Best Kept Lies

by Helena Maeve

  Sleep would’ve made it easier to embrace self-control. Karim’s warm breath on his nape stirred more than his short-cropped hair.

  “That first night in Rome,” said Karim. “Took me hours to realize I hadn’t made it up.”

  Grigory had no desire to move, but he rolled over, accidentally whacking Karim in the chest with his arm. He would’ve expected a smile on Karim’s lips. It sounded like a tease.

  “That wasn’t your first time with a man,” Grigory countered.

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “I hadn’t, in a while. And I wasn’t sure if it was taking advantage to—”

  Grigory raised his eyebrows. “Give me a blowjob?” He didn’t have to cast his mind back too far to remember the heat of Karim’s mouth, the intensity in his gaze as he drove Grigory past the point of no return.

  “I wasn’t sure it was…wanted.”

  “I don’t recall turning you down.”

  Karim ran a hand over his naked chest, curling his palm around a pectoral. “How could you have done? I was blackmailing you, threatening to turn your own agency against you… It’s not that I’m saying I would’ve done anything differently—”

  “Surely not,” scoffed Grigory.

  “But your options were limited. You could submit or…”

  “Way I remember it, I seduced you.”

  Karim smiled. “Selective memory.”

  “A necessity, in my line of work.” Our line of work. There was plenty of guilt to go around, if they started unpacking the past.

  Grigory had joined the service with no delusions about noble causes or keeping his hands clean. He’d known, from the very first day of training, that his weakness for his own gender could be turned against him.

  He had expected Karim to shove him away when he kissed him, though. He didn’t seem like the type. Grigory’s gaydar was seldom wrong.

  “What are you thinking?” Karim prodded gently.

  “Trying to remember when I was recruited,” Grigory lied. “I tell people I was twenty-two, but, really, it happened much earlier. Around fifteen, maybe?”

  Karim tapped his thumb against Grigory’s chest in time with his sluggish heartbeats. “People?”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Mhm.”

  “Ah.” Karim smiled knowingly. “You mean your other lovers.”

  The playful note in his voice was no different to anything he’d said before. It lacked the mockery Grigory dreaded. And yet he found himself drawing back behind his battlements, annoyance pitching in his gut.

  “Don't give me that.”

  Karim paused his drumming. “What?”

  “Don't pretend you’re interested in me, in my life…” Flushing with less than amorous heat, Grigory pushed himself upright. He couldn’t lie there with Karim, conscious of every point of contact between their bodies, and not want him. “What do you think is going to happen here? Do you think we’ll go steady? Buy each other flowers and chocolates for Valentine’s?”

  “Why not?”

  Grigory glowered over his shoulder. He hated himself for desiring Karim even now, even like this. The decadent sprawl of his body in soft hotel sheets wasn’t helping.

  Grigory pushed up from the bed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  If that didn’t kill the mood, nothing could.

  His clothes were scattered around the bed, where he’d discarded them earlier. He tugged them on hastily. The sky was dark outside the French windows, but the TV clock read only six o’clock. He had hours to kill before his rendezvous.

  He ignored any lingering desire to spend that time in Karim’s arms.

  “Your agency is out for blood,” Grigory went on. “And they want me to bleed for them. Do you think they’ll be pleased to discover we’re sleeping together? What about the SVR? Once they see the photos you have—”

  “They won’t.”

  Without turning, Grigory let out a harsh bark of laughter. His fingers trembled around the buttons on his shirt. He wanted a shower, but he didn’t trust himself if he stayed in the room, with Karim. He might do something he’d regret.

  “That’s not your call, is it?” Grigory shook his head, annoyed with his own petulance. “The best you can do is give me hope that if I play along, I can have my freedom back. But we both know that's not true.”

  “Do we?”

  “You’ll cultivate me. Sex, favors… Maybe you’ll cease contact after a while. But I won’t ever leave your payroll. That’s how this game is played. Top brass decides Section is better served with me out of the equation, I’m out. You’ll be reassigned, of course—wouldn’t want your morale affected. Off to screw your next victim, I suppose. There’s a CIA agent in Moscow could use some unwinding—”

  “Who gave the order?” Karim asked, cutting through the rambling diatribe with a surgeon’s precision.

  Grigory cinched his belt and tucked the long end. It took all the courage he had to meet Karim’s frosty black eyes. “Who do you think?”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  Of course he did. Interrogation was two parts manipulation. If he got Grigory to dance to his tune, he could then turn around and tell the higher-ups that he’d made progress.

  They’d be more impressed with that than Grigory going down on one of their agents.

  Knowing that it was just another tactic made it no easier to comply with Karim’s request. Self-made aggravation drained from Grigory’s bones the more he stood there, dressed in an airplane-rumpled suit, his tie knotted loosely around his neck.

  “It was me.” Three words, each individually painful to utter. “I put a marksman on you.”

  And she failed.

  Given his meeting with the CIA and Oksana’s assurances, Grigory wasn’t so sure. More like someone else took the bullet meant for Karim.

  His silence seemed to confirm it.

  “Why are you still in the field?” Grigory wondered. If you were my agent, you’d be in a basement somewhere, undergoing interrogation.

  The sheet rode down as Karim crossed his ankles lotus-style, revealing more of his beautiful, tan stomach, the ripple of muscle in his shoulders. He was Adonis and David, and all the unattainable men Grigory had ever desired. It didn’t matter that he was in his bed. The distance between them was insurmountable.

  The answer dawned on Grigory a fraction of a second before Karim spoke.

  “My mission’s not over yet.”

  In other words, Grigory was still at large.

  * * * *

  Salt spray filled the air each time whitecaps battered the cliffs at the foot of the promenade. The briny, sickly smell of the sea reminded Grigory of Sergei’s bone-white skin, his foggy eyes.

  He turned back to his coffee. If there was one thing he would be eternally grateful for to the SVR, it was sending him into countries that served excellent coffee.

  Across the table, Nathaniel’s eyes were hooded.

  “You look tired,” Grigory observed.

  “Haven’t been sleeping well… Seems someone’s trying to bump off our worker bees.”

  Trying and failing. Grigory banished the thought of Karim waiting for him back at the hotel, naked and gorgeous, and so very willing.

  Well. Less so now. The confession he’d prompted was bound to change things—as it should.

  “But you’re in no danger, are you?”

  It was Nathaniel’s turn to glance away. The young man with the balls to make demands on the Russian secret service had vanished. It was all to Zorin’s credit. One meeting with her and Nathaniel was as meek as a lamb.

  A flash of something like contempt twisted at Nathaniel’s features.

  He was a good-looking young man, probably broke hearts wherever he went. If he’d been one of Grigory’s agents, he would have assigned him desk duty until he turned gray. Good-looking boys attracted too much attention.

  He didn’t think that just because Nathaniel reminded him of Dmitri.

&nbs
p; “My father,” said Nathaniel, “already took pains to have me reassigned.”

  “Where to?” The SVR hadn’t been informed by their other spies. Mr. Jennings must have made the decision not long ago.

  For a moment, Nathaniel’s scowl almost seemed to imply that he had no desire to share that information. Then he came to his senses.

  “Miami, Florida.”

  “Ah, Fidel’s back yard.” If the SIS thought they needed a promising agent to staff their office there, they knew more than Grigory. He made a mental note to run this up the ladder, see if Zorin’s operatives were aware of anything.

  “Yeah, so…” Nathaniel picked up his coffee cup with studied nonchalance. “I won’t be of much use to you anymore once I’m there.”

  Had he squirmed or stared fixedly at Grigory, it would’ve been easy to decode the message. I’m out. This is our last conversation. But, while young, Nathaniel wasn’t stupid. The SVR didn’t hire idiots.

  Grigory sighed, regretting the words even as they came out of his mouth. “Our methods of conversation may need to be adapted,” he agreed, “but for now, we need you to stay on.” At Section. Inside the SIS. “Until we can extract you.”

  While the risk of exposure or prosecution was a powerful incentive for a man in Nathaniel’s position, the promise of extraction had always worked better for Grigory. He wanted nothing more than to follow through.

  “Uncle said no, huh?” Nathaniel restored his cup to its saucer and folded his hands above it.

  He did it so elegantly that Grigory almost didn’t notice the quiver in his fingers.

  “You son of a bitch… Am I ever going to leave Section?”

  No. “When the time is right,” Grigory lied.

  “Bullshit.” A worrisome tremor entered Nathaniel’s voice. “You’re just telling me what I want to hear. Christ, I’ve been funneling information to the SVR since I was fifteen years old!”

  Providentially, the café was empty so late on a chilly November evening, but sound carried along the promenade, ricocheted off the facades of vacation homes closed up for the season.

  Grigory twisted in his seat to make sure no one was listening. “Keep your voice down—”

  “The hell do I care if they find me out now or in ten months?” Nathaniel threw up his hands. “I’m dead either way!”

  The rickety metal table was narrow enough that Grigory barely had to strain to grab him by the shirtfront.

  “They aren’t the only ones you should worry about.” He preferred not to threaten Nathaniel if he could help it, but more lives were at stake than just his own—and the people caught in his orbit lacked the bulwark of a parent in the industry. “I didn’t want to have to tell you this…”

  Grigory reached for the briefcase parked beside his chair and slid it under the table until it connected with Nathaniel’s foot.

  “What—”

  “Look inside.” Grigory’s palm burned for having grabbed him. If Nathaniel insisted on behaving absurdly, he could count on being treated the same way.

  Shame lingered as Grigory downed the dregs of his coffee.

  A long beat passed before Nathaniel seemed to work up the nerve to pull the briefcase onto his knees and flip open the silver clasps. The open lid obscured the contents from Grigory’s view, but there was no disguising the shock in Nathaniel’s gaze. His eyes widened.

  “You can flip through them,” Grigory suggested. “I counted fourteen stab wounds, three points where he was garroted, some twenty-eight bruises, give or take a handful…”

  “Why are you showing me this?” Nathaniel whispered. His earlier panic simmered in the slack muscles of his face, but for now he was present, self-aware.

  “Our friends at Langley ordered an assassination as reprisal for what they thought was an act of aggression from us.”

  “What—”

  “Something we did to protect you from your own people,” Grigory supplied, smiling wryly at the black sky melding so perfectly with the lustrous sea. “We have your back, Nathaniel. We always will.”

  “Because I’m a threat.”

  Grigory shook his head. “Because you are one of us.”

  When he was fifteen, Nathaniel had accompanied his father on his first embassy posting. He’d attended the British School of Moscow, in Yasenovo district. After hours, he was supposed to go straight home. It had been ten years after the last chapter of the Cold War filled up the pages of every glossy magazine and yet the British still feared kidnappings on Russian soil.

  They were right.

  Nathaniel’s choice between cooperating with the SVR and risking his father’s life—on a trumped up threat, but the boy had been fifteen, he couldn’t have known—had been easily decided.

  Grigory had been a young recruit at the time, just twenty-two. Nathaniel Jennings was just another name on the files he handled.

  “You’ll get me out,” Nathaniel murmured, “after Miami?”

  “I swear it.”

  “Okay.” He snapped the briefcase shut on the evidence of Sergei’s grisly death.

  “Only an Englishman would look so sour at the thought of relocating to Florida.”

  Nathaniel shot him a wry little smirk, one corner of his lips too weary to rise. “I should go. I’m taking the Eurostar back to London in the morning.” And from there, he would be off to the States, where his father probably hoped he’d be safe.

  He stood, looked down at the briefcase one last time, and turned on his heel.

  It was sentimental and foolish of him, but Grigory wished they could’ve shaken hands at least once. I’m going soft. He picked up the case Nathaniel had left behind. He paid for both coffees, mostly out of habit, partly out of duty. He didn’t mind. Chances were he wouldn’t get another chance to treat his operative.

  He shelved the thought as he started down the promenade in the opposite direction to Nathaniel.

  The whoosh and bluster of the sea filled his ears with sound. He glanced behind himself twice before propping the briefcase open on his knee and removing the photographs. The flame of his borrowed lighter swallowed up the lurid images in a matter of seconds. The blackened ends curled protectively around broken ribs and fingers twisted at odd angles.

  Once that was done, he removed the pin from his breast pocket and placed it in an envelope, already stamped and addressed to Moscow. There would be other photographs to replace Sergei’s desecrated body—this batch featuring Nathaniel at a meeting with a Russian operative, the exchange of unknown but potentially classified information.

  At the nearest dumpster, Grigory disposed of the briefcase.

  The way back to the hotel would’ve been shorter if he went north, around the long stretch of grit-studded beach that reached into the sea like a tongue, but Grigory was in no hurry. He’d left Karim in bed before and returned to an empty apartment. He knew what he’d find when he got back.

  The boardwalk curved with the escarpment, melding with a narrow, two-lane road the clung close to the edge of the water. Grigory scowled at the lack of steel guards, the narrowing strip of sidewalk. The French must have liked living dangerously.

  No sooner did the thought kindle than a pair of headlights came hurtling down the serpentine byway. The car they were presumably attached to veered wide. Its engine revved.

  Shock rooted Grigory’s feet to the pavement.

  He moved out of the way a full second too late.

  Chapter Eleven

  “All right,” a female voice said. “Take it off.”

  Cobwebs formed a white film between the front row seats and broken ceiling tiles clinging to their siblings with their very last breath. A shaft of yellowish light peeked through the auditorium from a man-sized hole in the wall. Dust floated in the air like softly falling snow.

  Grigory blinked in his derelict surroundings, glad the hood was finally removed. Claustrophobia chose the oddest times to assert itself.

  He flexed his hands, but the plastic ties around his wrists held fast. Hi
s ankles were similarly bound.

  “Anything hurt?”

  “My head,” Grigory answered. He had to crane his neck to see the people behind him. Even then, the shadows were too thick, his migraine too stubborn and he wasn’t sure if he was speaking to two or three people.

  It would’ve been so much easier if they just stepped into the light, untied him. Put a gun in his hands.

  “You’ll live.”

  A telltale hiss betrayed the uncapping of a soda bottle. Before Grigory could dredge up all the clever ways fizzy drinks could be used as torture implements—there were a few—he was presented with a teardrop-shaped Orangina bottle, a pink plastic straw bobbing over the rim.

  He fit his lips around the spout and drank greedily.

  He was parched. He was also a prisoner in enemy hands—although he reasoned that if they wanted him alive and hydrated, it was for a reason.

  “That’s enough,” said the man holding the bottle. He wrenched it away so fast that Grigory’s teeth clanged together.

  Bad cop.

  “Now, now,” said another, peeling away from the shadows. “Let’s not start this off on the wrong foot.”

  Good cop.

  “I’m tied to a chair,” Grigory pointed out tersely. “How else could we start? By the way, nice to see you again, Karim.” He was rather proud of his steady voice.

  They had transported him in the trunk and marched him into the theater in absolute silence, but Grigory recognized Karim’s scent, his callused hands. He had a few hours to work through wounded ego and accept that the man he’d shagged yesterday was also the man who’d run him over with what Grigory suspected might have been a Citroën.

  “Grisha.”

  Grigory grimaced. “We’re all rational people here, so let’s cut the bullshit. Whatever you want to know, I won’t tell you. You may be trained to beat it out of me, but I’m also trained not to breathe a word under pain of torture.”

  “That can be arranged,” said the third party. The floorboards creaked as Oksana stepped into the light. Sunlight made a corona of her hair. She might have been the Virgin in the icons at the Dormition.

  Mary of the Brass Knuckles. It had a certain ring to it.