Threat Vector

“Your phone is right there.” He nodded to the side of the couch where she had been sitting. “Seriously. What’s going on?”

“Going on?” Melanie felt her heartbeat, and she was certain Jack must have heard it.

“Yeah. Why were you looking at my phone?”

The two just stared at each other for several seconds while the news report discussed the air war over Taiwan.

Finally, Melanie said, “Because I want to know if there is someone else.”

“Someone else?”

“Yes. Come on, Jack. You go away on trips all the time, we don’t talk while you’re out of town, you can never say when you are coming back. You can tell me, I’m a big girl. Do you have someone else?”

Jack shook his head slowly. “Of course not. My job… my job takes me places suddenly from time to time. It always has. Before last week I hadn’t traveled anywhere in a couple of months.”

Melanie nodded. “I know. It’s stupid. It’s just that this last time, I would have liked to have heard from you.”

Jack sighed. “I’m sorry. I should have made time to call. You’re right.”

Melanie stood and walked across the room to him, embraced him tightly. “I’m just stressed out right now. Hormones. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. I really didn’t know it bothered you.”

Melanie Kraft reached for the glass in his hand and took it. She smiled.

“Did you forget the ice?”

Jack looked at the glass. “The bottle was in the freezer. It’s basically a milk shake as is. Thought that would work.”

Melanie sipped it. “Oh. Yeah, that’s great.”

She turned with her drink to go back to the couch, but Jack stood there for a moment, his eyes on his phone.

He’d known she was suspicious of him, and he’d given her much to be suspicious about. He didn’t like the fact that he’d just caught her checking up on him, but he could not say he didn’t understand it. He let it go, told himself he needed to be careful to keep her happy, and put the matter out of his mind.

* * *

Valentin Kovalenko sat at the little desk in the furnished rental flat he’d acquired in Washington, D.C. He had just logged in to Cryptogram to let Center know he was in place and ready for instructions, and he was waiting for a reply.

The past two days had been a whirlwind. He’d cleared out of Barcelona, then trained to Madrid and flown from there to Charlotte, North Carolina. He was stressed about his trip to the USA; he knew there were dangers there for him on a par with what he faced in his own country. To combat the shakes he’d developed worrying about passing through U.S. immigration, he’d gotten himself good and drunk on the plane, and he passed through the airport control formalities in a calm, collected stupor.

In Charlotte he rented a car and then drove up the coast to D.C. He spent a night in a hotel, and moved into this basement apartment underneath the front staircase of a brownstone in upscale Dupont Circle.

He had actually been ready to work since noon today, and it was eight p.m. now, but before he even pulled his laptop out of his backpack or turned on his mobile phone he’d attempted to contact an acquaintance at the Russian embassy here. He wasn’t sure if the old SVR colleague was still posted in Washington, so he found a pay phone outside a post office and then called local directory assistance.

The man was not listed under his own name, which was no big surprise, but Kovalenko checked a couple of aliases the man had used on operations abroad, and only then did he accept the fact he would not so easily wend his way out of his obligations with the Center organization by phoning a friend for help.

After a lengthy surveillance detection run he went to the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Avenue, but he did not dare get too close. Instead he remained a block away and watched men and women come and go for an hour. He had not shaved in a week, and this helped him with his disguise, but he knew he needed to limit his exposure here. He did another SDR on his way back to his neighborhood, taking his time to get on and off public transportation.

He’d dropped by a liquor store on 18th Street just around the corner from his place and picked up a bottle of Ketel One and a few beers, returned to his flat, then put the vodka in the freezer and downed the beers.

His afternoon, then, was a complete bust, and now he found himself sitting at his computer and waiting on Center to reply.

Green text appeared on the black screen. “You are in position?”

“Yes,” he typed.

“We have an operation for you that is most urgent.”

“Okay.”

“But first we need to discuss your movements today.”

Kovalenko felt a twitch of pain in his heart. No. No way in hell they tracked me. He’d left his phone on his desk in his apartment, and his laptop had not even been unpacked. He’d used no computer, he’d not seen anyone tracking him through his SDRs.

They were bluffing.

“I did exactly as you asked.”

“You went to the Russian embassy.”

The pain in his heart increased; it was just panic, but he fought it. They were still bluffing, he was certain. It would be easy for them to guess he would try to make contact with SVR associates as soon as he got to Washington. He had been a good one hundred yards from the embassy.

“You are guessing,” he wrote, “and you guessed wrong.”

A photograph appeared on his Cryptogram window without warning. It was Kovalenko, surveillance quality, and he was sitting in a small park across from the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Street. Clearly it was taken this afternoon, perhaps from a traffic camera.

Valentin closed his eyes for a moment. They were everywhere.

He stormed into his kitchen and took the bottle of Ketel One out of the freezer. Quickly he grabbed a water glass from his cabinet and poured two fingers of the chilled vodka. He polished off the glass in a few gulps and then filled it again.

A minute later he sat back down at the desk. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

“I want you to obey your directives.”

“And what will you do if I don’t? Send the Saint Petersburg mob after me? Here in America? I don’t think so. You can hack a security camera, but you can’t touch me here.”

There was no response for a long moment. Valentin looked at his computer while he drained the second glass of vodka. Just as he put the glass back on the tiny desk, there was a knock on the door behind him.

Kovalenko bolted upright and spun around. Sweat that had formed on his forehead in the past minutes dripped into his eyes.

He looked down at the Cryptogram window. There was still no response.

And then… “Open the door.”

Kovalenko had no weapons; he was not that kind of intelligence officer. He ran into the little kitchen off the living room, and he pulled a long kitchen knife out of a butcher’s block. He returned to the living room, his eyes on the door.

He rushed over to the computer. Typed with shaking hands, “What’s going on?”

“You have a visitor. Open the door or he will break it down.”

Kovalenko peered through the small window next to the door, and he saw nothing but the steps up to street level. He unlocked the door and opened it, his knife low to his side.

He saw the figure now in the darkness, standing next to the garbage can under the stairs up to the brownstone. He was a man, Kovalenko judged from the stature, but he stood as still as a statue, and Valentin could not make out any of his features.

Kovalenko backed into his living room, and the figure moved toward him, came near the doorway, but did not enter the apartment.