Fidelity

by Jan Fedarcyk

  “As long as I have been in this business, I think that I’ve picked up on the distinction between the two, thank you.”

  “I’d hope so. You wouldn’t be much good to us if you hadn’t.”

  Vadim chuckled again. Kay wasn’t quite sure yet whether his deliberate jocularity was a cover for fear or if he simply had ice water running through his veins. Somehow she suspected the former. “And what is your point, exactly?”

  “We’re not the CIA. You would report directly to me and my handpicked team. Absolute compartmentalization of information. No one outside of my office would ever know who you are.”

  “You can promise this?” Vadim asked.

  “I don’t speak flippantly,” Jeffries said. “You can count everything I say as a promise.”

  “I’m sure that someone told Dmitri Ulyanov something similar.”

  “I’m sure someone did,” Jeffries said. “But that someone wasn’t me. I did not earn my reputation through lack of caution. I did not get it by being foolish, or unobservant, or unprofessional. My recruits are well protected and sleep at night as soundly as if a battalion of U.S. marines waited outside their door.”

  “That seems a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “Perhaps it’s nudging the corner,” Jeffries admitted. “Then again, if the job were so easy, we wouldn’t need to pay you a very large sum of money to do it.”

  Vadim went silent for a moment. Behind his eyes SVR info was converted into dollars, dollars converted into luxury automobiles, expensive suits, trips to foreign locales, an entire life different and better and happier than his own. A trace of saliva pooled at the corner of his mouth. He brushed it away with the cuff of his cheap suit. “How large a sum of money?”

  Jeffries shrugged, and Kay detected a trickle of enthusiasm leaking through her facade. To discuss a specific financial situation was to move the recruitment from the realm of theory into, at least slightly, the realm of fact. You were no longer arguing about whether a recruit would do something; instead the question became “How much?” “We have deep pockets,” Jeffries said vaguely. “And long memories for friends.”

  “Those are attractive qualities.”

  “We imagine them to be,” Jeffries said, cool as ever. “Though of course, neither of them are offered unreservedly to anyone. We’d need to be convinced of the value of our new friend before we are willing to open our pocketbook, deep as it is.”

  Vadim smiled. “You do not need to tell me of your standards, ASAC Jeffries, nor do I need to tell you of mine. The information I can provide would be invaluable in any number of ways, not the least of which is in determining the identity of the mole in your sister agency.”

  “Can one put a price on the invaluable?” Jeffries asked.

  “I can,” Vadim said. “And it is not a low one.”

  They had reached the nitty-gritty of the matter. Vadim didn’t promise anything, but what he did do was agree with Jeffries on an elaborate clandestine method for remaining in contact, a system of call signs, paroles and secret messages that should ensure that Vadim could get information to them even if he was being monitored closely by the SVR. In theory, of course, although nothing was infallible.

  “It was a pleasure getting to meet you, Mr. Vadim,” Jeffries said, standing and shaking his hand. “I look forward to any number of other, similarly productive meetings.”

  “The next time we have one, Comrade Jeffries, I would hope you would have more than papers in your briefcase. Or perhaps I should say I would hope the paper is green and comes in large denominations.”

  “That would depend on the contents of your own briefcase, Mr. Vadim,” Jeffries countered, “although, as I’ve said before, we’re generous to our friends.”

  Vadim nodded at Jeffries, then at Kay, then slipped out the door.

  “We got him,” Kay said, managing to hold in her excitement for a full twenty seconds or so after Vadim had left. She felt like she had just finished running a marathon or staked a year’s wages on one turn of a roulette wheel, watching the ball click-click-click across wood, coming up on her desired colors. “That was . . .” Kay cleared her throat, tried to regain some of her composure. “That was fantastic.”

  “Maybe,” Jeffries said, remaining as imperturbable as ever. “Or maybe he’ll head back immediately and report our contact with him to his superiors. Perhaps they’re already aware of it and, far from today being a great success, it’s been step one of a mammoth failure in which Vadim, dangled out falsely as a potential double, is anything but, and any information he chooses to provide us is carefully vetted in Moscow and intended to cause us nothing but harm.” Jeffries turned her cool, distant gray eyes towards Kay. “It might be a little early to break out the champagne.”

  30

  CHOOSING AN outfit on a first date was like deciding on an order of battle for a general: a question that required careful and nuanced consideration. It was Kay’s first in months—not the first time she had been asked on a date in months, needless to say, but the first time she had decided that it was worth her effort to actually go on one. She finally settled on a red strapless thing that Alice had insisted she buy one afternoon in SoHo: a bit much by Kay’s standards, but then, Alice had reminded her, Kay’s standards had died during the second Eisenhower administration and could perhaps do with some updating.

  And she was gratified to see Andrew’s reaction when he saw her coming up the stairs of the Houston Street subway station, his jaw not quite on the floor but at least some level below his shoulders. For that matter, Kay had to admit some mild disturbance of her own perfectly smooth manner on seeing his wide shoulders and deep, one might even say piercing eyes. “You look lovely,” he said, and smiled when she smiled. Then he presented his arm in a way that would have allowed Kay to ignore the offer without embarrassment, part of the casual grace with which he did everything. But Kay took it, and the two walked comfortably to the Village.

  The restaurant was old and stylish and served Italian cuisine. Andrew knew the owner, a friendly, moustachioed sort who complimented Kay’s beauty in thickly accented English, then took them swiftly to a corner table. Andrew thanked him in what sounded to Kay’s ears like competent Italian, then looked over the wine list. “Shall I choose a bottle?” he asked.

  Kay was, if not an expert, at least something of a wine buff—courtesy of growing up around Aunt Justyna—but she found herself acquiescing all the same. When the waiter came around, Andrew ordered them a bottle and a mixed tray of appetizers.

  “And how proceeds Black Bear?” Andrew asked a few minutes later, after pleasantries had been dispensed with. “Any burning leads?”

  “Yes. I forgot to mention, just this morning, we cracked the case wide open. We’ve got a team of Agents about to fall on our unfortunate traitor at just this very minute, put a knee in his spine and drag him off to a federal penitentiary.”

  “Yikes,” Andrew said. “Sucks to be that guy.”

  Kay laughed.

  “I’ve been reviewing some of the matrix results,” Andrew said, taking a bite out of a piece of arancini.

  “The matrix?” Kay said quizzically. “Now that you mention it . . . yes, yes I do think I recall the matrix. You mean the focal point of my daily existence for oh so many months?”

  “I’m not sure I trust this Deputy Chief that you’ve got your hooks into over at the Russian mission. Have you considered that he’s being used as a dangle?” “Dangle” was slang for a false double who planted false information from one side to the other, part of the endless selection of tricks that made up the intelligence officer’s toolkit.

  “You mean the Political Officer?” Kay asked, finishing off her first glass of wine. “It’s not like they come with their intentions written out on their back. Jeffries is keeping a close eye on the matter, you can be sure of that, at least.”

  “No doubt,” Andrew said.
“She’s a rare talent, your Jeffries. You should hear some of the stories they tell about her down at Langley. Not just Langley, either. The competition holds her in a special sort of reverence—a red, white and blue monster hiding in closets and ferreting out secrets.”

  “That’s kind of how we think of her too,” Kay admitted, “though mostly she wears gray.”

  Over the rest of the wine Andrew regaled her about some of his earlier postings. Two years in Kiev, two more in Moscow. He spoke affectionately of the people, the great literary and artistic traditions of the nation, those who survived several generations beneath communism’s tread, and those who had started to flourish in the years after the fall of the Soviet empire. He was funny and insightful, and unlike most men on first dates he didn’t feel the need to expound indefinitely, instead turning the conversation comfortably back onto Kay.

  “Where have you been assigned, Kay?”

  “Quantico, Baltimore, then back up here,” she replied. “But I spent two years in Namibia after college.”

  “Namibia? What were you doing there?”

  “I did a term in the Peace Corps.”

  “Did you have dreadlocks?”

  “Everyone sort of had dreadlocks in Namibia. I lived in a hut, and water came from a pump a mile and a half away. Hair washing ceases to be a major priority. One of the benefits of the first world.”

  “I’m sure they looked flattering,” Andrew said, smooth as ever. “What pushed you into the Peace Corps?”

  “My parents were . . . interested in foreign development,” she said lamely. In fact they had been more than interested, it had been their passion, the most important thing in their lives, apart from their children.

  “And what made you get involved in law enforcement?”

  Their murder, Kay wanted to say but didn’t. “I watched too many James Bond movies when I was a kid,” she said.

  “For me it was reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” Andrew admitted.

  The entrées were delicious. Almost in spite of herself Kay realized that she was having a rather marvelous time. Andrew was handsome and charming and seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. After dinner they ordered two espressos and split a cannoli.

  “Best in the city,” Andrew assured her.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Kay asked. “You just moved here.”

  Andrew wiped a bit of cream off his chin. “The Internet says so. And when has the Internet ever been wrong about anything?”

  “Never, to the best of my knowledge.” Kay looked longingly at the last bite, one which Andrew was kind enough to push in her direction. “It is . . . reasonably delicious,” she said.

  Andrew laughed. “I think that’s the nicest thing that I ever heard you say, Kay.”

  Kay smiled and forked another bite of dessert. The conversation, in its slow and effortless way, turned back to Kay. She found herself speaking offhandedly of some casual incident from her childhood, and from there on to adolescence generally.

  “How old did you say you were when . . . ?”

  Andrew didn’t finish but Kay knew what he meant. “Ten or so.”

  “How did it happen?” Andrew asked.

  As a rule, Kay did not speak casually about her parents. Not to anyone but her brother and her surrogate parents, and not even very much with them. “They were murdered,” she said.

  Andrew didn’t say anything for a long time, as if observing an honorary silence. Then he smiled.

  “Is that funny?”

  “No, that’s terrible. That’s absolutely terrible. I think it’s also the first time I ever lost the my-childhood-was-worse-than-yours game.”

  Kay found herself smiling as well. “What’s my prize?”

  “A lifetime of therapy?”

  And then Kay was laughing also, and they were ordering two shots of limoncello, Andrew waving to the owner, who came by swiftly, happy to further what seemed a budding romance.

  “To shared misfortunes,” Kay said.

  “They make us what we are.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course. I’m not sure if what happened to my parents is the reason I joined the CIA, but it’s certainly part of what made me a good case officer.”

  “How so?”

  He thought for a moment before answering. “You learn a lot of things, growing up on your own. But mainly what you learn is that you have to be responsible for the creation of your own character. There is . . . There is a certain terrible freedom in the thing: I had no one to shelter or define me, no one to tell me who to be or how to act. But I had no one to hold me back, no one that I had to pretend for. I was solitary, but . . . it made me strong.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kay found herself saying, more forcefully than she perhaps intended. “I mean . . . that’s never been how I felt. If it hadn’t been for my godparents—for my brother, even, all the trouble he is—I’d have been lost. Without people caring for me, without people to care for, I’d have been lost. I don’t know what would have become of me.” Belatedly she realized that this was exactly what seemed to have happened to Andrew and that it might have been better to keep her mouth shut.

  But he didn’t seem to mind, leaning back in his chair as if seriously considering it. “Some of the situations I’ve been in, Kay, overseas and undercover . . . Attachment of any kind is dangerous and can even be fatal. You have to be sharp and quick and clean and think clearly, without anyone around you to confuse the situation. You can’t hold yourself back for anything.”

  “It sounds a lonely way to live.”

  “I don’t know any other way,” he said, with something like regret.

  Neither of them seemed to want the dinner to end, but there was no category on the menu for “after-after-dinner drinks,” and anyway the restaurant was closing. When the bill came, Kay made an effort to split it, as she always did on dates, but backed down in the face of Andrew’s unwavering refusal to go dutch. They took a leisurely walk back to the Houston Street station and in the awkward moment after the good-bye Kay leaned in and kissed him.

  31

  PRODUCTIVE EVENING, Malloy?” Jeffries asked, appearing, as she had a tendency to, unexpectedly above Kay’s shoulder.

  It was a late evening in November, and like a lot of those, Kay and Jeffries were staying late in the office.

  “Not particularly,” Kay admitted, rubbing at her eyes. “Actually, I was just about getting ready to push my head through the monitor.”

  “That’s government property,” Jeffries said, taking a seat next to Kay, sipping from her thermos, which seemed bottomless. It was one of the lesser parts of her legend, that a woman weighing all of a hundred and ten pounds could drink her weight in caffeine every day without getting the least bit jittery. “And the Bureau does not look fondly on the destruction of its property.”

  Humor was so rare from Jeffries that, when it came, it always took Kay a few extra seconds to decipher it. “Maybe I could just pick a spot on the wall and launch my skull against it.”

  “That helps with the computer,” Jeffries acknowledged, “but I don’t imagine a severe concussion would be of much benefit to the good work and sharp thinking of our Agent Malloy.”

  Kay looked down at her desk and tried not to blush. Compliments from Jeffries were even rarer than humor. “I’m government property?” Kay asked.

  “You’re a Special Agent,” Jeffries responded, taking a long sip from her thermos. “So more or less.”

  “I don’t feel like it lately,” Kay confessed. She had come to recognize these rare moments when Jeffries would drop her guard ever so slightly and was quick to take advantage of them. “Shuffling aimlessly through the matrix, like Alice lost in Wonderland.”

  “I told you these things can last years. Right now it seems like the focal point of existence and requires ever
y waking moment of your time. When we wrap it up, you’ll feel the same way about the next one, and the one after that. It’ll take a while, but you’ll get used to it.”

  A sudden burst of courage, brought on by exhaustion or too much coffee, and Kay asked, “How long did it take you?”

  “You mean back when I first got involved in counterintelligence?” Jeffries repeated, as if struggling to recall halcyon memories of a half-mythical age. “When I started we did the matrix with a pencil. A ‘folder’ was not something you double-clicked to open; it was something that you had to drag out of a giant metal cabinet and then drag back in when you were done. Imagine everything that you hate about the matrix, and now imagine it being several times worse.”

  Kay shuddered. “You paint a nightmarish scenario.”

  “It was never easy,” Jeffries said. “It’s not an easy business. When I started out, we still had the KGB and the GRU. Remember the Cold War?”

  “I think I can remember it coming on sometimes between cartoon shows.”

  A hint of a smile creased Jeffries’s face, but she swallowed it quickly. “In some ways it was easier. The Soviets held down their half of the world, and we held down ours. Mostly we had a shared interest in making sure that things didn’t blow up completely. They were the enemy, but they weren’t so radically dissimilar from us, for all their talk about the proletariat. You could put yourself in their head space. It’s a whole new ball game these days. After 9/11 . . .” Jeffries shrugged. “You can probably imagine.”

  There was no question that the events of September 11, 2001, had been a watershed moment for the Bureau, as it was for every intelligence agency and for the country at large. Terrorism had swiftly become the FBI’s top priority, and forestalling another major attack their raison d’être. Not for the first time it occurred to Kay what an extraordinary breadth of experience Jeffries had acquired over the course of her long service to the nation.