Matthew Dunn - Sentinel

Though Will didn’t show it, he felt total admiration for the way Sentinel had approached Razin.

Sentinel sighed. “That was three years ago. It all seemed to be working out nicely.” He stared at the wall and frowned. “Why does he want to kill my agents and start a war? How does he benefit from both events?”

Will’s mind raced as he recalled the files he’d read in Langley. “Most of your tier-one agents are high-ranking military or intelligence officers. If they’re all killed, how would that affect Russia’s military capability?”

“It would be an inconvenience, but all of them are replaceable.”

“I thought so.”

Sentinel clearly could see where this was leading. “On the flip side, the agents’ intelligence would give the United States a major advantage in a war with Russia.”

Will agreed. “Advance knowledge of troop movements, the location of mobile strategic missile launch sites, naval deployments, among others. The war would be a one-sided bloodbath.”

Sentinel placed the tips of his fingers together; his eyes were darting left and right. “And yet, America’s military is far superior to Russia’s. Even without my agents, it would still win the war.”

Will remembered Patrick’s words: “Russia has one thing that we don’t: a willingness to sacrifice millions of its countrymen.”

A thought came to his mind.

But before he could articulate it, Sentinel slapped his hands on his legs and expressed the same thought: “Stalemate.”

“Precisely.”

They discussed the fact that if Russia wanted to go to war with the United States, the United States would have no choice other than to react with overwhelming force. The intelligence from Sentinel’s agents would make that reaction precise and swift. But if the agents were dead, Russia would be able to draw out the war and throw millions of bodies at the U.S. military. And at some point during the ongoing massacre of Russians, the United States would have to ask itself if it could keep pushing ahead.

Will nodded. “That’s what Razin’s banking on.”

“Russia can’t be annihilated-”

“-because America won’t have the stomach to do it.”

“So halfway into the war a stalemate is reached.”

“Peace is negotiated.”

“And Russia will honor its heroes.”

Both men stared at each other. Their thoughts were exactly the same, though it was Sentinel who gave voice to them. “The biggest hero of them all would be the man who stepped forward and said that he’d secretly killed my MI6 spies so that Russia wouldn’t be crippled.” He stood up quickly and banged a fist against the wall. “Razin’s not going to lay low or stop; he’s going to make himself that hero. And if he succeeds, he’ll be handed the Russian presidency on a fucking plate.”

The sun was setting over Istanbul as Will walked through the Turkish city’s Grand Bazaar. The place was a vast warren of alleys, streets, and covered walkways-some pedestrian, others strewn with heavily laden cars and trucks carrying goods to and from the multitude of shops on either side of the routes. He was surrounded by the sounds of street vendors calling to crowds of shoppers, car horns, distorted transistor radios playing Ottoman folk music, and a nearby mosque giving the aksam call to prayer. Despite being winter, the air felt warm and was thick with the smells of kebabs, gozleme pancakes, roasted vegetables, simit bread, and spices. He passed shops selling clothes and fabrics, tea, dried fruits and nuts, kitchenware, backgammon sets, cinnamon, turmeric, and guns.

As he pushed his way through the crowds, the sound of the call to prayer grew nearer and soon he was by the front entrance of the small sixteenth-century Rustem Pasha Mosque. Muslim men and women were lined up outside, queuing to enter the beautiful building. He watched them for a while before scanning the route he’d just covered. The place was a throng of bodies, jostling, moving into and out of shops, stopping, and walking. There were too many people for him to be sure that he wasn’t being followed. But he looked anyway, just in case someone looked out of place.

Someone like a twenty- or thirty-something man or woman who could move fast if needed.

Someone whose posture suggested a heightened alertness to his surroundings.

Movement from one shop front to another that was too rapid and had no shopping pattern.

Anything about someone that just looked wrong.

He walked quickly away from the mosque toward the Bosphorus. Streetlamps, shop and residential lights, and car beams were being turned on as dusk fell. The sprawling city became bathed in an electric glow, below a clear sky with a sickle moon and stars.

Reaching the Eminonu docks, he stopped close to the traffic-laden Galata Bridge and waited. The Bosphorus was busy with brightly illuminated ferries, some berthing, others crossing the channel or heading up it to Asia. A gentle sea breeze ran over his face, and for a moment Will enjoyed the sensation. He checked his watch.

He saw the tram; his senses sharpened.

It was one of the modern Bombardier Flexity Swift fleet: two long carriages with concertina breaks halfway along that enabled them to bend with the curvature of the tracks. It was slowing down. Will hurried to a ticket kiosk and bought a token that would allow him to take the tram three stops to Yenikap? station. The tram stopped in front of him. Inside, it was at half capacity.

He walked along the aisle of the front carriage and took a vacant seat next to a middle-aged man. He hoped the journey would take no more than ten minutes. Any longer, and he would risk compromising the person he’d come to meet.

His name was Luka, an SVR officer stationed in Istanbul whose presence in the city was fully declared to the Turkish intelligence service, Milli I?stihbarat Tes?kilat?. But even though his job required close collaboration with the MIT on issues of mutual Russian-Turkish concerns, that did not stop them from covertly following him everywhere he went.

He’d known Luka for three years, during which time the Russian officer had often passed Will secrets. Luka wasn’t a double agent; he was more complicated than that, and by his own admission he gave Will only information that he believed would foster better relations between West and East. Will knew that most of what Luka told him was lies, but occasionally he would produce a gold-dust truth that served both him and MI6.

Not that Luka knew he was talking to MI6. As far as he was concerned, Will was called Emile Villon and was an officer of France’s Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure.

As the tram pulled away, Will turned to the man next to him.

Luka smiled, then spoke in fluent French. “My friends are in the carriage behind us.”

The MIT surveillance detail.

Will returned his gaze to the front of the tram and responded in the same language. “Problem?”

“I don’t think so. But you never know. They can be… nasty fellows when they want to be.”

The tram followed the Turkish coastline. The evening was picturesque, though Will barely registered his surroundings, instead visualizing the rear carriage, knowing they were out of sight of the MIT team but also knowing they could be reached within seconds. “What’s your view on current Russian-American relations?”

Luka answered with a trace of sarcasm in his voice, “You’ve come all this way to ask me that?”

“No, but I’ll benefit from your opinion.”

“Opinion?”

“Insight.”

Luka was silent for a moment. “Relations are shit.” He placed a hand on the back of the seat in front of him, exposing an expensive Cartier watch. “Read the papers.”

“I have, but they don’t tell me what you know.”