Nadia
The thing about New York is that it doesn't care that you've arrived.
Every city has a quality to its arrival.
Moscow greets you with weight. London with grey indifference that somehow still feels curated.
Dublin with a smell like rain that got there before you did.
New York doesn't greet you at all. It simply continues, massive and indifferent, and you insert yourself into it or you don't.
I find this, unexpectedly, a relief.
I move through JFK with one carry-on and a checked bag that I collected seven minutes ago, which is faster than it should have been and is a small private victory.
My coat is wrong for November here — right weight, wrong cut, too European, the kind of thing that marks you if you know what to look for — and I make a note to fix it before the week is out.
Details matter. My father said that to me so often it stopped sounding like advice and started sounding like weather.
Details, Nadenka. Anyone can see the large things. The large things are for the lazy and the dead.
I spot Dara before she spots me, which is how it usually goes.
She stands near the far end of the arrivals barrier in a yellow coat that is absolutely a choice, her dark red hair loose around her shoulders, scanning the crowd with the focused squint of someone trying very hard to look casual.
She is not good at looking casual. It's one of her most endearing qualities and, professionally, one of her most challenging.
I come up beside her before she finds me.
She startles. Then laughs, short and genuine, and pulls me in by both arms. "You did that on purpose."
"I would never."
"You always." She steps back and looks at me the way old friends do after months apart — a quick inventory, checking for damage. "You look good. You look tired."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"No, but they're not ideal together either." She takes one of my bags without asking. "Car's outside. I'll drive, you decompress, and then I'll tell you about the apartment."
"Is it terrible?"
"It's New York. Terrible is relative." She glances at me sideways as we push through the doors into the cold. "It has good light."
"That's what people say when there isn't enough space."
"There's space. Just not wasteful space. Efficient."
I put on my sunglasses against the flat grey glare and breathe in cold that smells like exhaust and concrete and something frying from a cart we pass on the way to the car. "I'll manage."
"You always do."
She says it lightly. We both know what it means.
She is right about the apartment. It is efficient.
The building is in Astoria — close enough to Manhattan to be practical, far enough to be anonymous, which is the only thing I asked for when they told me where I'd be stationed.
The elevator takes forty-five seconds longer than it should and makes a sound on the third floor that I decide immediately to stop thinking about.
The apartment is on the fifth floor, east-facing, two bedrooms, a kitchen with new counters and fixtures original to about 1987.
But the light is, as Dara promised, good.
I stand at the window and look out at the city while she makes tea — she found the kettle within thirty seconds, which tells me she's been here already, familiarizing herself — and I do what I always do when I arrive somewhere new. I orient.
Two exits from the building I know of already, likely a third through the service entrance at the back.
The street below has moderate foot traffic, the kind that provides cover without providing chaos.
The building across has a doorman who was not at his post when we came in, which is useful information.
The fire escape is accessible from the bedroom window if the bedroom window is the one facing east, which I'll confirm once I unpack.
Details, Nadenka.
"Studio is four blocks north," Dara says from the kitchen.
"Small. Good floors. The director is a woman named Petya, she's expecting you Tuesday, and she knows nothing beyond that you're a trained dancer looking for a place to practice while you're in the city.
" She brings two cups. "She seemed pleased.
Apparently they don't get many serious students. "
"Good." Ballet has been my cover and my sanctuary in roughly equal measure for as long as I can remember.
My mother enrolled me at four because she thought it would make me graceful.
My father took one look at what it did to my body — the discipline, the spatial awareness, the ability to hold absolute stillness — and decided it was the best training he hadn't thought to arrange himself.
He was not wrong.
"And the other thing?" I ask.
Dara wraps both hands around her cup. She has a tell when she's choosing her words — her shoulders go still, like she's bracing. She does it now. "You received the briefing packet. I assumed you read it on the flight."
"I read it on the flight."
"Then you know what they want."
"A light infiltration," I say. "Test the Irish defenses, identify weaknesses, document what we find.
Leave enough of a mark to communicate presence without provoking full response.
" I look at her. "They want to let the Irish know the Russians are watching without telling them who's watching or why. "
Dara nods. "They also want it done within the first two weeks. Before you've had time to establish a pattern here."
"Of course they do." I turn back to the window.
Two weeks is aggressive. They know it. That's why they gave it to me — because in the estimation of my superiors, I deliver on tight timelines precisely because I'm young and motivated and female, none of which they say out loud but all of which they mean.
I'm also someone they trust not to complain, which is true, and to comply, which is becoming less true than it used to be — but which I have not yet given them reason to question.
I am my father's daughter. I understand the value of letting people believe they know you completely.
"Dara," I say.
"Mm."
"Do you think they send you to babysit me, or do they send you because you're genuinely useful."
She is quiet for a moment. It isn't an offended silence — Dara doesn't offend easily, which is another thing I like about her. It's a considering silence. "I think," she says eventually, "that those two things are not mutually exclusive. The same way tired and good-looking aren't."
I almost smile. "Fair."
"I'm useful. I'm also here partly to keep an eye on you. I don't think pretending otherwise serves either of us."
This is why Dara has been my closest friend for six years. She defaults to honesty when dishonesty would be easier and go undetected. In the world we were both raised in, that quality is rare enough to be worth protecting.
"The Irish boss," I say. "What do you know about him beyond the file."
She tilts her head. "Liam Costello."
"Yes."
"Older than the file makes him sound. Not in age, in experience.
He's been through things that mark people.
" She pauses. "He had a — situation. A few years ago.
With a woman. Apparently it went badly and he's spent the time since trying to rebuild his reputation as someone who can be dealt with.
The Italians extended an alliance. That's not nothing. "
"A man trying to prove he's changed."
"A man who may actually have changed," Dara says carefully. "Which is different, and worth noting."
I nod, filing that away. A man who has genuinely changed is more complicated than a man performing contrition. Harder to predict. Harder to manipulate. Harder to write off as exactly what you expected him to be.
My father would say that is the more dangerous kind.
My father would also say danger is just another word for opportunity, if you're standing in the right place when it arrives.
I finish my tea and set the cup on the windowsill. Outside, New York continues not caring that I'm here. The light is going grey and gold at the edges.
"Get some sleep," Dara says. "You look like you need it."
"I need a lot of things." I pick up my carry-on and head for the bedroom I've already decided is mine. "Sleep is probably the most practical."
I don't sleep for two hours. I lie on top of the covers in the dark and look at the ceiling and think about Irish defense routes, about warehouse locations, about the particular architecture of a light infiltration that announces itself just enough and not too much.
I think about my father, who is three years dead and still the loudest voice in the room whenever I'm alone.
Anyone can see the large things, Nadenka. The large things are for the lazy and the dead.
I am not lazy, I think. And I am not dead yet.
I close my eyes.
Tuesday, I'll dance. Tonight, I'll plan.
And before the two weeks are out, the Irish will know that someone is watching them.
They just won't know it's me.