Cauldron

ambassador’s vodka.

Soloviev smiled down at her. “Of course.”

They danced together, moving gracefully in oddly contented silence, until the song ended in a polite patter of applause. Soloviev held her close for just a moment longer and then stepped back, bowing. “My thanks.”

His lips brushed across the back of her outstretched hand.

Erin stiffened. Not because she was embarrassed by his oddly old-fashioned courtesy, but because he’d just slipped a folded piece of paper into her hand. The colonel straightened up. His face was quite calm, perfectly still. “I enjoyed myself, Miss McKenna. Perhaps we shall dance again one day.”

She nodded without speaking and watched him move off into the crowd. Still bemused, she noticed that many of the women looked after him with just a hint of longing and most of the men with a mix of admiration and jealousy. She forced herself back to reality. What the hell had just happened?

For the first time that evening, Erin wished she had dressed grayly and inconspicuously. It took her several minutes to find a quiet corner where she could study what the Russian soldier had passed her without being observed.

It was a brief note in strong, masculine handwriting. “I must see you again. Come running with me. Alone. At 6 A.M. on the day after tomorrow at the Novodevichy Convent. The matter is urgent.”

Erin looked up in astonishment, instinctively seeking Soloviev’s distinctive features among a blur of several hundred different faces. He was gone.

She refolded the note and headed upstairs for the chancery building’s Secure Section. Whatever was going on was not something she could keep to herself.

Thirty minutes later, Erin and Alex Banich sat in the Moscow Station chief’s office. Len Kutner stared down at the unfolded piece of paper lying on his desk. He tugged at the tight collar of his tux, loosening it slightly, and looked up. “What’s your read on this, Alex?”

“It’s a setup.” Banich was insistent. “That son-of-a-bitch Soloviev is trouble. With a capital T. Or maybe with a capital K — for KGB.”

“The KGB doesn’t exist anymore,” Erin pointed out.

“The hell it doesn’t!” Banich exploded. “They can call it the FIS, or whatever else they want, but it’s still the same damned thing.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t think so. He didn’t seem like one of them.”

“That’s the point.” Banich frowned at her. “Don’t forget, I’ve dealt with this guy before. Soloviev’s as smooth as silk. All smiles and easy charm right up until he plants a stiletto between your ribs!”

Kutner leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “Maybe so. But I still don’t see why one of Kaminov’s senior advisors would get personally involved in a sting op.”

“Because he’s the perfect bait. Highly placed and well connected. They know we’ll be tempted to play along just on the off chance he is genuine.” Banich shrugged. “All the more reason to give this one a pass.”

“But why now?” Erin asked. “The FIS has had me pegged as an intelligence agent for months. Why wait this long to come hunting me?”

“Because something’s in the wind. Something they don’t want us to know about. Maybe connected with Poland. Maybe not.” Banich turned to Kutner. “You saw my report on the airport clampdown. Not even Kaminov would throw that many security personnel around on a whim.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you can see what these bastards could have in mind. They must know we’ve got a network here in Moscow — one they haven’t been able to penetrate yet.” Banich nodded toward Erin. “Say they lure McKenna outside the embassy, pass her a few worthless state secrets, and then grab her red-handed. The FIS gets two big pluses from that. One, they disrupt our operations and force us to commit resources arranging a swap or a buy- back. Two, they can break her wide open under interrogation.”

He lowered his voice. “She knows too much, Len. My name. My cover. The trading company. Everything. And the frigging Russians would get it all.”

Erin flushed angrily at the implication that she would spill secrets so easily. But she had to admit that Banich was probably right. She was an analyst, not a field agent. She didn’t have the training to withstand prolonged questioning — whether under torture or drugs.

Still, he seemed far too inclined to view only the worst-case situation. Would he have been as adamant if the Russian colonel had contacted Mike Hennessy instead of her? She doubted it. Maybe somebody should point out the possibility that this particular glass might be half-full, not half-empty. “What if Soloviev isn’t setting a trap? What if he does have vital information to give us? Look, Alex, you say yourself that there’s something big happening inside the Russian government. Have any of your sources been able to tell you what’s up?”

He shook his head reluctantly.

“Then isn’t it worth taking some risks to find out more?”

Banich shook his head again, vehemently this time. “No, it’s not. I don’t care what the payoff seems to be. I don’t make sucker bets.”

She turned to Kutner. “So that’s it? We just walk away from a man who could give us access to Kaminov’s inner circle? Can we really afford to pass up a chance like this?”

The station chief didn’t answer her right away. Instead he studied the crumpled note in front of him one more time. When he looked up, he was looking at Banich, not at her. He grimaced. “I’m afraid Miss McKenna could be right, Alex. This may be one sucker bet we have to make.”

CHAPTER 26 Time on Target

JUNE 25 — OVER ENGLAND

Four delta-winged Mirage 2000s screamed north over the rolling, windswept Lambourn Downs, flying so low they nearly merged with the shadows rippling over long, green grass. Below them, strings of racehorses out for early morning schooling panicked, broke free from their stable lads, and scattered in a frenzied gallop — spraying across the barren landscape like pellets from a shotgun.

The pilot of the lead Mirage eased back on his stick, pulling his jet up as the ground ahead rose steadily toward a line of low chalk hills stretching east and west. One hundred meters. Two hundred. Three hundred.

Abruptly the landscape dropped away below them, falling into a wide, settled valley dotted with small villages and fields — the Vale of the White Horse.

As he dove for the valley floor, a series of low, bass beeps sounded again in the lead pilot’s headphones. The sounds signaled an airborne search radar hunting for them. Either the Americans or the British had an AWACS plane orbiting over southern England. He checked the radar signal strength. High. Too high. They’d been detected.

He shook his head. The AWACS was too late. The four French warplanes were just twenty kilometers and ninety seconds from their target. He rocked the Mirage from side to side as a signal to the others and accelerated.

CNN HEADLINE NEWS, ON THE FLIGHT LINE, RAF BRIZE NORTON, NEAR OXFORD

CNN’s viewers were being treated to live pictures of a massive military operation in progress. Huge U.S. Air Force C-5As, looking more like sections of gigantic pipeline than anything flyable, lumbered over the concrete tarmac. In the distance, other transports, C-141s and C-17s with their ramps extended, loaded trucks, missile launchers, and pallet after pallet of supplies. More colorful civilian airliners were intermixed with the green-painted military planes, pressed into service to carry troops. Long files of infantrymen shuffled forward to board the passenger aircraft, bowed down under rucksacks, weapons, and gear weighing up to 120 pounds.

With its three-thousand-meter long main runway, the RAF base at Brize Norton was an important center for the airlift pouring men, equipment, and supplies into Poland.

The reporter’s khaki pants, shirt, and bulky flak jacket gave him a martial air that fitted his surroundings. He had to shout into his mike to make himself heard over howling jet engines and rumbling machinery. “The British 1st Armored is only one of — ”