“I need to make a phone call.”
“And then?”
Rebecca smiled. “We’re going home.”
At that same moment, three men were walking along Thirty-Fifth Street toward the Potomac River. In dress and aspect, they were unlike the typical denizens of Georgetown. One of the men looked to be in considerable pain, and a close inspection of his right hand would have revealed the presence of blood. The hand itself was uninjured. His wound was to his right clavicle, the result of being struck by a 9mm round.
As they crossed O Street, the injured man’s legs buckled, but his two colleagues, a tall man with pale skin and a smaller man with a forgettable face, kept him upright. At once, a car materialized, and the two uninjured men helped the third into the backseat. An employee of a popular neighborhood flower shop was the only witness. She would later tell police that the expression on the pale man’s face was one of the most frightening she had ever seen.
By then, units of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department were responding to reports of gunfire on normally tranquil Winfield Lane. The car carrying the three men headed rapidly across Georgetown to Connecticut Avenue. There it turned north and made its way to a ruined house on Chesapeake Street. Inside were two of the most powerful intelligence officers in the world. They had let her run. And now she was gone.
75
Tenleytown, Washington
There were only a handful of public telephones remaining in Northwest Washington. Rebecca Manning, for a moment such as this, had memorized the locations of most of them. One was at the Shell station at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Ellicott Street. Unfortunately, she had no change. Eva, however, always kept a roll of quarters hidden in her car for parking meters. She gave two to Rebecca and watched her walk over to the phone and dial a number rapidly from memory. Eva recognized it; she had been given the same number. It rang inside the Russian Embassy and was to be used only in the event of an extreme emergency.
For Rebecca Manning, the number represented a lifeline that would pull her safely back to Moscow. For Eva, however, it was a grave threat. Rebecca would doubtless arrive to a hero’s welcome. But Eva would go straight to a debriefing room where Sasha would be waiting. She was tempted to slip the Kia into drive and leave Rebecca behind. She doubted she would get far. For all Eva knew, there were three dead men in a car on a private street in Georgetown. In addition to being an agent of a foreign intelligence service, she was now potentially an accessory to murder. She had no choice but to go with Rebecca to Moscow and hope for the best.
Rebecca returned to the car and told Eva to head north on Wisconsin Avenue. Then she switched on the radio and changed the station to WTOP.We have breaking news this hour regarding a shooting incident in Georgetown... She jabbed at the power button, and the radio went silent.
“How long?” asked Eva.
“Two hours.”
“Are they going to pick us up?”
Rebecca shook her head. “They want us to get off the street and wait until the bolt-hole opens up.”
Eva was secretly relieved. The longer she stayed out of the SVR’s hands, the better. “Where’s the bolt-hole?” she asked.
“They didn’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
“They want to make sure it’s safe before they send us there.”
“How are they going to contact us?”
“They want us to call again in an hour.”
Eva didn’t like it. But who was she to question the wisdom of Moscow Center?
They were approaching the invisible border separating the District of Columbia from Maryland. Two large shopping centers confronted one another across the busy boulevard. Rebecca pointed toward the complex on the right. The garage entrance was next to a chain restaurant famous for the size of its portions and the length of its wait for a table. Eva headed down the ramp and snared a ticket from the machine. Then, following Rebecca’s instructions, she navigated to a deserted corner and backed into a space.
And there they waited, largely in silence, the SIG Sauer on Rebecca’s lap, for the next thirty minutes. They had no phones to connect them to the world above, only the car radio. The reception was fickle but sufficient. Police were searching for a Kia Optima sedan, District plates, with two women inside. They were also searching for three men who had abandoned a bullet-riddled Nissan on Winfield Lane. According to witnesses, one of the men appeared to have been wounded in the gunfire.
The signal swelled with static. Eva lowered the volume. “They’re looking for two women in a Kia.”
“Yes, I heard that.”
“We need to separate.”
“We’re staying together.” Then Rebecca added contritely, “I can’t do this without your help.”
Rebecca increased the volume on the radio and listened to a resident of Georgetown expressing shock over the shooting. Eva, however, was watching a white commercial van, Maryland plates, no markings, coming toward them through the patchy overhead lighting. The FBI, she thought, loved unmarked vans. So did the SVR.
“We’re in trouble,” she said.
