The Fall of Moscow Station (3 page)

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.”