Oath of Office

Elizaveta had taken three hours to drive out of D.C., picking a random Hampton Inn off Interstate 81 north of Winchester after a meandering journey to Front Royal and through the Shenandoah forest that was sure to scrape off the FBI agents who routinely followed her. There were several who rotated through, but she called them Bullwinkle and Rocky, no matter who they happened to be at the moment.

* * *

Once she’d chosen the Hampton Inn, she used a prepaid phone to call and inform her two most trusted men of the location. She’d made no specific plans in advance, so the Americans would have nothing to intercept and no idea where to plant listening devices in advance of her meeting. Even so, she spoke in code, using a one-time pad so only her men could understand. The only way the FBI would have the single-use codebook is if one of these two men had turned. If that was the case, she was lost anyway. Once she was in the hotel room, mobile phones would go in the mini-fridge and all appliances would be unplugged.

If it had been possible to conduct the meeting on the surface of the moon, she would have done so. This assignment was beyond sensitive.

It was madness.

Bobkova had no moral qualms against killing. Some would say she had neither morals nor qualms. She had no problem at all giving some pesky reporter a shove or inducing a toxic reaction in a traitor, but one fact of espionage was so bold as to be outlined in crimson in the operational training manual: Murder of the opposing team was bad business. There was nothing like losing one of their own that galvanized either side into hunting moles and rooting out spies. The FBI would devote hundreds, even thousands, of agents to find the culprit. Smert shpionam—Stalin’s NKVD motto of “Death to spies”—became an all-too-real possibility. Notions of righteous vengeance gave everyone itchy trigger fingers. Beyond that, the real work would grind to a halt. The added scrutiny after a killing would make intelligence gathering next to impossible. Even if Bobkova was somehow able to hide her involvement in an assassination, expulsion was a foregone conclusion for anyone remotely suspected — and she did not want to leave the West. Capitalism was the “main enemy,” but it provided for a comfortable apartment and fresh fruit all year round.

There were ways to stay, but they were unthinkable. Were they not?

She looked at the two men across from her in the dim hotel lighting and slid a sheet of thin onionskin paper across the faux-leather ottoman before leaning back in the rolling desk chair. The men would take a moment to read the instructions. She was ninety-nine percent sure that there were no listening devices in the room, but one percent was enough to blow up in her face, so she remained careful. The fewer words they spoke out loud regarding the actual plan the better.

The men smelled of heavily scented Russian soap and a shellacking of American cologne. The combination might have worked in other circumstances, but the tight confines of the hotel room had quickly taken on the assaultive odor of an airport duty-free shop. They both had mild crushes on Bobkova, and she assumed the cologne was for her benefit. It did not matter. They wouldn’t be here long. And Bobkova did not plan to get any closer to either of these men than she already was. Maybe Gorev. He was young and muscular and knew how to shave his ears. But that would have to be later. To do anything now would show favoritism, which would just piss off Pugin. Even he was not entirely unpleasant to look at, not handsome, but he would have been okay with a little grooming.

Both were fit, battle-hardened, and wise to the ways of the street. Experienced intelligence operatives, possessed of the added brutish edge that made them valuable for this type of idiotic mission. She would beat the shit out of that fool Dudko for forcing her into this. If he got her sent back to Russia, she would kill him. Perhaps she would kill him anyway.

Gorev rose from his stool and walked to the bathroom without speaking. He had buzz-cut blond hair and a sad smile that belied his thuggish skills. She heard him flush the toilet. There was hardly any need. The flimsy paper would disintegrate the moment it touched moisture of any kind. Even the humid air of Washington, D.C., would render it unreadable mush in a matter of days. Gorev came into the short hall and leaned against the wall and waited for his partner to finish reading over his own briefing paper for the second time. At forty, Viktor Pugin was older than Gorev by ten years, with dark eyes on a pie-pan face. Far too many black hairs sprouted from his ears for Elizaveta’s taste, but his extra years had brought with them a certain contemplative nature that she respected. He was quick and careful, with just the right measure of each.

She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, looking at each man in turn, studying them to gauge their mood.