Out! Out!

He pushed with everything he had. And suddenly he felt air on his face.

People were yelling in the distance, calling his name. The two men who had buried him were gone.

Nuri pushed himself to his knees. He was still half buried, covered with dirt. He reached his hand into his pocket and found the MY-PID unit.

“I need the words for ‘seal off the area,’ ” he told the computer. “I need the words for ‘not one motherfucker leaves.’ ”

63

CIA Headquarters, Virginia

Jonathon Reid frowned as he scrolled through the list of intercepts. There were several screens full—more than a hundred messages.

The sheer number alone was significant. Add to that the fact that they came from military units spread around the country, and the conclusion was inescapable: the Ukraine army was about to revolt.

But Reid smelled a rat.

He moused over to the folders with the latest satellite images. There were unmistakable signs that two of the units in the eastern part of the country were mobilizing. And there were no corresponding orders indicating that they should do so.

Concrete evidence of a coup, especially when coupled with the intercepts.

Still—a coup with the NATO ministers about to descend on Kiev? How very convenient for the Russians.

“Mr. Reid, the director is waiting.”

Reid looked up at his assistant, Mark Dalton. Dalton, a field officer who had been rotated back home following an injury in South Asia, wore an exasperated expression—pretty much the one Reid always saw.

“I’m just reviewing the data he’s going to be interested in,” said Reid. He cleared his screen and got up from his desk.

“You don’t think it’s a coup?” asked Dalton. He’d come on duty at 6:00 A.M.; he’d been working for more than twelve hours and was very likely to be here for several more.

“I think someone wants us to think it is, yes,” answered Reid.

“But you don’t.”

“It looks so much like a coup it could come out of a textbook,” Reid answered. “And real life very rarely resembles what goes on in the classroom.”

Reid made the same argument upstairs in the director’s conference room twenty minutes later, this time in front of a packed house of CIA officials, including Herman Edmund, the Agency chief. Several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their aides were watching via video from the secure center at the Pentagon, and an equal number of NSC people were over in the White House situation room. Reid, speaking after the Agency’s in-house experts of Ukraine had made a case for the coup, patiently dissected the intercepts.

“What you’re saying is that it’s too perfect,” objected Stephen McGovern, the Agency’s ranking analyst for Eastern Europe. “That’s really a difficult argument, Jonathon. What would be the point?”

“The point would be to disrupt the NATO meeting. Showing that the country is unstable. Without, of course, having to go to the trouble of actually encouraging a coup.”

“It’s a lot of trouble,” said McGovern.

“Not very difficult to do,” said Reid. “The Russians break into the network and send a lot of messages. They get two divisions to move their units around. Bribe the right officer, and these trucks will drive to Paris. It’s no secret how badly most of these troops are paid.”

“But what would the point be?” said Edmund. “That’s the real question. Let’s say that it is fake—we’ll know it in a few hours.”

“A few hours’ indecision may be all it takes,” said Reid. “But we may only be seeing the opening act. There may be more. It may end up looking as if a coup was planned, and then aborted for some reason. And it’s not just us—every Western intelligence agency is seeing these intercepts. Even the French have them.”

“Well, that is an indictment,” said Edmund.

Everyone laughed.

The meeting proceeded quickly to the conclusion favored by the analysts: a coup might be under way in the Ukraine within a few hours. Reid succeeded only in getting them to emphasize the word “might” and add a few caveats to their alert. Given the tendency of the analysts to stay away from any definitive statement that might come back to haunt them, it wasn’t much of a victory.

Director Edmund stopped him at the door as he was leaving.

“If you have a moment, Jonathon.”

“Always for you, sir.” Reid stepped back as the others filed out.

“Whiplash was successful?” Edmund asked when they were alone.

“The action in Moldova eliminated everyone at the farm,” said Reid. “There were about a half-dozen people, Russians we think, and they all appear to have been associated with the Wolves.”

“Is it possible these intercepts were related to what they had planned?” said Edmund. The operation against the Wolves was still so secret that neither Reid nor Edmund had shared it with the others.

“I didn’t bring it up because the timing of this activity seemed wrong,” said Reid. “If there were a direct link, then we wouldn’t expect these messages until at least the day after tomorrow when the NATO ministers gather.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Edmund.

“Unless there’s something we’re missing.” Reid smiled. “It’s too pat. It seems so obvious I wouldn’t even give it to a junior officer as an exercise.”

“You do like complications,” said the director.

“A character flaw, I’m afraid. Hopefully, not fatal.”

64

Outside Prague

The Black Wolf examined his face in the mirror. He didn’t look all that much like the dead man on the bed inside, but that wasn’t necessary—the people he had to fool wouldn’t be looking all that hard at him. All he had to do was look enough like the dead man that they wouldn’t bother with a second look until it was too late. Far too late.

Toward that end, he sprayed a little more gray into the side of his hair, dappling it with his fingers for a salt and pepper look.

Distinguished.

There was a knock on the outer door. The Black Wolf took his pistol from the counter and went to it.

“Yes,” he said, still speaking Polish.

“Wolf,” said the voice outside softly. He was speaking English.

“Black Wolf.”

“We are ready.”

The Black Wolf opened the door. Two of his assistants on the job—men he had not met until now—stood in the hallway. They were dressed in brown and gray suits, looking very much like the men he had killed earlier.

“Watches,” said the Black Wolf, holding his out.

They held out their arms and made sure their watches all had the same time. It was exactly 0432 local.

“We must be downstairs in exactly twenty-one minutes,” the Black Wolf told them. “It will take the car five minutes to arrive, and another ten for us to reach the Old State Castle. The others will meet us there. Are we ready?”