The 14th Colony (Cotton Malone 11)

Zorin admired Kelly’s home, which was like a double house with rooms laid out symmetrically on either side of a central hall. Wooden details such as ceiling rosettes, cornices, fluted molding, and arches all seemed crafted with skill and precision. The décor was likewise impressive, with lots of art on the walls and sculptures on the tables. The room where they sat in overstuffed chairs had a bay window that faced the front of the house and one on the side. His knapsack rested on the floor near his feet. Radiators and a raging fire inside a period hearth provided welcomed heat, and he caught a faint scent of eucalyptus in the warm air.

“It’s been a long time,” Kelly said in perfect English.

Small talk did not interest him. “Why have you been waiting for me?”

“I miss the old days. Do you miss them?”

He told himself that this man was no amateur. Instead, he’d been successfully embedded deep within Western society, which required a measure of patience and skill. Of the three, he’d always known this one would be the greatest challenge. “The old days are why I am here.”

“I thought you were dead,” Kelly said. “Nearly everyone else is gone. It saddens me to think about them. We did some great things, Aleksandr.”

“Do you live here alone?”

Kelly nodded. “It is my one regret. I never married. Too risky. There were lots of girls, most not smart or pretty, but willing. Momentary diversions. But I’m a bit old for that now. How about you? Did you find someone?”

“My wife died,” he said, keeping Anya to himself.

“It’s not good, for either of us, to have no one. I spend most of my time reading.”

“Why do you live in Canada?”

“I visited here once many years ago and decided that if I survived and wasn’t shot or jailed, that this would be where I would retire. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? No way to know when or if they’ll come for you. No way to know who compromised or gave you up. They just appear, with guns and badges, and then you disappear. Amazingly, that hasn’t happened to me. But I have to say, to hear your knock a few minutes ago sent a chill through me. It’s a bit late for visitors.”

“You live well,” he said, motioning to the air of affluence the room projected.

And what he’d not said hung in the air.

Like a capitalist.

“When the Soviet Union disappeared, I thought it time for me to blend totally into the West.”

“You could have come back home.”

“To what? Nothing I knew existed anymore.”

On that they agreed. “So you became the enemy?”

Kelly smiled. “I wish it were that simple, Aleksandr. To everyone around me I was an American, so I simply kept playing the part.”

“You were sent to spy.”

Kelly shrugged. “That was my original mission, and the position at the university in DC gave me access to a lot of people. I knew an assistant to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, another at the Rand Corporation, a friend worked at the Brookings Institute, and I had many colleagues in the State Department. I was the perfect mole, the last person you’d ever suspect as a spy. I did my job, until my job mattered no longer.”

Time to get to the point. “Fool’s Mate. Did you complete it?”

“And if I did, are you here to kill me, too?” Kelly’s right hand slipped behind his back, beneath an untucked shirt, then reappeared holding a revolver. “You don’t think I would answer the door this late at night and not be armed. I assure you, comrade, I will not be as easy as the other two.”

Zorin sat still and tried to arrange his impressions into some sort of judgment. This had to go right. “How did you know?”

“Because I’m a trained officer of the KGB, just like you,” Kelly said in Russian. “I pay attention.”

Only here, within the confines of this home, shrouded in the lateness of the hour and a cold darkness outside, would either of them speak in their native tongue. But it seemed fitting, so he kept to it and declared, “I’m not here to kill you.”

“Then what?”

“I want to complete what Andropov intended. That plan has remained dormant far too long.”

“My orders were explicit. I was not to report anything, except to Andropov himself.”

“My orders indicated that you were to report to me.”

Kelly chuckled. “I would assume that was for your detriment.”

Then he realized. Once he’d reported the success of Absolute Pin and Backward Pawn, he would have been eliminated.

Leaving only Kelly and Andropov.

With the bombs.

“I reported the second kill,” he said. “But no one by then knew what I was talking about.”

“Because Andropov was gone, and it didn’t matter to anyone else. Surely, comrade, you can see that all of that is long past.” Kelly’s voice drifted off, as though weary of jousting at lost theories and forgotten ideals. “Nothing you and I ever knew still exists. In fact, all that may be left is you and I. We are probably the only people left on this planet who even know what Fool’s Mate entails.”

“I’ve waited a long time to pay the West back,” he said. “They destroyed us, and I’ve searched hard for a way to extract some measure of retribution. Until yesterday, I did not know if you were still alive. So I have come a long way to enlist your help. You have the method and I can provide the means. Together, we can implement Fool’s Mate.”

Kelly was listening, that much was clear.

So he asked, “Do you remember what Andropov said that night, at the end, in the safe house?”

Kelly nodded. “Every word.”

So did he.

“I want you to know, comrades, that what we are about to accomplish will strike America at its core. They think themselves so right, so perfect. But they have flaws. I’ve discovered two of those, and together, at the right time, we will teach America a lesson. Minimum effort, maximum effect. That’s what we want, and that is precisely what you will deliver. This will be the most important operation we have ever undertaken. So, comrades, we must be ready when the moment comes.”

“That moment has come,” he said. “I don’t know it all, but I know enough.”

Kelly stayed silent, but lowered the gun.

A gesture of trust?

“You realize that it may no longer be possible,” Kelly said.

He kept his optimism in check, but made clear, “It’s a chance I’m willing to take. Are you?”

* * *

Cassiopeia had listened carefully, noticing the shift from English to Russian. The tone of the two men changed also, from cautious to conspiratorial. She’d also risked a look and saw as Kelly lowered a gun he’d been aiming at Zorin. She now realized that Cotton had assigned her the listening dutie

s on the off chance that these two would revert to Russian.

Always thinking.

That was another thing she loved about him.

“I’ve been ready for more than twenty years,” Kelly said. “I’ve done my duty.”

“Then, comrade, tell me what I need to know.”

* * *

Malone kept one eye on Cassiopeia in the bushes near the house and the other on the street. He stood in the front lawn. His exhales hung before him in the cold air. Zorin certainly would not expect that he was being watched, and definitely not by the same American agent he’d last seen cuffed to an iron pipe in his basement. Their paths to this Canadian house had taken two totally different courses. Five suitcase-sized nuclear devices secreted away somewhere on American soil? He couldn’t imagine how such a thing could have escaped detection but, unfortunately, border security in the 1980s and 1990s was nothing like today. Governments were not watching with the same intensity that the war of terrorism had taught was necessary. He’d reported all that he knew to the White House, so he assumed things were happening on Stephanie’s end. But the quickest route to those hidden nukes seemed to be inside Jamie Kelly’s house.

He checked his watch.

Friday had come and gone.

It was now early Saturday morning, Canadian time.

He heard a noise and turned to see a car creeping down the dark street. No headlights cut a swath of light. That was never a good thing. He was hidden behind the trunk of a sturdy oak, its width and girth signaling age. The ground just behind him sloped gently away from the house, toward the river, with more trees between here and there.

The car eased to a stop just short of Kelly’s driveway, right behind Zorin’s truck.

Four dark silhouettes emerged.

Each carried a short-barreled, automatic rifle.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

WASHINGTON, DC

Stephanie led the way into the Oval Office, Luke close on her heels. Danny had told them to come straight here from Annapolis, sleep would have to wait. Inside she spotted the president and his chief of staff, along with one other visitor.

Nikolai Osin.

“Close the door,” Danny said to Luke.