Page 67 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)
M OSCOW , R USSIA
I RENE Kennedy counted up five floors on the US embassy building as she drove past. As per the Russian volunteer’s instructions, a single light remained lit in the chief of station’s office.
The sun had set about an hour ago, and with darkness shrouding the city, the light could have been cast by a distant star rather than a simple desk lamp.
Irene liked that analogy. A single star in an otherwise dark sky was cause for making a wish.
As her SUV carried her west on Bolshoy Deviatinsky, Irene fervently wished for luck in tonight’s operation.
Her team was going to need it.
“Ma’am, are you sure we can’t talk you out of this?”
Irene smiled at the honorific.
She’d made such progress in prodding her protective detail to call her by her first name, but that headway had been lost the moment she’d proposed something crazy to her agents.
“We’ve been over this, Fred,” Irene said. “I understand your concern, but my entire team is putting it on the line this evening. I’ve got to do my part.”
“You’re the boss, Chief,” Fred Burton said from the front passenger seat.
Her driver, once again Brett Maryott, didn’t say anything at all, but he did activate his right-turn signal in order to merge with the traffic on Konyushkovskaya Street.
She considered his silence a win.
Like her team of case officers, her protective detail was not big on her decision to participate in tonight’s festivities. Brett completed his turn and goosed the SUV’s accelerator, pressing Irene back into her seat. “We’ve got company.”
“Confirmed,” Fred said as he looked in the side-view mirror. “Our Russian friends are out tonight in force.”
“Not to worry,” Irene said. “I have it on good authority that the FSK will be on their best behavior.”
The DSS agents’ lack of response spoke volumes.
Stansfield had phoned just prior to her leaving the embassy to confirm that the Russian deputy chief of mission and his spouse were being expelled based on an issue with the spouse’s visa.
Since the pair hadn’t been formally declared persona non grata, the interaction hadn’t risen to the level of an international incident, but a message had been delivered all the same.
The pair were going to be flown back to Moscow on a State Department jet, and the jet would not return to America until Kris Henrik was aboard.
The CIA’s Moscow Station should be free to operate this evening without fear of the employees’ families bearing the repercussions for their actions.
At least that was the hope.
“Okay, ma’am,” Fred said. “Four more turns and it will be your show. Ready with the jack-in-the-box?”
Irene eyed the contraption on the seat to her left. “I push the button and get out of the way, right?”
“Exactly. Just make sure you slide it into your seat before you exit the vehicle. The idea is to keep your silhouette exactly the same.”
While technology had revolutionized the profession of espionage, sometimes the old ways were still best. The jack-in-the-box was a perfect example.
When the activation button was depressed, a person-shaped balloon rapidly inflated, giving the impression that the seat’s previous occupant was still in the car.
The jack-in-the-box couldn’t withstand close scrutiny, but for a mobile surveillance team trying to follow the SUV, it should do the trick.
“Two minutes,” Brett said. “Your drop-off’s coming up on the right, ma’am.”
Irene peered into the night searching for the industrial building. Tonight was just a rehearsal, but Irene intended to go through each step as if it were the real deal short of exiting the SUV.
A moment later, the boxy structure’s outline materialized.
“In sight,” Irene said.
“Okay,” Fred said. “Remember, if we were doing this for real, I’d want you to duck behind the bushes in front of the building and stay frozen for at least five minutes.
The Russians are probably using more than one tail vehicle.
After your five minutes are up, walk at a normal pace to your car.
Brett and I should be able to keep them from getting close enough to determine that the jack-in-the-box is a fake for at least thirty minutes. ”
Irene did remember.
All of it.
This was partially because she had a photographic memory, but mostly because the plan had been hers.
She still nodded anyway, as though she were committing the details Fred had just recounted to memory.
Tonight’s goal was twofold: One, to see if her case officer’s heat state was real or the product of an overactive imagination.
Two, to stretch and test the Russian surveillance team.
Though she had no way of knowing if her volunteer was still checking the embassy windows after two days of silence, Irene was acting on the assumption that she would meet with the Russian tomorrow.
This meant that tonight might be her only chance to practice before she’d have to lose the FSK surveillance team for real.
The plan to do so was simple.
Her case officers had left work this evening as they normally did in ones and twos, but rather than go home to their families, the men and women began to execute SDRs that would take them across Moscow’s four cardinal directions, dragging their surveillance teams with them.
Though the Russians certainly had the home-field advantage, their resources were finite.
Irene hoped that by forcing Russian counterintelligence operatives to pick and choose whom to follow, she would dilute the surveillance net currently ensnaring her CIA officers.
Especially the Russians assigned to watch her.
“Thirty seconds, ma’am.”
Irene released her seat belt and grasped the door handle with one hand while resting the other on the jack-in-the-box.
After Brett made the next turn, a multistory industrial building on the right would briefly obscure the SUV from the pursuing surveillance team.
This blind spot would allow her to activate the decoy, exit her vehicle, and hide behind the hedges.
Once the Russian surveillance team drove by, she would walk to the parking lot, where a car had been pre-positioned for her.
Simple.
“Okay, Irene,” Brett said. “Five, four, three, two—”
Light shattered the darkness, nearly blinding her.
Irene turned toward the headlights, registering the presence of a massive truck.
Then her head connected with the passenger window accompanied by the sounds of buckling metal, squealing tires, and breaking glass.