by Saul Herzog
The switchboard was partially automated, and if nothing went wrong, his message would be recorded, stored, and no one would ever hear it. It was an insurance policy. If his loyalty was ever in question, he’d be able to refer to it, and show that Timokhin had forced his hand.
A woman with a lifeless voice picked up the phone and Igor said, “This is Igor Aralov with authorization from Direktor Fyodor Timokhin.”
“Target Russian agency?” the woman said.
“Main Directorate,” he said.
“Target Russian agent?”
“Tatyana Aleksandrova,” he said, amazed how easily the words came to him.
“Location?”
“Christopher Street metro station, New York.”
“Confirmation of death?”
Igor cleared his throat. “Target shot and hit by oncoming train.”
“Identity of assassin?”
“Classified.”
“Please hold,” the woman said.
The system would now allow him to leave a secure recording that would be categorized and saved according to the information he’d just provided.
There was a click and then a recorded voice said, “Please record at the tone.”
The tone sounded and Igor suddenly found himself lost for words. “Igor Aralov,” he said, even though that was unnecessary. “On orders from Direktor Timokhin, I allowed my agent, Tatyana Aleksandrova, to meet with a member of the CIA. Aleksandrova was leaking information to the Americans and our purpose in allowing the meeting was to find out who on the American side she was meeting.”
He waited. Nothing happened. There were no further prompts. Just a tape recorder somewhere deep in a vault beneath the city, listening to his confession.
Igor felt scattered. He wasn’t sure of himself. He didn’t know if what he’d said was enough to justify what he’d done to Tatyana. It certainly didn’t feel that way.
“For the record,” he added, “Tatyana Aleksandrova was killed for selling secrets and possibly defecting to the Americans.”
He stopped talking. He was rambling now. His hands were shaking. He could barely hold the receiver. He didn’t know if there was anything more to say. Technically, the recording was for his protection, an explanation of his actions leading to the death of one of his agents. But he didn’t know where the recording was kept, how it was filed, or who might be listening.
He cleared his throat again and added one final sentence. “Leaked information related to bioweapons program at Sverdlovsk Military Compound 19.”
He hung up the phone and sat back. He opened his top collar button and pulled the shirt from his skin. He was tacky with sweat. His hand was shaking.
He opened his humidor and took a King of Denmark cigar from the top shelf. It had been a gift from the president on his fiftieth birthday. As he cut it, he wasn’t sure if he was rewarding himself, or compensating himself.
Igor knew there was more to this than Timokhin had let him in on. They were preparing for war. The bioweapon was part of that. But that wasn’t the only angle Timokhin was working.
Igor had been sent Goldin’s recording of the meeting between Tatyana and her American contact. The contact was a woman. They were still trying to get a read on who she worked for.
He couldn’t believe Tatyana had allowed herself to be totally exposed, even though she knew she was being followed.
It was an inexplicable error in judgment, and it had cost her dearly.
He watched the footage over and over, trying to make sense of it, but he couldn’t.
Igor lit the cigar and as he smoked it, he went to the window and imagined looking out on all the construction work from a window on the top floor. Tatyana was dead, and he was on his way up in the world. If he was to have any chance of survival up there, he had to know what was going on.
And Agniya was his only lead.
He reached inside his drawer and pulled out the PYa, or Pistolet Yarygina, his military-issue side-arm, and put it in the holster under his jacket.
Then he sat back at his desk and pressed the button that called his secretary to the room. She opened the door.
“Come in Agniya Bunina,” he said, aware of the ominous undertone of using her full name. “Shut the door. Take a seat.”
She eyed him suspiciously as she sat.
“It seems we’ve had a little slip up,” he said.
“How so?” she said, her voice flat, betraying nothing.
“Direktor Timokhin had one of my agents killed.”
“I see.”
“Tatyana Aleksandrova,” he said.
“I see,” she said again.
He was toying with her. Making her squirm.
“It’s regrettable,” he said.
“You were close to her.”
“Yes, I was close to her.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“If there are any more leaks from this office,” he said, “I will be very upset.”
She said nothing. She denied nothing. Confirmed nothing. Just sat there, looking at him blankly.
He dismissed her and leaned back in his chair, staring at where she’d been sitting.
That evening, he went into town. He spent a few hours at one of his favorite restaurants close to the Patriarshiye Ponds. It was an expensive place and he got a table that allowed him to watch the traffic along Balshaya Sadovaya. He dined alone and ordered Beluga vodka with his steak.
Afterward, he went to Agniya’s apartment building. It was even nicer than his own, overlooking the park. He waited for another resident to open the door and then went in. He took the stairs to the fifth floor and knocked.
He waited until he heard her approach then shot the lock with his pistol. He kicked open the door and saw the elderly woman standing there in shock. She really hadn’t seen this coming.
Poor creature.
She was wearing slippers and a bathrobe and holding a paperback romance novel. Prokofiev was playing on a vinyl record player in the living room.
Igor leapt at her, knocking her over. She was like paper. She fell on her back and hit the ground hard. Igor climbed up on top of her, his hands on her neck. He began to squeeze. She flailed wildly, her arms grasping for anything that was within reach. She managed to grab something, Igor didn’t see what, and struck him on the side of the head with it.
The blow almost caused him to black out and he lost his grip of her. She scrambled away from him. He reached up to his temple. There was blood there.
Agniya was struggling frantically to her feet and he grabbed her ankle. In a single motion he pulled her back to the ground. She reached back and swung at him again. She was holding a heavy, glass snow globe. Inside it was an ice skater.
He grabbed her wrist and forced her hand to the ground.
“Agniya,” he said.
“You monster,” she screamed, then with her free hand, clawed him across the cheek with her long nails.
He grabbed her other wrist and pressed both her hands to the ground. Looking down at her, he remembered the night they’d fucked. It had been in a seedy motel close to the office. She’d been surprisingly lithe for a woman her age. Afterwards, they showered together and she’d washed him.
He thought of it often. He slept with so many women, women forty, sometimes a full fifty years younger than her, but it was her he thought back to most often. Even more than his memories of Tatyana. When he was alone in his bed and there was nothing but his imagination to satisfy him, it was her he turned to.
“You betrayed me, Agniya,” he said.
“I would never betray you, Igor.”
“Tatyana was selling information to the Americans, and everyone knew but me.”
“I had no choice, Igor. I swear it.”
“How did they catch her?”
“They’ve been watching her for years.”
“Who has?”
She said nothing.
“Who’s been watching her?”
She struggled furiously.
“You’re going to pay,” he said.
She struggled again, and he squeezed her wrists so tightly he thought they might break.
“I have information,” she gasped.
“What information?”
“Spare my life.”
A sneer spread across his face. “It’s too late for that, my dear.”
Agniya spat at him. He moved up on her body so that he could pin her arms under his knees. She struggled helplessly.
He put his hands on her throat. She was so frail, so vulnerable. He could have done anything to her.
“What’s this information you speak of?” he said.
She struggled again and he began to press down on her throat.
“Give it to me and I’ll make this painless,” he said.
40
Sofia stood in the parking lot of the hospital, looking around frantically. The mood was turning fast. People had started shouting insults at the soldiers. Some were at the gates, demanding to be allowed out.
She could tell that any moment, things were going to get out of hand. After twenty-four hours of lockdown, patience was turning to anger, and panic.
The morgue, which was in a separate building across the parking lot, was full to capacity. The people could see the orderlies outside it, wondering what to do with the bodies that kept coming. There was a blue tarp covering a mound outside the entrance, about six feet high, and it was obvious the sheet was covering corpses.
“What are they doing over there?” Sofia said.
The man next to her wore a green orderly uniform.
“They’re at capacity,” he said.
“Tell them to start the furnace. They can’t just keep piling up the bodies like that.”
“It’s cold enough,” he said. “They won’t turn.”
Sofia looked daggers at him and he turned and hurried toward the morgue.
Two large trucks drove by and Sofia was overwhelmed by the wave of chlorine that sprayed out of them. She fell into a fit of coughing and Olga had to help her.
“They’re using too much,” she said when she caught her breath.
They’d been hosing down the streets with chlorine all day and it was getting to the point where people’s eyes were starting to sting.
Olga nodded. Both women had done everything they could to get the military to break the quarantine, they’d called health officials and military commanders, Sofia had called the institute to see if Vasily could do anything, they’d even called local news media. No one could do anything. The order to contain the hospital had come directly from Moscow. Short of a stampede, there was no way the guards were going to stand aside. And a stampede was something that was looking increasingly likely.
The soldiers, from inside their hazmat suits, were getting as antsy as the people. They’d been ordered to point their guns at their own people, and had even less idea of what was going on than the people inside the hospital.
“Let us out,” a man in overalls shouted at the guards.
Inside his suit, the soldier couldn’t speak back.
The man in overalls picked up a stone, it was about the size of an egg, and flung it at the soldiers. It hit one of the vehicles parked behind them and bounced off the windshield, leaving a large crack.
Some other men cheered him on.
“Let us out,” he shouted again, and this time his demand was backed by more voices.
“There’s going to be a massacre,” Sofia said. “We have to get these people back inside.”
She pushed her way to the front of the crowd and grabbed the man in overalls.
“Hey,” she said. “You’ve got to calm down.”
“Calm down?” he said. “They’ve got machine guns pointed at us.”
“Yeah, and if you keep throwing rocks, they’re going to use them.”
Another wave of chlorine passed over them and everyone started coughing. Sophia was on her knees, gasping for breath, and the man in overalls bent down to help her.
When she caught her breath, she said, “We’ve got to get everyone back inside. There’s going to be bloodshed if we don’t.”
“We’re not going back inside,” the man said. “They can’t keep us like this.”
Sofia stood and climbed onto the fence to give herself some extra height. The soldiers immediately turned their guns on her.
Sofia ignored them and faced the crowd. She raised her voice.
“Listen to me. Everybody listen to me.”
The people in the crowd looked up at her.
“We need to go back inside the hospital and wait this out. We’re not safe out here.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” a man shouted.
Sofia’s eyes were so irritated by the chlorine she could hardly see.
Someone shouted, “Look at her. The virus is already taking her.”
Sofia tried to tell them it was the chlorine but too many voices were drowning her out.
Then she heard a rumbling in the air. She looked up at the sky.
“What is that?” someone cried.
Sofia turned to the soldiers. They were all looking at the sky.
A moment later, a single Sukhoi SU-34 fighter jet blasted overhead at low altitude.
The jet had taken off from Chelyabinsk, two hundred kilometers south of the city, and was traveling at a strike velocity of mach 1.2
The sound was deafening.
A moment later, a massive explosion knocked everyone to the ground. The people were flung against the gate, almost crushing Sofia who fell to the ground at their feet. She couldn’t hear anything. Her vision went blank. And when she was able to make things out again, she realized she was looking out through the gate at the soldiers. They’d been blown back by the blast too.
She put her hand to her head and touched her ears. Blood was coming from them. She struggled to her feet, using the gate for support, and as the smoke cleared, she realized that the hospital morgue had just been completely destroyed.
She shook her head. She didn’t know what she was seeing. She couldn’t comprehend it.
The people on the ground were beginning to get back to their feet. They were dazed, disoriented, but as soon as they gathered their senses, panic set in. Everyone, at once, wanted out.
The hospital was being bombed.
They took hold of the gate and started shaking it. Some people began climbing it. It was twelve feet high and wasn’t difficult to scale. It had been designed to keep out vehicles, not a crowd. Sofia was trapped, pinned by the mass of people against the gate.
There were speakers on one of the vehicles and a voice came out from the loudspeaker.
“Get back,” the voice said. “Get back or we’ll open fire.”
The crowd surged forward. More people began to pull themselves up onto the gate. Some had reached the top and were swinging themselves over the spikes.
“This is your last warning,” the voice said.
The crowd continued to pile onto the gate. Two more men climbed over the top and one dropped to the ground on the other side.
Soldiers rushed forward and grabbed him. He was followed by another, and another, and the soldiers struggled to arrest them.
“Get off the gate,” the loudspeaker said again.
“Get back,” Sofia cried at the people. “Get back. They’re going to shoot us.”
She could see it coming. She’d known it since the moment the soldiers first showed.
A man was climbing the fence next to her and she pulled at his leg.
“Get off the gate,” she cried. “They’re going to open fire.”
He kicked her off and she began pushing herself through the crowd, away from the gate.
“Get back,” she cried. “They’re going to fire.”
And then, the burst of machine gun fire.
The man she’d pulled at fell off the gate like a felled tree and landed on the crowd right above her. Blood splashed onto her face.
Two more men on the gate
were shot down.
The crowd completely lost control. Some people turned around to retreat, but enough surged forward that Sofia was forced back toward the gate.
Another burst of gunfire. And another. Bodies fell to the ground as if they were being mowed down by a scythe.
And then Sofia felt it in her back, the sharp bite of a bullet cutting through her flesh.
41
Lance had bought an apartment in the Watergate while working for the group. It was empty most of the time, but had given him a base close to Langley where he could recuperate between missions.
It was there that the bulk of his relationship with Clarice had taken place, and being there now brought his mind back to her. And to what had happened at the end.
The decor was spartan. There were no pictures, no personal effects. The space was cleaned periodically, that was a requirement of the condo agreement, but it hadn’t been lived in for over two years and there was a sterile feel to it, like a hotel room.
The refrigerator was empty. The bookshelves were empty. Lance flicked on the TV and the cable subscription had expired.
In the bedroom the bed was made and there were towels and a few basic toiletries in the bathroom. The wardrobes and drawers had some of his clothes, neatly folded stacks of identical white shirts, a jacket, jeans, nothing fancy.
He went through the apartment searching for signs Clarice had ever been there, that she’d ever existed, and the only thing he found was a paperback spy novel on one of the bedside tables. He picked it up. He didn’t remember seeing her read it, but it was on her side of the bed and he knew it wasn’t his. She’d loved reading those books, rolling her eyes mercilessly at the implausible plot twists.
He’d stopped at the grocery store on the way there and picked up a few things, some cereal and milk, some coffee, a toothbrush. He went into the kitchen and put on the coffee. Then he took a hot shower and after drying off and getting dressed in clean clothes, went back to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of the coffee. The TV was still on, a message telling him to call the cable company, and he turned it off. Then he flicked open Clarice’s novel and read the first few pages.
