Page 71 of The Shadow Friends

Ingrid nodded. “At least we’ve got that.”

“And we have photos of the man. We’re running his image through the database now.”

Confused, Lloyd looked at Rodrigo, then at Ingrid. “This whole thing—it was just an op?”

“And we walked right into it,” groaned Maggie. She scanned the plaza and spotted a young man in blue jeans watching from a café. And up on one of the balconies, a woman was staring down, a camera and telephoto in hand. Both must be part of Rodrigo’s team, she thought. The ones she could spot, anyway.

“Get inside,” said Ingrid. “We’ll explain.”

“They’re not cleared for this,” said Rodrigo.

“We hardly have a choice. We have to tell them,” said Ingrid. “For better or worse, they’re part of it now.”

“I was never really in danger,” said Ingrid. She had removed the black wig and the latex mask, and once again, she looked like herself. But something had changed between her and Lloyd. Even though the two of them sat side by side on the sofa in the hotel suite, even though Ingrid’s hand rested on her husband’s knee, Maggie could see a distance between the pair. Doubt had come into their marriage, and the distrust was as real as a physical wall dividing them.

The presence of Rodrigo didn’t help. He loomed in the background, a silent and unsmiling observer watching from across the room. Also watching were two men from the Argus team, both in their thirties, both fit and poker faced. Clearly intelligence professionals, probably drawn from the Special Activities Division, the CIA’s paramilitary arm. They’d all regrouped in this nearby hotel suite, which was serving as their base of operations. Maps of Madrid were laid out on the dining table, the room’s coffee maker was gurgling with a fresh brew, and on the kitchenette countertop was the well-stocked makeup kit that had helped transform Ingrid into Beatriz Guerrero, a.k.a. Zoya Larina. Scattered around the room, on tables and chairs, were backpacks and surveillance equipment, laptops and chargers. The controlled chaos of a team in mid-operation. An operation that had been forced to a halt while they processed this new complication, and what to do about it.

“Beatriz was never in any danger either,” said Ingrid.

“How were we supposed to know that?” said Lloyd. “We saw that man moving in. He looked like he was going to shove you—or whoever you’re supposed to be—into that van. And then you’d be gone. They’d drive you away to God knows where, and in a few days your body would be . . .” Lloyd looked away and cleared his throat. They didn’t need to see his face; they could hear the tears in his voice.

“Where is Beatriz?” said Maggie.

“She’s in a safe place. We relocated her, as soon as we learned—”

“That she’s on Moscow’s kill list?”

Ingrid glanced at Rodrigo. “You see? I told you this would happen.”

“What would happen?” asked Maggie.

“That you’d be on to us. That my friends weren’t born yesterday.”

“You could have saved us a lot of trouble by just telling us what you and Argus were up to.” Maggie turned to Rodrigo. “That was your Piper Seneca that picked up Ingrid, I believe.”

Rodrigo responded with a shrug, a smile. He’d cut an imposing figure when she’d first met him at the Stone Coast Conference, and he was just as imposing now, with his mane of silver-streaked black hair. Just by his air of command, he left no doubt who was in charge here.

“Since that kill list is hardly a secret to us, you might as well tell us when you learned about it,” she said.

“Moscow has always maintained an enemies list,” said Rodrigo. “In just the last three years, at least fifty targets have been killed. They represent a wide range of people, from businessmen to journalists to political opponents, anyone who dared to challenge Russian leadership. Then a year ago, a new category of targets began getting killed: defectors, who should have been safe because they were living under new names, new identities, and their locations were known only to the Agency. The first was killed in London, where he’d been living quietly under an assumed name. When his body turned up in the Thames, the Agency thought maybe he’d just had the bad luck of being spotted and recognized. Then another defector was found tortured and killed in Rome. He’d been living there for over twenty years, safely tucked away under a new identity. How did he get exposed? Someone with access to classified CIA files was obviously feeding the info to Moscow.”

“A mole,” said Maggie.

Rodrigo nodded. “You can understand why secrecy is crucial. If this mole gets wind that he’s now being watched, he’ll go dark and slip away to someplace we can’t reach him. But if he thinks he’s still safe, he’ll keep leaking info to Moscow. He won’t realize he’s being monitored. The intel from his communications is worth gold. Not only does it reveal what he’s telling Moscow; it also reveals who in Moscow he’s talking to.”

“So this mole has already been identified,” said Maggie.

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t need to. You pulled Beatriz Guerrero and Willem Dekker to safety, which means you knew they’d already been exposed.”

“Years ago, when Dmitry—Dekker—defected in Italy, I was his handler,” said Ingrid. “I recognized Dmitry at once when Rodrigo sent me his photo from the kill list. I knew it was only a matter of time before the Russians came after him.”

“Moscow’s kill list offered us interesting opportunities,” said Rodrigo. “We knew which targets they’d be coming after, and we could set out a staked goat to tempt the killers.” He looked at Ingrid. “Or what looks like a staked goat. When the assassins show up, we close in. The hunters become the hunted.” He paused. “That was the plan, anyway.”

“You made my wife the staked goat,” said Lloyd.

“That wasn’t Rodrigo’s idea,” said Ingrid. “It was mine.”