Eagle Station

More information scrolled across Koshkin’s screen. “Both agents arrived at Krasnoyark’s Yemelyanovo International Airport this morning on a flight from Moscow,” he reported. He smiled wryly. “Like everyone else genuinely invited to Kansk-Dalniy, they have tickets on a return flight to Sheremetyevo leaving this evening.”

Leonov snorted his own amused understanding. Apparently, no one from Moscow would willingly spend an hour longer in a Siberian rural backwater than was absolutely necessary. Not even a couple of enemy agents.

For the first time, Viktor Kazyanov spoke up. “I can have an FSB team ready to arrest these spies at Sheremetyevo when they land,” he suggested hesitantly.

“Absolutely not! Don’t be an idiot!” Leonov snapped. He saw the other man’s face turn gray with anxiety and sighed. Useful though Kazyanov’s timidity was to him, watching him act more like a mouse than a man could still be extremely irritating.

“Look, Viktor, there’s no point in spooking the Americans now,” he explained patiently. “Remember, we want Wernicke and Roth to pass on the false information we’ve just fed them.” He shook his head decisively. “No, we’ll give these Scion agents plenty of room for the moment.”

“While we dig deeply into Tekhwerk and all of its operations?” Koshkin suggested.

“That’s exactly right, Arkady,” Leonov agreed. He looked at both Koshkin and Kazyanov. “Understand this: I want a very thorough, but also extremely careful, investigation, gentlemen. Q Directorate will handle the cyber end of things, while the FSB does the physical legwork. But before you move in to make any arrests, make sure you’ve learned just how far this Scion front company has burrowed into our military and defense industry infrastructure.”

He stabbed a finger at Koshkin’s computer screen, which now showed new live pictures of the two foreign spies. They were standing side by side, looking up at the sky as the modified Tu-160 made its final approach back to the airfield. “Of themselves, those two are nothing. But if we play our cards right, they’ll lead us right where we want to go. And when the time comes, I want Scion’s whole Russia-based espionage network in the bag. Here. In the Lubyanka’s basement cells… singing like birds while your interrogators work them over. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Marshal,” Kazyanov said quickly. Koshkin merely nodded.

“Good.” Leonov stood up. His jaw tightened. “Because it’s high time we cut this damnable cancer out of the Motherland. Now get to it.”

Thirteen

Evolution Tower, International Business Center, Moscow

A Couple of Hours Later

The weirdly twisting Evolution Tower soared more than eight hundred feet above the right bank of the Moskva River. Its odd, DNA-like double spiral was created by a slight, three-degree offset of each floor from the one below it. High up on one of the eastward-facing spirals, the large suite of offices leased by Tekhwerk, GmbH occupied a substantial share of the building’s forty-second floor. From here the company’s senior managers had sweeping views of Moscow’s crowded city center. The shattered ruins of the Kremlin were plainly visible, as was the roof of the Lubyanka, just three and a half miles away.

Only a tiny handful of those working out of these offices understood the irony of the views they enjoyed. The vast majority of Tekhwerk’s staff believed they were employed by a legitimate export-import company. And, in fact, well over 90 percent of its day-to-day operations were perfectly legal, or at least winked at by the ruling authorities. A byzantine web of holding companies and investment firms completely concealed Scion’s ownership of the enterprise. As far as Kevin Martindale was concerned, it was icing on the cake that Tekhwerk’s profits — largely derived from Russian government contracts — funded so many of Scion’s covert-action and intelligence-gathering operations.

Zach Orlov was one of the few in on the secret. Supposedly a native Russian Tekhwerk information technology specialist, he had actually been born in the United States and he was one of Scion’s top computer hackers. From his émigré parents, one a brilliant mathematician and the other an accomplished musician, he’d picked up perfect fluency in Russian. Gifted with high intelligence and focus, he’d been so bored in regular school that he’d spent most of his teenage years systematically and illegally breaking into every computer network he could access. If Martindale hadn’t recruited him into Scion, it was probably a coin toss whether he’d have ended up behind bars — or working for the U.S. government’s National Security Agency.