The Russian

by Saul Herzog

  “That’s why you have to tell the president it’s time to stop listening so closely to everything Levi Roth says. Point to recent events. This Spector agent went rogue on Roth’s watch. He hasn’t come in from his last mission. He’s not responding to communications. He’s supposedly Roth’s best man, and now he’s just waltzed into the embassy throwing around bomb threats.”

  “Did he make bomb threats?”

  “That’s what you need time to investigate. A few hours in an interrogation room. The president won’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “And Roth just has to back off?”

  “He’s too close to Spector to look at this with any degree of objectivity. That compromises the entire CIA. This threat is based on NSA intelligence, and the NSA need to be allowed to control the interrogation room.”

  “Control the interrogation room? The NSA don’t even have personnel in Moscow.”

  “Send in the RSO. He’s responsible for embassy security. This is his job.”

  The RSO was the most senior member of the Diplomatic Security Service stationed in Moscow. He was responsible for overall embassy security, and that included authority over the marines.

  “The RSO doesn’t answer to me,” Sandra said.

  “You don’t have to worry about that. You just convince the president to give you the room. Keep everyone else out. Once you get the room, send in the RSO.”

  “The RSO?” Sandra said doubtfully.

  “He’s impartial. He’s a civilian. He doesn’t work for you or Roth. It will look like you’re just trying to get to the facts.”

  “And Roth won’t think it’s a fishing expedition.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re forgetting,” Sandra said, “that Levi Roth is one of the president’s most trusted advisors. He’s spent more time in the Oval Office than anyone in Washington. There’s no way the president’s going to side with me over him.”

  “You’ve got to convince him, Sandra. Look at Roth’s recent mistakes. The Group was blown wide open. Three of the nation’s most valuable assets were killed in a single day. The entire project is in the process of being disbanded. Maybe it’s time to reassess Roth’s position. He’s been around a long time. Maybe he’s becoming a liability.”

  “You’re trying to use one rogue agent to pull down Roth’s entire career. It’s just not possible. The president and Roth are closer than brothers.”

  “Read the bible, Sandra. Even brothers turn on each other eventually.”

  “Not these brothers.”

  “Listen to me. If there’s ever been a time the president’s been ready to cut the cord with Levi Roth, it’s now.”

  “You’re wrong on that.”

  “Everyone loses their value eventually, Sandra. You’ll learn that soon enough. Mark my words, you plant this seed in the president’s ear, and it will grow. Roth’s loyalty to a rogue agent. The implication there’s a terrorist plot. The president won’t be able to ignore that.”

  “But none of it’s true. They’ll find that out soon enough.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ll have what I want by then.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I thought you were smarter than that, Sandra.”

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Who am I?” Medvedev teased. “Think, Sandra.”

  “It’s Spector,” she said. “The RSO is in your pocket. You’re going to kill Spector.”

  “Brava, my dear. I’m going to kill Spector, which is more than a personal vendetta here in Moscow. Spector’s been a thorn in our side for a very long time. Getting rid of him, and hurting Roth at the same time, that’s critical.”

  “You want to burn to the ground everything Roth’s built.”

  “Is that so bad? Isn’t it time for a change of the guard? Nothing lasts forever.”

  “You’re asking me to tear down the career of a man who practically built America’s intelligence apparatus. He’s a legend here. They’ll name a building after him when he’s gone.”

  “What do you care for Roth’s career?” Medvedev said, getting nervous.

  If she suspected for a second that this whole thing was about anything more than disgracing Roth and killing one of his assets, she’d go straight to the president. All the threats in the world wouldn’t make a difference then.

  “I think you need to focus,” Medvedev said. “Worry about what’s important to you. Your job isn’t to protect Roth. It’s to protect your country and your family. And what I need is for you to keep Roth out of that interrogation room. It’s one hour, Sandra. Surely you can manage that.”

  “You want Spector to sit tight in a cell until the RSO arrives? That’s it?”

  “That’s it. So simple. And when it’s done, you get your daughter back.”

  She was so close.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s say I do everything you want. Let’s say the president buys everything I say and gives me full control of the investigation. How do I stop Roth from simply going around my back? The CIA has multiple personnel stationed in Moscow. I don’t have anyone. If the marines posted to Spector’s room let Roth’s guys in, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  Medvedev nodded. She was right. Everything depended on keeping Spector isolated, but the fucking RSO was with his Russian mistress at a fucking dacha outside the city. He’d been sent for but was still an hour away.

  Medvedev didn’t know exactly what information Spector had, but the fact he was at the embassy at all proved he’d found out something. Just letting him sit in the room for an hour while the RSO made the drive back was too risky.

  This mission was too important.

  Medvedev grabbed his coat and put it on. He was going to break one of his cardinal rules. He was going to go out in the open. If he wanted Spector to eat a bullet in that interrogation room, he was going to have to deliver it himself.

  “Just do what I told you,” he said to Sandra. “You know what happens if you don’t.”

  34

  Laurel told the cab to pull over outside the first bar that looked halfway decent.

  “Right here. This is fine,” she said impatiently.

  She swung her legs out of the cab, and as soon as she tried to stand, realized her stiletto heels were higher than she’d thought. The shoes had been sitting by the door, and she’d grabbed them impulsively on her way out of the house.

  They were Tatyana’s, of course. That woman could walk on stilts if she had to.

  Laurel hadn’t had the benefit of GRU Swallow training in that regard, and she wobbled on them like the red-blooded Alabama girl she was.

  She felt a mess. She’d slipped into a tight little black dress back in the house, and her makeup had been hastily applied in the cab, in the dark, with the aid only of her compact mirror.

  This had been a hasty decision, a spur of the moment jaunt. She’d wanted to get away without Tatyana seeing her. She planned on doing a few things she did not particularly want Tatyana’s judgmental eye to witness.

  She wanted to get away from Tatyana, she wanted to get drunk, and she wanted to get fucked. In that order.

  She walked past the bouncer, grabbing hold of his arm for support when she almost broke an ankle on the step, and went straight to the bar.

  The place wasn’t particularly busy, and she didn’t have to fight for service.

  “Tequila,” she said.

  The bartender put a shot glass in front of her and filled it. Laurel didn’t have time to waste on lemon and salt and knocked the shot back neat. She shut her eyes, relishing the burning sensation, and slammed the glass on the bar.

  “Again,” she said.

  She was ready to blow off some serious steam.

  “My kind of girl,” the bartender said, eyeing her up.

  “Oh, buddy,” she said. “I’m just getting started.”

  She’d already decided she was going home with someone. Anyone. She wasn’t going to be picky. As long as he had al
l the right equipment and knew how to use it, she was all his.

  This bartender looked like a perfect candidate.

  She caught his eye as she knocked back the second shot.

  Already, she could feel the tension releasing from her body.

  She and Tatyana had been cooped up in the house together for too long. If they stopped to eat, it was takeout in front of their keyboards, and when they slept, it was in rooms separated by only a thin hallway, each with a door opening onto a shared balcony.

  She was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  They hadn’t been able to find Lance. He was completely off the grid. As if he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke. Laurel was beginning to fear something very bad had happened.

  And the whole time, while they performed hour after hour of tedious search routine, locked together in the command room with only each other for company, Laurel had the distinct impression Tatyana was lying about something.

  She’d have bet her life Tatyana knew more than she was letting on.

  She and Lance had been off the radar for over a week in Moscow.

  The more Laurel thought about it, the more convinced she made herself that the two of them had been together during that time.

  She couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. She hated herself for it, but she kept picturing Lance with Tatyana in some dingy apartment, the two of them awake into the wee hours of the morning, sweating and moaning and heaving on top of each other like two animals.

  It made her want to scream.

  And it was so stupid. She and Lance weren’t even an item. They never had been. Probably never would be. They barely knew each other, and what time they had spent together they’d fought.

  “Another shot?” the bartender said.

  “Hit me.”

  She hated that she was jealous.

  She prided herself on her professionalism. Her job came before everything in her life. It wasn’t just about her career. The work they did was personal to her.

  She’d cut ties with family, given up relationships, she’d decided long ago she’d never marry or have kids.

  And now she was going to blow everything up by acting like a jealous schoolgirl with a crush.

  It drove her nuts.

  She didn’t even like Lance. She never had.

  If anything, he was just a mark.

  Roth had brought her in to lure Lance back to the Group. Lance was his most valuable asset, the most effective assassin in CIA history, and the future of the Group was at stake if he didn’t come back in.

  Her job was to be the bait.

  She’d maybe compromised a little too much in what she’d agreed to. She’d signed every waiver and consent Roth put in front of her, and before she knew it, she was undergoing cosmetic surgery procedures to increase her resemblance to a woman Roth thought Lance loved.

  Maybe they really were all as messed up as Lance said.

  For Roth to even think he could replace a dead woman, a woman he’d ordered killed, what did that say about his psyche?

  And the really sad part was that the surgery, that was Laurel’s idea. She’d seen the pictures of Clarice, she saw the resemblance, and she’d been the one who initially suggested it. A way to tip the scales, so to speak.

  Maybe it was impossible to do a job like theirs without being screwed up in some fundamental way.

  In any case, it all backfired.

  It never worked the way she’d thought it would.

  Lance didn’t care who she looked like. It seemed to Laurel like Russian women were more his type.

  She knocked back another shot.

  That’s what their job did to people.

  They started out spying on other countries but ended up spying on each other.

  Laurel only had herself to blame for any of it. She’d signed up willingly. She didn’t have all the facts, but she knew the world she was getting into. She’d allowed the surgeries. She’d known they were using her to manipulate someone.

  A man.

  An assassin.

  It made her feel cheap.

  Like a whore.

  Like a cheerleader forced to sleep with the quarterback to keep him scoring.

  But it was too late now to undo any of it.

  Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket. It was Tatyana.

  “Oh fuck off,” she said to herself, knocking back another shot and instantly ordering another.

  The thing about Tatyana, the thing that bothered Laurel, was that none of that was her fault. Tatyana had nothing to do with any of it. And even if she and Lance were together, why should she even care?

  She picked up the phone and answered it.

  “What is it?”

  “Laurel, you need to get back here.”

  “I just borrowed them,” Laurel said, admiring the shoes she’d stolen.

  “Laurel,” Tatyana said, in her flawless, Russian vamp accent. “You need to get back here right now. Do you understand me?”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “We’ve got a hit.”

  “What do you mean, a hit?”

  “It’s Lance. He just popped up out of nowhere.”

  “Where?”

  “We shouldn’t be talking on the phone.”

  Laurel was feeling the effects of the tequila and said, “Just fucking tell me.”

  “The embassy.”

  “What embassy?”

  “The US embassy in Moscow. He just walked in off the street and asked to speak to the head of security.”

  35

  Larissa watched the embassy from her hotel room window with a growing sense of dread. Ten minutes turned into an hour, and then two hours, and there was still no sign of Lance. She kept glancing at her watch as if that would bring him back sooner.

  She knew if he didn’t re-emerge, she was on her own. She wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t make it all the way to Germany alone. She wasn’t built the way Tatyana was. She needed Lance’s help.

  When two hours and ten minutes had passed, and there was still no sign of him, she knew she had to do something.

  She grabbed her coat and purse and left the room. In the elevator, she wanted to cry, she could feel the knot of emotion in her chest, but she held it back. She would need it for what was coming.

  She went out the front of the hotel and stood on the steps, looking at the embassy across the street. It was almost dawn, and the morning traffic was beginning to pick up. There were some taxis by the curb, and the doorman asked if she wanted one.

  “No thank you,” she said, her gaze fixed on the embassy gates. She pictured the moment, just a few hours earlier, when Lance had disappeared through them.

  She knew now that had been a mistake.

  Armed guards stood in front of the gates or in the small heated guard post. They wore black uniforms and body armor and carried assault rifles. Headsets were attached to their helmets.

  Two guards leaned on a concrete barrier by the gate, smoking cigarettes. A black limousine pulled up, and they waved it through.

  Larissa watched as the gate opened and the limousine drove through to the courtyard. When it stopped, a driver got out and opened the back door, letting out an enormous, white-haired man. As the man hobbled toward the building, the driver held the umbrella over his head.

  Larissa thought that was strange. It was dark. It wasn’t raining. She wondered what the umbrella could be shielding him from, before realizing it was overhead satellite surveillance.

  She knew then that something very bad was going to happen if she didn’t step in.

  Without deciding what her plan was, without even stopping to think, she walked across the street toward the gates.

  When she reached the guard post, she went up to the window and started screaming at the guard standing inside. The words came to her spontaneously.

  “You took my husband,” she screamed.

  The guard was Russian and didn’t have the faintest clue what she was sc
reaming about.

  “We took no one,” he stammered.

  “My husband,” she screamed. “A Russian. You took him.”

  The man looked around for backup. The others were as taken aback as he was.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “My husband. You took him. He went in and never came back out.”

  “What is this?” a senior guard said, approaching the guard post from inside the gates.

  “This woman says we took her husband.”

  Larissa was getting more frantic by the minute. She let her emotions take over. She was already terrified Lance wouldn’t come back out, and all she had to do was give full voice to her fears.

  “My husband,” she screamed. “He did nothing wrong. He’s Russian. They can’t just take him.”

  “There’s no one in there,” the senior guard said to her. “It’s the middle of the night. The embassy isn’t even open.”

  Larissa grabbed him by his vest, and he shoved her off.

  “Get rid of her before she creates a scene,” he said to the two men inside the guard post.

  The two guards came out, grabbed her by the arms, and half-carried, half-dragged her back toward the sidewalk.

  “You can’t do this,” Larissa yelled. “My husband is in there. He’s Russian. Let him out.”

  “Get out of here before you get in serious trouble,” one of the guards said, shoving her across the sidewalk.

  She stumbled into the street and was almost hit by a passing cab. It swerved to avoid her, and the driver jammed his brakes. He’d seen the guards shove her and got out of his car to see what was going on.

  He was a big guy with a stubbled face and thick arms, and he was angry.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded of the guards. “You could have killed her.”

  His car was blocking one of the three traffic lanes, and cars were already getting backed up behind it. They weren’t shy with the honking, but the cab driver didn’t care.

  He approached the guards aggressively.

  “Get back,” one of them yelled, raising his weapon.

  The driver wasn’t fazed in the least and said, “You guys ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”