by Max Karpov
It was after the others had left, and Chris was ready to turn in, that Martin tugged on his sleeve and pulled him outside, a glass of scotch in his left hand. It was after eleven by then.
“I thought I should tell you, before I go,” Martin said, his tone deceptively casual. “We did find something else. From Turov. It was on one of the USB drives that you retrieved in Moscow. It took us several weeks to break the encryption.”
For a moment, Christopher wondered if Martin was going to try to recruit him again. He had hoped he’d be safe now at least for a couple of semesters.
“It contains what you described when you returned,” he said. “The timeline, Turov’s layout of the operation. It’s what he must’ve given the Kremlin. The proposal for an alliance between our countries. Much of it’s as you said.”
“So. His intentions were good, then.”
“No. Bad,” Martin said. “From the way it’s laid out, the alliance would’ve just been a further step in Russia’s infiltration. The objective, according to this, appears something akin to a total infiltration, with Turov running—and here I quote—the ‘US liaison operation’ from within our borders. It’s possible the US was going to be Turov’s final retirement destination.”
“Oh,” Christopher said.
“For all Turov told you, he never did give up Putin, did he?”
“So maybe that was the real fourth move. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Martin said. “War and Peace being his idea of a little joke.”
Christopher listened to the leaves blowing. “Any chance I could get a copy of that file?”
Martin, as often happened, was already ahead of him, pulling a copy from his jacket. Chris skimmed the document in the light through the back windows. Had this been Turov’s real objective, then, with “the children’s game”? Operating undetected from inside the States, influencing its politics and policies, monitoring electronic communications, turning the generous but gullible United States into a giant, unwitting satellite of Russia? If so, did the game really end with Turov’s death? Could there still be a spy—or spies—in the house?
He slipped the document back into the envelope, thinking he would pass it on to his little brother. “I guess it’s a good thing we cut things off when we did,” he said.
Martin closed and opened his eyes, acknowledging only that he had spoken. “Who knows what other monsters are going to crawl out of the sea,” he said, “while we’re busy with our political jousts and televised distractions . . .” He paused to finish his drink.
Forget about crawling from the sea, Christopher thought. What about the ones already here?
Just then the back door slid open and they both turned to look: it was Martin’s wife Heidi, saying it was time to go. They had a forty-five-minute drive back home to northern Virginia, she reminded him.
Anna and Christopher walked them outside for a long goodbye in the driveway. They waved from the street as the Lindgrens finally pulled away, watching their taillights disappear over the rise in the road. Chris felt Anna’s hand close around his as they began to walk back through the mist.
“So. Here we are,” she said. Chris felt a tug of gratitude. A gust of cold wind shuffled through the dead leaves in the side yard.
By the time they reached the house, though, he was thinking again about Russia. He looked up at the clouds sliding past the moon and thought of his country’s enemies, those real and those imagined. And he thought about stories, the kind that people tell, with beginnings, middles, and ends. And the real kind, which were never so tidy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thank you to Laura Gross and her staff for all of their good work on this book. And to Cal Barksdale, executive editor at Skyhorse/ Arcade, for taking on the project. I’m also grateful to Alexandra Hess, for her editorial suggestions and guidance along the way, and to the talented and creative staff at Arcade Publishing.
And thank you to the many experts who shared their thoughts about disinformation warfare and Russia-US relations.
