Page 63 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

M OSCOW , R USSIA

O NCE again, Irene Kennedy found herself sitting alone in the yellow submarine massaging her temples. While the room’s meager three hundred square feet had felt homey when she first began to work in the space, she would now use a different word to describe her feelings.

Claustrophobic .

To be fair, this adjective might better describe her state of mind than her surroundings.

The meeting with her clandestine team had not gone well.

Between legitimate concerns about their individual heat states, worry about family members still in Russia, the drain on morale driven by Kris Henrik’s continued imprisonment, and the operational churn that had resulted from the almost one hundred percent leadership turnover in the last couple of days, Moscow Station’s contingent of case officers was not in a great headspace.

Irene had serious doubts about her team’s ability to pass the Farm’s final training exercise at the moment, to say nothing of working a complex approach to a high-level Russian intelligence officer in a denied-access environment.

But her team’s shortcomings were only part of the problem.

Despite Stansfield’s confidence in her, Irene was less than ten years out of the Farm herself.

She had never held a senior leadership role at any of the CIA’s overseas bases or stations, and she was not a Russia hand.

She was woefully unprepared for the position in which she found herself and perhaps one bad decision away from igniting a full-fledged mutiny among her staff.

As each of her case officers had explained why their heat state with respect to the Russian counterintelligence officers charged with surveilling them would not allow them to conduct a linkup with the Russian volunteer, Irene felt her spirits free-fall.

Stansfield had sent her here to provide direction and guidance to the single station that might just be able to unravel whatever Russia was planning in Latvia before the European continent plunged into war.

Instead, she felt like she was standing on the bridge of the Titanic as the ship slid beneath the Atlantic’s icy waters.

“Irene? You have a call.”

Irene looked up to see Elysia standing in the doorway.

The woman had become her de facto aide and though her help was invaluable, Irene was now worried that such proximity to a failing leader might tarnish the young case by association. Pushing the dispiriting thought aside, Irene forced her lips into a smile.

She could almost hear Stansfield’s fatherly tone.

One problem at a time, Irene.

One problem at a time.

“Thank you, Elysia. Who’s on the line?”

“Not sure. It’s a secure call from the embassy in Vienna, so the initial handoff was just from their communications team to ours. I can route the call here if you’d like.”

“That would be great.”

Elysia nodded and left, shutting the door behind her.

After Moscow, Vienna Station was probably the second-most-important posting in Europe.

Vienna had long been a crossroads for espionage, as reflected by its nickname “City of Spies.” In her admittedly limited experience, secure calls from one CIA station to another rarely heralded good news.

After clearing her throat and mind, Irene activated the secure speakerphone.

“This is Irene.”

“Irene, it’s Stan.”

She had never been happier to hear the familiar, gravelly basso.

Hurley’s voice felt like home.

“Stan—it’s good to hear from you.”

“Likewise. Sorry that it’s taken so long to return your call to the message service. In answer to your question, I am one hundred percent certain Rapp had nothing to do with the London shooting.”

The euphoria that had accompanied hearing a friend’s voice faded as the reality of the situation began to register. Stan Hurley was calling her from the CIA station in Vienna. Chances were, he wasn’t phoning to discuss the schnitzel. “How do you know?”

“Because he was with me.”

“In Vienna?”

“It’s a long story.”

It was.

For the next ten minutes, Irene listened with minimal interruptions as an operative who was at least nominally supposed to be under her supervision regaled her with tales of the unsanctioned operations he and another member of her Orion team had undertaken.

She almost stopped Stan to clarify that she’d heard correctly when he mentioned in passing that Rapp had eliminated an entire Russian direct-action team in Bizerte.

Almost.

As Hurley himself had taught her long ago, don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer. Be that as it may, there were still some questions she had to ask whether she wanted to know the answers or not.

“I think I understand where you’ve been, but I’m still not clear as to why you’re in Vienna with a former KGB officer turned defector.”

“Shit, sorry. That’s the best part. Volkov’s come out of retirement to help us crawl into Petrov’s head.”

Irene frowned. “I get that Volkov was once Petrov’s deputy and that the men continued to work closely until Volkov defected, but that was, what, twenty years ago? I’m not certain how much insight your former asset can provide into Petrov’s thinking today.”

“Volkov said the same thing. That’s why we’re in Vienna. Outside of Washington, DC, this city has the largest contingent of Russian intelligence officers abroad. It’s by far the most important espionage-related city in Europe. I told Volkov to drop in on some of his former coworkers.”

Irene stared at the speakerphone as if the inanimate device could provide context to Stan’s answer.

He wanted to use a defector to strike up a conversation with current Russian intelligence officers?

Surely she’d misheard. “I think using Volkov to spot and assess potential SVR officers for us to target is fantastic out-of-the-box thinking, but we don’t have weeks or months to go through the recruiting process. We need answers now.”

“Agreed,” Hurley said. “That’s why I told Volkov to think unconventionally.”

Irene felt her headache return with a vengeance.

The words Stan Hurley and conventional did not belong in the same sentence.

If the man whose default setting was to play fast and loose wanted someone to think unconventionally, she could only imagine what chaos might ensue. “What exactly does that mean, Stan?”

“It’s like this. I’m betting Petrov has gotten out over his skis and he’s making his contemporaries nervous.”

Irene stopped massaging her temples. “Why do you say that?”

“Gut feeling backed up by a couple of facts.”

“Start with the facts.”

Hurley laughed. “You never did think much of my gut. Okay, stick with me. The effort to oust Gorbachev was, what, two years ago? The coup had the backing of the KGB’s leadership and the army along with a whole bunch of Communist Party bigwigs, but it still failed.

When push came to shove, the KGB’s and Soviet military’s rank-and-file members refused to follow their orders to storm the Russian parliament building.

After the dust settled, the coup’s leaders were imprisoned or executed, the KGB broken apart, and the Soviet Union dissolved. ”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Great, because that takes us to today. Russia is no longer a communist totalitarian state, but it’s not a bastion of democracy either.

Corruption has run rampant, many former KGB officers have become instant oligarchs, and Russia’s first democratically elected president begins his day with a vodka and orange juice and switches to straight vodka by lunch.

Things are not going well for the Motherland. ”

“And you think what—Petrov is mounting another coup?”

Hurley sighed. “I think that some of the same people who stopped the coup against Gorbachev a couple of years back might have buyer’s remorse.

Look, Petrov has always been a mover and shaker.

Had the coup not happened, he’d probably be running the KGB today.

But it did, and the KGB was split in half.

Petrov is one of the leaders of the FSK and now works the counterintelligence mission.

Foreign intelligence collection is handled by the SVR, meaning that the Russians in Vienna don’t work for Petrov and may not be on board with whatever the hell he’s doing. ”

“You think Volkov might be able to open a back channel to the SVR?”

“We’re flying blind, Irene. We missed the coup against Gorbachev and dodged a bullet when it wasn’t successful. We got lucky once. We shouldn’t count on getting lucky twice.”

Irene agreed. She glanced at the clock that displayed Moscow time in uncompromising red LED digits.

Only a few hours until nightfall and her opportunity to signal the Russian volunteer.

Now was the time to throw everything at the wall and hope that something stuck.

“This plan of yours, it’s not without significant risk to Volkov. ”

“I know. So does he. We’ve already come to a financial agreement. I’m going to provide security for him during his meets, but like you said, the sense of urgency doesn’t allow for finesse. Things might get rough.”

Irene refrained from pointing out that Stan Hurley had never been known for his finesse.

Instead, she focused on what was actually transpiring in this conversation.

Only weeks ago, Hurley had all but questioned her fitness to be Rapp’s handler.

Now he was coming to her for approval when he could have just run the operation without her knowledge.

Stan Hurley might really be turning over a new leaf.

Or maybe the world was about to end.

“Thank you for letting me know, Stan. I think your reasoning is solid and your plan, while risky, is worth the potential reward. I’m working something here too. Hopefully between the two of us, we’ll get answers for Stansfield.”

“Count on it, Irene. Good hunting.”

“Good hunting, Stan.”

Only Stan could give her a kick in the ass by being nice.

Her team of case officers were certain that they were compromised by FSK watchers.

That might be true, or it might be that the men and women under her charge had been badly rattled and were now jumping at shadows.

One way or another, they were about to find out.

Moscow Station was done sitting on the sidelines.