The Children's Game

by Max Karpov

  At the same time, Briggs didn’t care for Christopher’s vulnerabilities. There was something reckless about him going alone into the lion’s den this way. Niles was an analyst and a retired intel officer; he wasn’t a soldier. And Briggs wasn’t convinced Turov hadn’t laid an elaborate trap for him.

  It’s just us. No one’s coming in to rescue us.

  He debated it for several minutes as gusts of rain shook the treetops. Finally, Briggs stepped back, visualized what he was going to do, and did it—running up to the wall, planting his foot waist-high, swinging his arms for leverage, grabbing the top of the wall, and pulling himself up and over. He dropped down on the other side and lay flat on the edge of the lawn, knowing the rain had given him some camouflage. But was it enough?

  He raised his head and studied the setup: the house they’d taken Chris to was a modern-looking job, with geometric designs, tall ceilings, giant windows. Between him and the house was a long, manicured yard with topiary hedges, a narrow decorative pool, and four modern-looking sculptures of giant figures. Briggs skittered crablike to the cover of the closest sculpture, what seemed to be a large bronze of a kneeling nude woman. The sculpture would serve as his observation post. Briggs lay down behind it and waited, surveying the back of the house, looking for cameras, for the ways in and out.

  What he thought at first was a bush or a statue on the back porch, he began to see, was in fact a person: a security guard was standing outside the door under a metal awning. The tiny red glow against his face was a cigarette.

  Briggs knew that Turov depended on a handful of security men, and suspected there were just two or three with him here today. Like Christopher, he preferred small numbers. Anton Konkin, Turov’s security chief, was inside, probably monitoring the property on video cameras. Whether Konkin had already spotted him he didn’t know. But it was best to assume he had.

  Briggs saw moving shapes through the window of a corner room—smudges of shadow and light. Christopher’s in there. Briggs wasn’t going to make any move now unless he had to, he decided. Unless he was confronted. He wasn’t going to do anything that would jeopardize Chris’s mission . . . As he lay in the grass, Briggs thought of his respite at the French harbor—how the early morning scent of the sea had drawn him to the pebbly beach while he waited for Delkoff. And he thought of what had happened later that morning—the surprise ambush of Delkoff and his men. Other images filtered through his thoughts as the wind blew sheets of rain across the pool: the young Russian men dragging American flags over the cobblestones in Red Square, their faces strained with manufactured hate. This isn’t about what you saw in Red Square, he told himself, or about Delkoff. It wasn’t about anger, or revenge, or chasing phantoms. This was Chris’s mission, not his.

  But how will I know when enough time has passed? Or too much time? He’d have to trust his instincts.

  He saw movement again on the back porch: the guard was stepping out into the rain now, finished with his cigarette. Briggs lowered his head, flattening himself on the ground. He lifted his eyes and saw the man walking parallel to the house, beginning a surveillance round, maybe. Briggs recognized him now from the leather jacket and jeans: it was the man who’d opened the van doors for Chris near Gorky Park.

  Halfway across the back of the house, the man stopped. He turned, looking his way. Then lifted something to his face. A phone. Briggs reached for his gun. He rose to a crouch, shielded still behind the sculpture. The guard stepped away from the house and walked toward him for several paces. Then he stopped, and stood still.

  Briggs lost sight of him for a few seconds in the rain. Then he noticed something else—there was motion to his right now: another man was coming from around the front of the pool.

  So they’d seen him. Or seen something.

  The second man stopped. Briggs heard voices, the men talking above the beat of the rain. They began to move again, their paths converging as they walked toward the back of the yard. Briggs took a deep breath. He peered around the sculpture. One of the guards shouted something in Russian. He fired a shot that was wide to his left, maybe intentionally so. Briggs stepped to the side, returned fire and scrambled back to cover. Three more shots rang out immediately, two of them clanging off the head of the sculpture. Briggs waited. Briefly he had a clear view of the second guard, who seemed suddenly disoriented. Briggs stepped out from the sculpture again and fired, hitting the man three times as he tried to aim his gun. Briggs watched him go down, both legs tucked underneath him.

  That’s when he saw that the first man was down, too.

  The rain seemed to turn deafening after that, as if someone had turned up a volume knob. Briggs looked at the men he’d shot, both lying in the grass beside the pool, like modern sculpture. He scurried to the cover of a side hedge, and waited for the other one. Anton Konkin.

  Lit up with adrenaline, Briggs began to step along the perimeter of the yard toward the house. Knowing that Konkin must’ve seen, or heard, what had just happened. Briggs’s advantage was the storm. And momentum. And desire.

  He stood, flush against the house, out of range of the cameras.

  Waiting for the back door to open.

  When it did, Briggs didn’t hesitate. He knew that he had no choice anymore. There could be no half measures now. He had to keep moving forward, until this was finished.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The second proposal you’ll prefer,” Andrei Turov said, lowering his eyes in a way that suggested humility. Chris was still thinking about the first: the utopian idea of using the August 13 attack to create an alliance between their countries, a partnership dedicated to higher aims, such as “eliminating” terrorism. The grandiosity of Turov’s ambitions always seemed to blossom in the presence of other people, Chris knew; he’d written that in his report, a copy of which sat now on Turov’s desk. “If—let’s say—the Kremlin was unreceptive to what we just discussed. We might then bypass them altogether and negotiate a different arrangement.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your country’s loss of credibility and internal divisions will only worsen, as I’m sure you know,” Turov added solemnly. “Analysts are predicting that your country is on course to break into pieces, much as the Soviet Union did in 1991.”

  “You’re underestimating the United States, Andrei, but go ahead.”

  Turov smiled slightly. Then his expression stiffened, as if correcting itself. Chris could see he didn’t like that. “If,” Turov said, “some documents existed—not here—but say some documents existed, the kind of evidence you’d need to tell a different story about August 13.”

  “Evidence—?”

  “Digital recordings of phone conversations. Records of transactions between Colonel Delkoff, Anton Konkin, my head of security, and the Kremlin. More significantly: a transfer of funds from a Kremlin-run RFM account—the president’s personal financial intelligence unit—that ended up with Delkoff. Real evidence. Not these ramblings of the ‘crazy colonel.’”

  “Tying the events of that day to the Kremlin, in other words,” Christopher said.

  Turov nodded once. “Evidence that would allow your journalists and political leaders to tell the story you’ve been trying to tell about Russia for years now.”

  “Okay,” Chris said. They’d come, at last, to Turov’s real trick, he sensed: for years, Putin’s critics had portrayed the Russian president as a high-level “thug,” the silent force behind the murders of journalists and dissidents. But there’d never been good evidence linking him directly to those crimes. Here was someone offering that. Putin Kryptonite. Turov was taking this in a direction he hadn’t expected: offering to betray his country, to sell out the president. Cassius scheming against Caesar.

  “Okay,” Chris said. “And in exchange—?”

  “We would need to work out terms.” He looked away for a moment. Perhaps Turov saw this as his only way out now; maybe he felt that Putin had hijacked his original plan and he needed the US to bail him out. Or maybe this was som
ething else. Chris reminded himself that Turov was an illusionist.

  “I’d want some personal assurances, obviously,” Turov said. “Information for immunity.”

  “For you.”

  “For my family. I’d want an assurance that neither of my daughters would be prosecuted or harmed in the event that details ever came out. I’d want immunity for my daughter Svetlana, in particular, and her children. And for my closest staff, Olga Sheversky and Anton Konkin, and their families. And lastly, for myself, yes. That’s all I would ask.”

  Chris waited on a boom of thunder. “Immunity beginning—?”

  “Tonight. Now.”

  The diplomat in Christopher wanted to agree; the pragmatist wanted more details. He recalled what Amira had told him on Tuesday, about Turov’s concerns for his family. “I don’t know that I could do anything that quickly,” he said.

  “Unless you had to.” His eyes went calmly to Christopher’s report. “You have a private plane at the airport, don’t you? You are planning to fly to Washington tonight, correct?” Chris tilted his head to acknowledge it was possible. “I think you understand how we can help each other. And our countries.”

  Chris glanced at the blur of rain out the window, almost believing Turov. Here was a man who had devised a project to destroy the United States’s credibility in four moves, while creating the conditions for a regional conflict in the Baltics that could easily escalate into a war against the West. Now he was trying to play ambassador? It meant that on some level he must feel that he was being betrayed by his own country.

  “You’re not afraid that you’re under FSB surveillance now?” Chris asked.

  “Not here, no. We are safe in this building. We’ve been very careful.”

  Chris knew that he was nowhere right now, in a neighborhood he’d probably never find again. “What are you proposing, then? Specifically?”

  “I can provide a set of nine documents, including bank transfer records, phone transcripts, and emails, which will confirm the Kremlin’s role. They will include a document I generated summarizing the entire plan, a copy of which was handed to the president.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I’ve given them all to a personal carrier. They’re not in this country,” he said. “Once we complete the deal, however, the information is yours.”

  “Once you’re out of the country, in other words.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this information will prove conclusively that the president was directly involved in August 13?” Turov nodded in that almost imperceptible way he had. Chris held his gaze. He had come to Turov hoping to strike a deal; he didn’t expect Turov would make it so easy. “And explain to me exactly why you want to do this.”

  “Because.” He looked at Chris as if he already knew the answer. “We all have an expiration date. I have no reason to think mine isn’t coming soon. I can’t just go into exile in London like some of the president’s other former friends. But even if I could, it’s my family I care about. My grandchildren, and their children. My lineage. At the same time,” he added, “I care what happens to our countries. The big war that is coming will not involve nuclear weapons, you know that. It will be a game that is played in rooms that most people will never see.”

  “The children’s game.”

  Turov said nothing. But there was a twinkle now in his eyes. “And I could help you with that. I could help your side.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because.” His smile this time was unexpected. “You know me. You know who I am. And no one else in your government seems to, as this shows.” He tapped an index finger on Chris’s report. “We might even make a good team. Certainly an interesting one.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then we’d drive you back. Or to the airport. And you’d leave. And I’d make other arrangements. But you won’t say no,” Turov said. “You didn’t come this far to say no.”

  Christopher gazed again at the rain, beginning to play out the moves he’d need to make for this to work. “All right,” he said. “Tell me what you need, then, and let’s do it.”

  He saw something give in Turov’s face; a distant relief seemed to flood his strange blue eyes. It was a vulnerable and very human look, as if Christopher had just agreed to save his life.

  Turov’s cell phone rang on the desk in front of him. He lifted it and placed the phone to his ear.

  “Yes?” His eyes shifted to Christopher’s as he listened. “Oh . . . Yes, you’re sure who it is? All right. Take care of that, then,” he said, speaking in Russian. “No, I’ll stay here. Yes. No, come to see us when you’re finished.”

  He set the phone back on his desk without averting his eyes. Then Turov slid open his desk drawer again. He pulled it back farther so Chris could see what was in the center: a handgun, a 9mm Makarov pistol.

  He lifted the gun from the drawer and pointed it at Christopher Niles. Four quick booms sounded outside, then two more. This time, it wasn’t thunder. “So,” he said, “it turns out you’re no more honest than your country is, after all.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Turov kept the Makarov aimed at Christopher’s head. There was a starkness to Andrei Turov’s face all of a sudden, like an actor who’d slipped out of character.

  Seconds passed and the phone on his desk rang again. Turov put it to his ear.

  “All right,” he said.

  He set it down, his eyes still on Christopher. “You made an agreement, didn’t you?” Turov finally said. “That you would come here alone. I’m disappointed you chose not to honor that.” The pupils in Turov’s eyes seemed to darken. “This is why your country has lost so much trust around the world, you know. You pretend to be a moral leader. You think you are somehow entitled to play the world’s police and prosecutor. But you always fall back on your American arrogance and petulance: as soon as your own interests are threatened, you think you no longer have to follow any rules. You think you can break your own agreements.”

  Chris, watching him, was silent. This was ironic, coming from Turov.

  “Tell me, what was your real intention?” Turov said, raising the gun slightly for emphasis, his face still showing no emotion. “You brought your man out here to kill me?”

  “No. Not at all,” he said. “I wanted cover. A witness. I took precautions, in case anything went wrong. This doesn’t have to change our arrangement, Andrei. I can stop this.”

  “It’s late for that,” Turov said. “You have put me in a difficult spot, I’m afraid. Once trust is lost, what do we have?”

  Christopher said nothing. He recognized Turov’s cycle of paranoia: a man whose business is deceiving others always thinks others are trying to deceive him. He ascribes his own motives to adversaries whose real motives may be benign. It was one of the fatal flaws of men like Turov. It was also the case that Turov, despite his peculiar genius, could become stubbornly unforgiving if he felt that someone had wronged him. They were getting into that territory now. “We can still do this,” Chris said, trying again.

  “Possibly,” he said. “But it will be difficult.” Turov continued to point the gun, a faint flush reddening his face. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to end this right now. Chris thought of Anna Carpenter, at her office in the Capitol. He thought of his father.

  Turov reached again for the phone, looked at the readout, and set it down. There was another boom of thunder. Then something closer: this time within the house. A door closing. The squeaking of footsteps. Someone was in the house. Someone was walking down the hallway toward Turov’s corner office.

  Turov extended the gun, pointed at Christopher’s face.

  “Anton?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  “Stand up,” Turov said, motioning Christopher to the door. Then he stood himself. “Go ahead. Go to the door and open it.”

  Chris took several steps across the room. He stopped. Both men listened. Someone was right outside. In the next instant, the do
or burst open. Turov fired two quick shots from the Makarov.

  “No! Don’t!” Christopher shouted.

  Simultaneously, Briggs fired once and Turov staggered back. Then Briggs fired again, twice, hitting Turov in the leg and arm.

  But Briggs’s first shot had gone through his chest. Turov’s gun fell to the floor and he dropped back into the chair, no longer moving. His otherworldly pale blue eyes remained open, facing the doorway, his expression still alert, as if waiting for someone to come and explain what had happened. But there was no light in his eyes. There was no one home anymore.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  There were, Christopher would later explain, three witnesses to the killing. Because no known video existed and because one of the witnesses also happened to be the victim, that left just two men to explain what happened. And two, he thought, was a pretty manageable number.

  The human memory, of course, was famously unreliable in cases like this. Christopher had once participated in an Agency class in which twenty-five students witnessed the same mock crime and gave twenty-five different versions of the event, diverging even on such details as the skin color of the participants.

  Two, though, was a good number, and Chris and Briggs would give markedly similar accounts of what had happened. That there had been, for instance, five gunshots in total: the first two from Turov, the next three from Briggs.

  After the fifth, Briggs had dropped to a crouch, they would recall, his gun still raised in both hands. A long silence followed. They both remembered it like that.

  Andrei Turov had come to his final rest in the desk chair, eyes open, lips pressed together in that firm, reasonable-looking expression. One of his arms was on the armrest, the other on his upper thigh. Chris felt for his pulse and didn’t find one. He had never before seen a dead man who looked so alive.

  It seemed to spook Briggs more than it did Christopher. A shadow of rain flicked on the desk from the window and Briggs raised his gun to Turov’s head.