Eva removed her phone from her handbag and checked the time. It was 7:46 a.m. The window opened in fourteen minutes. Fifteen minutes after that, it would close again, and if everything went according to plan, Sasha’s mole would be revealed. Eva felt no guilt over her actions, only fear—the fear of what would happen if the SVR somehow managed to seize her and take her back to Russia. A windowless room at the end of a dark corridor in Lefortovo Prison, a man with no face.
Poof...
She checked the time again. It was 7:49. Hurry, she thought. Please hurry.
68
Wisconsin Avenue, Washington
On the opposite side of Wisconsin Avenue and one hundred yards to the north was an upscale Safeway designed to appeal to Georgetown’s sophisticated clientele. There was an indoor parking garage at street level and a second outdoor lot at the back of the store that Rebecca Manning preferred. She drove slowly up the ramp while staring hard into her rearview mirror. At two points during her surveillance-detection run, she had considered abandoning the drop for fear she was being tailed by the FBI. She now considered those fears to be unfounded.
Rebecca parked in the far corner of the lot and with her handbag over her shoulder walked to the store’s back entrance. The baskets were near the elevator that led to the garage level. Rebecca took one from the stack and carried it through the store, from produce to prepared food, up and down the many long aisles, until she was certain no one was following her.
She dropped off the basket at the self-checkout area and headed down a long flight of steps to the store’s main entrance on Wisconsin Avenue. Rush-hour traffic poured down the slope of the hill toward Georgetown. Rebecca waited for the light to change before crossing to the other side of the street. There she turned south and while passing a darkened Turkish restaurant mentally committed herself to proceeding to the drop site.
It was forty-seven paces from the door of the Turkish restaurant to the entrance of the Starbucks, which was guarded by a homeless man clothed in filthy rags. Under normal circumstances, Rebecca would have given the man money, the way her mother always gave a few centimes to the beggars on the streets of Paris, even though she had little more than they. On that morning, however, she brushed guiltily past the man and went inside.
Eight people were queued at the register. Anxious-looking lawyer-lobbyists, a couple of future MI6 officers from the British International School, a tall man with bloodless skin and colorless eyes who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. The barista was singing “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Rebecca glanced at her wristwatch. It was 7:49.
Christopher Keller and Eli Lavon had not bothered to follow Rebecca Manning into Safeway’s upper parking lot. Instead, they had parked on Thirty-Fourth Street, outside Hardy Middle School, a vantage point that allowed them to witness firsthand her arrival at Starbucks. Eli Lavon flashed the news to the Chesapeake Street command post—needlessly, for Gabriel and the rest of the team were watching Rebecca live through the camera of Ilan’s phone. Everyone but Graham Seymour, who had stepped into the garden to take a call from Vauxhall Cross.
It was 7:54 when Seymour came back inside. Rebecca Manning was now placing her order. Seymour provided the sound track.
“Tall dark-roast coffee. Nothing to eat, thank you.”
When the young man at the counter turned away to draw Rebecca’s coffee from the warmer, she inserted her credit card into the chip reader, thus confirming her presence in the establishment on the morning in question.
“Would you like a copy of your receipt?” recited Gabriel.
“Yes, please,” answered Seymour on Rebecca’s behalf, and a few seconds later the young man at the counter handed her a small slip of paper, along with her coffee.
Gabriel looked at the digital clock at the center of the trestle table:7:56:14... The window for transmission was nearly open.
“Seen enough?” he asked.
“No,” said Seymour, staring at the screen. “Let her run.”
69
Wisconsin Avenue, Washington
There was a space available at the communal table. It was the seat nearest the door, which provided Rebecca with unobstructed views into the street and the café’s rear seating area. The man who had been ahead of her in line, the one with pale skin and eyes, had settled at the far end of the room, with his back toward Rebecca. A couple of tables away, a young man who looked like a graduate student was tapping away at a laptop, as were four other customers. The three people seated with Rebecca at the communal table were digital dinosaurs who preferred to consume their information in printed form. It was Rebecca’s preference, too. Indeed, some of the happiest hours of her extraordinary childhood were spent in the library at her father’s apartment in Moscow. Among his vast collection were the four thousand books he inherited from his fellow Cambridge spy Guy Burgess. Rebecca could still recall how they smelled intoxicatingly of tobacco. She smoked her first cigarettes, she reckoned, by reading Guy Burgess’s books. She was craving one now. She didn’t dare, of course. It was a crime worse than treason.
Rebecca pried the lid off her coffee and laid it on the table, next to her iPhone. Her MI6 BlackBerry, which was still in her handbag, was vibrating with an incoming message. In all likelihood, it was the station or the Western Hemisphere desk at Vauxhall Cross. Or perhaps, she thought, Graham had changed his mind about bringing her to Langley. He was probably leaving the ambassador’s residence now. Rebecca supposed she ought to read the message to make sure it wasn’t an emergency. In a minute, she thought.
Her first sip of coffee entered her empty stomach like battery acid. The barista was now singing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” and the man across the communal table, perhaps inspired by the lyric, was grousing to his neighbor about the American president’s latest outrage on social media. Rebecca glanced toward the rear seating area and in doing so caught no one returning her gaze. She assumed the illegal was upstairs; she could see the illegal’s receiver in the network settings of her iPhone. If the device was functioning properly, it would be invisible to any other phones, tablets, or computers within range.
She checked the time:7:56... Another sip of coffee, another corrosive surge in the pit of her stomach. With outward calm she flipped through the icons on the home screen of the iPhone until she arrived at the instant messaging application with the SVR protocol buried inside. Her report was there, encrypted and invisible. Even the icon that sent it was a lie. With her thumb hovering above it, she made one last sweep of the room with her eyes. There was nothing suspicious, only the incessant shivering of her MI6 BlackBerry. Even the man across the table seemed to be wondering why she hadn’t answered it.
It was now 7:57. Rebecca placed the iPhone on the tabletop and reached deliberately into her handbag. The BlackBerry was resting against the SIG Sauer 9mm. She removed the phone carefully and entered her long password. The message was from Andrew Crawford, wondering when she was going to arrive at the station.
Rebecca ignored the message and at 7:58 returned the BlackBerry to her handbag. Two minutes before the window for transmission opened, her iPhone rattled with a new incoming message. It was from a London number Rebecca didn’t recognize, and one word in length.
Run...
70
Wisconsin Avenue, Washington
