Chapter 3 #2
Nothing in her apartment or pocket litter would suggest she was anything but a freelance tour guide.
The best defense for any of them was their cover.
The best way to hide incriminating evidence was not to carry incriminating evidence.
The best way to act like you had nothing to hide was to have nothing to hide—nothing tangible, anyway.
Counter-surveillance equipment in your home would just confirm any suspicions.
He and Nika both carried more cash than a regular person, but that could be explained away by their cover—sometimes they had to pay a bar or a bribe in cash.
Otherwise, they stayed clean. They rarely even took notes—his brain held intel as reliably as a flash drive.
If they did have to smuggle documents or photos, there were ways to hide or encrypt them within their tourist company paperwork.
They saved frank conversations for walks in parks, never hotel rooms.
But if this list truly was on its way to the Kremlin, and their names were on it…
“All done,” Carter said, handing back the phone. He returned to Nika and slung an arm around her. “What do you mean about being followed?” he murmured.
“At first, I thought I was imagining it. But there are other things.” She laughed, wryly at first, then forcing it into a girly giggle for the sake of onlookers.
“This all sounds so silly when I say it aloud. I have not been able to say it aloud before now. There is no one I can…” The smile wavered slightly.
“You always tell me to trust my gut. Moscow Rules. Well, my gut is telling me something is wrong.”
Carter resisted the instinct to check over his shoulder.
It wasn’t like Nika to get cold feet, and the suggestion of closing down their operation would not go down well at Langley.
Together they had set up one of the CIA’s most reliable and secure outflows of intel from the Kremlin.
The take had been invaluable, or so he was often assured.
Most of what he passed on meant exactly nothing to him—encryption codes, passwords, names, dates, meetings—but it didn’t take an analyst to figure out that much of it was related to Russia’s disinformation campaign in the U.S.
and its ambitions to push out its borders and create a new world order.
And it wasn’t just Nika’s intel that was at stake.
Carter’s alias gave him an excuse to circulate at the five-star hotels where much of Russia’s government, diplomacy, and business was conducted, and recruit and run agents who had eyes and ears in those gilt suites, boardrooms, stretch limos, saunas, massage parlors…
People who were more than happy to supplement their meager salaries or get help for a disabled daughter or a gambling debt—it was just a case of finding that desire. The whole cobweb would be compromised.
“I’ll keep an eye out, talk to my guy,” he said.
“That is not enough. You must take me with you out of the country, to America. Take me with you, on the train, when you leave.”
“That is not an easy thing to do, Nika, especially if you’ve been blown. Even if I could make it happen, I’m leaving in two days. That’s not enough time.”
“Your government can make anything happen that it wants to. Have I not earned this?” She continued to smile, but her blue-gray eyes were glossy, and not from the cold.
He steered her toward the cathedral, an arm around her waist to give them an excuse to stay close and talk quietly.
“Four years I have worked with you, risking my freedom and my life to betray my country. You recruited me after Yuri died. You told me you’d protect me. ”
“I told you I’d do everything I could to protect you. There’s a difference and you know it.”
She gave a slight scoff, which killed him. So much of how they behaved was an act, but their friendship was genuine, and the tears she was fighting were real. Even at her fiancé’s funeral she hadn’t cried.
“I didn’t say it was impossible but it’s a massive process. We’ll need to run it by the station chief, consider counter-surveillance to confirm it. If you’ve been blown, documents would need to be arranged… The logistics… And, I’ll be honest, we don’t usually help people at your level to defect.”
“Because I am not an asset,” she said, bitterly. “I am not important. What is the term? A throwaway? A discard?”
He bit down on his lower lip. “You are incredibly valuable here but—”
“But I am just the go-between. I do not possess the intelligence, I do not generate the information, I merely pass it on. I would be worthless the second I landed in America, and the CIA does not operate on pity. Yes, to all of the above?”
“Nika, the work you’ve done here, the risks—”
“It’s okay,” she said, though evidently it wasn’t.
“I understand how it works. And yes, I understood all this when I chose to become involved. It’s just…
Back then I did not care so much if I died.
Maybe I even wanted to die. But now that it could be a possibility…
” She channeled a little more energy into the smile.
“Anyway, it does not matter, I do not want to be seen to defect. I must not do this in any way that will raise suspicion, for the sake of my contacts. I cannot be seen to be getting favors from your embassy.” She folded into his side, as if sheltering from the biting northerly.
“But I have done the research. With my qualifications, my background, I do not qualify for an American visa as Annika the Moscow tour guide. This must look legitimate, genuine. Something that has come about naturally from this job.” She slid a pointed look up at Carter.
“For example, falling in love with my colleague and marrying him.”
His stride faltered. “Nika, we can’t. We would never get away with it.”
She rested a gloved hand on his chest. “We can get away with anything your government wants us to get away with. Please, you must do this for me. You said yourself—you plan to never marry again for real, after what happened to your wife.”
After what happened to your wife. Like the sonavabitch he was, he’d used his wife’s disappearance to earn Nika’s trust, though obviously he’d changed the facts.
He’d lost his wife, she’d lost her fiancé, so he understood her desire for something good to come from it, to make Yuri’s death worthwhile. Some bullshit like that.
“I am not asking for a real marriage. You will be free to do whatever you choose. I’m merely asking you to save my life. I will pay you everything I have. I will do anything you w—”
“Nika, shh,” he said, aware that the birthday girl in the tour group was eyeing them curiously.
“I’d do it for you in a second if I thought it would work, and I wouldn’t take a ruble.
But it can’t work. It’s not feasible that we could get you a visa so quickly, if at all.
That alone would confirm any suspicions the FSB may have.
And you know it’s not my call whether the CIA helps you. ”
“But you can help me, I know you can. And you are a persuasive person. You must help me.”
As they neared the steps to the cathedral, he pulled her aside and took her gloved hands in his, drawing their chests close. “Nika, you know that if it were up to me, you’d be on the next flight out, but—”
She silenced him by sliding close, tiptoeing, and kissing him on the lips.
He had no choice but to play along, goddammit, feeling awkward as all hell.
Rejecting her would create even more of a scene.
She released him with a smile that to the outside world might appear as triumph but he knew to be desperation.
If she’d been blown, the Russians would never let her leave the country.
If they were both caught, he’d likely be tortured before being tossed out on his ass, persona non grata. She wouldn’t be so lucky.
She sank back down, not that there was much difference between Nika on stilettos and Nika on tiptoes. Her eyes shimmered. Twenty feet away, the birthday girl nudged her husband and smiled indulgently, as if to say, “See, I was right about those two.”
“Marry me and take me to America. It is the only way. You know what they do to people like me. What they did to Yuri. Do not leave me to die.”