George kept the operative in a chokehold for several seconds to teach her a lesson, and then released her. As she sucked down air, he helped her to her feet.
“Impressive,” she gasped, rubbing her throat with her left hand. “But you missed one thing.”
“What, ma’am?”
She showed him the letter opener in her right hand. “I grabbed it when you brought me down. The way you were holding me, I could’ve stuck you anywhere.”
Rubbing her throat, Peggy returned to the map while Private George looked at the letter opener and silently cursed himself. It didn’t bother him that a woman had bested him; in training, Sondra and he had knocked each other around mercilessly. But on a mission, missing something like the letter opener would have meant the difference between living and dying.
Still standing by the closed door, Aho said, “Now that the introductions have been made, perhaps you’d care to go to work?” Peggy nodded.
“When you reach the boat at the harbor,” Aho said, “your password for the boat will be ‘wonderful stempost.’ The response is ‘handsome dragonhead.’ Private George, I’ve already explained the process of gaining access to the midget submarine to Ms. James. I’ve also given her money and the Russian uniforms you’re to wear.” He grinned. “We have more Russian uniforms here, and better fitting, than the Russians do.” He took a sealed packet from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Private George. “Here are the papers identifying you as a Principal Shipboard Starshina Yevgeny Glebov and Senior Sailor Ada Lundver in the Russian Navy. You’re the Sailor, Ms. James, assigned to coastal mapping and buoy refurbishing. This means that if anyone sees you, you’ll have to look like you’re following Private George’s orders.”
“He doesn’t speak Russian,” she said. “How will that work?”
“You’ve got a ninety-minute boat ride and a ten-hour submarine trip to teach him some basics,” Aho said. He put his hat back on. “And that covers everything, I believe. Further questions?”
“None, sir,” George said.
Peggy shook her head.
“Very well, then,” said the Major. “Good luck.”
George picked up the heavy rucksack containing his gear and jogged after Major Aho, who opened the door, walked into the hallway, and shut the door behind him.
George stopped short to avoid running into the door. “Officers!” he said with a disgusted sigh as he reached for the knob.
“Don’t!” Peggy barked.
George turned around. “Excuse me?”
“Put your gear down,” Peggy said. “You and I aren’t going anywhere yet.”
“What do you mean?”
She took an instant camera from atop a filing cabinet. “Smile,” she said.
As Major Aho left the building, a woman and her dog were standing by the calm waters of the South Harbor, watching him. Valya had ridden her bicycle from the apartment of their longtime Helsinki operative, a retired Finnish policeman, and had leaned it against a high lamppost while she walked away from the cone of light. When she was safely hidden in darkness, she let the dog rest from its short run-a cuddly, less energetic springer spaniel having replaced the wild Jack Russell terrier she’d used against the British agent in St. Petersburg. Valya didn’t need to deactivate anyone here: she had come over simply to watch and report back to Colonel Rossky.
It had been easy for the Operations Center to track the jet from the United States, and even easier for her to follow the Major and his American friend when they left the airport. Now her driver was waiting out of sight on Kanavakatu, by the tall, majestic Uspensky Cathedral, and she was watching to see what the Finnish officer and his spy did.
His two spies, she noted as two companions joined Aho when he walked toward his car.
When she was sure they were going inside, Valya tugged on the dog’s collar and it began to bark loudly, twice, twice again, and then two more times.
“Ruthie!” Valya shouted, tugging on the leash a second time. The well-trained dog fell silent.
Major Aho looked over, apparently failed to see any- one in the darkness, then slid into the passenger’s side of his car, the other two climbing in the back. Beyond them, the Russian saw her partner’s Volvo swing onto the Esplanade, alerted by the bark. They had agreed beforehand that he would follow the car to see where it went, then come back for her: she wanted to remain behind and make sure no one else popped out of this wing of the Palace. Having lost two agents, they might take unusual precautions to protect more. Some countries did that as a matter of course: five years before, when she first joined the spetsnaz intelligence bureau, her superior had been stung by a fake English operation covering the real one, and he took his life after being dismissed in disgrace. Valya Saparov had no intention of letting that happen to her.
She continued to stroll along the steps of the embankment, listening to the tranquil waters lap against the stone and into the drainpipes, watching the few cars and even fewer pedestrians that came and went along the thoroughfare.
And then she saw something that brought a smile to her lips: two people leaving the Presidential Palace, people who looked suspiciously like the ones who had departed with the officer shortly before ….
THIRTY-FIVE
Tuesday, 1:08 A.M., St. Petersburg
When he was making regular trips into space, General Orlov was accustomed to having his days and nights carefully regulated: when he would eat, sleep, work, shower, and exercise. When he began training others, he held to a tightly controlled regimen because it worked for him.
In the two years he’d been attached to the Operations Center, his regimen had deteriorated because of the demands on his time. He didn’t exercise quite as much as he wanted, and that made him unhappy. In the last few weeks, as the on-line hour drew near, he hadn’t slept as much either, and that made him even more cranky.
He had expected to be up late today, helping to iron out any problems with the various systems, though there were surprisingly few. And he had even been prepared, if necessary, to run an urgent counterintelligence operation using Rossky’s spetsnaz intelligence operatives based in nearby Pushkin. Fortunately, word had reached Rossky that Ministry of Security agents had found and arrested the waiter who’d been working with the British spy, and were bringing him to St. Petersburg. No doubt he could be persuaded to help them ferret out other spies-a more effective tack than Rossky’s harp-fisted handling of those two operatives. Orlov didn’t believe for a moment that the British agent had taken his own life, and he was sorry they hadn’t had the opportunity to interrogate him.
Disappointment and the ability to adapt were part of any job, and Orlov remained focused and alert. But he hated waiting for anything-especially missing pieces of a puzzle. In space, whenever he had to troubleshoot, there was a checklist. Here, there was nothing to do but sit and keep busy while awaiting information.
The message came from Valya Saparov at 1:09 in the morning-just after midnight in Helsinki. Because she hadn’t wanted to carry secure radio gear, she placed a straightforward international call from a phone booth in Helsinki to a number at the St. Petersburg telephone exchange. There, an Operations Center employee routed the call to the intelligence base, where someone in the radio room picked up. In this way, telephone calls couldn’t be traced to or from the Operations Center.
Calls from agents over unsecured lines were in the form of personal messages to friends, relatives, or roommates. If the operative didn’t preface the message by asking to speak to someone in particular, the Center knew to disregard the contents. Messages were sometimes sent this way to confuse eavesdroppers who might be tracking a spy and trying to make sense of what they were reporting. When the operative said something about the weather, the listener knew that that was when the message proper began.
Valya asked for Uncle Boris, her name for Colonel Rossky, and he was notified by an operator at one of the nine computers linked to the phone and radio lines. He grabbed a headset and took the call. General Orlov took a duplicate pair from the operator and pressed one side to an ear, listening as a digital recorder taped the call.
“My little ptitsa,” Rossky said, “my precious bird. How is your visit with your karol?” He used a nickname, “king,” so a listener wouldn’t be able to check on anyone’s identity.
“Very well,” she said. “Sorry to call so late, but I’ve been busy. The weather couldn’t be better for sightseeing. ”
“Good,” said Rossky.
“I’m out with the dog now, in fact. Karol went to the airport with two friends, but I didn’t want to go. I decided to take a bicycle ride to the harbor instead.”