The Russian

by Saul Herzog

“Jesus,” Roth said.

  “What’s going on, boss?”

  “Shrader’s making a play. I’m not sure what her game is, but she claims Lance is involved in a bomb plot.”

  “Against the embassy?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, the president just gave her jurisdiction over the whole thing. I’ve been summoned to the White House. The president is not happy.”

  “What does he think is going on?”

  “It sounds like Shrader’s fed him some crock of shit about us being too close to Lance to see him for what he is.”

  “And what is he?”

  “A traitor.”

  “Shrader said that?”

  “I’ll know more when I get out of the Oval Office. Although I doubt it will be good news.”

  Tatyana pulled up satellite footage of the embassy compound. It seemed a crowd was gathering outside, and it looked angry.

  “You’ve got to find out what brought Lance into the embassy,” Roth said. “He’s not there for the coffee. Something’s coming.”

  “Sir,” Laurel said. “It looks like a mob is gathering in front of the embassy.”

  “Fuck me,” Roth said. “I’m passing White House security. I’ve got to go. See what you can find out. And see if you can get that audio feed running.”

  The line went dead, and Laurel turned to Tatyana.

  “I don’t think I’ve heard him swear before,” Tatyana said.

  Laurel pulled the satellite footage up to the primary monitor and zoomed in. The crowd was about a hundred people. Traffic on the Garden Ring was backed up and people were getting out of their cars to see what was going on.

  Whatever had started this, it was about to get a whole lot worse.

  “There,” Laurel said. “What’s that?”

  Someone was standing at the front of the crowd, riling them up. “Zoom in there.”

  Tatyana zoomed in on the person’s face and then suddenly pulled back out. She jerked her hand as if she’d gotten a shock from the console, knocking over her coffee.

  The cup fell to the floor and shattered all over Laurel’s feet.

  “Oh my God,” Tatyana said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She bent down to pick up the pieces, and Laurel got down next to her.

  “Are you all right?” Laurel said.

  “I’m fine,” Tatyana said. “Just jumpy.”

  Laurel noticed Tatyana’s hand was shaking. She took the pieces of porcelain from her and put them in the trash.

  Tatyana went to grab a rag to mop up the spill, and Laurel turned her attention back to the screen. She zoomed the camera in on the person at the front of the crowd. It was a young woman. She was addressing the crowd, getting them worked up, making them angrier and angrier.

  Some of the men picked up rocks and flung them over the gate. The guards were forced back, and Laurel saw that some of them had their guns aimed at the crowd.

  The situation was headed for disaster.

  She zoomed in on the woman’s face and heard Tatyana gasp.

  She turned to see that Tatyana’s face was white as a ghost. She was staring at the screen, her mouth open, her eyes as big as saucers.

  “What’s wrong?” Laurel said.

  Tatyana shook her head.

  Laurel looked at her, then back at the screen.

  “Tatyana,” she said, “who is that woman?”

  Tatyana said nothing. She was nervous. Hiding something.

  “Please don’t lie to me,” Laurel said.

  Tatyana shook her head. She looked like she was going to cry.

  “This is my fault,” Tatyana said.

  “Whatever you’re hiding,” Laurel said. “It’s time to stop.”

  “I never meant to lie to you,” Tatyana said.

  This was it, the conversation Laurel had been dreading. “I knew it,” she said.

  “Laurel,’” Tatyana said, her voice quivering with emotion. “It’s not what you think.

  Laurel looked away. She didn’t want to hear it.

  “Lance didn’t want to be found,” Tatyana said. “He made me promise not to say anything.”

  “I see,” Laurel said.

  “But he and I…”

  Laurel shook her head.

  “We didn’t, Laurel. Not once.”

  Laurel felt her face flush. She couldn’t believe the conversation had come to this, but she couldn’t hide her emotions any longer.

  “Whatever you and Lance did, that’s your business,” she said, turning to the screen. “But if you know something about this, what’s happening on this screen right now, I need to know.”

  The young woman’s face still filled the screen. Laurel zoomed out the camera, and they saw that the crowd had more than doubled in size.

  “You’ve got to stop lying to me,” Laurel said. “You’ve been hiding something since you got here. You either start talking or…”.

  “Or what?” Tatyana said.

  Laurel could see she was shaken. She kept looking at the screen like she was afraid of what it would show. Laurel brought it back in on the young woman, and then she saw it. The way she held her head. The shape of the eyes. The movement of her mouth as she worked the crowd.

  She looked exactly like Tatyana.

  “You know that woman,” she said.

  Tatyana shook her head.

  “Who is she?”

  “She has nothing to do with this.”

  “Nothing to do with this?” Laurel said. “She’s inciting a riot outside the front gates.”

  “She’s…” Tatyana said.

  Laurel knew it before she even said it.

  “She’s my sister.”

  Laurel had to sit down. “You better start explaining right now,” she said, “before I start to lose my shit.”

  “She was an informant of mine,” Tatyana said. “In Moscow.”

  “And what is she doing with Lance?”

  “I told her how to find him.”

  “When?”

  “It was just a few days ago. I was trying to get word to her that I was burned. I had to let her know it was time to flee. I couldn’t just leave her behind, Laurel.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s why I stayed in Moscow. I wasn’t with Lance. I swear.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “Yes, you do,” Tatyana said. “I know you do. You’re jealous. And that’s fine. I get it. You like him.”

  “I do not,” Laurel said, and as she said it, she cringed from embarrassment.

  “It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t get between us. I was in the city so that I could get word to my sister. It’s my fault she’s involved in all this, and I couldn’t leave her behind.”

  “So, you sent her to Lance?”

  “No, I left her a message. And I gave her a way to contact me. I had a line. I carried a cell.”

  “And she called it?”

  “She said something about an attack at the embassy. A Chinese and a Russian were involved. They’d met at the Lubyanka and were plotting something.”

  “You knew about this the entire time you’ve been here?”

  “I couldn’t verify any of it,” Tatyana said. “It was just something she’d overheard. I sent her to Lance because I wanted him to get her out of the country. I wanted to keep her safe.”

  “And now, the NSA is claiming he’s plotting to blow the whole place up.”

  Tatyana nodded.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”

  “I was only thinking of my sister,” Tatyana said desperately. “She’s the only family I have left. She doesn’t belong to this world. It’s my fault she’s involved, and now I’ve fled the country and left her behind.”

  Laurel looked at her and shook her head. She couldn’t believe they’d been staring at a screen, trying to figure out what Lance was doing at the embassy, and Tatyana had been sitting on this trove of information.

 
“Is there anything else I should know?” Laurel said.

  Tatyana shook her head. “That’s it. Larissa said something about an embassy attack. I sent her to Lance. That was it.”

  “That was it?”

  “I didn’t even know if she’d connected with him until now,” Tatyana said.

  “And you don’t know anything more about this alleged attack?”

  “Nothing,” Tatyana said.

  She was close to tears. She was worried about her sister. She hadn’t been with Lance.

  Laurel reached out and touched her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Tatyana said. “I should have told you about Larissa’s message. I figured she’d tell Lance, and he’d look into it. I didn’t know it would come to all this. I only wanted her to get out of the country.”

  “It’s all right,” Laurel said.

  Tatyana looked up at her.

  Laurel sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Tatyana nodded.

  “I thought you and Lance…”.

  “It’s all right,” Tatyana said.

  Laurel looked back at the screen. The crowd was beginning to get out of control. Someone had poured gasoline in front of the gates. It would only be minutes before black smoke billowed into the air like a beacon to the entire city.

  She switched the feed back to the view of Lance inside the embassy. He was still handcuffed. Marines were entering the room.

  “Still no audio?” Laurel said.

  Tatyana shook her head. She was crying, and she wiped her face with the back of her sleeve.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Laurel said.

  Tatyana nodded.

  “We’ll get your sister out,” she said. “You have my word.”

  Tatyana looked up at her.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  And then all the feeds, the live footage of Lance inside the embassy, the external camera angles, even the satellite feeds from the CIA’s own secure network, all of them went dark.

  38

  The marines brought Lance to a windowless third-floor office and sat him on a chair. The room wasn’t secure, but his wrists were still cuffed behind his back and he’d been searched for weapons.

  “I need to speak to the CIA Chief of Station,” he said.

  They said nothing to him as they locked the door.

  He could hear arguing behind the door, and there seemed to be some debate going on about what to do with him. The commanding marine was on his radio, arguing adamantly with someone.

  Lance sat on the chair and waited. Someone would have to come to speak to him eventually, either the station chief, the embassy RSO, or the marine lieutenant colonel. As the wait grew longer, he thought maybe they were bringing the ambassador himself.

  The higher up they went, the better. He needed to pass on the threat information, and it would be preferable if the person he was telling had the authority to do something about it.

  He figured that at the very least, they needed to call in extra marine protection and get rid of the private security firm. With information on a potential attack, there was no way in hell anyone could leave security in the hands of a Russian contractor.

  Lance knew he’d put himself right back on the CIA’s radar. He’d have to answer to the station chief now. He’d have to speak to Roth too. He knew Roth wanted to bring him back into the fold, but Lance wasn’t sure what he thought of that.

  Whoever came to speak to him, the first thing they’d want to know was what his motives were. They’d want to know why he’d failed to report back after his last mission, why he’d tried to pass off false credentials.

  They’d accuse him of being part of the threat he was warning them about.

  It would take time for them to piece things together.

  They’d also want to know where he’d gotten his information.

  Lance wouldn’t be able to give them satisfactory answers to most of their questions. He certainly wasn’t going to give them Larissa.

  Their investigation would take time, time they didn’t have, but he was sure they’d beef up security while they looked into it.

  The compound already had some of the most advanced security systems on the planet. If they brought back the marines who were supposed to be manning those systems, that alone could be enough to ward off the attack.

  There was no clock in the room, and he was estimating how much time had passed when two Marines showed up at the door. They pulled him to his feet and shoved him toward the door.

  “Easy, fellas,” Lance said. “I came to you, remember.”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” one of them said.

  They escorted him to the elevator and pressed the button for the basement level. Lance considered giving them the slip, but he still needed to tell someone in power about the threat.

  In the basement, they walked through an underground tunnel that led to a hardened receiving bay. The reinforced concrete gave way to stone, and Lance realized they were entering the old embassy building.

  This was the building the Russians had blasted with so many x-rays that every part of it had been upgraded and reinforced multiple times. A set of eight-inch thick steel doors led to a narrow, dingy corridor, at the end of which was a secure elevator.

  Lance was beginning to have second thoughts as he let the marines lead him into another elevator. Once he was fully secured and locked away in this place, getting out wasn’t going to be an easy task.

  The elevator went down four floors, deep below ground, and when the doors finally opened, they led to a narrow, stone corridor.

  The marines took him down the corridor, passing sets of thick steel doors. Lance looked at them as closely as he could as they passed. Their only weakness appeared to be that they were old. They clearly weren’t still in use.

  They were taking him into some disused part of the embassy, a dungeon that had all the charm of a CIA black site.

  They stopped outside some doors, and one of them began unlocking it with a set of old keys. He wasn’t familiar with the keys. It looked like it might have been his first time using them. The seventh key he tried unlocked the door. He leaned his weight into it, and the thick steel swung open with a groan.

  “What is this?” Lance said.

  The room was a dark, sealed box, about twelve feet by twelve feet. There was a ventilation duct in the ceiling, too small to fit a man. The air was heavy and damp, and mold had started to take over. The only light came from a recessed light fixture in the ceiling. The cover was plastic and had a large brown stain at its center in the shape of a fluorescent bulb.

  There were two wooden chairs and a rickety wooden table in the center of the room. On the table, an iron shackling-ring had been screwed into the wood.

  The room was a holdover from the darkest days of the Cold War. Lance knew exactly the kinds of things that had been done there.

  “You want to lock me in here?” he said.

  The marines looked at each other, then nodded.

  “Why?”

  They had no answer.

  “I’m an American citizen,” Lance said. “I came into this embassy of my own free will. I wanted to speak to someone in charge of security because I think there’s going to be an attack.”

  “We don’t know anything about that, sir. We’re just following orders.”

  “Following orders?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever brought anyone down here before?”

  They shook their heads. The two men had their hands on Lance’s back, but they’d stopped short of shoving him into the room. Lance was tense. They were tense too, ready to draw their weapons if he tried to resist.

  He was beginning to regret getting into this position. There wasn’t much he could do about it now though, with his hands cuffed behind his back and two armed men holding him.

  “Tell me this,” Lance said. “Who’s coming to speak with me?”

  The marines looked at each other. />
  “The RSO,” one of them said.

  The other gave him a look that said he should have kept his mouth shut.

  “Who’s the RSO?”

  “A guy from Florida. Goes by Stilton.”

  “Like the cheese?”

  “Like the cheese, sir. Slick guy. Likes his toys. Always with a new Russian girl.”

  Lance nodded. The man didn’t sound like the best bet for preventing an attack, but it was what it was.

  “He a stand up guy?” Lance said.

  The two men shrugged. That told Lance all he needed to know.

  “We’re just following orders, sir,” the talkative marine said again, and they shoved him into the cell. “Stilton will be here in an hour. I’m sure this will all be sorted by then.”

  Lance shook his head. “This doesn’t feel right,” he said, turning to them as they shut the door. “If I was going to be speaking to the RSO, this is the last place you’d be taking me.”

  They looked at him one last time and said nothing. They knew what he was saying was true.

  The old door groaned shut, and the locks clanked.

  Lance sat on one of the chairs and stared at the moldy walls. It wasn’t long before he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and the big door swung open again.

  An enormous man appeared in the doorway, his eyes as red as blood and his skin pale as a corpse. The man didn’t look right. He was a ghoul, something out of a nightmare. As he entered the room, ducking his head, Lance knew he was the albino from the Lubyanka.

  A giant, Russian albino.

  The man they called Polar Bear.

  Lance suddenly realized how remarkable it was that this man had managed to stay off the CIA and NSA radars so long. He certainly was the type who would stand out. His security measures must have been extraordinary.

  He walked with a pronounced limp. He was over seven feet tall. Lance didn’t even want to guess what he weighed.

  Lance looked at the two marines standing in the corridor behind him and said, “Hey, I thought I was waiting for the RSO.”

  “The RSO has been detained,” the Polar Bear said. “You’ll have to deal with me instead, I’m afraid.”

  “You can’t leave me in here with this guy,” Lance shouted to the marines, but there was nothing they could do about it. This had clearly been authorized from the top.