The chief of the general staff smiled at that direct order. His reckless subordinate, Colonel General Levchenko, was about to have his ass chewed personally by President Vladimir Vladimiroch Pushkin.
The telephone in his pocket burped as soon as Kyle Swanson landed. The directory showed that DSS Agent Lem James up in Helsinki had called several times. Flying on the commercial aircraft meant Kyle could not use his cell phone while in the air, which had left him out of contact. Every other passenger also seemed to have phones in their ears as soon as the plane touched the earth.
“Hey, Lem,” Swanson said in greeting. “What’s happening?”
The agent’s voice was clear and calm, although the words were carefully chosen for the open circuit. “I talked to our Finny friend about that thing you wanted to know.”
“And? Did she give it up?”
“Between colleagues and good friends, she told me to blow it out my ass. She would not budge.”
Inspector Rikka Aura of the Finland Security Intelligence Service was not cutting them a break. She would not give up her source for knowing exactly when and how Swanson had entered her country.
“Do we have any leverage?”
“None,” replied James. “She is stone. I’ll keep my ear to the ground up here.”
“Roger that, Lem. Thanks for trying.” He dropped the phone back into his pocket, continued toward the exit and thought: Bitch!
A small crowd was clustered at the arrivals hall to welcome friends, family and business associates. Corporate drivers in traditional black suits held name signs for incoming VIP passengers. Kids shouldered heavy backpacks, as if soldiers going off to war. Porters rolled luggage carts. Adults wrestled with suitcases.
Out of the crowd of well-wishers sailed Jan Hollings, sparks of fire in her sea-blue eyes and her blond hair almost standing on end with her fury. She pointed to an isolated area and he followed. “Where the fuck is Anneli?” Calico demanded. “She never showed up at the safe house.”
“Relax. She is perfectly fine. When you told us that we were wanted for murder, I made another plan. She is safe and secure and satisfied.”
“Without telling me! I’m the one responsible for that girl. I demand that you tell me, right now!”
Swanson’s implacable mask slipped and let his own anger show. “That’s not going to happen, Jan. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the intelligence chain of our country, and I know there is a leak. Probably dozens, maybe hundreds of leaks, and that doesn’t even get into the local police forces, where any secret is for sale. The fewer people that know her location, the safer she is. You just have to trust me on this one. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
“Trust you? That’s a laugh. I don’t trust you. Nobody trusts you.”
“And I don’t trust you, either, Calico, but it’s the nature of the job. You just push ahead to get those new identification papers for Anneli. When she is really needed, I will produce her. Not until then.”
She gave him a look that could wither a cornfield, then caught a breath and changed gears. “You had better be right, you arrogant son of a bitch. If anything happens to her, I will scalp you. Now let’s get you back into that room with Ivan Strakov, where you were supposed to be all along.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m here.”
17
This time, Swanson recognized the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the landmark of the Brussels neighborhood, and the nearby brick-and-plaster building that was unchanged since he had last been there. Calico drove into the underground garage and Kyle went through the chutes-and-ladders identification routine to reach the interrogation room on the second floor. Colonel Ivan Strakov was already there in his chair, drinking a soda, no more nervous than a midlevel banking nerd figuring out how to best foreclose on a widow.
Gone was the common orange jumpsuit, and instead he was in khaki pants and a soft brown sweater, with unscuffed Italian loafers on his feet. He was spending his first million, and planning on more. Swanson reached the table in a few steps, trading silent stares with the Russian. The man’s hair was newly trimmed and his nails were buffed and polished. On his left wrist bulged a large new watch with silver sweep hands on a black face and a little window that clocked the days. Overall, this was a man enjoying his special treatment.
Strakov’s snake eyes flickered over Swanson, then he said, “Finally, my hero returns. I knew you would be back.” He sipped a Diet Coke.
Swanson cleared his throat. “You are not the only thing happening in the world, Strakov. I had to talk to somebody else, somewhere else, about something else. Now it’s your turn again.” He would not give Ivan the satisfaction of an explanation, nothing that the Russian could use to play him. It was like walking through a mental minefield.
“Good. Good.” Ivan scratched an ear. “I spent some of the downtime watching television. They let me do that now that I have proven myself, so I binge-watched all of Breaking Bad and I want to start Game of Thrones tonight. Hollywood is a wonderful dream factory.” He held up his left wrist to show the timepiece. “And I even went shopping.”
“I noticed the new threads and kicks. Hell of a watch.” They had let him leave the house?
“Of course. I am a guest here, not a prisoner.”
Kyle crossed his arms and did not pursue the pampering issue. He had to trust that the CIA minders knew what they were doing; probably just fattening the cow to keep it happy before the butchering. “Whatever. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“And the news shows, Kyle! I watch a lot of news,” Strakov said with a sharp look. “Things seem to be getting a bit tense out there.”
Kyle thought, Damn it all! Going out into public and open television viewing? Outside information should not be allowed to reach this man. He remembered the crossword puzzle from last time. Newspapers, too? “Don’t believe the media, Ivan.”
The colonel frowned. “Among the things I watched with interest were reports of a rather large Russian military exercise along the NATO border. Had you not run out on me, I would have warned you that it was coming.”
“Sure you would.” He dodged the accusation. “You have been so forthcoming on everything. Anyway, the exercise was no big deal. The rabbits ran around for a while, and even now are scooting back into their holes, but not before we took pictures of your hotshot Armata tanks and battle platforms. Yesterday’s astonishing secret is old news now.”
The defector remained infuriatingly smug. “Of course it is, Kyle. It was called Operation Hermitage, by the way, and it was a practice for defending St. Petersburg. The last tsar had his Winter Palace there, the Hermitage, which is now a magnificent museum. Hence the name. I really wanted to explain the exercise so NATO would not have been taken by surprise. You took off before I had the chance.”
Swanson coughed into his fist. “You think that we are unaware that Moscow has forces lined up all the way down the border from Estonia, through Latvia and Lituania? There is no news there, buddy. Your President Pushkin would love to snatch those little countries back for his dream of rebuilding the Soviet empire.”
Strakov glanced around the bare room to gather his thoughts before continuing. He smiled. “Consider it this way, Kyle. Suppose Louisiana or Texas broke away from the United States in some ill-considered revolution, but the overwhelming majority in those states wanted to stay allied with Washington. Would Washington want to help those unhappy former Americans rejoin the fold? Same thing.”