The Right Hand

by Derek Haas

  His parking space was closest to the door, and he crossed the garage, entered the seven-digit code into the keypad, and arrived in the vestibule, closing the door behind him. No signs marked the building, the garage, the vestibule, or the elevator.

  Adams pulled out his key card and slid it into the slot next to the elevator. The elevator car arrived in moments and whisked him up to the seventh floor.

  When most Americans think of Central Intelligence offices, they think of Langley on the East Coast, the George Bush Center for Intelligence, and men in suits shuffling past marines to get to conference rooms featuring wall-to-wall computers loaded with the latest technology. In reality, there are seven of these domestic district offices spread out across the United States; besides Virginia, there are offices in Miami, Dallas, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles. They look like accounting firms, with ten-years-out-of-date furniture, bland cubicles, and cream-colored walls. At least the computers are fairly new, Adams thought; they did run Echelon programs with the latest encryption software. Resources went into technology, not feng shui furniture.

  Staffers worked the phones. There were no weekends in Intelligence, no holidays. These men and women were among those who had sewn the very fabric of this country but would go forever unrecognized. Adams admired the hell out of them. Hell, he was one of ’em.

  He had climbed the ranks from a junior analyst position when he’d joined the CIA to a case officer—a handler, in popular parlance—with a stable of five field operatives under his direction, to case supervisor, where the number of field operatives quintupled to twenty-five, and here he was at age forty-five, heading the second-largest district in the Agency. Only Laura knew what he really did for a living; everyone else thought he was in risk management. Coming up on the analyst side instead of the field side, he’d been able to marry his college sweetheart and have a family. Though one or two analysts in the course of the sixty-five-year history of the Agency had been caught stealing sensitive documents, they weren’t targeted by foreign intelligence the way field officers were. They could lead normal lives, as long as they didn’t mind the fluctuating hours.

  He stopped at the desk of Warren Sumner, a recent Princeton graduate he had pulled out of Washington to be his assistant.

  “How we doing?” Adams asked as he approached.

  “Hovering right around fine, sir.” Why can’t Warren just answer a question like a normal person? Adams thought, but he said nothing, only smiled. Warren continued, “DCI just called…I said to hold, you were in the elevator on the way up, but he said call back when you got behind your desk.”

  Adams grimaced. “Thanks, Warren,” he said as he headed into his office.

  “One more thing.” Warren held up a finger, and Adams waited, half in and half out of his doorway. His demeanor said that his assistant had better get on with it.

  “I received a sit-com report from Eppie in Havana. I went ahead and gave him the parameters you described at the debriefing Wednesday. If I overstepped…”

  Adams frowned and shook his head. “No, it’s fine.”

  “I would’ve waited for you personally, but I knew you had this Director call….”

  “It’s fine, Warren. Good job.” Adams’s assistant beamed. Adams had told Warren a long time ago he was looking for an assistant who would step up, would reach further than his grasp, would be able to anticipate needs and fulfill requests before he was asked. Warren Sumner had exceeded even these lofty expectations. Adams prided himself on his ability to find good people, raise smart, qualified lieutenants, and Sumner would undoubtedly make a good case officer in the near future. Still, there was something a tiny bit off-putting about his obsequiousness; he was like a dog you like having around but wish wouldn’t lick the dirt off your toes.

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it. Getting the Director now.”

  Warren reached for his phone, and Adams shut his door.

  A minute later, he heard Director Manning’s voice on the other end of a secure line.

  “Howdy, Michael.”

  “How are you, Andrew?”

  “All right. How’s the family?”

  “Everyone’s great. Thanks for asking.”

  “I heard you got away to Ojai for a few days?”

  “I did.”

  “You have to recharge your batteries every now and then or this job’ll eat you alive.”

  “Yes, sir.” Adams wondered if the Director was in one of his talkative moods or if there was a point to this call. He got his answer.

  “Tell me what you know of a field officer named Austin Clay.”

  “One of the best I ever supervised. I mean, I was a new case officer at the time….”

  “You ever get a disloyal vibe off him?”

  The Director was asking if Adams thought this officer could be turned. They had ways of making euphemisms out of everything in the intelligence game…no one ever wanted to be on the record for anything, even the Director.

  “Never once. What happened to him? I heard he—”

  “Thanks, Michael. When are you headed to Prague?”

  “Next week.”

  “Right. Have your man schedule it so you get a day in DC. I want to talk to you in person before you go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  The phone went dead in Adams’s hand.

  He returned the receiver to its cradle, and Warren almost immediately knocked on his door. “Come in.”

  “You want to go over your calendar, sir?”

  Adams didn’t immediately answer. Austin Clay. Clay had worked the field all over Europe and the Middle East and in those early days had been Adams’s go-to hot spot guy. Langley had moved the officer out from under him a long time ago, and he hadn’t heard the name in years.

  “Your calendar, sir?”

  Adams snapped back to the present. His calendar. Prague. That was going to be a hell of a meeting…the other district office heads jockeying for a European appointment.

  “Yes. The Director wants me for a day in DC on the front end of it.”

  “On it,” Warren said, and headed for the door.

  Chapter Five

  CLAY DROVE the commandeered Mercedes to the nearest parking lot—at some sort of factory in a town with too many consonants in its name—and stole a nondescript gray van. He drove it to the next parking lot and repeated the process twice more in a shell game meant to buy him a day or two of anonymity, if he was lucky. Stealing a plane would have been nice, but piloting one was always something he thought he’d learn to do someday in the future. Why did Russia have to be some damn massive?

  He got lucky with his last steal—a fairly new Lada hatchback with a Russian road map in the glove box. If he pushed, he could make it to Vladivostok in three days while keeping off the main highways, at least for the next thousand miles. He hoped for a bit of leeway as new agents were brought up to speed on him—this man who kept dispatching his pursuers. He hoped they wouldn’t figure out where he was going. He hoped Nelson hadn’t yet confessed to the existence or location of the stepbrother.

  Off the main motorway, rural Russia might as well have been trapped in the nineteenth century. Roads weren’t paved, endless farms rolled by the window, and towns were little more than a couple of communal buildings. If he was lucky, he’d find a gas pump, if not a station. He located shady, secluded spots where he could sleep for a few hours during the day and tried to drive mostly at night, pinching just enough petrol and food to avoid attracting attention.

  Traffic was minimal during the night. He stumbled upon an unmarked military base of some kind, and congestion picked up as he negotiated his way around jeeps, trucks, and transports, but if he looked suspicious in his little beige Lada, no one seemed to notice. At least the excitement temporarily broke up the road’s relentless monotony. Soon the military machinery faded behind him and he was back alone on the road. Once he misjudged his spot on the map by a good thirt
y kilometers, but he kept the dash pointed east and soon picked his way back to a listed road. He knew he needed to report in to Stedding at some point, but he felt he was making progress without sounding any alarms, and he didn’t want to risk a break-in if he didn’t have to. His scent, he hoped, had disappeared from the hounds charged with hunting him.

  After three days of bumping along back roads, praying that a sudden storm wouldn’t muddy things up, he jogged back to the main motorway that headed into Vladivostok. The sun was out and felt warm on his face.

  Clay’s stomach cramped, and he realized he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. He was narrowing in on Vladivostok from the north but wasn’t sure how far he had to go. When he saw a small motel with a few cars in front, he eased into the lot. Smoke was curling up from a stovepipe affixed to the roof, and he could smell meat cooking. His stomach made some noise, presumably to voice its approval.

  Inside, the motel was dark, with a low wooden ceiling that barely cleared his head. A small desk to the right must have been for reception, but it was unmanned. Two long wooden tables stood a little farther into the room, with benches on either side, occupied by simply, inelegantly dressed customers. The smells of eggs, potatoes, butter, and roasted beef mingled with cigarette smoke and formed a wreath around his head.

  An overweight man wearing what looked like a smock gestured from a kitchen door to a seat at the end of the second table. The man spoke Russian with a flat, hollow accent and said something along the lines of “Please, sit,” but Clay wasn’t sure he’d interpreted it correctly. He moved to the indicated seat and sat down heavily. A plastic bowl was immediately filled with soup, and Clay nodded at the family staring at him before digging in. He was expecting something bland and was surprised by the flavor; extreme hunger has a way of making everything taste gourmet.

  A girl of no more than six sat closest to him. She stared brazenly, watching as he dipped his spoon again and again into the bowl. Her mother pulled her in tight to her side, a hen protecting her chick. Her father sat across from her; he was a big man with a curly black beard and eyes spaced too far apart.

  “You’re a traveler?”

  Clay nodded as he scooped up another bite of the soup. “Driving to Vladivostok.” He could feel two tables’ worth of diners straining to hear what he had to say.

  “Wonderful. It is nice to see men traveling these roads again. We live in Ussuriysk.”

  Clay kept shoveling the soup into his mouth. He didn’t want to be impolite, but he wasn’t keen to make conversation, either. His soup bowl was whisked away when he finished, and a plate of meat and potatoes replaced it. There was not a green vegetable or a ripe piece of fruit in sight, but he didn’t mind.

  “We grow wheat. This is my wife, Dina. Our daughters are Oksana, and Lidya is the one who hasn’t stopped staring. My name is Pavel.”

  “Ivan,” Clay said, and tore into the meat. The potatoes tasted more of butter than of well, potato, but he couldn’t bring the food into his face fast enough.

  “What brings you to Vladivostok?” Pavel asked happily. He shook out a cigarette and lit the end.

  Clay stopped eating long enough to put a smile on his face and say, “I am a playwright, Ivan Parinshka. Just visiting the university.”

  Pavel beamed. “Oleg works at the university!”

  Clay felt his throat tighten, but he kept his face blank. All eyes turned to the man seated one table over, directly behind Pavel. Pavel turned and clapped the man on the back warmly. “Oleg, say hello to Ivan. He is coming to visit your university!”

  The man named Oleg spun on his bench, wiped his mustache with his napkin, cleaned his hands, then stuck one out to Clay. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you,” Clay said, and returned the handshake. He was suddenly full and put his fork down.

  “Did I hear you say you are a playwright?” Oleg asked. He had dark brown eyes that shone with intelligence, a sharp contrast with Pavel’s vacant expression.

  “I am. From Moscow.”

  “Will you be speaking at the linguistics—?”

  Clay interrupted before he could finish the question. “In what department do you teach, Oleg?”

  Oleg smiled. “International Relations.”

  “Fascinating. You must spend much time traveling, then?”

  “Oh, yes. I stayed a few months last year on the Korean peninsula. I will be spending another few months in Japan next year on an exchange with Waseda University.”

  “Wonderful,” Clay said, standing up abruptly. “I would love to talk more with you, but I must be on my way. Perhaps if I find myself with a minute, I can stop in and see you in your office, Oleg.”

  Oleg looked mystified to discover that the conversation was ending and that this man could have finished his plate so quickly. Clay found the cook with his eyes and gestured for the check. The man grunted something about four hundred rubles.

  Pavel stood and shook his hand. “Must you be leaving so quickly?”

  “I am very tired and would like to get on with my travel. How much farther is it?”

  “No more than one hour twenty minutes straight down the M60.”

  Clay fished some money out of his pocket and put the bills on the table next to his plate.

  “You didn’t tell me where you are speaking at the university. Perhaps I can come hear you speak?” Oleg said just as Clay began to move away.

  Clay stopped and turned back to the professor. “I’m attending incognito, I’m afraid. I am writing a new play about a student. I am just attending to observe student life.”

  “I see,” Oleg said. “Well, please stop in to say hello to my colleague Sergei Trushin in the journalism school. He would be delighted to interview a playwright from Moscow.”

  “Sergei Trushin,” Clay repeated, pretending to commit the name to memory. “I will certainly do that, Oleg. Thank you.”

  “With pleasure,” Oleg said, and turned back to his dish. Clay nodded at the family and headed for the door, ducking his head to avoid bumping the ceiling. He replayed the conversation in his mind all the way to his car but couldn’t see any mistakes in it. Still, he cursed his stomach for speaking up when he only had an hour and twenty minutes to go before reaching the university.

  The stepbrother was named David Czabo. Clay hoped the difference in the surnames—Czabo and Csontos—had thrown FSB off his trail and they hadn’t found the connection Nelson had found.

  He entered the biotechnology building and passed the classrooms in search of the faculty offices. The university felt modern and clean, a stark contrast to his last week out in the backwoods of Mother Russia. He was clean, too. He had called Stedding as soon as he’d found a phone on the outskirts of town. Within three hours, Stedding had gotten him a room at the fine Azimut Hotel and a closet full of clothes his size. Every now and then, Steddy liked to remind Clay how resourceful a handler he could be, and how fortunate Clay was to work with the best.

  He passed several closed office doors and arrived at an open one, inside which a bearded academic sat over papers. The name on the door read Zagrevsky.

  “Professor Zagrevsky?” Clay asked as he knocked and entered.

  “Yes.” The man looked up and then back down at his work immediately.

  “I am Boris Antopov, with Central Ministry.”

  As expected, the professor looked up. His fingers went to his beard and scratched nervously.

  Clay put on his warmest smile. “Biotech division.”

  “Yes?”

  “You have a student here named David Czabo.”

  “Yes, yes. Fine student, David.”

  “I wish to speak with him, but my assistant did not give me his living address and the office is closed in Moscow due to scheduled renovation.”

  “To speak with him? What is this concerning?”

  Clay’s smile spread. “Concerning ministry business.”

  The academic frowned. “I see. Well, you are in luck with your timing. I have class with Da
vid Czabo in just over an hour. I will introduce you upon his arrival, yes?”

  “Thank you, Professor Zagrevsky.”

  The academic nodded and returned to his paperwork as though the intrusion had never occurred.

  Often, Clay’s missions involved stalking prey. He could wait patiently for hours, days, weeks, hiding in the shadows, as undetectable as the proverbial white spider on a white flower. He could observe and make notes, search for weaknesses and defenses, plot the best way to intercept, confront, or control his target. Patience was never a problem for him; it was a component of his childhood, long hours looking at an endless roll of waves on that damn boat.

  But stalking wasn’t an option here. There was simply no time. He hoped he had beaten FSB to Vladivostok, but he couldn’t be sure. So he had spoken to Professor Zagrevsky for a specific reason: he wanted to frighten his quarry. More often than not, frightened quarry scuttles back to its nest.

  It didn’t take long to prove this theory correct. David Czabo ran like a spooked squirrel as soon as the professor opened his mouth, bursting from the utilitarian classroom corridor and out the nearest door.

  Clay sprang after him, marginally concerned about the way this incident looked in front of dozens of faculty and students, but Russians come from a long tradition of keeping their eyes shut and mouths closed. The professor would tell everyone that Czabo had “government trouble” and probably leave it at that.

  The kid was agile. He darted across the campus, leapt a bicycle rack like an Olympic hurdler, and stole between cars into the street. Clay wasn’t concerned. Pursuit wasn’t always about overtaking prey.

  Clay hung back just far enough to let Czabo think he had lost him. It wasn’t fair, like putting an amateur into the ring with Ali. The kid tried to execute a couple of evasive maneuvers, doubling back on his trail, darting into a shoe store to watch across the street, but Clay tailed him as easily as if he’d planted a GPS chip in his backpack. After a half hour, the kid poked his head out into the street, now wearing his jacket inside out. It almost made Clay snicker. Almost.