JANUARY 26, WEDNESDAY LATE AFTERNOON, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
THE SWIRLED MULTICOLORED DOMES of St. Basil’s and the Kremlin glowed in the early darkness of the Russian winter, and at the far end of Red Square, skaters twirled on an ice rink in the lightly falling snow. A Christmas card perfect scene—if one just went by appearances, but, as Kolya Petrov knew, appearances could be deceptive. Nothing in Moscow was ever as it seemed. Still, if he were a tourist, Kolya might have enjoyed the sights as well as the music, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, blaring over the rink’s loudspeakers. While his musical passion was for jazz, both playing and listening, he also liked classical—even if the Mussorgsky piece seemed a bit of an odd choice for skating music. It was only an idle thought. He wasn’t a tourist or a visiting musician. Nor was he from Belarus visiting relatives—as his fake passport claimed and as he’d casually mentioned at the hotel. He was an American intelligence operative.
An older woman in a shabby coat stood in a booth with an electric heater, renting skates to those who hadn’t brought their own. He told her his size, peeled off the requisite bills, and she handed over a pair of brown hockey skates with rusty blades. He carried them to a nearby bench, kicked off his shoes and tried them. They fit, a little looser than he would have liked—not great if he’d wanted to play hockey or figure skate, but good enough for today’s purposes.
He was dressed warmly, a wool cap covering his blond hair and three layers—long sleeve shirt, wool sweater, blue ski jacket, but it was still cold. He estimated the temperature at maybe five degrees. Colder than Washington D.C. where he currently lived—but not as cold as he remembered from his last experience of January in Russia.
The skating rink, small by Moscow standards, was in front of the GUM, the state department store during the days of the Soviet Union, now a luxury shopping mall, filled with designer stores. Open December to March, the rink was well lit, and dozens of warmly bundled skaters of all ages circled the ice.
While tightening his skates, he assessed the small crowd around the rink. One man in a sheepskin hat, late middle age with a hard face, stood on the far side of the rink, hands in pockets. He seemed to have no connection with any of the skaters—nor did he seem interested in skating.
Sheepskin Hat, a little less surreptitiously than Kolya, was checking out the crowd around the rink, but his attention focused on a woman with red hair skating with a dark-haired teenage girl. Did Sheepskin Hat know that the red-haired woman was about to pass something off to American intelligence—or was he just routinely assigned because of who she was: Maria Andropov, mistress and accountant to the President of the Russian Federation—and Kolya’s contact?
Or maybe nothing was going on. The man could just be enjoying the sight of the skaters or maybe watching a friend or a relative.
Kolya’s instincts said no, and he hadn’t survived seven years on the job by ignoring his instincts. Sheepskin Hat had the look and feel of a professional on the job. Kolya suspected he was FSB—the state security organization that had replaced the KGB.
Kolya saw no one else that looked suspicious. Then again, someone with good tradecraft probably wouldn’t draw attention to himself. The mere fact that Kolya’d noticed Sheepskin Hat either meant that he was there to divert attention from whoever might be the real threat—or that Maria was considered low priority, and they’d assigned someone who wasn’t all that good.
He hoped it was the latter, but he had to be prepared for anything. Moscow rules. Trust no one. Trust nothing.
Working with no official cover (NOC) meant he had no diplomatic
immunity. If he were caught, the American government wouldn’t admit that he worked for them. As a former Russian national, he’d be deemed not just a spy but a traitor. Being a Jewish former Russian national would just increase the abuse he’d suffer. He’d wind up in a concrete cell in the basement of the Lubyanka, where a guard would put a bullet through his brain—after months of physical torment. And he wouldn’t be the only person executed.
The red-headed woman and her child would be shot along with him.
He could walk away, but there were no backup arrangements. Besides, if Maria was under surveillance, all the more reason to act quickly— before anyone found evidence of her betrayal—and she was arrested.
Everything was in place, and this was the best chance.
He wobbled from the bench to the edge of the ice and entered the rink. Muscle memory kicked in. Although he hadn’t skated in years, he remembered the feel and the moves from when he had played hockey as a child. But the trick was to look like a novice.
He waved his arms as if trying to keep his balance and stumbled into an old man, who said two rude words. Kolya apologized.
He made it halfway around the rink before tripping and falling, landing on his knees and the palms of his hands. The ice stung. After a minute, he pulled himself up, took two tentative strokes on the ice, lost his balance again, and grabbed onto a young woman. She was startled but put out a hand to steady him.
“Lean forward,” she said. “Bend your knees.”
“Spacibo,” he thanked her. But he needed to appear clumsy. He shuffled forward, tiny steps on the ice, resisting the urge to glide.
Two minutes later, the red-haired woman passed on his left. He stumbled again, grabbing onto her to get his balance. While holding on to her, he whispered a sentence into her ear.
Her response was indignant. “Idiot. Let go of me. If you can’t skate, get off the ice.” Her tone was in contrast to the fear in her deep blue eyes. Not just for herself. For her daughter. The President of Russia murdered people for much less than what she was doing.
“Izvinite.” He pronounced the Russian apology.
She shoved him.
“What an asshole.” Blissfully unaware, the teenage girl shot him a
withering look.
Then the two of them skated away. He made his way to the edge of
the rink and continued to circle, falling, bumping into strangers, and apologizing for another forty minutes, twenty minutes after Maria and her daughter had left the ice. Then he exited the ice, changed back into his shoes, and returned the skates.
The thumb drive that Maria had slipped into his hand was safe in his pocket. His next destination would be the mall, where he’d pass the drive on to another operative who would get it out of the country. By evening, the information on the accounts, a number of which were located inside the United States, that the Russian President used to hide billions he’d stolen, would be in the hands of the Executive Covert Agency, otherwise known as the ECA, the Executive Covert Agency, the intelligence agency that employed Kolya.
Next, the more dangerous operation: getting Maria and her daughter safely out of Russia.
He looked for the man in the sheepskin hat—but he was gone as well.
