Eagle Station

Inside the MiG-31’s forward cockpit, Major Stepan Grigoryev kept a careful eye on the digital timer counting down along the edge of his head-up display. “Stand by, Alexey,” he announced over the intercom. “Twenty seconds.”

“Standing by,” Captain Balandin, his weapon systems officer, acknowledged from the fighter’s rear cockpit. “Cloud cover remains at one hundred percent. There are no air contacts on my radar.”

“Understood,” Grigoryev said. That was good news. All civilian and military air traffic had been diverted away from this region for the duration of the “Firebird flight test.” After all, there was no point in staging this little magic act if anyone on the ground or in the air could see what was happening. Abruptly, the timer on his HUD flashed to zero.

“Going supersonic,” he snapped. His left hand shoved the MiG’s throttles all the way forward and then slightly to the left — going to full military power, past the detent, and into afterburner. Raw fuel poured into the exhaust stream of both huge Soloviev D-30F6 engines and ignited. Immediately, he felt himself shoved back against his seat as the fighter accelerated with astonishing rapidity.

Seconds later, the boom created by its sudden transition beyond the sound barrier rippled across Omsk and its suburbs. For those watching the monitors back at Kansk-Dalniy, it would seem as if the mythical Firebird test aircraft had just slashed through the sky high above the city at more than six thousand kilometers per hour.

Beneath his oxygen mask, Grigoryev bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. Not a bad piece of sleight of hand, he thought. First, send a Tu-160 bomber — fitted out with fake engine nacelles — up through the clouds and well away from the airfield, out of sight and out of hearing. And then, at precisely calculated intervals, have each of the three MiG-31 fighters stationed over Kansk-Dalniy, Novosibirsk, and Omsk suddenly accelerate beyond the speed of sound… creating the perfect illusion of a hypersonic-capable aircraft streaking across central Russia at incredibly high speed.

Q Directorate, Federal Security Service (FSB) Headquarters, the Lubyanka, Moscow

That Same Time

For more than one hundred years, the Lubyanka had been the center of state terror in Russia. From its maze of identical corridors and cryptically numbered offices, the secret police, whether called the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, KGB, or FSB, waged a never-ending clandestine war against foreign spies and anyone else unlucky enough to be declared an enemy of the state. It was a brutal conflict fought without pity or remorse. Those dragged inside the Lubyanka for questioning rarely left its dank, bloodstained cellars alive.

In recent years, however, the old ways of extracting information desired by the Lubyanka’s masters — physical torture, truth drugs, and sleep deprivation — had been supplemented by more subtle means. Q Directorate’s skilled programmers and supercomputers were among the most important of these new weapons. Originally organized to conduct offensive cyberwar and computer-hacking operations, the directorate was now also expected to defend Russia’s critical industries and computer systems against foreign espionage and sabotage.

It carried out this vital work from a highly secure facility built into the very heart of the Lubyanka. Thick walls, floors, and ceilings with interwoven layers of metal paneling, wire mesh, acoustic fill, and gypsum wallboard protected its offices from electronic eavesdropping. The rooms themselves were utterly plain, devoid of anything but desks, chairs, and masses of ultramodern computer equipment. There were no windows. And the only way in or out was barred both by armed guards and rigorous biometric screening procedures.

The Spartan décor of Major General Arkady Koshkin’s private office matched those of his subordinates, with only a small sideboard and silver samovar for making tea as obvious luxuries. At first glance, Koshkin’s physical appearance was equally unimposing. He was a short, slight man with a high, wrinkled forehead and thick spectacles. Anyone passing him on the street would have mistaken him for a minor functionary in some unimportant ministry.

All in all, the head of Q Directorate was a textbook example of how first impressions could be deceiving, Marshal Leonov thought approvingly. Only Koshkin’s eyes, gleaming with ambition and intelligence, gave him away.