by Derek Haas
“Back to the hatch for you, Marika.”
She nodded and disappeared behind him.
He pulled into the designated lane, and a green-camouflaged border guard approached, an assault rifle strapped to his chest.
“Freight and transit report.”
Clay looked in the glove box. Nothing. He checked the center console. Nothing. Then he spotted a blue folder tucked between his seat and the console. He gave it a quick glance—it seemed official—and handed it over.
The guard opened the folder and looked at it for less than a second. Clay started to hand over his passport—the one whose name would appear nowhere in the file—but the guard just pursed his lips, clucked, and handed the file back.
The gate swung open and Clay drove the truck into Belarus. Sometimes it could pat you on the back, not knowing. Sometimes it took pity on you and focused its attention on your enemies.
Adams walked the city square in Prague at six in the morning. He always loved this city in first light, as it awoke. He had heard a rumor that Hitler thought the city so beautiful, he forbade the Luftwaffe to bomb it. He also heard that Walt Disney had borrowed the architecture of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn for the steeples on Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Apocryphal stories or not, the city’s charm was undeniable.
The sun hadn’t yet shown its face, and the air held its chill. He found one coffeehouse opening its doors and ordered an espresso. His clock was off from the jet lag, so he might as well hit the caffeine and fight the long day. God knew he needed it.
He wondered again if Laura and the girls would accept the news. It might catch them off-guard, but they would warm to it, he was confident. There was more education in travel than in school, and as the world grew continuously smaller, his girls would hold an advantage from having lived abroad. He was already rehearsing what to say.
A shadow fell across his back, and he saw a dull reflection in the polished wood of the long bar.
“Hello, Michael.”
Adams turned, his expression fixed. “Alan.”
“You found the one espresso in Prague worth a damn.”
Alan Fourticq had been in charge of EurOps for the last fifteen years. He had grown up in Manhattan, attended Yale undergrad, then Harvard Law, and had worked for the CIA as an analyst on the team that helped bring down Slobodan Milošević. He had a full head of silver hair and eyes that spoke of a lifetime of intrigue. His smile pulled the corners of his mouth up reluctantly.
“Did I?”
“I guess you’ll be a regular here before long.”
Adams sized up his predecessor. “You’ve heard, then?”
“I’ve spent thirty years in espionage. I have a knack for discovering secrets. Congratulations, Michael. Truly.”
He offered his hand, and Adams shook it. If there was warmth in the gesture, the younger man had a hard time detecting it.
“I’ve been so preoccupied with this damn news and how the other directors were going to take it, I didn’t ask about you…. What are the Agency’s plans for you, Alan?”
“Is there a glue factory for retired spooks?”
Adams chuckled in a way he hoped sounded natural and anticipated more. Fourticq obliged. “I’ve put away some money, built a house in a remote corner of the world where I can take a step back for a while.”
“Hmm. I guess I thought you’d plant in Virginia and consult with the Director.”
“I thought I’d run EurOps until I decided to retire, but like Mick Jagger sang, you can’t always get what you want.”
There it was, the truth dropping on the floor and stinking up the room. Adams didn’t know what to say in response, but he hadn’t risen this far without being able to think on his feet.
“Sorry it didn’t end on your terms. It rarely does in this line of work.”
“No, it doesn’t, does it? How’d your family take the news? Eager to live overseas for a while?”
Had he told Fourticq he had a family? Spooks had a general rule that they kept conversation on the professional level, never personal. Mention of his family was like hearing a false note out of a trumpet. Still, he managed to keep his smile, though it felt unnatural on his face.
“I haven’t told them yet.”
Fourticq winked. “Ah, well. I’m sure they’ll enjoy the surprise. Never had kids myself, but Prague has an excellent American school, you’ll soon discover.”
Adams was eager to steer the conversation away from his family. “I’ll need your help transitioning; I’d be disappointed and at a disadvantage if you didn’t give me a few extra months of your time.”
Fourticq measured him, then nodded. “Of course.”
Adams nodded back, sipped his espresso, and started for the door.
“One other thing,” Fourticq said. “Watch out for Dan Clausen. He made no effort to hide that he was gunning for this job. He’s not going to take the news of your promotion lying down.”
“I’ll watch him,” Adams said, and headed out across the square. The sun was just beginning to rise on the other side of the St. Charles Bridge, but a ribbon of clouds threatened to push it back out of sight before it could make its climb.
They ditched the semi at a train station parking lot outside Minsk, then walked into town, ate chicken and potatoes cooked together in a pot, and stole a tiny car from behind an apartment in the dead of night, but not before exchanging the plates with a car on a street two blocks away. The way to keep the little red ball undetected was to continuously move the shells.
A CIA division director named Adams was to be assassinated in Prague in less than a week. Marika had a strong memory for names and dates, and the level of detail she revealed was remarkable. Layered as it was with precise recollections regarding the inner workings of the CIA, her information was actionable. Someone senior inside the Agency was a longtime conspirator with Russian FSB, but Marika didn’t know who. The name was never mentioned, just the code name: Snow Wolf. Over the last decade, Snow Wolf had handed over technology, operations, and strategy intel in exchange for the most American of reasons to be a traitor to one’s country: cold hard cash. Adams, it turned out, threatened that traitor’s power and therefore had been set up for elimination. When Clay had first started, he’d had a handler named Adams, whom he’d met only a few times. When he was transferred to black ops, he’d forgotten about him. He suspected that the Adams he knew and the Adams scheduled to die might be the same person. He remembered the man as being sharp and fair, and it was little wonder he had risen up the ranks on the analyst side.
Now Clay understood why so many people wanted Marika killed. Power and information were resources to be cultivated at great cost and to be protected at great sacrifice. Her knowledge would expose not just an assassination plot but a traitor. The life hanging in the balance—Adams’s—was just collateral damage to the bigger target, the extent of FSB’s infiltration into US intelligence via Snow Wolf.
Since the time he had orchestrated the burning, drowning death of his uncle, Clay had learned a detached stoicism in his work. He got an assignment, dispassionately executed it, and moved on to the next. But this one had fanned his inner fire, and he felt emotion brewing inside him: anger, hatred, retribution. These men played their games, they moved their pieces, and they minded losing a pawn or rook or queen only if it affected their hold on money or power. He hated them. They passed secrets and lies as easily as if they’d been dollar bills; they counted lives as though they were debits and credits, black and red ink on either side of the ledger. He hated them. They held on to their power with viselike grips and cut down threats to that power as easily as rotor blades cutting dry grass. He hated them. He had bled for his country on countless occasions, and he wondered if any of those assignments had been for Snow Wolf’s gain. His hatred grew, and for the first time since he’d joined the Agency, he had no plans to check it.
The coffee outside Warsaw was strong and warmed his mind as much as his throat. They had crossed into Poland throug
h back roads under the cover of darkness. He preferred to press on, but they needed to eat.
Marika observed him as she blew on her own cup. “You look upset,” she said.
“I guess I am.”
“I worry that what I told you will get you killed by your own countrymen.”
“It won’t.”
“I am the worst thing that’s happened to you.”
“No. Trust me when I tell you I’ve lived through far worse than this.”
“When my mind tries to think of David, a darkness falls over him so I can’t see his face. It was only last week and I can’t see his face.”
“It’s normal. The mind has its own set of defense mechanisms, like a porcupine’s quills.”
“That man yesterday. The truck driver…” She shuddered.
“He ran girls from Russia to brothels in Eastern Europe. It was just a matter of time before he got what was coming to him.”
Marika fell silent. A plate of eggs and sausages was brought to their table, and she pushed them around with her fork. He hadn’t seen her smile in so long. He wanted to see her smile.
“Did you know they have a nickname for me inside the Agency?”
She looked up and shook her head.
“They call me the Right Hand.”
She pointed to her right hand and wriggled the fingers. “The Right Hand?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“I will tell you, but you have to promise me that you won’t laugh.”
Her eyes softened and she took a bite of her eggs. She didn’t know where he was going with this, and that suited him. He had heard a comedian once say that the first rule of comedy was surprise.
“It was my first job in the field. Intelligence indicated that Iran’s energy council was secretly hiring German scientists to assist them in enriching uranium at their facility in Natanz. Secret delegates from Iran’s nuclear program were to meet with a leading physicist under the guise of attending a conference in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. My mission was to intercept this scientist, named Tomas Zimmermann, and persuade him to discontinue his relationship with the Iranians.”
“Persuade him how?”
“That was left to my discretion.”
She drew a finger across her throat and made a questioning face.
“I hoped that wouldn’t be necessary, but I wasn’t going to rule anything out.”
She opened her mouth again, but he interrupted, smiling. “Would you like to hear this story or not?”
“Of course!”
“Thank you. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, Abu Dhabi. I arrive there under the guise of an American student attending the same conference. I was quite young at the time, in my mid-twenties, and I wore a short beard and the round glasses of an intellectual.”
She grinned, picturing it. He felt emboldened. There was that smile. He hoped for more.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“It’s the biggest bullshit you’ve told me so far,” she said, then covered her mouth with her hand to hold back the laugh.
“Maybe I’m not saying this in Hungarian correctly. I was an intellectual.” He used the word for student.
“Yes, you are saying it correctly. Continue, please….”
He pretended to be offended, but he had her now and he was pleased. He kept a half smile on his own face, as if his tale could spin into the absurd at any moment.
“So the conference is at the Palace Hotel, which is the most opulent building, let alone hotel, I’ve ever seen in the world. The ceilings are literally made of gold, and they even have an ATM machine in the lobby that will spit out gold bars instead of cash.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“You have my word. So they have this enormous conference room the size of a football field, and I sit in the back with a notebook and a suitably bored expression on my face and wait for Zimmermann to speak. He’s the third speaker, and his language is German, which I barely understand, and there’s a translator but I forgot to pick up the headphones I see everyone else wearing, so I just nod my head and pretend to take notes like I’m fully absorbed in what he is saying. And let’s face it, even if I did understand German, I’m not sure I would follow his talk comparing nuclear fusion energy and hydrogen energy or whatever the hell he’s talking about.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I spot three Iranians—hard-looking guys with unfashionable short-sleeved buttoned-up shirts and khakis that say these guys belong at an intellectual conference even less than I do. And they’re watching Zimmermann with these malevolent expressions, like really threatening postures. I recognize the one seated nearest me as a known terrorist who aided Al Qaeda in getting arms into post–Bin Laden Iraq. Anyway, dangerous guys.
“And you must remember, I’m new at this. I have no idea if I’m sticking out like a sore thumb or if I’m blending in the way I hope. Maybe they’ve already made me and I’m a rubber duck in a shooting gallery. I have no idea. My mission is to dissuade Zimmermann, remember. It has nothing to do with tussling with Iranian hostiles, so I’d be wise to avoid them.
“So I look over again and the Iranians are gone and I breathe a sigh of relief. Zimmermann finishes speaking and I have to wait through three more equally boring, equally esoteric speeches before we break for lunch. Now, I know, because I’ve watched him, that Zimmermann is going to head back to his hotel room to eat by himself instead of joining the buffet for featured speakers. I also know the elevator to his floor is a good fifteen-minute walk from the conference room—this hotel is truly preposterous in its dimensions—and so I set out to tail him. The Iranians are nowhere in sight; I’m sure they were equally bored as I, and whatever money and information they’ll be exchanging with Zimmermann is to be later that day. I wait for Zimmermann to step into the elevator alone before I follow him inside.
“I let him press the button for nine; then I press the same so he’ll think I share his floor. We ride up in silence.
“I need more time than I would have on this elevator ride to properly convince him of the error of his ways, so I decide I will discreetly tail him to his room and then push in behind him and we’ll have a little chat.
“So the doors ding nine and we disembark and no sooner do I slide out of the elevators than the three Iranians swing in behind me and I feel this knife in my ribs.
“I act startled, which is what you’re supposed to do to maintain your cover, but the truth is I am startled. What the hell was I thinking, right? The one with the knife croaks at me in Arabic to move, and I pretend not to understand, but they’re not amused and they push me into Zimmermann’s room: 901. He’s got a suite the size of an apartment and they shove me rudely down into this chair in front of a small table and two of these Iranian sons of bitches pull my arm out and hold it down so that the palm of my right hand is exposed flat on the tabletop.
“Zimmermann slides across from me, looking like the spitting image of Dr. Mengele, and he asks me in perfect English who I am.
“Now, I have a cover story. I am a PhD student at MIT, studying the ramifications of Haramein’s paper on the Schwarzchild Proton or some shit I’ve completely forgotten now, and I think I’m convincing. I look the part; I sound the part.
“The doctor smirks at me, takes off his glasses, and starts wiping the lenses with the tail of his shirt, very slowly. ‘Now,’ he says to me, ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions any student at MIT should know about physics, and if you get one wrong, I’m going to nod at Salaam here and he is going to chop off your hand, understood? Once Salaam is done chopping, perhaps you will be more forthcoming about who you are and who you work for, umm-hmm. Or perhaps you would like to tell us now, while you still have your appendages, hmmm.’
“I have spent the last three months learning all I can about Zimmermann and physics, but I’m no scholar, much less an MIT graduate. What can I do, though? Blow my cover and they’ll kill me straightaway. Try to answer the questions and buy myself more time. T
hat’s the first thing they teach you at Langley: do whatever it takes to buy yourself more time. You just never know how the game will break, and time is as precious a commodity as gold.
“So I repeat that I’m telling the truth, I am who I say I am, and I beg for him to believe me, to call MIT, to call my roommates—and again, this is an Academy Award–level performance, but Zimmermann remains unimpressed.
“The two goons have my arm pinned down, that right hand exposed, and Salaam picks up the biggest, sharpest knife you ever saw and poises it over my hand like it’s a guillotine.
“‘If you are who you say you are, you have nothing to worry about,’ says the doctor. I can’t remember what I said then, but he keeps rubbing those lenses with his shirt. They must be caked in mud the way he keeps rubbing them. ‘Ready?’ he asks. I’m sure I begged him again to stop, but he keeps on.
“‘The reason your head jerks forward when coming to a quick stop is best explained by what?’
“I look at Zimmermann, at Salaam holding that knife, at my right hand, which is about to say bye-bye. Then this answer pops into my brain; I don’t know where it came from, what textbook I had pored over in preparation for this assignment, but my mouth is quicker than my mind and I blurt out, ‘Newton’s first law. Objects in motion stay in motion unless an external force is applied. Your head wants to stay in motion.’”
Marika started laughing and clapped her hands. “You knew the answer!”
“I don’t know how, but I knew that one. It was basic physics, I guess. Really, I thought he’d try something harder, more germane to his field and why he was here speaking at this conference.”
“And so you kept your right hand!” She looked as if she wanted to point to it, but his hands were in his lap, under the table.
“I’m not done.”
Marika’s eyes lit up, delighted there was more.
“So Zimmermann frowns and Salaam looks over at him expectantly, but the good doctor shakes his head. I think it’s over, I’ve passed the test, but Zimmermann isn’t finished.
“‘One more,’ he says. ‘A fifty-fifty chance. Answer correctly, and you can leave here whole. Incorrectly and I’ll feed you your right hand myself. True or false? For any pair of surfaces, the coefficient of static friction between the surfaces is less than the correspondent coefficient of sliding friction.’”
