Chapter 6 #2
"Honestly, Jim, sometimes I'm not sure what I should say to you, or if anything I say matters at all."
"Everything you tell me matters."
"But it doesn't lead you to tell me what I need to know."
He nodded once. "You and Cassie are alike in the way that you believe you need to know every detail about my life—about your father—about the past. There is a difference between what one needs to learn and what one desires to know."
"I understand that."
"Do you?"
"Better than you give me credit for—yes."
Jim took a breath. "Has something happened?"
"Specifically? No. Something is always happening, Jim. Something I can't see. I don't like running blind. It tends to land me on the ground."
He laughed softly. He admired his daughter-in-law—her determination and her devotion to family—Cassidy most of all. And he trusted her.
"You still think I'm hiding something."
"I don't think it; you are." She held up a hand.
"And I believe that you believe what you hold back doesn't matter.
It all matters, Jim. Even the details you think mean little, or that you fear might alter your relationships.
What you view as unimportant may hold something that helps me.
This business we're in is all about information.
The more I have, the better chance of preventing something we'll all regret. "
He leaned back in his chair. "What do you want to know?"
"I want to bring Nika Kapralov in."
He blinked, then laughed. "In? Do you mean to tell me you want to bring the former Russian president, who is dead to the world, to Washington, D.C.?"
"Yes."
Jim shook his head, chuckling.
"Can it be done?" Alex asked.
He sighed. "Alexis."
"Jim, please."
He held her gaze firmly.
Alex sighed, took a breath, and sighed again. "I've tried to walk away—more than once," she told him. "I left Carecom. I spent years teaching and coaching. And I thought that would be my path for the rest of my life."
He listened.
"Cassidy isn't wrong. There were many things about that time that I loved, but I was never fulfilled."
He nodded.
"When Hawk asked me to rejoin the FBI and paired me with Claire, everything changed.
I don't think that's what Hawk intended.
It opened the floodgates, Jim, and they have never closed.
My family—our family—isn't safe. Maybe they'll never truly be safe.
I don't know. All I do know is that the people I care about most are still caught in the crosshairs of some twisted game they didn't create.
I didn't create it. None of us did." She sighed.
"But here we are. Maybe you think I don't realize what's happening.
I do. I know we've been sucked into this, and maybe all our digging, our need to understand, is more personal than it should be.
Maybe we're just feeding the beast we claim we want to conquer.
I don't know. Walking away won't make us safer.
Someone will keep trying to lure us back—threaten our children, threaten our friends.
I can't stand by and allow that to continue if there's anything I can do to stop it. "
Jim watched her silently.
Alex expected evasion. She had learned to recognize the subtle shift in his expression when he reached the edge of what he was willing to say. His face did not close exactly. It softened, almost with regret, as if he were sorry before he had even refused her.
"No," he said quietly. "You can't."
Alex blinked.
"You're right," he said. "Walking away won't make you safer. It didn't make you safer when you left Carecom. It didn't make Cassie safer when she chose teaching. It didn't make Claire safer when I tried to disappear from her life before she knew I existed."
Alex nodded.
Jim's gaze dropped to his coffee. "That's a lie men like Brackett tell themselves: that secrecy ensures safety. That if enough names are buried, records altered, and relationships severed, the people left outside will remain untouched."
"That hasn't worked," Alex said.
"No." Jim looked up. "Because people in this business forget what they were meant to serve."
The words settled between them.
Alex had expected resistance, not agreement. Somehow, agreement unsettled her more.
"You asked about Nika," Jim said.
"I did."
"And I laughed because the image of Nika Kapralov strolling into Washington as a dead man is absurd."
"Can it be done?"
Jim sighed. "Possibly."
Alex sat forward.
"I didn't say it would be easy. And I don't think it's wise."
"Jim."
"It would require more than moving a man from one country to another. Kapralov is not merely a former Russian president. He's a symbol. A liability. A ghost some people need to remain dead because he can rewrite too many official stories."
"I know that."
"No," Jim said gently. "You know some of it."
He held up a hand before she could respond. "And before you tell me I'm holding back, I am. Not because I don't trust you. Because some truths require scaffolding, Alex. If I hand you one fact without the structure beneath it, the entire house falls down."
"That sounds like an excuse."
"It may be," he admitted. "But it happens to be true."
Alex leaned back and shook her head.
Jim rubbed a hand over his jaw. He looked tired. Older than he had been a few minutes earlier.
"The Collaborative was never as unified as people like to believe," he said.
"Go on."
"It was built on cooperation," Jim continued. "At least, that was the story. Men and women from different nations, different agencies, different disciplines, working together to prevent another world war from consuming everything that was left standing after the last one."
"And the truth?"
"The truth is that cooperation is always competing with control."
Alex waited.
"American espionage was controlled by the military until after World War II, when civilian intelligence became the political answer to spying.
That transition wasn't accepted or cheered by everyone.
There were men who believed placing intelligence in civilian hands was not innovation.
It was surrender. They believed the military understood threat in a way politicians and bureaucrats never could. "
"Men like Brackett," Alex said.
Jim nodded. "And Brackett's father before him."
"And my father?"
"Nicolaus chose a different lineage. His father came from that wartime intelligence world, but Nick embraced what came after it. Civilian intelligence. Corporate reach. Influence without the need of a uniform." Jim paused. "That distinction mattered more than you understand."
Alex scratched her brow. "Is that why he was so opposed to me entering the military?"
"I'm sure it was a factor," Jim said. "I think what Nicolaus feared most was this."
"This?"
"Us, sitting here having this conversation. That you would become immersed in a world smaller and darker than the one most people know. But bigger and more complicated than any one person can comprehend. And more dangerous."
Alex considered his words. "And how does this relate to Nika Kapralov?"
"The same tension existed in Russia," Jim said. "Different names. Different structures. Same struggle. Military intelligence and state security were never the same creature. They shared enemies. They shared methods. They sometimes shared information. But they did not share a vision of power."
"Kapralov came from the KGB."
"Yes."
"And Popov believes his military service makes him more qualified?"
Jim sighed. "Yuri Popov believes intelligence should serve power. Kapralov, for all his sins, believes intelligence can shape power. Those are not the same thing."
"And the military?"
Jim looked toward the window. Outside, Connecticut seemed almost indecently calm. Bare branches. Pale winter light. The kind of afternoon that invited people to believe the world was simpler than it was. Also, colder.
"What did this have to do with you?" she asked.
Jim looked at her. "I was not recruited by the Collaborative," he said. "Not at first. I was recruited by the military."
Alex blinked.
"I was a scientist," he continued. "You know that. A useful one. My curiosity and ambition made me willing to believe that work done in the shadows could still serve a noble purpose."
"And Brackett?"
"He recognized my usefulness. He also recognized my weakness."
"Which was?"
Jim smiled sadly. "That I believed him."
Alex said nothing.
"He brought me into the work through military channels. My research had many potential applications. I created and led the kind of projects that could be justified in the language of defense even when their implications wandered far beyond it."
"And then?"
"And then civilian intelligence became interested in what the military was doing with my research."
Alex's stomach tightened.
"You were spying on Brackett."
Jim looked down at the table. "Eventually."
"For the CIA?"
He took a breath. "Yes."
Alex stared at him.
"Not in the way you're imagining," he said.
"You don't know what I'm imagining."
"I know exactly what you're imagining, Alexis. You think that my loyalty switched. That there was one moment when I decided one side was corrupt and the other was noble. I never experienced that kind of moment."
"Then what happened?"
"What always makes people bend: pressure, concern, flattery, fear. A series of moments when I convinced myself I had no choice—no choice because each one was presented to me as necessary to protect something I cared about." He met her gaze. "You know something about that."
Alex shook her head.
"I reported what I observed," he said. "To your father. At first, that was all I did. I shared methods, timelines, and objectives. Which projects held the most promise and which might be... corruptible."
"Brackett found out."
"Not immediately."
"But he suspected."
"Brackett suspected everyone. It was one of his strengths and one of his illnesses."
Alex leaned forward slowly. "That's why you were a liability to him."
"Yes."
"Because you knew too much across the lines."
Jim nodded. "Yes."
"And because no one could be certain whose side you were on."