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"You have an extremely convenient short-term memory. Tell me, Stan, how many times in your first two years did you get yourself into trouble by ignoring orders or running off and launching your own operations?"
"It was a different time back then. We were given far more latitude."
"And you still got in trouble." Stansfield shook his head as if trying to reconcile an irreconcilable thought. "Does the truth matter to you at all, or do you just want to go round and round all night until you wear everyone down? You don't remember all the times I had to go to bat for you and bail your ungrateful butt out of trouble, and now you're coming down on this new kid as if you were some saint."
Hurley started to speak, but Stansfield cut him off. "I'm not done. If the kid had screwed up, we wouldn't be having this conversation. He'd be gone. But he didn't screw up, did he? He made all the right decisions. He took care of our problem and didn't leave a speck of evidence and made it back here all on his own. He's a natural and you want to throw him away."
Hurley stubbornly shook his head.
Stansfield was done arguing with him. "Irene," he said, turning his attention to Kennedy, "what about running him on his own? Break him off from the team. Let Stan and Richards work together."
Hurley didn't hear Kennedy's answer because he was too busy reliving all the various times he'd landed in hot water with a station chief or someone back at Langley. There were too many to even begin counting. That was part of the reason why Stansfield and Charlie White had set him up as a freelancer almost twenty years ago. He'd worn out his welcome at every embassy from Helsinki to Pretoria. Simply put, he wasn't good at following rules, so White and Stansfield had removed him from the system. They had gone to bat for him against Leslie Peterson, that Ivy league prick who wanted to gut the Clandestine Service and replace it with satellites. He liked to say, "Satellites don't get caught breaking into embassies." Yeah, well, satellites can't seduce an ambassador's secretary into working for the CIA or kill a man. At least not yet anyway. Hurley grudgingly saw the plain truth--that he was an ingrate.
"I can work with him," Hurley announced. "And if I can't, I'll turn him back over to Irene, and she can run him."
Stansfield was speechless for a moment. Kennedy and Lewis were thunderstruck.
"Don't look so surprised," Hurley grumbled. "No one hates these fuckers more than I do."
CHAPTER 28
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
SAYYED stood just inside the glass doors. He looked through the frosted window as a gust of wind whipped up a cloud of dirty snow. It moved like a ghost through the dark night and caused a shiver to run up his already frigid backside. He did not like Moscow, had never liked Moscow, and would never like Moscow. Not in summer and definitely not in winter. His warm Mediterranean blood found it to be perhaps the most inhospitable place he had ever visited. He could practically feel his skin cracking.
With voyeuristic awe, he watched an abnormally round woman waddle by. She was wrapped from head to toe in the dark fur of some animal he couldn't quite pinpoint. Why did these people live here? He would endure a hundred civil wars if he could avoid ever coming here again. A vehicle entered his field of vision from the left. The handler reached out and touched his elbow. He gestured to the waiting SUV and grunted the way big Russian men do.
Sayyed was fairly certain he'd smelled vodka on the man's breath when he'd met him at the gate. That was another thing about these Russians, they all drank too much. Sayyed was not the kind of Muslim who ran around telling everyone what they could or couldn't do. He enjoyed a glass of wine from time to time, but never in excess. They would want him to drink tonight. He knew it. He didn't want to drink and he didn't want to go outside, but he had no choice. He had been summoned, and his bosses in Dama
scus had eagerly offered him up. With great effort he clutched his long black coat around his neck and stepped into the cold Moscow night.
The bite of the cold wind snatched at his ears and cheeks. His eyes filled with tears, and he could have sworn the hair in his nose had turned to icicles in under a second. He opened his mouth narrowly to catch a breath, but his teeth ached from the subzero temperature, so he lowered his head and shuffled toward the car. He'd learned that the hard way on the last trip. You never ran on a Moscow sidewalk in winter. No matter how cold it was. You shuffled. Half skating. Half walking.
It wasn't until he was in the backseat that he realized he was sitting in a brand new Range Rover. Apparently capitalism had been very good to the SVR, the KGB's bastard offspring. The man who had fetched him from the gate tossed Sayyed's suitcase in back and jumped in the front passenger seat.
"I take it you don't like the cold?" a voice asked in decent yet accented English.
Sayyed had his head shoved so far down into his jacket that he hadn't noticed the diminutive man sitting next to him. "How do you people live here?"
The man smiled, popped a shiny cigarette case, and offered one to his guest. Sayyed grabbed one. Anything that would provide a scintilla of warmth was to be taken advantage of. After he'd taken a few long drags and had stopped shivering, Sayyed sat back and said, "I do not think we have met before."
"No, we have not. I am Nikolai Shvets."
Sayyed offered his hand, "I am Assef."
"I know," the boyish-looking man replied with a smile.
"I take it you work for Mikhail?"
"Yes. The deputy director is a very busy man. He will be joining us later."
That was fine by Sayyed. Mikhail Ivanov, the deputy director of Directorate S, was not someone he looked forward to dealing with. Sayyed had done everything in his power to get out of the trip, and then to delay it when he was told he had no choice. Two days ago Ivanov had called his boss at the General Security Directorate in Damascus and told General Hammoud he would consider it a personal insult if Assef Sayyed was not in Moscow by week's end. The last the general had heard, the meeting had already been scheduled. He was not a happy man, and he made sure Sayyed understood just how unhappy he was.
"The deputy director is very much looking forward to speaking with you. He has been talking about it for some time."
Sayyed couldn't pretend happiness over seeing the old spider, so he said, "it's too bad you did not travel to Damascus. It is very nice there this time of year."
"I would imagine." The man glanced over his shoulder and looked out the back window. "Your Mediterranean blood is too thin for our Moscow winters."
