Eagle Station

In an odd sense, the man sitting beside Leonov in front of Koshkin’s desk was an illustration of the same principle. Though tall and powerfully built, Minister of State Security Viktor Kazyanov was a physical and moral coward, fit only to be a toady and yes-man for those who were stronger and more ruthless. Gennadiy Gryzlov had kept him on as head of Russia’s intelligence services for precisely those reasons. Now Kazyanov’s weaknesses served Leonov’s own purposes. Through Kazyanov, he could exercise effective control over the nation’s secret police and foreign intelligence operations without unduly alarming the other government ministers who unwisely imagined they were still his equals.

The sleek computer on Koshkin’s desk chimed once. “Well?” Leonov demanded.

“We have a match for one of our two suspects,” Koshkin said evenly. He turned his flat-panel display so that the others could see the image it displayed. The broad-featured face of a very large man filled the screen. “According to his identity papers, this is Sergei Kondakov — a mid-ranked official in the Ministry of Industry and Trade.” His thin smile never reached his eyes. “And if we were relying only on the personnel records of that ministry, we would believe him to be exactly who he says he is.”

“Because those records have been hacked,” Leonov said dryly. Koshkin nodded. “So who is he really?”

“Probably an American. And almost certainly an agent for Scion.” Koshkin touched a key, bringing up a new picture. This one showed the same man, only this time wearing a far more stylish business suit. “But for the past several years, we have believed him to be a German national named Klaus Wernicke, a senior executive for Tekhwerk, GmbH.”

Leonov’s eyes narrowed. “How… interesting,” he ground out.

“Indeed,” Koshkin said flatly. Tekhwerk, GmbH was supposedly a jointly owned German and Russian import-export company specializing in advanced industrial equipment. Since its operations helped Russia evade Western sanctions, Moscow’s law enforcement and regulatory agencies tended to allow it wide latitude, often turning a blind eye to its occasionally irregular business activities. If, as now seemed likely, the company was actually a front for Scion’s spies operating on Russian soil, that had been an unforgivable error.

The computer chimed again. Two new images appeared — the first showing the attractive, blond-haired woman the Defense Ministry’s digitized personnel files identified as Lieutenant Colonel Katya Volkova of the Aerospace Forces. The second showed what was unmistakably the same woman, only in this photo she wore elegant civilian business clothes and her hair was a dark red color.

“And this one?” Leonov asked grimly.

“She is also supposedly a German national.”

Leonov snorted. “Who is also employed by Tekhwerk?” he guessed.

“Yes,” Koshkin said. “According to her passport, her name is Erika Roth. Nominally, she’s a corporate accounts executive — though based in Berlin, rather than here in Moscow.” He sat back, looking pleased with himself. “It appears that the glittering lure of the Firebird’s magical feathers has worked just as we hoped.”

Leonov nodded. Besides helping create the illusion of a serious Russian program to develop its own version of America’s spaceplanes, the Firebird test was also a trap. Q Directorate specialists had created two initially identical lists of those authorized to witness the Kansk-Dalniy demonstration flight — one protected by a tough, but hackable, security firewall, and the other, the real one, sheltered behind impenetrable barriers. A cross-check of both lists several hours ago had immediately revealed evidence of tampering… and the false identities being used by the two imposters.

Armed with that information and using concealed cameras rigged at various points around the airfield, Koshkin’s experts had easily obtained a number of high-resolution photographs of “Lieutenant Colonel Valkova” and “Sergei Kondakov.” These pictures were then fed into one of Q Directorate’s supercomputers. Sophisticated facial recognition software first developed by a leading American high-tech company for the People’s Republic of China made it possible to cross-check them against a large number of government and industry databases in near real time… yielding these more accurate identifications of the two Scion agents.

Leonov discounted the possibility that Wernicke and Roth were operatives for the CIA or one of the other Western intelligence services. The boldness and skill with which these two spies had infiltrated what was supposedly a top secret flight demonstration had all the hallmarks of a Scion operation. Government-run espionage organizations were far more cautious, hobbled by bureaucratic and political restrictions that inevitably reduced their effectiveness.