The Throwaway

by Michael Moreci

  Sarah cocked an eyebrow at Jenna. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Jenna said, drawing near Sarah and lowering her voice, “that of all the companies that linked Mark to Vishny, Verge is the only one he was invested in prior to Mark’s involvement. If we’re going to go ahead and call this thing a conspiracy, then, to me, this is its centerpiece.”

  A strange feeling shivered through Sarah, starting in her throat and going all the way to her toes. It was fear, she recognized. Whatever was going on, it had depth. It had scope that extended well beyond Mark. His safe return would always be Sarah’s priority, but now it seemed like the Russians were at work infiltrating the United States defense system, and Mark was just a cog in a much larger plot.

  “Jesus,” Sarah whispered. “What the hell is going on?”

  Jenna shook her head, and Sarah could tell she was at a loss. “I have no clue. Not yet. But in the short time I’ve had, I’ve asked around a little about the contract, and no one wants to talk about it. People in Hodges’s office, Dudek’s aides—they hear anything about the software or Mark and they stick their fingers in their ears and run the other direction. Something is happening here.”

  Information, theories, and suspicions swirled in Sarah’s mind, all vying for attention. Sarah had no doubt Jenna was right: Something was doubtless happening. But it was like looking at an overcast day through frosted glass. The world was familiar but blurred enough to be deceptive, to remain unclear. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she shifted her perspective, she’d gain the focus necessary to see things clearly. Jenna had given her plenty to think about, but what stuck in her mind most was the chilling truth that whoever set Mark up was close to him and, that being the case, close to her as well. She considered that, considered Vishny and what he seemed to be after—

  And then it hit her.

  “God. Damn. It,” she spat, her anger roaring so intensely within her that she felt light-headed.

  Jenna recoiled at the ferocity of Sarah’s words. “Uh—what?”

  “Listen, I need you to do me a favor,” Sarah said as she backed away from Jenna. “Keep digging—find out anything you can about Vishny and whatever ties he has. Pull the bastard out of whatever hole he’s hiding in if you have to.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Jenna shot back, mystified.

  “I’m going to have a little chat with a friend of mine,” Sarah said. “And when I say ‘chat,’ I mean I’m going to kick his ass.”

  20

  Dr. Maximilian Steele.

  The persona was born of a lark, but a well-intentioned one. On their third anniversary, Mark and Sarah assumed fake identities and met at a hotel bar, pretending to not know each other. It was meant to be a sexy tryst, but it ended up being more of a gag as neither Mark nor Sarah could keep a straight face as they tried to connect using their fake, and ridiculous, identities. Mark never imagined Dr. Steele would return to their lives, yet he was grateful the good doctor was in. He just never imagined he’d be needed under such circumstances.

  Mark worked at the only English-language keyboard at the internet café, keeping his head down to avoid being identified. The café’s individual computer banks were open, but the bulky monitor—a decade old, at least—did an adequate job giving Mark something to hide behind. But, seeing that the café was occupied only by an elderly couple and a group of loud, obnoxious teens, Mark was confident he could fade into the background and not be bothered.

  While Mark knew Sarah’s phone was being monitored, he had no idea how thoroughly her online activity was being watched. Neither did Ania, and while it took a lot of convincing, she eventually gave Mark permission to reach out. Despite Ania’s hardened exterior, Mark knew she understood the lengths he was compelled to go to in order to protect Sarah. She had done the same to protect her parents, and that softened her to Mark’s relentless need to do whatever he could to ensure his wife’s safety.

  Contacting Sarah via email was a waste of time. Mark’s message would surely be intercepted, traced, and discarded. Same went with social media, he assumed. But whoever was watching Sarah’s Facebook, they were waiting for Mark to reach out.

  Not Maximilian Steele.

  Using pictures found from a Google image search—of beach parties, to give Maximilian the appearance of a man who enjoyed a life of leisure and make him seem less like a spambot—Mark constructed a profile for Maximilian that looked as convincing as possible. He liked a bunch of fan pages, wrote a “Hello, I’m new to Facebook!” post, and even tried to friend a few people from the high school that Maximilian had not actually attended. But Sarah had. Sure enough, a handful of the grads from the class of ’02 accepted his request, and Maximilian was well on his way to being unsuspicious.

  With Maximilian’s life established, Mark reached out to Sarah, sending her a friend request and a note via Messenger. The note was the key; Mark could only hope that Sarah not only read it, but also remembered who Maximilian was and deciphered Mark’s real message. He wrote:

  “Sarah! I finally broke down and joined the Facebook. I’ve been abroad for so long, and I’m still here, stationed overseas. Not by choice. My work has a way of putting me in unusual situations. Anyway, how are you? Please let me know how you’re doing. Are you okay? I’m good, safe and sound for the time being. I’d love to reconnect with you, so feel free to contact me here whenever you can. We can share all our latest news, which is what Facebook is for, right?”

  Mark leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. He exhaled sharply as his eyes stayed glued to the monitor, praying that a message popped up sooner rather than later. Staying more than a few minutes would be a mistake. If whoever was monitoring Sarah’s account flagged his message and identified its point of origin, it would be a dead giveaway. Mark would be swarmed by FSB goons in a matter of minutes, and he wasn’t sure he had another escape in him.

  Anxiety gnawed at Mark. As long he kept running and fighting, he didn’t have to think. About Sarah. About the baby. About what was going to happen to them now that Mark was on the loose. Would someone use Sarah to get to him? Would they hurt her—or worse?

  But then salvation arrived.

  The little blue-headed dialog box popped up, and there was Sarah. Mark almost collapsed to the ground, and he hadn’t even read a word. Sarah was safe. She was okay. That, first and foremost, was all he needed. Mark gathered himself and read the screen.

  “Maximilian! What a strange surprise. It’s so good to hear from you. I’m doing well, safe and sound, like you. But these are very unusual times with everything happening in the world. You never know what could happen. But in this moment, I’m perfectly ok. Life has been unusual lately. I’m helping a friend with a research project, pretty much as a hobby. We’ve been able to discover some really interesting things, things that I think will interest you. It could really change things for the better. Did I mention I was pregnant? Here, let me show you a picture—my first ultrasound!”

  Mark’s bottom jaw slowly separated from the top, and Mark raised his hand to cover his mouth. His heart jumped in his chest, and he could already feel the tears running out of the corners of his eyes. There, that tiny image, that was his child. His child. And it needed Mark. It needed its father, and Mark needed it, too. Though he tried, Mark couldn’t stop himself from sobbing. Tears of love and fear and rage poured from him. This baby, it was out there in the world, however many miles away, and Mark already loved it. And at the same time, he hated whoever was keeping him apart from his life, his real life. He pounded his palm against the monitor, not thinking about the attention it drew.

  Regardless of the attention—and both the teens and the elderly couple were staring at the blubbering, angry man at this point—Mark knew he couldn’t stay in this location much longer. Not when FSB agents could very well be on their way. He wrote back, doing his best to withhold his emotions:

  “You have no idea how touched I am to see this photo. You must be t
hrilled, and I know things will only get better. I have to run, but if you ever need to be in touch, this is the best way to get ahold of me. I’d like to hear more about your research project, when we have time. Like I said, I’m abroad still, but I plan on being back home soon. I’m working on it. Until then, please be safe.”

  Removing himself from the computer was like severing a limb. He wanted to write how much he loved her, how he was doing everything in his power to get home. But if he wanted to see her again, Mark had to be smart. He had to be cautious, more than cautious. He had to make every decision like his life depended on it.

  Mark logged off and wiped out the browsing history, leaving a clean computer behind.

  Just as Mark was walking out, Ania was walking in. She’d gone down the street to grab them some food and, according to her, “do some research.”

  “Hey,” Mark said, accepting the sandwich Ania handed him, “you find anything?”

  Ania nodded. “We have to work our way up the ladder to get to the bottom of all this: why you were framed, what the connection to Vishny is, who’s pulling all the strings—and why.”

  “I get the feeling you know the rungs to climb.”

  “I do,” Ania admitted. She reached around Mark and grabbed the remote control off the clerk’s counter. The clerk started to complain, but Ania said something in Russian that shut him up. “Check this out,” she said, and surfed through the TV channels until she found the one she was looking for.

  Broadcast on the screen was a red carpet event, sort of like the Oscars. Nothing of what he was looking at—men and women dressed up in designer clothing, parading for paparazzi—stood out as meaningful to Mark. It was just wealthy jerks being worshiped, same as they were in the United States.

  “What am I looking for here?” Mark asked.

  “An old acquaintance,” Ania said. “This gala, celebrating the anniversary of the government-funded station you’re watching—I was supposed to attend. Another public appearance for the national hero.”

  “Sorry you had to miss it,” Mark sardonically replied.

  “It’s better that I did,” Ania said with a sly smile. “Because in my absence, they have to send my backup.

  “Look,” Ania said, directing Mark’s attention to the screen.

  There, Mark saw a hefty, bald-headed man scowling for the cameras.

  Viktor.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mark said.

  “Want to climb up the ladder?” Ania asked. “Here’s a crucial rung. Viktor’s relentless and ruthless, and I have little doubt he’s used both qualities to wedge himself deeper into the FSB since we’ve gotten back. People like him, believe it or not. They trust him—which means they tell him things.”

  “Yeah, I got the sense that being stationed in the U.S. as a glorified babysitter wasn’t his dream assignment.”

  “He wouldn’t stop complaining about the mission, and I’m willing to bet someone like him was let in on the truth. If only to shut him up, but most likely to bring him into whatever inner circle is at work here.”

  Mark nodded. In theory, it was simple enough: get to Viktor, and somehow persuade him to spill what he knew.

  “I’m guessing you have a plan to get information from him?” Mark asked.

  “The only way you get information out of anyone: We’re going to have to beat it out of him.”

  21

  All O’Neal had were dots. The product of his clandestine investigation, laid out on his kitchen table, was nothing but dots that didn’t connect. And he tried. In different ways and from different angles, O’Neal tried to do what his mentor—Gil Pak, long retired to Florida—had taught him to do: Create a narrative. Evidence was important, as was the psychology of your criminal. But putting it all together in a story? That was the key. Stories gave evidence and psychology life; stories strung everything together and answered the vital questions of how and why. In truth, evidence could be misleading and a diagnosis of another human’s mind wasn’t foolproof. Pak insisted that O’Neal take a step back during any investigation and see for himself how the case made sense as a narrative.

  In the case of Mark Strain, it was impossible to manufacture a story, no matter how hard he tried, that made a lick of sense.

  O’Neal paced around the evidence he’d collected, no longer conjuring ways to piece everything together in order to prove Mark’s guilt. Instead, despite all the suggestions that he move on from this particular case, O’Neal was doing something entirely unexpected.

  He was trying to prove Mark’s innocence.

  “God damn it, Strain,” O’Neal grumbled under his breath as he sipped on his third cup of coffee. It was almost two in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep. The dots called to him, pecking away at his analytical brain and eroding any chance for him to rest.

  For the umpteenth time, O’Neal went over his discoveries, tirelessly trying to piece everything together into a whole that made sense. Of course, that meant shrugging off his disbelief at this entire situation. He had never been fully comfortable with the way Mark was scooped up and shipped out of the country without anyone so much as whispering the words “habeas corpus.” And now? Now he was baffled. And suspicious. And angry. Assuming Mark was innocent, someone had not only framed him to take the fall, but also had used O’Neal to make it happen. The seasoned agent didn’t like that one bit. But O’Neal knew his feelings weren’t the real thing at stake here; it was a potentially innocent man’s life, and whoever manufactured the conditions that made Mark look guilty enough to be stuffed into an airplane and exiled to Russia had to wield considerable power. Which meant O’Neal had to tread carefully.

  He again considered what he knew, studying all those dots through an assumption that Mark was innocent. First, there was Sergei Vishny, the mysterious oligarch. In and of itself, that was a damning connection. But how were they connected, really? O’Neal had discovered the business ties between them, but also learned that Vishny had invested in Mark’s accounts after the fact. Four times Vishny got financially involved with Mark’s clients after Mark took them on. Most investigators these days, eager to close cases, would look at that connection and see a smoking gun. They’d go no further. But O’Neal needed his narrative. If Mark and Vishny were co-conspirators, or even if Mark was in a compromised position with Vishny and unwillingly doing his bidding, O’Neal needed their connection to be more profound than a paper trail.

  But there was nothing that linked Mark to Vishny on a personal level. Those dots just floated out there, unable to connect. So O’Neal went broader. How did Mark connect to Russia, in general? Becoming an operative for a foreign country—and a traitor to your own—was no small matter. O’Neal had encountered individuals who’d been flipped, and in each case the person had undergone a form of indoctrination. Brainwashing. They were defamiliarized from the world they knew—stripped of their identity, more or less—and re-created into a new person. And these people were usually social exiles to begin with, people with no friends, no family, nothing to keep them grounded in reality. Mark had a wife, a baby on the way, a mom in Minnesota who he called regularly. Indoctrinating someone like that wasn’t easy. And Mark had never even been to Russia. His phone and email records, a perfunctory search had shown, revealed no suspicious contacts. O’Neal was willing to take that with a grain of salt. If Mark was a spy, he would know to be more cautious than to use his personal accounts for his operative communications.

  That meant Mark would need to make clandestine contact. Well, both his personal and work computers—now property of the U.S. government—showed no encrypted accounts, no shadow log-ins. O’Neal studied what the tech eggheads had given him, and while he didn’t understand all of it, he was smart enough to get the gist.

  There was nothing hidden in either computer.

  O’Neal even followed up on Ania, Mark’s coffee-shop buddy and alleged co-conspirator. He had the photos that showed them together at Starbucks. Plenty of photos. But not a single snapshot, not one repo
rt, showed Mark and Ania passing anything between them other than a newspaper—a newspaper that Mark had purchased at Starbucks and, again, there was no photographic evidence of him loading anything into the Health and Science section. A file, an external drive, anything. They never even leaned in for a sneaky chat. O’Neal had gone to the Starbucks and interrogated the workers who covered the early morning shifts. Their take? Just a couple of flirting regulars, something they saw all the time.

  O’Neal groaned.

  “Strain, you’re either the most cautious spy of all time, or this is all bullshit.”

  And bullshit, O’Neal concluded, was what all of these dots reeked of. The question, then, was who was responsible for spreading this bullshit all over Mark’s life.

  The noose that tightened around Mark’s neck, apparently without him even knowing it, cut off his air right as that cyber defense contract he’d been working on closed. That’s when Mark’s case—though O’Neal was loathe to use the word “case” to describe what had been constructed against Mark—came to a head. O’Neal flipped through the documents he had on the contract itself; something about firewalls, mainframes, and a bunch of other tech jargon he couldn’t even pretend to comprehend. Data didn’t build stories, though. People did. Assuming Vishny was a smoke screen, whoever was in on Mark’s frame job must have been involved in this contract. It’s what they had to have been after, and once secured, they tied up their loose ends. And that meant discarding Mark.

  O’Neal studied the players. The people at Verge were worth a look; a multinational security firm was always worth putting under a microscope for one reason or another. But, again, the question came down to connecting Verge to Mark. Because if Vishny being peppered throughout Mark’s career was any indication of a frame-up, then this plot had been going on for years. That’s too long and uncertain of a game for Verge to play for one contract. Especially when contracts in D.C. came and went like farts in the wind, O’Neal mused.