The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  They exited the highway and entered the forest near the presidential palace. The driver asked if he could open the windows to clear the interior of the Craig of the scent of flowers. Though it was a cold morning, Sergei took pity on him. And he did not regret it. The forest air was cold and clean, in between the decomposition of autumn and the absolute death of winter.

  The walls surrounding Novyy Rim were over six meters tall. The surveillance and security were outstanding. At the gate three men in suits and long black jackets inspected the car while a fourth man, his own eyes red with fatigue, spoke to his driver.

  The palace itself was soft yellow with white pillars. To the right, as the car approached, two women walked with horses saddled for a ride. Sergei recognized one of them and waved. On the grounds there was a fine greenhouse and another structure for hens and chickens. President Mironov preferred to be at Novyy Rim because it was much safer than any residence or suite of offices at the Kremlin, and no one could listen in on his conversations.

  It had always delighted Sergei to walk through the Kremlin, which for most of his career had been the seat of global communism. Purists might have pointed to the palace as the madness and decadence of the tsars but to Sergei’s knowledge no one who ever controlled a square centimeter of the Kremlin had ever proposed ripping it down, melting the gold into coins, or selling it all for the glory of the proletariat.

  Mironov was a cleverer politician than any of the previous presidents or general secretaries. At least he made an effort to conceal his wealth and opulence, to make it seem the result of private cunning—not his due as the Russian Federation’s leading public servant. If journalists dared look into the purchase and construction of Novyy Rim, they would discover at the end of a long string of shell companies a simple transaction in the name of Aleksandr Mironov, businessman and investor.

  “Take three Aspirin and sleep,” said Sergei, as his driver opened the door for him. “I may be an hour.”

  “Thank you, boss.”

  To the left of the palace, a technician fussed with Mironov’s helicopter. At some point today, he would have to fly into Moscow.

  Mironov did not come out to greet Sergei. An intelligence agent welcomed him at the front door and led him into the palace. Their shoes echoed on the shiny floor.

  “The president is swimming. Do you mind meeting with him in the pool room?”

  “Of course not.”

  Sergei removed his jacket and entered the elevator as the agent whispered into a concealed microphone. Halfway down, chlorine overwhelmed the scent of the flowers. They passed through another manned security checkpoint and entered the gym. Then, with a swiped card, the swimming pool.

  Mironov was finishing a lap. He stopped. “Sergei. Care for a swim? I have extra trunks.”

  “No, my friend. Thank you.”

  “Are the flowers for me?”

  “Congratulations.”

  Everything Mironov said and did was, at its core, about power. He was in his mid-sixties, not much younger than Sergei, yet he looked and acted like an extraordinarily fit fifty-year-old man. It pleased Mironov to display the physical difference between them. In fact, Sergei was sure his old friend had orchestrated the nature of this encounter. Nothing with the president was random or happenstance.

  Mironov pulled himself out of the pool. The intelligence agent placed a white towel on a chair, took a final look around, and left the sealed room. On his way to the hot tub, Mironov picked up the towel.

  “This morning, when I heard the news from America, I remembered the moment you first told me about our Kingfisher and her husband.” Mironov lowered himself into the steaming water. “I remembered our first meeting together.”

  Sergei smiled. “The Inter-Continental in Prague.”

  “A beautiful day. A beautiful woman. Escargots! Even with the divorce and her occasional transgression she has been a perfect asset and you have been the finest handler in history. Bravo.” Sergei sat on the edge of the hot tub.

  “When the American networks finally called the election for Craig, and I saw all those angry men dressed for a round of golf with their fists in the air, our own American soldiers, my first thought was that it was all too perfect, that it is the most elaborate plot in the history of statecraft—and that he will somehow destroy us.”

  Sergei sat up straight. “I don’t see how, Aleksandr.”

  Mironov was going bald when they first met. Now, after several transplants, he had a convincing head of hair. His skinny legs made his broad chest look strange, but in the hot tub the president was all torso.

  “He is a monster of chaos. Completely undisciplined, and therefore an unreliable ally. He’ll say or do anything.”

  Sergei had never lost control of a possession but he could not tell the president the truth about his call with Elena, the previous night, and how she’d been in tears. “We both have grandchildren,” she had said. “Sergei, what have we done?”

  Mironov wiped his forehead with the white towel.

  “You do not have to worry about him,” said Sergei. “Enjoy your gift. If he said anything about Elena, about us, it would be suicide. And besides, there is no proof.”

  Mironov pulled a pistol from between the folds of the towel, pointed it at Sergei, and pulled the trigger twice. He stood up out of the hot water as Sergei fell in.

  “No. Not anymore.”

  43

  MIAMI, 2018

  Unless she was traveling for a story, Grace drove up from Miami once a month to have dinner with her mother. Friday nights were taco nights at The Grove. In the beginning, she came every week and they shared a table for two. Over time, however, Grace had to find a place for herself at a table for eight or ten and realized she was preventing her mother from a jollier and freer evening with her friends.

  That evening a mariachi band from Ocala was playing on the small outdoor stage. The staff poured good sipping tequila for anyone who was interested, a follow-up from a presentation on reposado and añejo back in August. The dining room was on a gorgeous terrace which led to a lush garden and a pond. Every now and then an alligator showed up in the pond and her mother’s retirement community in Central Florida made the local news.

  Grace watched her mother singing along to “Cielito Lindo” with her friends. In the years since the election, Elsie Elliott had become a different person. A staff doctor at The Grove took an interest in her and in only a few months he managed her diabetes to the point where her eyesight began to improve, enabling her return to one of her dearest loves: reading mystery and romance novels.

  For her birthday in September Grace had flown Elsie to Prague, as promised, and they stayed at the Four Seasons.

  Grace’s phone hummed with a new call just as the mariachis began playing their encore. They had invited her mother and two of the other women up to sing along. Grace ignored the call and watched her mother sway in front of the microphone, buzzed on Tapatio Añejo, singing in front of her new best friends: good, attractive, wealthy people in pretty white dresses, in tan chinos and button-up shirts, fine jewelry, brand-name watches.

  At the end of the song they all applauded and a man named Barry, who she worried might be her mother’s boyfriend, stood up to lead an ovation. Grace did not recognize the number of the caller but she hoped it would be one of the editors she was in touch with, desperate on a Friday night to dole out a killer story to a not-so-desperate freelancer.

  Grace walked into the garden to listen to her voice mail. “I am in Miami tomorrow on business. Can we have dinner?”

  It was Elena.

  * * *

  —

  They agreed to meet at La Vaquera, an Argentinian restaurant in South Beach a half-hour walk from Grace’s little orange ranch house on Michigan Avenue.

  When Grace arrived the following evening, the maître d’ asked her for picture ID and then he led her through the restaurant and up a set of stairs. She had only been there for brunch and did not know about the private room, w
ith an open-air view over the beach and the ocean—dark now. There was Elena, sitting alone in the vast room, looking down over the action on the ground floor terrace below.

  She stood up. “Duše moje.”

  A bald, white giant of a man politely asked if he could check Grace for weapons or listening devices. He took her phone.

  The pat-down was uncommonly thorough, nothing like airport security. When the man was finished, he apologized for the inconvenience and left them.

  A server immediately appeared with champagne.

  “I took liberties.” Elena inspected the bottle. “It’s a Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus Premier Cru.”

  Grace knew she should be impressed. “Oh.”

  “A great year, 2009.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Craig. And what a beautiful spot.”

  “For you, duše moje, anything.” While the server fussed with the bottle and popped the cork, Elena stood up and kissed Grace’s cheeks. In her out-of-season beige linen, Grace thought she would have fit in beautifully at The Grove. The warm breeze moved through her loose slacks and her hair. It had been two years since they had last spoken, in the back seat of the Craig sedan in Mladá Boleslav. Elena looked tired and older than Grace had ever seen her, and a bit puffy, almost her age. There was a new tremor in her left hand. When their glasses were full the server prepared to excuse himself.

  “You can begin bringing us food,” said Elena.

  “Oh. Right, ma’am. What…sort of food?”

  “We are two.” Elena placed her hand on Grace’s. “Ask the chef to impress us.”

  “Wonderful. Wonderful, ma’am.”

  Elena had not been visible in Anthony Craig’s transition to power. From time to time Grace had read about her, about how she remained a trusted, informal advisor to the president.

  What Grace most admired about her was still there: her confidence, her poise, her elegance, and her charm.

  But there was something new.

  “It must be so exciting, to see your family…ruling the free world.”

  Elena did not smile or nod. “The man who searched you, my security man, he works for the government. I asked him to sweep the room, for listening devices, so we can speak freely. Your little house, duše moje, it is pretty?”

  “It is, thank you.”

  “And your mother? She is happy?”

  “Very happy. And healthy. She’s absolutely transformed.”

  Elena took a drink of the expensive champagne. “Do you understand now why we did what we did?”

  Grace thought of her mother’s comfort and safety, of her own prosperity and the lonely sort of contentment in her life now. She could trade it for an explosive worry every night—that her mother could be taken from her, that her own life could end with a spiked drink or meal, a pinprick in an airport she hardly felt that would grow into a demon of pain and suffering and darkness. She understood clearly why we did what we did.

  “I imagine the choice is even simpler when you have a daughter.”

  “It is simpler and more complicated, duše moje. It is no longer a question. You submit because you will do anything for your child. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  A chacarera song with a dance beat underneath it played while they sipped their champagne and looked out over the couples on dates below.

  “Does anyone know what you achieved, Elena?”

  She shrugged. “My close friend Josef Straka, of course. By now you know about my relationship with Sergei.”

  “I know he exists. I don’t know anything about him.” Grace felt like she should be taking notes but why and for what? It was over.

  “He’s dead.”

  Grace did not know if she should apologize.

  “You are in my prison with me.”

  “I’m living a life I never would have lived.”

  “It’s a curse. You’ll come to see that. A slow infection that devours everything. You see, to them we are nothing. Sergei called us his possessions. These men, who possess us, they really only have one goal, and they would like to achieve it while they are still alive.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To turn all of this upside down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To destroy us, duše moje, so artfully that we do not know it is happening. We do not feel the dagger go in. We just slowly bleed.”

  “We?”

  “They have you and me, my daughter. And they have him too.”

  Grace thought of all that had happened, since the election. It felt like a coup d’état in slow motion.

  Elena gestured at the terrace full of lovers below, even the dark beach where the courageous nighttime joggers ran silent and barefoot. “They have us all.”

  Grace thought of her mother in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Prague sipping a glass of Moravian wine, winking at her daughter, proud of her. Her mother thought the money for this new life had come from a book deal, something secret. A ghostwriting job.

  “Someday someone will find out.” Elena slid her champagne flute in a gentle circle on the table. “You found out.”

  “But Roberta McKee, she told me there’s nothing left. Not a trace.”

  “Do you know my code name?”

  “They’re so pretty, kingfishers. A good name for you.”

  “I suppose they are. That is why they recruited me, why Sergei recruited me. I was so pretty.”

  “And an athlete.”

  “A mediocre athlete. Just smart enough, just dumb enough. I had friends, smarter friends, who did not make it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they are dead. They could not endure what I endured.”

  “Living the life of a fabulous multi-millionaire?”

  Elena shook her head. “Grow up, duše moje.”

  Their first courses arrived: little hunks of meat with chimichurri sauce, some chorizo, and a kale salad of some sort. It all smelled delicious and they complimented the server, as he topped up their champagne glasses, but Grace wasn’t hungry anymore. The security man stepped in and looked around, apparently to be sure a ninja had not sneaked in under the server’s black apron.

  When they were alone again, Grace saw that Elena wasn’t any hungrier than she was.

  “How many of them are there, women like you and Roberta? Swallows?”

  “There were twenty or thirty in America in the 1970s.” Her voice was dour. “Now there are probably five hundred.”

  “Ms. Craig, doesn’t this mean you’ve won?”

  She chuckled, but not because anything was funny. “I’m on pills for depression. It makes my face big.”

  “Why did you ask to see me?”

  Elena looked down on the terrace again. “You know, before the election, I was trying to help you. But I had to be careful.”

  “William.”

  “You could not even speak Czech. He knew how to find what had to be found. I wanted you to write it, to write something, before the election. Then I changed my mind. I was afraid.”

  “He completely fooled me.”

  “Falling for you, believe me, duše moje, that was not part of his job.”

  Grace felt her eyes fill with tears. She thought of a life she nearly had, in a small apartment south of London, the weekend strolls through parks with her mother.

  “You wanted to write a book.” Elena leaned forward over the untouched food. “Let’s write it. A true book.”

  Grace was shocked. This was not what she was expecting. “But we can’t. They’ll…”

  “Kill us? Maybe. Maybe not.”

  There was a black safe in Grace’s closet, where she kept her notes on Elena and her story. She had been using an old Mac clamshell laptop without Internet access. “Ms. Craig, I already started.”

  “I knew it.” Elena lifted her champagne flute. “I knew this about you, duše moje. That you are brave enough. I will tell you everything.”

  “Wait, wait.” Grace’s appetite was
returning suddenly. “How would it work?”

  For the next two hours, over several more plates of meat and sauce and the rest of the champagne and a bottle of Malbec, they plotted. There was nowhere to hide so they decided not to hide. They would meet in the spa and in the Hamptons, where they used to meet. Elena would tell her story.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, every morning, Grace wakes up and wonders if this will be the day. When she returns home from a walk with her new puppy, she inspects the safe in her closet to be sure it’s still there, that the old orange computer is still inside, that the previous night’s writing is saved. She calls her mother twice a day to say “I love you.” Once a month she drives to St. Petersburg to spend three days mentoring young journalists. She goes to rallies and she signs petitions. Every night she goes to sleep hoping she will wake up.

  Grace knows all of this can end any day, before we reach the end of the lazy fragment of a final sentence. She wants you to know why.