Was it three days? A week? She couldn't even be sure precisely when it occurred. Couldn't pinpoint a moment. She only knew that it had happened during her ill-fated trip to the United States.
For a time in the last great days of the Cold War, Anna Chutesov had been one of the Soviet Union's top agents and adviser to a succession of Soviet leaders. Though professionally she had always been at the top of her game, she retired from active field duty under a very personal cloud. On her last mission some thirteen years ago, Anna faked her own death and went underground. After her return from the West, she assumed a top-secret post back in Moscow. She became head of the mysterious Institute.
And there she worked in darkness, squirreled away from the prying eyes of a world that thought her dead. But her years in seclusion didn't last. Despite her plans, circumstances forced her back into the field.
She recently journeyed to America to eliminate a former Russian general whose crazed actions threatened to expose one of the most dangerous and shameful secrets in her country's recent history. The mission was fraught with peril, and eventually brought Anna face-to-face with the very thing that had caused her to flee her former life.
While in California to track down General Boris Feyodov, Anna bumped into Remo Williams, an American agent with whom she had once had an intimate relationship.
Anna had always harbored a fear of seeing Remo after all these years. She assumed he would be unforgiving of, even hostile to, her deception. But to her surprise he was remarkably accepting. Especially given the fact that it was because of him she had feigned death so long ago.
Anna soon came to realize that Remo had changed in their years apart. It was a subtle thing that he himself probably didn't see, but he had a self-confidence that was absent before. He'd always been cocky. Aggravatingly so. But now he had the self-assuredness to back it up.
No, in her mission to stop Boris Feyodov, the worst thing wasn't seeing Remo again. The most terrible, frightening thing happened thousands of miles away-here, in Moscow. In the big concrete Institute building.
Upon her return, Anna found the building open wide. The chains that wrapped the main gates, which were meant to be locked in perpetuity, were cut.
Fortunately, the Institute had a reputation in the surrounding neighborhood of Kitai Gorod. It had sprung from the dying days of the Soviet empire when mobs demanding freedom had taken to the streets.
At that time all government buildings were coming under attack. Though the nature of what went on inside was unknown, the Institute would not be spared. But when angry crowds began to swarm the streets outside, demanding an end to seventy years of failed Communist rule, something strange began to happen. People started dropping dead.
There were no soldiers visible or bullets fired. The windows to the building were sealed, preventing the use of more exotic weapons by the faceless men hidden away inside. But still the bodies in the street piled up.
Some in the mob feared gas or some form of chemical weapon. Most dismissed this as unlikely, for whatever it was seemed to kill indiscriminately. A man would drop dead while his friends on either side were spared. And so an explanation was quickly decided on by the people of Kitai Gorod, The big sinister building with no windows and a chain around the only door was quite obviously haunted. During the days of civil unrest that brought an end to the Soviet era, the mobs began to cut a wide swath around the Institute and the deadly spirits that dwelled inside.
Anna had always found the superstitions embarrassing. Such ludicrous notions were the reason much of the world saw Russia as a backward nation. But when she returned three days ago to find the gates wide open to the street, she was thankful for the big ugly building's reputation. These days an open door in Russia was an invitation to looters and squatters and virtually everyone else in this crumbling, lawless society. Fear of the supernatural was the only thing that kept the people from sneaking in through the open door and stealing the nails from out of the very walls.
Not to say there was nothing to be afraid of at the Institute. It was only the fear of a building that she found ludicrous. After all, a building was just a building. For Anna Chutesov, the true thing to fear was that which had escaped into the world through that wide-open door.
After getting over her initial shock at the security breach, Anna realized she had to report this terrible news. On a good day it was a risky proposition to attempt to use the Moscow telephone system. On this day it could have been suicidal. Anna sped to the Kremlin.
She was ushered into a paneled conference room that would have been stylish in the early 1960s, but was now hopelessly out-of-date. She had left that old-fashioned room only one hour before. The president of Russia still sat at the desk where she'd left him, a celebratory vodka bottle at his elbow. His sharp eyes smiled up at Anna Chutesov.
"Ah, you have changed your mind," the president slurred. "You have decided to join me for a drink after all."
He fetched her a glass from a silver tray.
"No, sir, I have not," Anna had announced crisply. "I have come to report a danger. Perhaps the greatest threat to ever face our country."
The president's thin eyebrows rose skeptically. "Russia has faced down many threats," he said. "The Tartars, the Troubled Times, the Narodnaya Volya. The worst threat ever was stopped by you yourself just this week."
Anna didn't bother to explain to him that the things he had named from Russia's history were far worse than the recent events that had occupied her in America.
He waved his empty glass. Anna noted how small his fingers were. Like a child's.
"If this is your attempt, Anna Chutesov, to increase funding to the Institute, I am sorry to say that it is not possible. There is no more money to be found in all of Russia. Despite your stellar work in this crisis, you already receive a generous part of the secret budget."
Anna shook her head. "This is not about money," she insisted. "Only an idiot would use a crisis of this magnitude to attempt to extort a budgetary increase."
The president neglected to mention that he was forever hearing complaints from cabinet officials, each one declaring a greater crisis than the last, each assuring the president that this whatever-it-was crisis could only be solved by more money. Directed, of course, at each official's own agency.
He didn't say any of this because he was speaking to Anna Chutesov, one of the brightest minds he had ever encountered. Not only would she already know all this, it wasn't in her nature to state anything other than cold, hard facts. That was part of her appeal as an adviser.
Despite his earlier reservations, the president sat up straighter. He set his glass to his desk with a click. "What is wrong?" he asked.
"Only the worst crisis to befall our country since our earliest wars with the Byzantine Empire."
As those dire words were sinking in, she quickly informed him of her discovery at the Institute.
"I scoured the entire building before coming here," she concluded urgently. "They were nowhere to be found."
At last beginning to grasp the nature of the problem, the president of Russia touched his tongue to his thin upper lip.
"As I understand it, you kept them confined for years. Perhaps they have gone to visit friends or family members. It is possible they will be back."
"No," Anna said firmly. "They were not prisoners. They were allowed several weeks of leave every year. And they knew where the special entrance was. The fact that they did not use it is not insignificant. Furthermore, the fact that the chain was broken and the gate was left open was a sign."
"From whom?" the president asked.
Anna shook her head gravely. "I do not know," she replied. "For security purposes there were no cameras inside, so I don't know what happened during my absence. I only know that which I found upon my return. And it puts not only me in danger, but you and the previous two occupants of your office, as well, for they knew of this. It is not an understatement, sir, to say that with them on the loose, our nation is at risk like never before."