The Blind Spy

massive protection to boot.

“Because she’s the best, Theo,” Burt said patiently.

“She’s also on the KGB’s most-wanted list. For God’s sake, with their Black Sea fleet based there, the Russians are crawling all over Sevastopol. The base is also an excuse for them to insert all kinds of other, unconnected operations into Ukraine. The place is completely porous to Russian operatives. She shouldn’t be going.”

“Spoken like her fairy godfather, Theo,” Burt said. Then he sighed contentedly. “But that’s the deal made by her, not me. She’s only mine—only Cougar’s—if she’s allowed to operate in the field, and against Russia. Otherwise I lose her and I can’t afford to do that. I give her what she demands, that’s all.”

“What’s she going to do?” Lish said, exasperated. “Go on fighting the Russians until she’s scaling the walls of the Kremlin with grappling hooks?”

Burt chortled. “Maybe, Theo, maybe. But she’s grown up enough to make her own decisions.”

“Her recklessness is getting to be of comic-book proportions,” Lish said. “We could never employ her here, you know.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Burt said good-humouredly. “You’d snap her up immediately if she were free.”

Lish huffed. Burt was right. She was gold. But he was thinking of another argument. “What about her child?” he said, going off on this new tack. “Doesn’t she want to stay alive at least for him?”

“We gave her boy a new identity,” Burt replied.

“I know. You told me.”

“He lives with a new family now, three half siblings, on a nice farm in Connecticut. Four years old, or coming up. She goes to visit him once a month.” He looked directly at Lish. “But the boy needs a new life whether she’s working or not, Theo. It’s irrelevant if she’s a fully engaged operative scaling the walls of the Kremlin, or a kitchen gardener producing new strains of purple broccoli. Either way, the KGB won’t rest until they have her. Her picture is used for target practice out at the Forest. They hate her, and they’re vindictive enough to let that obscure their vision.” He smiled. “That’s good. That plays in our and her favour. Aside from her obvious—and huge—talents, in some ways the Kremlin’s hatred offers her a small amount of protection. They want her alive now—that’s the information coming out of Moscow. They want her to be an example, not in public, perhaps, but in the intelligence community. They want to display her and that gives her a little immunity—at least from a bullet in the head in some back street.” Burt heaved himself sideways and his bulk crushed another part of the sofa. “So she may as well have a crack at the Russians since they’ll be after her anyway. As we’ve already seen, her son is a vulnerable part of any trap they might set to get their hands on her. She knows his safety is assured if he’s far enough away from her. And she knows she’s lost him—effectively.”

“That’s sad.” Unlike Burt, Lish was a confirmed Christian family man who saw most of the problems in the world arising out of family dysfunction.

“And it’s a fact,” Burt replied stolidly. “We can’t ignore the facts, Theo. So she pursues her revenge against her former masters in any way she likes, as far as I’m concerned. She’s the best.”

“You think it’s revenge? For her man they murdered? For Finn?”

“Partly,” Burt said. He was deep in thought now. “But in my opinion it’s not revenge for Finn alone. Or even mainly about revenge for Finn.” Burt clasped his hands over his generous stomach. “You know, Theo, for Anna, Finn was just the wrench that got her out of Russia. Sure, she loved him, maybe he was the only man she ever loved. But leaving Russia to make her life with the Brit wasn’t just about them falling in love. For Anna, there was a far greater question that filled her skies. A decisive break from her background, her father, the regime in Moscow, the organisation she so successfully worked for. In her mind, coming to the West was a decision in favour of life rather than of half life. It was about the shedding of entrenched and decomposed ideas, and complete reinvention. It was about the destruction of the social, political, and family DNA that held her in its prison. Above all, it was an act of extreme, risk-taking bravery. Finn was just the key that opened the door.”

“But what’s the change? She’s still doing the same damn job,” Lish protested, exasperated now. “Just for our side, that’s all.”

“She’s smart. She knows it’s what she does best,” Burt said simply. His mind turned to lunch once again. “And she likes her steaks underdone, with or without purple broccoli,” he added.

And then Burt apparently tired of explaining the motives of the best operative he’d ever had in all of his long career, and he began to lay out for Theo Lish the real purpose of their little chat in this office. Apropos of the severed head and not, as with Anna’s trip, preplanned at all, he was also sending Logan Halloran to Ukraine. He ignored Theo’s raised eyebrows. Separately from Anna’s assignment, he told Theo that while the three of them had been in the laboratory, looking at the head, he’d decided Halloran would be going to Kiev.

He explained to Theo why he was sending Halloran, and that he wanted Halloran to have all the cooperation the CIA station in Kiev could give. Theo raised his eyebrows still higher. Burt explained that—who knew?—maybe the Forburg would turn out to be connected in some way to “other stuff,” as he put it vaguely. Maybe Halloran’s mission to Kiev would dovetail with the story behind the appearance and then the disappearance of the Forburg. He artfully painted a picture of a fascinating possible array of connections and coincidences, real or imagined. Then, once more, he threw in Anna’s assignment to the Crimea, preplanned though it was, as another useful feeler worth extending in the hunt for the Forburg. Look for the connections, he said to Lish, even if it’s only to eliminate them. As luck would have it, he said in conclusion to this pitch, his two most experienced field operatives in the Eastern European and Russian sectors would be on the spot. One in Kiev, the other in the Crimea. We’ll find the Forburg, he concluded triumphantly. We’ll track down this terror ship together, Theo. Burt now used the dead man’s words as if they were gospel.

And now, too, suddenly, the Forburg began to take form, as if the ship itself were appearing through a thick sea fret. It was a full-blooded terror ship now, not just in the opinion of some dead and little-known Russian operative whose severed head lay propped up on a table four floors below. But it was so in the opinion of the great Burt Miller, the intelligence guru who had the ear not just of Theo Lish—and through him the president—but of most of the senators on the Intelligence Committee whom Cougar had carefully lobbied over the years and who also represented the interests of Cougar in Washington’s intelligence hothouse. And when he’d established his position where the “terror ship” was concerned, finally Burt wove a tapestry of cooperation and success between Cougar and the CIA that would bring glory to them both.

More or less in parentheses, Burt then told Lish, in detail, what he wanted from the CIA and he eventually received a nod of agreement. Lish’s eyebrows, it seemed, could go no higher without taking leave of his head altogether.

3

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 2010

THE MOMENT SHE STEPPED OFF THE BOAT, Anna Resnikov knew that she was being followed. They must have been tailing her when she’d boarded the ferry in Istanbul. One man, maybe more than one, she wasn’t sure. But her conviction that she was observed came neither from belief nor suspicion, both of which were, to her, subtle, dangerous distractions that she swiftly discarded in any analysis. She either knew something or she didn’t, and in this case she knew.

She reached the foot of the clanking, rusted metal steps that led from the upper deck of the Kalydonia ferry to the dock and then waited in line with the other passengers on the windswept quay at Odessa’s customs and border post.

It was January 16. Tomorrow would be the first round of the presidential elections in Ukraine. That was a mere coincidence, as far as she was concerned. She had come to the country for another reason. She had come to make a contact.

There would be a prearranged drop-off, and then, if all went well, she would make the pickup. If things went according to plan then it would be a two-to four-day round-trip for only a few minutes of active engagement. Her