“Look what he did to Cara. That could be you lying in the hospital wondering when your new liver’s going to show up. Or Anna. I can’t protect you from him. Maybe I can’t protect you from anyone. Most of the time I’m not even here.”
“Anna and I would already be dead if it weren’t for you.”
“But you’re not. You’re alive. Maybe you should start thinking about how you’re going to stay that way.”
“I have enemies, too, Mitch. The new identity you gave me is good, but no lie is perfect. Can you protect me from Maxim Krupin? Probably not. But I’m much more likely to be targeted by someone from my past than yours. And in light of that, living with a vindictive professional assassin isn’t bad for me.”
“Tell that to the people who scraped my wife off the sidewalk.”
She let out a long breath. “Are you sure this is about me and Anna? Or is it about you? If you drive us away, you can have your nice neat life back. Just you and Scott’s supermen. When one of them dies you all get drunk together and talk about honor and duty and all that other male nonsense. Then you forget them. You tell yourself that their time was up or that they made a mistake you wouldn’t have. And when it’s finally your turn, they’ll do the same for you. Drink and tell stories and forget.” She shook her head. “Life’s messier than that, Mitch.”
CHAPTER 24
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
USA
RAPP crammed the Egg McMuffin in his mouth and chased it with what was left of his Coke. A garbage can had recently appeared in the corner of Irene Kennedy’s private elevator, likely because she’d gotten tired of finding his fast food wrappers on the floor. He took advantage of it and watched the numbers above the door climb.
Rapp normally steered clear of Langley, but a text he’d received at 1 a.m. suggested this meeting would be worth an exception. Apparently, the Agency’s Russia analysts had finally come up with something more useful than shrugs and bullshit speculation.
Kennedy’s assistants weren’t in yet and he strode through the reception area, leaving his empty cup on one of their desks. Azarov had beat him there and was standing in the middle of Kennedy’s office, looking a little lost. She was oblivious to them both, sitting at her desk, talking quietly into her phone.
“How is Cara?”
“Her spirits are improving. But there’s more to think about. To talk about.”
Rapp remembered waking up in the hospital to the news that his wife was dead. It had been the worst moment of his life, but at least it had been over quickly. Seeing Cara full of tubes and knowing that she was going to stay that way for the foreseeable future was something completely different. Azarov had to face her every day with the knowledge that he was the cause of her suffering. It was better than the alternative, but Rapp wasn’t sure by how much.
“He’s ready for us,” Kennedy said, hanging up the phone. “We’re going to meet in the conference room down the hall. The AV equipment is better.”
They followed her to a room where Anton McCormick was connecting his laptop to a projector. He nodded a casual greeting as they entered but froze when Azarov appeared. As the head of the Agency’s Russia team he would be familiar with Azarov’s history, but knew nothing about his relationship with Rapp. That was on a purely need-to-know basis and the names of the people who needed to know could fit on the back of a postage stamp.
“Grisha, I’d like you to meet Anton,” Kennedy said. They exchanged a brief greeting in Russian and then McCormick switched back to English to get started.
“Thanks for coming out so early. My people have been working ’round the clock and we just struck on this a few hours ago. For now, details are sketchy, but we’ll be filling them in as fast as we can.”
He clicked to a slide of a shirtless Maxim Krupin drinking vodka by a lake. “Despite everything going on in Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, Krupin’s been unusually quiet. One interview and no personal appearances have been logged in weeks. And more than that, he has the state run media focusing very much on the growing corruption scandal surrounding his prime minister.”
“So he decided to go camping?” Rapp said. “Maxim Krupin handed his country over to a bunch of flunkies so he could go get promo shots of him fighting grizzlies with a pocketknife? I don’t think so.”
“I’m not sure our bears are technically grizzlies,” Azarov corrected.
“Point’s valid, though.”
“Agreed.”
“Are you two finished?” Kennedy said. “Anton, please continue.”
“Thank you. The Russians eat up this kind of testosterone-fueled propaganda. But Mitch is right. The timing and sheer amount of footage is something we haven’t seen before.”
“Like you say, though, it plays well with his base,” Kennedy said. “So unusual, but not shocking.”
“There’s more. We have detailed maps of Russia and we’ve tracked down all the locations where those videos were made. All were done within a twenty-four hour period inside an area that spans about a hundred miles. He basically spent an entire day being ferried around for photo ops.”
“Again, this doesn’t seem that unusual,” Kennedy said, playing the role of devil’s advocate. “He wanted to get all the propaganda out of the way so he could spend the rest of the time hunting in peace.”
“No,” Azarov said. “Maxim doesn’t actually like the outdoors. He does it entirely for the cameras. He wouldn’t spend valuable time away from the Kremlin if there was no filming being done.”
“Exactly,” McCormick agreed. “And that leaves a lot of time unaccounted for. If Krupin wasn’t wandering around in the woods with a film crew in tow, where was he?”
“Mistress?” Rapp said.
“No,” Azarov said. “He has many, but it’s an open secret. And they all live in or around Moscow as far as I know. Krupin doesn’t like leaving the city. Security arrangements are complicated and he’s afraid of people plotting against him while he’s away.”
McCormick advanced to a video of Krupin on a Russian news program. “This is from a year ago. The audio isn’t important—it’s just another kiss-ass state media interview. What’s interesting, though, is comparing it to the one he did just yesterday.” McCormick clicked forward again. “Notice anything different?”
“He’s wearing tinted glasses,” Azarov said immediately.
“The interview’s being done outside and it’s sunny,” Kennedy pointed out.
“One of Krupin’s greatest weapons is his stare,” Azarov countered. “I know this as well as anyone. The idea that he would choose to wear glasses like that in an interview is hard to imagine.”
“In fact, we have over a hundred examples of Krupin speaking outdoors and he’s not wearing sunglasses in a single one,” McCormick confirmed. “Do you notice anything else?”
“He’s pretty tan for a guy who you say was just outside for a day,” Rapp said.
“Bingo. You’ve touched on another superlative, Mitch. This is the darkest we’ve ever seen him.”
“I admire what you must have gone through to get a quantitative analysis of his tan,” Kennedy said, “but are we perhaps getting into the weeds here?”
“I wish I had a smoking gun for you, Irene, but what I’m working with is more of an accumulation of circumstantial evidence.”
“Leading somewhere, I hope.”
“Bear with me just a little longer and look how many cuts there are during this interview,” McCormick said, fast-forwarding through it. “This is a five minute piece and there are three. Normally, Krupin would do that in one push. And then there’s the sun again. If you look at the angle, this interview took a half an hour to shoot.”
“I agree with Anton that this is unusual to the point of being suspicious,” Azarov said. “Maxim is very jealous with his time and has a powerful disdain for the press. Even his own.”