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“Yes. As you know from personal experience, the statement ‘War is hell’ isn’t just a colorful expression. After the operation, I led my partisan band back into Allied territory without incident, but the team’s good fortune didn’t last. My aide-de-camp was a sixteen-year-old French boy named Andre. He spoke German like a native and continued to poke around in the Soviet sector on behalf of Allied intelligence even though I admonished him not to do so. Petrov eventually caught and killed him, but not before torturing Andre long enough to learn about my role in Nikolai’s death.”
“War is hell,” Irene said.
“Indeed. Even the so-called cold ones. Perhaps now you better understand Petrov’s animosity.”
As always, Stansfield had a gift for understatement. Irene knew thehatred she felt for the Islamic terrorists who’d murdered her father along with sixty-two-odd people in April 1983 when a suicide bomber detonated a van full of explosives outside the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and she hadn’t watched him die. “I can see why Petrov might hate you, but I still don’t understand his timing. If he is settling a vendetta, why now?”
“That is an excellent question for which I don’t have an answer,” Stansfield said. “Fortunately, there’s a new chief of Moscow Station, and I’ve heard she’s extremely capable. Now, unless you have anything else, I’m going to catch a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow has the makings of another long day.”
“Nothing else, sir. I’m on it.”
“I know you are, Irene.”
Stansfield ended the call.
Irene leaned back in her chair, alone with her thoughts at last.
What had seemed manageable moments before her call with Stansfield now felt different. Moscow Station was in crisis, Europe might be on the brink of war, a lieutenant general in the Russian counterintelligence service was hell-bent on settling a forty-year-old vendetta, and once again blood was flowing down a European ally’s streets. Blood that implicated her assassin. Irene eyed the yellow submarine’s unassuming, foam-covered walls imagining some of the conversations that must have occurred in this sacred space.
Here was where agency officers had tried to determine whether Nikita Khrushchev was bluffing about Cuba or ready to lead the world into nuclear war. Here was where her predecessors had simultaneously missed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and brainstormed how to aid a brave Polish cardinal who’d been elevated to pontiff. This room had been the scene of gratifying victories and stinging defeats, but that was the way of the intelligence business. Irene wasn’t so much cowed by the enormity of her task as distressed by what little she could bring to the battlefield. She didn’t have her usual allies like Dr. Thomas Lewis, Stan Hurley, or even Mitch Rapp. No doubt word of her predecessor’s unceremonious recall back to Langley had already spread through the station’s personnel. Somemight welcome his departure, but on the balance, human beings prized stability, and of that Moscow Station had seen precious little. Were she a betting woman, Irene would place odds on her welcome as the new acting chief being a bit muted, to say the least.
She was alone.
“Miss Kennedy?”
Irene turned to see the woman Duane had so rudely dismissed standing hesitantly in the door. What was her name? Something unusual and perhaps a bit whimsical. Elise? Eloise? Elysia—that was it.
“It’s just Irene, Elysia. Please, come in.”
The young woman’s answering smile warmed the room.
Perhaps Irene wasn’t without allies after all. Maybe she would be able to take a beat to figure things out before embarking on a one-woman crusade to right the listing ship that was Moscow Station.
“Sorry to interrupt, Irene, but I thought you should see this.”
Elysia extended a folded piece of stationery that Irene reflexively took. Unfolding the paper, she found a message typed in English.
I am a ranking staff officer in the Russian intelligence service. I have vital information for Moscow’s chief of station that could help avert a war in Latvia. I will only provide this information face-to-face. Acknowledge receipt and intention to proceed by leaving the light in the chief of station’s office on your embassy’s fifth floor illuminated all night. If you signal your intention to proceed, I will leave further instructions and proof of my bona fides on the following day in the same manner I provided the note.
Beneath the paragraph were two handwritten words.
Please hurry.
So much for taking a beat.
CHAPTER 41
IRENEread through the message twice more to ensure there wasn’t some nuance to the phrasing she’d missed. Then she turned her attention to the handwritten words.
Please hurry.
“How was this delivered?” Irene said.
“Do you know the gas station a block away?”
Irene shook her head.
“I guess if you’ve never been to Moscow there’s no reason why you should. It’s reserved for foreign diplomats. The DSS folks refuel our vehicle fleet at that station exclusively. Anyway, two days ago, someone slipped this message into the open window of one of our diplomatically tagged SUVs.”
