by Greg Wilson
Despite himself Nikolai laughed. “I’ll get my own dog, okay? I promise, by the time you come visit us we’ll have the dog.” Vari gave a reluctant nod of approval. “Okay.” He let go a breath. “So what more is there to say?” He leaned across Nikolai and threw open the passenger door. “Get going. Your family needs you. I’ll see you in America.”
Nikolai let himself into the building and made his way up the dimly lit staircase. He reached the third floor lobby and paused, wondering whether he should continue on upstairs to check the tapes, then suddenly remembering how Vari had made sure the door to the top floor apartment had been locked when he left. He laughed to himself at the irony. How was he supposed to get back in to retrieve them when Hartman came? Call a locksmith? When he thought about it he supposed that wouldn’t be necessary. Supposed that Hartman would be at least as adept as Vari at all of those netherworld skills which he so obviously lacked. He gave the staircase a pass and stepped into the lobby, juggling keys.
Natalia must have been waiting. Must have heard his footsteps and seen him through the spy hole in the door, since it fell open even before he could raise his hand to the lock. He looked up to find her standing there, washed in the soft light of the hall lamp, her dark liquid eyes desperate with concern, tracing over him, making certain he was all right, then falling back to rest on his own, full of fearful questions. He dropped his keys back into his pocket and reached for her, drawing her to him, feeling the curves of her body melding into his, inhaling the scent of her hair and her skin. They clung tightly to one another on the threshold. He didn’t want to let go of her. Ever. But in the end he did. Pressed her back, gently, and spoke to her in a soft, even tone.
“We have to talk,” he said. He stepped her inside the apartment, swung a hand behind his back and closed and locked the door. “We have to leave.”
Fuck the rules!
Jack Hartman spun the paper knife he’d been playing with aside, dragged open the bottom drawer, pulled out the packet of Marlboro and the heavy glass ashtray and dropped them onto his desk. He stopped for a moment, staring again at the blank email screen, then flicked the lid of the box, pulled out a cigarette, slotted it between his lips and lit it, sucking down the smoke until he could feel it filling his lungs.
His eyes dropped to the digital clock on the computer’s toolbar. Nine twenty. Almost four hours since he’d left the Rossiya; a little over three since he had clicked the virtual button and bounced his encrypted report and authorization request up to the invisible satellite and back down to Thomas Gaines at Langley.
Saturday morning in Virginia. Hartman hoped to hell his message had reached the CIA’s Russia Division Director before he bundled his golf clubs into the back of his Oldsmobile and headed off for his favorite course at McLean. He could see Gaines now, slamming the trunk, stepping round to the driver’s door and just about to slip his keys into the lock as Alice, his wife, materialized on the front stoop.
Phone Tom. It’s the office. They say it’s urgent.
Hartman couldn’t help smiling at how pissed Gaines would be… how pissed all of them would be. Saturday morning and poor old Tom would have to round them all up. The Deputy Director of Operations (DDO), the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI). Probably even the Director (DCI, aka God).
And now they’d be sitting in some windowless room at Langley in their golf shoes and Saturday clothes, drinking coffee that tasted of polystyrene and reading his message for the fifth time, wondering what the fuck they were going to do about it.
Another Saturday down the toilet, thanks to Jack Hartman.
He exhaled, blowing a long, steady stream of smoke and frustration past the computer monitor, through the yellow cascade of light from the desk lamp into the darkness beyond. He closed his eyes and let his head swim as the nicotine hit his brain then opened them, flicking the end of the cigarette against the edge of the ashtray.
He had nothing else to do so he surveyed the room.
A corner office on the top floor, size befitting the Moscow Head of Station, and imported hi-tech European furniture and American wizardry to match. But it was all just an illusion, a distraction from the reality of how the stature of the CIA Moscow base had steadily diminished since he was last here a decade ago.
The years between ‘81 and ‘85 had been glory days for the agency and the time he’d spent here back then as Deputy to the Chief had been an amazing experience. On those weekends when he wasn’t working, he and Nance… He felt the stab of pain and paused a moment, waiting for it to pass… He and Nance and Kelly, their daughter, then in her teens, would venture out together into the strange foreign land beyond the walls of the Embassy fortress. Then once outside they would lose themselves in the streets and the subways and the markets, pretending they were locals, sometimes even taking a car and picnicking in the nearby countryside, but always returning as dusk approached to the security of the compound, like mediaeval villagers hurrying back through the portcullis before darkness fell.
They’d lived as family in Virginia and Berlin and Rome before that, but Moscow had been strangely and unexpectedly special. It had changed them all.
They had grown closer here.
Why that had happened he wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe it had something to do with the sense of threat and foreboding that hung over the place like a mist that never quite dispelled. Perhaps that was what had drawn them together and made them realize how fortunate their lives were, and how blessed they were to have one another.
After Moscow they’d spent six months back in the States then moved on to Istanbul where he’d served as Deputy Chief. Those three years had been tough on his wife. While Kelly was back home starting college in New York and he was busy playing spook games around the Caucasus, Nance – with nothing else to do and nowhere to go – had, for the first time, fallen into the long-taloned clutches of the Embassy wives’ club.
Kuwait and the Emirates were next, this time as Station Chief.
Nance had held out with him for the first twelve months then, when things started turning bad, he’d insisted she return to Virginia and after that he’d commuted. A couple of months there, a couple of weeks back home, rationing his time unequally between his marriage and the intelligence demands of the Coalition operation against Iraq.
The Cold War had officially come to an end on 25 December 1991, the day the Soviet Union had been formally dissolved (Christmas Day, no less, the significance unashamedly planned to please the Orthodox Church which had, by default, suddenly become the most powerful force in Russia). Communism had been routed and capitalism had won, but Jack Hartman hardly noticed since, at the time, he was still sun-baking in the desert, helping clean up after the party.
Then, in 1992 – with twenty-five years under his belt – the Deputy Director had offered him second in command of the Russia Division back at Head Office and to the great relief of Nance and Kelly, their only child – who by then, at twenty-two, was hardly a child any longer, and in her final year of a double degree at Columbia – he’d accepted, planning to see out the last five of his thirty back on home ground.
But his planning hadn’t allowed for fate intervening in quite the way it had.
Hadn’t allowed for Nance blacking out behind the wheel of her car one day when she was returning from lunch with some friends in Arlington and running off Fort Myer Drive into the park at the top edge of the cemetery, narrowly missing a group of sixth graders from Indiana on a school excursion to the capital.
The kids and their teachers had been shocked but not hurt. Even Nance had come out of the wreck surprisingly unscathed, with only a broken wrist. But the blackout that had caused it was the omen and the tests confirmed it.
Inoperable brain tumor. Six months at most.
Six months and eight days later he and Kelly had buried Nance in the small graveyard of the church at Tarrytown, the village on the Hudson, an hour north of Manhattan, where her family had lived for three generations and where he and Nance
had first met on the railway platform twenty-six years before. The place they had been planning to return to when his career with the Company came to an end.
It was winter. Two days before Christmas to be precise.
He and Kelly had spent the holiday together in the beautiful big old clapboard house at Pocantico Hills that he and Nance had found and fallen in love with a year earlier and had already begun to renovate. On the days when it was fine enough, they’d layer-dressed, laced up their boots and walked together along the quiet country lanes. In the evenings they’d sat on the floor in front of the open fire, drinking wine while the snow fell outside, flicking through albums and sharing their memories. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, their time for mourning was over. Kelly had to get back to Manhattan to start her new job as a researcher at the UN and he had to… What was it he had to do?
For the first time in his life he wasn’t sure. He was fifty-two. Middle-aged, by himself and totally lost.
He returned alone to Virginia, to the other house he and Nance kept there, bouncing around its winter emptiness until he couldn’t stand it any longer and then, on the second day of the new year, he went back to work.
The problem was, there were too many empty corners in his life now. Dark, hollow places he kept wandering into unexpectedly. Places that reminded him not of the times he’d spent with Nance, but those he hadn’t.
He battled on for close to twelve months. Sold the house in Virginia and, with some prompting from Kelly, took an apartment at Georgetown, but that wasn’t a solution. It gave him more time to think, not less. So he started working longer hours, leaving home before dawn and returning after dark, his life lost in a tunnel between Georgetown and Langley, until three months ago when the Moscow Station position had opened up.
He thought about it for a week. Pinned the internal memo to the ice-box with a magnet and looked at it each morning when he reached for the juice and every night when he got back home, threw his bag on the couch and went for a beer. On the Thursday night he called Kelly. Talked to her about it for an hour on the phone. Then on the Friday morning he looked at the memo one last time, plucked it down, folded it and slid it into his jacket pocket. A little before ten he dropped his application on Tom Gaines’ desk.
Gaines reached for the envelope, peeled it open, slipped out the sheaf of papers and ran his eyes over the cover sheet.
“You’re sure about this?” He spoke without looking up.
“Certain,” Hartman had answered.
Gaines pursed his lips. Shrugged. Even managed the hint of a smile.
“Okay. Then you’d better pack.”
And that was how Jack Hartman had ended up back in Moscow.
He glanced at the empty email Inbox and reached for another cigarette.
Back but not back.
Moscow had changed because Russia had changed, and the whole world with it. Now that he was here he had mixed feelings about the decision. As if he’d returned to a warship he’d once served on, only to find it had been decommissioned and converted into a freighter.
The era of the spooks was over. At least that was the way Ambassador Malcolm Powell had put it at their first meeting.
Don’t get me wrong, Jack. I respect your role and your experience and I’m happy to have you here, but the world’s changed and it’s important for me… for the United States… that you understand that. You got me, Jack? All that double-dealing at the ideological end of the market is a thing of the past. We and the Russians are on the same side now. We have to work together, you understand me? And something else. Something real important, okay Jack? I don’t want anything bad happening here on my watch.
Powell was the perfect picture-book ambassador. Mid-fifties, tall and angular and trim. Silver-haired, with expensive suits, a fifty grand smile and a social-pages blonde wife who adored being center of attention at the Kremlin soirées. He was one of those successful businessmen who’d wanted something more and had no doubt invested his time, money and favors meticulously to make absolutely certain that he got it. He was the kind of guy, Hartman reflected, who made you melancholy for the old-school diplomats. They may have usually been pains in the ass but at least they had a respect for history and understood the rules of the game. The first impression of Powell was that he seemed to believe it was his calling to rewrite both.
On his way out of Jack’s office he’d stopped to share one last view of his world.
You know Jack, pretty soon spooks are going to be just like dinosaurs. The only places we’ll be able to see them will be in Spielberg movies and kids’ pop-up books.
Hartman remembered crossing his feet on the desk and thinking about that. Thinking about how much it told him about how little Powell really knew.
The real spooks were never seen at all.
The shrill ring from one of the two telephones bit the silence. Hartman’s hand shot out to the secure fine. He’d been half expecting the call. Imagined them sitting around the speaker phone at Langley, peering at it as if it were some suspicious life form. His fingers started to close around the handset then stalled. No lights flashing.
His glance slipped sideways to the house phone as it rang again. His fingers closed in a fist, moved left twenty degrees, opened and picked up. He lifted the receiver to his ear and spoke his name.
“Dad?”
Kelly’s voice.
He broke away from his distraction and turned his head into the mouthpiece.
“Kel?” Genuine delight tripped across his face. “Honey… it’s great to hear your voice.” He juggled the receiver to his other hand, lifting his watch to the light, a hint of caution intruding on his tone. “Where are you? Is everything all right?”
There was a smile in his daughter’s voice. “Everything’s fine, Dad.” A pause. “In fact, everything’s better than fine.” Another pause. “I’m here in Manhattan, with David,” a kind of coyness now, “and we wanted you to be the first to know. Dad…” He knew what was coming now, as surely as if she’d already said it, “Dave’s asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.”
He hesitated. Not long enough, he hoped, for her to notice. Pushed a smile as if she could see it and hoped it would show in his response. He closed his eyes.
“Kel, I don’t know what to say.” He did know what to say. What he wanted to say was Stop! Don’t do this, Kelly! It won’t work! He could see it as plainly as he’d heard the words before she’d spoken them, but how many fathers would have the guts or the stupidity to say those words at a moment like this. “Honey… honey, I’m so happy for you. For both of you.”
He heard his daughter’s sigh of relief. “Oh Dad. Thank you.” Heard what she hadn’t said. I know you don’t have much time for him, Dad. I know how much this must disappoint you. I’m sorry. I love you. But I love him, too and I really want to do this and I just love you so much more for understanding and accepting.
That was the way he and Kelly were. They didn’t need to talk to communicate. He pushed the smile again.
“So, when’s it going to be?” From the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of movement on the screen of his computer.
“We’re thinking winter. Dave’s family are scattered all over; they’ll need some warning. Is early December going to be okay for you?
“Fine. December’s fine.” Jack Hartman’s eyes were fixed on the blinking icon. Receiving Mail. “Honey, anytime will be fine. I’ll make it fine, you know that.” The blue measuring bar gathered pace along its track.
“Thank you, Dad.” The way she said it: more unspoken words. Then a different tone. A kind of schoolgirl exuberance. “Dave’s right here. He’d like to say hello.”
The measuring bar ran its length and vanished and the computer chimed. Two lines of decoded black text flicked up at the top of the screen.
Sender: Thomas J. Gaines
Subject: Exfiltration Authorization Request - Aven, Nikolai.
“Sure. Put him on.” Hartman reached for the mouse. Ran the pointer
across the text, as David Rengard’s voice came on the line.
“Good morning, sir.” David Rengard. Old New York money and manners and breeding. Upper West Side with vacations at Rhode Island. The kind of guy who checked his image in storefront windows. He and Kelly had been going together for – what was it – a year? Hartman had hoped for better. Hoped she’d wake up and move on, but she hadn’t.
His finger hovered above the mouse. He bit his lip. Another premonition. This didn’t feel right. “Dave.” Another forced smile. “Kelly’s told me the good news.” So what if it was a cliché. “I’m really pleased for you.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m going to make her happy, I promise.”
“I know you will, Dave.” No you’re not. You’re going to break her heart and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it because that’s something she has to work through all by herself. Hartman’s eyes tripped back to the monitor. “Listen, Dave. I’m sorry, but I have a situation here. I’m going to have to go. Can you put Kelly back on the line for a minute?”
A pause. A blank, offhand tone. “Sure.” Maybe Dave could read between the lines as well.
“Daddy?”
“Here, Kel.” He took a breath. Lowered his finger and clicked on the line of text. The four-paragraph message trickled down the screen like raindrops on a window but Hartman didn’t notice. All he could see was the heading.
AUTHORIZATION DENIED.
Then the door to his office opened and Malcolm Powell was standing there, dressed in a dinner suit, looking like he’d just been hauled out of a party, his features squeezed with barely controlled rage.
“I’ve just been speaking to Washington, Jack. I thought you and I had an understanding.” He noticed the telephone pressed to Hartman’s ear and lowered his voice. “Whoever that is, get rid of them. We need to talk.”
“Dad…” Kelly’s tone was cautious, like a blind person suddenly aware of a third presence in a room. “Who is that?”
