by Max Karpov
He saw something give in Turov’s face; a distant relief seemed to flood his strange blue eyes. It was a vulnerable and very human look, as if Christopher had just agreed to save his life.
Turov’s cell phone rang on the desk in front of him. He lifted it and placed the phone to his ear.
“Yes?” His eyes shifted to Christopher’s as he listened. “Oh . . . Yes, you’re sure who it is? All right. Take care of that, then,” he said, speaking in Russian. “No, I’ll stay here. Yes. No, come to see us when you’re finished.”
He set the phone back on his desk without averting his eyes. Then Turov slid open his desk drawer again. He pulled it back farther so Chris could see what was in the center: a handgun, a 9mm Makarov pistol.
He lifted the gun from the drawer and pointed it at Christopher Niles. Four quick booms sounded outside, then two more. This time, it wasn’t thunder. “So,” he said, “it turns out you’re no more honest than your country is, after all.”
FIFTY-THREE
Turov kept the Makarov aimed at Christopher’s head. There was a starkness to Andrei Turov’s face all of a sudden, like an actor who’d slipped out of character.
Seconds passed and the phone on his desk rang again. Turov put it to his ear.
“All right,” he said.
He set it down, his eyes still on Christopher. “You made an agreement, didn’t you?” Turov finally said. “That you would come here alone. I’m disappointed you chose not to honor that.” The pupils in Turov’s eyes seemed to darken. “This is why your country has lost so much trust around the world, you know. You pretend to be a moral leader. You think you are somehow entitled to play the world’s police and prosecutor. But you always fall back on your American arrogance and petulance: as soon as your own interests are threatened, you think you no longer have to follow any rules. You think you can break your own agreements.”
Chris, watching him, was silent. This was ironic, coming from Turov.
“Tell me, what was your real intention?” Turov said, raising the gun slightly for emphasis, his face still showing no emotion. “You brought your man out here to kill me?”
“No. Not at all,” he said. “I wanted cover. A witness. I took precautions, in case anything went wrong. This doesn’t have to change our arrangement, Andrei. I can stop this.”
“It’s late for that,” Turov said. “You have put me in a difficult spot, I’m afraid. Once trust is lost, what do we have?”
Christopher said nothing. He recognized Turov’s cycle of paranoia: a man whose business is deceiving others always thinks others are trying to deceive him. He ascribes his own motives to adversaries whose real motives may be benign. It was one of the fatal flaws of men like Turov. It was also the case that Turov, despite his peculiar genius, could become stubbornly unforgiving if he felt that someone had wronged him. They were getting into that territory now. “We can still do this,” Chris said, trying again.
“Possibly,” he said. “But it will be difficult.” Turov continued to point the gun, a faint flush reddening his face. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to end this right now. Chris thought of Anna Carpenter, at her office in the Capitol. He thought of his father.
Turov reached again for the phone, looked at the readout, and set it down. There was another boom of thunder. Then something closer: this time within the house. A door closing. The squeaking of footsteps. Someone was in the house. Someone was walking down the hallway toward Turov’s corner office.
Turov extended the gun, pointed at Christopher’s face.
“Anton?” he called.
There was no answer.
“Stand up,” Turov said, motioning Christopher to the door. Then he stood himself. “Go ahead. Go to the door and open it.”
Chris took several steps across the room. He stopped. Both men listened. Someone was right outside. In the next instant, the door burst open. Turov fired two quick shots from the Makarov.
“No! Don’t!” Christopher shouted.
Simultaneously, Briggs fired once and Turov staggered back. Then Briggs fired again, twice, hitting Turov in the leg and arm.
But Briggs’s first shot had gone through his chest. Turov’s gun fell to the floor and he dropped back into the chair, no longer moving. His otherworldly pale blue eyes remained open, facing the doorway, his expression still alert, as if waiting for someone to come and explain what had happened. But there was no light in his eyes. There was no one home anymore.
FIFTY-FOUR
There were, Christopher would later explain, three witnesses to the killing. Because no known video existed and because one of the witnesses also happened to be the victim, that left just two men to explain what happened. And two, he thought, was a pretty manageable number.
The human memory, of course, was famously unreliable in cases like this. Christopher had once participated in an Agency class in which twenty-five students witnessed the same mock crime and gave twenty-five different versions of the event, diverging even on such details as the skin color of the participants.
Two, though, was a good number, and Chris and Briggs would give markedly similar accounts of what had happened. That there had been, for instance, five gunshots in total: the first two from Turov, the next three from Briggs.
After the fifth, Briggs had dropped to a crouch, they would recall, his gun still raised in both hands. A long silence followed. They both remembered it like that.
Andrei Turov had come to his final rest in the desk chair, eyes open, lips pressed together in that firm, reasonable-looking expression. One of his arms was on the armrest, the other on his upper thigh. Chris felt for his pulse and didn’t find one. He had never before seen a dead man who looked so alive.
It seemed to spook Briggs more than it did Christopher. A shadow of rain flicked on the desk from the window and Briggs raised his gun to Turov’s head.
“Don’t!” Chris said, stopping him.
Briggs lowered his arm.
“Are you all right? Were you hit?”
“I’m all right,” Briggs said, still out of breath and dripping rain. “I’m going to clear the house.”
Briggs looked carefully at Turov before turning away, as if expecting him to leap back to life. Christopher walked with him down the hallway, covering Briggs as he went room to room and into the garage. Calling out, “Clear . . . clear . . .”
They walked outside to the three security men, confiscating phones, checking pockets. Christopher used his own cell to take photos of the dead men, which Headquarters would run through face recog software after they were out.
“The guards ambushed me, I had no choice,” Briggs explained as they came back inside. “There was no way of dialing it back.”
“We’re fine,” Chris said. “Let’s just focus on getting out of here. Do something for me.”
“Name it.”
“See if there are any suitcases or bags in the car and the van, or anything personal. Then we’re gone. Stay clean, no fingerprints.”
Christopher went back to the corner office and the unsettling sight of Andrei Turov seated in the leather desk chair, his eyes open, lips together. He felt again for a pulse. Nothing. He was tempted to tip him over, to make him look more like a dead man should look. But he didn’t. For some reason, he didn’t want to spoil Turov’s final impression.
He stood by the window and looked at the scultpture pieces in the rain, surprised that he was becoming emotional, thinking about Anna again. It wasn’t just the normal feeling that accompanies sudden death, the reminder of how fleeting life is. And it wasn’t just Turov, a man he’d obsessed over for years. Mixed in was the loss of Turov’s proposal, the chance of connecting with his “carrier,” if such a person really existed; the idea of two major countries forming an alliance, using their strengths to benefit the rest of the world. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Chris had never explained Turov properly to Jake Briggs, and maybe he should have. But it didn’t matter now. This mission had ended in an elemental game of self-defense.
As Briggs had said, there was no way of dialing back now. Maybe it was for the best. There would be no more Turov deceptions.
“Two suitcases in the trunk,” Briggs said, standing in the doorway, his eyes turning to Turov.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.”
Christopher’s silence seemed to make Briggs uneasy again. He raised the garage door and climbed in the passenger seat. “I had no choice,” Briggs said as he drove toward the entrance gate. “I wish I did.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Chris was angry with Jake Briggs, in a superficial sort of way. But anger didn’t travel well. He’d weigh all that later: costs versus outcome. Briggs was an honorable man, unpredictable, wound a little tight. An old-school operative in some ways, the kind of man the CIA used to prize when Chris’s father was coming up, before the shift from human intel to electronic SIGINT. Had Briggs intended all along to kill Andrei Turov? He’d worry about that after they were back home. Chris’s thoughts had to be tactical now, not analytical. Briggs had changed the op, but he hadn’t ended it.
Briggs took them through the gate and back to the Lada. They shifted bags to the back seat and then he drove to the M10 motorway and the airport. Chris sorted through Turov and Konkin’s suitcases as they went: mostly clothes, and a few personal items, but he also found three flash drives in a small cotton tote bag in Turov’s case.
At Sheremetyevo International Airport, they bought casual business clothes at a Paul & Shark store and changed in the dressing room. Briggs came out with his hair slicked back, walking in his stiff-legged wrestler’s strut.
Martin had arranged for a concierge business-traveler package at Sheremetyevo, which allowed them to pass through security and passport control in a private VIP lounge, avoiding the queues and the scrutiny in the main concourse. When the flight was ready for takeoff, an English-speaking agent accompanied them to a private SUV, which delivered Chris and Briggs through the rain to their waiting Gulfstream V. The plane was registered to a CIA-owned NGO called Holstake Industries, which did millions of dollars of business in Moscow. It was one of about thirty charter planes owned by the CIA. The plane would deliver them to a private airfield north of Williamsburg, Virginia.
“Have a wonderful trip,” the personal agent said, with her pleasant Russian accent, standing in the rain beneath a giant umbrella.
Chris called Martin on the plane’s encrypted satellite phone once they were airborne and out of Russian air space. “The op’s over. I’m sending data,” he said. “I’ll need to call you back.”
“Are you all right?”
“We’re fine. I’ll call in thirty minutes.”
He made his two business calls, then. First, to the FSB agent whose office he believed had run surveillance on him in Moscow. “You will be interested to know,” he said, speaking Russian. “There has been a shooting, a robbery. Andrei Turov. I think one of his political enemies may have been responsible.” He gave the location and hung up.
Then he called Amira Niyzov on the number she’d written for him over lunch on Tuesday. Amira sounded pleased to hear his voice, but also cautious, a reminder of how delicate this op was. “Thank you again for talking with me for my story,” he said, “about the Russian Orthodox Church. I have a copy of what we spoke about, and am sending it to you.” Amira would be the first to receive the Delkoff document, other than Chris’s brother. “You know what we said Tuesday about returning to the cornfields?”
“Our philosophical discussion? Yes, of course,” Amira said.
“I’m told a crow died tonight, northwest of the city.”
“What?”
“Someone said the FSB may be there, or on its way now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a story that’s about to go public, about him. Obviously, some people won’t be pleased. You’ll be hearing about it.”
Amira was silent.
“Can you do what we said?” he asked. He felt an anxious twinge, worried for Amira. “Without putting yourself in jeopardy.”
She sighed and made a faint “mmm-hmm” sound. Chris knew that if she wanted to, Amira could spread this story to a handful of influential opposition leaders who could open up the network again. But she’d have to decide if doing so was worth the risk. “Where are you?” she said.
“I’m already out,” Chris said. “Probably you should leave too.” Amira didn’t respond. “I’m sorry. Be careful. I’ll be in contact,” he said. “Godspeed.”
His next call was to Anna, although he didn’t expect to reach her. It was midafternoon in D.C., and she was probably in a meeting.
“Christopher?” For a moment, he didn’t say anything. It was wonderful just hearing the timbre of her voice again.
“We’re done,” he said. “I’m coming home.” He listened to Anna’s silence, savoring the connection. “I just wanted to say: I’ve missed you. And us.” He added, “You can tell my brother to go ahead and publish now. Say he got it from a government source.”
“None too soon,” Anna said. “Have you talked with Martin?”
“Briefly. Why?”
Chris glanced up at Briggs, who averted his eyes. “Call Martin,” she said. “He’s got something to tell you. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He gazed out the window after hanging up, as the plane rattled through a mild turbulence. He tried for a while to imagine what Martin had to tell him. Maybe they’d discovered that Turov had arranged the meeting in London. Or maybe something had happened to Petrenko. That had been worrying Chris, for some reason.
He closed his eyes and felt the presence of Turov, felt his ghost traveling with him back across the Atlantic. We might even make a good team. He considered Turov’s proposal, a plan for two countries to think against their prejudices. Or maybe that had all been illusion. Maybe Langley would find Turov’s true intentions on his phone or on the computer drives in his suitcase. Or maybe they’d never be known.
Finally, Christopher called Martin back. “Turov’s gone,” he said. “We’ve got photos, flash drives, digital evidence. It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s how it went down.” Martin drew in a breath. “I think it’s possible the media’s going to report that he was killed by Russian intelligence services. By the FSB,” Christopher added.
“Because—?”
“Retribution. Because Turov let Delkoff get away. And because of what he knows. Knew. Delkoff’s story’s going to go viral by morning. The story will name Turov as the organizer of the August 13 attack.”
“The Delkoff document, you mean.”
“Yes, the Delkoff document.” Christopher smiled at his lapse. Martin already knew about the document; Briggs had sent it to him first. “I understand the FSB may still be on the scene.”
He heard a crackle of static before Martin spoke again. “You were there first, though.”
“Yeah.” Martin waited. “We were there first. Turov’s guards tried to stop Briggs. He responded.” Chris gave a sketchy picture of what had happened, leaving out details that he hadn’t worked through yet. “It’s not a perfect outcome,” he said.
“Well, no. Obviously not.”
But they were talking about two different things, he knew. “I just gave my brother the go-ahead to run this story. The Russian opposition has it too. Just so you know. That’s our alternate scenario now.”
“Better late than not at all,” Martin said.
“Anna said you had something to tell me.”
“Yes. I do. It’s about your brother. He’s tracked down the story of CIA involvement in August 13. He thinks some of it’s coming from Turov’s older daughter, of all things.”
“What?”
“It caught us off guard, too. She’s an NOC for Russia, evidently, that we, and the FBI, missed somehow. Living here under a different name. Your brother’s trying to track her down. They wanted to know that you were safe before they took it further.”
Christopher said nothing. As far as he knew, Turov’s ol
dest daughter had made a clean break with her past—and her father—and was living in England.
“What did you mean, then, not a perfect outcome?” Martin said.
Chris sighed. “I’d thought Turov might be returning with us. That didn’t work out.” And then he explained, in abbreviated form, the deal that might’ve been, the connection with the “carrier” they had lost. “I don’t know where the line is between real negotiation and Turov’s deceptions. Or delusions. I just regret that we may have lost an opportunity.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Martin said.
His response was odd; the lack of explanation made it odder. “What do you mean?”
“Just—I don’t know that we’ve lost the carrier,” Martin said. “The carrier may be fine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I may have spoken with the carrier this afternoon,” he said. “She may be fine. I’ll explain when you get here.”
And then, in vintage Martin Lindgren style, he hung up, leaving Chris with a puzzle. He sat back and closed his eyes again, knowing that he had the rest of the flight to figure it out. It was still ten hours back to Virginia.
To kill a man like Andrei Turov was not difficult; it was no more difficult than killing any other human being, Jake Briggs thought, watching Christopher as he talked on the satellite phone. But for a country to kill someone, and claim a legitimate reason for it—a legal one, anyway—could be more problematic. There were multiple legal structures for that sort of thing; the laws of armed conflict being different from the laws of criminal justice. Certain enemies of the United States could be deemed legitimate kill targets by White House legal counsel. But killing a businessman, in his own country, in his own home, was a little trickier. A businessman who hadn’t even made the Russian sanctions list.
He still needed to talk with Christopher about that. Briggs understood by then who Turov was, and what he represented; he knew that, in killing him, they’d also eliminated a threat against the United States. To Briggs’s thinking, that was good enough. The only thing that worried him was that, technically, he’d been on assignment for the Central Intelligence Agency when it happened. If some ambitious journalist or elected official were somehow tipped off to that, it could become a problem for Briggs; it could even become a politically-driven investigation resulting in criminal charges.
