“I’d rather not say,” Jack answered, but he was pretty sure his worried face gave away the answer.
Gavin Biery sat up straight. “Oh, shit. Not your girl.”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“But you obviously suspect something. Let’s skip breakfast. I’ll take it back right now.”
Jack Ryan sat in his car in the parking lot of Hendley Associates for forty-five minutes. It felt strange not having his phone with him. As with most people these days, his mobile had become an extension of himself. Without it he just sat quietly and thought uncomfortable thoughts.
His eyes were closed when Biery came back out to the car. Gavin had to tap on the window of Jack’s black BMW.
Ryan climbed out of the car and shut the door.
Gavin just looked at him for a long time. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“It was bugged?”
“Location software and a RAT. I left it in the air-gapped lab so I can study it more. I’ll have to go through the source code to see the details of the malware, but trust me, it’s there.”
Jack mumbled out a few words of thanks, then got back in his car. He headed toward his apartment, but changed his mind, drove to Baltimore, and got a new cell phone.
As soon as the clerk set it up to accept calls from his phone number, he saw he had a voice mail.
As he walked through the mall he listened to the message.
It was Melanie. “Hey, Jack. Just wondering if you are around tonight. It’s Saturday, and I’ll probably only work till four or so. Anyway… give me a call. I hope I get to see you. I love you.”
Jack disconnected the call, and then sat down on a bench in the mall.
His head was spinning.
Valentin Kovalenko had been hitting the bottle more and more in the days since the Georgetown murders; later and later into the night he was up with his Ketel One and his American television. He did not dare surf the Internet, as he knew with certainty that Center was watching his every online move, and there were no sites he wanted to troll bad enough to do so with some Chinese über-geek spook looking over his shoulder.
Late nights of pizza, booze, and channel surfing had caused him to slack off on his morning runs in the last week or so. This morning he did not roll out of bed until nine-thirty, a near-cardinal sin for a health nut and gym rat like Kovalenko.
With bleary eyes and bed head he made coffee and toast in his kitchen, and then sat down at his desk, opening his laptop — he’d been careful to shut it when he wasn’t using it, because he suspected Center would sit around looking at his living room throughout the night if he did not.
He was paranoid, he knew this, but he also knew what had brought him to this state of being.
He checked Cryptogram for this morning’s instructions and found that Center had sent him a message at five-twelve a.m., ordering him to wait outside the Brookings Institution this afternoon and to take covert pictures of the attendees of a symposium on cybersecurity.
Easy, he said to himself before shutting down his laptop and changing into his running clothes.
He decided that since he had his morning free, he might as well go for a run. He finished his coffee and breakfast, changed into his running attire, and then finally stepped outside his rented apartment at five minutes until ten and turned to lock his door only to find a small envelope taped on the knob. He looked up past the staircase at the residential street, and then around the side of his building toward the back parking lot.
There was no one in sight.
He pulled the envelope off the knob and stepped back inside his apartment to open it.
The first thing he noticed as he opened it was the Cyrillic script. It was a handwritten note, just a line of scribbled text, and he did not recognize the handwriting.
“Dupont Circle fountain. Ten a.m.”
It was signed “An old friend from Beirut.”
Kovalenko read it again, then put it on his desk.
Instead of leaving for his run, the Russian sat down slowly on his couch to think over this strange change of events.
Kovalenko’s first posting as an SVR illegal had been in Beirut. He’d spent a year there around the turn of the century, and though he did not work in the Russian embassy there, he remembered many Russian contacts from his time in Lebanon.
Could this be someone from the embassy who saw him the other day and was reaching out to help, or could it possibly be some sort of a trick by Center?
Kovalenko decided he could not ignore the message. He checked his watch and realized he’d have to hurry if he was going to make the meet on time.
At ten o’clock on the nose, Kovalenko crossed the street into Dupont Circle and walked slowly toward the fountain.
The walkway around the fountain was ringed with benches, which were full of people either alone or in small groups, and the park around the benches had many people sitting around even on this chilly morning. Valentin did not know whom he was looking for, so he just wandered in a large circle, tried to recognize any faces from his past.
It took a few minutes, but he saw a man in a beige trench coat standing under a tree on the southern side of the circular park. The man was alone, removed from the other people enjoying themselves, and he faced Valentin.
Kovalenko walked toward him warily. As he got closer he recognized the face. He could not believe it. “Dema?”
Dema Apilikov was SVR; he’d worked with Valentin in Beirut many years ago, and then he’d been posted under Valentin in London more recently.
Kovalenko had always thought Dema to be a bit of an idiot; he’d been a substandard illegal for a couple of years before becoming a paper pusher for the Russian spy service in the embassy, but he’d been honest enough and never so awful in his job as to get the ax.
Right now, however, Dema Apilikov looked pretty good to Valentin Kovalenko, because he was a lifeline to the SVR.
“How are you, sir?” asked Dema. He was older than Valentin, but he called everyone sir, as if he was nothing more than a paid servant.
Kovalenko glanced around again, searching for watchers, for cameras, for little birds Center might have sent to follow his every move. The area looked clean.
“I’m okay. How did you know I was here?”
“People know. Influential people. I’ve been sent with a message.”
“From who?”
“Can’t say. Sorry. But friends. Men at the top, in Moscow, who want you to know that they are working to extricate you from your situation.”
“My situation? Meaning?”
“I mean your legal troubles at home. What you are doing here in Washington, it is supported, it is considered an SVR op.”
Kovalenko did not understand.
Dema Apilikov clearly saw this and said, “Center. We know about Center. We know how he’s using you. I’m told to tell you that you have SVR sanction to continue, to see it to the end. This could be very helpful for Russia.”
Kovalenko cleared his throat and looked around. “Center is Chinese intelligence.”
Dema Apilikov nodded at this. “He’s MSS, yes. He’s also working for their military cyberwarfare directorate. Third Branch.”
This made instant and perfect sense to Valentin, and he was elated that the SVR knew all about Center. Indeed, apparently Dema knew more about Center than Kovalenko himself did.
“Do you have a name for this guy? Any idea where he’s working out of?”
“Yeah, he’s got a name, but I can’t give it to you. Sorry, sir. You’re my old boss, but officially you are outside the system. You are an agent, more or less, and on this op, I’ve got a script to give you and that’s it.”
“I understand, Dema. Need to know.” He looked around at the sky and it seemed bluer, the air cleaner. The weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. “So… my orders are to keep working for Center until I get pulled out?”