The Fall of Moscow Station by Mark Henshaw Page A

true.
    â€œPerhaps, but I think you know who she is,” Lavrov suggested. He held out a large manila envelope.
    Maines opened it and pulled out the contents, three photographs, medium resolution, clearly stills taken from security-camera footage. The first was an image from the roof, Stryker arguing with him yesterday, then driving her knee into his crotch. The time stamp confirmed what Maines’s own memory told him.
    The second picture was grainy, poor resolution with odd lighting. Even so, the detail was enough for the American to see that it was Stryker again, no disguise, dressed casual. She was handing something, likely her passport, to an airport customs officer. China , he thought, from the Mandarin lettering on a wall sign, Beijing , he supposed.
    â€œThis picture was taken in Beijing two years ago. Our facial recognition software says that there is a very high probability that it is the same woman despite the differences,” Lavrov said, confirming the guess. “Our Chinese friends sent it to us after the incident in the Taiwan Strait with the U.S. Navy, asking for help identifying the woman. Some days after this was taken, she helped a Chinese intelligence officer escape surveillance, likely as part of an operation to bring the man to the United States. She assaulted one Chinese officer during the escape, and another on the street some days earlier. That one spent a significant amount of time in a hospital after she beat him with a steel bar.”
    Maines stared at the woman’s picture. You landed on your feet after Caracas better than I did , he realized, and he felt a hatred for the woman welling up inside him. She’d moved on to lead a key operation while he had sat rotting at headquarters, even after he had saved her. Should’ve been me.
    â€œThe man she helped escape had shared information on a research program that the People’s Liberation Army had been running for seventeen years with my assistance,” Lavrov continued. “A few days later, your country’s navy destroyed a unique stealth plane that was the focus of that project. The radar telemetry collected during the battle shows that your navy had established a system to detect the plane.”
    Maines stared at the picture again. “Sorry,” he lied. “Still don’t recognize her.”
    Lavrov tapped the third photograph. It showed Stryker at another customs desk, this one in some Latin American country, judging by the Spanish signage. The picture was higher quality. Stryker was blond again, no glasses, athletic build, not a short, overweight brunette with bad eyesight like yesterday—
    â€”then he recognized the place. Caracas.
    â€œOur Venezuelan friends shared this with us last year. The woman infiltrated a munitions factory near Puerto Cabello and was instrumental in stealing the nuclear device that the Iranians were building there with the help of their hosts. She assaulted the Venezuelan national intelligence director inside the base and later in an airport hangar. She crushed his nose and shattered his cheekbones with a rifle butt, and she detached one of his retinas. He identified her some days later from the airport security footage after his eyes could begin to focus again. Apparently, she had been in his country before and was wounded in a counterintelligence operation he had led. She seemed to take it quite personally.”
    Maines gaped at the photograph and cursed silently in amazement. Kyra broke into that military base last year? He’d been wrong. It hadn’t been an analyst who Cooke had tapped for that operation. He’d just assumed that Kyra had joined the Red Cell later. You went back to Caracas. He might have been impressed had his anger not been crushing every other feeling in his head.
    Still, Lavrov had insulted him and Maines was in no mood to give the man free information, or even show that he was unhappy. “Yeah, I bet. Still can’t help