Noah Boyd - Last Chance to Die

“Sorry,” Lasker said. The single word seemed genuine. “We’ve got a major problem. There’s no way to make this sound like it’s not hyper-bole, but it is legitimately a matter of national security. The people in this room are the only ones who know what I’m going to tell you.”

“Classified, I got it.”

“I’ve been through your old personnel file again, so I know you’ve been trained in counterintelligence.” Because of a master’s degree in Soviet history, Vail had originally been hired to work the Russians. Out of training school, he’d been sent to Detroit to work general criminal cases in order to develop broader investigative skills, but he was frequently sent back to Quantico for in-service training. That’s how he knew about the old embassy across the street and the building they were now in. “Other than the technology, not much has changed. It’s still pretty much cloak-and-dagger. Actually, more cloaks than daggers. Have you followed any of the recent cases?”

“I’ve always been interested in anything American-Russian, so I read a lot of what’s published.”

“Good, then we won’t have to waste time explaining every nuance of how all this works. Bill, can you fill him in?”

The assistant director stood up, went over to a laptop computer, and tapped a key. The wall above the fireplace, which was being used as a makeshift screen, lit up. A photograph of grainy surveillance quality appeared, showing a man with the flat, pale features of an Eastern European, his sideburns and mustache a little too bushy to be stylish in the United States. “A month ago this individual contacted our Washington Field Office and requested a meeting. He was guarded in the information he supplied but said that he was an intelligence officer with the Russian embassy here in Washington. He would not identify himself by name but instead used the code name Calculus. At this meeting, to qualify himself as legitimate, he turned over five classified documents. When we asked him what he wanted from us, he said he had a list of Americans, some employed by the government and some by corporations with defense contracts, who were supplying information to the SVR, which if you’ve been keeping up, know is the new KGB. He wouldn’t say how many were on the list or where they worked. However, one of the individuals, he was certain, worked in the U.S. intelligence community. He didn’t know which agency.”

“The documents he turned over—how critical was the information?” Vail asked.

“Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to convince us that he could have access to what he claimed. Why do you ask that?”

“Just curious.”

Kate watched Vail carefully. She detected a note of discovery in his voice.

“I assume he wants money,” Vail said.

“Why else would someone betray Mother Russia and risk the executioner?” Langston said. “The way he set it up was quite clever. He would give us, in his words, the ‘smallest fish first, the largest, last,’ which we assume is the intelligence agent. Once we identified the first one, we were to wire-transfer a quarter of a million dollars to a Chicago bank, for which he provided an account number. He said it’s a large bank and that the account, which was opened by one of his relatives who works there, is in a dummy name. He warned that if the Bureau tried to find out who it was or trace the funds, the relative would be alerted and all contact with us would be severed, because if he couldn’t trust us, he was as good as dead. Once the relative notified him that the money had been deposited, we would get the next name. He wanted a quarter of a million for each of them and a half million for the last one, because according to him it’s a highly placed intelligence agent.”

“Did he say how quickly after payment you would get the next name?”

“In fact, he made that quite clear. We would get it, in his words, ‘immediately if not sooner,’ because he felt the longer this dragged out, the better the chances of his being exposed. He said the SVR had been given strict orders by Moscow that it must never become public knowledge that the Russians were spying on the United States again. Although their agents are extremely cautious to start with, apparently that directive has made them completely paranoid. Even the faintest hint of disloyalty launches an all-out probe.”

Vail said, “So he gives you a name, you arrest that person, and then wire a quarter of a million dollars to the Chicago account. Once it’s deposited, you get the next name, and so on until the intelligence agent is caught, and then you send a half million.”

“Right.”

“Does that mean he’s given you the first name?”

“More or less,” the assistant director said.

“As far as spycraft goes,” Vail said to the director, “this sounds pretty paint-by-the-numbers. Why am I here?”

“A couple of reasons,” Langston said. “Two days ago we got a short, cryptic text message from him. He has been recalled to Moscow unexpectedly.”

“Uh-oh,” Vail said.

“What?” Kate asked.

“When someone is suspected of spying, the Russians find some routine excuse to get them back to Moscow. Once there, they’re interrogated, for months if necessary. Should they confess or if the SVR develops any proof, the suspected individual is usually executed for treason. And since it’s not something the Russians are likely to make public, you’d never know,” Vail said.

Langston continued, “Since the first letter, we’ve been trying to identify Calculus. And now we think we know who he is. The CIA has a fairly high-level source in the Russian embassy. In a rare act of cooperation, they’ve identified an individual for us. If they’ve given us the right name, he’s an electrical engineer by training and is extremely cautious, even obsessive, which in the spy business is a good thing. His job is what we call a technical agent. He’s sent all over the United States to their safe houses to wire them for sound and video and record meetings in case any of their double agents should get cold feet. Then they could be threatened with exposure, a foolproof way of keeping an asset’s attention. The rest of it we’re guessing at. We think, after meetings between American sources and their Russian handlers, he would collect the recordings and store them at the embassy. We think that with his financial future in mind, he started making a list of their identities. Maybe even keeping copies of the documents they turned over or other information we could use as corroborating evidence.”

Vail said, “You got to love a communist who appreciates capitalism more than we do.”

“Exactly.”

Vail asked, “Well, let me ask you—hopefully for the last time—why me?”

“The only ones who know about this are the people in this room. If we gave this to any of our agents, I guarantee it would leak out. Your discretion has been established more than once. You have a certain reputation for getting things done despite obstacles that our agents would find … well, procedurally insurmountable.”

Vail laughed. “You mean none of you want to get caught.”

The director said, “The rest of us here are not exactly street-ready, and this has the potential to get challenging. The men in this room haven’t been out there in decades.” Lasker glanced around to see if anyone objected. “Sorry, guys.”

Vail glanced at Kate and then back at the director. “When you offered me this kind of arrangement before, I said no.”

The director pursed his lips. “That was because I thought your not being an agent was a waste of talent and I was hoping you’d eventually realize it. When you were vehement, I accepted it. But this is different. This is vital.”

Vail got up and walked over to the window. He raised the shade and stared at the old Russian embassy across the street. “Funny, five years ago I thought this was exactly what I’d be doing right now. Instead I’m a bricklayer.” He turned back and looked at the men. “While you may find that ironic, I find it unjust.”