FOREWORD Read online

  Shortly before he moved, Helen dropped the bombshell. She was carrying his child, and she intended to keep it. Although she didn’t ask for anything in the way of support, John Huth still maintained at least some of the old-fashioned values with which he’d been raised. He had money, having been the sole heir to his late father; a man of not inconsiderable wealth. And Helen’s child was his responsibility.

  So for almost twenty years, he’d been paying $1,500 per month into a trust fund for a son he’d never met. Even though he hadn’t seen Helen since leaving Georgia, he still maintained occasional contact with her. She would write to his work address at Langley, keeping him abreast of Billy’s progress. Apparently, he’d just won a place at the University of Georgia to study medicine. From the pictures John Huth had seen, he was the type of boy to make any father proud; captain of the football team, a gifted athlete and academically brilliant. He comforted himself with the knowledge that at least something good had resulted from that sordid episode.

  And, to this day, Cleo still knew nothing of Helen or Billy. She didn’t pay close attention to her husband’s finances, so she had never noticed the regular monthly payments to the Columbus branch of the First Bank of Georgia. John and Cleo Huth had two children of their own now, aged eleven and three. For all intents and purposes, their lives epitomized middle-aged domestic bliss. But even now, John Huth was still a man plagued by guilt. He had spent two decades asking himself why he had done it, but had never come up with a satisfactory answer. Perhaps it was loneliness, perhaps it was just because he had the opportunity. The truth of it was that Helen and Billy embodied a secret that would probably go with him to the grave.

  In fact, the only person who had ever uncovered the story was Paul Nielsen. It had happened when John Huth was recruited by the Agency a few years’ earlier. Anybody joining a sensitive organization such as the CIA is subject to the strictest of background checks. One routine check uncovered the anonymous payments. Nielsen had quizzed Huth on it, and the future DDO had known better than to lie. After he’d come clean, Nielsen promised him that it was not a problem and that the story would never be repeated. I know what it’s like, every man has his secrets, doesn’t he, and yes, I understand what it’s like to be away from your family and be surrounded by temptation, nothing to be ashamed of, you’re not the first, won’t be the last.

  Now four years’ later, that same man was smiling at him across a dinner table, threatening to use his knowledge of Helen and Billy to destroy a blissful marriage in order to satisfy an immoral and quite possibly illegal political agenda.

  “I guess I have no choice, do I?” Huth said finally.

  Nielsen smiled thinly at him, saying nothing, his face aglow with self-satisfaction. Then he returned his attention to the menu.

  “I’ve heard the gravis lax is excellent in here,” he remarked. “Shall we order?”

  “I’m not hungry any more.”

  John Huth had never hated anyone as much as Paul Nielsen at that moment.

  FARMINGTON VALLEY, CONNECTICUT

  He had fallen asleep fully clothed on his bed, a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels sitting open on the nightstand. On the television, Jay Leno was cracking jokes at the expense of Vice President Adam Jones; a tragicomic figure whose apparent intellectual shortcomings had made him an irresistible target for satirists and comedians. The sound on the TV was muted, and its pale blue light reflected off the pastille gray walls of the darkened bedroom.

  He was sweating profusely, his sleep tortured by unseen demons that he fended off with his arms. His murmur was groggy but repetitive.

  “Sandra… Sandra…”

  Suddenly, he jerked upright in his bed, aware that something other than the nightmare had disturbed his sleep. His head felt like it had taken the full weight of a sledgehammer and he had a terrible taste in his mouth, as if something had defecated in it.

  What the hell…?

  Somebody was knocking at the door. He checked his watch. Who the hell could be bothering me at this time of night? He had vague recollections of a bar brawl. Had that been today, or the day before? Perhaps he was imagining it. With every passing day, events and dreams seemed to blur increasingly into a single strand of consciousness where reality was not necessarily a given. It was the booze, he knew. It was the booze that kept him sane, and it was the effect of booze that was destroying his mind.

  Heads I lose, Tails you win.

  And I’m too yellow to face my sins.

  He rose to his feet and was rewarded with a throbbing sensation in his head that caused him to groan. His body’s tolerance for liquor seemed to be diminishing by the day. Getting old, pal, he told himself for not the first time recently. That point was emphasized when he caught a glimpse of his haggard features in the bedroom mirror. Thirty-nine going on sixty. As if he didn’t have enough enemies in the world, now Time had joined the long line of abstractions queuing up to hurt him. Well, he thought,at least I’m still in good shape. And the old reflexes are still there ,even if they are a bit blunter than they were .

  His visitor knocked again.

  “Okay, for God’s sake. I’m coming.”

  He staggered into the hallway, barely managing not to stumble into a wall that seemed to have moved since the last time he was here.

  He opened the door

  “Hey buddy,” his visitor grinned. “You look like shit.”

  Dr Lewis Stein felt his jaw drop in astonishment. As a former member of the British parachute regiment and American intelligence services, he had learned to expect almost anything.

  Anything except for the Director of the CIA banging on his door.

  NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTER, THE PENTAGON

  “Okay. What the hell is so important that you have to drag me all the way down here at this time of night?”

  General Marion Westwood, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, didn’t bother to conceal his displeasure as he stormed into a soundproofed conference room, known as ‘The Bubble’. A 275lb mountain of muscle standing over six feet tall, Westwood still spoke with the brogue of Detroit’s ghettoes, where he’d been raised. He had come a long way since then, of course. The son of a Baptist preacher, he had worked his way through the ranks of the US Army, graduating from West Point and earning an MBA from Yale in the process. He was the proud recipient of a decoration for valor in the Gulf War. Yet, even his consummate professionalism failed to conceal the straight talking bluntness that he had developed in his formative years on the streets of one of the country’s toughest neighborhoods.

  The brave individual who had disturbed the Chairman’s slumber, a two star General called Harry Wilkes, was chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency; the lesser known but far better equipped of America’s two major intelligence agencies.

  “Something strange going on in Ukraine, sir,” Wilkes reported, spreading out a series of opaque satellite reconnaissance photographs on a backlit presentation table. To the uninitiated, the monochrome images would have been little more than obscure abstractions. But Westwood’s trained eye knew exactly what they represented. “Just got these in from Langley.”

  Westwood picked up a magnifying glass and began to examine the images before him.

  “The first one was taken at twelve hundred Zulu today,” Wilkes explained. “Note the positions of the three Russian tank brigades around Chernihiv, and the two infantry battalions south of Konotop. Looks like they’re involved in one hell of a scrap with the Ukes.”

  “That’s the front line,” Westwood observed. “They’ve been stuck in the mud for six months now. “So?”

  “Six months. Precisely.” Wilkes pushed the second image forward. “This next one was taken at zero hundred hours Zulu - just over an hour ago.”

  Westwood didn’t require any further explanation. He immediately saw what was bothering Wilkes. Three Russian tank brigades were retreating northeast towards the border in a ragged formation. The distance they had covered between the two satellite passes sugg
ested that they were moving at breakneck speed, which meant that they were consuming vast amounts of fuel that the Russian military could hardly afford to spare. By their very nature, tanks require heavy maintenance, and the fact that lack of maintenance had cursed much of the Russian offensive made the rapid retreat even stranger. Westwood also saw that the Ukrainians weren’t bothering to pursue them. It was almost as if the Russians had thrown in the towel, and now they were trying to get out of the way of ….what?

  “What the hell…?” What am I missing here?

  Wilkes smiled thinly. “They’re getting out of Dodge. Thing is, they weren’t exactly getting their butts whipped by the Ukes, not in that part of the country anyway. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason for them to run away like that. Certainly goes against everything I know about the Russians. They’ve left their MSR” - Main Supply Route - “totally exposed.”

  “Damn right they have,” Westwood grunted, a bad feeling developing in his gut. It seemed too much of a coincidence that the Russians were running like chicken so soon after Godonov’s death. Where they were going? And why were they going there so fast? “What about Russian forces in eastern Ukraine? Are they bailing out too?” He was thinking aloud, clutching at straws.

  “We’re still waiting for confirmation from NSA. But early indications suggest not.” That had been the first thing the DIA had checked, based on the theory that the new Russian President might have ordered an unconditional retreat without telling anybody. “Perhaps the ELINT will tell us more. NSA is working on the translations as we speak. There’s been a lot of radio chatter between Moscow and the Russian brigades in Northern Ukraine, significantly most of it coming out of Moscow, not a lot going the other way.”

  “I want those translations ASAP,” Westwood ordered, mentally ticking boxes on a checklist of possibilities. “Any sign of increased military activity inside Russia?”

  “Some signs of increased alert status around bases on the Ukrainian border. No unusual activity around Moscow though, so I don’t figure on a coup. Besides, why would the Army recall units from the Ukrainian front to assist in a coup? If something like that was going down, they’d use troops closer to home. These guys running from Ukraine won’t be in any fit state to do anything by the time they get to Moscow.”

  Westwood exhaled loudly. His gut feeling was becoming more portentous by the second. “Yeah, I know, but I still don’t like it. Any indication from Moscow that they’re calling off the war?”

  Wilkes almost laughed at that. “Hell, no. The fighting is still going on in the south of the country, fierce as ever. But they’re leaving holes in their northern flanks, and that’s the damnedest thing. They’re not covering their ground; they’re just running. I guess it’s always possible that we’re witnessing the early stages of a revolt, especially given the increased alert status of Russian border installations.”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs pinched his eyes shut. His senses weren’t fully alert yet. At this ungodly hour, he needed a cup of Java before he could function effectively. Even so…

  “You gonna inform the President?” Wilkes asked him.

  “No, not yet. Let’s wait for NSA to come up with the goods. In the meantime, we keep a close eye on things, see how they pan out. There could be a rational explanation for all this.”

  But if there was, neither man could think what it might be.

  FARMINGTON VALLEY, CONNECTICUT

  “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for this visit,” Lewis said, pouring himself a shot of Jack Daniels.

  Bishop ignored the remark. “You look like you’ve been doing far too much of that,” he observed as his former colleague drained the glass in one hit.

  “Only pleasure I’ve got these days, old pal,” Lewis chuckled, refilling the glass and collapsing into an armchair with all the grace of a discarded rag doll. He raised his glass in mock salute - “Cheers.” - and promptly sunk another shot.

  Bishop eyed him with concern. They had met in Moscow many years earlier, back in the days when both had been in the field. As a matter of fact, Lewis had saved the CIA Director’s life, even though they had been working for very different employers - indeed, differentnations - in those days. But that was another story, and one upon which Bishop didn’t care to reflect right now. Nevertheless, that single show of heroism by the Englishman had sealed a lifelong friendship between the two men. A friendship that had, shortly afterwards, enabled Lewis and his ex-wife to shortcut the standard INS bureaucracy to obtain American citizenship. And that was the beginning of another story.

  Now, more than a decade later, Lewis’s haunted expression was that of a man who had experienced more pain and tragedy than any human being should be expected to endure in a lifetime, and that was something for which Bishop had to admit some degree of responsibility. After what Lewis had endured, it was small wonder he’d hit the bottle. Anybody else might have cracked completely. Yet, even though years of self-neglect had taken its physical toll, those deep set brown eyes still projected a fierce intelligence, always alert and scouting for danger. Yep, Bishop thought to himself. You may lose the muscle, but you never lose the look. It was the look of a man who had done both the takingand the saving of life; a look that could only be recognized by another who had done likewise.

  “Why are you here, Tony?” Lewis asked, impatience creeping into his voice. He lit a cigarette. “Bit far for you to come for a social call. ‘Specially at this time of night,” he added with a mordant smirk. “You interrupted a wonderful dream I was having. You were in it somewhere, I think.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called for a while, Lew,” Bishop apologized, sipping from a can of Coke that Lewis had fetched him from the kitchen. “You know how it is…”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a big intelligence agency to run now. So. How is life at Spook Central these days?”

  “We’ve had better times,” the DCI admitted sourly.

  Lewis took a long drag of his cigarette and squinted at Bishop through a cloud of blue smoke. “Russia?”

  “You’ve been watching the news.” More an observation than a question.

  That remark earned him a disdainful snort. “How bad is it?”

  “That’s why I’m here. The boss needs good advice, and he’s not getting it. Aldick’s gone, State is in a mess, so the Agency is acting point on Russia. And, as much as I hate to admit it, we’re seriously weak in that area right now. Congress doesn’t like us much, and the budget cuts have hit us hard. There’s nobody on the Russia desk who could make a gut call without a fifty thousand volt prod up his ass.”

  That comment elicited a chuckle loaded with bitter irony. Lewis had faithfully served two different nations in his life, and had flirted with death for both of them during a career that had cost him one marriage and very nearly his sanity. At the very least, it had reduced him to little more than a semi-alcoholic, socially challenged burn-out who paid the bills by teaching hormonally overloaded college kids about Things That Mattered. He’d paid his dues with interest, and still his former employers wanted more. Even now, they wanted hisinsight and hisadvice . Because the world was in danger, and who else was going to save the day but Superspook? His chuckle almost developed into a belly laugh when he saw the half empty bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the sideboard beside a framed wedding photograph of him and his ex-wife.

  Some fucking Superhero!

  “Tony,” he said gravely. “How many billions is the CIA’s annual budget? And what about the NSA? Or, for that matter, the DIA?”

  Bishop gave him a quizzical look. “What are you getting at?”

  “I mean, with all those resources, you’re saying that you’ve got nobody brighter than me to figure things out? I don’t buy it.”

  “I know where you’re coming from, Lewis.” Bishop leaned forward, lowering his voice an octave. “But I’ve never met anybody who can piece things together like you can. Sure, we have lots of specialists; but they’re damnacademics , each and e
very one of them. None of them have ever been out there, in the field, like you have. We’ve got nobody like you who can see the big picture. My Russian experts are people who have only read about Russia in textbooks. You, on the other hand, have been there and done that. You speak my language; you’re not a fucking politician like the rest of them. And you haven’t been locked up in a Washington office with your head up your ass for so long that you can’t make sense of things.”

  “No, I’ve been stuck with my head in a bottle of booze for so long that I can’t make sense of things. I mean, what’s to make sense of, huh? What’s to figure out? You want me to tell you whether we should back Pushkin? I think you know my answer to that. Don’t insult my intelligence, Tony. What do youreally want from me?”

  Lewis sensed that Anthony Bishop, his old friend, mentor and boss, was carefully considering whether to spill the entire jar of beans. An awkward dilemma for the CIA boss, for once he had crossed that line of disclosure there was no going back. Lewis, of course, still had a higher security clearance than most of the Agency pukes who worked at Langley, but that wasn’t the point, was it? He wasoutside . And therefore, a potentialliability .

  “Okay,” the DCI sighed acquiescently, “here goes. You know what happened to Bert Aldick, right?”

  “As you so helpfully pointed out, Ido read the newspapers.”

  “Well then, here it is.” Bishop took a deep breath. “I’m not inviting you back to Langley. I’m here on behalf of the President to offer you a seat at the top table. Actually, the First Lady recommended you to him. You’d come in on a consultancy basis to begin with. I’m not saying that you’ll replace Aldick - only the President can make that offer - but if you call this one right, who knows?”