Moscow Sting (14 page)

Anna wondered how much more out-of-the-way it could get than this dismal collection of mud houses at ten thousand feet.

The truck moved into the quiet, impoverished village and pulled up at a general store. They all climbed out and stood in the damp earth street, feeling the icy air coming down from the mountains ahead. There were just adobe buildings, she now saw, their mud walls in various states of decay. The rooftops were made of corrugated iron, rusted and torn.

Apart from the crosses everywhere, it could have been a village in the foothills of the Caucasus—Chechnya or Dagestan, Anna thought. But this was America.

“Founded in 1754,” Burt said. “By the Spanish king. They came up that way”—he pointed south—“from Mexico. They first arrived in 1583, settled here, then got driven out by the Indians. Then they came back and stayed.” He took her arm. “Let me show you something.”

Anna took Little Finn’s hand as they crossed the dirt road, and they followed Burt into what looked like an unkempt field. But when they were inside it, she saw it was an untended graveyard. Burt pointed at the second gravestone they came to. “Kilt by Indians,” it read.

Anna shivered in the cold after the warmth of the car. Burt had promised her somewhere remote—that was all he’d said about their destination—but this was not the America she’d imagined.

Burt read her thoughts.

“Not what you expected huh?’

“No.”

“It’s like Siberia out here,” he said. “It certainly has about as much respect for Washington as Siberia does for Moscow. The Hispanics have been arguing—sometimes fighting—for a hundred years to have their land back. They don’t even speak English up here, many of them.”

Anna wondered how much she was in this empty hole on the map for her protection and how much to encourage her to comply with greater alacrity.

“You won’t be here long,” he said, as if reading her thoughts again. “It all depends on how we judge your safety. And Little Finn’s,” he added. “And how other things come into play,” he said vaguely. “We’ll see.”

Burt bought Little Finn a candy bar at the general store, which seemed, also like the remoter parts of Russia, to sell just a few oddments, whatever was available at the lowest end of the demand chain. Most of the shelves were empty; there were a few lightbulbs, their boxes dusty, a few boxes of screws, a chain saw, some jam. . . . Always tins of jam wherever you went, she thought. If there was nothing else, there were tins of jam. It was the same in Russia.

She wondered if Burt had brought them here deliberately, into this store. There was nothing here, except the message that there was nothing here.

And the place they were going to was thirty miles beyond the road’s end, farther into the mountains from the village. True wilderness, Burt had said, as if he’d been a travel agent selling a high-end Outward Bound experience to wealthy metropolitan adventurers.

“In winter there’s no way out of where we’re going,” he’d said. “Except by chopper.”

They climbed back into the truck. Little Finn was silent. They drove out through the village, past a few homes with metal arches with names inscribed in wrought iron. The dirt road got rougher, almost impassable even without snow. They crossed a riverbed, and beyond that the track was hardly visible. They were now driving over rock.

“It’s just a few more miles,” Burt said after nearly an hour. “Deep in the forest. Few people even know of its existence. All this land is part of the land grant of the Spanish king back when. It’s called Nuestra Senora del Rosario San Fernando y Santiago Land Grant.” He guffawed. “They sure liked a long name. I’m the only Anglo who got to buy land up here. The others got their houses burned down.” He chuckled at his own smartness. “It takes time, and luck, to be able to get a foot in up here. But they know me. I give to the church, fix the roof, buy their cattle in the winter, arrange their medical insurance. We’ve got a good relationship.”

The road improved as they went deeper into the forest. Anna guessed that they kept it almost impassable at the beginning where it left the village, in order to dissuade the curious.

Finally, after a slow, bumpy thirty miles beyond the hill where the village stood, the truck came into a clearing about a quarter of a mile in diameter. There was a meadow with a stream running through it. Some horses grazed behind wooden fencing. The place was as still and silent as anywhere Anna had ever been. But she saw that, in springtime, this would be a good approximation of paradise.

Little Finn saw the horses first, and then the chickens that roamed around the field. Then, wide-eyed with excitement, he saw some goats and a pair of llamas. He tugged Anna’s arm to go closer as they stepped out of the truck.

At the top of the meadow was a large log house.

“About as safe a safe house as you’ll ever see,” Burt said. “Welcome to your new home.” He beamed happily.

Chapter 15

I
T WAS SIX O’CLOCK
in the evening and Anna was putting Little Finn to bed when Burt, alone in the study of the log house, put the tape Adrian had given him into a machine for the second time.

Adrian had suddenly been supremely confident, he recalled. He’d clearly been waiting to spring this news on him from the moment they’d met in New York five days before.

Burt settled into a large leather armchair. There was a fire blazing in a grate in the corner of the room. But before pressing play, he went back over the background for what was on the tape, looking for inconsistencies. Adrian had given him the context of the information it contained, but he wanted to be sure.

“Picture this, Burt,” Adrian had begun. “A man walks into our embassy in Kyrgyzstan three months ago. August sixteenth, to be exact. He’s looking for a relative of his who’s gone missing on a trip to western Europe. He wants our help.”

“You’re going to tell me who he is, presumably?” Burt asked.

“He’s from the Federal Security Service Reserve, Burt, KGB to the core. This relative of his was on an assignment in Germany.”

“For the KGB?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn’t he go to his own people?” Burt queried. “Or the German embassy, come to that?”

“First of all he couldn’t go to the Germans because this relative was doing something clandestine there, that’s why. He knew he’d get no help from the Krauts in the circumstances.”

“And his own people?”

“That’s the juice,” Adrian said. “He believes his relative, who is a brother, by the way, has been killed. But he’s sure it’s not by the Germans or any of our intelligence services. What he tells us is that it’s his own side he believes has killed his brother. The Russians, he says, killed their own agent. He wants to find out if this is true, and either way, he wants to find out where his brother has got to. If he’s still alive, even.”

“Some risk he took,” Burt replied.

“Oh, yes. A great risk. But he’s angry. He’s from one of the southern republics, and this is the last straw for him. Years of racism, years of Russian arrogance, years of Russia and the Russians walking all over his country, wrecking his women and his people and his land. That’s how he sees it.”

“Where’s he working?”

“The Defence Ministry in Moscow.”

“Very good,” Burt said. “Very interesting. So what do you do to help him?” Burt raises an eyebrow in ironic deference to Adrian’s great healing powers.

“We keep him talking until we’ve run a check on him. We find he’s definitely a middle-ranking figure in the Defence Ministry in Moscow. So far, so good. And then we think, Why not? We drug him and hold him for eight hours until he tells us some very interesting things. Some of which are on that tape.”

“Then you let him go?”

“Yes. We hold him for as long as we dare. We don’t want anyone alerted that he’s missing.”

“And then you help find his brother.” Burt guffawed at this unlikely scenario. It was a sound that was probably louder than the library at the Union Club had heard for several decades.

“We make enquiries, yes. But what we do in the main is contact him again and tell him how much he’s compromised himself. We have him nailed. All on tape, photographed inside our embassy, full of stuff the Russians will recognise. We tell him we need more of his help. Then we’ll see what happened to his brother.

“But we also tell him that if he doesn’t help us, not only will his brother be gone forever, so will he. Once we hand over the material to the Defence Ministry, or the KGB, he’s done for.”

“What made you think he was worth it?”

“As I say, he’s a middle-ranking figure, but during the few hours we held him we could tell he had access. Initially we thought we’d get some good insight into the regular running of the ministry, if nothing else. You know the kind of thing—what its current general aims are, who are the key figures with influence there, who is closest to the Kremlin. That sort of thing. Humdrum stuff, but all adding up to a bigger picture.”

“But you got more than you bargained for.”

“There was one thing he told us when he was drugged that made me think he might have more use than that.”

“And it’s about us.”

“About America, yes. When he was drugged, he spoke in various tones of voice, various degrees of volume, he either sat completely still or thrashed about—you know how it is. There was one theme that he referred to twice. On both occasions, he almost shouted about it, waved his arms. It’s a theme that concerns you very much, Burt. Defence secrets. American defence secrets. He said the KGB has an agent here in America, who communicates via a Russian official at the United Nations in New York. Someone who’s employed inside one of your own defence establishments.”

Adrian had sat back in his chair, and Burt saw a feeling of satisfaction wash over him.

“Or so this guy says,” Burt replied. “Which one? Which defence establishment?”

“That’s something we’re still working on,” Adrian purred, with the clear intention of implying he knew. “We think he doesn’t know,” he added disingenuously.

“Or you’re holding out on me, Adrian.”

“Not at all,” Adrian said primly. But he hadn’t finished yet.

“We’ve kept in contact with him, of course. Let’s call him Rustam. First we held drops to communicate with him and pick up his material at Sokolniki, the Moscow metro station. Then we moved the drop to Sokolniki, the town, in Tula Oblast. After that, we kept to the theme, first time a metro station, then the town or place from which it gets its name. He’s being very compliant. In fact, he’s fucking terrified.”

“You’ve turned him. Well done, Adrian.”

Adrian soaked up the compliment, but his face was still hard, Burt saw.

“What about the brother?” Burt said at last. “Did you go after him?”

“We did.”

“And what did you find?”

“It was very difficult. We wanted to do it without alerting the Germans. But we found him all right.”

Adrian was not going to volunteer any further information. It was Burt’s turn to insist now. Adrian had done enough special pleading for a lifetime.

“Well?” Burt prompted.

“He’d been murdered. Poisoned in Hamburg. The police didn’t have any identity for him. We told them he was one of ours. They’d had him on ice in some super-closed-down facility for a month, against the possible spread of contamination. One of those places built since 9/11. It was a job to retrieve him, but we did, even though I don’t think the Krauts believed us. But what could they do? They had nothing on him.

“Then we showed a picture of him to Rustam. Jackpot. It was his brother, just as we thought. The poison was identified as polonium-210. Same stuff they’ve used in western Europe before—the Russians, that is. So it looked pretty clear-cut that the Russians had murdered one of their own, an agent who was the brother of a KGB reservist and decent figure in the Defence Ministry who’d just been waiting for one more grudge to blow him over the edge. Now, Rustam is almost happy that we drugged him and got all his lovely secrets. He’s going to be most helpful in finding this agent in America.”

Burt sat without speaking. Eventually he looked up and fixed Adrian with a friendly stare.

“Why bring this to me? Why not go straight to Langley? You’re the boss in London, you could talk to the head of the CIA here, direct.”

“This is your operation, Burt.”

“You mean Anna.”

“Yes, the woman,” Adrian said, and sat back.

“So,” Burt said. “This is your way through to meeting with her.”

“That’s right.” Adrian allowed himself to feel the warm glow of victory. “I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get that favour from you personally. If I go to Langley, there’ll be all kinds of fingerprints over it. I don’t want to foul your operation,” he said with deliberate insincerity. “What I want—what we both want, Burt—is Mikhail. If I tell Langley I want to speak to the woman, they’re going to trample all over your carefully laid plans for debriefing her. I don’t want to damage your operation, Burt. I just want time with her. Deal?”

Although Burt saw this was an expert piece of blackmail, he didn’t show it. But Adrian’s threat hung over him in the library. If Burt didn’t give him what he wanted, he’d go to Langley, and they would give him what he wanted. Which would mean, in turn, that Burt would lose control of Anna in the melee that was bound to happen.

“You’ve got me,” Burt said. Then he grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned, Adrian. You sat on this the whole damn evening.”

“And you get to take this to Langley yourself,” Adrian chimed in, pointing at the tape. “A feather in all our caps. But only once I’ve seen her.”

“Okay . . . okay, then,” Burt said slowly. “What gets me, though, is why you’re so goddam keen to speak with her.”

Adrian contemplated the benefits of openness or concealment, and decided on the former.

“I have some unfinished business,” he said. “Finn’s killer. We know who he is now. But my orders”—he said the word as if it were choking him—“were to get to the woman first. Without getting to her, I’ve been told, we can’t terminate Finn’s killer. This will put pressure on them back in London to concede. They’ve been pussyfooting over this for long enough, and there’ll be no more excuses they can come up with.”

Adrian fixed Burt in the eye. He knew now he was on a winning streak.

“So,” he said. “You tell Langley that you’ve given me full access to her. I’ll inform my political masters, and I’m sure it will filter through to London from Langley anyhow. Then I’ll have what I want. I can wash my hands of Finn, we’ll have done the right thing. Honour is done and seen to be done.”

He drained his glass in a final punctuation of his triumph.

“In the meantime,” he summed up, “you need Mikhail more than ever. You have a Russian agent in one of your top defence establishments, Burt. So we don’t just have to find Mikhail for all the former reasons. We have to find him to know who this Russian agent is.”

“Working together,” Burt said.

“That’s right.” Adrian smiled thinly. “Working together.”

Burt turned towards the window of his study at the log house. It was dark outside, but in the porch lights he saw it had started to snow.

Adrian had given him a week with Anna, that was all. Otherwise the threat to go straight to Langley, to disrupt Burt’s debriefing of Anna, would become a reality. Adrian wanted in. It upset all of Burt’s carefully laid plans for her far longer debriefing. Things were going to have to move a lot faster than he’d expected. Never mind. It was what was happening.

Burt switched on the tape. First he listened to Rustam talking in the drugged state, at the beginning. Then he picked up the transcripts of Rustam’s later information, the further intelligence about this agent the Russians had in place in America.

Burt both did and didn’t want to believe it. For one, it would be a huge coup for him to take this to Langley; a huge badge of honour for Cougar, and an increase in procurement budgets. But it was also information that Adrian held over him, to get access to Anna. And he didn’t like that.