Chapter 8
Carter
Izmailovsky Market, Moscow
Eighteen months earlier
Carter and Nika had ushered their charges out of the hotel early, before the snow on the market paths turned to slippery mush, and before the city’s streets and subway got so busy with Saturday crowds that their CIA tail would struggle to spot an FSB tail.
As Carter helped the birthday girl haggle over an antique porcelain chess set, there were no likelies in sight.
Bartering was a game for her, of course, given that she could afford to buy a set made from platinum and diamonds and fly in Kasparov himself to tutor her.
Carter ensured she paid a premium, while letting her think she’d gotten a bargain.
As she triumphantly handed over her rubles, the stallholder huffed as if disgusted at being bested.
She handed the set to Carter to carry—not that he’d offered.
Carter was forcing himself to resist looking around too much, but even so, potential FSB operatives were popping up like dolphins.
Of course, by the time he casually turned to check, all he ever caught was a ripple.
Was this the paranoia afflicting Nika? One of his trainers at The Farm had warned that it was a fine balance between instinct and paranoia: “Not every loose thread in the fabric of your day is a sign you’ve been burned.
If you want to find something suspicious, you will, every time. ”
“So how do you know what’s real and what’s not?” he’d asked. “The imagination is a powerful thing.”
“It’s not something that can be taught,” the trainer had said.
“We spend a fortune training a single case officer, but so much of what we do is only learned in the field. You’ll get to the point that you know the streets of your posting better than those of your hometown, because you notice things, commit things to memory. ”
Carter could hardly remember his hometown.
Four years in this gig, three before that on shorter assignments, mostly in Kabul, a year in training, six years in the military, four at college.
Most of the time he had a handle on what was real and what wasn’t, but instinct could steer you wrong.
You risked getting to the point of convincing yourself of threats that weren’t there, or of reaching a place of dangerous complacency.
Maybe it was time to get out of Moscow, to level up the cover into something that came with diplomatic protection.
But the trouble with an embassy job as cover?
It immediately put you under suspicion from the host government, which endangered everyone you spoke to.
What was the alternative, though—a day job at Langley?
Working regular hours, going home every night to his silent apartment, where Vanessa’s clothes still hung in the closet.
“You should sell it,” his mom had said, the very day Vanessa’s death certificate was issued. “Too many memories.”
Which was exactly why he couldn’t sell it—or live in it, or rent it out.
As Carter trod the mottled snowy path behind Nika and the tourists, he adjusted his scarf to cover a patch of neck that had become exposed.
This winter was proving as brutal as the first he’d spent in Moscow.
Which had to make it four years nearly to the day that he’d recruited Nika, after months working up her dissident fiancé as a potential asset.
A software engineer, the fiancé had contacted the U.S.
Embassy to say he could supply intel from sources in the Kremlin and other government bodies.
Carter, new to Moscow and posing as an American in the import/export trade, had landed the job of assessing him, but had concluded he was too outspoken and had already come to the attention of the FSB.
Carter, however, had discovered something the FSB hadn’t.
Yuri had a tour guide fiancée—a relationship they kept secret because her wealthy, connected family had bigger plans for her.
Carter’s surveillance confirmed that the girlfriend shared Yuri’s views and contacts and spoke impeccable English but exercised a whole lot more discretion.
She was on no radar except Carter’s. Even before the fiancé died in a fiery car crash, Carter had become more interested in her.
He’d found her at the funeral. Well, not technically at the funeral.
She was too cautious to stand at the grave.
She’d watched discreetly from beside an old tomb on a hillside as the snow-dusted coffin sank into the ground.
Little more than her nose was visible beneath her unremarkable winter clothes, and she carried flowers, as if she were visiting a family grave.
If you didn’t know to look for her, you wouldn’t have noticed her.
Another sign that his instinct was correct.
Carter had set off after her, hunkering into his gray coat, keeping out of sight among the tombstones.
If she spotted him, she’d likely vanish.
He’d rounded a sepulcher right beside her and her head had snapped up, her eyes rimmed with red.
He’d approached her quickly, using her name, speaking English, coming straight out and telling her he was in contact with Yuri and that she’d been spotted by the FSB agents who were also surveilling the funeral.
“I didn’t see anyone,” she’d said in the flawless English he’d heard in his surveillance recordings. Neither had he, of course, or he wouldn’t have approached her.
“Did you see me?”
“Yes, but I did not think…”
“You must be more careful in the future.” He took her forearm.
In the distance, a figure disappeared behind a tomb.
Probably a random mourner—a real one. Nika didn’t flinch at the contact, so Carter pulled her in and wrapped his arms around her—a meeting of thick coats, two walruses brushing up against each other, one wearing perilously high boots.
“Pretend we’re together—meeting to visit a friend’s grave.
You’re safe with me.” She went rigid but didn’t wriggle away. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“What loss?” she said, sniffing, her foggy breath trailing out from his shoulder.
“I know all about you and Yuri.”
She shook her head against his collarbone but didn’t resist. He pulled away slightly and found her right glove. Through the leather and the fur lining, he traced the outline of a ring.
“He gave you this. A synthetic sapphire but he planned to give you something worthy of you once he could afford it. You offered him money for it, worried he’d spent too much, but he refused to take it. You don’t wear it when you visit your family.”
Her eyes sparkled, almost as gray as the tombstone behind her. “I don’t underst—” Her mouth fell open. “He was … spying for the Americans? Is that why this happened?” She gestured down the hill, though the grave site was no longer in view.
“No. It never got to that point. He was interested in working with certain people within the U.S. government who had the power and the resources to help him advance his cause. But the FSB were already onto him. I warned him but…”
“You knew him?”
“Yes. I admired his principles, his courage. He wanted to do something good, to work for change, and I wanted to make that happen for him. Unfortunately, it was too late.”
“He was fearless. Which made him stupid and selfish.” She spat the words. “A car doesn’t explode from a small bump, no matter what the politsiya say.”
“He feared for you. He feared to lose you.”
“If he truly cared, he would have kept himself safe. Now I have been burned too—and I cannot even be seen to mourn.”
“You can to me.”
She pulled back to look up at him. “If you know about me, does the FSB? I assume that is who killed him.”
Carter shook his head. “Your precautions have been effective—and wise. Come,” he said, dropping a hand to her waist and leading her away to find a suitable grave to mourn at. Her boots crunched on the gravelly snow.
He had a lengthy pitch prepared in his head, about how he could give her a pathway to act on her conscience, help her country, make Yuri’s death worthwhile.
He’d been prepared for the recruitment process to take months.
To have to earn her trust. Bribery, blackmail, coercion—that was how it usually went.
Small compromises, small confidences, gradually leading to bigger ones, until she was in over her head. Turned out he wouldn’t need it.
“I won’t spy on my family,” she’d whispered. “That is where I draw the line.”
“They’re not what this is about.”
“Well then, I can’t help you. I don’t know anything. It was Yuri who had the information, Yuri who was on the inside, who knew how things operated.”
“But there are other people who do have access, people as frustrated as you are, people who need our help. The people Yuri was working with.”
Her lips flattened into a line. “If you know who they are, why not approach them yourself?”
“I don’t know who they are. I don’t want to know.
Safer to use a go-between. Yuri’s plan was sound, he just wasn’t the right person to carry it out.
You are. His contacts need a safe funnel to get their intel out, intel that might help bring proper democracy to Russia, without their names coming near any CIA database—and neither would your name, of course.
You and I can be that funnel, working together. ”
She’d scoffed. “You are an idealist, like Yuri. You really think it would make any difference?”
“The right information can. I can make sure it gets to the right people, who can act on it. And sometimes it’s empowering just to do something, rather than watch helplessly from the sidelines. Do it for Yuri.”
He fell silent, giving time for the thought to circulate in her head.
She was intelligent enough to come to her own conclusions without a hard sell.
With her family’s wealth and power, it was pointless to offer money or protection.
He was pretty sure she wouldn’t do it for her ego or for the thrill.
He could threaten to hand her family evidence of her love affair with a dissident, but that was hardly damning enough to convince her to betray her country, and blackmail wasn’t the best way to gain trust. Which left ideology.
Plus, the satisfaction of secretly rebelling against her family.
The idealists were the most valuable, the ones doing it for the right reasons: justice, freedom.
The ones who were in it for the money? Someone else could pay more.
If it was about flattery, someone else could flatter more.
The trick with an idealist was to ensure they kept believing in the mission, even when, over time, nothing tangibly improved.
Eventually she said, “If I get you what you want, can you get me to America to live?”
“For the foreseeable future, you’re more useful to your compatriots here.”
“And after the foreseeable future?”
“I can’t see that far,” he said with a wry smile. “But,” he added as her expression hardened, “that’s been known to happen, for our very best contacts.”
Finally, she nodded, more to communicate something to herself than to him, he suspected.
“I have felt so helpless for so long. And Yuri’s friends…
If anything, this has motivated them more, though I cautioned them to stay quiet.
You understand that I love my country? It is just this administration that I hate.
It has defined our country for too long.
I can’t imagine not ever doing something to try to change things. ”
“I do understand. You think you can convince these friends of his to work with you?”
“I know I can.”
And she had, Carter reflected, as he passed steaming cups of sbiten to the tourists, the vendor ladling them from a cauldron guarded by a three-headed stone dragon.
The cinnamon-and-clove scent alone seemed to defrost the inside of his nose.
One of the tourists nibbled the last chunk of lamb off a shashlik and handed Carter the chewed kebab stick, which he tossed into a garbage can right under her nose.
If he was blown, he sure wouldn’t miss babysitting rich people. But then where would that leave Nika?
Still, by early evening, as his group reached the hotel to change for dinner and the opera after their private tour of the Kremlin, Carter felt confident. As he walked through the foyer toward the elevators, Nika caught up with him and linked arms, her heels tapping on the marble floor.
He leaned down, pretending to brush his lips on her hair, which was newly liberated from her hat. “We live to spy another day,” he whispered.
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t see anyone today. And I know what I’m looking for.”
Once in his room, he sat on the bed to remove his boots, and opened his laptop to check for emails. Only one message, from his “booking office” in New York. He opened it, frowning. It was a tour cancellation, for Elena Petrov—Nika’s code name. He swiftly shut the lid.
A burn notice. They were leaving her to the Russian wolves.