Where to begin? Every person on the paper would be dealt with, and quickly, but the CIA would be conducting an exercise very much like the one he was performing right now. If they could only save a few before the Russian dragnet fell, who would they choose? Who would they sacrifice that others might live? It was a fascinating puzzle of a kind that Lavrov had never had to tackle before.
The young woman from the roof — Maines had said her name was Stryker — could have been very useful to him right now, were she cooperative. The concept of a Red Cell fascinated the GRU head… a group of analysts who, among other things, imagined themselves to be the enemy and tried to think as the enemy did. It was a concept not unknown to his predecessors. The old spy school at Vinnytsia where KGB officers had lived as Americans, shopped at 7-Eleven, and spoken English in homes where they ate roast beef and cherry pie had been a brilliant idea. Even the CIA had thought so. But such techniques had fallen out of use and Lavrov had no training in them.
He touched a finger to the first name. Are you more important to the CIA than the next name? Or the last?
Lavrov shook his head and cleared his mind.
Stryker, the woman… she had seen the test platform at Vogelsang. His men had caught her and her associate emerging from the missile storage bunker. Had she deduced what he had demonstrated there?
Assume that she has, Lavrov thought. That was easy enough. It was his natural inclination to consider worst cases.
If she knew of the EMP, did she know of the other advanced technologies that the Foundation had shared with America’s enemies over the years? It was possible. The Chinese stealth plane had been lost in its first confrontation with the U.S. Navy three years before. The Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group had used a very unusual radar network in the Battle of the Taiwan Strait. Had they been forewarned?
The nuclear warhead the Iranians had been constructing in Venezuela had been captured last year, the covert facility utterly destroyed with a Massive Ordinance Penetrator as neatly as a tumor excised by a surgeon’s laser. Hosseini Ahmadi, the Iranian program’s leader, had been executed on his own plane at the airport, a single bullet to his forehead. It was still unclear who had pulled that trigger and Lavrov hadn’t thought the Americans were that ruthless, but his own sources in Caracas had confirmed that they had been aboard Ahmadi’s aircraft when he’d climbed the stairs, then left just before his corpse had been carried back down.
Assume that she does.
Other operations had come off undisturbed, so the CIA clearly did not know the full scope of the Foundation’s work. But if they knew of the program generally and the EMP specifically, would they not try to stop him from sharing that technology, as they had the others?
Lavrov focused on the paper again, reading each name. Which of you could tell Miss Stryker and her friends of the EMP? Its design? Its location? How we will deliver it?
Would those be the people the CIA would try to save?
Perhaps not… but they would be, he supposed, a very good place for him to start.
CHAPTER FIVE
Of the innumerable diplomats and foreign leaders that President Daniel Rostow had met, he disliked the Russian ambassador to the U.S. the most. Igor Nikolayevich Galushka smiled so rarely that he frightened most everyone who knew him when he did. The Russian diplomat had come from a background that would have crushed the ambitions of other men in the Kremlin. He was a farmer’s son from Fedyakovoan, an unremarkable village seated two hundred miles east of Moscow on the back of the Volga River, and had no advantages of family or business connections to the men who ruled the country. That he had managed to survive the various political and personal purges of the previous three decades and get himself one of the most important postings in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was more a testament to his lack of ethics than any diplomatic skill. That was fine by him and his superiors. Most important policies between nations were hashed out over the phone between leaders. Ambassadors were used only when the chiefs of state didn’t want to answer unpleasant questions, and Galushka excelled at being the bearer of appalling news.
Galushka had demanded, not asked, to see Rostow. The president had granted the request, summoned the secretary of state and his national security adviser to the Oval Office for the meeting, and made Galushka wait fifteen minutes for no good reason before admitting him to the room. The Secret Service officer on duty admitted the Russian diplomat, then took up a position by the closed door.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. President,” Galushka began after the pleasantries were finished. “I regret that this will not be a friendly visit.”
Rostow doubted that Galushka regretted anything. “I do hope that we can resolve your issue in a fair way.”
“To speak in honesty, Mr. President, there is nothing you need do except comply with single demand that I must make,” Galushka told him. “As you are aware, I am sure, our security services are the most skilled in the world at counterintelligence. They have been running a major operation for some time, and have confirmed that your country has brought a number of spies into our motherland under the false pretenses of being diplomats and businessmen. This is unacceptable! The presence of a single infiltrator would be unacceptable to us, but the scale of your activity is appalling. Our president has reaffirmed his readiness to expand cooperation with the U.S., including the cooperation of our intelligence agencies in fighting terrorism, but such provocations are in the spirit of the ‘Cold War’ and undermine the mutual trust we both value.”
“I assure you, Igor, your services must be mistaken—” Rostow began.
The Russian reached into his jacket, withdrew a single sheet of folded paper, and laid it on the Resolute desk. “This is a list of the CIA spies that our security services have identified in our country. I am here to inform you that my government has declared them all persona non grata, unwanted persons expelled from our soil for engaging in activities inconsistent with their diplomatic status. Their expulsion is mandatory and they and their families must leave our soil within twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours? That’s unreasonable, Igor. You can’t expect people to settle their affairs, pack up, and evacuate in a single day.”
“Given the scale of American perfidy in this matter, that is all the time we are prepared to offer. The number of spies you have sent into the Russian Federation beggars the imagination.”
Rostow frowned, picked up the paper, and unfolded it. The list of names was arranged in two columns and almost filled the page. “Igor, this can’t possibly be right. Are you trying to gut our embassy?” Rostow protested. He had abandoned any thoughts of diplomatic phrasing.
“The list is correct,” Galushka replied. “Our foreign minister has summoned your ambassador in Moscow to receive our formal demarche and is sharing the same information with him. However, in the spirit of generosity, we will not arrest the ones who lack diplomatic cover. They will be allowed to leave peacefully, but any of them still within our borders after the deadline will be subject to the full penalties of our law.”