“Five million U.S. Now give me the damn antidote.”
“You sold me out after I showed up here in Moscow. You told Popov I ran a Red Team against Sandia, didn’t you? How else could he have known that? That’s not in my two-zero-one file, because I didn’t use my real name. Even when I took the army’s Red Team Leader course at Fort Leavenworth, I was using an alias. But you knew it, Herb. You knew I ran the Red Team against Sandia.”
“Lots of people knew that.”
Kit shook his head. “No. Very few people knew, and they’re not the kind of people who would talk.” Kit fixed Sinclair with a penetrating gaze as if he could read the man’s thoughts. “Before I came along, Popov was going ahead with his plan to use a homemade Russian EMP weapon. But thanks to you, he saw the chance to use me to get a much more dependable device. I’d already broken into Sandia, it would be easy for me to do it again. All he needed was some leverage to force me to act.”
“Yes, I told him about you! But I didn’t know he would hurt your family,” said Sinclair through gritted teeth.
“You’re the third mole, Herb. It wasn’t someone inside the embassy. It was the guy outside the embassy who was spying on our people better than the Russians were spying on our people. You asked Popov to order one of his men to seduce Rufo. Sergei didn’t get the assignment until after you and I identified the first two moles. The idea was for you and me to eavesdrop on her passing a secret to Sergei, and that would have been a wrap. But if Sergei couldn’t turn her, you’d just falsify some kind of communications intercept. We’d ID Rufo as the third mole, I’d go home, our secret investigation would close, and your risk of exposure as the real mole would end.”
Kit took another sip of Dos Equis.
“You pushed Popov on the idea of using me to steal the e-bomb. You desperately wanted me out of Moscow. You were afraid.”
A wall of pain surrounded Herb Sinclair; he knew it was over. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Kit looked on with no satisfaction as the CIA legend crumpled in front of his eyes.
“I asked seven times for them to bring me in from the cold. They wouldn’t, so to hell with them. I was already on my own, I figured I might as well cash in. It was a hell of a ride while it lasted. Need someone to blame? Blame the suits at Langley.”
He wretched, then stood on wobbly legs.
“Antidote. And then I’m walking out that door.”
“I won’t stop you, I told you I wouldn’t. But I did… what’s the word the politicians use when they’re forced to admit they told a bald-faced lie? I ‘misspoke.’ See, I did come to Moscow to kill you. There is no antidote.”
Bennings reached over to the end table and turned off a tape recorder that was hidden by a piece of paper. He pocketed the recorder as Sinclair fell to the floor in the throes of death.
He retrieved the heavy bag of money and crossed to Yulana. “If we live through this… college tuition money for Kala.”
CHAPTER 48
Larry Bing, commanding officer of the Activity, had gone out on a long limb to help Kit Bennings and Yulana Petkova acquire what they needed to get out of the United States and into Moscow. Even though Bing had gotten a heads-up from the SECSTATE days before telling him Bennings was a “special case” and not to believe allegations he might hear about the major, he provided help without tapping army resources or active personnel, just to be on the safe side.
Hence, Kit Bennings and Yulana Petkova had been well equipped for the confrontations with Sergei Lopatin and Herb Sinclair. And thanks to Angel Perez’s doings, CIA/FBI/CID were scouring the Mexican border area for the fugitives. Angel had driven the van Kit had stolen off of Nellis Air Force Base all the way to Gila Bend, Arizona. There, he had used Kit’s ATM card at a dive that didn’t have security video, and then he abandoned the van, making sure to leave a few other incriminating items inside.
That diversion had given Kit the confidence to use the goth decorated apartment in Moscow—the one connecting his old apartment via tunnel—as his and Yulana’s temporary safe house. They’d already made a round-trip using the tunnel to retrieve weapons and other gear from his real apartment.
They had also stopped at Herb Sinclair’s workshop and found a secret room crammed with esoteric electronic equipment he used for his snooping.
And they found a weapons cache and small-scale supply depot. The SAD counted on Sinclair to be able to support a wide range of missions on a moment’s notice, and so they had invested heavily in creating a unique, well-stocked storeroom of items, ranging from the nonlethal, like CS gas, to the very lethal, such as plastic explosives and poisons.
Kit and Yulana had gathered quite a few pieces of gear that might come in handy for the incursion at Popov’s HQ. Kit also found thermite grenades, nasty little canisters that created superintense heat and were used to destroy weapons and materiel. A thermite grenade could melt right through the engine block of a truck. Herb had had them in case he needed to destroy his electronic spy gear in a hurry. Kit had packed twenty-three of them into a backpack to make sure he could demolish Popov’s computer servers.
So right now, at 2:37 A.M. Moscow time, as they sat on the dilapidated couch in the goth safe house while listening to Buddy Guy belt out “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues,” Kit sent an e-mail containing a “key” number to one of Margarite Padilla’s private e-mail addresses. Then he used Darknet software to send the audio file of Herb Sinclair’s interrogation and confession into the ether. Pieces of the heavily encrypted audio file would be distributed to many “points.” When Padilla submitted the key number to Darknet, the program would go out and gather up the pieces of the encrypted audio file and reassemble them for her.
He was telegraphing his presence in Moscow by sending her the audio file, but knowing how Padilla operated, he knew he had fourteen to sixteen hours before the CIA would come looking for him. And the unmasking of the third and most important mole—a CIA agent at that—would cut him a lot of slack and be more ammo for Padilla to use against the DCI, John Stout.
Kit checked his TAG Heuer chronograph and rubbed the pressure point on his hand. The migraine he’d been keeping at bay with hand reflexology during the last few days was on the verge of taking root; he was experiencing an “aura” precursor—a slight blurring of his vision, a symptom he knew well. Stress, lack of sleep, having been shot… made him so run-down that all the acupressure in the world couldn’t keep this migraine away. It would probably hit him full force in the next hour or two.
“Three forty-five in the afternoon in Las Vegas,” said Kit. “One call to make before we go.”
“Have a drink with me first, then make your call.” She poured vodka into two small glasses and handed one to him.
“You’re a bad influence on me, do you know that?”
“Nyet, I’m a good influence,” she said matter-of-factly. “I can’t believe all of this has happened.” She shook her head. “I’m just a research scientist, but now I feel…”
“Different?”
She nodded. “Even if we find Kala, what can I do then? How can I go back to my old life? I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“We’ll get Kala back, and I’ll get my sister back. That’s the meat of it. Don’t worry about the rest.”
He smiled, toasted with her, and pretended to take a sip of the vodka. The truth was, he felt far from sure he could free Kala, considering Popov was holed up in a veritable fortress, but there was no good in sharing his doubts with Yulana.
Angel snoozed on a couch in a three-bedroom suite at the Venetian. Buzz sat on the terrace in a pair of shorts reading the paper. Jen had four laptops going on the kitchen table, as usual, when her sterile cell phone rang.