by Steve Berry
* * *
Stephanie had never been fired before. There’d been many threats throughout her government career from both attorneys general and presidents, but none had ever manifested itself into an actual dismissal.
Until today.
Bruce Litchfield had obviously received the blessing of the incoming administration to do as he pleased. No way he would have been so bold without that okay. She could hear the new AG designate as he dismissed Danny Daniels as a man who, in only a matter of hours, would no longer matter. That was a big mistake. She’d learned that Danny would always matter, regardless of his political status. He believed in what he did and stood behind those beliefs—and politics be damned. He was a man she respected and admired and the new administration could take lessons from him.
She filled a doorway about a hundred feet from Luke Daniels’ apartment building, the wind whooshing by in chilly gusts. The four-story, redbrick building stood surrounded by a brown landscaped lawn and tall trees bare to winter. It sat off a busy boulevard in northwest DC, and no one had paid a visit during the past fifteen minutes. Except one car. A black Cadillac sedan. From which Nikolai Osin and two other men had emerged.
Luke had just called and she’d told him that he was to cut Anya Petrova loose and let Osin take her. She knew that Osin would play his part to perfection, which was why she’d made a call to him just after leaving Anderson House, explaining exactly what she had in mind. Her cagey colleague had complimented her on the plan and said he would head directly for the apartment and lay claim to their problem.
Anya appeared in the front door of the building, flanked on either side by two men in dark overcoats. Osin followed them into the early-afternoon sun. She watched as the entourage headed for the Cadillac, then drove away, disappearing down the short drive, past a tall hedge. She imagined Anya Petrova to be, at best, confused.
Luke stepped from the building.
She fled her shady hiding place and found the sun.
Luke walked across the front parking lot with the bouncy gait of an athlete and said to her, “You just let that happen?”
“I made it happen.”
“Care to explain? ’Cause it took a lot to corral that woman.”
“Fritz Strobl told me something interesting. Brad Charon was once the society’s Keeper of Secrets.”
She recounted what she’d learned.
“We created the post long ago,” Strobl said. “It was formally abolished in the mid-20th century, or at least that’s what I thought. About ten years ago I discovered the position still existed as part of the historian’s duties.”
“What does this have to do with the woman we have?”
“She knew Mr. Charon had held the Keeper position. Only a handful of individuals, high in the society’s leadership, would know that. Even I didn’t. Yet she did.”
Which raised a whole new set of questions, the most critical of which was, “Why is any of this important?”
“She wanted to know the current historian, and threatened to kill me if I did not tell her.”
“Strobl told her the man’s name and where to find him,” she told Luke. “He lives in Maryland, outside Annapolis.”
“And did dear ol’ Fritz mention why Petrova was so damn interested in the society’s long-lost secrets?”
“He told me he honestly doesn’t know. And I believe him.”
He pointed a finger at her. “I smell it. You have a plan, don’t you?”
“I do, but I have to warn you first. An hour ago, the acting AG fired me. I no longer have a job, so whatever we do from this point on is without sanction.”
Luke smiled. “Just the way I like it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Zorin decided on some rest before he began the serious task of planning what would happen once he made it to Canada. Fatigue melted through his bones, seeping into muscles. He wasn’t a young man anymore. Luckily, he had several hours of quiet time to rejuvenate.
Strangely, he’d been thinking of his mother. Odd considering she’d been dead such a long time. She’d worked her whole life as a farmer, and he could still see her kneeling in the rich black soil, the sun hot on her back, working the rows of cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes that sometimes swayed and rippled in the wind like waves of water. Models of tidiness and efficiency, was how Moscow described them. His mother simply called them her own. He’d loved the fields, the air there never thick with soot, coal, chemicals, or exhaust. Perhaps that was another reason he’d fled east to Siberia, where the same smell of cleanliness could still be found.
His mother had been a kind, gentle, naïve woman who never considered herself a Soviet. She was Russian. But she was smart enough never to be a troublemaker or instigator, keeping opinions to herself and living a long life, dying simply of old age. As a boy he’d gone with her to church because he’d liked the singing. He’d realized then that he was an atheist, a fact his mother never knew. Which was good, since God had occupied a large part of her life. Persistent, careful, hardworking, and loyal, that had been his mother.
And her humming.
That he’d enjoyed.
One of her tunes had stayed in his mind. A song from her childhood, the words of which she’d taught her sons.
A hare went out for a walk.
Suddenly a hunter appeared
And shot the hare.
Bang, bang, oh, oh, oh,
My hare is going to die.
He was brought home
And he turned out to be alive.
He’d loved that rhyme, and like the hare he, too, had gone out for a walk, one that had lasted for more than twenty-five years. He’d been figuratively shot and left for dead. But like the hare, he, too, was coming back alive.
He’d often wondered how he ended up such a violent man. Certainly not because of his mother. And his father, though once a soldier, ultimately proved weak and dependent, lacking in courage.
Yet violence was no stranger.
He’d killed and harbored no remorse. He’d ordered the death of the American back at the dacha without a moment’s hesitation. If he ever possessed a conscience, all semblances of it were gone.
Like his brothers.
Who married, had children, and died young.
And his own wife and son.
Dead, too.
Nothing remained for him save for Anya. But there was no love between them. More companionship that they both seemed to need. How was she doing in America? Perhaps he would find out soon.
He’d eaten one of the meals the charter company provided, pleased the food had been filling. The jet was surely now way beyond Russian airspace, headed on a westerly route over the Central Asian Federation, then on toward Europe and the open Atlantic. He was pleased to be at work again, his mind focused on the invisible front and the main adversary. He’d been a good warrior, fighting for the motherland, protecting the Soviet Union. Never had he breached his oath. Never had he placed himself before his country. Never had he made stupid mistakes.
Unlike his superiors.
Who refused to see what lay clearly before them.
He recalled his first encounter with the truth.
A winter’s day in January 1989.
“Comrade Zorin, this is the man I told you about.”
He studied the stranger, who oddly tried to disguise his height with a slight stoop. The thick line of a black mustache colored the space beneath a bulbous fiery-hued nose. Usually he didn’t meet face-to-face with recruited sources. That was his subordinates’ job. His was to evaluate and report what they gathered to Moscow. But what this source had said intrigued him to the point that he had to judge the credibility of the information for himself.
“My name is—”
He raised a hand to halt the introduction and caught a slight tightening of worry around the other man’s lips. “Names are not important. Only what you are about to say matters.”
His operative had tagged the man “Aladdin,” a nondescript way
to distinguish him from the countless other sources they’d cultivated across Canada and the United States. Aladdin worked for a defense subcontractor headquartered in California. He’d traveled north to Quebec City, supposedly on holiday to enjoy the winter carnival, but the real purpose had been this meeting.
They sat within a suite inside the Frontenac hotel, high above an ice-clogged St. Lawrence River. Aladdin had booked and paid for the room himself. Zorin’s people had spent two days assuring themselves that the man had come alone, and the room had just been electronically swept for any listening devices. Zorin was taking a chance on this gathering, but he’d decided the risk was worth it.
“I am told,” he said, “that you have information regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative.”
“Which I’ve passed on, and you’ve paid me.”
“I want to hear the information, again, myself.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe you. I simply want to hear it again.”
Aladdin seemed perturbed, as he’d not been told why it had been necessary for him to come to Quebec. He’d first been cultivated at a Canadian university, a physicist who specialized in advanced laser research. His work had caught the eye of the Americans, who recruited him. But Zorin had kept the lines of communication open, harvesting more intelligence, paying Aladdin several thousand dollars for his continued efforts. Two weeks ago Aladdin had passed on something extraordinary.
“As I told your man here, SDI is an illusion.”
The Strategic Defense Initiative had been announced by Reagan six years ago. The American president had told the world that he intended to build a shield that could repel nuclear missiles, destroying them in flight, thereby rendering their effectiveness to nothing. “The solution is well within our grasp,” he’d declared. Ever since, billions had been spent on research and development, part of which involved Aladdin. Zorin’s and every other KGB officer’s primary objective was to secure as much intelligence on SDI as could be gathered. No issue was more important to Moscow.
“And why do you believe such a thing?” he asked.
“I’ve been in meetings. I’ve heard discussions. The technology simply does not exist to make it happen. We’re decades away from being able even to try shooting a missile down. It’s been studied to death. It can’t be done. The American taxpayer has no idea how much money is being wasted.”
Moscow feared SDI so much that its abolition had formed the cornerstone of all recent nuclear weapons talks with the United States. Any reduction in offensive weapons must include the end of strategic defensive weapons, too. Of course, America had balked at such a condition, which explained why armament talks had been stalled for the past several years. Now to hear that the whole thing was a fraud?
But he wondered. Was that truly the case or was this source the fraud?
“We’re developing,” Aladdin said, “missile interceptors, X-ray lasers, particle beams, chemical lasers, high-velocity cannons, improved tracking and surveillance systems. Ever heard of brilliant pebbles?”
He listened as Aladdin told him about a satellite interceptor that consisted of high-velocity, watermelon-sized tungsten projectiles that acted as kinetic warheads, capable of destroying a satellite or missile.
“It all sounds amazing,” Aladdin said. “And it would be if it worked. But it’s just hype. These systems exist only on paper. There’s no solid, workable technology that could make them practical in the real world.”
“Tell me about the Defense Department,” he said.
This was the most shocking revelation his officer had reported, the main thing he’d come to hear.
“They know it’s all a ruse, but they want us to keep going, and they keep pouring billions of dollars into it. Don’t you see? Our job is only to convince the public that it’s real.”
“Reagan himself said that the task would be formidable, that it may not be achieved until the end of the century.”
“There’s a big difference between saying something is tough and will take time, and something that’s completely non-achievable. SDI is just that. It can’t be done, or more correctly it can’t be done anytime in the foreseeable future. And Washington knows that. The whole program will never amount to anything, except fattening the pockets of the defense contractors who are getting paid to develop what’s not possible.”
Sources were ranked by reliability.
“Extremely well placed” meant access to exactly what he or she was talking about. “Unproven” denoted either a rookie or information that had yet to be verified. “Unconfirmed” was always suspect, but once a source established a track record, confirmed or not, they became “reliable.”
Turning targets had been his specialty, the rules of the game common sense. He or she had to first be worth the effort and have access to desirable information. If so, contact was made—usually informal and coincidental—then a friendship cultivated. The danger of a dangle, though, loomed great. Another operative merely pretending to be receptive to spying. Which was exactly what he’d first thought Aladdin to be. That happened a lot, and it was suicide for any KGB career. Ultimately, if targets passed an extensive background check and at least seven personal encounters seemed genuine, then they were assigned a code name and brought operational.
Aladdin had passed each test, becoming “highly reliable.”
Everyday field officers had to contend with their natural suspicions and the consequences that might come from believing what they were being told. He had been fed something that, at best, could be fantastical and at worst a lie.
But he’d reported the information.
Only to be chastised by his superiors.
Moscow viewed the SDI program as a move by the United States to neutralize the Soviet military and seize the initiative in arms controls. To the Kremlin, space-based missile defenses made offensive nuclear war inevitable. So their response was never in doubt. A similar Soviet initiative had to be undertaken and it was the KGB’s job to shorten that development process through espionage. Yet instead of providing any useful information, Zorin had reported that the whole thing may be a fraud. Most times information from even “highly reliable” sources was trivial. Seldom did anything compromise a nation. But every once in a while luck would fall their way.
He stirred in the jet’s leather seat and recalled the official response to his report on Aladdin.
Forget such nonsense and get back to work.
Yet history had proved him right.
No missile defense system has ever existed anywhere in the world.
The USSR eventually spent billions of rubles trying to create one, thinking all the while that America was actively doing the same. True, billions of U.S. dollars were also spent, just as Aladdin had said, but it had all been a ruse that Ronald Reagan himself masterminded. A way for his enemies to do themselves in. Which worked. The Soviet economy imploded from hyperinflation, fueling a total communist collapse.
His gut churned every time he thought of how it all could have been avoided. If only Moscow had listened when he, and other KGB officers, reported what they were each learning, independent of the others. Yet ignorance seemed the greatness weakness of conformity. A select few made all the decisions, and everyone else followed, regardless that those decisions could be wrong.
He closed his eyes and allowed sleep to take hold.
No longer did the Red Army march in a gorgeous phalanx, stepping high, gleaming boots springing from the cobbles of Red Square, arms slapped flat across their chests as heads angled to the top of Lenin’s mausoleum.
Where fools had stood.
Those days were gone, too.
Now here he was, decades later. Alone. But not impotent. He had the blood and strength of a peasant with the resolve of a communist, and, thankfully, his body had not been fatally damaged by alcohol, cigarettes, or reckless living.
Another childhood rhyme came to him.
Hush you mice, a c
at is near us.
He can see us, he can hear us.
What if he is on a diet?
Even then you should be quiet.
Excellent advice.
Decades of reflection had taught him that the entire Soviet system had run on institutionalized mistrust, the military and civilian intelligence services never close. The idea had been to keep both from becoming either complacent or too powerful, but the real effect had been to render them ineffectual. Neither listened to or cared what the other thought. Both had been masters at gathering information, neither one of them good at analyzing it. So when the obvious was placed before them—that they were engaged in a bitter and desperate race that America had manufactured—both had rejected the conclusion and stayed the course to their collective end.
He would not be that stupid.
This was his war.
To be fought on his terms.
A quick shock of nervousness coursed through him. Not unusual. Every field officer knew fear. The good ones learned how to tame it.
The main adversary, the United States of America, had taken his past, his reputation, credibility, achievements, even his probity, rank, and honor.
But not his life.
And though his brain stayed racked with alternating bouts of optimism and doubt, eased occasionally by conviction but nearly always flagged with guilt, this time—
There would be no mistakes.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Luke drove the Ford Escape that, as Stephanie told him, belonged to Fritz Strobl. How she managed to acquire a loaner from a total stranger he could only imagine. They were headed east, out of DC, on U.S. 301 toward Annapolis.
“You heard earlier about missing nukes,” she said to him from the passenger seat. “The Russians think five are still out there. Suitcase size.”
“Like on 24?”
“I know. It sounds fantastic. But I think Osin is being straight with us. We’ve always thought the Soviets developed compact nuclear weapons. Each bomb was, maybe, six kilotons. But nothing could ever be verified. Of course, we developed the same.”
“And we still have these?”
