The Throwaway

by Michael Moreci

  Finally, the perfect mark arrived. A rusty sedan rattled into the parking lot, pulling into a spot parallel to the entrance—placing it outside the store clerk’s field of vision. A middle-aged man got out of the car, and as he headed into the store, Mark hurried into position. He waited along the store’s brick wall, and when the man came out, Mark, riddled with guilt, acted. Even though it was a mugging, Mark wanted to handle it delicately. Politely, even. But he couldn’t risk things going wrong; he couldn’t wait for another opportunity to get what he needed to survive.

  The man, focused on the pack of cigarettes he was trying to open, didn’t even notice Mark step out of the shadows.

  “Hey,” Mark said, his voice hoarse. “Hey, you.”

  The man turned to face Mark, a look of agitation on his face. Mark was supposed to move behind him and smack him on the back of the head with his gun. That’s what he and Ania had agreed to when Mark insisted that he do the mugging. He still didn’t trust Ania, and he didn’t want her killing anyone because, as far as Mark knew, that’s just how she operated. Still, this plan never involved Mark talking, especially since no one would understand him.

  “Give me your keys,” Mark ordered, but the man continued to just stand there, confused and not comprehending. “I said give me your keys,” Mark repeated, this time pushing his gun in the man’s face. This drew a response, but not what Mark had hoped for. The man was getting pissed, not scared. Which meant this was not at all going as Mark expected.

  The man stepped toward Mark, and Mark stepped back. Suddenly, his mind went to Oleg, seeing him dead on the floor of the hospital, and he began to envision the possibility of having to kill this man, too. The thought nearly made him wretch.

  “Just give me your damn keys,” Mark said, but the man wouldn’t listen. He kept walking toward Mark, and Mark kept taking steps back until he was nearly pressed against the convenience store.

  The possibility of having to shoot this man became more and more real with every step, causing his hand—and the gun it held—to tremble.

  “I—I don’t want to hurt you, I—”

  Mark’s stuttered pleas were cut off by the sound of a muffled impact, like someone punching a bag of sand. The man dropped to the ground and landed with a thud, and when Mark looked up he saw Ania, gun in hand, standing where the man had been.

  “What the hell was that?” she scolded.

  “Nothing, I just … I didn’t want to hurt the guy.”

  “You didn’t want to hurt him? Well, boo-fucking-hoo, Mark. Listen, you’re fighting for your life, and putting my life on the line, so if we agree on how something’s going to be done, you do it to the letter. You got it?”

  Mark just stared at her.

  “Earth to Mark. Do you understand me?”

  Finally, Mark managed to nod his acquiescence. Ania inhaled a sharp breath—she was doubtless frustrated by how this situation had spiraled out of hand. Downward spiraling, though, was Mark’s normal.

  “All right,” Ania groaned. “Pick his pockets clean and let’s get out of here.”

  Mark did as he was told, relieving the man of his car keys, his cell phone, the money in his wallet, and his license. Ivan Popov. Mark would have to repay him, provided he lived long enough to do so.

  Mark dragged the man to the sidewalk, not wanting him to get run over by a car while unconscious, and whispered an apology into his ear. He joined Ania in their new car and drove off into the quiet night. Thirty minutes later they were warm inside a hotel room, and Mark had his first respite in what felt like years. As he thought about the man’s body being covered by a layer of snow, Mark tried to refocus his mind on what was important: He needed ideas, he needed a plan.

  Exhaustion, though, took hold of him. Body and mind, Mark was spent. Beyond spent. And try as he might, he couldn’t push himself any further. Couldn’t conjure the magical solution that would alleviate the many, many obstacles in front of him. Mark shut the drapes to his room’s window, bolted the door, and collapsed on the rock-hard chair. He looked at Ania, who was asleep on the bed, and he slipped into slumber before he could count to three.

  * * *

  Mark awoke late in the morning, throat raw, head pounding, and body aching from head to toe. He was dehydrated, starving, and bruised in places he didn’t even know could bruise. But all those problems were silenced when he realized Ania was gone.

  She’d sold him out. This was an elaborate ruse and the FSB was going to bust down his door any second, and Ania would lead the charge, a hero once more.

  Those were Mark’s immediate and only thoughts as he paced the room, cursing Ania for betraying him and himself even more for trusting her. Mark was so blinded by his frenzy that he failed to see the note Ania had left for him. But there it was, a small handwritten message on the foot of the bed. Mark read it, and his panic quickly gave way to embarrassment. Ania had gone to get food and supplies, and she hadn’t wanted to wake him. She’d be back soon.

  Mark sat on the edge of the bed. His body was trembling, his heart racing. If he couldn’t control the situation he was in, he at least needed to get control of himself. He knew it was a long shot for him to survive this ordeal, and the odds of him making it out of Russia and getting back home—an exonerated man—were even slimmer. But Mark never liked being told the odds. And the fact was, he had no alternative other than to get out or die trying. If he couldn’t make it home to Sarah and their baby, he might as well be dead. So until either one of the two happened—his return or his termination—he’d face whatever came his way with a level head. It was the only way through.

  But just like his lobbying work, success could only come one step at a time. First, he needed to get as much of his strength back as possible. He had to replenish.

  Sticking his mouth under the bathroom’s faucet and lapping up metallic-tasting water like a dog helped diminish his thirst. With water dripping from his chin, Mark stripped off his clothes—Oleg’s clothes—and started the shower. Even with the temperature valve buried on the hot side, the water struggled to reach lukewarm. But Mark didn’t care. What mattered was rinsing everything—the blood, sweat, and dirt—off his body and feeling as revived as possible.

  As he let the water run over him—every inch of his body sensitive to the touch—Mark considered his options. It was a brief train of thought because he really didn’t have any options. At least not yet. Without identification, he couldn’t clear Russia’s borders in his car—assuming the junker he had acquired could make it that far—couldn’t buy a train ticket, and he certainly couldn’t get on a plane. He hoped Ania had enough pull to secure him a counterfeit ID so he could at least try to make it out of the country. That had to be the starting point: Get out of Russia.

  Mark turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He dug into his pants pocket and retrieved the phone he’d taken off Ivan Popov at the convenience store. Like Oleg’s phone, it was another bulky model outdated by about a thousand years. He dialed Sarah’s number, wanting to get in another call before Ania returned, but all he got was a dial tone and a message spoken in Russian. Mark guessed that international calling wasn’t available on this prehistoric relic.

  Though he was yet to shake off his sluggishness—Mark needed more rest and a whole lot of food—he still had enough energy to jump to attention and ready himself to fight when he heard the front door click open. Mark’s instinct wasn’t to run, it wasn’t to hide; Mark was ready to brawl with whoever dared come after him.

  But he couldn’t even imagine the shades of red his face turned when Ania walked through the door and caught him dressed in nothing but a snug-fitting towel, poised to take on an army of attackers.

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” Ania said as she closed the door behind her.

  “Sorry, I just thought—”

  “That someone was going to come in here and try to kill you? I’d say that’s a reasonable expectation. Here,” Ania said, tossing him a grocery bag. “I got you
some new clothes. As much as I like to see you parading around in a towel clearly cut for children, I figure it’s better for you to be comfortable.”

  “Thanks,” Mark said, suddenly feeling very aware of his mostly naked body. He backed into the bathroom and got dressed. Ania had chosen his size perfectly and supplied him with new briefs, jeans, and a thick sweater. The little bit of normalcy—having clothes that fit him—went a long way to putting him at ease.

  Still, Mark had questions. While he was grateful for Ania’s help, he harbored some real skepticism as to why she had jumped back into his life. Why take the risk? What did she have to gain? Her aid was a gift horse Mark was hesitant to look in the mouth, but he had to know: What could possibly motivate her to risk her neck to help him through what was very likely a suicide mission?

  When Mark stepped back into their diminutive room—it was just large enough to hold a queen-sized bed, an armchair, a small table with two folding chairs, and a heating/air conditioner unit that ran beneath the window looking out onto the parking lot—Ania was laying out breakfast: a bag of bagels, lox, and a couple of apples.

  “The money we took last night didn’t go far, but we can always get more,” she said. “Assuming you don’t talk your way out of a perfectly good mugging.”

  Mark gave a halfhearted laugh, and Ania stopped what she was doing. She glanced over at him with a put-on look of worry on her face. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Someone’s about to get serious.”

  “No, no,” Mark said, trying his best not to sound serious. “I just … I’ve been wondering—”

  “You want to know why I’d risk my ass to save you. Right?”

  Mark rubbed the back of his neck. “Well … yes.”

  “Because you don’t trust me?” Ania asked, the sting of Mark’s perceived slight creeping into her tone.

  “What? No—I mean, yeah, at first I didn’t trust you. But I trust you now.”

  “Okay,” Ania shrugged, “then what’s there to talk about? I’m saving your life. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  Maybe Mark didn’t know Ania, but he did know Alice. And while their relationship had been a ruse, there had to be some truth in it. Like when Alice told Mark about the brother she’d lost at a young age, how that had motivated her to get into medicine. Sure, the medicine part of that claim was a total lie, but the hurt of having lost a sibling, Mark knew was real. Just like he knew that there was something to whatever was driving Ania to help Mark, and it was genuine. Regardless of what it was, Mark didn’t like the idea of Ania shouldering it on her own.

  “You can talk to me, you know,” Mark said, taking a step toward Ania as she turned away. “Before all of this, we … we were friends.”

  “No. You’re wrong. I’m not allowed to have friends, or family, or … anything!” Ania’s voice rose to a yell, and with an effortless swipe of her arm she flung a folding chair clean across the room. “They took me from my home—my mom and dad—when I was just a girl. The government took me from the only life I knew so I could train to become … whatever it is that I am.”

  For a moment, Ania looked so small to Mark. She was small, standing only five and a half feet tall, but she carried herself much larger. And in her diminished size, Mark saw Sarah in her. He saw his delicate wife, and it made him want to reach out and hold her and have the piece of him that was missing filled just a little bit. He knew, though, how wrong that was—wrong to touch Ania, wrong to assuage his heartache with anything less than the real thing.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Mark softly said.

  “You really want to know about me?” Ania asked as she took an aggressive step toward him. “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  Ania scoffed at him. “That brother I told you about? He wasn’t my brother, he was my friend. The only one I had at the academy, and he died in what they called a ‘training accident.’ More like he was pushed too hard and decided to get out the only way he could. He was just a kid, we both were, and nobody cared that he was dead. Nobody but me. And that’s when I learned that I was disposable, that I wasn’t a human being in their eyes. I was just a tool that the agency could replace at any time. I wanted to leave, I wanted to disappear and never look back. But my parents—they’d kill my parents if I ever tried to run away, and I knew they weren’t bluffing.

  “So I stayed. I stayed for my mom and dad, so they could be safe. I trained and eventually convinced myself that what I was doing was noble and good, that I’d be making a difference. It was the only thing that got me through.

  “And after all that, you know what my first assignment was?”

  Mark shook his head, and Ania lifted her stony gaze to meet his. “You,” she said. “And what was the point?” Ania questioned. “Everything I sacrificed, everything I endured, it was all in the service of ruining the life of an innocent, good man. Ruining his wife, ruining the life of his child before it’s even born. The only thing that had kept me going was the threadbare belief that I’d be able to make a difference, that I’d be able to help people. But no, instead I was instructed to deceive you. And for what? So some oligarch filth could get even richer.”

  Mark brought his fingers to his temples. Suddenly, the room was spinning. “Wait wait wait,” he said. “What oligarch? What are you talking about?”

  “That’s what this is, Mark—at least, in part. Sergei Vishny is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, and he is a silent principal in Verge. The foundation of my mission was to ensure that the Verge deal went through and that Vishny got paid.”

  Mark had to sit down and catch his breath. “I didn’t … I had no idea. I thought Verge was a typical Silicon Valley startup that hit it big. Not one that’s financed by the damn Russians—no offense.”

  “Hardly anybody knows. Some people say that Vishny has a hand in half the world’s tech companies, but no one is certain. He’s completely reclusive. No one has laid eyes on him in over five years. It’s like he doesn’t even exist.”

  “Hold on,” Mark said as he sprang to his feet and started to pace. “This can’t just be about some oligarch’s money, because I would have pursued this deal whether I was being framed as a Russian spy or not.”

  “You catch on quick,” Ania said as a sly smile spread across her face. “They sold us the line about national duty, which was basically a nice way of telling us to shut our mouths and not ask questions.”

  “Something else is going on here,” Mark said, turning his attention to the window. The pieces of this mystery floated in his mind—the Verge deal, his own role as a diversion to protect the identity of Russia’s real mole, and now the oligarch—but he was nowhere close to understanding how they fit together.

  “You’re right about that, something is going on. Something’s wrong with all of this. And if you’re wondering what my stake in all this is, it’s finding out why I was used. I want to know what is worth giving up my family, I want to know what is worth my friend’s life.

  “I want to know the truth.”

  Mark listened, but his attention was diverted from Ania’s determined words to the parking lot. He had noticed something weird: cars. Not that it was unusual for a hotel to have occupants, but last night, the lot was empty. Even Mark’s stolen car, per Ania’s order, was parked on a side street. That way, if it was reported stolen and found, whoever found it wouldn’t necessarily think to search the hotel for the thieves. But now there were three cars in the parking lot. All newer-looking, which was suspicious considering that the hotel was a dump. Mark tried to convince himself that he was being paranoid. But then a man stepped out of one of the cars—a man dressed in a black-and-white suit, exactly like Oleg.

  It was the FSB. Those bastards had tracked him down. Panic and anger wrapped barbed wire around Mark’s chest.

  “They’re here,” Mark said, his stunned voice sounding like it was coming from a thousand miles away.

  “What?!” Ania said as she raced to the window. “That’s impossible—how? How could they find u
s?”

  Mark knew, but he didn’t want to say a word about calling Sarah while Ania was out. He realized, too late, that her line must have been subject to tracking, and the call—though it technically didn’t even go through—was enough to lead the FSB to his and Ania’s location. With no small amount of burning shame, Mark confessed.

  “You’re lucky I don’t have time to kick your ass,” she snarled. Ania stomped to the bed and took her spare bullet clip out from underneath her pillow. “They’re going to bust in here any second. We have to be ready.”

  “Wait … we’re not running?”

  “We’ll never make it. Never. The only chance we have is to catch them off guard.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “They’re here for us. I think the element of surprise is long gone.”

  “No,” Ania corrected. “They’re here for you. There’s a chance they don’t know you and I are together. There’s no telling if anyone identified me at the embassy last night, and even if they did, information doesn’t travel quickly, or efficiently, in the agency.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Mark asked, failing to catch on to Ania’s plan.

  “Nothing. Stay here, and let them break that front door off its hinges. When they storm you, I’ll storm them.”

  “I’m bait.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ania said, stepping into the bathroom. “Now be ready to act surprised when they bust in here. And then be ready to help me kick the shit out of everyone in our path.”

  Mark thought he should prepare himself somehow. As he stood alone in a Russian hotel room, he thought there might be a way to steel himself for the barrage of enemies he was about to face. Not only was his hope wildly impractical, but also he had no time. Moments after Ania disappeared into the bathroom, Mark heard the cheap wooden door frame burst into splinters as the door itself was battered off its hinges. Four agents rushed into the room led by automatic rifles; Mark leapt off the bed and shot his hands in the air, offering no resistance. The closest guard grabbed Mark hard by his neck, turned him around, and shoved him against the wall. A violent frisking followed, but the agent only got through Mark’s legs when he was interrupted by the sound of one of his fellow agents screaming behind him.