18. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
Arkady gives me the file on the way to work.
I open it before I even get into the car.
A thin gray folder. The first page contains the photograph attached to Taylor’s visa application.
Her hair is pulled back. She’s not smiling.
The lighting is flat and unkind, but her green eyes are still bright, her skin still warm with color.
She looks younger somehow. Excited to leave the country even while someone has apparently instructed her not to smile.
Taylor Morgan Hayes. Twenty years old. Born in Wyoming.
American citizen. Political science and Russian double major.
Student visa converted to a limited professional placement authorization through the university’s international fellowship program.
Valid through the end of the academic year, with the possibility of extension upon review.
No irregularities. No criminal record. No political affiliations of concern.
No known connection to foreign intelligence.
I already knew most of this. I had her official documents reviewed before she began working in the building. That was standard procedure. Necessary procedure.
This is different.
Pavel opens the rear door for me, and I slide into the car without looking up from the report. Arkady gets into the passenger seat, turning slightly so he can see me as Pavel pulls away from the curb.
This report includes Taylor’s residential address.
A fourth-floor apartment in a Soviet-era building she shares with Anya Sokolova, another student at the university. The rent is modest by Moscow standards and high by Taylor’s. The building has a coded entrance, an unreliable exterior camera, and a rear courtyard accessible from an alley.
I pause over that detail. “Unreliable how?”
Arkady crosses one ankle over his knee. “The camera cuts out in cold weather.”
“It’s always cold.”
“Then perhaps unreliable was generous.”
I make a note in the margin.
Arkady watches my pen move. “Are you planning to repair her building?”
“I’m identifying a vulnerability.”
“In the municipal surveillance network?”
“In her security.”
He smiles.
I ignore him and continue reading.
Her university records are excellent. Better than excellent.
Top marks in political theory, Russian language, and international relations coursework.
High marks in economics, though one professor describes her as argumentative.
One disciplinary warning for publicly challenging a guest lecturer during a seminar.
I read the attached summary. The lecturer claimed Western sanctions affected only oligarchs and political elites. Taylor cited three economic studies, disputed his methodology, and asked whether he had visited any region outside Moscow in the past five years.
She was removed from the lecture.
I read the paragraph twice.
Arkady leans slightly toward the back seat. “Something interesting?”
“No.”
“You smiled.”
“I did not.”
“You nearly did.”
I turn the page.
Her grades from the United States are similarly strong. Scholarships. Academic awards. Letters from professors describing her as independent, diligent, and occasionally resistant to authority. That, I could have told them without an investigation.
Her financial records are less impressive.
No significant savings. No property. No trust. No family wealth concealed behind modest clothing and a badly maintained apartment.
Her tuition is funded through scholarships, a federal loan, and a small private loan co-signed by her mother.
She sends money home irregularly, usually after receiving her fellowship stipend.
The amounts are not large, but they are too large for someone in her position.
Two hundred dollars three weeks ago.
Her own account balance dropped below the equivalent of fifty dollars twice.
My jaw tightens. “She’s sending money home.”
Arkady lifts one shoulder. “Yes.”
“When she barely has enough herself.”
“Yes.”
I stare at the number again.
Three weeks. Long enough that Taylor has stopped moving through my office like a temporary visitor. Long enough that she knows the routines, the staff, the elevators that close too quickly and the copier that jams if someone looks at it incorrectly. Long enough that she has begun to belong there.
Long enough that I should have become accustomed to her.
I have not.
The report was supposed to answer a simple question: Is Taylor a threat?
Not necessarily a deliberate one. Threats are not always men carrying weapons. Sometimes they are women with foreign passports and access to private schedules. Sometimes they are careless roommates, desperate relatives, compromised accounts, jealous lovers, old debts.
People can be used.
The more someone loves, the easier they are to use.
I know this better than most.
The next section is social. Known friends. Professors. Coworkers from temporary university jobs. Photographs taken from publicly available accounts. Taylor at a student café. Taylor standing in Red Square with Anya. Taylor wearing a winter hat so large it nearly covers her eyes.
There is one photograph of her with a man.
I stop.
He is young, perhaps twenty-two, with dark blond hair and glasses, sitting beside Taylor outside some university building. She’s holding a coffee in both hands while he leans toward her to show her something on his phone.
“Who is this?”
Arkady glances back. “Maksim Voronin. Graduate student. Russian literature. They have two classes in the same building and appear to share friends.”
“Are they involved?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“He has a boyfriend.”
I look at Arkady. He looks serenely forward again.
I turn the page.
Recent social contacts include Viktoriya Milova, Dmitri Sokolov, Alina Morozova, and Katya Lebedeva from the governor’s office. Taylor has been photographed twice leaving restaurants with the group after work and once entering a café with Viktoriya and Dmitri during lunch.
My attention catches on Dmitri’s name.
There are three photographs. In the first, he is holding a door open while Taylor walks through it. In the second, he is standing beside Viktoriya with his hand at the small of her back. In the third, the three of them are laughing over something on Taylor’s phone.
The report notes that Dmitri and Viktoriya appear socially close.
I read that sentence. Then I look at the photograph of Dima standing beside Taylor again.
The question itself does not bother me.
Asking it in front of Arkady does.
“Dmitri.”
Arkady’s shoulders move. “What about him?”
“Nothing.”
“You said his name.”
“I am aware.”
“Would you like the photograph framed, Governor?”
I look up.
Arkady’s face is perfectly solemn.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“I value my position. And my limbs.”
I return my eyes to the file, skimming further for any serious relationship, any man who appears repeatedly, any romantic entanglement that could be exploited by someone with more imagination than caution.
“I just could not help but notice,” Arkady continues, “that you asked whether there was a serious man in her life.”
“I asked whether she had exploitable connections.” I snap the file closed. “A lover is exploitable.”
“Of course, Governor.” His voice is so respectful I briefly consider shooting him. “But why a serious lover?” he asks. “Lovers are exploitable, serious or not.”
“You are becoming irritating.”
“I am flattered you did not think me so before this.”
Pavel pulls beneath the covered entrance of the government building and stops.
I drop the folder beside me and reach for my briefcase. “You have something useful to do today?”
Arkady smiles. “Several things.”
“Good. Find the link between the second phone and Orlov’s transport office. I want to know who authorized the number and who they report to. And find out how they got my mother’s pharmacy.”
The amusement leaves his face. “I am working on it.”
“Work faster.”
He nods.
I open the door.
Arkady taps the gray folder lightly with one finger. “You read this very carefully.”
“That is the purpose of a report.”
“Of course.”
I reach back for my briefcase.
“But you—”
I look at him. His almost-black eyes are shining with pleasure, and I know before he opens his mouth that I am going to hate whatever comes next.
“You read it like a love letter.”
I slam the door.
There is nothing romantic about surveillance.
Nothing tender about knowing the balance of a woman’s bank account or the route she walks home at night.
Information is protection. Information is power.
Information is the difference between anticipating danger and cleaning blood from the floor afterward.
I tell myself this several times before entering the building. It remains true even when it sounds less convincing each time.
By lunchtime, I have signed eleven documents, sat through two meetings, rejected an infrastructure proposal that should never have reached my desk, and received three increasingly impatient messages from Arkady about Orlov’s people.
I answer none of them immediately.
Taylor leaves at twelve thirty with Viktoriya and Dima. I know because I see them from the corridor as I return from a meeting.
I do not ask where they are going. That would be absurd.
They return less than an hour later.
Pavel’s car is still pulled near the entrance because he has returned with documents from another office, and their taxi stops behind it.
Viktoriya gets out first, copper-red hair catching what little light the Moscow afternoon provides.
Dima follows her, and Taylor climbs out last, holding a paper cup and laughing at something Viktoriya has said.
They look considerably more alive than they did the morning after the bar.
Viktoriya is wearing Dima’s scarf.
I notice that. I understand what it means.
Dima is looking at her as they walk.
I notice that too.
Taylor steps around the back of the taxi and catches her shoe on a ridge of packed, dirty snow. Dima moves without thinking. One hand closes around her elbow. The other lands at her waist. Taylor lets out a bright trill of surprise and embarrassment before laughing.
For one clean, vicious second, I imagine taking Dima by the back of the neck and introducing his face to the roof of the taxi. The thought is so immediate that my hand actually flexes at my side.
It is absurd.
He caught her. That is all.
Viktoriya is beside him wearing his scarf. I know who he looks at when he thinks no one is paying attention. I have watched him smile across the office at Viktoriya often enough to understand where his interest lies.
None of it matters.
Dima’s hand is still at Taylor’s waist.
She straightens, brushing snow from her skirt. “Jesus.”
“You are welcome,” Dima says.
“I was fine.”
“You were falling.”
“I was gracefully adjusting altitude.”
Viktoriya laughs. Taylor does too. The sound loosens something in my chest and tightens something lower. Relief at hearing it collides with something hot and ugly at the sight of his hand finally leaving her.
The reaction is unlike me. Worse, it refuses to settle into anything clean enough to dismiss. I have spent weeks inventing cleaner names for it.
Security.
Concern.
Interest.
Possession, perhaps, when I am being less dishonest.
I know better now. Jealousy is humiliating because it requires another person to have power over you. A man cannot be jealous of what he does not value. He cannot feel threatened by losing what does not matter.
Taylor matters.
That is the part I cannot forgive.
They reach the entrance.
“Good afternoon, Governor,” Dima calls pleasantly.
I look directly past him.
Taylor’s smile begins to fade.
“Miss Hayes.”
She slows. “Yes?”
“My office.”
Her brows pull together. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”
“Now.” The word cracks across the pavement.
Taylor freezes. So does Dima. Viktoriya turns her head slowly toward me.
I know immediately that I have spoken too sharply. There is no emergency. No mistake Taylor has made that requires correction, certainly not in front of her coworkers. I know all of this. I do not take it back.
Taylor’s expression hardens. The warmth disappears from her face, replaced by something far more familiar. Defiance. “I said I’d be right there.”
“And I said now.”
Silence settles around us.
Dima shifts beside her, like he might speak.
I look at him. He decides against it.
Good.
Taylor stares at me for another second, her green eyes narrowed. Then she hands her coffee to Viktoriya and walks past me toward the doors without another word.
I follow.
The anger does not lessen.
It should. Dima did nothing wrong. Taylor did nothing wrong. I know exactly where Dima’s interest lies, and it is not with her. None of it matters.
I can still see his hand at her waist.
The file told me where Taylor lives. How much money she has. Which classes she takes. Which people she trusts. It told me who she eats lunch with and which men appear beside her in photographs.
It cannot tell me what makes her laugh like that.
It cannot tell me why praise makes her eyes brighten before she remembers to hide it.
It cannot tell me why the thought of someone else learning those things makes rage move beneath my skin like heat.
Those answers are not in Arkady’s report. They are waiting for me in my office.
Taylor is already halfway to the elevators.
I follow her.