by James Grady
“Afterwards we’re standing alone on the sidewalk after the café. Traffic whizzing past. She cocks her head. Waits for me to fill the stillness.
“The frown pulled my whole face down. Sad clown. I tap where I don’t have a wristwatch. Grimace and rock from side to side, urgency. Use both hands, my wiggling fingers trailing tears down my cheeks. Shrug and lift my hands up. Helpless.”
“Hopeless,” said Sasha.
“She gestures about my pockets. I shrug.”
“But the CIA has its Panic Line. All you needed—”
“I fucking know what I needed!”
Sasha forced himself to relax so the man sitting shoulder to shoulder with him on the Union Station bench would feel and follow that softening.
“She reaches out,” said Condor. “Our first touch. Takes my left hand, white gloves over our flesh. Puts the last of her francs in my open palm. Closes my fist.
“She swirls away. Flags down a taxi. Opens the back door.
“I slouch. Face her. Press my white-gloved hand over my heart.
“She presses two fingertips to her dark red lips. Presses them to mine.
“The taxi driver yells ‘Allons! Allons!’ I’m in the back seat. The door slams. He starts to pull away, but there’s time, there’s still time, there’s fucking time for me to press my white-gloved hands against the glass of the back window, stare out it at her staring back at the cab leaving.”
“What happened then?” said Sasha.
“You went back to Moscow. Ames betrayed you. Jesse got you out in a spy swap.”
“No, we all know what happened to me. What happened to you? What did you do?”
“Told the taxi driver the address of another safe house. My real Op. Then this and that and some other things. I came up with the idea for the V. Got it up and running, which meant I wasn’t a ‘company man’ anymore. Then the CIA locked me up in their secret insane asylum.”
“No wonder.”
The two old men laughed.
“And here we are,” said Sasha. “Where you still haven’t told me why.”
Condor said: “They’re going to kill you.”
All sound in the bustling train station fell away from Sasha.
Condor rode the silence.
Sasha said: “Why? Or better, why now?”
“Have you read the news today?”
“Sadly. The Big Reveal: ‘Grab ’em by the pussy.’ That is the news in America today. And tomorrow. And all your brilliant poll-taking and mirror watching political poofers—”
“Poofers?” said Condor.
“They talk. They fill up the TV, the newspaper. But all their we know what’s real goes poof because they only hear themselves. They will say ‘grab the pussy’ is the end of him, is beyond what people will accept. Is like a horror movie clown gone crazy. But they’ll be wrong.
“They don’t get it because he doesn’t look like who they see in their mirrors. And they’re right about that, he isn’t like them. That’s why people like him. People trust clowns to be clowns who must be somebody under their makeup. Better than someone who pretends he wears no makeup: We all know it’s there. Clown you at least trust to be lying to you. Like reality TV.”
“They’re coming for you, Sasha. And you know that. All the way back to Trotsky—”
“—with an ice ax in Mexico,” interrupted Sasha, who’d spent hundreds of hours of playing board games like Clue with CIA babysitters who kept him company in a Colorado safe house for the first year of his swapped-out life.
“I know the CIA read you the hit list since Russia started up revenge whacks again after the lull when the Berlin Wall fell. Poison pellet in the park. A bullet in an alley. A car accident. Suicide flying out a fourth-story hotel window.”
“We were better at it in my day,” said the wolf.
“Now is now, and you, you tell the CIA no. Don’t let them move you to their witness protection. You don’t take them up on their expensive as hell fallback offer to set you up with babysitters at your cottage, let you live the life you say you won’t give up so it doesn’t get ripped from you by your old crew. And to top all that off, you tell them that you’ll burn any without your permission protection team you catch.”
“I’ve been in enough prisons.”
Condor leaned forward on his folded thighs.
Sasha looked down at the black leather jacket back of this man who’d saved his life once.
“Why are you here, Condor?”
“You know your old colleagues in Russia. The uniforms change. The job doesn’t.”
The former Russian spy said: “They are looking for polenzi durak. Useful fool. You have a lot of them in American politics. Almost better than an actual compromised leader. Control is difficult in any politics, anytime, anywhere, anyway, so why not just make your enemy more out of control than you? Hell, control is difficult in any intelligence operation, look at us. Come to think of it, look at everybody.”
“Right now,” said Condor. “I’m looking at you. For Jesse. For me. If I can’t get you to be smart, I better try and stop you from being stupid.”
Sarcasm edged through Sasha’s words: “You’re too nice to me.”
“We all have our failings.”
“Just don’t fail to see the real Russia, yes? We—
“—they,” Sasha corrected himself, “are only 144 million people and America has 325 million, but Russia is born of Stalingrad, the stupid communists, yes, but also one million of us died refusing to give up to the Germans. Fighting in the streets of the city. Starving. Dying in the snow. Now they will be finally be number one. No one is going to conquer Russia.”
“I don’t think anyone wants to,” said Condor. “Well, China …”
“But more,” said Sasha. “We all want more, yes? You. Me. That waiter bussing the table. Russia. The oligarchs who are Russia, now not needing to sneak and pretend and fight communist fools in the government. Whatever else, Russia is now more like the days of glory when we were an empire in this world. Respected. So the people love the man who gave them that dream of back when things were great, they love Putin.”
Condor said see.
“See what?” said Sasha.
“Not see, not that word.”
“What then? You are speaking Spanish now—si?”
“I said ‘c.’ Like in A, B, C.”
Alexander Volkov aka Volk aka Wolf aka Sasha blinked.
Said: “You are talking to someone I can’t see.”
“I can’t see her either.”
“But she can see us? Hacked into the Station’s security cameras?”
“They don’t work well enough.” The born in the USA spy frowned: “You agreed to meet me. But only here. Why?”
“Does this train station mean something special to you, Condor?”
“These days, any place I get to be is special to me. But why here for you now?”
“Well … public place where just in case you come with a pick-up team, I have better fighting chance. Witnesses are problems for you Americans.”
“I don’t fuck with my friends.”
“But your friends fuck with anybody,” said Sasha.
“You should see what my enemies do.”
“I have. I was.”
“No other reason to come here to Union Station?” said Condor.
“Ice cream afterwards. Food court in the basement. I’ve been here before. Plenty of parking. Easy to find even if the woman in my cellphone wasn’t talking to me.”
“You had your cell phone on,” deadpanned Condor.
Sasha said nothing.
“Why?” said Condor.
The man in the black cowboy hat said: “Sometimes you have to walk out on the line. Just to see. Verify. You can’t always trust weathermen.”
“Fuck.”
“Are we still friends?”
“We passed being friends running across the rooftops of Paris.” Condor shook his head. “The CIA said your whack is scheduled for next week. Not now.”
“So what? Are you saying they were wrong again? And now my old but new colleagues spotted the unexpected, us two birds with one stone? Stalingrad taught seize the chance you see.”
Sasha’s eyes traveled up to the second-floor balcony. To the stone statues of Roman Centurions. He scanned every nook and cranny as he said:
“Is it true that the shields those statues stand behind were put up after the statues were installed? That your religious leaders and the politicians who they owned insisted on hiding the statues’ genitals that were probably only some codpiece flower thing? That they wanted to hide any hint of sex from American citizens’ eyes?”
“Public decency and morality.”
“And private what? Grab ’em by the pussy?”
Condor said: “We have to move.”
Cowboy hat and black jacket stood as one, walked side by side across chessboard tiles.
Sasha said: “Are you heavy?”
“This is America,” said Condor.
Two old men shuffling through Union Station collided as they turned face to face. Luckily, their crash into each other became like a mutual hug, the cowboy reaching deep inside his buddy’s unzipped black leather jacket, no doubt checking to be sure that old guy’s heart was still beating. They parted. Adjusted their clothing and walked on.
Shoulder to shoulder.
Side by side.
Hands empty and free.
“Your invisible woman,” said Sasha. “Is she nearby? Perhaps with friends or relatives?”
“No. You said come alone. I knew you’d catch me in even any well-intentioned lie.”
“How does your she know anything about what’s going on here?”
“You aren’t the only one with a turned-on cellphone.”
“Ahh,” said Sasha. “You are already deep in this Op.”
“Not by choice. And your part was CIA. Until you told them no, my friend.”
“Sorry—not about telling the CIA no, but about getting you here in this now.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That they wouldn’t want to kill me with the CIA right here.”
“I’m not CIA!”
“Well now I believe you.”
They’d strolled a circle along the walls of shops in the main hall like two old men walking the circle of a big clock from seven up to eleven and past twelve. No one else seemed to be walking the clock behind or ahead of them on this tick-tock.
They strolled past the front wall of double doors filled with sunlight.
Stayed on the tick-tock circle.
Sasha said: “What does your telephone ‘c’ mean?”
“Call the cavalry.”
“Are they coming?”
“I’ve got one op’ who’s a tough street angel. She’s running the keyboard but out of the combat zone. And I’ve got a newbie. All the right scars but not enough street time beyond them, young guy, just like I was. He’s near. But I gave him orders about any kind of if. He’s to stay close, watch and learn, but stay clear.”
“He means something to you.”
“He’s gotta be tomorrow.”
“Let’s hope not starting today,” said Sasha.
“So,” he said as they curved toward the passageways leading from main hall to the waiting areas and gates for trains. “No cavalry?”
“Probably not in time.”
“How many falcons?”
“Now the pings analyze out as fourteen, probably more. Every door covered.”
“Will they come in?” said Sasha.
“Let’s not wait and see. No more collateral casualties. Sorry, Chris Harvie.” Condor frowned. “Where did you park?”
“That’s the last place we should go! They probably setup there as soon as they could! It’s a perfect kill zone.” Then Sasha’s grim line grin said got it. His mouth said: “Come on.”
Black cowboy–hatted Sasha led Condor to the escalator running up from the passengers waiting areas and gates to trains. He took the lead, the first to step on those rising stairs.
Fluttering shot past them, a pigeon desperately trying to get the hell out of there.
The two old men reached the flat, red-tiled entrance level.
Condor said: “I think we can skip the parking validation machine.”
“OK,” said Sasha as they pushed their way through the EXIT doors into the sunlight for the parking structures, pancake layers, “but does this mean no ice cream?”
The stepped into the crisp chilly air.
Neither man zipped up his jacket.
No bullets cut them down as they walked past clusters of waiting bus customers.
Up the first escalator.
Sasha rode top, eyes scanning where they were going, what they were passing.
Condor rode drag facing backwards.
A few people whose faces and hands did nothing suspicious rode down past them.
What looked like a snippy married couple got on the UP escalator below Condor’s gaze.
Second level, Condor walking out from being in a straight line behind Sasha until they were both on the next UP escalator.
The snippy married couple turned and walked into the pancake parking’s second level.
Condor and Sasha rode the third escalator up. Rode it alone. Rode it ready.
The fourth and final escalator carried them up into the top level’s entrance.
“How do you want to do this?” said Sasha.
“Give them a choice,” said Condor.
“They wouldn’t do—they haven’t done that for us.”
“Us isn’t them. And if we are, we’re already dead.”
Sasha and Condor pushed open the glass doors. Stepped outside.
Their right hands hung chosen empty by their sides.
That vast concrete field.
A seeming thousand steps away, in the concrete field’s left corner: Sasha’s parked car.
A line of five men waited perhaps fifteen paces from the car, faced the two old men.
Condor and Sasha stepped forward as one.
Black leather–jacketed Condor and black cowboy-hatted Sasha stopped a first down in American football away from that skirmish line of five still empty-handed, cautious hunters.
One those hunters, a bushy eyebrows man, yelled in clear English: “Bonus!”
Before that shout echoed off the suicide wall around this vast concrete wasteland of yellow-striped slots came the blare of a disembodied electronic woman’s voice blasted at full volume through all present cyber devices: “Stoy!”
This whole cast of killers froze.
Like a shot, knew they were not alone. Knew they were known.
Sasha translated: “Halt.”
From far off, those on the cement parking lot roof/floor heard the sound of a helicopter.
Coming closer.
Bushy-eyebrows man shouted at his comrades: “Trakhat’ ikh!”
Condor flowed like he was half his age, swooped into the Weaver stance. His left hand cupped his right and the .45 1911 automatic pistol created for American soldiers to stop fanatical religious terrorists. His eyes—
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Slug two knocked Bushy Eyebrows backwards and slammed him onto the cement.
Gunshots echoes going gone as the chopping sound of a helicopter grew louder.
Condor lowered his gun arm and through the ringing in his ears yelled: “Stalingrad!”
The four men facing the two spies they’d come to kill stood absolutely still, but Condor sensed that his shouted word had moved them, moved
Sasha.
The chopping sounds of a helicopter.
Slowly, his eyes on the four men standing by their sprawled boss, Condor walked a curve around the Russians and toward the Jeep. Sasha traveled with him.
The four Russians had been to the ballet. Moved as one. On the escalator down, gone as the October Saturday shook with the sound of a helicopter.
Condor stood beside Sasha, with him between his car and the sprawled corpse.
“Fuck them,” said Sasha. “Trakhat’ ikh. That’s what he yelled.”
“Oh.”
“Mutual Assured Destruction,” said Sasha. “The old Cold War. That’s what you wanted them to know.”
“No,” said Condor. “Stalingrad. No retreat. No surrender. No fucking around.”
A helicopter roared over their heads.
Condor told Sasha: “You’ll have to stay now.”
“No longer than it takes for you who aren’t CIA to clear me to go.”
The helicopter landed on the far side of the cement roof/top level of Union Station’s pancake levels parking structure. A SWAT team hopped out and hustled a tactical advance, assault rifles aimed and ready, orders streaming into their helmets’ earpieces.
The two old men glanced at Sasha’s Jeep.
Slugs one and three had punched holes through the driver’s door.
Sasha shook his head. “I’m going home.”
“But you,” said this man in the black cowboy hat: “Where are you going, Condor?”
CHAMBER SIX
Runaway American Dream
’Twas the day after Christmas and nothing was stirring in this suburban Washington, DC, neighborhood, not even at the Martin’s old house that odd couple bought in September. Of course, there must have been something going on somewhere! After all, 2016 had been quite a year: the Chicago Cubs broke the 108-year-old curse and won the World Series.
They—the odd couple, not the Cubs—they were nice people, of that everyone in the neighborhood was sure, though no one had ever done much more that exchange polites with them and feel an odd chill that wasn’t from the gold leafed October air when they moved in. The new people kept to themselves—except for the visitors—but that was understandable given her conditions that their real estate broker accidentally let slip into neighborhood ears.
