Chapter 23
“I used to envy you,” said Lloyd. “There I was, trapped behind a desk in Langley, while the four of you were out there in the field, slinking down alleys. Picking locks and chatting up assets. Surviving on your wits. But after tonight . . .” He shook his head.
“I realize I never could have hacked it. I would have ended up dead somewhere. Or locked up in a foreign prison.”
They were huddled on the sofa in her hotel room, both of them calming their nerves with sips of the whisky she’d found in the room’s minibar.
It was only an eight-year-old scotch, but under the circumstances, it was serviceable enough, and they were drinking it neat.
They needed it full strength, to regain their equilibrium and to celebrate the fact they’d survived the night.
Although they should not have. They’d been careless and stupid, and for that, Maggie had only herself to blame.
Lloyd was just a neophyte, and he couldn’t be expected to perform in the field, but she’d had decades of experience, experience that had failed her tonight.
Her old skills were slipping. Once, she might have been a decent operative, but that Maggie had gone soft in her old age.
She could not afford to screw up again. Not if they had any chance of tracking down Ingrid.
“The field isn’t for the fainthearted,” she said. “You got a taste of that tonight.”
“And I was useless, Maggie. Worse than useless. You tried to warn me, and I led us straight into an ambush.” He dropped his head in his hands. “Utterly, completely useless.”
“Lloyd.” She grasped his arm. That arm could expertly wield a chef’s knife and a spatula, but those skills were not of much use outside his well-equipped kitchen. “This is all new to you. Don’t beat yourself up over what happened.”
“It’s not how I imagined it would be. Not how I thought I’d perform.”
She set down her empty glass and got up to search the hotel minibar for something else.
If they were going to do a full postmission debriefing, they’d need more than just one round.
She found small bottles of gin and vodka, demi-bottles of red wine and white wine.
She took them all out and brought them back to the sofa.
“I imagined myself as a sort of James Bond,” he said. “It all seems ridiculous now.”
She opened the mini bottle of gin and emptied it into Lloyd’s glass. Emptied the bottle of vodka into hers. “James Bond is ridiculous.”
At that, Lloyd smiled. Finally a smile, but it was a small one, and it soon faded.
He looked down at the gin in his glass, his eyebrows knitted in an expression that was almost one of pain.
“I need to tell you something, Maggie. I didn’t want to share it with that man Marcus, but you should probably know.
Because it might mean something. In fact, it probably does mean something. ”
“What is it?”
“He said Dmitry Surikov defected twenty years ago. That he walked into the US consulate in Naples and confessed to being a Russian illegal.”
“And?”
“Twenty years ago, Ingrid was sent to Naples.”
Maggie’s gaze sharpened on him. “I thought she was stationed in Rome.”
“She was. Her cover firm was in Rome. The so-called Johnson-Baron Ad Agency. It was all CIA, down to its basement. Ingrid’s title was secretary to the director.” He paused. “She was an excellent secretary.”
“I have no doubt.” Knowing Ingrid. “So why did they send her to Naples?”
“I don’t know. I only know that she and I were supposed to go to Marseille together.
It was our wedding anniversary, and we’d booked a holiday on the sea.
We planned to gorge on fish and mussels and, you know, do what happy couples do on their anniversary.
But at the last minute, she had to cancel because she was called to Naples.
She couldn’t tell me why. For a whole month, I didn’t see her.
And when she finally got home to our flat in Rome, she was absolutely mum about the whole affair.
Which I understood, of course. Nature of the job and all.
But I always wondered about that month in Naples.
What she was doing there. Why it all happened so suddenly.
Then tonight, when Marcus told us that Surikov gave himself up by walking into our consulate in Naples, I realized that must be why Ingrid was called there.
To deal with the intelligence windfall. A Russian sleeper, ready to spill all his secrets, in exchange for a new life.
” He looked at Maggie. “That must be the connection between Ingrid and Surikov. She would have been his handler, his protector. She would have helped him forge his new identity.”
“But that was years ago. He would have been passed on to other handlers. Why get involved with him now?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure if my theory holds water.
But it’s the only thing that might tie Ingrid to this whole mess.
” His head dropped into his hands and he rubbed back his hair, leaving it in wispy gray tufts.
“She’s no longer with the Agency, so what is she doing here? And why keep it a secret from me?”
From all of us, thought Maggie. She knew there were valid reasons for secrecy, if lives, or the success of a mission, were at risk.
Even among the five of them, all with high-level clearance, secrets remained.
Secrets they would guard to the grave. Where Lloyd and I might well have ended up tonight.
Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the caller’s number and answered: “Hey.”
“You both feeling better?” said Declan.
“Still recovering. We’ve finished all the scotch in the minibar, and we’ve moved on to the gin and vodka.”
“You’re going to need more than vodka when you hear what we found out since you called.”
“Go on.”
“First, about this fellow Jon Marcus, who pulled you out of the fire. You described him as early forties, six feet plus, brown hair, blue eyes . . .”
“That’s right. Is he really Agency?”
“When I asked my source about Marcus, I got their classic Glomar response.”
“Ah. ‘I can neither confirm nor deny.’”
“That’s about what he said.”
“Which means Marcus probably is Agency.”
“That’s my take as well. I think Jon Marcus is just a cover name, because we can’t find anything on him.”
“You said we’d need more than vodka for this.”
“Right. Here’s where it gets interesting.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“You know those two names you gave us, Dmitry Surikov and Willem Dekker? That combination turned out to be the magic key. Ben reached out to a friend at Langley who used to be one of the tech whiz kids. But time marches on, and now this guy’s closing in on retirement.
He’s royally pissed about the Agency’s new policies.
All the layoffs and loyalty tests, all the directives to play nice with Moscow.
When he heard we already knew about Surikov, he told us to run the names Surikov and Dekker, along with the Amsterdam address, through the Tor and Kilos search engines because we might find a little surprise.
So we did, and up popped a website that Ben’s friend has been quietly monitoring.
Strictly speaking, he didn’t actually reveal the site to us; he just told us how to go about finding it.
His secret little act of rebellion before he retires. ”
“This site is on the dark web?”
“Yes. It doesn’t contain much, just a series of names, addresses, and photos. There are eight individuals listed on the site. Six of them are now dead.”
“A kill list?”
“That’s what it looks like. It appears Moscow is using the site to put out death contracts. Their own operatives have had a few spectacular failures lately, resulting in a lot of bad publicity. But if a contractor does it, no matter how sloppy the job, who’s to know the kill was ordered by Moscow?”
“You said Ben’s source at Langley is quietly monitoring this kill list. Am I to conclude he doesn’t trust his own colleagues with this info?”
“Kudos to the great Maggie Bird. You’ve read the situation correctly.
He knows they have a mole in the Agency, someone who’s been exposing defectors to the Russians.
I suspect the Agency already knows who this mole is, and they just haven’t acted on it yet.
But they are monitoring the kill list, and proactively pulling the targets to safety.
The question is, how does Ingrid fit into all this? ”
“I think we can answer that. Partly, at least,” said Maggie. “Lloyd thinks she was assigned to handle Surikov when he defected in Naples. Maybe that’s what Ingrid was doing here in Amsterdam. She saw Surikov’s photo and realized he’d been exposed and needed protection.”
“Why not tell us that?” said Declan. “Why keep it a secret? It makes you wonder what we’re missing.”
“And Dr. Maslov? I assume his name was also on this kill list?” Maggie asked.
“No. It wasn’t.”
She paused. “Well, that’s not what I expected.”
“Maslov was different. First, he wasn’t just a defector in hiding; he was a continuing thorn in Moscow’s side, speaking publicly about their bioweapons program.
Second, his murder happened on US soil, which isn’t easily accessed by Vory.
We think Moscow assigned one of their own operatives to kill Maslov, someone who was already placed in the US.
Right now, I’m sure Langley’s doing a deep dive into Ingrid’s past, and you can understand why.
She was in Purity when Maslov and Karen O’Brien were murdered.
Then someone sends her Surikov’s photo, and off she goes, to Amsterdam.
You know they have to be thinking . . .”
“That Ingrid’s the killer.”
“This is insane!” blurted out Lloyd. “The Agency can’t seriously be thinking that!”
Maggie looked at Lloyd, who was flushed and agitated at the mere suggestion his wife might be a traitor. She held up her hand to silence him. Said, into the phone, “Declan, you said there were eight defectors on that kill list and six are now dead. Who else is still alive, besides Dmitry Surikov?”
“A woman named Zoya Larina.”
“Her current address and cover name?”
“Cover name is Beatriz Guerrero, and she lives in Madrid. I’m sending you the info now. If the pattern holds up, that’s where Ingrid will head next.”
She looked down at the photo that had just landed in her phone. Zoya Larina, a.k.a. Beatriz Guerrero, was in her mid-forties, a stunning woman with intense dark eyes and a cascade of black hair streaked with gray. “What do we know about her?” she asked.
“Not much. I assume the Agency’s moving in to protect the woman, so you don’t need to get involved. It’s time to come home, Mags.”
“We plan to. Our flight to Boston’s already booked.” She looked at Lloyd. “But I’m not sure our friend here is happy about going home.”
“Damn right, I’m not,” said Lloyd. “Not without my wife.”
“Oh Lord,” sighed Declan. “He’s going to get you both killed.”
Lloyd stood up. “Excuse me, but I have to go make a few arrangements.”
“What arrangements?” she asked.
“I’m not going to Boston. I’m going to Madrid.”