“That stack of hundreds in the package works out to be something like fifty thousand dollars… probably bona fides money,” Barron said. “Maines had to give the Russians something juicy to prove that he was a serious turncoat. Most Russian assets get a pittance, if they get anything at all. The last ones they paid that kind of money to were Robert Hannsen and Aldrich Ames.”
“I assume that giving up Strelnikov would’ve been worth fifty thousand?” Jon asked.
“Ten times that much, easy,” Barron replied. “Maines gave him up cheap. Anyway, FBI Director Menard put a surveillance detail on him and got a warrant for cell-phone and Internet taps. Five days ago, Maines made like he was going to work. Surveillance lost him, he never showed up at headquarters, and he never came home.”
“A deputy chief of Russia House defecting to the Russians could shut us down in Moscow,” Kyra observed.
“He knows about all of our tech ops and key assets,” Barron agreed. “If he’s talking to the Kremlin, there’s probably not an intel officer in the city from any of the English-speaking countries who’s safe, much less our assets. I’ve suspended all human operations there as of this time yesterday and the chief of station is preparing to exfiltrate our key assets, but it’ll take a few weeks to get the resources in place.”
Jon turned the file on the table, looked at Maines’s biography, then turned it back. “Sounds like a straightforward greed-and-revenge defector,” he said, the boredom in his voice clear.
“It was until three days ago,” Barron agreed. “First, Strelnikov turns up dead just a few days after Maines fingers him. That’s not how the Russians operate. They’re methodical. They build airtight cases so they can rip our operations open in a public trial. They watched Oleg Penkovsky for months before they grabbed him and he was giving up nuclear secrets.”
Barron leaned across the table and offered the analysts another photograph. Kyra took the picture… Maines standing in a customs line at an airport. “Second, two days ago, the Russian ambassador walked into Main State and gave that up. We’ve identified the airport where that was taken as Berlin Schönefeld. The ambassador told SecState that Maines was defecting.”
Kyra’s eyes grew wide “He’s here?” she asked, incredulous.
“Looks that way,” Barron said. “What we can’t figure is why the Russians burned him. Maines could’ve been an incredibly valuable asset to the Russians. There was no good reason to burn him that we can see, and now he won’t be worth anything to them in a few months. I would say they were dumb, but I have the feeling someone is getting played and I don’t want it to be us.”
“It’s not us,” Jon said, his voice flat. “It’s Maines.”
“I want to believe that more than you know,” Barron said. “What’re you thinking?”
“Maines wasn’t planning on defecting. Look at the letter… this sentence here,” Jon ordered, pointing to the second paragraph.
As to communication plan, we have designed a secure and reliable one we will share with you at GLENDA very soon as we have arranged for you in our previous contact.
“You don’t establish a covert communications system for an asset unless you’re expecting him to keep working for you,” Kyra observed.
“That’s not even the interesting part,” Jon said. “The money is.”
“How so?” Barron asked.
“Given how tight the Russians are with a ruble, not just anyone could authorize a fifty-G payout,” Jon offered. “Add onto that Strelnikov’s former military rank and his position as the head of the Russia’s DARPA, and it’s obvious that not just anyone could order his execution.”
The NCS director frowned but his expression betrayed his agreement. “Makes sense,” Barron replied. “Still doesn’t tell me why they burned Maines.”
“There’s only one reason that makes sense, don’t you think?” Jon asked, looking at Kyra.
The woman stared down at the photograph of Maines in the airport. “Running an asset is slow business,” she started, thinking as she talked. The puzzle unraveled in her head in an instant. “Impatience will get your people killed, but the Russians are being impatient, which means they’re worried or scared. They’re in damage-control mode, trying to protect something or someone very important. So whoever took out Strelnikov has leaks he needs plugged, he wants it done fast, and Maines knows where the leaks are. So Strelnikov’s killer tricks Maines into leaving the U.S. and then burns his bridge back. Now Maines has to depend on him for protection, and the cost of that protection will be a complete download of everything he knows.”
“You’re saying that the Russians are blackmailing their own asset?” Barron asked, incredulous. “That doesn’t make sense if he’s already playing for their team.”
“It does if you consider that Maines is a new asset… so new that the Russians don’t really know him or what his motivations are,” Kyra explained. “Some traitors still have morals or principles, and won’t give up everything they know. But that’s not acceptable if this Russian really is desperate to plug some leaks and doesn’t think he has much time to do it. So he needs leverage to force Maines to give up everything right now.”
Kyra realized that she’d been staring into the distance, unfocused on the men in the room as she’d thought through the story. She looked down. Jon was smiling, Barron was horrified. “Sir,” she said, “if that’s right, you may not have a few weeks to exfiltrate any of those assets. The Russians could start dropping them anytime. They might kill them as fast as Maines identifies them, the same as Strelnikov.”
Barron muttered a curse. “If that’s true… we have no way to figure out who’s at the top of the hit list.”
“No, there is a way,” Jon disagreed. Barron looked up, hopeful. “Figure out who ordered Strelnikov’s execution and what he’s trying to protect. Do that and you can identify which remaining assets are his biggest threats. But…” He trailed off.
“Yes?”
Jon hesitated, then looked to Kyra. He doesn’t know how to say it gently, she realized. Kyra tumbled the thought about in her mind for a few moments before deciding that there were no gentle words for it. “We can start with Strelnikov’s file. That might give us an idea of where to start. But after that… dead assets might be the only other clues we’ll get to answer the question.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Barron said, his voice turning cold.
“The only other option is to talk to Maines,” Jon said. “If the Russians have pulled a bait and switch on him, he might not be happy about his current situation.”
“And how, exactly, would we get in the same room with him?” Barron asked.
“If Maines really is in town, he’s either at the Russian Embassy or a safe house,” Kyra said, thinking aloud. “If it’s a safe house, someone at the embassy will know where. So we go to the embassy.”
“Good luck even getting the Russians to admit they have anyone in our business at the embassy,” Jon mused.
“They can do a lot worse than say no,” Barron warned. “If the Russians really are desperate to use Maines’s information to plug some leaks, there’s no telling how they might react when you show up asking for him.”
“I don’t think,” Jon said, his mind engaged now. “They were the ones who told us where he was. They had to expect that we’d come asking about him. They might even be planning on it.”
“And it might offer some clues besides dead bodies that will help us figure this out,” Kyra added. “So let’s go knock on the door.”
Kyra sat in the empty conference room, focused on Maines’s file to distract herself. She’d read it twice already, and had found it surreal to read about the operation he’d led to save her from the Venezuelan SEBIN. Moving on, she saw that Barron’s clinical words about narcissism and sadism had softened his description of the true problem. She’d only known Maines a few months before she’d been pulled from the country, had liked him well enough. He’d been a decisive leader, amiable, with a concern for his subordinates that she’d thought genuine at the time. The papers on the table had shaken that conclusion.