The Fall of Moscow Station (36 page)

“I can make that happen,” Sokolov assured her. “But your refusal to cooperate with me can only delay that process. How can I tell them who has requested their assistance if you will not give me your name? You had no identification with you when you were detained. You must give me some information about yourself or I cannot help you. I do not even know which embassy to contact,” he said.

Okay, time for a little reward
, Kyra decided. “The U.S. Embassy.”

“So you are American.”

Kyra fought down the urge to roll her eyes and insult the man's deductive powers. “Yes,” she said, her voice oozing condescension. The Russian's English accent was heavy enough that Kyra suspected the man wouldn't understand the emotion when he heard it.

“That is a start,” Sokolov said. “And your name?”

“You don't need that. Just advise the embassy that you have a U.S. diplomat in your custody.”

Sokolov turned to his Russian subordinates. “Leave,” he ordered in their native language.

The photographer moved immediately to the exit, but the escorts stayed rooted, their faces perplexed. “You will leave,” the Russian ordered a second time. “She is uncooperative. I must apply other measures. You will stand the post outside.”

More hesitation, but the escorts finally obeyed, leaving the Russian alone with Kyra.

Headquarters of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)

1 Bolshaya Lubyanka Street

Moscow, Russia

The FSB's current home, strictly speaking, was across the street from old Lubyanka, the home of the KGB before it. If asked, Kathy Cooke would have admitted that the older building was an impressive piece of architecture, a four-story neo-Baroque edifice made of yellow-brick-turned-gray. CIA headquarters was an ugly complex to her eyes, but Lubyanka, originally built to be the home of an insurance company before the 1917 Revolution, had some real old European beauty in its design. It radiated a sense of history to her.

Not the good kind of history
, she thought. The artistry of Lubyanka's design belied the fact that its ground floor had been a prison where thousands had entered and somewhat fewer had emerged. So much of Stalin's reign of terror had its epicenter in Lubyanka.

“Never thought I'd get this close to it,” Barron admitted.

“Never wanted to,” Cooke replied. “Too many people walked in and never came out. You can feel the ghosts.”

“I never took you for the type to believe in the supernatural,” Barron said.

“I'm not,” she told him. “But I'm just religious enough to think that if the dead are walking the earth anywhere, it's here. You ever heard of Vasily Blokhin?”

“Can't say as I have.”

“He was the chief executioner of the Soviet Union, handpicked by Stalin himself. It was an actual government position, if you can believe it. Nobody even knows how many people he personally killed, but I've seen claims as high as fifty thousand. He oversaw the executions of seven thousand Polish soldiers in one
month
in 1940,” Cooke recounted. “He set a goal of killing three hundred people every night . . . brought his own briefcase full of Walther pistols because he didn't think the Soviet sidearms were reliable enough. The man even had an official executioner's uniform . . . leather butcher's apron, hat, long leather gloves that ran up to his elbows. A guard would march the prisoner into a little antechamber called the ‘Leninist room,' which Blokhin had designed himself . . . soundproof walls and a sloping floor with a drain, to make it easier to wash the blood off after each kill. They'd put the prisoner down on his knees and Blokhin would shoot him in the base of the skull. They'd drag out the body and bring in another one. His unit helped him kill them at the rate of one man every three minutes, ten hours every night for a month. Stalin gave Blokhin the Order of the Red Banner for it.” Cooke raised an arm and pointed at Lubyanka. “And he did it all in there. So, yeah, I can believe in ghosts.”

“You know, the Russians probably believe our predecessors were doing the same thing at Langley.”

“We've had our share of bad men, but we never had a prison in the basement, and we sure never kidnapped our own citizens,” Cooke replied.

“Yeah, good luck convincing the Russians of that,” Barron said. He felt like the building in front of him had drained the humor from his bones. “How'd Blokhin check out in the end?”

“Lost his job in '53 after Stalin died,” Cooke recalled. “Became an alcoholic and went insane. The official record says he committed suicide in '55.”

“Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy,” Barron mused.

“I've never understood how someone can become so indifferent to life.”

“ ‘That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved,' ” Barron said. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unfortunately, that applies to evil talents as well as good ones. Do something often enough and it becomes banal . . . ordinary.”

“Maybe,” Cooke said. “But he committed suicide. Maybe it never really became ordinary to him after all.”

“You really believe he killed himself?”

Cooke pondered the question, then nodded. “Actually, yes. Maybe the ghosts of all the people he murdered tortured him until he went mad. That would be justice. A man who kills that many people by his own hand . . . I can't imagine what that does to your soul.”

“What soul?” Barron asked. “A man would have nothing left by the end of that.” He shook his head in disbelief. “And we're going to talk to the successor of guys like that. Makes me think this operation can't possibly work.”

“Maybe,” Cooke replied. “The question is who Grigoriyev hates worse, us or Lavrov.”

“My money's on Lavrov. Grigoriyev was the FSB director when I was the station chief here, so I got a pretty good feel for him. He's a professional. He doesn't like us, but it's not personal. We're not trying to put the old man out to pasture. Lavrov is, and the anger between those two runs deep. If there's one thing the Russians do well, it's hold a grudge.”

“You're right on that score,” Cooke agreed. “You ready to do this?”

Barron shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “You know, the Russians never filed the paperwork to PNG me after that car wreck. We've always assumed they know I'm Agency, but they never confirmed it. I guess they're going to find out now.”

“If you're going to blow your cover, might as well go big and nuke it hard,” Cooke advised.

“Like Slim Pickens riding the bomb.” He dismounted the car and held the door for Cooke. Churkin and a Russian security detail got out of their own vehicles and formed a cordon around the Americans, leading them toward the visitors' entrance.

They approached the guard post. The Russian officer held up a hand.
“Ostanovites' i identifitsirovat' sebya!” Stop and identify yourself!

Barron nodded, reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out his CIA credentials. “This is Kathryn Cooke, deputy director of national intelligence for the United States government. My name is Clark Barron and I'm the director of the CIA Directorate of Operations.” Churkin's head whipped around in surprise at that revelation, proving conclusively that he spoke very good English. “We're here to speak to Director Anatoly Maksimovich Grigoriyev,” Barron said in Russian. “He's expecting us.”

The FSB officer manning the door gawked at the American, took Barron's credentials, and stared, then picked up the phone.

•  •  •

The conference room to which the escorts delivered them was more ornate than anything Barron had ever seen at Langley. The walls were hardwood, lacquered and polished to a perfect shine, with gold trim around the ceiling. The table in the center had a similar wooden border, the center covered in green leather. The chairs matched the table, with blue-and-white-checked cloth coverings, and Barron thought that the office chair under him was possibly the most comfortable in which he'd ever sat. There was no telephone in the room, no computer, no way to communicate outside. Barron wondered where the cameras were.

Grigoriyev stared hard at Barron, murder in his eyes. “You have lived in Russia before, Mr. Barron,” he said. “My men retrieved our old file on you. It said nothing about you being a CIA officer.”

“I lived here for three years,” Barron confirmed. “I'd like to think I was good at the business.”

“It appears you were. But you were in a terrible car accident,” the Russian noted.

“Some of your counterintelligence boys were tailing me and one of my officers,” Barron told him. “They got a little aggressive and ran into us . . . flipped our car and killed the young woman who was with me.”

“They thought they were trailing diplomats and thought they could intimidate you. It was a new team and they were reckless. My condolences, though such accidents do happen from time to time. For their stupidity, the team responsible was reassigned to some very unpleasant duty in our far northeast, if that gives you any satisfaction at all.” Grigoriyev's tone announced that he could not have cared less about a dead American spy. He turned to the senior U.S. officer in the room. “I was quite surprised to receive your request for a meeting, Miss Cooke. It is rare for American intelligence officers to meet with us at all, and when it does happen, months of planning occur in advance. Rushed meetings are rare things, so you must forgive my suspicions and concerns about your honesty right now.”

“Not at all, Director,” Cooke said. “I would feel the same if I was sitting on your side of the table.”

“So we understand each other,” Grigoriyev agreed. “Then why did you wish to meet with me?”

“There is a situation with one of our assets here in Moscow that has gone out of our control and we need your assistance to resolve it,” Cooke replied.

GRU headquarters

Sokolov leaned in to Kyra, close enough to whisper. “I turned cameras off, so they cannot hear us, before they came in with you. Will look like equipment failure. You know where you are, yes? This building is old GRU headquarters, but GRU does not handle counterintelligence in the
Rodina
. That is FSB. They don't know you are here and Lavrov will not tell them or your embassy. FSB would turn you over to your embassy and expel you from country after making you a . . . what is the word . . . spectacle? But FSB does not know about what Lavrov is doing here and he does not want them to know. So if you want me to tell your embassy that you are here so they can tell FSB to come, you must give me your name.”

Kyra looked at the man in disbelief. “I have wanted to work for your people, long time now,” Sokolov said.

Kyra stared at him, watching him twitch. The arrogance had disappeared so quickly and completely that she wasn't sure it hadn't been an act all along. “I don't believe you,” she finally said, cautious. He was showing none of the physical signs of deceit, but he was a Russian intelligence officer after all. The GRU trained its men to hide them, she was sure.

Sokolov saw her expression. “For thirty years, I am interrogator for GRU,” he said. “I am good at it, but I am sick of it. Seeing people brought to me who have done nothing but make angry or insult some senior man. Then our Soviet Union falls and I had hope we would be a better country. We
are
a better country, for a few years. They do not bring people to me in here for long time. Then Putin takes over and I see him and his friends taking us back, making us again what we were. And then they start bringing people to me again—” He stopped talking, almost in midsentence, choking on whatever he was going to say next.

Kyra didn't try to fill the silence. Finally, Sokolov looked up. “And I am a coward,” he said, self-loathing in his voice. “They bring these men to me . . . sometimes women, sometimes journalists who try to solve murders done by government . . . officers and spies who tell superiors that they are evil men . . . sometimes just businessmen who do not want to sell things to the Kremlin at prices the Kremlin wants to pay. And I ask them questions, and if they do not give me answers that my bosses want to hear, then I step outside and let guards come in and beat them until they give me answers that my bosses want to hear. And I am afraid to say no because I know the names of so many people that my bosses kill. I am afraid that if I stop, they kill me too.”

The Russian colonel slumped, resting his backside on the heavy metal table. “So I think maybe I can be a spy, but I never volunteer because I am afraid. And then Lavrov tells me that he has source who is going to give him names of Russians who I need to kill. And I think, if names come from his source, then Russians brought to me must be working for CIA, yes? And I think, maybe I can warn the men who the source names, so they can maybe escape. So Lavrov gives me the name, I find the person, and I make private phone call and tell them to run. But my unit, they are too good and catch them anyway, and I have to act like I am pleased and do my duty so they do not kill me.”

He had hardly looked at Kyra during his explanation, but he raised his head and looked at the analyst's face. “But now Lavrov brings me Americans, you and the other man. He will not talk and I have to try to make him. Lavrov does not want me to kill him, but I think maybe it would be better. If you do not talk, maybe Lavrov will tell me to do to you the things I had to do to him. I do not want to hurt you. I hope you can tell your bosses about me and help me escape my country. Will you help me? Will you help my family? If you say yes, I try to save you. I cannot get you out of the building. The escorts have orders from Lavrov. The only way to get you outside is to tell FSB. Grigoriyev hates Lavrov and to hear that Lavrov is holding and torturing diplomats will give him a chance to hurt Lavrov. But FSB, they will contact your embassy first to confirm you are diplomat. They will need your name to do that. If your embassy agrees, FSB will come—”