11. Soccer, Secrets, and Strollers
CHAPTER 11
SOCCER, SECRETS, AND STROLLERS
LEDGER
I ’ve experienced a lot of things as an intelligence operative. I have to say that this is the first time I’ve listened to a conversation via my earpiece of two women in a public restroom, where one is an intelligence operative and the other is a potential asset. It isn’t my first time, though, hearing Zoe become exactly who she needs to be for the situation. She does it masterfully, which both impresses me— when I see it in action, and frustrates me— when I experience it used on me.
The two women walk out of the bathroom, and through my earpiece, I hear Zoe say to Mila , “ Let me just say goodbye to my date.” Then Zoe walks up to where I’m still sitting at our table and leans in as if she’s kissing the space right in front of my ear. Her breath is warm, and it tingles as if that’s actually what she’s doing. The tingle goes right up my spine and neck, too, and makes my breathing kick up a notch, even though it has no business doing either.
Instead of kissing me, though, she breathes in a low voice, “ Follow us at a respectable distance. After I drop her off, we’ll regroup.” Then she pulls back, gives me a smile, and reaches for my hand, which she then squeezes. I manage to come out of my stupor in time to remember our cover story and say, “ It’s okay. We’ll catch up later. Good luck with work stuff.”
The bar’s windows are a little grimy and partially covered with signs and blocked by furniture, but I can see the women standing out front, waiting for their Uber . I say, “ Damjan , you’re back, right?”
“ Yep .” I hear what I’m guessing is the trunk closing. “ Ready to go.”
“ Get in the passenger’s seat and let me know when their Uber arrives.” I don’t want Damjan driving for two reasons— one, Damjan’s driving isn’t exactly discreet. And two— I just ate a bunch of sausages, onions, and bread, and I’m not entirely sure that my stomach can handle his driving.
They drive on the right side of the road here, and except for some streets at odd angles, their roads aren’t too different from roads in the United States . Their stoplights are even similar to ours. The buildings are a mix of single-story and multiple-story structures and range everywhere from run-down and graffitied to newer and well-cared-for.
I follow Zoe’s Uber across the river and along streets that are lined with trees and grass and nice buildings. The closer we get to Mila’s home, though, the narrower and more cracked the streets get and the smaller and closer together the homes are.
I keep further back as Zoe’s and Mila’s Uber driver drops Mila off at her small house on a street barely wide enough for one car, in a neighborhood filled with run-down houses and pavement. Not a yard— or even a patch of dirt— is anywhere.
As soon as Zoe’s Uber is out of sight of Mila’s home, Zoe has the driver let her out on a slightly wider road. When the driver leaves, I pull off the road, park near Zoe , and get out of the car. It’s still plenty light outside and warm without being too hot. About seventy-five degrees, if I have to guess.
As soon as both Damjan and I are out of the car, Zoe says, “ I think we can turn her.” She sends a message to Packston , her tech op, and loops him in, and a moment later, I have Kella looped in, too, so the five of us are together on comms. “ Packston , what have you got on Mila ?”
“ A few things that I’ve also forwarded to Kella . Her full name is Milena Nikoli? . She is twenty-one years old and currently lives with her sister, Maja Nikoli? , and her sister’s two kids— a five-year-old boy named Andrej and an almost two-year-old girl named Anja . She attended the University of Belgrade for a year and a half, studying business administration, and living on campus. She was doing quite well, too. I’m looking at her transcripts, and she got nines and tens in everything. Well , except for Public Speaking , where she got a six, so barely passing.
“ Then her brother-in-law, Bodgan , died about a year and a half ago in a work-related accident at a chemical manufacturing plant. Mila’s sister, Maja , couldn’t work and take care of the kids, so Mila left school and moved in with her sister to help out. Mila got a job working for Zoran Savovi? as an administrative assistant to Savovi?’s event planner, Petra , and works during the day, then watches her niece and nephew after so her sister can work.”
“ And from what I got in speaking with her,” Zoe says, “she does a lot of the grunt work at Savovi?’s . She’s a smart girl, but she never gets the chance to really shine.”
“ All right,” I say. “ So what should we use to motivate her? We’ve got the standard money, ideology, coercion, or ego.” I gesture back toward her street. “ Clearly , they could use money.”
Zoe nods slowly. “ She didn’t once complain about her pay or their living conditions, though. That doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue, of course, but it wasn’t on her mind enough to bring it up during the short time we’ve had to chat. She mostly talked about how bad it is working for her boss, Petra .”
“ Petra Popovi? ,” Kella says. “ It says that she’s over events and special occasions at Savovi?’s mansion. Mila is the only employee under Petra . There’s a picture of Petra . Yeesh . If she were a librarian, she’d probably shush you for breathing too loudly. And then make you write an essay on the importance of following the posted rules, right before claiming it as her own work.”
“ So ,” Packston says in our earpieces, “maybe you can convince her to help you by saying if she does, it’ll stick it to her job. Help her to get revenge.”
“ Except her helping us wouldn’t actually stick it to her job,” I say. “ In fact, it’ll help them, since they’ll be more likely to get the piece back after Aragundi’s wanna-be’s steal it with our tracker in it.”
“ She doesn’t seem like the vengeful type anyway,” Zoe says. “ Besides , she doesn’t have an issue with Savovi? — only with Petra .” Zoe starts tapping her bottom lip with her finger and I’m having a hard time not getting distracted by it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so distracting if I hadn’t kissed those lips a year and a half ago and know exactly how they feel on mine. To know how it feels to hold her close while those lips are on mine.
Head . In . The . Game , I tell myself.
In our earpieces, Kella says, “ And it sounds like anything that made things worse for Petra would just be pushed onto Mila anyway, so that direction in general is a bust.”
“ What about finding a way for her to leave that job?” I turn to Damjan . “ What’s the job market here like? Is offering that a possibility? If she hasn’t gotten a chance to shine, a new position might give her that chance.”
Damjan nods. “ Yeah , I think it’s a real possibility. I have some contacts I could check in with.”
Zoe is nodding, too, and everyone else is silent for a moment. Sometimes when we discuss what kind of motivation will convince an asset to spy for us, we come up with an idea that seems perfect. It doesn’t feel like we’ve hit “perfect” for Mila , but with the time we have to turn her, we don’t have access to the kind of information that will get us to perfect.
“ I say go for that,” Kella says. “ As a backup plan, Packston and I will get with our directors to see what kind of a compensation package they’ll approve if you end up needing to offer money. What’s the timeline?”
Zoe hikes a thumb to the northeast. “ She is going with her nephew and niece to a soccer— or ‘fudbal’— field about two blocks away for her nephew’s practice at seven. It’d be good to approach her there.”
We all look down at our watches. That’s in fifteen minutes.
“ We’ll go work on that now,” Packston says. “ We’ll check back in with you before seven.”
Damjan claps his hands together. “ Okay , let’s talk about the approach itself.” He aims his clapped hands in my direction. “ Because you, my giant friend, are intimidating, and you’re going to scare her.”
My head pulls back in surprise. “ What ? I am not.”
“ Hey , listen. I know you’re just a big fun-loving guy. First impressions, though?” He winces.
“ I saw the way Mila flinched when I said goodbye to my ‘date,’” Zoe says. “ He’s right. We need to make you softer.”
“ Softer ? ”
“ Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Damjan says as he goes around to the back of the car and opens the trunk. The guy spent a good amount of time in the United States , but his accent is still plenty Serbian . He pronounces all his vowels clearly, rolls his R’s , stresses the first syllable of his words, and rises in pitch at the end of sentences, but his English is perfect, including slang. “ Just think of you as James Bond and me as your own personal Q .”
Zoe lights up. “ Ooo . Do you have gadgets for us?”
“ Something like that. When you guys were in the bar, I left. I found a little girl with one of those baby dolls that looks and feels like a realistic baby.” He lifts the doll from the trunk and holds it up by one arm. “ Check it out— doesn’t it look like the real thing?”
“ And you just took this from a little girl?” Zoe asks.
“ What kind of a monster do you think I am? No ! The girl was holding the doll by its ankle while gazing longingly at a group of kids riding bikes, looking for all the world that she drew the short stick. So I bought a bike and traded her. Made her entire year.”
“ And a baby doll is going to help us… how?” I know the look I’m giving Damjan right now isn’t a generous one, but I can’t help it.
Damjan pushes the doll into my chest, and when I grab hold, he reaches into the trunk and pulls out a very pink stroller. As he’s opening it, he says, “ Because you are going to be a dad when you go talk to her.”
“ And that’ll make me ‘softer?’”
“ You bet it will. Mark my words— with that woman, Mila , in particular, if you show up like you are, you won’t even get through your pitch to turn her before you’ve scared her off. If she’ll even talk to you at all. If you have a baby with you, she’ll relax enough to hear you out. You might even be able to convince her to help you.”
“ Fine ,” I say. Luckily , the doll came with a couple of baby blankets— also pink— which is good, because just tossing the doll in the stroller isn’t going to convince anyone. I spread one of the blankets out in the trunk, place the doll so its head is by one of the corners, and then wrap the blanket so it’s swaddling the doll, just like I did with Blake’s daughter Heidi when she was a baby. Then I put the baby in the stroller and arrange the second blanket around her.
When I stand back up again, Damjan is appraising me with his arms folded and nods. “ Yep , that’ll work just fine.”
Zoe and I walk to the soccer field with me pushing the pink stroller like we are a cute little family out for an evening walk.
Yeah , like that could ever happen. A year and a half ago, I’d thought maybe it could. I had tracked a rogue scientist to an abandoned research station in the dense forests near Moldova’s eastern border. Zoe and I crossed paths and discovered that there had been some sort of inter-agency miscommunication, and the CIA had sent her to do what was essentially the same mission as mine. At the time, I’d only heard of Zoe — we hadn’t met. I’d known her name and who she worked for, but not much else.
We’d teamed up to complete the mission, and for three days, we’d worked together to stay warm, shared stories of our pasts, flirted, became a little vulnerable, took turns standing watch, shared some life-altering kisses, and built what I thought was trust. She was the most incredible woman I’d ever met, and like a fool, I’d fallen for her completely.
So completely that I’d already started imagining a life with her. Not a traditional life, of course, but one that would work for who we are. One where we would be open with each other like that all the time. Discuss crazy things going on in the world that few people knew about over breakfast. Compare daring feats we’d done while snuggling under the covers at night. Go sky diving, snowboarding, or river rafting together on the weekends. Maybe even go on a few missions together.
I’d thought she felt the same. I hadn’t even suspected it was all an act until it was too late. And by then, she’d not only taken my trust but she’d also taken my heart. I’m not about to give her either again.
Just as we reach the fence, Kella says in my earpiece, “ I just sent you the approved amount you can offer Mila .”
I pull out my phone and take a look. If we can’t get her to help us by offering to get her a new job, the money should do it. We spot Mila through the chain-link fence. She’s standing on the sidelines, a toddler on her hip, cheering for the five-year-olds playing soccer on the field.
She doesn’t see us as we get the stroller through the gate and head up the sideline toward her. We’ve seen a few other soccer fields in the city that were much nicer than this one. This is mostly a fenced-in yard with dirt and weeds on the sidelines, a grassy field with lines painted on it, and an old building that looks like it houses restrooms on one side.
It isn’t until Zoe puts a hand on Mila’s shoulder that she turns her attention away from her nephew on the field or her niece who’s now sitting at her feet, playing with a dandelion. She turns and sees Zoe , and confusion washes over her. “ Shauna ?” She glances from Zoe to me to the pink stroller. “ What are you doing here?”
“ Can we talk to you for a moment?”
Mila looks toward her nephew, then her niece. “ Um , sure.” She picks up her niece and places her on her hip again as the little girl tries to pull each seed individually from the white dandelion. We walk a dozen feet away so we aren’t by any other people as we talk. But even if we were, we aren’t speaking Serbian , so probably most wouldn’t know what we are saying.
Mila’s not just confused now— she’s also a bit alarmed. I realize that having the stroller near us isn’t enough, so I turn to the baby like it’s fussing and coo at it, reaching in to give its little hand a gentle squeeze.
“ I don’t actually work at a financial firm,” Zoe says. “ I work for the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States , and this is my coworker, Lincoln . We could really use your help.”
I’m glad she just went with “coworker” for my description instead of bringing up the CSA or fumbling over what to call me.
Mila is full-on alarmed now, and she keeps eyeing us like we’re about to tell her that she’s arrested and needs to come with us or something. So I reach into the stroller, lift out the swaddled baby doll, and put her against my shoulder, making sure the blanket covers the back of her head. Then I start patting her on the back. Mila instantly releases her tense shoulders and relaxes her stressed expression. Wow . It actually worked. Score one for Damjan .
She is watching me curiously, though. As if she hadn’t pictured me as a dad when she saw me in the pub and is now wondering if I stopped at the daycare to pick up my child after I left.
Zoe and I go back and forth, almost like we’ve practiced this, explaining that one of Savovi?’s art pieces is going to get stolen by bad people who are going to use it for bad purposes, leaving out the specifics. We tell her that we need to place a tracking device on the art piece so that we can find it— and the thieves—once they steal it. We say we’ve heard that the only way to even get close enough to the sculpture to place that tracker is if she can turn off the security system at a time when we can sneak in, or by Zoe and I scheduling a private viewing to see the piece.
And the only way to get a private viewing is if we impersonate someone who is already on the guest list for the auction. Preferably before the auction takes place, since we think that the men plan to steal it then. And we tell it to her all while the little girl she’s holding is trying to put dandelion seeds up her nose. What is it with toddlers and noses?
At one point when Mila isn’t even looking at me, I realize I’m bouncing the baby, but only when I catch a look on Zoe’s face that I can’t quite decipher. An expression I’ve never seen on her before. I stop bouncing and place the baby back in the stroller, arranging the blankets so her face can’t be seen.
“ I can’t turn off the security system,” Mila says in her thick accent, setting her squirming niece back on the grass. “ I’m not even sure the head of security can. Mr . Savovi? is very distrustful.”
Zoe and I give each other a look. So much for doing things the easy way. Then I ask Mila , “ Do you have access to the list of people who will be coming for the auction? Can you get it for us?”
“ You want me to steal the list from my work for you? I could get fired for that!”
“ Just a copy of the list,” Zoe says. “ We know that it is risky and that you could get caught. But these are very bad men who want to steal that art piece, and by helping us, you could also help to save a lot of innocent lives. We also know that you don’t love your job, so as a thank you, we will get you a new job.”
“ You’re going to make me leave my job?”
Zoe and I both shake our heads, and Zoe says, “ No . Just help you get one where your contributions will be recognized and you’ll really be able to shine. And , as a bonus, you won’t even have to deal with art people.”
“ Listen ,” she says, putting both hands up like she’s trying to stop this conversation and stop anything from moving forward that we’ve suggested. “ I know I complained about my job, and my boss is not nice, but I like the work. And I made friends. I hope someday it will help me get a position I really want.”
Okay , so we were far from coming up with the perfect motivation for Mila . Zoe gives me a look that says, Well , do you want to offer the money, then? And I’m about to open my mouth to do it when another idea hits me. One I can’t believe we didn’t come up with when we were all brainstorming ideas.
“ Mila , would going back to school help you to get that position you really want?”
“ Da ,” she says, but she shakes her head. “ But that’s no longer possible.”
“ What if it was?”
Her eyes are on me, and I’ve got every bit of her attention.
“ You did really well in school, so I’m guessing you liked it. I’m also guessing the reason you stopped going was because you needed a full-time job to help your sister after your brother-in-law died?”
Her eyes are wide like she’s surprised we know all this about her, but she doesn’t say a word— she just nods.
“ What if we could get you back in school, and for the two years you’ll be in school until you graduate, we pay you the same amount per month that you’d be earning at your job?”
Tears literally start falling down her cheeks as she looks between me and Zoe . “ You would do that? You will help me go back to school?” Her eyes finish on Zoe . She already heard it from me— she’s looking for confirmation.
“ We will,” Zoe says. “ That’s how much we need your help.”
Then she hugs us both. All right. That’s not something I usually get when asking someone to put themselves at risk. I might have to start taking a baby to all my asset negotiations.
We give her a secure phone, tell her she can call if she has any problems, and she says she’ll get a copy of the list for us at work tomorrow. She’s leaving work a bit earlier to go to her nephew’s fudbal tournament that is part of the city’s Summer Fest , so she’ll be back on this field at three. We tell her that we can’t meet her again in the same location without raising suspicions, so we’ll need her to do a dead drop that we pick up later.
Zoe points to a small, run-down structure made of cinderblock and adorned with graffiti at the edge of the field. “ Are those restrooms?”
Mila nods.
“ Just go in sometime during your nephew’s game and leave it in the garbage can.”
“ But make sure it’s well hidden,” I tell her. “ We won’t be able to come immediately inside after you leave it, and we don’t want someone else to spot it first.”
“ Okay .”
“ And don’t worry,” Zoe says. “ You won’t be able to spot us, but we’ll be watching, so we’ll see when you do the drop.”
Mila nods at Zoe , then reaches down to pick up her niece who has found a new dandelion that has gone to seed. Mila’s eyes flick between the two of us, and as if she’s giving a fierce rallying cry at a volume that no one outside of the four of us (five, if you count my fake baby) can hear, she says, “ I won’t let you down.” I am sure she won’t .
I am also sure that her niece is about to fully get a dandelion seed into Mila’s nose without Mila even seeing it coming. As Zoe and I walk away, me pushing the stroller, I hear Mila sneeze, then say, “ Anja !”
Yep . The niece succeeded.