The train rattled to its Union Station stop, and the doors sighed open. Most of the passengers departed, and Sarah shuffled along with them. In Sarah’s mind, they were all watching her. Even if they weren’t looking at her, they were still seeing. She wanted to believe that it was all in her head. But since Mark’s warning, she couldn’t help but feel that at least one person in the crowds she clung to—Sarah had made it a point not to go any place she’d be isolated—had their eyes on her. Paranoia, she thought, was defined by deep concerns over things that weren’t true; that being the case, Sarah couldn’t be paranoid. This was real. Someone, whether near or far, was watching her.
While keeping an attentive eye on any pursuers—though she did figure that anyone following her would likely be worthy of the job and, therefore, able to easily avoid detection—Sarah hurried through Lower Senate Park, the crisp chill in the air nipping at her exposed neck. When she came to the Russell Building, she wondered what kind of trouble security would give her getting into the building. Assuming they’d let her in at all.
Crossing Massachusetts Avenue, Sarah passed under the limestone columns that ran along the building’s exterior, a showy display of its Beaux Arts design. Inside, she was met with little resistance, almost as if she was expected. The most suspicion cast on her was when the guard monitoring the lobby asked why Sarah was meeting with Senator Schmidt, and Sarah sniped, “For a chat about privacy invasion.” The remark raised an eyebrow on the guard’s face, an expression less of agitation, which was what Sarah had expected, and more like she was impressed. The guard probably didn’t get much attitude as the front line of defense for U.S. senators’ offices—both the gravity of her position and her bodybuilder physique, Sarah assumed, commanded a lot of obedience. Still, despite Sarah’s short fuse, the guard let Sarah continue on her way.
Sarah tried to temper her expectations, reminding herself that even as a U.S. senator, there was only so much Dale was capable of. He could just as soon pluck Mark from Russia and drop him back in his home country as he could leap to the moon. Sarah knew he wouldn’t even have access to the intelligence that led to Mark’s abduction and deportation. But she had to start somewhere, and even if Dale ended up being someone who shared Sarah’s grief, fury, and confusion, that might be enough. While Dale would never assume to know Sarah’s trauma—he was too tactful for that—she knew he must be suffering in his own way. He was Mark’s friend, and in the absence of a real father figure in his life, Dale was often called on to fill that role. And like Sarah, Mark was torn from Dale’s life without warning or explanation. The time to grieve over what had happened was over, Sarah decided. Now it was time to do something about it.
After being ushered into Dale’s office by his plucky assistant—Sarah always marveled how everyone who worked directly for the government was either twenty or fifty—Dale greeted Sarah with a gentle hug that felt like the way someone embraces you at a funeral.
“I’m so sorry this is happening,” Dale said as he pulled out of the hug but still held Sarah by her shoulders. “How are you holding up?”
Sarah eyed Dale. His words sounded forced, his posture stiff. It was the way he performed when Sarah watched him on C-SPAN; like he was staging his actions. It made Sarah feel guilty, in a way; it wasn’t like she was close with Dale, and odds are he didn’t quite know how to deal with the baggage she brought to his doorstep. While friendly, generous, and always kind, Dale wasn’t the most expressive person. Even with Mark, he kept much of his life close to his chest. Mark contended that Dale had no private life. He was married to his job, and the pride he took in serving his country as a senator was about as romantic as the man got. Which might be true, yet Sarah couldn’t shake the feeling that she was making Dale uncomfortable, for whatever reason, and she was already starting to regret this visit.
“Excuse the mess but please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable,” Dale urged as he stepped behind his desk. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
So lost in her thoughts, Sarah hadn’t noticed that Dale’s office was cluttered with moving boxes. His bookshelf was bare, and his picture frames were gone from the wall.
“Are you … moving?” Sarah asked.
Dale took a deep breath. “I had meant to tell you and Mark before … everything. But, I’m retiring. The news is actually set to break this afternoon.”
Sara furrowed her brow. She couldn’t imagine Dale as anything but a senator, and she wasn’t sure if he could, either. “Should I congratulate you?”
Dale chuckled. “Maybe? I don’t know. I’ve been at this for so damn long, and I think it’s time to go and do something else. I can be one of those old farts who fishes all day down in Florida.”
“It just seems so abrupt,” Sarah said, wishing she hadn’t.
There was an awkward silence, which Dale finally broke:
“So, how about that drink. Coffee? A shot of bourbon?”
“No, no,” Sarah said, forcing a smile. “Especially not the latter.”
Dale winced. “I am so sorry. Now I’m the one wondering if it’s okay to congratulate you. Is that appropriate?”
Sarah sighed. “I can hardly make sense of my life right now; etiquette is the least of my problems.”
“Understood,” Dale said. “In that case, congratulations. Despite this … whatever this is, it’s still a good thing. And you’re going to be a wonderful mother.”
Sarah nodded, fighting back tears, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Thankfully, Dale took the initiative, simply and bluntly.
“We should talk about it,” Dale said. “That’s why you’re here, and I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you to come, in fact. I wanted to reach out, but I also wanted to give you the space you needed.”
“I just can’t wrap my head around how this could happen,” Sarah said. Much to her growing frustration, that was Sarah’s starting and ending point whenever she tried to make sense of Mark’s abduction: absolute confusion. It was beyond her understanding to make any sense of how Mark could be mistaken as a spy, how he got snatched from their home like a murderer on the run, and how he could be shipped off to another country without so much as a hearing.
Dale took a deep breath and shook his head, expressing more anger than confusion.
“With what this country has become, not a single thing surprises me. Not anymore,” he said. “You’ve got citizens, actual U.S. citizens, being thrown out of the country or denied entry. People separated from their families, people afraid to leave. And then Mark, arrested and shipped out without anyone even having time to say ‘due process.’”
“Well, why didn’t he get a lawyer and a trial, a chance to prove his innocence? This whole thing, every bit of it … I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“I’ve tried to find out anything I could, but no one’s talking about his case. A lot of people in this town are tight-lipped already about everything concerning Russia—you bring up Russian espionage, and they run the other direction. Whatever Mark was involved in, it had to have rattled the cages of some people way up the food chain. That’s the only way he could get pushed through the system and shoved into the Russians’ hands that quickly.”
Sarah narrowed her glance at Dale. His tone was clinical, like he was reading the autopsy of someone he didn’t even know. Her visceral core told her to scream her disgust in his face, but she kept a level head and allowed Dale a small benefit of doubt. Sarah knew, especially from her experience as a nurse, that everyone coped with trauma and loss in their own way; maybe detachment was Dale’s mechanism.
Even so, Sarah had to establish a few fundamental truths that, prior to walking into Dale’s office, she assumed they shared. Particularly, that Mark was innocent.
“What do you mean ‘whatever Mark was involved in’?” Sarah carefully asked. “You know he’s not guilty, right? Everything about him and his ties to Russia, it’s all lies. Every word of it.”
Dale sighed in a patroni
zing way, and he gazed at Sarah with sadness in his eyes. He seemed to be lamenting Sarah’s naïveté more than Mark’s deportation. It made her want to take Dale’s phone receiver from its cradle and smack him in the face with it.
“Listen. I know that, of everyone closest to Mark, this pill is toughest for you to swallow. What I’m going to say to you, I say only because I hope, in the long run, that it helps.
“You have to understand that the United States doesn’t make a habit of arresting its own citizens for treason and kicking them out of the country. There has to be something there for this to happen. Now, that isn’t to say Mark is the Russian James Bond, the way the press is making him out to be. I’m not saying that. It guts me to confess this out loud, Sarah, I swear it does—but given what’s happened with Mark, it’s unfathomable that intelligence agents got this completely wrong. That Mark is totally innocent.”
The air rushed out of Sarah’s lungs. She gripped the arm of her chair and leaned forward, twisting her right ear toward Dale as if her problem was a physical one. Because her ears, they couldn’t have heard what she thought they did. Dale believing in Mark’s guilt—that was impossible.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “What are you saying?”
“Just think about it. This town, the business we’re in, it’s a house of cards and the walls are fortified with duplicity. Who knows? Maybe in the course of one of his deals, Mark got mixed up with the wrong people and … I don’t know. Maybe he got involved in something that spiraled out of his control. Maybe he was a puppet for some bad people, and he didn’t even realize it. There’s no telling what happened, there just isn’t.”
“Which is exactly why he deserves a trial,” Sarah said, clawing at the chair’s arm. “A trial that will prove Mark’s innocence to the entire world.”
“And I’m trying to get him that trial. I’m doing everything I can to help Mark. But I’m not going to tell you everything’s going to be okay, Sarah. I don’t know if that’s true, and I’ve been in this business too long to know that there’s never this much smoke without at least a spark of fire. I’ve learned the hard way that trust doesn’t come easy, and it isn’t absolute.” Dale paused and narrowed his glance at Sarah. “But you already know that, don’t you? Because if you did trust me, the first thing you’d want to talk about would be Mark escaping.”
Sarah tried to keep a poker face, but she couldn’t help flinching. Dale was right; the more he talked, the harder it was to trust him. In minutes, he had become like any other politician, exposing a flippancy toward his relationship with Mark the second it became inconvenient. She could already see Dale on the news, downplaying what he meant to Mark and what Mark meant to him, selling him out with platitudes and rehearsed statements. And this game Dale was playing—like her, he was withholding the news of Mark’s escape—made her uneasy. She got the impression that Dale’s intention wasn’t to exonerate Mark at all costs. He had a cost, and it was the tarnishing of his political career.
“Don’t be so surprised,” Dale said. “I’ve been using every resource I have to keep close eyes and ears on Mark. I know all about his escape, and I know you two have been in contact. If you know where he is, where he’s heading … Sarah, you need to tell me.”
Inhaling a deep breath, Sarah steeled herself. This wasn’t right. None of this was right, and she was too smart to allow herself to be used as a pawn in whatever game was being played all around her.
“And if I tell you—you’ll bring him home?” Sarah asked, but she already knew the answer.
“I can’t do that. It’s not in my power. But at least if he’s in custody, he’ll be relatively safe while I work on a way to get him out of there. On the streets of Moscow, though? He’s on his own, and there’s no telling who will get their hands on him and what they’ll do.”
“But why? Why do the Russians even want him? They obviously know he’s not their spy, which makes it hard for me to believe that they’re invested in his well-being.”
Dale leaned back in his seat. “That’s an interesting question. Why would the Russians want Mark? If he wasn’t one of theirs, in some capacity, they would have never taken him in. They wouldn’t be going along with this charade. But they did take him. And they’re playing along—which makes you wonder if it really is a charade after all.”
“You can believe that if you want, if it helps you feel better, but I know the truth,” Sarah said as she stood up and moved toward the door. Gutted hollow, she felt like an apparition floating through the room. She hadn’t hoped for comfort from Dale, but commiseration would have been helpful. What she got was something different, and not only was it unexpected, it was also unnerving. Mark was out there running for his life, and the one person who could help was more inclined to devote his energy to convincing himself of Mark’s guilt rather than working tirelessly to prove his innocence.
“Where is he, Sarah?” Dale said. “Tell me, and I can help. You’re doing him no favors by keeping things from me.”
“Mark’s innocent. Find out how this happened, find out how we can get him back home, and then we’ll talk. But no one’s getting close to Mark, at least not through me, without proving that they’re going to make this thing right.”
“You might be waiting a long time,” Dale said, but just as Sarah was about to open the door to his office, Dale raised a hand for her to stop. He put his pointer finger to his mouth, urging her to remain quiet, then started scribbling something on his notepad.
“Cooperating with me,” Dale continued, “is the only way to get Mark to safety. We both want the same thing, Sarah—to ensure, first and foremost, that nothing bad happens to Mark.”
Dale silently tore the sheet from its pad and walked, taking cautious, quiet steps, to Sarah.
“We can agree on that, right?” Dale asked.
Sarah raised an eyebrow and suspiciously considered the slip of paper Dale was handing her.
“Right?” he said again, motioning for her to respond.
“Right,” Sarah agreed, taking the sheet from Dale’s hand. As instructed by his written message, she read a line of text, verbatim. “But I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you if I did.”
Dale took a deep breath as Sarah continued to read:
Apologies for everything I’ve said. There’re ears everywhere. Talk to Mark’s assistant, get her to dig into his deals. There has to be something. Find it, then bring it to me. No one else.
“We’re on the same team,” Dale said as he opened the door to his office, ushering Sarah out. “One way or another, we’ll get to the bottom of this. Together.”
Sarah took one last look at Dale, who gave her a conspiratorial nod. Then the door closed, and Sarah was left with nothing but questions. Who would be spying on a U.S. senator? What did Dale know that he couldn’t say? Why was it necessary for him to act like he was doubtful of Mark’s innocence? Was it an act?
As thoughts rattled through her mind, a terrifying realization kept popping up in her head, from the elevator back to the subway:
Whatever she and Mark were caught up in, it was way bigger than she had ever imagined.
18
Snow fluttered softly from the sky. Thick, chunky flakes had all but covered the dingy Russian landscape in a coat of pure white. Mark watched it tumble through the illumination cast by a nearby streetlight, feeling a tinge of guilt for enjoying the comfort of a warm hotel while the man who paid for it might still be unconscious in the parking lot of a desolate convenience store, his body being covered in a blanket of snow.
Just two hours ago, Mark and Ania were staking out said convenience store, looking for the right person to mug. Ania had convinced him it was necessary, seeing that they had no money, no car, and no place to stay—and in the event she’d been identified as his accomplice, she couldn’t risk using any of her credit cards and leading the FSB to their location.
The convenience store was the one business open on a street crowded with buildings that were either close
d for the night or closed for good. Much of the exteriors were covered in graffiti, an eclectic blend of colors brightening the monochromatic aesthetic of the neighborhood, which resembled more of a futuristic prison than a community. Hovering above the stout row of spray-painted buildings were residential towers made of drab, thick concrete that looked capable of enduring a war. Mark had no idea what part of Russia he was in, but he knew it wasn’t good. That’s why he figured it would be wise to be selective about who they robbed at gunpoint. People around here probably weren’t pushovers.
Unsurprisingly, even though it was an island among desolation, the store attracted very few customers in the dead of a cold, snowy night. A few people arrived on foot, which was of no use to Mark and Ania. They needed wheels, first and foremost, and Mark knew that poking his mug out in public was a bad idea. Trains, buses, taxis—none of it would do. Avoiding recognition, either as a beloved national treasure or a man on the run, was priority number one. But if Mark was going to get the hell out of Russia—with Ania’s help, supposedly—he needed a few essentials.
Crouched behind a van that’d been stripped of its tires, shivering in the cold night, Mark waited for a proper victim to arrive. A few cars came and left, but none of them were right. Even if they worked together, Ania and Mark knew it was unwise to try and jack a car full of people and risk failing. And unlike Ania, Mark couldn’t live with himself if he stole an old man’s ride, and he certainly didn’t want to try to take a car off the guy in jeans and a tank top, tattooed from his neck down, built like a brick wall, and probably immune to intimidation. They had no choice but to wait, even as the night got colder and colder. He was exhausted, famished, his body bruised, beaten, and sore all over. Mark knew that if they didn’t get what they needed soon, he might pass out.
The Throwaway Page 17
