Best Kept Lies

by Helena Maeve

  * * * *

  The last rusted gleam of a late October sun had already fled the sky by the time Grigory’s feet guided him back to the hotel. His steps ricocheted against closed shutters and graffiti-streaked shop windows like the clatter of ping-pong balls.

  In the interests of bolstering his cover, he’d deliberately opted for an establishment accessible to middle managers getting by on a per diem from an Eastern bloc country.

  Next time, perhaps Center would permit him to pose as a wealthy industrialist and check in at the Hyatt.

  Grigory caught a yawn in his hand. As long as he had a bedbug-free mattress and clean sheets, he wasn’t about to quibble. Not tonight, at least.

  The façade of the hotel was hardly distinguishable from the buildings wedged against it to either side. A modest awning curved over the entrance, deflecting the yellow light of the lobby. The narrow sidewalk barely left room for one man to squeeze between the row of stone townhouses and the cars clogging one half of the narrow alley. Grigory stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trench coat, wrinkling his nose at the inconvenience.

  Lamp posts were sorely lacking in Rome’s back streets and the cul-de-sac outside the hotel was no exception. Yet in the dim, buttery glow of the hotel entrance, a figure stood fiddling with a lighter and cigarette.

  Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Rome knew no shortage of idlers.

  Another silhouette peeled free of the shadows on the other side of the street. It glanced down the sloping pavement toward the fountain at the heart of the crossroads some two hundred yards away and made to cross to Grigory’s narrow sidewalk.

  Grigory registered the flash of movement from the corner of his eye. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. Slowing his steps, much less turning and bolting, was not an option.

  He curled his fingers through the slit lining of his coat and fingered his revolver. Fast draw or not, he still had to be sure it was worth blowing his cover before he pulled out the gun.

  “Mr. Antipov?” queried a soft, male voice behind him.

  Grigory startled, spun on his heel.

  The stranger—who knew his name, who must have followed him into the alley—offered a tepid smile. In the dark, his hooded eyes shone like a pair of black marbles, brow furrowing as he dug a Taser into the soft flesh of Grigory’s hip.

  The revolver clattered to the pavement, not a shot fired.

  Chapter Two

  Daybreak scratched at Grigory’s eyelids with the ferocity of a rattleboned cat. The gauzy curtains were no shield against its persistence.

  Grigory must’ve forgotten to close the blinds. He never forgot. Foolish, drank too much, that’d explain this goddamn headache… Recollection washed over him in single, merciless deluge.

  He bolted upright in bed, the room spinning wildly around him.

  He remembered a black van with tinted windows. The steel and cement haze of a deserted underpass somewhere outside the city, where even the slums gave way to wilderness. Hands, rifling through his clothes in search of any other weapon. Fingers in his mouth, seeking a poison tooth.

  The pinch of a Taser’s metal fangs smarted on his left hip, as if to lend insult to injury.

  Though the air in the hotel room stank faintly of liquor sweat, last night’s events had been no drunken delusion.

  Grigory knuckled the grit at the corner of his eyes and took in the clothes scattered around the bed, wet patches on the knees of his trousers. Blood stained the collar of his shirt. He must have stripped off in a hurry before falling into bed in underwear and socks.

  A business card lay face down on the frayed chartreuse rug, one corner bent upright.

  He swung his knees over the edge of the mattress. The migraine that hammered at his temples was in no way improved by rapid movement. Morbid curiosity ate at him. He turned the card over in his hand.

  Vellum Office Supplies. Stationery and Furniture for the Successful Business.

  The same logo had been painted on the van into which they’d dragged him, semi-conscious, after discharging fifty thousand volts into his body. Drugs must have been involved, too, or he wouldn’t have crawled back to his room without fuss after all the fun and games.

  Did a lot more than that… The grim thought raised goose bumps along his bare arms. He had to call Zorin, bring up their meet. He had to report this, fast, before the Rezident found out through other channels that he’d indulged a one-on-one with the SIS.

  Bile rose in Grigory’s throat as he remembered the photographs. Doctored. He’d say they were doctored. He had been a loyal agent of the Kremlin for nearly a decade. What was one photograph when weighed against so many years of patriotic service?

  What were ten snapshots, collectively painting him as a man who handled cash with strangers in dark rooms?

  Center might tolerate whispers of his perversions, but they would be marginally less eager to look the other way if his trustworthiness came under question.

  Grigory scrubbed both hands over his face. The bristles of morning stubble caught under his fingertips. He was in bad need of a shave—and a shower.

  He’d think about self-reporting once he’d made himself presentable.

  * * * *

  Rezident was more than able to do the Kremlin’s bidding abroad when that bidding involved facilitating deals or negotiating contracts with Western businesses that couldn’t be seen to take orders from Russian investors. Other tasks required anonymity. Men like Grigory—forgettable, unremarkable, clad in drab, off-the-rack suits—took care to spin those plates.

  He was practically invisible. No one paid him a second glance as he boarded the nine-fifteen to Ravenna. The car he chose was peopled with schoolchildren, their burgundy uniforms marking them as students of some private school.

  Attempts to keep them quiet left the two harried teachers tasked with shepherding the gaggle even more frazzled than they’d been boarding the train.

  Eventually, the older of the pair leaned across the aisle and apologized.

  “Not at all,” Grigory replied, any hint of an accent chiseled into obscurity. He lowered his copy of that morning’s La Stampa. “We were all young once.”

  The teacher huffed her disbelief. “I’m sure we were never quite so rowdy.”

  “Weren’t we?” Grigory held her gaze a beat longer than would’ve been strictly polite among strangers. He’d never read a more vivid description of weary eyes than in Tolstoy’s oeuvre. He imagined that even a great wordsmith would have struggled to illustrate the teacher’s expression in that moment.

  Her features slackened, understanding slowly rolling back the years.

  They weren’t strangers. They were two identical gears fashioned by the same well-oiled apparatus. The only difference was in the quality of the window dressing.

  Grigory’s pocket litter was enough for a convincing Italian traveler. Francesca Bandini—née Oksana Pudovkin—had built her cover over eight long years as an Italian housewife turned schoolteacher.

  In an instant, their paths converged, cogs meshing perfectly. The machine kept churning.

  “I distinctly recall having my knuckles rapped with a ruler,” Grigory went on meditatively. “Of course, that was back in the eighties… I don’t believe it’s done anymore, is it?”

  “My mother was a teacher in the eighties. I don’t believe it was done then, either. You must have been very disobedient…”

  He smiled fondly. “Oh, I was a terror. But I always knew that my elders meant well.”

  “We do,” Oksana replied, her eyes downcast.

  “Good.”

  A disembodied voice echoed through the car, syllables butchered by a poor recording and the interference of two dozen rambunctious preteens. Grigory glanced to the scratched windowpane. Beyond the glass, railway tracks striated the Italian countryside.

  The train slowed as it approached the station at Passo Corese.

  Grigory folded his newspaper and climbed to his feet. “We must always tru
st our betters, I think… Well, enjoy the rest of your trip. I hear it’s sunny in Ravenna.”

  On his way out of the car, he made sure to tip his folded newspaper toward Oksana’s seat. A burner phone slid into her lap.

  She covered it with a smooth flick of the wrist, barely glancing down. There was an edge to her smile.

  Grigory dismissed it from the report he had already begun cobbling in his mind. Refusing to come out of retirement was not an option for animals of their breed. The same applied to absolute candor in the communiqués sent up the ladder to Moscow.

  In the hubbub of the station, watching the train to Ravenna pull away from the platform, Grigory came to a decision about his own predicament.

  It was obvious. He couldn’t tell Zorin.

  He couldn’t come clean to his superiors.

  Balancing his briefcase in one lax hand, he made for the row of unused pay phones near the entrance. Stickers advertising phone sex operators and strip bars papered the plastic walls of the booth. Needs must.

  The call connected within two rings.

  “Vellum Office Supplies, how may I—”

  “Grigory Antipov.”

  “Please hold.”

  “No. I have a message.”

  On the other end of the line, the voice fell silent.

  “Piazza Navona, midnight tonight,” Grigory said and hung up. If the latest phone tapping scandal in the UK had proved anything, it was that the SVR weren’t the only ones who recorded calls. The message would get through. The SIS would send an agent.

  And this time Grigory would be ready.

  * * * *

  “Twenty minutes of staring into Fontana del Moro and you didn’t even make a wish…”

  The click of a tongue echoed dangerously close to Grigory’s ear. He stiffened, dread rippling over his flesh as he recognized the man’s voice.

  Fifty thousand volts had burned its exact pitch and tone into memory.

  “Nice of you to wait until I had a drink,” Grigory shot back, curling his fingers around his brandy.

  His companion smiled. “You’re very welcome.”

  As frustrating as it was to discover that he’d been watched since he arrived in the square, he was more annoyed by the cheery note in the other man’s voice.

  “What do I call you?” he wondered, bypassing the entire matter of who shot whom with a Taser and why.

  “Karim.”

  “Damn, I had a bet with myself that you’d say Bond.”

  The smile broadened, Karim’s eyes sucking up the glimmer of every electric candle in the bar. He glanced away in search of the bartender. “How’s the Courvoisier?”

  He pronounced it better than Grigory had when he’d placed his order. It grated on the nerves.

  “Terrible.”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Karim told the bartender.

  He wasn’t as big as Grigory’s hazy memory reported. The span of his shoulders was no wider than Zorin’s. He wore a similar brand of dress shirt—stiff and wrinkle-free, the top two buttons rakishly undone. The similarities ended there. Where Zorin was pale and graceful, hips like the gentle curves of an hourglass, Karim was angular, blue-green veins visible beneath the tan skin of his neck.

  He’d draped a distressed leather jacket over the bar beside him when he’d come in. To Grigory, it seemed like a gesture he’d picked up from an American movie.

  “You’re staring,” Karim observed, resting his chin on a folded fist. His nails were neatly trimmed, not a hint of red around the edges.

  No doubt he wore gloves for wet work.

  Grigory raised his eyebrows. So? “I didn’t get a very good look at you last night—on account of the black bag over my head.”

  “Ah. Yes… It wasn’t my call.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The bartender slid a snifter onto the counter, cognac clinging to the glass.

  “Orders,” Karim added.

  “I understand.”

  A hefty sort of silence settled as they preoccupied themselves with their drinks. The warmth that spread from Grigory’s stomach to his extremities would have been pleasant on a slightly less muggy evening, in slightly better company.

  The English had an expression about beggars and choosers that applied.

  “You made the right call,” Karim said, at length.

  “Who says I made any call?”

  “You arranged this rendezvous… Good eye for logistics, by the way. Crowded but not too crowded, easy to get to. Six exits that I can see—”

  “Seven,” Grigory muttered.

  Karim’s jauntiness scraped against his composure with every word that passed his soft, permanently slanted lips.

  The spy went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “You wouldn’t have asked to meet if you hadn’t at least considered defecting.”

  That word. That fucking word.

  Grigory set his glass on the bar top a little harder than was strictly necessary. The cacophony of music and overlapping voices drowned out the noise. “So that’s the plan. The SIS wants me to turn traitor.” Why me? Why now? He wasn’t stupid enough to ask. “Good to know.”

  He pushed away from the bar as he reached for his wallet.

  With cat-quick reflexes, Karim caught his arm just as Grigory made to lose himself in the crowd.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’re done here.”

  Karim clucked his tongue. His grip, Grigory noted, was like a steel cuff around the wrist. He could probably tear free if he put his mind to it—no manacle was impossible to evade—but not without causing a scene.

  The last thing Grigory needed was more eyes on him.

  He dug his toes into the floor as Karim tipped forward. He anticipated a threat on par with those he’d already considered—exposure, a fatal blow to his cover, the entire legend of who he was and what he’d been sent to do in Rome disclosed for public consumption.

  After a moment’s consideration, Karim said, “Do you play chess?”

  It took everything Grigory had to conceal his surprise. Between last night’s tide shift and the brandy, he was struggling to see clearly. “I’m Russian.”

  Karim slackened his grip. “Fool’s Mate. It rarely ever occurs in practice, even among novices.”

  “Is that your way of saying there’s hope I’ll fight another day?” Bringing up the rear within two moves was more than a little insulting.

  Without Karim’s strong fist to hold him prisoner, it should have been easy to pull away. Grigory didn’t. The last thing he wanted was to imply physical contact made him uncomfortable.

  “Something like that.”

  “I won’t defect.”

  Karim turned back to the bar. “We know.” He swirled the brandy in his glass before he took a sip, grimaced, and placed it back down.

  Grigory watched as he licked his lips. “I see.”

  It’s information you want. Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, he had become the very creature he was trying to shape Nathaniel into. He was the prize MI6 wanted in its collection. And they thought that the way to do it was with scare tactics.

  “I’m a little disappointed.”

  Karim blinked.

  “You could’ve tried seducing me first. Much more enjoyable for us both.”

  It was a thrill—albeit small and perverse—to see Karim glance away quickly. He had the look of a lads’ lad, the kind of man who didn’t get solicited by others of his gender. But honey traps were commonplace in the business and he was too handsome not to have ploughed a few female assets for Queen and country.

  Those dimpled cheeks alone would’ve been enough to shatter hearts.

  Grigory shifted his weight. “Well? Are you coming or not?”

  “I’m sorry?” Karim’s earlier cheer was suddenly dialed down to zero, easy smiles concealed behind a guarded expression.

  As victories went, it wasn’t much. Grigory took what he could get.

  “You’re walking me ho
me,” he flung back over his shoulder. “Easier to explain why I’m meeting strange men in bars if it seems like I’m screwing them.”

  Depravity was pardonable. Treason was not.

  Grigory stalked out into the street without waiting to see if his companion would follow. The click of Karim’s oxfords on the cobblestones was its own opening move. Grigory slowed his long strides to allow Karim to fall into step beside him.

  They didn’t exchange a word as they negotiated the maze of pedestrian-only streets back to Grigory’s hotel. The front desk was unmanned and the elevator lacked CCTV, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched.

  “My superiors would like proof of your willingness to cooperate,” Karim murmured, as though picking up the thread of their conversation in Piazza Novona.

  He didn’t look at Grigory when he spoke, so Grigory didn’t look at him.

  “And I’d like proof of their willingness not to destroy my life with a single DHL delivery. Life is filled with disappointment.”

  The elevator doors crept open slowly. Grigory slid through the gap, rummaging for his room key in the back pocket of his slacks. A small part of him wondered if he’d left too much of a mess in the room. He’d remembered to drop off his soiled clothes at the nearest dry cleaner’s, at least. The evidence of Karim’s tender handling had been erased.

  He expelled a sigh as he flicked on the lights in the room. The bed was made, the carpet vacuumed. Fresh flowers drooped in the vase on the narrow coffee table wedged between window and sunken armchairs.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your sense of humor,” Karim went on, “but the sooner you accept—”

  The chances of catching an MI6 agent unaware were pitifully slim. Somehow, Grigory was able to palm Karim’s cheeks with both hands and press his lips to his in a rough kiss without his fellow spy ducking out of his reach, let alone breaking his fingers.

  Karim’s breath fled his mouth in a rush as they parted. “What’re you doing?”

  “Giving us both a convincing cover. You want to leave? Door’s over there.”