“Seven Russian women, chosen from dissident parents, trained almost from birth to infiltrate various institutions of the former Soviet Union and provide the United States with intelligence. It’s one of the few times the agency exercised patience,” Emerson said.
It distinguished the CIA from the KGB, at least when Russia had been the Soviet Union. Soviet intelligence had always moved with great deliberation and patience, and it was accepted in the intelligence community that Russia had agents in the United States who had been inserted as children.
“The seven sisters were to be totally clandestine,” Emerson continued. “Only a select few in the agency ever knew of the operation, and fewer knew the sisters’ names. I am not among those select few.”
“They still exist?” Jenkins asked.
“Some,” Emerson said.
“We didn’t deactivate them when Gorbachev instituted glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s?” Jenkins said.
“No,” Emerson said. “And now things have changed both inside Russia and in our relationship to it. Putin is not Gorbachev.”
Putin had been a KGB foreign intelligence officer who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and he was generally considered untrustworthy and immoral by the intelligence community.
Emerson spoke as he walked to one of two red leather chairs. He sat and crossed his legs. “Putin is on record as saying that the breakup of the Soviet Union ‘was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.’ It’s a particularly telling statement when one considers the twentieth century produced two world wars and the Holocaust.”
Jenkins lowered himself onto the leather couch across from Emerson, the coffee table between them. “Why are you here, Carl?” he asked again.
“Three of the sisters have been killed within the last two years.”
“Killed as in—”
“As in they’ve quit reporting and disappeared.”
“Maybe they don’t want to be involved any longer.”
“Unlikely. The more Russia reverts back to a dictatorship, with a constitution that is largely perfunctory, the more it goes against everything the seven sisters were trained to oppose.”
Jenkins sat back. “You think someone inside Russia has determined their identities and executed them? Why wouldn’t they execute the other four at the same time? If they had three, they would have the names of the others—Russian interrogation techniques are ruthless.”
“The sisters do not know one another, nor do they know the name of the operation. They don’t even know they’re part of an operation. Each believes she is acting autonomously.”
“They can’t give each other up.”
“No. They cannot.”
Jenkins gave that some thought, then said, “So I ask again. Why are you here?”
“The millennials have come of age, Charlie, and they’ve moved into the intelligence community. They are very good with computers and electronic intelligence. Human intelligence, however, boots on the ground, has become a lost art. You speak the language or could reasonably do so again quickly. Your employment provides you with a legitimate cover; LSR&C has an office in Moscow, does it not? It would make your presence within the country easy to backstop. You would not need training.”
“You want to reactivate me?” Jenkins asked, disbelieving.
“We do,” Emerson said.
“For what purpose?”
“We assume that if three of the sisters have been identified and killed, it is just a matter of time before the others are also terminated.”
Jenkins should have said “No,” but instead he asked, “How much do we know?”
“Not enough. What we know is Putin first learned of the seven sisters’ possible existence while he worked as a KGB agent, and that he tried unsuccessfully to verify their existence and to identify them.”
“And he never gave up looking?”
“He never forgot might be a better way to put it. The FSB is not the KGB. It is a more refined version, with better technology. We have reason to believe Putin verified the operation and activated a counteragent, what he refers to as an eighth sister.”
“How very James Bond of him,” Jenkins said.
“Subtlety has never been his hallmark. You’ve seen the pictures of him with his shirt off? Perhaps while riding bareback?”
“Russian virility,” Jenkins said, recalling how the Russian officers thrived on thinking they were stronger than their CIA counterparts.
“The eighth sister is in reference to an eighth building Stalin commissioned but never saw built. We need someone to identify who that person is before any more sisters are killed.”
Jenkins shook his head. “Russian intelligence would pick me up the moment the Border Guard scanned my passport, and they will have a dossier on me from my time working in Mexico City.”
“I’m counting on it.” Emerson smiled. “A disgruntled former CIA agent now working in Moscow. The FSB will be wary, but also very interested,” he said. “You would start slowly, provide information to interest them but which does not compromise active operations. When you establish their trust, you will indicate that you can provide the names of the remaining four sisters. When you do, we have reason to believe the eighth sister will present herself.”
“And then what?”
“Your role would end upon identification.”
“I’d be a shoehorn agent.”
“Yes.”
Jenkins shook his head. “And my successor would kill the eighth sister?”
“As you said, Charlie, Russian interrogation techniques can be brutal. The remaining four sisters have risked their and their family’s personal safety to provide sensitive and important information.”
“So, tell the director to get them out. Russia is no longer a closed country. Have the remaining four sisters travel to Europe or have them travel here.”
“Unfortunately, pulling them out might expose them, and recent events in Britain have proven that pulling them would not protect them from Putin’s wrath. We’d also lose a link to vital information at a time when we cannot afford to do so. Putin has never hidden his nostalgia for the Soviet Union. He restored lyrics chosen by Stalin to the Russian national anthem, marshaled Soviet-style military parades in Moscow, and restarted a national fitness program Stalin first began in 1931.”
“Maybe he thinks he’s Jack LaLanne.”
Emerson smiled, but it waned. “With his intervention in Ukraine and his annexation of Crimea, not to mention Russia’s role in Syria, in the 2016 election, and the nerve agent attack in Britain, the days of the Soviet Union seem to once again be upon us.”
Jenkins stood and paced. “I walked away decades ago and did so for a reason.”
“Which is what makes you an asset now. What happened in the past was a mistake, Charlie.”
Jenkins could still see the Mexican village, men and women lying dead on the ground, and the attack based on reports he had filed. “A mistake? That’s an interesting way to describe it.”
“The attack was based in part on your intelligence.”
He grew angry. “And I’ve had to live with that. That’s been my punishment.” Jenkins checked his emotions. He’d buried the past. He’d never forgotten it. “I don’t have any desire to get involved again. I have a wife and a child, and a second on the way. Find someone else.”