The Eighth Sister

by Robert Dugoni

  Jenkins had awoken at just after 4:30 a.m., which had become his routine since his return from Russia. Initially, he’d related his inability to sleep to jet lag, but his insomnia had persisted. He’d awake with his mind churning over the minutiae of the security work, and of Russia and the operation.

  Unlike in his younger days, he could not compartmentalize his job, could not separate his work from his personal life. Though he was home on Camano, Russia remained on his mind, as did the ramifications of everything that could go wrong. He used his left hand to steady the mug and sipped his coffee. His restlessness would escalate until he got up to run, or to do enough push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups that his muscles ached and he was gasping for air. When he had finally exhausted his body and cleared his mind, he’d grab a book and a blanket and lie on the couch in the family room. Most mornings sleep still didn’t come, despite his growing fatigue.

  He couldn’t hide this from Alex. When she asked, he told her he was worried about the business, got up because he didn’t want to disrupt her sleep, and said he’d get through it. Alex didn’t buy it. A psychiatrist diagnosed Jenkins with panic attacks and generalized anxiety, and related both to what Jenkins had told her—worry about his business failing, and the uncertainty of becoming a parent, again, at sixty-four years of age. The psychiatrist said the attacks could get better when the issues resolved. In the interim, she prescribed mirtazapine, which Jenkins took at night to help him sleep, and propranolol for attacks during the day.

  “All right you two, breakfast is served.” Alex carried a platter of cinnamon rolls topped with melting frosting to the dining room table. CJ dropped the droid and nearly beat her there.

  “They’re hot. Don’t burn your mouth.” She placed one of the rolls on a plate and handed it to him, along with a napkin. CJ began to peel the bun, which released wafts of steam. She served Charlie a roll, but he set it aside.

  Alex sat in the adjacent leather chair and looked down at Max. “She loves that bone, doesn’t she?”

  Jenkins nodded to CJ. “Almost as much as he loves your cinnamon rolls. Next year I think we should forget the presents and just make him a week’s supply.”

  “Do you think we overdid it?”

  Jenkins had no idea of the final tally. “Probably, but this is his last Christmas as an only child. You feeling okay?” Jenkins asked. “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.” She’d been complaining of fatigue since his return. She was twenty-eight weeks pregnant now, and the doctor wanted her to go as long as possible before he would schedule her for a C-section. “That was a nice Christmas gift from Randy,” she said. “That should help, shouldn’t it?”

  “Definitely made my contractors and our vendors happy,” Jenkins said. He had told Alex the $50,000 payment had come from LSR&C. It had actually come from Carl Emerson. Jenkins had paid his security contractors and many of the company’s vendor invoices. It didn’t bring CJ Security current, but they were closer than they had been.

  “Randy said he’ll do his best to bring us current by the end of the year,” Jenkins said. “Personally, I’m worried LSR&C is growing too fast. I told Randy I didn’t really see the point of the office in Moscow, or in Dubai for that matter. Randy didn’t say it, but I think he agrees with me. He said the offices were Mitch’s idea, that he wants to take advantage of emerging markets.” Jenkins referred to Mitchell Goldstone, LSR&C’s chief operating officer. “What time do we need to be at David’s?”

  Since neither Jenkins nor Alex had immediate family, they spent most holidays with David Sloane, who had lost his wife, Tina, to a murder.

  “David said anytime,” Alex said. “It’ll be nice to see Jake again. I’m happy he’s back. Nobody should have to wake up alone on Christmas morning.”

  Jake, Tina’s son, had been living in California with his biological father, but he had moved back to Seattle to attend law school and once again lived with Sloane at Three Tree Point on the shores of Puget Sound.

  Jenkins stood. “I’m going to get the paper and another cup of coffee. You want anything?”

  “I’m good,” she said.

  Jenkins filled his coffee cup in the kitchen, then walked out the back door. The temperature felt cold enough for it to snow, if they got any precipitation. The meteorologist had indicated that was not likely. Jenkins picked up the paper and slid it from the plastic sheath. The front page included a picture of a homeless shelter beneath the headline Happy Holidays. Articles below the fold included the president’s Christmas dinner at the White House, and another on the continuing battle to increase national park fees.

  Jenkins took the paper into the kitchen and stood at the counter, flipping through the pages and glancing at articles. On an inside page, in a section reporting on world news, a small headline caught his attention.

  Russian Laser Pioneer Found Dead

  Beneath the fold was a picture of a dark-haired man wearing glasses. Nikolay Chekovsky.

  Jenkins felt the familiar rush of anxiety as he read the article. Chekovsky had been found hanging in his Moscow apartment, and his wife was pushing the police to investigate the death as a homicide.

  Chekovsky, considered one of the leading laser scientists in the world, had been an outspoken critic of the use of lasers in military applications, which placed him at odds with members of the Kremlin.

  Jenkins felt heat spreading throughout his limbs, and the now familiar ache in his joints. His right hand shook enough to rattle the newspaper. He set it down and rushed through the kitchen into his den, found the bottle of propranolol in the bottom drawer of his desk, and dry swallowed one of the green tablets.

  9

  Early evening, the day after Christmas, Jenkins walked Waterfront Park in downtown Seattle. The weather remained cold and blustery, with wind gust warnings for those traveling home from the holidays. Emerson stood at the railing at the end of the pier looking west, across Elliott Bay’s blackened waters. He wore a long tweed coat and black gloves. His hair fluttered in the wind, but otherwise he seemed impervious to the stiff breeze blowing whitecaps across the bay. To Jenkins’s left, the Seattle Great Wheel, festively lit in Seahawks blue and green, rotated high above the water. Farther south, the roof of the football stadium glowed purple. Faint notes, Christmas music, carried on the gusting wind, which also brought the briny smell of Puget Sound.

  Jenkins pulled up the collar on his black leather car coat against the cold and thrust his hands deep into its pockets as he approached Emerson. Though he wore a black knit ski cap, he could feel the cold on his earlobes.

  “Who was Nikolay Chekovsky?” he said.

  Emerson never acknowledged the question, or seemingly even heard it. He stared blankly at a decorated ferryboat churning toward the pier.

  “Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked above the howl of the wind.

  “You read the paper.” Emerson spoke so softly Jenkins almost didn’t hear him. “He was a scientist and Russian dissident who spoke out against the Putin regime. In Russia that can be enough to get one killed.”

  “Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked again, this time more forcefully.

  Emerson shot him a glance, then, as if thinking better of whatever he was going to say, disengaged and returned his attention to the crossing ferry. “Whether he was one of ours or he wasn’t is irrelevant.”

  Jenkins stared at the side of Emerson’s face. “To you maybe, but not to me. I want to know. I have a right to know.”

  “No, you don’t.” Emerson turned and looked Jenkins in the eyes, holding his gaze. “You have no right to know.”

  “If I am back in this—”

  Emerson raised his voice and his tone. “This is the way the FSB works. You know this. It’s the way the KGB worked. If you are interrogated, anything you know they will also know. So, I say again, you have no right to know.”

  “I’m done with this. I’m done with this whole thing.” Jenkins turned to walk away.

  “You can’t walk away this ti
me, Charlie.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “If you walk away and this assignment fails, four women who have served this country for nearly forty years will die, and for that you will never forgive yourself.”

  The words stopped Jenkins in midstep. He shut his eyes, fighting against the ache in his muscles and the burning in the pit of his stomach. Guilt, he knew, was a horrible reason to do anything, but it was also a powerful motivator. He turned back. “You could have got him out. I told you his name. You could have come up with some excuse, some reason for him to leave the country.”

  “You know why the Russians told you his name,” Emerson said. “This was how the KGB operated in Mexico City. They told you Chekovsky’s name because they had already decided to kill him. Using him to test whether you would give his name to the agency was just a convenience. You know if I had moved to get him out, whatever the reason, they would have known you were not trustworthy, that you had given up the name and the information to someone at the agency. What then? What of your mission?”

  “This isn’t about—”

  “The next time you tried to enter the country they would have detained you and sent you home or, worse, allowed you to enter and made arrangements for you to permanently disappear. If pushed, they would have painted you as a traitor to your country who, when confronted, committed suicide, thereby ruining not just your good name, but that of your entire family. I told you, Charlie, the FSB is a more refined version of the KGB.”

  A seagull, fighting the breeze, spread its wings to land on one of the piers, a relatively simple task, but the wind blew the bird backward, and it gave up without really trying.

  Emerson changed his tone. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. You were given a name, and you provided me with that name. I made the decision that it go no further. If anyone is responsible for Chekovsky’s death it is me, not you.”

  Jenkins hadn’t thought of how the news might impact Emerson. He’d been too busy being angry and feeling sorry for himself. Emerson was right. Jenkins had done all he could by disclosing the name. He had not made the decision to abandon Chekovsky. That decision had been made by people well above his pay grade. But it did little to assuage the angst he felt since he’d read the news of Chekovsky’s death.

  “Federov will call,” Emerson said. “He will feel emboldened by these events, and he will try to make you feel responsible for not having disclosed Chekovsky’s name.”

  This, too, had been a common tactic of the KGB to gain leverage over an informant. They used the information to blackmail the person so he could not back out.

  “To Federov,” Emerson continued, “you will have put yourself in a no-win situation that requires you to do exactly what he wants when you next meet.”

  “And what do I give Federov when we meet?” Jenkins said.

  Emerson opened his coat, reached inside, and handed Jenkins an envelope. Jenkins snatched it before the stiff breeze blew it down the pier.

  “The fourth sister,” Emerson said.

  Jenkins eyes narrowed. “How did you get her name—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Emerson nodded to the envelope. “Uliana Artemyeva died two years ago of cancer at sixty-three years of age. She worked in the Russian nuclear industry sector as a top-level analyst. For the past decade she provided the CIA with classified information exposing Russia’s energy officials engaging in bribes, kickbacks, and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business worldwide. Of course, the FSB does not have any knowledge of this individual’s betrayal.” He nodded to the envelope. “That will prove it, and it will again prove that you are capable of providing them with highly classified information.”

  “Federov told me his superiors are not interested in information on dead Russian double agents.”

  “But he also expressed interest in identifying the remaining sisters, did he not?”

  “Artemyeva was one of the sisters?”

  “I highly doubt it,” Emerson said, “given that her involvement with the agency only began ten years ago. But the Russians don’t know when her involvement began, she is the same age as the other three sisters they’ve already identified, and the information she provided is similar in nature to the information provided by the other three.”

  “They’ll assume she was one of the seven,” Jenkins said.

  “They may doubt you, but they will have no means to prove or disprove what you tell them. This information will get you one step closer to meeting and identifying the eighth sister.”

  “Will you attempt to get the other four sisters out of Russia?”

  “That decision is above me. Remember, though, that the other sisters do not believe they are in any danger because they do not know the three women killed were three of seven.”

  Jenkins shook his head.

  “Something else bothering you?” Emerson asked.

  Jenkins couldn’t precisely pinpoint the nature of his concern. “Where did the eighth sister get her information on the other three?”

  “I suspect you will know soon enough. You will have provided Federov with too much information for him to ignore. He’ll make contact. When he does, tell him you are returning to Russia.”

  “Did he at least pay the fifty thousand dollars I demanded?”

  Emerson smiled. “Of course not. He’s Russian. After eighty years of communist rule, Russians never pay for anything they can steal or get through blackmail. But he will pay when you disclose that information.” He nodded to the envelope. “He can’t afford not to.”

  10

  The telephone call from Federov came just after the new year. The conversation was brief. Federov invited Jenkins to return to Russia. Jenkins asked if Federov’s superiors had agreed to his financial demands—mainly just to tweak him. Federov assured, “All matters discussed are being handled.”

  Until that was actually the case, Emerson was reimbursing Jenkins cash for his expenses.

  The second week of January, Jenkins left the rain on Camano Island for Russia’s snow and bitter cold. He told Alex he had to return to London to check on the progress of his security team at LSR&C’s new office in advance of a visit from two English billionaires. That part of the story was true. He also said he would travel to Paris, a possible expansion site for LSR&C, to scout potential office locations. That part was not true.

  He didn’t like lying to her, but his purpose in doing so was twofold. The less a spouse knew of the case officer’s work, the less she could ever divulge in an interrogation—by either side. More practically, he didn’t want to worry her, knowing that worry could be harmful to her and to the baby.

  This time, when his flight from Heathrow to Sheremetyevo International Airport landed, Jenkins had no problem with customs officials. He met Uri at baggage claim. Jenkins had called the office to ask for a ride—to not do so would have looked suspicious—and Uri had been more than happy to oblige him. Uri dressed in a black turtleneck and black leather jacket. He looked like a Russian mobster. For all Jenkins knew, he might be.

  “Good that you are back, Boss.” He grabbed Jenkins’s bag and bulldozed a path through people scrambling to find luggage.

  When they arrived at the Metropol, Jenkins presented himself at the registration desk, and the smiling clerk greeted him by name. Jenkins doubted the man’s memory was that good, even if six-foot-five black men were not the norm in Moscow. The clerk also provided Jenkins with a room key card without asking for a credit card. The room would be free, but it also meant there would be no record of Jenkins having stayed at the hotel on this occasion. Federov had spoken to the hotel, it seemed. Jenkins was uncertain what to make of this.

  Jenkins made his way to room 613, tossed his bag onto the bed, and considered an expensive bottle of champagne wrapped in a towel and plunged into a bucket of ice. On the counter was a three-by-five white envelope and in it, a card with a message welcoming Jenkin
s back to the Metropol and confirming that his car service would pick him up in the courtyard at the rear of the hotel at eight fifteen that evening.

  That gave Jenkins twelve hours to catch up on sleep, though not in this room. He picked up the phone and called the front desk.

  “Yes, Mr. Jenkins?”

  “Mne ne nravitsysa moya komnata. Ya by predpochel druguyu.” I don’t like my room. I’d prefer another.

  “Did you receive the bottle of champagne?” the flustered clerk asked.

  “I did, thank you,” Jenkins said. “But it didn’t improve the room.”

  “Is there something specific then, Mr. Jenkins?”

  “I’d prefer the opposite side of the hotel,” Jenkins said. He wanted to be able to see the front entrance. At present he was looking at the wall of an adjacent building.

  “I meant is there something specific about your room?”

  “Not unless you can move it to the opposite side of the hotel,” Jenkins said.

  “I’m sorry,” the clerk said. “I’m afraid those rooms have all been reserved for the evening. We’re full.”

  “A higher floor, perhaps.”

  “I’m sorry,” the clerk said again, clicking computer keys before responding. “We don’t have any open rooms.”

  “Then I’ll be checking out,” Jenkins said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Wait,” the clerk said.

  Jenkins did not respond.

  “We’ve had a cancellation, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll send the bellboy to your room in one hour.”

  “I’d like to be asleep in one hour,” Jenkins said, knowing the delay was to bug the alternate room. This clerk had been in contact with Federov. “Send the bellboy now.”

  He hung up the phone before the clerk could respond, grabbed the champagne and the note, and picked up his bag. Within minutes the bellboy knocked on his door and escorted Jenkins to a room on the opposite side of the hotel and two floors higher.