Best Kept Lies

by Helena Maeve

  “Yes,” Oksana laughed falsely. “I’m sure it was this afternoon… Although I don’t blame you for getting mixed up. It’s been a busy few days, hasn’t it?”

  Grigory made an acquiescing noise low in his throat—or thought he did. Vodka churned in his gut like poison. He thanked Oksana and hung up just in time for his composure to crumble.

  He dropped the phone to the table and gripped the edge of the kitchen table. Putting his head between his knees alleviated some of the lightheadedness, but not all. Not nearly all.

  It had to be done.

  He could have found another way.

  It was the only way to prove his loyalty and stay alive.

  Karim had been acting on orders, too. He probably had no choice but to abduct Grigory that night and put the screws on him. He was no more of a free agent than Grigory.

  And now he’s nothing.

  Part of Grigory wanted to call Oksana back and ask for details. Had she done it with a bullet to the head? A car bomb? Poison seemed unlikely when Karim’s movements were so erratic, but not impossible. Oksana was a highly efficient wet work operative. She would have picked the best and cleanest method to achieve her ends.

  On the wall, the salmon’s fins pointed to half past midnight, then crept dutifully down toward one in the morning.

  Grigory peeled the cling film off the lasagna and dug in with a tablespoon.

  Chapter Eight

  “Good thing you left when you did,” Dmitri said, on the cusp of a yawn. “You look like hell.”

  He wasn’t the first to come to that unflattering conclusion. Ever since Grigory had walked into the office and plonked down at his desk, he’d been the subject of sidelong glances from the staff. Those who’d known him the longest ventured close to ask if he was sick.

  Grigory smiled, shook his head. Just a stomach bug. I’m sure I’ll be fine.

  He couldn’t lie to Dmitri with quite the same ease. He’d been at the bar last night. He knew how much Grigory had imbibed.

  “At least I didn’t come in wearing the same shirt,” Grigory pointed out tersely. He stood, relieved when the floor stayed put beneath his feet and made to take the reports across the hall to the director’s office.

  Dmitri fell into step beside him. “I had an excellent night, thanks for asking.”

  “Anna did seem like good company…”

  “Anna? Oh,” Dmitri huffed, scratching at his nose. “No, I, um… Anna wasn’t really my type?”

  Grigory found that hard to believe, but he let it slide. Confident, brash women could be intimidating. Dmitri spent most of his life in an office where wallflowers wilted fast. It wasn’t so absurd to imagine he’d want to see them bloom in his own time.

  “Katya, then.”

  Dmitri blushed. “I really like her.”

  “You must have, to spend all night—”

  “Talking,” Dmitri said quickly. “Just talking.”

  Of all the euphemisms Dmitri could have chosen, he picked something that stretched credulity to the breaking point. Grigory rolled his eyes and handed his papers over to the director’s personal assistant.

  She nodded, glanced up, and looked away again just as quickly. As soon as they’d drifted off, she dug out a bottle of antiseptic out of her desk.

  Grigory wondered if he should have stayed home. “And Sergei?”

  “Oh, he went home.”

  “His wife must’ve been pleased to see him come in reeking of vodka.”

  Dmitri’s cringe stopped him in his tracks. The boy’s face was too expressive. He gave himself away with a single twitch of the mouth, a quick flicker of eyelids. He’d never make it in the business at this rate, and it would be Grigory’s job to clean out his desk.

  “I see.” Sergei hadn’t left for his home when the bar finally shut its doors. “Suppose that explains why he’s late,” Grigory muttered.

  “You won’t tell him I said anything, will you?” Dmitri’s eyes were pleading.

  The SVR allowed a certain degree of leeway in an agent’s personal life. It was why Grigory didn’t particularly fear being terminated for his preferences. As long as their work was not affected, he and his fellow bureaucrats were allowed to do as they pleased. For some, freedom from consequences meant picking up strange women in bars and failing to show a modicum of discretion.

  For others, it meant sleeping with the enemy.

  Grigory dismissed the thought. At least he’d taken care of his loose ends.

  Dmitri stopped him with a hand on his elbow. “Grisha? You’re not mad at us, are you?”

  “No… No, I’m not. Why do you ask?”

  “You look like you want to skin me alive.”

  It took conscious thought to ease the crease between Grigory’s eyebrows. He shammed a tepid smile. “No one can tell Sergei his business.” Especially when it comes to beautiful women.

  “We’re only human,” Dmitri agreed. “He’ll show up eventually. Or call in sick…”

  “Perhaps he threw out his back?”

  Making Dmitri smile had been a hobby of Grigory’s when the young recruit first joined their ranks. He’d wrestled with the impulse, always worried that it might not be so innocent. But Dmitri seemed to remain oblivious and though he’d spent years at the SVR, he was still quick to grin and muffle a chuckle behind his hand.

  The joke hung in the air between them throughout the day, there in the jerk of their eyebrows whenever someone asked where Sergei Nikolayevich was. By noon, his absence had been noted by everyone in the office, including the director’s secretary. His desk phone rang and rang by intervals, as grating as nails on a chalkboard.

  Grigory didn’t let himself fret. He had too much on his plate to worry about Sergei. Getting through the day was the best he could hope for.

  He knew he wasn’t operating at full capacity when he looked up from his computer screen to see the director’s assistant standing like a soldier at parade in front of his desk. He barely curbed a jolt of surprise.

  She seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, a curl of displeasure on her lips. “The director wants you.”

  It’s certainly good be wanted.

  The thought rang in Grigory’s ears with the echo of Karim’s brogue. It wasn’t anything he’d said before, but Grigory could imagine it with painful clarity. Filling Karim’s mouth with scripted lines was easy now that he’d never speak again.

  “Grisha?” The secretary peered down at him. “Are you all right?”

  Before he could reply, she reached over the desk and pressed a hand to his forehead.

  “Hmm. You don’t seem to have a fever. But you look very bad.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll run out and get you some black tea and oranges—”

  Grigory shook his head, both to dismiss the generous offer and dispel the dark cloud above his head. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

  “It’s no trouble,” said the PA briskly. “You get sick then we all get sick.” With that parting volley, she turned on her heel and made for the director’s office, leaving Grigory to follow more sedately behind her.

  He knocked and waited for the director’s summons before he entered.

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  The director nodded. “One of our people is absent from his post.”

  Shit. “Sergei Nicolayevich, sir.”

  “You know him well?”

  “A little,” Grigory corrected. Depending on where this was going, he wanted to be very careful about setting himself up for a house call. Dmitri seemed certain that Sergei had gone off with a woman who wasn’t his wife—in which case it ought to be Dmitri who shared the news with the director, not him.

  “His wife called,” said the director. “He didn’t come home last night.”

  “We went for a drink after work.” Grigory resisted the urge to rock on the balls of his feet. “Some of my colleagues wanted to celebrate my return.” He nearly said triumphant return. This wasn’t the time for humor.
r />   The director hummed under his breath, circling the desk until there was no obstacle, no shield between him and Grigory. “I received a strange call this morning…”

  Icy fingers danced down Grigory’s spine. The photos. It had to be. Karim was dead and his comrades had nothing to lose by pressing the trigger. Mutually assured destruction only served as a deterrent when both parties feared destruction.

  “A Mr. Dixon from the United States Embassy would like to meet.”

  Grigory frowned. “With…me?”

  “No. But I can’t possibly be seen indulging the Americans.” The director wrinkled his mouth as though he’d smelled bad fish. “Given the state of relations between our countries, it would be…”

  He seemed to be hunting for the word.

  “Imprudent?” suggested Grigory.

  “Yes.”

  Confession at the Dormition didn’t go well, did it?

  He tied a ribbon around the question and shelved it. “I’m happy to make the rendezvous. Do we know anything about this Dixon?” The name didn’t ring any bells, but then Grigory had been out of the country for a good few weeks.

  Embassy staff rotated, especially in Russia. The Americans were rightly concerned about their people going native since the handful of times it happened, back in the sixties and seventies.

  “We’ll have a file ready for you in half an hour,” said the director. He made to turn, then hesitated, a flash of awkwardness in the stop-start movement. “If it should turn out they know something about Sergei…”

  “I will exercise caution.”

  “We take care of our men.”

  “Of course.”

  Sergei knew the drill as well as anyone. If he spent any time in enemy custody, his career was over. His life, too, unless they got him back swiftly. It was nothing personal.

  A dead agent was safer for everyone.

  * * * *

  Sokolniki Park had traded in its summer green for deep reds and rust yellows, all burnished in a faint layer of frost. A few thrushes darted from branch to branch, keeping pace with Grigory as he left behind the aging funfair and food stalls clustered by the entrance. He preferred the unkempt wilderness in the depths of the park to the swarm of activity around the Ferris wheel.

  The ice skating rink teemed with children and adults, their laughter fading the farther Grigory walked. He passed the rose garden, then the International Exhibition of Calligraphy.

  He tried not to wonder what Karim’s handwriting had been like.

  Soon the trees thickened around the maze of paved alleys, pines and spruces meeting overhead to create a cathedral of shuddering branches. Grigory thought he spotted a squirrel darting through the snow-weighed foliage, but it might have been a trick of the light.

  The air was crisp with the promise of winter snow. The weather report warned of another blizzard tonight.

  Deeper into the park, on the edge of the Putyaevskie pond, a lone figure in a long, black wool coat idled on a wooden bench. His head was bare despite the chill, hair the color of charcoal. He held himself perfectly still, as though hypnotized by the gently lapping water.

  Grigory’s heart performed a worrying lurch, vaulting high into his throat at the sight. His startled inhale must have been louder than he’d intended.

  The man shot him a sidelong glance. The short-lived sense of familiarity vanished.

  Grigory didn’t know him after all. He was just another stranger. Grigory was a fool to hope, even for a second, that Oksana was mistaken.

  “I asked to meet with Uncle,” said the man in the black coat. His Russian was better than the ambassador’s.

  “And when the Christians in Action send us their top brass, we’ll reciprocate.” Grigory advanced slowly, wondering belatedly if Mr. Dixon had a gun on him.

  Probably. It was what Grigory would’ve done in his place.

  It spoke to the day he was having that the thought hadn’t occurred to him until he was within arm’s reach of his contact. Carelessness was what got him into this mess before.

  Carelessness was the reason Sergei hadn’t come in to work today.

  Satisfied that he’d committed to memory all details of the agent’s face, Grigory turned to watch the pond. “Not that I don’t appreciate an afternoon walk, but was there something you wanted?”

  “A CIA agent was assassinated in Rome last week,” Dixon recalled. He had a voice like crunching gravel. His breath misted the frigid air when he spoke. “Forty-two years of service, retired to Italy to enjoy a life of leisure and day trips to the sea. And he was murdered.”

  “I heard it was a suicide.”

  “But we know better, don’t we?”

  From the corner of his eye, Grigory observed the quirk of a smile pull at Dixon’s lips. It was not a friendly look.

  “I also heard rumors,” Grigory ventured, “tying your dead agent to the recent revelations regarding Prime Minister Craft… It’s unpleasant to consider, isn’t it? Just goes to show that you can’t trust anyone.”

  “Like our allies in London?” Dixon’s smile had become a full-on grin. He had that American square jaw thing going. It made him seem so very punchable.

  “Even the British have a breaking point. Perhaps the SIS does not appreciate having to work with a hostile successor.”

  “No one’s been elected yet—”

  “As I understand, all the candidates are ill-suited for the prime ministership.” Grigory blew out a breath. It was cold and he hadn’t slept a wink last night. Verbal tennis with the Americans was usually entertaining, but trading lies chafed his nerves today. “If that’s all…”

  Dixon ignored the overture. “Did you hear the one about the MI6 agent taken out by a sniper?”

  “I assume MI6 is tidying up loose ends.” One agent broke ranks and took out a friendly. Then that agent was eliminated. Simple.

  “Or someone else is working hard to incriminate the Brits.”

  “Or that.” Grigory scowled. “Don’t they have a new head of section?”

  Dixon’s features were an echo of Karim’s, if Grigory only glanced at him from the corner of his eye and if the light fell a certain way across the American’s face. The similarities did nothing to endear him to Grigory.

  He had the distinct feeling that the sentiment was mutual. Naked hate hung in Dixon’s gaze when their eyes met. This was personal for him. Perhaps he’d known the retired agent Oksana had dispatched. Perhaps he was simply prejudiced against Mat’ Rossiya.

  He wouldn’t be the first.

  “Tell Uncle that this is the only warning he’ll get,” Dixon rasped, little flecks of spittle leaving his lips. “You don’t want to fuck with us.”

  “Threats are so—”

  “Cheap?” Dixon quirked his eyebrows, his whole face illuminated by a cheery smile.

  Grigory thought of Facebook photos of the agent and his family—all of them toothy and rosy-cheeked, gorging on apple pie, hot dogs, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Manufactured portraits of a life well lived.

  He resisted the impulse to respond in kind.

  “You’re right,” said Dixon. “My apologies. But look! There’s something floating downstream. I wonder what it might be…”

  Despite the early snows, the pond had yet to freeze. The ducks that paddled between the water lilies in summer had fled or been removed by park administrators. No obstacle stood in the path of plastic-wrapped parcel buffeted by the gentle current. All five feet of it, plus cheap suit and water-logged shoes slowly drifted to a gentle stop at Grigory’s feet.

  “You’ll pay for this,” he gritted out. But Dixon was already gone.

  * * * *

  “How could they do this?” Sergei’s widow wailed. “How could they?”

  The bedroom door slammed. Dmitri inched back, like a kicked puppy. A female relative sighed and went to take his place. They all agreed Natalia Ivanova should not be on her own.

  Grigory’s cheek still stung from the slap she’d delivered when
he’d walked in the door. Her family seemed to believe she was losing her mind, lashing out against Sergei’s fellow Ministry pencil pushers because it was the only outlet for her grief. Grigory accepted their apologies, hiding behind pity to disguise his guilt.

  He suspected that Natalia Ivanova was not as ignorant of her husband’s work as the SVR might have wished. He kept his thoughts to himself.

  “I should go,” he said, placing his lukewarm tea on the table.

  Dmitri paled. “You’re not going back to the office?” The thought of being alone with Sergei’s family seemed to paralyze him.

  “Airport,” Grigory murmured. Too many people stood crammed in Sergei’s living room for further details.

  “So…you won’t be here for the funeral?”

  I don’t do funerals. Just murder.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  Dmitri scowled. “That’s not… I just thought you’d want to be there. For Sergei.”

  The accusatory glint in his eye was amply deserved, but it still came as a surprise to Grigory. He expected it from Sergei’s widow, even from the director. But Dmitri?

  It might have been him. The thought pierced Grigory’s skull with sudden ferocity. He imagined himself in Sokolniki Park, standing over Dmitri’s body, peering down into his unseeing, wide-open eyes.

  Sergei’s widow had been told her husband had been badly beaten in a mugging, then tossed into the pond where he’d drowned. Would Dmitri’s bloated body give his parents more cause for suspicion?

  “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” Grigory said.

  Dmitri didn’t try to stop him from walking out.

  A car was already waiting to take Grigory from the office to Sheremetyevo Airport when he returned to headquarters. He let the driver slot his suitcase into the trunk and allowed himself one last glance at the massive building. He thought he spied movement behind the third floor window of the director’s office, but it might have been a trick of the light.

  The director had received the news of Sergei’s death with a sigh that to Grigory sounded a lot like relief.

  There were so many windows. He probably had the wrong one.