by Owen Chance
Thom cleared his own throat. “Of course, sir.” He had little clue as to why he was here. The Deputy of Counter-Intelligence had told Thom she was sending him to Moscow, to work directly with Ambassador Anderson, who would brief him upon arrival. He had four days in D.C. to prepare for the trip, a trip for which he didn’t know the length or extent. The story he was to tell Jason, Trey, coworkers, friends, and his family (well, his father was his family, but Thom hadn’t spoken to his father in four years, so the point was moot) was that Thom, a digital systems expert, was working with State to secure a new operating network at the embassy in Moscow.
“Thom, I believe our Vice President is working for the Kremlin.”
Chapter Two
1.
Thom dropped his fork. It clanked on the old terracotta floor of the courtyard and bounced towards the table where the bodyguards sat. In his scramble to pick up the fork, Thom knocked over his glass, spilling wine onto the lab of the American ambassador to Russia, who had just told Thom he believed the Vice President of the United States of America was working for the Kremlin.
“Oh Thom,” Anderson laughed, “for a Company man you’re awful with surprises.”
Thom laughed, too. The bodyguards busied themselves with picking up the utensils as the waitress returned with a warm damp towel for the ambassador and to pour new glasses of wine for Anderson and Thom. She placed a hand on Thom’s shoulder, “Your boss is an intimidating man, but remember, you are cuter.” Thom blushed as she walked away and again, Anderson laughed, “Someone’s got a crush on clumsy ol’ Thom!”
“If only she had met me in college,” Thom sat back down, “she might have had a chance.” Back at ease, the men continued their conversation.
“Thom, I know the Vice President seems like an outstanding guy. Former Marine comes home from heroic service in the worst part of Afghanistan. Goes to Duke Law School and becomes a selfless public defender. Marries his college sweetheart, an beautiful debutante from a well-healed, progressive, and monied Southern family. United States Congressman, then Senator. Hailed a rising star in the Republican Party and appointed Vice President. A shoe-in to become Mackenzie’s successor at the end of her two terms.”
“He certainly doesn’t fit the profile of a foreign agent,” Thom said, absent-mindedly fingering the wedding ring on his left hand. A bird flew into the courtyard, a beautiful, snowy white homing pigeon, and landed on a large topiary in a giant urn. For a brief moment, Thom thought of the photograph framed in the entryway to his and Jason’s condo: a giant black and white print of Nina Simone in a Parisian park feeding pigeons and smiling, a smile that betrayed her quickly deteriorating first marriage. Thom returned his attention to Ambassador Anderson, “Why do you think he might be compromised?”
“No, Vice President Adams doesn’t fit the profile,” the ambassador continued, “But on his last visit here I noticed he didn’t want us around. He kept his detail small and took long dinners at the Kremlin without anyone from the embassy. Very weird, I thought, so I had my Russian source dig around. When the VP left town, my source texted me.”
Anderson handed Thom his phone, open to a secure texting app. Thank god, Thom thought, he’s not using open SMS. The last message on the screen read “Found what you’re looking for. Meet me tomorrow at 1915. Usual spot.”
“What did he find?” Thom asked.
Anderson shook his head. “My source was found shot in the head before we could meet. A robbery, the news said.” But both men knew this was no pickpocketing gone awry.
2.
Vice President Grant Adams woke up at 5:45 in the morning, the same time every day, and every day he ran five miles through Rock Creek Park. Every day he returned to the Naval Observatory at 6:35 to shower, eat his everyday breakfast of half a grapefruit, a small cup of cottage cheese, and a single slice of toast with North Carolina strawberry preserves. After this breakfast, he said goodbye to his two children, and his wife in her dressing room, every day leaving the vice presidential mansion at 7:15, arriving at his office in the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) by 7:27.
Today was no exception. Wednesday, April 14, the day before Americans’ taxes were due, was unseasonably warm in Washington. As his driver pulled out of the Naval Observatory at 7:16, Adams looked to the thermometer on his watch, a tenth anniversary present from his wife. The temperature was already 74 degrees, with an expected high of 85. Driving down Massachusetts Avenue, Adams watched early bird tourists snap pictures of blooming cherry trees in front of embassy after embassy. He smiled, remembering three years ago when he and his wife Abigail (Abigail Adams, yes, an unfortunate but politically opportune name) moved into the stately mansion on a hill above these embassies. How every night that first spring they sat on a flagstone patio and drank rosé.
Before, that is, he began sleeping with one of the children’s nannies, and before Abigail caught them in a gardening shed together. Grant and Abigail Adams had been in counseling ever since, discrete weekly meetings in one of the mansion’s overstuffed sitting rooms, this one decorated with giant, fading maritime maps framed in thick, weathered frames. It wasn’t that the Vice President’s heart wasn’t in his marriage. Quite the contrary. It was the case, however, that his thoughts were elsewhere.
As they turned left off Mass Ave into a garage below the O.E.O.B., Adams checked his watch again. 78 degrees. His chief of staff, Sullivan Andrews, greeted Adams as a Secret Service agent opened the S.U.V.’s door. “Good morning, sir,” Sullivan discretely handed Adam’s a stack of papers, the morning’s business. At the top an invitation to Moscow, the opening of a new children’s hospital, where he was to be the Russian President’s guest.
3.
By the following Friday, Thom was set up in his new office and into his new routine. Every morning he stopped by Nude Coffee & Wine for breakfast, and the baristas vied for the attention of their handsome new American regular. He worked in the office from 9 until 6, checking in with the ambassador once in the morning and once in the afternoon. By 6:15 he was back in his hotel, working out in the gym, having dinner in the hotel bar, and watching Netflix on his iPad until he fell asleep on the sofa in his briefs and a hotel robe, waking up around 2 a.m. to a flashing light somewhere out the window overlooking Revolution Square. Thom and Jason texted a few times during the day, but not a ton. Given the seven hour time difference between D.C. and Moscow, Jason was getting to work as Thom was leaving it, or Jason was getting out of work as Thom was going to bed. Not that they wanted to talk more, not really, and keeping busy at work had been a great excuse during the last year of their marriage. A big time difference was even better.
Thom was beginning to enjoy this temporary life in Moscow, but there was a problem. He still didn’t know exactly what he was doing.
Ambassador Anderson gave Thom full access to the Embassy’s network, which held secure backup of all communications between U.S. officials and anyone in the Russian government. For his first week in Moscow, Thom spent all day pouring over these emails and creating algorithms to search for key phrases. Though he found some juicy tidbits — that the Deputy Ambassador for Arts & Cultural Outreach was sleeping with a married Russian socialite, for instance — Thom knew this was just prelim work and that he wouldn’t find what he was looking for in U.S. government secured email accounts. It wasn’t like the Vice President himself would be exchanging emails with Russian leaders with sign-offs like “Proud to be spying for you! -G. Adams.” It wasn’t like the Vice President wrote any of his emails himself. Even when he was traveling, the V.P. had a whole team of assistants and handlers and Secret Service agents and one asshole of a chief of staff, Thom had heard.
And it was towards the end of his sixth day of combing through emails that Thom found something strange: an email between Ambassador Anderson’s head scheduler and the V.P.’s chief of staff. “The ambassador would like to schedule a small dinner on the final night of Vice President Grant’s visit,” the scheduler wrote. The chief of
staff responded immediately, “We have blocked that time out for a meeting.”
“But a meeting isn’t on the official agenda,” the scheduler wrote.
“It is not. And it will not be a State Department issue.”
As Thom looked for more emails in the thread, Anderson came into his office. “I’m going to a summit in Geneva for the rest of the weekend, but have Natalie patch you directly through to me if you need anything, okay?”
“Yessir,” Thom answered, barely looking up from his computer screen.
“And Thom,” the ambassador waited for his full attention, “Go out and have fun. Who knows how long we’ll need you here in Moscow. You can’t spend every night holed up in that hotel, no matter how expensive it is.”
Thom laughed, “Yessir. I promise.”
4.
The treadmill thumped as Thom ran into his sixth mile. Though he listened to Smashing Pumpkins — a band the first boy on whom he had a crush at fifteen had introduced him to, a straight kid named Jeff who was the only other boy in his sixth period art class back at Amarillo South High School — at deafening levels, Thom could only think about that dead-end of an email between the embassy and the Vice President’s chief of staff.
Billy Corgan whined “Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage” into Thom’s ears, but the chorus was cut off as a FaceTime call came through Thom’s iPhone. It was Jason, and Thom hit accept call when he meant to decline it.
“Hi hon! Are you working out?” Jason asked, walking to work and smiling ear-to-ear across his pale, well-bred face.
“Yea, sorry,” Thom said, annoyed at himself for hitting the wrong button and slowing from a sprint to a walk.
“Don’t be sorry. I like seeing you sweaty,” Jason laughed. Thom remembered how much he hated when Jason laughed at himself. How utterly fake it was.
“How are you? Busy day at work ahead?” Thom asked.
“Busy as hell!” Jason responded, launching into a complicated case he was working at D.O.J. as Thom struggled to catch his breath. Then suddenly, “Oh heyyyyy!” Thom yelled to someone off-screen, returning to Thom, “Honey I’m sorry but I’ll have to call you later. I’m meeting Steven for coffee and it’s hard to hear you…” The video call cut off as Jason walked into the Starbucks beside his office. Apparently, Jason was meeting his ex-boyfriend for coffee.
5.
Thom should have been angry. Or worried. Or devastated. Two years ago, right before he married Jason, Thom met his own ex-boyfriend for lunch at an Au Bon Pain in Union Station. His ex was in town for a meeting but catching the Amtrak back to Boston and texted Thom to see if he had time for lunch. They ate bland salads from plastic containers and caught up for 45 minutes as commuters rushed to trains all around them. That was it. But when Thom told Jason about it that evening, Jason flipped out. Broke a wine glass against the wall and yelled, “I would never meet up with an ex without telling you first.” The well-bred have a knack for hysteria, Thom realized then. And now Jason was making a show of meeting his own ex. Was it just coffee? Thom wondered.
And yet, Thom wasn’t angry. He was perplexed, sure, but mostly relieved. And perhaps a bit sad he felt resigned in this relief.
Thom wiped down the treadmill and took the elevator up to his room. He stripped out of his sweaty clothes and stepped into the shower. Do not cry, he told himself, you will not cry. And he didn’t. He cranked up the stereo as he toweled himself dry, dancing to Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay.” As he rubbed his thighs with the plush hotel towel, he looked in the mirror. Thom wasn’t a vain man, but admittedly he looked good. As his relationship with Jason imploded over the last year or so, he’d spent more time in the gym and more time with his soccer league as he spent fewer evenings at home drinking wine on the couch with his husband. Yes, he looked good. His thighs pulsed as he flexed his legs and admired his own body in the mirror. He fought the urge to jack off. No, he’d go out tonight. His boss had ordered him to, after all.
Thom texted Trey, “Give me a gay bar to go to.” Trey, no doubt sitting in his cubicle back at Langley, waiting for 5:00 and happy hour himself, messaged back immediately, “Mono Bar. Kiss a hot Ruskie for me!”
Mono Bar was located on the northern edge of the Pokrovsky Boulevard Promenade, in an old warehouse where Peter the Great kept ice and curing meats for the royal palace. Just over two kilometers from the Metropol Hotel, Thom walked there in about fifteen minutes. He paid the cover, checked his coat, and walked to the bar, ordering a vodka soda with lime and taking in the scene around him.
Disco balls hung from old meat hooks above the crowded dance floor. It teemed with Russian men. Students from the engineering college down the street. Bankers and lawyers, hipsters and drag queens. Men with Oxford sleeves rolled up, and men who had shucked their t-shirts, tucking them into the backside of their pants. One guy smiled at Thom. Alexi, a barista from Nude. By Monday, Alexi’s female co-workers would be disappointed to find out Thom was, in fact, gay.
Alexi danced with a group of friends to the thump of bad Euro EDM. He waved Thom over and introduced him around. As EDM transitioned into a dance remix of a Justin Bieber song Thom was ashamed to admit he knew, Alexi’s friend Petrov asked Thom if he was ready for another drink. Petrov wore a threadbare t-shirt with the logo of a Russian Army basic training camp, tight across his pecs and a bit short, but charmingly so, on his biceps. His jeans were tight to match, with bright white Puma tennis shoes. But it was Petrov’s face that caught Thom off-guard. Boyishly handsome, buzzed head and square jaw with just the faintest of five o’clock shadows. His eyes were an icy blue Thom had only ever seen on Russian men. When he smiled, Thom could see Petrov had perfect teeth with one exception, the tiniest of chips at the bottom of one tooth that, somehow, made him even more sexy.
“Sure,” Thom said, and Petrov grabbed his hand, leading him to the bar. Petrov was exactly the distraction Thom needed tonight.
Chapter Three
1.
“You’re in Russia now. We don’t mix our vodka,” Petrov said, leaning over the bar to catch the attention of a bartender. Throwing back the rest of his drink, Thom considered Petrov more closely. Thom was only 35, but people always assumed he was around 30. But Petrov, this boy Thom had just met, with whom he was so suddenly taken, no, Petrov couldn’t have been a day over 25. Petrov’s shoulders heaved with each breath as he leaned over the bar. Through his thin t-shirt, Thom could see how his back veered into a deep “v” just above the waist of his jeans, risen slightly to reveal Petrov wasn’t wearing underwear. Thom allowed himself to dream this musculature came from summers on a grandparents’ wheat farm south of the city towards the Black Sea. Summers of thick cut bread with blackberry jam for breakfast. Summers of cucumber soups and sweet lemon cakes for dinner, picnics beside a lake where Petrov and his cousins swam naked, the dimples in their asses flexing as they dove into the always chilly water and their laughs rising as they wrestled to become prince of the family. But this was just a scene from a painting Thom had seen years ago in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. And if Petrov’s t-shirt was any indication, his muscles came from his stint in the Russian army, a stint Thom had yet to find out as past or present.
“Here, brother,” Petrov handed Thom a double shot of vodka with a pilsner back, “Ypa!” They clinked glasses and shot their vodka, followed by a long draw of beer. Thom coughed. Petrov handed him another shot glass, “Ypa!” and they repeated the minor ceremony. Thom coughed again. He had never been a frat boy back at Emory, had never been much of a drinker at all. A remix of Aretha’s “Chain of Fools” began to pulse from the D.J. booth high above them. Petrov grabbed Thom’s free hand, “I love this song! Now we’re ready to dance!”
Thom was an awkward dancer. Petrov wrapped one arm around Thom’s waist, pulled him in tight to his own body, and balanced his other arm, the one holding a beer, on Thom’s left shoulder. Thom’s cheek kept rubbing against Petrov’s bicep as they moved to the mu
sic. The Russian smelled of Irish Spring, the soap Thom had grown up using, all bright clover and the hint of a rushing waterway, or at least the commercials claimed. This smell made it almost like Thom was dancing with a ghost of his former self, before Jason had introduced him to more expensive soaps and lotions and deodorants. “It’s time for you not to smell like a farm boy,” Jason had told him once, before taking him to a cosmetics store on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. But that was a world away. Absentmindedly and with eyes closed, Thom leaned his nose into Petrov’s arm pit and inhaled, forgetting where he was and who he was with. Petrov laughed, “You like it, brother? I’m glad.” Thom shook out of it, “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.” But Petrov, clearly, did not mind.
The song changed. Thom realized he was drunk. Petrov said, “No, no, I like that you like it,” and pulled Thom’s lips to his own. They made out on the dance floor at a gay bar in a country known for a less-than-stellar record of gay rights and where Thom was stationed as an agent of the C.I.A. Thom thought about this, all at once, but didn’t stop making out with Petrov, instead choosing to taste, to savor, the mint of the boy’s mouthwash as their tongues pulsed to the bad E.D.M. encasing them. And he did not think of Jason.
“Where are you staying?” Petrov finally asked. “Metropol,” Thom slurred, but beginning to sober up, “just off Revolution Square.”
“I’ll get us a taxi.”
“No,” Thom grabbed his wrist, “let’s walk.”
2.
It was warm for an April night in Moscow. Given the beer and vodka and their close bodies, neither Thom, nor Petrov, needed their jackets. It was 1:30 in the morning, and they walked down a series of avenues with shops well past closing time punctuated by the occasional bar or brightly-lit hotel lobby. But this part of the city was mostly a business district, so the clubs were now behind them.