Jericho had called the moment she’d walked in the door. She’d heard the urgency in his voice, but the fact that he was willing to send his ex-wife and daughter to communist Russia to keep them safe from the new administration said all she needed to know about his present state of mind.
Jacques had called seconds later, filling her in on the specifics of the attack on Kim and Mattie. He knew the plan and told Ronnie he’d brief them on what she was about to do.
She ran a hand through thick hair, rubbing her eyes with a thumb and forefinger as she thought through her course of action. A hot bath called her name, but there was no time for that. She had a call to make — and the sooner she made it the better. There was no way she could make it from her house — even on the burner phone. There was no way of knowing what someone might be able to pick up with infrared or laser listening technology.
Apart from letting her know how easy it was for someone from the Internal Defense Task Force to find out where she parked her car in the CIA parking lot, Garcia’s conversation with Agent Walter had twisted her gut into a knot.
A long run would help quiet her nerves. More important, it would give her the perfect opportunity to make her call.
Stripping off her street clothes as she walked down the short hall to her bedroom, Garcia rummaged through the pile of laundry beside her dresser until she found a reasonably clean pair of running shorts and a loose T-shirt. Barefoot, she sat on the edge of the bed and rummaged through her wallet until she found a business card to a local pizzeria with a coded phone number written on the back.
The IDTF and NSA had become bosom bedfellows under the new administration — so much so that she’d had to purchase two prepaid cell phones. Not wanting to burn her communication link with Quinn in the event this international call was hacked, she dedicated one of these “burners” to Jericho and the other to calls like the one she was about to make. Monitoring was always likely, but tens of thousands of people made international calls from the US each day. As long as the conversation stayed plain vanilla and no names or trigger words were used, Garcia hoped she could melt into the digital background noise.
Falling back on the bed, she took a moment to decipher the safety code she’d written on the card. It was meant to slow down anyone who might have been snooping around her wallet. Once she figured it out, she picked up the phone and dialed 01 to exit the US, 7 for Russia and the Skylink prefix, which acted as an area code for the Russian cell service, before punching in all but the last digit of the number.
A member of the Russia’s Federal Security Service or FSB, Aleksandra Kanatova was a spy Jericho Quinn had spent a considerable amount of time with, traipsing around South America while they looked for a missing Soviet-era nuke. Ronnie had seen her once, at a party near Miami where they had been hunting the same terrorist. They’d both been dressed in flimsy bathing suits so it had been easy to get a read on Kanatova, physically at least. Ronnie supposed the Russian was pretty if one had a thing for smallish redheaded assassins who were covered in freckles. Thankfully, Jericho Quinn seemed to prefer his killer girlfriends built a bit more on the robust side with a little more pigment to their complexions — and the hint of a Cuban accent.
Garcia laced up her running shoes and slipped the tiny Kahr 9mm pistol into a black leather fanny pack that blended in with her shorts. Skipping her usual stretch, she reset the alarm and headed out the door with the burner phone in her hand.
She put in a single earbud, letting the other one dangle. It was an unwise spy who cut herself off from the warning signs of outside noises when out on a run — or anywhere for that matter.
Garcia checked up and down the quiet residential street in front of her modest frame house. She was half surprised that she didn’t find Agent Walter’s black Lincoln Town Car parked half a block away. There were a couple of other runners out — the cute guy who worked at the Pentagon and a housewife from three doors down who was out jogging off the extra pounds her spandex shorts so prominently displayed. A small ganglet of three preteens rode by on their bicycles, heads ducked in an all-out race for the end of the block. She was a horrible neighbor and wouldn’t have been able to give the names of a single individual who lived around her — even under threat of torture. But she was an excellent spy and recognized them as people who did in fact live on her street. It was a quiet neighborhood with quiet people who kept to themselves, just like Ronnie. The houses were modest things, some decades old, some built on subdivided lots within the last five years. None were very large. These were not the Great Falls or Vienna, Virginia, homes of three-star generals and undersecretaries to the presidential cabinet. They were the plain brick and stick homes of the worker bees, close enough to DC to be within commuting distance and far enough away to be affordable before you hit GS 14 on the government pay scale. The warm scent of new-mown grass and blossoming flowers hung on the humid air. The lawns were manicured and the shrubs well-trimmed, but there were no sidewalks, so Ronnie ran along the edge, next to the gutter.
She entered the last remaining number into the cell phone, and then pressed send before breaking into an easy trot. She’d just reached a comfortable stride when she heard a loud click on the line, as if the connection was a stodgy throwback to the Soviet Cold War days.
“Allo.” Aleksandra Kanatova smacked her lips as she spoke, as if groggy from a deep sleep.
Garcia kept up her pace, glancing at her watch. A quarter after six in Maryland. She winced. It was after two in the morning, Moscow time.
“Zdravstvujtye,” Garcia said. She used the more formal greeting. Speaking Russian always made her think of her father, which caused her to smile. She hoped the sentiment carried in her voice. She spoke slowly, allowing the woman on the other end to wake up and grasp the gravity of her call. “I am calling on behalf of your friend from Argentina.”
Kanatova gave a heavy cough. Garcia thought she heard the scrape of a lighter. She envisioned the Russian in a drab flat with a weak, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and flaking paint on the walls, smoke from the freshly lit cigarette swirling around her naked shoulders. Garcia didn’t know why, but she imagined all Russian spies slept naked and smoked a cigarette each time they got up to pee during the night.
Kanatova coughed again. Her voice was coarse and whiskeyed. “We were better acquainted in Bolivia.” She gave the preplanned phrase to assure her identity. “I trust he is well.”
“For now,” Garcia said, telling what little she knew. “He would like to visit.”
“Ah. I see.” Kanatova was smart enough to know Quinn would have called to make the arrangements himself if he could have, so she did not question the fact that he’d asked his girlfriend to do it for him. Paper rustled on the line as she turned the page of a notebook. “Will he be bringing any luggage?”
“Himself and two carry-ons,” Garcia answered.
“A large and a small carry-on?”
“That is correct.”
“I have been watching the news,” Kanatova said. “This was to be expected. I will make the necessary arrangements on this end.”
“I understand,” Garcia said. “I will call again soon to get the details.” She hung up, picturing Aleksandra Kanatova falling back in her rumpled sheets, blowing smoke rings in the darkness of her dingy flat.
Kanatova had already taken care of the visas for just such an eventuality — one for Jericho using the passport under the unofficial and, with any luck, untraceable alias, John Hackman, and two more for a Kim and Mattie Hackman. A softening of the rules and few hundred extra bucks made the visas good for multiple entries over a three-year period from the date of issue. But there were still things that needed to occur on the other end. Knowing someone like Kanatova would smooth the way for Quinn to travel quickly with his “carry-ons.”