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second tour in Helsinki, Nate had recruited young SVR officer Dominika Egorova—code-named DIVA—and together with Forsyth and Gable had engineered her return to Moscow as CIA’s next generation mole in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
    The loss of MARBLE to the Kremlin’s treachery had affected them all, but Nate most of all had changed since that evening when he cradled MARBLE’s head in his lap, watching his agent’s blood ooze over asphalt wet with the Estonian fog, shimmering in the reflected light of the spotlights. He normally was nervous and earnest and ambitious. But Nate now had become darker, focused, less concerned about managing his career, about detractors and competitors.
    “Fuck ‘It’s great being in your Station again, Marty,’ ” said Gable. “We got a walk-in downstairs; Marine Guard just called. Let’s move.”
    As he bounded down the stairs beside Gable, Nate’s brain geared up.
A walk-in, an unknown person off the street. Go. The clock started the minute the walk-in arrived. The marines in the embassy foyer would have checked him for weapons, taken any packages from him, and buttoned him up in the walk-in room, a windowless, tech-filled interview suite with video, audio, and digital transmission equipment.
    Go. A walk-in, could be anything: A madman with aluminum foil inside his hat to ward off alien radio beams, an undocumented exile pleading for a US visa, an information peddler who that morning had memorized a newspaper article and hoped to serve it up as secrets worth a few hundred dollars.
    Go. Alternatively, a walk-in could be a bona fide volunteer—foreign intel officer, diplomat, scientist—with colossal intelligence that he was willing to pass to the Americans for money, or because of a crisis of ideology, or to exact revenge against a tyrant of a boss, or to spite a system in which he no longer believed.
    Go. A good volunteer is a free recruitment, access established, intel ready to harvest. Volunteers over the years were the best cases, the ones they carved in stone.
    Go, go, go. Find out who he is, do a lightning assessment, flip him, arrange recontact, and get him out of the embassy as soon as possible. If he’s Russian, North Korean, or Chinese, he’s on a clock, his embassy counterintelligence watchdogs will note how long he’s unaccounted for. Thirty minutes tops.
    On the embassy ground floor, Gable nodded to the marine standing outside the door and they pushed their way inside the room. The fish sauce smell of vomit hit them in the face. Sitting in a plastic chair at the small desk was an old bum, his rumpled suit coat wet down the front with puke,trousers spotted and dusty. He probably was in his sixties, with gray stubble on his cheeks, eyes red and rheumy. He looked up as the two CIA officers came into the room.
    “Christ,” said Gable. “Like we have time for this crap. Get him out of here.” Gable gestured toward the door, signaling for Nate to call the marine. They’d walk the old drunk to the basement garage and ease him out via the loading dock. Stop the clock. False alarm.
    Nate quickly assessed the man. He didn’t look like an old Greek coot: hands strong and nails trimmed. Shoes muddy but expensive. Disheveled hair cut short at the ears. He sat straighter when they entered the room, not like a drunk. A little wind chime tinkled in his brain. “Marty, wait a minute,” said Nate. He sat in the chair beside the old man, tried to breathe through his mouth to avoid the cat urine smell of him.
    “Sir,” said Nate, trying English, “what can we do for you?” He heard Gable shift his feet impatiently. The old man looked up into Nate’s face.
    “Not good English,” said the old man, but his bass voice was strong. More wind chimes. “I give informations,” he said softly, as if the words caused him pain.
    “We already got the recipe for muscatel,” said Gable, crossing his arms.
    “Not understand,” said the old man.
    “Sir, who are