by Tod Goldberg
You always want to put your opponent on edge, thinking their very next step might be their last. People don't want to die. People who want to die are mentally ill, sociopaths or think a heaven of milk, honey and countless ready-for-hot-sex virgins awaits them. People, normal people, will opt to live. People, normal people, who try to kill themselves, will often receive an involuntary physical override via the human reset button known as blacking out. Above all else, people don't want to die. So they give up information. They say things to save themselves. They put faith in the humanity of others in hopes of being spared. The trained eye will see the truth. The trained eye will watch for tells, for shimmers that seep out involuntarily, things said to make a person worry.
Bringing in family is generally considered poor form, particularly if you're doing sanctioned work, since killing civilians is frowned upon.
That Natalya brought up my mother was a tell.
That Natalya brought up my mother was also a bluff.
First problem: Natalya Choplyn isn't a normal person. Dying to her would probably be considered upsetting but expected. After spending two decades working first for the KGB and then later the FSB and then, well, whatever agency Putin had her fronting in, occupational hazards are fairly terminal.
Second problem: If Natalya Choplyn really wanted me dead, as seems to be the case more and more frequently with people I encounter-a disturbing trend, certainly-she could have done so that morning as I sat with my mother, my guard whittled down by the persistent gnaw of my mother's voice.
Third problem: All of this had transpired in public. Natalya needed something. Maybe she wanted something, too, but above all else, there was need.
"I'm leaving," I said. "See you at your war crimes trial."
"Please wait," Natalya said. She reached out and grabbed my arm. Not hard. Not insistent. Softly.
Need it was.
I looked at my watch. "Five minutes," I said.
Natalya nodded slightly. "Will you sit?"
History told me that I shouldn't trust Natalya. We were both sent to Bulgaria to take care of the same problem: Vitaly Sigal. Sigal was a low-level administrator at the Kremlin when the Russians entered Afghanistan in 1978, but since he spoke Farsi he ended up getting a cushy assignment in the country, which he turned into an even cushier black market career that extended to buying and selling large arms and propellants throughout the Middle East during the nineties. When the building blocks of the Iraqi Tammuz-1 missile were traced to a few key purchases made through Sigal, I was dispatched to find him.
When I finally found Sigal, he was holed up in the Dryanovo Monastery as a guest of the monks. Natalya had likewise been sent as protection, since word of his worth on the world market had made its way to the people who had lingering interests in Sigal not landing in U.S. hands, not that that was what my orders were, precisely. I'd encountered Natalya on several other occasions-Chechnya, Bucharest, twice in France, once outside a nuclear sub docked in San Francisco, once Christmas shopping in Dubai-and though we'd never tried to kill each other directly, there was a sense of general animosity that broiled between us by virtue of nationalistic genetics and a few "incidents" involving guns, Black Hawks and covert operations involving oil, of course. One on one, on even ground (Dubai), we'd had a few drinks which turned into a few more drinks, which turned into, well, something. Sometimes, it's safer having sex with someone you know absolutely is the enemy.
But in Bulgaria, there would be none of that. I wanted Sigal or at least certain information he could provide. She wanted to protect Sigal. We agreed to meet in the Bacho Kiro caves, an ancient labyrinth of caves located above the monastery where Sigal was housed. For the first two days, we negotiated off and on for hours in the stone forest section of the cave, the tourists milling past us none the wiser that two superpowers were trading information, making concessions, looking at the soft points of each other's musculature. On the third day, Natalya produced Sigal and allowed me to interrogate him for several hours… and then, well, she tried to poison me.
I stepped out of the cabana, found a bar stool and dragged it back in front of the opening. "Talk," I said.
"It seems we have a problem," she said. "I've been informed that I'm marked for expulsion from this life, never mind my present position."
"Not my problem," I said.
"But it is," she said. Natalya explained that her sources had informed her that I'd implicated her in concert with the Colombians; that she'd been the point person in a long-running drug enterprise, through the Port of Miami and Panama, all under the Russian flag without sharing in the profits. A big no-no, even to the Russians.
And, moreover, that I'd been the facilitator, had my own hands in this business, and had flipped information on Natalya to save my own life.
"That's not true," I said. "And if you thought it was true, we wouldn't be sitting here. And if you were doing it, you wouldn't care if I'd implicated you or not. You can disappear just as easily as you've appeared here."
"Things have changed, Michael," she said.
It was hard to tell when Natalya was lying, but something in her voice seemed tickled, as if there was a real person beneath the old Cold War exterior. I looked around the floor of the bar, at the beautiful people milling about, at the bumping and the grinding, at the common luxury, the thugs and dealers looking unimpressed across the way, the Armani suits, the diamonds, the gold, the drinks, the absolute benign-ness of it all, compared to the life Natalya had already lived. Her cover had always involved the travel industry-in Dubai, she ran a resort for the sultan-but this wasn't travel. It was excess. And it wasn't even remotely interesting.
But there was something more. I looked again at Natalya, tried to really see her. She'd been a flawless beauty before-if that's possible-with an intellect equal to anyone I'd come up against. She was also relentless, always in motion.
Sitting on a love seat in a cabana would be like being submerged underwater.
Her body back in the day was all coiled muscle, but I thought I saw the tiniest roll around her midsection.
I snapped my hand out and grabbed her left wrist.
She didn't flinch.
I put my thumb and forefinger around her wedding ring, all two carats of it, and pulled, but there was little budge. I let go of her hand and sat back on the bar stool. Natalya hadn't moved an inch. "Boy or girl?" I asked.
"One of both," she said.
"That's good," I said. "Me and my brother, it was always a competition, never a friendship. Even today, there's that space between us. Brothers and sisters, it's more protective."
"I hope they don't need to be protected."
"You made the wrong career choices," I said. "There will always be someone out there, Natalya."
She nodded once.
"The way I look at it," I said, "you have something to lose, you maybe make a concerted effort to avoid conflicts that might bubble out into your real life. You come after someone's family, that changes things. You maybe try to get out of the life you've made. You don't threaten people who could make your children motherless."
Natalya exhaled and I realized that the entire time we'd been talking, she'd been taking only the tiniest of breaths. You can train yourself to do anything, but it's difficult to override the nervous system. "Be that as it may," she said, "the information I have comes from a very good source. Until I see proof otherwise, I have to trust my source."
"Let me guess. A mole in the FBI? A mole in the CIA? A mole in the NSA? It's a lie, Natalya. I've got so many problems right now, the last thing I need is to be selling out other agents, even ones who tried to poison me."
"I've been given the courtesy of a week's time to settle this situation," she said.
"Let me guess. You either come up with the missing money or proof that it's a lie or you're dead. Would that be accurate?"
"Somewhat," she said.
"Oh, wait," I said. "There are pictures somewhere, would that be correct? Or, better, someone i
s taking pictures right this very moment." Natalya indicated that was the case. "So now I'm not only burned- I'm also potentially a double agent?"
"That wasn't too difficult for you," Natalya said.
"This has been a great year," I said. "There any job openings here at the hotel? Maybe something working security, where I could just mumble and threaten people?"
"A friendly contact operates the hotel chain," she said. "You always liked Albania, didn't you, Michael?"
"What do you need from me, Natalya?"
Natalya took a sip of her tea. "Proof. Barring that, the missing cut."
"That's not going to happen," I said.
"I have my orders then." She set her tea down and got up, smoothed lint from her skirt and smiled at me in a way I found rather disconcerting. Nothing seemed all that happy. "It was lovely to see you, Michael. The years have certainly been your friend. It's a shame, really, to stay looking so good when the world has grown so ugly. It makes you stand out." She patted me on the knee as she walked past and for a moment I thought that Fiona was probably right from the get-go: Blowing up the hotel would have been easier.
3
The next day, Sam picked me up at eight thirty in the morning. He was clean shaven, his pants looked pressed and his shirt was absent any sort of floral or fruit arrangements. I looked into the backseat and noticed an actual blazer, still in the dry cleaner's bag. When I slid into his Cadillac, he handed me a plastic grocery bag.
"What's this?" I asked.
"I took the liberty of picking you up breakfast," he said, "just to show you how much I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to assist me in this venture."
In the bag were two dozen containers of yogurt. Some were even flavors I liked.
"Coming on a little thick this morning," I said.
"You think?"
"Is there already a complication in your damsel-in-distress scenario?"
"I went by last night and met the damsel," he said. "Cricket O'Connor is her name. She's… challenging."
"Excellent," I said. "That's exactly what I'm looking for. More challenging women with problems." I told Sam about my meeting the previous day at the Hotel Oro, about the rather precarious situation it revealed and how it presented a few fresh issues for me to deal with, not the least of which was trying to figure out who would provide false information to the Russians in my name, and why. Sam would have the contacts to get to some of the truth, but in times like these, a little financial grease would probably be needed.
And, as usual, apart from the thousands and thousands of dollars in my frozen bank accounts, I didn't have much money, a fact that seemed to make Sam happier than I would have liked.
"Then this job we have is coming at just the right time," Sam said.
The Miami I grew up in isn't the one I returned to. I knew this before, but on this day, as Sam drove us through the neighborhoods surrounding my place and then east on the Dolphin Expressway toward the MacArthur Causeway, where we'd pick up a private ferry to take us to Fisher Island, where Sam's said damsel (one Cricket O'Connor) lived, I couldn't help but notice how little I recognized this as home. A normal kid, maybe he sees all the tourist points of Miami before he turns twelve, goes to the Orange Bowl, maybe takes in the Art Deco tour, sees the Blue Angels at the Air and Sea Show, watches the Winterfest Boat Parade.
By twelve, I was sure my father wasn't just a bully but a bastard, that my mother was her own particular kind of horror show and that my brother, Nate, would always complicate things.
By twelve, I'd already stolen a dozen cars.
By twelve, I was already figuring out how to get the hell out.
Miami has always been a city of rogues and ruffians-that much is certain-but in the twenty years since I left town for good, only to return for a day or two at a time, though not long enough to actually be there when my father finally died, leaving my mother to her paranoia and Nate to, well, Nate, it's become this odd mix of glitz and sham, so that even the humble neighborhood I grew up in is a mark for those who want to speed into town and speed back out with cash in their pockets.
Real estate, once a bargain, has turned into the irresistible boom, impervious to the real world, since the people with six million dollars to spend on a waterfront home aren't carrying subprime loans and surely don't live in the real world. Crockett and Tubbs couldn't stop the drugs and neither has anyone else, the cocaine trade becoming a cash crop far more lucrative than sugar and just as easily attained, so in came even more drugs, like heroin, and cheaper drugs, like meth, all of which then fed and grew until Miami became not just the party capital of the country but also the center for identity theft, murder and narcoterrorism.
Ah, home.
With all of those things comes another kind of evil, or at least one of the more egregious sins: envy. You can't be too rich in Miami; you always have to have something more than your neighbor, always have to live somewhere even more extravagant, so that your wealth isn't merely the end result of your hard work-it's the hole card that provides the flush of other people's envy.
"You know what I wonder?" Sam asked. We were on the private ferry-which is pejorative to ferries, since this was more like a cruise liner that happened to carry expensive cars, along with the few clunkers belonging to the help, or just the help themselves, most too poor to own cars-halfway between the causeway and Fisher Island at this point, but had opted to get out of Sam's car to take on the view of the private isle.
"I can't even pretend to know."
"You see all of these minimum-wage people? They spend all day on this little slab of paradise, and they'll never, at the rate they're going, ever have enough money to even own a blade of grass on the island."
"Yeah?"
"So why do they even bother? Why even wake up in the morning when you know that you're always going to be crawling out of the same rut, until you're too old for that rut, and then you'll be forced to get into an even worse rut?"
"Everyone needs a job," I said. "Look at us."
"Naw," he said, "what we did was make it so everyone could feel safe in their crappy lives, and for what, really? Float out here from Cuba for a better life and end up working for some rich despot just the same."
"That's capitalism at work," I said.
Sam stared out over the water and squinted, as if he were trying to see something that wasn't there. "Listen," he said, "this thing with Natalya Choplyn, that's not something to trifle with."
"I know, Sam."
"Mikey, she might have impressed you with her husband and family but she's still calling shots around the world," he said. "She saw your mother. If Fiona hadn't been on top of her game, she'd be dead and probably two or three dozen other people would be too. The kind of juice she must have to get the no-call names, to get actual agents out on this, that means whoever told her you dimed her is big. Let's just pull the plug here, let the CIA know she's here and go on with our lives. You don't have to let this concern you."
Sam was probably right. But I'd been threatened.
"You don't think the CIA knows where she is? They've probably been tracking her on Echelon for fifteen years," I said. "And you don't think she'd be a step ahead of us? Waiting for that? If her source is so good, it probably is CIA." But there was something more, something that niggled at my mind, an inkling that whoever was trying to get her out by using me was involved with my burn notice and that, if I solved this, I might have one more piece of the puzzle fixed. And then there was the likelihood that somewhere there were pictures of us palling around Dubai and I'd be tried as a traitor and hanged, all of which I mentioned to Sam, as well, and which didn't sound like a great way to spend an afternoon.
Sam digested all of that. "Then let me help you, at least."
"Are we having a little bit of a moment here?"
"Little bit, yeah."
I patted him on the back. "You're hired," I said. An announcement rang over the PA system that we'd be docking on Fisher Island in five m
inutes, that we should be mindful of the island's strict twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit and that the temperature on the island was a perfect eighty-two degrees. "Maybe, if things work out, we can get ourselves a blade of grass out here to retire on."
Prior to 1905, Fisher Island didn't exist. But when the dredging project to create a shipping lane into Miami left a couple hundred acres of green island adrift in Biscayne Bay, the island was born. What was once just mangroves became a millionaire's retreat, the property shifting hands between some of the nation's wealthiest people, eventually ending up in the hands of the Vanderbilts, before turning into what it is now: the most exclusive address in Miami.
As Sam drove towards Cricket O'Connor's house, we passed the private resort that was once the Van-derbilt estate and is now a playground for those for whom price is no problem, replete with towering coconut trees, a distinctly Gatsby-ish expanse of tennis courts and a rippling golf course peopled by men wearing sweaters tied over their shoulders, as if a squall were just around the corner. A ten-story condo complex hugged the coastline and offered astonishing views starting at two million dollars. Along the narrow avenues were elaborate guard gates and surprisingly tasteful manors, usually with a design mirroring the old Vanderbilt estate-Spanish influences abounded with a neo-Art Deco flair tossed in for flavor.
From the moment we drove off the ferry, I counted seven Bentleys, fifteen Mercedes, two dozen face-lifts, double that many boob jobs (usually on women more accustomed to being called Bubby than Baby) and enough tummy tucks and lip implants to make one wonder how anyone functions with the fat cells they were born with.
The air was warm.
The streets perfectly clean.
The views were impeccable.
It was, frankly, making me a little paranoid.
But then I had the strangest memory.
"I've actually been here before," I said.
"You're thinking of Grenada," Sam said. "The night before the invasion, right? It was just like this. Helluva time. Female med students have special needs in times of war, if you know what I'm saying."
