Best Kept Lies

by Helena Maeve

  It should have felt like coming home—and in many ways, it did. He was only a few metro stops from his apartment. His office lay within walking distance of a lovely bit of green next door. Sure, it was a small windowless room scored by the whir of newly installed heater that blew either too hot or too cold, but it was his.

  He recognized the streets in Moscow. He didn’t have to think to adapt to the local customs. Simply hearing everyone around him speak Russian was a boon. Yet his usual relief made its absence felt.

  This time, he was no conquering hero returned to the motherland.

  This time, he was acutely aware of the blood on his hands.

  “Grisha!”

  His thoughts floundered beneath the bell chime of a familiar voice. He spun around.

  Heedless of the curious glance shot his way, Dmitri Andreievich jogged down the vast, echoing corridor and enveloped Grigory in an enthusiastic embrace. He’d let his hair grow in since completing his military service. It or his clothes smelled faintly of peppermint.

  He launched into passionate chatter as soon as he’d released Grigory. “We heard you were coming back today. Sergei has the day off—his wife just gave birth, did you know?—but he said to call if you had time for a drink. Remember that place in Krasny Oktyabr? He says we have to be with you to get the pretty waitresses to give us a discount…” During a lull in his monologue, he reached out and squeezed Grigory’s arm. “Don’t they feed you in Rome? You look skinny. I thought Italy had all the pasta and pizza and—”

  “Well, I thought of coming back plump as a Christmas pig,” Grigory teased, “but I didn’t want to make my friends jealous.”

  Dmitri grinned. “I’m not jealous. I got my first posting.”

  “Did you?” The churn of bile in Grigory’s gut took on a decidedly vinegary twist. “Where?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that!”

  “Really? Not even me?” He shammed a sigh. “Recruit a man to serve his country and he says he doesn’t trust you…”

  Because he was young and because he still thought this was a joking matter, Dmitri jabbed him playfully in the ribs. “Help me pull one of those pretty waitresses tonight and maybe I’ll change my mind. You’re going to see Uncle?” He jerked his head toward the office door.

  It was a great mahogany thing, double wide and carved with suitably symmetrical squares that twenty years ago might have held the hammer and sickle.

  “Thought I’d see if my report needs to be supplemented.”

  Sometimes the only way to get the pulse of the organization was to go all the way to the top. Providentially, Grigory enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Director.

  He hoped that was still the case after his behavior in Rome.

  “Oh, he’s not in.” Dmitri looked around and, satisfied that no one was listening, added, “He’s confessing. At the Dormition.”

  “Ah…”

  The Kremlin was a collection of world-famous domes and towers, but at the heart of the citadel lay Cathedral Square, a beautiful sextet of highly exclusive sanctuaries. While between the walls of the SVR, it was safer to say that the Director had gone to seek divine guidance than report to the President, especially in the current climate.

  Grigory flung one last, doleful glance at the forbidding office doors. There was nothing he could do about the Rome report now.

  “So,” he said, sighing heavily. “Sergei is a father. Are we sure it’s his?”

  It took little effort to prompt Dmitri into another long and colorful tale about their colleagues. Grigory did his best to tether his thoughts to office politics when they threatened to slip back to the man he’d left behind in Italy.

  Oksana had her orders.

  * * * *

  Dmitri was good company and an even better record keeper of the past month’s events, but Grigory couldn’t keep him from his work for long. They parted after an hour of catching up, once Grigory’s return lost all sense of novelty for his fellow bureaucrats.

  He took the metro home, intent on letting the rocking of the train blot away some of his worries. Flurries still danced through the air when he emerged from the station with his suitcase in one clenched fist. The slippery sidewalk was a lesser challenge than the business of finding his key.

  One of his neighbors was just leaving as he patted as his pockets outside the front door. She let him into to the building with a beaming smile, little more than her face visible between the high collar and cowl of a navy parka.

  “Oh, Mr. Antipov! You need a better coat.”

  Grigory looked down at himself with a rueful half-smile. His trench coat was patently inappropriate for the early snow. When he’d left Moscow, it was barely autumn and the trees in Sokolniki Park had yet to shed their leaves.

  Foreign assignments constantly foiled his sartorial choices.

  “Yes, I—”

  “You’re back from your mother’s again? How is she?”

  “Good, good. Better—”

  “You’re a good son. And lucky to have a boss who lets you take so much time off!”

  He agreed that it was. He was.

  Fortunately, the wind chill soon curtailed further conversation.

  Grigory the good son, the office manager, made it as far as his living room couch before his knees gave out. The flight from Rome to Moscow alone had taken a good five hours during which he couldn’t sleep or relax in the too-narrow economy-class seat. Five hours with his thoughts was dangerous on a good day. It was nearly insupportable when every second could mark the press of a trigger, the spray of blood and brain matter.

  Exit Karim.

  The prospect was oddly revolting. Grigory bounded up from the couch.

  Under a loose floorboard under the bed, he had concealed a handful of burner phones, a couple of fake passports—insurance, in case his friendship with the SVR soured overnight. He plucked out one of the handsets and stuck the charger into the wall plug. Seconds ticked by until the device siphoned enough power for the screen to light up.

  He dithered only a moment before pressing the call button.

  “Hello?”

  A distant clatter of footsteps and children’s laughter trickled down the line.

  The alarm clock on Grigory’s bedside table read fifteen-forty-two.

  In Rome, they were having lunch under a late autumn sun, eager for the weekend.

  He swallowed, shifting the lump in his throat long enough to ask, “Is it done?”

  “Oh, no.” Oksana’s voice was a melodious sing-song. She wouldn’t have recognized the number, but she still knew his voice.

  His insides churned at the thought.

  A memory intruded—the two of them as young recruits, fresh out of school, standing in the kitchen of their first safehouse, shoulder to skinny shoulder, digging around the pantry for something to beat back the pangs of hunger. Oksana turning Peas, oh peas into a riff on Katyusha.

  They never found those peas, settled for sharing a tin of oily sardines instead. Francesca Bandini with a three-bedroom house in Centocelle, a husband and a child, probably never stood in front of her pantry chanting for peas.

  “Hang on,” she said into the phone, even though Grigory had fallen silent. “I can’t hear you.”

  The children’s voices dimmed but didn’t quite fade. Oksana must have stepped away from the playground.

  Grigory imagined her turning to keep an eye on the monkey bars out of habit. Directorate S trained them to abduct children as well as adults. They trained them to take all manner of vile, but necessary, action. Grigory had never questioned their methods. Wars were fought with whatever was available.

  “You said I had forty-eight hours,” Oksana recalled, lowering her voice. “What’s changed?”

  “Nothing.” I had sex with your mark. Grigory wrinkled his nose.

  “Any heat from the Ravenna job?”

  Suspicion slithered into his bones like a virus. “Why?”

  “Didn’t see it in the news.”<
br />
  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “You’re telling me there’s not a nosy journalist out there looking to dig through trash?” Oksana scoffed. She’d always been the type to look for trouble where there was none.

  “Let us worry about that,” advised Grigory. A lifetime ago, he might have been tempted to share details of their strategy. He would’ve filled her in on information he wasn’t supposed to just to put her mind at ease.

  He couldn’t. He was her controller, not her friend.

  Silence stretched between them until Oksana sighed. “I’ll take care of the other thing.”

  “Mama!” echoed from her end of the line.

  “Sorry, I have to go.”

  “Listen–” But she had already hung up.

  Grigory stared at the burner in his hand for a long beat. Eventually, he set it aside and went to unpack. His wardrobe was a modest, subdued collection of grays and blacks. He had eight different button-down shirts in varying shades of blue. He hung up his ties and stood in front of the mirrored door for a long moment. The bags under his eyes looked like bruises. His bottom lip jutted out. He sucked it back in reflexively and tried not to think about Karim’s mouth.

  Or Karim’s mouth around his dick.

  Or Karim’s mouth on the back of his neck.

  He ran the shower very hot when he finally tore himself from the staring contest. It didn’t help. Water spurted from the shower head in a slow, lukewarm trickle. Grigory shivered all the way to bed some fifteen minutes later. He didn’t have the energy to dig clean pajamas out of the dresser drawer.

  With the very last ounce of energy he possessed, Grigory grabbed his pistol from the cache under the bed and slotted it, perhaps foolishly, under his pillow. The first night back was always the hardest—and he didn’t usually have SIS agents out for his blood to fuel his paranoia.

  * * * *

  “So you see,” said the director, “it had to be done.”

  The SVR building was vast enough that every window overlooking the façade was afforded a more than generous view of the thick woodland around the city. Beyond the birches and poplars stripped of their leaves, tall apartment towers pocked the horizon like the last molars in a toothless mouth.

  No statue of Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky to peer up at the seat of his power out here. No hint of the legacy of espionage and covert operations that went on behind the cement walls of the Y-shaped HQ.

  They were just bureaucrats pushing paper. Nothing more.

  Grigory turned away from the window, keenly aware of having zoned out. He smiled politely.

  Meetings with the director tended to run long, not because he believed in oversharing—he wouldn’t have made it to the highest echelons of the service were that the case—but due to his strong feelings on what he perceived as the failings of fellow agencies. The latest to attract his ire was the supposedly incompetent, careless or downright dangerous SIS.

  “From what I understand, the runner-up is more liberal than Prime Minister Craft,” Grigory mused. He brought his cup to his lips and thought instantly of Zorin and her steady supply of black Russian tea.

  “The runner-up may not earn his party’s favor,” the director countered.

  “A general election?”

  It was possible, of course. So-called democratic countries liked to pretend any problem could be resolved by shuffling seats at the top. How no one noticed that the same people remained in power term after term perplexed Grigory.

  “The press has been agitating for a vote of the people. Even the Conservatives agree.”

  Grigory scoffed. “What better way to distance themselves… But that doesn’t mean they’re behind the coup.”

  “No, no.” The director tipped forward, leather chair creaking beneath him, and replenished his tea. “Such an order would have come from much higher than the party.”

  “GCHQ?”

  He tipped his head and Grigory felt an embarrassing, childish flood of pride. He’d guessed right. He got the gold star, the prize at the fair.

  “According to our contact in Rome, the intelligence community was just as baffled by the news as we were…”

  The director’s smile was barely perceptible behind his cup. Only the barest crinkling at the corners of his eyes suggested amusement. “Our young friend should speak more with his father. He was recently promoted to head of section.”

  “Which section?” Grigory asked, a little slow on the uptake. His cheeks warmed the longer he observed the director’s silence. “Oh. That section.” The only one that mattered.

  * * * *

  Missed opportunity.

  The vibration of the subway car and the tooth-drill noise of the tracks did little to dispel the thought. Although the director would never say it outright and in their interactions he was every bit the patient mentor Grigory had always known, he knew he’d been disappointing during their interview.

  Given how much he traveled, Grigory only had a scattered few chances to impress his superiors. And he came unprepared. Exhausted. His mind resolutely elsewhere.

  If his next assignment saw him relegated to Vladivostok, it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

  Grigory grabbed the steel bar and levered to his feet as the train slowed into station. Crisp evening gales buffeted his cheeks and the cement stairs leading up to the surface. He didn’t mind the climb or the slippery walk down to his apartment building. He needed the exercise.

  Did they even have escalators in Vladivostok?

  There was no sign of his busybody neighbor as he slotted his key in the door and stomped his feet to shake off the melting snow. His mailbox overflowed with pamphlets and advertisements. He shot it a baleful glare in passing but resisted the urge to clear it out.

  Tomorrow. He would find time for it tomorrow.

  He shifted the bag of groceries from one hand to the other as he trotted up the stairs. This was his life. He could get used to it again. Warm, crowded Rome was already losing its grip on him. Soon he wouldn’t miss the coffee or the food. He’d forget the smells and sounds of the city—just in time for his next mission.

  Idle thoughts consumed Grigory’s attention. He was on the landing, halfway to his apartment door, when he noticed the sliver of light slanting through the gap.

  The plastic bag slid free from his hand. Two apples rolled out. One thumped lazily against the door, nudging it open a little farther. The other rolled right into the apartment, where it tapped softly at a black, heavy-duty climbing boot.

  Karim picked it up and took a casual bite.

  Chapter Six

  “What are you doing?”

  Grigory himself had tried different variations on that theme when he’d arrived, but even armed with answers a few hours later, he still struggled to make sense of Karim’s presence.

  In his apartment. In Moscow.

  He peered up at him from his place on the couch, squinting in suspicion.

  Karim hadn’t seen fit to don his shirt or underwear. He paraded around in the nude as if Grigory’s home was his domain, fractured moonbeams painting him in shades of blue and gray. Shadows burned to black in the hollows of his collarbones and the long column of his neck.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Grigory lied. I was thinking of turning you in.

  Karim tugged a hand through his hair. He fell more than sat on the couch, his body a loose sprawl of muscular limbs, radiating heat. Disheveled was a good look on him. “Why didn’t you wake me? I could’ve kept you company.”

  “Thought we already took care of that portion of the evening…”

  His hips ached where Karim had held him down to the mattress. He had discovered a tender spot just under his right shoulder. Karim’s arms were beautifully rounded with lean muscle, but he had rather pointy elbows. Grigory had learned just how pointy in those brief, delicious seconds before Karim spent inside him.

  They had fucked. Sotto voce recriminations and threats came first, naturally, but as soon as Grigory had stepped in
close, he’d known what would happen. He wasn’t even a little surprised to feel the wall against his back and Karim’s hands under his clothes.

  Their scattered slacks and shirts and underwear had painted a breadcrumb trail through the small apartment. The first thing Grigory did upon waking up was gather and fold everything. Now the flat was tidy and he had nothing to do, nowhere to run from the decision he had to make.

  Karim had him by the nape, his palm curled like a half-collar. Grigory yearned for the strength to pull away.

  “That’s the problem with your service. You always underestimate the enemy.”

  “Is that what you are?” Grigory couldn’t find it in him to wrest free, so he turned to face Karim instead, hoping that meant he’d shake off his grip without trying to do so. “My enemy?”

  Karim’s eyes shone in the moonlight. “I don’t want to be.”

  “But our countries have been at war in some form for the past hundred years at least, and you’re trying to turn me against my people—”

  “Yes,” Karim said, “but that has nothing to do with us.”

  For a long, incredulous beat, Grigory thought he was being mocked. He considered leaping onto Karim and putting both hands around his throat, just to see how he liked being the one in the trap.

  “Weren’t you sent here?”

  Karim thinned his lips. “I was, but—”

  “To keep an eye on me, make sure I remember that my neck is on the line?”

  If he didn’t play ball with the SIS, the director would receive a phone call first thing tomorrow that would arouse suspicion in the best of cases, outright incriminate Grigory in the worst. It all depended on whether Karim wanted to have him executed or simply packed off to Siberia.

  Nothing to do with us. Grigory gave out a huff of laughter. “You’re sweet, but you’re deluded.” He patted Karim’s knee as he rose. “I’m going back to bed.”

  Karim moved to snag his wrist.

  For once, he wasn’t fast enough. Grigory twisted out of his reach, shifted his weight to one foot and used the other to jam his knee into the meat of Karim’s bare, vulnerable thigh.