fall of Moscow Station, and The Last Man in Tehran, and lives with his family in Leesburg, Virginia. Visit him at MarkHenshaw.com.
Read an Excerpt
The Fall of Moscow Station
Vogelsang Soviet Military Base (Abandoned)
65 kilometers north of Berlin, Germany
General Stepan Illarionovich Strelnikov kept a steady pace as he walked through the abandoned streets, though not fast enough to satisfy his impatience. He could not walk faster, not anymore. The cushions between several of his vertebrae were eroding, so the doctor had said, and walking any serious distance was agony. He had taken the painkillers before setting out this morning, but they weren’t up to the task. He ignored the pain as much as his discipline allowed, which was very little.
The road was familiar. That wall of trees to his right hadn’t been there in his youth, and now, though pleasant on the eyes, it blocked his view of the old buildings he knew were sitting beyond. No matter. Strelnikov hardly was paying attention to the scenery. Vogelsang brought back memories thick as the flies swarmed these woods during the summers. He had been stationed here in his youth, when the first Soviet nuclear base outside of the Rodina had sheltered fifteen thousand soldiers and their families. It had been a lively place, an entire Russian town cultivated inside East Germany, where the signs all had Cyrillic letters and children had always been running between the buildings, some to the cinema, others to the school or the playground.
Now Vogelsang was a desolate waste, empty and crumbling, with trees growing up through the floors of some of the buildings. Grass erupted in straight lines through the concrete seams of the open spaces, and the buildings were all turning a uniform gray as their paint eroded. There was hardly an intact window anywhere, though most still had metal bars covering the openings. Doors were missing or hanging open. The wind made an ugly sound as it passed through the structures, the cracks in their facades creating a symphony of whistles and moans that combined in random tunes. The Germans wanted to level this reminder of the days when they had been in bondage to his country, but it seemed like nature was determined to do it first.
Why meet here? he wondered. The old general’s knees had quivered when he’d recovered the meeting instructions that his CIA handler had left at the dead-drop site in Moscow. He’d had to read them twice, but there had been no mistake. Was it all coincidence, or did the CIA know his history? If that, what purpose could they find in calling him here? That was a question they were going to answer before he would answer any of theirs.
He stopped to orient himself, trying to remember which decrepit building was which, and his old mind wandered. His memory of the place became as real as the world around him and for a minute the pain in his back was gone. Strelnikov recognized the old theater across the intersection, where he had met his wife. He’d courted Taisia here and they’d dreamed of building a dacha a few miles north to retire in the German woods—
Foolish old soldier, he cursed himself. “No time for that,” he muttered. Maybe after the meeting.
He found the building after another half hour’s walk. The base commandant’s office had been a high-class facility in its prime. Now it was a shell, but good enough for a clandestine meeting, he supposed. He trudged up the small flight of concrete steps onto the landing, pulled open the door, and stepped inside.
The loop came down over his head. Strelnikov thought it was a garrote, and he was sure a metal wire was about to crush his windpipe and choke off his air. But the attacker pulled it short and Strelnikov felt a fat cotton rope force itself between his teeth, to stop him from biting down.
In that instant, Strelnikov knew that the man behind would not kill him, not in the next few minutes anyway.
One hand pushed his head forward and down while others seized his arms and pulled them high over his head, spreading them like a chicken’s wings flapping in the air. The pain surged in his shoulders, narrowing his vision into a black tunnel, and for a moment he was sure the men would keep pulling until the rotator cuffs tore, but finally they stopped before he passed out. More hands stripped his coat and shirt from his body. The Russian general offered no protest.
There are no suicide pills hidden in my clothes, young comrades.
When he was stripped to the waist, Strelnikov’s arms finally were allowed to fall free. The men behind him pulled a hood over his head and suddenly he was blind.
His pants were pulled down to his ankles and Strelnikov was pushed down to sit on a stool. His shoes were pulled from his feet. More unseen hands covered with latex gloves searched his body, leaving nothing untouched. His captors forced him to stand, then bend over.
You will find nothing in there either, he assured them in his thoughts, but Strelnikov didn’t bother saying the words. He had no plan to end his life on his own terms, but his promises would carry no weight with these men and he held his silence. Strelnikov had known the cavity check would be coming, but it was painful all the same. Suicide pills were small and the men were thorough, if not gentle. The rope in his mouth was a convenient outlet for that particular pain, and Strelnikov bit down hard until the clinical search was finished.
He was pulled by his arms, pushed around corners, and marched in circles until he could not longer orient himself by memory. They dragged him forward and up a staircase, then into some room, and he heard a door close behind. He was made to dress in what he knew to be a blue jogging suit. His modesty restored, his assailants removed the hood. The men wore no masks and Strelnikov knew soldiers when he saw them. The hair, the bearing, the efficient manner told him that these men were Special Forces.
They checked his mouth with a penlight and a dental pick for false fillings or other implants. Strelnikov offered no resistance. These men had specialized tools for wrenching open the jaws of anyone who stupidly thought they could keep their mouths shut as far as the rope allowed. Finding nothing, they finally removed the cord, cleaned up their kit, and evacuated the barren room. Strelnikov watched them go, waiting for the door to close before turning to the interrogator he knew was still inside.
“Good evening, Stepan Illarionovich.” General-Major Arkady Lavrov, director of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), sat in a cheap wooden chair by the corner of the door.
Strelnikov said nothing for several seconds, his mind pondering the surprise, and then he spoke. “Good evening, Arkady Vladimirovich.” He made his way to the lone wooden stool in the room. It looked like it was original to the building and he hoped it wouldn’t crumble under his weight.
“It looks so very different, does it not, the old base?” Lavrov asked.
Strelnikov exhaled long and slow. “It’s hard to say. Time is cruel to memories,” he said, making no effort to hide the sarcasm. What he’d said was true in so many ways. To admit that this country was a better place now than when the Soviet empire had controlled its eastern end would have been to admit that he had spent his life in the service of a mistake.
Lavrov waited for the other man to say something else, then finally spoke when the silence grew too painful. “It has changed, very much. A testament to our failures.” He pressed his lips together. “We were in Berlin that night. Do you remember, on the embassy roof? We watched the people dancing on the Wall.”
“I do,” Strelnikov said. “That was an unhappy night.”
“Yes, it was. I question, sometimes, how we did not foresee what happened that evening,” Lavrov admitted.
“We did not see it,” Strelnikov advised him, “because we lacked the great virtue that would have let us predict it.”
“And that would be?”
“Honesty. The Kremlin would not hear of failure, so we would not let ourselves consider the possibility.”
Lavrov let out a quiet laugh after a moment. “Yes, you are right, but not all of us were so blind.”
Strelnikov sighed. He’d pushed away his memories on the walk here and he was in no mood to let his old friend indulge in them now. “You were the one who left the instructions at the dead drop in Moscow for me to come here. I must congratulate you on your penetration of the CIA. I was told that my case files and reports were being held in a very secure compartment.”
“They are,” Lavrov agreed. “And our new asset is impressive. It is regrettable that he cannot be allowed to remain in place, but your betrayal has forced me to exfiltrate him. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will very soon.”
“How long have you known?” Strelnikov asked.
“Not long,” Lavrov admitted. “Your knowledge of my operations left us little choice but to act quickly. But you are my old friend, Stepan, and I had to be convinced beyond any doubt that you truly were guilty. There was no question once you left for Berlin. Your fellow GRU officers dismantled your dacha. I’m told they found the smartphone and software the Americans gave you to use, among other toys. It doesn’t matter where you’ve hidden whatever money they have paid you, you will not see it.”
“There was no money,” Strelnikov told him. “I asked for none. I did not do this for money.”
“I had hoped not.” Lavrov looked to his comrade, a painful sadness twisting his face. “More than forty years we have been friends. So, please, tell me why you turned to treason,” Lavrov demanded.
“Do you truly want an answer?”
“Of course. It will not change what comes after, but I prefer knowledge to ignorance.” His desire to know was genuine, Strelnikov knew. Lavrov needed no confession to condemn him at a tribunal. An answer to the question could not hurt him more and perhaps might do some good.
“My grandfather was a Jew, Arkady. I never talked about him, of course. There were so many Jew-haters among the chekists. Still today too, though not so many. You are not one of them, I know, but still you and your foundation threaten my grandfather’s people . . . my people.”
“Ah,” Lavrov said. “The assistance I gave to the Iranians.”
“Yes,” Strelnikov said. “You should not have sold them nuclear technology. And now the new device you want to sell them—”
“We must help our allies,” Lavrov said, as though that simple fact alone was justification enough.
“Our allies are butchers, Arkady.”
“And we are not?”
“We have been, but we could be better men. We can restore the Rodina Mat in other ways than this.”
Lavrov sighed, feigning a loss of energy. “I will have your clothes returned after they are inspected. I will give you that dignity. But you already were a better man, Stepan Illarionovich. I know you were.”
“It was not my head but my heart that made my choices, Arkady,” Strelnikov said, defiance in his voice. “As it always has.”
“In honorable men, true men, the head and the heart speak with the same voice,” Lavrov told him. “I regret that you forgot that. Remember it now and you might find some peace.” The senior Russian official stood to leave.
“Arkady . . . a question for you,” Strelnikov pleaded.
“Yes?”
“Why this place? Why bring me back here?”
Lavrov smiled, rueful. “Death and resurrection, old friend. This is the place for it.” He turned away from Strelnikov and walked outside.
• • •
Aqid (Colonel) Issam Ghazal of the Syrian Army had learned, of necessity, to be a patient man. With no familial connections to advance his career, his promotions had come through careful maneuvers and waiting for those more ambitious and less careful than himself to make mistakes that could not be dismissed. Such steps created enemies and each rise in the ranks forced him to be ever more deliberate. Greater heights put him under more scrutiny, and ever-smaller mistakes could be his undoing. Still, his self-control was rigid now and he enjoyed the thought that his enemies were going slowly mad waiting for him to make mistakes that never came.
But patience did not mean he could not be mindful of the time. Ghazal checked his watch, a Suunto Core digital that he’d picked up in a highbrow Berlin shop the day before. He wished he could afford one of those finer Swiss watches, one of the TAG Heuers that he’d seen under the glass, but those would stay beyond his means until he could secure a promotion to flag rank.
The Russian general, Lavrov, had been inside the decrepit mansion for a half hour before emerging. “Colonel Ghazal,” he said. “It is my great pleasure to meet you again.”
“General Lavrov,” Ghazal replied, bowing slightly.
“If you will walk with me, I will escort you to the test site,” Lavrov requested.
“You don’t want to drive?” Ghazal asked.
Lavrov shook his head. “I would like my car to be in working order after the weapons test.” He extended an arm and Ghazal began to trudge across the cold ground with the Russian, their boots crunching in the hardening mud.
“That was a spectacle that your men put on a few minutes ago,” Ghazal noted. “Who was the man they detained?”
“Regrettably, an old friend,” Lavrov said. “But one who could not find it in himself to remain loyal.”
“Ah,” Ghazal said, his manner sympathetic, “that is always regrettable. The foundation of any friendship is always loyalty.”
“Indeed,” Lavrov replied. “And to violate it is the unpardonable sin. Trust cannot be recovered once lost. Doubt always remains after treason, no matter what a man says or does thereafter.”
“Yes,” Ghazal agreed. “I presume that you wanted me to see that so I could reassure my superiors that your operation is secure.”
“Correct,” Lavrov admitted. “The debacle our Iranian friends suffered last year caused many of my clients to question our ability to be discreet. I wanted to show you that we can manage the problem.”
“I do not think that was ever in doubt,” Ghazal said. “But they do not want it managed, only prevented. At our level, one breach is too much.” The Syrian ran a hand through his dark beard. “If that man taken in the house truly was your friend and a loyal officer for decades, then anyone else could be vulnerable. If the Americans could persuade him, who could they not reach? No, I do not think my superiors will be convinced that your operation is secure.”
“The Americans did not persuade him,” Lavrov countered. “He had a weakness that led him to falter. A relative of his was Jewish, so my dealings with the Iranians and now with you worried him.”
“Zionists and their friends are everywhere. How many more like him might be part of your organization? We can never know.” Ghazal sighed. “I am under orders not to pay you nor take possession of the material until my superiors are convinced that you have reestablished your security,” he said. “My leaders do not want trouble with the Americans like the Iranians suffered last year, much less with the rest of NATO or, Allah forbid, the Israelis.”
Lavrov frowned. “What are their terms?”
“They are not asking for changes to the contract,” Ghazal admitted. “They simply do not want it executed until they are sure there will be no unexpected publicity.”
“That will happen very, very soon,” Lavrov said. “The man who identified Stepan as a traitor can identify any others in my organization who are disloyal.”
“That is reassuring,” Ghazal replied. “And you will be pleased to hear that I have convinced them to pay you interest for the time spent cleaning out your own house.”
“A small investment now that will save you from greater problems in the future,” Lavrov advised. “But for now, come, I have something to show you.”
The Großer Müggelsee Lake
Treptow-Köpenick District
Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany
The gray clouds made the day look as though it was already dying despite the morning hour when Sigmar Mueller stepped out of the Mercedes Vito onto the wet grass. The vegetation had grown wild and thick along the lakeshore here, and the recent storms had fueled its growth as much as the Müggelsee water. Some underpaid labor had not mowed along the roadside and the green shoots rose to a height that reached up past his boots and darkened his pants where they touched his legs. He closed the car door, trapping some of the wet plants inside the cabin, and Mueller muttered something indiscreet about the work habits of immigrants hired to keep the grass down.
The marshy ground pulled at his feet as the grass gave way to cattails that gently hit his thighs until he reached the paved trail, but the damage was done. The old man, tall, graying hair, and smooth faced, ignored the feeling of his trousers growing more damp and cold with each stride. It hardly qualified as an annoyance. The senior investigator for the Bundeskriminalamt, the Federal Criminal Investigation Office, had been called to study corpses in locations far more hostile and personally uncomfortable than this one. The worst had been the dead prostitutes that some patrons of the street had stuffed into sewer holes. Those pictures in his mind stood out in his memory, which was impressive given the many competing images. Mueller hoped that dementia might help him forget them all someday after he had given up the job.
The Müggelsee had been an attraction for him since he’d been a child, a lake so large that one could always find some quiet solace on a weekend near a tree line. He brought his family here often during the gentler seasons, the October fall and the April spring before the air turned either frigid or humid, and he prayed that what he would soon see here would not put him off this place. But he supposed the lake’s size and secluded shores that made it such a draw for him would eventually call for less benign reasons to the organized criminal groups that operated out of Berlin, sixteen kilometers to the northwest.
The highway encircled the lake, no more than a few dozen meters from the shore at the farthest point, but trees hid the water from the road in places and early September rains had left the ground a humid bog on the southeastern side. Mueller muttered to himself, then chuckled, amused by his own absurdity of wanting to ask murderers to accommodate him and his fellows by depositing their victims in convenient spots. They would earn an extra measure of his gratitude if they would also concede to pick less onerous seasons to do their work. He had missed enough Advents and Christmas days with his family and feared he would have too few left to make up the difference.
He cleared a slight rise, the far side of a low swale where the water had pooled an inch deep, creating a tiny marsh that sank under his feet until the dirty water covered the toes of his boots. He pushed himself up the embankment, then pulled himself forward by grasping an exposed root, scrambled up, and saw that he had arrived.
The body rested under a blue plastic sheet held down by rocks to keep the cold breeze from carrying it away. Two uniformed officers from the local Polizeibehörde stood over the departed and Mueller realized that he didn’t know which town was closest to this point of the lake. No matter, he supposed. The locals had called for the federal police, he had arrived, and their duties here would be done by the day’s end. Other officers had roped out a perimeter larger than he needed for the purpose of his visit, and civilians were blessedly absent except for two—a young man, bearded with short brown hair, and a woman, petite with a pixie cut, both sitting in a covered police Gator that someone had managed to drive through the thick woods.
One of the local police, this one a woman dressed in civilian clothes and an overcoat, saw him coming and moved to meet him. “Herr Mueller?” she asked.
“Ja,” he replied.
“I am Johanna Adler. It is a pleasure,” the younger woman replied. She was a head shorter than Mueller, blond, probably half his age and overweight, which he observed from her rounded cheeks, but not so much that young men would find her unattractive.
“The pleasure is mine,” Mueller replied in their native tongue. “Though not so much to be here.”
“I must agree with you,” Adler replied, her voice quiet, unnerved.
“Your first murder scene?”
“Nein,” Adler said. “My second, and at this lake, if you can believe it.”
“And who was the first victim?”
“A young British man, a photographer and hiker, pulled from the lake last month.” Her cheeks were flushed red, whether from embarrassment or the cool air Mueller didn’t know. “I used to love the Müggelsee. Now I am starting to dread seeing it.”
“I hope you will be able to spend happier days here,” Mueller said. “How was the victim found?”
“By the two witnesses, there,” Adler said, pointing to the young couple sitting in the Gator. Closer to him, they looked to be barely more than teenagers to Mueller’s eye, but he was old enough that most everyone looked like children to him now. The woman was distraught enough that she probably had been incoherent an hour before. The man was holding her and saying nothing except to answer an officer’s questions with as few words as possible. Adler pulled out a notebook and read her own handwriting off the pages. “Thomas Gauck and Angela Weidmann. He brought her here this morning at sunrise to propose marriage. He says that he had spent a week wandering the lakeshore to find the best spot and finally settled on this one yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t counted on the rain, but decided not to postpone. They arrived on foot at six forty-five this morning. When the sun finally rose, they saw the victim in the shallows. The body was facedown in the silt, with no shirt or shoes. Mr. Gauck insists that he would have seen it yesterday afternoon had it been there, but the state of decomposition seems advanced, so it is unlikely that someone merely left the body here overnight. That spurred me to call your office. Our local office is not equipped to identify a victim so . . . unrecognizable.”
Mueller walked over to the blue shroud on the ground and saw Adler avert her gaze as he lifted a corner. “Not so bad,” he said. “The dirt from the water makes him look worse than he really is.” It was true, but Adler had not been entirely wrong. The deceased was bloated enough that identification would be problematic. Obviously male, a little under two meters, and moderately overweight, though his swollen tissues made his true weight difficult to estimate. Mueller scanned the muddy ground around the corpse and saw no sign of disturbance. Adler looked ill to him, trying to control her rebellious stomach, but questions had to be asked. “And there were no other tracks on the ground?”
“None that we could find other than those left by Herr Gauck and Fräulein Weidmann.”
“The ground is too soft for anyone to come and go and leave it unmarked,” Mueller observed. “It seems likely that the body floated here.”
“Ja,” Adler replied. “The Spree River inlet is a half kilometer from here, close enough to create a slight current that could have pushed the body from there to this point overnight.”
Mueller nodded. “I cannot say there was violence involved in this, but if so, it is possible that it could have been deposited here in the lake a few days ago, improperly tied and weighted, and worked its way to the surface. Decomposition creates gases in the tissues that make the corpse buoyant. They can be quite difficult to keep submerged.”
He’d recited the science as pure facts, not thinking about the woman standing to his left. He heard her make an unpleasant sound and he turned, seeing Adler’s face pale at the thoughts his words had drawn in her mind. Poor girl, Mueller thought. Such a thing to see before the holiday. He regretted that she would have to suffer through for a few minutes more. Procedures had to be observed. “Did you examine the body for distinguishing marks?”
“Only the areas we could see without moving it,” she said, her voice tenuous. “Obviously, the rigor has passed, but we did not want to disturb the site until you had a chance to inspect the area. He has a military tattoo of some kind on his left shoulder, but I’m not an expert on such marks. We did find something unusual when we checked his pants. If you’ll check the interior label—?”
Mueller donned a pair of latex gloves, then followed the young woman’s suggestion, turning the waistband of the wet blue jogging suit over. Adler saw the older man’s eyes widen when he saw the marking. He let the pants go, extracted a pair of glasses from his overcoat, put them on, and repeated the inspection.
Mueller let the pants go and pulled the suit top away from the corpse’s shoulder until he could see the tattoo. He stared at it for several seconds, committing it to memory, then stood, removing the glasses and the thin gloves. All sense of charm had vanished, replaced by a more serious demeanor in the time it had taken him to come to his feet. “I will talk to the witnesses and call in a forensic unit. We will take responsibility for the remains and the site, but I doubt there will be any evidence to collect here beyond the body itself. If you would share your interview notes and any suspected evidence, I would be most grateful. And could I trouble you to please summon the Bundesamt für Verfassungsshutz? The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution might have some domestic intelligence that could be useful. Interpol may also become involved.”
Adler’s brow furrowed deep. Mueller saw her confusion. “You recognize Cyrillic letters when you see them, yes?” he asked.
“Of course, Herr Mueller.”
He nodded. “I am familiar with military tattoos. The one on the victim’s shoulder is not uncommon among soldiers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate. You might know them as the GRU, the old masters of the Spetsnaz Special Forces. That and his suit label together suggest this gentleman was a Russian intelligence officer at some point in his life. If he was still a military officer at the time of his death, then this is almost certainly a murder. No Spetsnaz soldier, past or present, would drown in the water unless he suffered a cardiac arrest or some other medical issue. The gray in his hair and his weight, even accounting for the bloating, suggest that he’s likely an officer, possibly a senior one. Enlisted soldiers of the Russian military are typically conscripts, and tend to be younger and more trim. So we face the possibility that a ranking Russian Special Forces officer died on our soil, possibly from misadventure or natural causes, but murder seems more likely to me. Unless we can rule that out, we must consider this as a potential national security matter, possibly involving espionage or organized criminal activity. So you are freed of responsibility for this matter.”
Adler exhaled. “I cannot say that I am sorry for that, Herr Mueller,” Adler said. “My men and I will be most grateful not to have to work this case.”
“I would say that you’re most welcome, Fräulein, but I’m not pleased to catch such a case myself.” He was past the age where he sought the big cases that promised recognition and advancement.
“I understand,” Adler said. “I will fetch my case notes for you and place the call.”
“Danke.” Adler trudged away toward the officer interviewing the witnesses and Mueller knelt down again and pulled back the plastic sheet. Thus ends my holiday, I think, he told himself. Perhaps next year.
Flughafen Berlin-Tegel Airport
Tegel, Borough of Reinickendorf
Berlin, Germany
The Boeing 777 carrying Alden Maines arrived late, which chafed him but created no real inconvenience. Nothing short of incarceration would truly upset his schedule. That was a real possibility, though a small one and not enough to cause him any anxiety as he made his way through customs. If the Germans had known to detain him, they would have sent men onto the plane before allowing anyone off. His logic proved right and the customs officer hardly looked at his face as she processed his passport and waved him into the Federal Republic of Germany without a welcome.
A driver was waiting for him, holding a card with the cover name the Russians had assigned him. The car was more average than Maines thought he deserved, but he supposed that anything expensive would’ve drawn attention. The driver gave him a sealed envelope before leaving him at a boutique hotel near the St. Clement-Kirche Chapel and the Hebbel Theater. He opened the letter in the privacy of his room, and the cryptic instructions inside ordered him to dine at a local eatery before calling a contact number. The operator at the other end of that call sent him another mile northwest on foot to a pub in Tiergarten, giving him time to walk a surveillance detection route and buy the current copy of the Economist. He held the magazine in his left hand at the intersection of Stulerstrasse and Cornelius at 2:45 local time to signal another driver, who was punctual.
Maines would’ve preferred some time to shake off the jet lag before the meeting, but he knew that he wouldn’t have slept. The world was going his way. The Russians had sampled the product he was offering and liked it enough to pay him a nice sum and ask him to come here. They would want to control him, of course, but he was the one selling the secrets, so the advantage was his. The Russians would follow his lead or they would lose his services. It was his neck on the block, wasn’t it?
The driver made the final turn and Maines was surprised at the destination. He’d expected a safe house.
The Russian Embassy in Berlin was a great stone slab of Stalinist design, hollowed out in the center and surrounded by a low rock parapet and wrought-iron gates. The white walls and trees in the courtyard at the building’s front tried to persuade onlookers that the embassy wasn’t some granite pustule erupting out of Berlin’s underside, but the pilasters and parapets above advertised the building’s cold, austere spirit. The enormous complex violated German laws governing the height of buildings along the Unter den Linden highway, but East Germany had been in no position during construction to ask its Soviet masters to obey regulations.
The car passed through gates manned by Russian guards and pulled into an underground garage. The driver gestured for Maines to follow and the two worked their way through back hallways and little-used stairwells. He supposed that his sponsors didn’t want the staff to see an American expatriate walking the corridors, but the small office where the sentry finally delivered him was disappointing. After he’d made peace with being at the embassy, he’d assumed that the meeting would take place in one of the finely furnished conference rooms on the building’s top floor. Maines had owned a larger office at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, and the chairs in this one hardly qualified as comfortable, much less ornate. The light was harsh, the walls concrete, and the pipes in the ceiling exposed. It was hardly a place to fete a man who could provide the information he held.
They made him wait another hour, the driver standing at the door to make sure he didn’t wander, and his temper was at a full rolling boil when his patron finally approached.
“Spasibo.” Arkady Lavrov ignored the American in favor of the sentry. “Pozhaluysta zakroyte dver.” The escort nodded and closed the door as he’d been asked after Lavrov stepped inside. The Russian GRU director went to his seat on the other side of the small desk, then leaned back and studied the American sitting across from him. “Mr. Maines, it is a shame that you are here. Do you love your country?”
Maines’s brow furrowed and he stared at the Russian. “I . . . of course I do.” What idiocy was this?
“That is unfortunate.”
Maines drew his head back. “General, I’m here to help my country.” He’d told himself that enough to believe it. “Relations between us have suffered because my president is a moron. Our two nations will benefit from having someone like me who can explain to you what my leaders are thinking—”
“You have no access to President Rostow,” Lavrov observed.
“I’ve been with the CIA for twenty years. I know how the White House and the Agency operate.”
“No doubt. But I question whether you understand what this will cost you.”
Maines’s features twisted in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m concerned about your soul, Mr. Maines.” Lavrov leaned forward, clasped his hands, and rested his arms on the desk. “I truly wish you were a mercenary, just giving up your country for money. It would make the new arrangement that I will propose easier on you. I have seen more than a few men commit that treason, some for money, others for revenge or ego, a few for reasons of conscience. The ones who do it out of principle, like yourself, almost go mad from the shame and the homesickness, once they are discovered and have to live in exile. Even the ones who do it for less honorable reasons and are beyond feeling guilt simply never know another day without fear, another peaceful night. They wonder whether this won’t be the day that the knock comes at their door. The money or the vengeance or the excitement never can cure that. So I fear for you, Mr. Maines. If you truly are doing this for principle, then I wish that you had been faithful to your country.”
“I fingered a traitor to your country,” Maines protested. The anger was starting to rise in his chest now. He’d run this meeting through his mind over and over, and no imaginary version of it had ever followed this course. “I helped you neutralize a serious threat to your operations to prove my sincerity—”
“Yes, you did,” Lavrov said. “I almost wish you hadn’t. General Strelnikov had been my very good friend for a long time. It hurt me deeply to know that he had been unfaithful to us. You are correct that he was jeopardizing our work, but it saddened me all the same. He thought he was helping a country that he loved. It’s just unfortunate that he loved two countries and imagined that he could divide his loyalties. I know how he would have suffered for that through the years had you not told us what he had done.”
“ ‘Would have suffered’?” Maines asked.
“He was executed.”
“Huh,” Maines grunted in surprise. He should’ve expected that, wasn’t sure why he hadn’t, but it didn’t rankle him much. Men had been sacrificed before to prevent hostilities between nations, and the leaders who’d sacrificed them were hailed for it later. The masses sometimes needed a few years to realize the wisdom of the choice, but the historians were usually kind.
“He cannot hurt the Rodina anymore, for which I am glad, and now his conscience will not torture him, for which I am also glad. But you will come to regret what you have done, I think,” Lavrov said.
Maines fought the urge to roll his eyes at the man’s stupidity. The entire conversation had left him off balance. The casual way that Lavrov had denied him control of the discussion, deflecting every attempt to seize the initiative from the outset, was maddening. Get on with the business, he thought, but did not say. He pushed ahead. “General, if you don’t want my information, I’m sure there are others in your government who would appreciate what I have to offer,” he said. “But I don’t know why you would be stubborn about security or money. You already paid me fifty thousand dollars.”
“That will not be necessary,” Lavrov told him. “You are here and your information will be useful. So I am prepared to hear what you have to tell me. As for money, you will receive none.”
Maines frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“After your flight to Berlin had left America’s airspace, I had one of our people in Washington inform your FBI that you were defecting to the Russian Federation.”
“You . . . what? I don’t—”
“Like Cortés in Mexico, I burned your ship after you landed in the New World, as it were.” Lavrov reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a sheet, and slid it across to the American. “You will not be going home, Mr. Maines.”
Maines looked at the sheet and started to rock back in surprise before he caught himself. He stared at the paper, a copy of an Interpol Blue Notice with his photograph . . . the one from his Agency badge, in fact.
Maines, Alden
WANTED BY THE JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR PROSECUTION
IDENTITY PARTICULARS
Present family name:
Maines
Forename:
Alden
Sex:
Male
Date of birth:
10/09/1980 (39 years old)
Place of birth:
Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Language(s) spoken:
English, Russian, Spanish
Nationality:
American (USA)
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Height:
1.8 meter
Weight:
77 Kg
Colour of hair:
Brown
Colour of eyes:
Green
CHARGES Published as provided by requesting entity
Charges:
Treason, corruption
IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT
Your national or local police
General Secretariat of INTERPOL
Lavrov smiled. “You will tell me what I need to know, and once that is done, I will take you to Moscow and see to it that you get a permit for work and residency. I will also help you secure an apartment. That should be enough for you to start building a life.”
Maines’s face twisted in disbelief at the words. “What I know is worth millions of dollars, tens of millions, and I’m only asking for a fraction of that.”
“Mr. Maines, please.” Lavrov shook his head in pity. “I am surprised that someone who has lived in the United States so long should have such a poor understanding of capitalism.” He paused, then leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. Each empty second stretched out in the air. Finally he spoke. “Intelligence secrets are strange things. We collect them at great cost, and they are valuable not because they tell us what to do, but because they tell us what not to do. They prevent mistakes of judgment and save us the costs of wrong guesses. And yet, once such a secret is revealed, it loses all its power. The enemy realizes that we know his secret and changes his behavior. He shuts off the means by which we stole his secrets. We lose the power of the secret itself and some of our ability to gather more through the same means. So the cost of collecting our enemy’s secrets goes up.”
Lavrov leaned forward again, his features hardening. “One does not pay a mole to reveal his country’s secrets. One pays a mole for his access, which is much more valuable. Time destroys the value of any information he gives up, no matter how important. Secrets are just another perishable commodity and a mole is the broker. We pay a broker not for his product, but for his ability to provide that product.” Lavrov leaned back, gathered his thoughts again, then smiled. “Now you have no access and you are a wanted man. So you need my protection and the only currency you have to barter for it is the information you have in your head. And without the ability to acquire more, what you have devalues as we speak. Your value to me diminishes by the hour. So, cooperate now and we will grant you residency with no extradition. From time to time, we will use you to embarrass your government and highlight its hypocrisy, and you will smile and cooperate with our networks and newspapers to do it.”
Maines ground his teeth together, his face flushing red. “I’ll take my information to someone else.”
“A poor threat,” Lavrov advised. “If you will not share your information with us, then your only value to me will lie entirely in the goodwill I will earn from the Germans and the Americans when I walk you out the front door where the German federal police will be waiting.”
Maines’s head was throbbing now. His desire to murder Lavrov right here, smash his brains out against the table, almost overcame his own desire for self-preservation. The driver was still outside the door, and he was probably Spetsnaz, more than a match for a mildly obese CIA officer just past his prime. But this was all beyond his control . . . not how this meeting was supposed to have gone. He couldn’t even walk out of the embassy now. “So why not just toss me in a cell?”
“You’re not a prisoner,” Lavrov told him. “You are just not in a position of leverage.”
“So that guard outside the door is just a free concierge service you offer all of your clients?” Maines asked. He suspected the sarcasm would be lost on the Russian.
“Not at all,” Lavrov said. “He will make sure you do not roam the embassy. You were a CIA officer, and there is always the possibility that you are not a true defector. We don’t want you to steal any more of our secrets than you already have.” The Russian pushed away from the table and smiled. “I do enjoy honesty. Do you not, Mr. Maines? We get so few opportunities to indulge in it. It is a rare delicacy for men of our occupation.”
“I don’t think you want me to indulge in honesty much right now,” Maines warned him.
“So long as you are truthful when you give us the names, the rest I will forgive,” Lavrov replied. “But it is not in your interest for any negotiation to drag on. Time is no friend of yours now. I suggest you make your decision within the next day or so.”
Lavrov stepped outside into the hall and closed the door behind him. Maines heard his footsteps shuffle away from the small room and was left to listen to the buzz of the harsh lights and his own thoughts.
