by Owen Chance
When Petrov finally came home that night, his father was waiting for him in the garden. Petrov slumped next to him on an old wooden swing and his father sighed, “Son, your mother and I don’t care who or what you are. We love you. But you should know there are people who will not love you. Who will want to kill you for who or what you are.” With this his father stood up from the swing, placed his hand on his son’s shoulder, and turned to walk into the house.
5.
In had been nearly a decade since Thom had driven in Moscow, but the quarter master at the embassy didn’t seem reluctant to check out the Range Rover to him. “It’s the only car we have available certified for the ambassador to ride in. Just watch your speed, cowboy.” Traffic was light on a Saturday afternoon, though, and as Thom got on the expressway to the airport, he remembered he was driving a luxury car with a V8 engine and diplomatic license plates. He floored it, topping out at 104 m.p.h., reaching the entrance to the executive airport, usually a 15 minute drive from the embassy, in eight minutes flat. He couldn’t drive back as quickly — the ambassador’s security detail would be tailing them in another Rover — so he enjoyed the car while he had the freedom.
Thom pulled up to the terminal and waited for Anderson, but he didn’t have to wait long. Anderson waved to Thom a few minutes later, pointed his guards to their own car, and climbed into the passenger seat next to his young friend. “God, am I glad to be home. Well. Whatever this country is.” They exited the terminal area and Anderson pointed to an empty cell phone waiting lot astride the tarmac. “Pull in there so we can talk.”
Thom put the Rover in park but left the engine running. “Is everything okay, sir?”
Anderson looked out the window at his diplomatic colleague’s jet on the tarmac, which had just landed, and sighed, “I’m not sure, Thom. You know my friend, Ambassador Popov?”
“Of course,” Thom answered. He’d met the Russian ambassador many times back in Washington. Anderson pointed out the window to a small jet on the tarmac. “He came back to Russia today. Fired from his diplomatic post over a disagreement with the administration.” Thom’s eyebrows raised, but Anderson continued before the analyst could ask, “That’s all I know, Thom, but I’ll need you to look into it because somehow I think this is all connected. This morning, this note was tucked into my newspaper.” Thom read it. Pull the thread, Paul, and the whole world unravels. Thom asked, “Do you have any idea who left this for you?”
Anderson didn’t have time to answer. On the tarmac, Ambassador Popov’s plane exploded, and flames shot high into the air followed by plumes of thick black smoke. “Jesus Christ!” Anderson cried out as the security detail wrangled both Anderson and Thom into the backseat of the Rover. The agents hightailed it out of the parking lot and onto the expressway, radioing into the embassy that they had the ambassador and were returning to base, which needed to be put on lockdown.
Thom and Anderson turned in their seats to look out the rear window. Nobody would survive such an explosion. No ambulance came to the jet, already burning to the ground.
Chapter Five
1.
Even on a Saturday morning, Vice President Adams was in his office by 8:30. Through the window beyond his desk, he could see a few tourists snapping pictures of the White House next door. But most of non-visiting D.C. was still sleeping off their Friday night hangovers, or taking a shower before heading to brunch, or making pancakes for their children, like his wife was doing back at the Naval Observatory. She’d stopped begging him to stay for Saturday morning breakfasts around October.
Now it was April, and Adams enjoyed his Saturday mornings at the office with his chief of staff and only a few others around. Today, he had to reduce some budgets for rarely-used military installations around the world, an attempt to please their Democratic caucaus in congress. He turned on the television atop the French Provencal buffet across from his desk. CNN was reporting live from Moscow, where the Russian ambassador to the United States’ plane had exploded on the tarmac just after landing. Adams knew Andrei Popov quite well. He and Abigail had invited the Popovs over for dinner several times. On most of these occasions, Grant and Andrei had drunk bourbon neats with an orange twist late into the night as Andrei poured over the maritime maps hanging on one of the Naval Observatory’s sitting room’s walls. Popov had been quite the sailor, first in the Russian Navy, and then for sport. Adams didn’t share this love, but did enjoy Andrei’s stories. The two got along surprisingly well, perhaps, for being so often at political odds given their respective countries’ longstanding distrust of the other.
It struck the Vice President as more than coincidental that Popov had been fired at the G8 summit. He picked up the phone atop his desk, thought again and hung the phone up, walking across the room to close his office door. When Adams got back to his desk, he opened the middle drawer with a key he kept on his person at all times and pulled out a slim cell phone. He dialed, waited a second, and then said to the Foreign Minister of Russia, “Gregor, it’s Grant. What the hell is going on over there?”
2.
“I call this open session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to order,” Senator Thomas of Ohio banged his gavel atop the desk, “The chairman recognizes the junior senator from North Carolina, Grant Adams.”
Six years ago, Adams national career began in what might otherwise have been a senate committee meeting watched by maybe a few hundred Capitol Hill staffers on CSPAN. But word had leaked that a new senator was about to expose grave human rights violations committed by one of America’s biggest allies in Eastern Europe. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Adams cleared his throat. He almost didn’t continue. The intelligence he had found was not really found. It had landed in his lap.
Or in his proverbial lap. Three months prior, an unmarked envelope had appeared on Adams’ desk. He was new to the senate, new to Washington, with a new staff and so didn’t think much of it. It sat there for days, and when he finally opened it, the envelope held picture after picture of mass graves filled to the brim. Xeroxed memos stamped top secret explained the graves held dissidents to the Ukrainian government, which had executed thousands of its own citizens and put them in graves deep in the mountains.
Adams was stunned, and if the documents ended up true, he had to act. No matter where the envelope had come from.
“Mr. Chairman, I have been given evidence, now verified by our intelligence community, that the Ukrainian government has been at war with its own citizens for the last three years. Our sources estimate no fewer than 7,500 Ukrainians have died unlawfully at the hands of their own government. This atrocity must be brought before the world, judged accordingly, and stopped.”
Overnight, the junior senator from North Carolina became America’s darling. Though in a few months, he feared that fame came with a price.
3.
Jason sat across from his ex-boyfriend, Steven, in a booth at Ted’s Bulletin on 14th Street. It was a lazy, humid Saturday morning, so they took breakfast slowly, splitting a giant platter called the Hangover Burrito, a side of biscuits and gravy, and two flavors of house-made pop-tarts, strawberry sundae and salted caramel. It was a federal holiday on the front end of tourist season, so D.C. wasn’t as busy as it normally was. Their server was glad to keep refilling Jason and Steven’s coffees as they poured over the New York Times crossword puzzle, filling it in with Jason’s monogrammed ballpoint, a sign the server took to mean a good tip was waiting if he was patient with the couple taking up one of his booths.
But Jason and Steven weren’t a couple. Jason was married to Thom, and Steven had a boyfriend who was a pharmaceutical lobbyist, so rarely in town. Jason and Steven had been a couple for two years before Steven turned down Jason’s marriage proposal. A month later, Steven planned on asking Jason back, to marry him, but when he showed up to the bar Jason went to every Friday, Manny’s Delicatessen in Georgetown, Jason was perched on the bar talking to a man he had just met. That man was Thom.
This was
the third breakfast Jason and Steven had shared this week, in addition to one lunch and two dinners and a movie. But Jason had refused to go home with Steven, acting every bit the pious trust funder Steven knew him to be. Jason was honest with Steven. He wasn’t sure things would work out with Thom, on assignment in Moscow for the last few weeks but emotionally out of commission for the last 18 months. But he wasn’t ready to break his vow. Not yet. “Plus,” Jason told Steven as they puzzled over 17 across, a ten-letter word for a hilarious lion, “A few more weeks and you’ll want to sleep with me so badly the sex will be the best you’ve ever had.”
“Better than the all-night marathon on the dock at your parent’s St. Martinique house?”
Jason laughed, filling in the spaces for 17 across, “U-P-R-O-A-R-I-O-U-S. Uproarious. From the Middle Dutch for comedic confusion, as in, you are an uproarious man, Steven Wesson.”
4.
The Russian foreign minister had been evasive, telling Vice President Adams, “Of course I know nothing about the Ambassador’s unfortunate death, Grant, and I am insulted you would insinuate otherwise.” But Adams had reason to believe the Kremlin might be behind Popov’s death. Adams knew he was beholden to many inside the Russian administration, but Popov had been his friend, however unlikely that seemed. “Before you go, Mr. Vice President, let me remind you how happy our leader is you’ve agreed to join him at the opening of the Russian National Children’s Hospital in a few weeks. I look forward to speaking with you in person. I must go now” The line went dead.
Adams hadn’t agreed to travel to Moscow for the ribbon cutting, but he knew the point was moot.
He put the cell phone back in the desk drawer, locked it, checked again to make sure it was locked, turned off the television, and walked out of his office, stopping only to tell his secretary, “I’m going for a walkabout. Be back in an hour.” His staff was used to this. When Adams had been a marine, he had long border patrols on base in Afghanistan, walking around and around for hours by himself in the middle of the night or under the high noon sun. Adams and the other grunts called these walkabouts, a term they’d picked up from an Australian contractor who’d been killed in Kandahar. And though his walkabouts here in Washington were quite different — it’s hard to be alone with a gaggle of Secret Service agents always tailing you — Grant still found them a small comfort.
He walked through the underground tunnel connecting the O.E.O.B. to the White House, waving cordially to the guards stationed every ten yards. When he came to a secure door, a marine buzzed him through and Adams walked up a stairwell into a back hallway on the outer reaches of the West Wing. From here he walked east, to another set of Marines flanking French doors leading out onto the lawn, which were opened for him so he could stroll the gardens, first rose, then vegetable, and finally wildflower, his favorite spot in Washington that felt more like the back reaches of his parent’s property in North Carolina if he squinted and was able to forget where he actually was.
As Adams walked the reverse path back to his office, he felt better. Or at least resigned to his situation, to the ill-feeling his phone call with the Kremlin had left in the pit of his stomach. He greeted his secretary warmly, “Hi again, Sally. Can you bring me those numbers for our Air Force base in Guam?”
“Absolutely, sir.” He walked into his office and sat at his desk. The middle drawer, the one to which only he had a key and he had double-checked was locked when he left, was ajar. On top of his cell phone lay a simple, but expensive piece of square stationary. In a beautiful cursive it read, Pull the thread, Mr. Vice President, and the whole world unravels.
5.
Jason asked their server for the check as Steven excused himself to the bathroom. His phone rang, a number with a Texas area code he didn’t recognize. “This is Jason Jefferson,” he answered, expecting it to be an F.B.I. field agent or some other D.O.J. business. “Mr. Jefferson, this is Dr. Paulson at Amarillo Memorial Hospital. We can’t seem to get ahold of your husband.” Jason responded, “He’s in Moscow for work. I haven’t spoken with him in a few days, and he might be impossible to reach. Can I help you with something?” The doctor paused, “Mr. Jefferson, I’m sorry to tell you this over the phone, but your father-in-law had a stroke sometime last night. He’s in a coma, and the prognosis doesn’t look good.”
Chapter Six
1.
In the hands of Ambassador Anderson’s two security agents, the Range Rover careened at top speed away from the airport and onto the freeway, where they dodged cars eager to put some distance between them and the executive airport. After an explosion, people flee, generally, and especially in this age of terror attacks, when a single explosion often signals a beginning, not an end. Despite the chaos around them, Thom and the ambassador rode in silence on their way back to the embassy. From the console in the front seat, Thom’s cell phone rang again and again, but he dared not ask one of the agents to hand it to him. It was probably Trey or another C.I.A. coworker checking in to make sure he was okay. Maybe even Jason, if the news was reporting a terrorist attack in Moscow. But was it a terrorist attack? Beside Thom, Ambassador Anderson loosened his tie and sat with his eyes closed, clearly focusing on his breathing and rubbing his temples with his index and middle fingers.
“Can one of you have the office confirm Ambassador Popov was still on that plane?” Anderson finally asked.
The agent in the passenger seat radioed into the embassy, now just a few blocks away, through his ear piece. Even though he was a C.I.A. agent himself, though admittedly one trained specifically in The Company’s cybersecurity unit, Thom marveled at these security agents, how they kept calm in the most high-stakes situations, and all in trim deep navy suits that made them look less United States federal employee and more straight out of an ad in GQ or Esquire. Thom and his friend Nick played soccer with Drew, a State Department security agent such as these. One Saturday, as he pulled the team’s powder blue knee socks up his thick thighs on a bench in Malcolm X Park back in D.C., Drew told them how all agents are required to train with a Buddhist monk, who teaches them that all stress, all pain, all distraction is chosen, and how to meditate on-the-spot, anywhere and at any time, even if bullets are flying around you, so that you can have the laser focus of the Buddha. Thom had, for a brief three-week span during his sophomore year at Emory, dated a Buddhist, a white boy who was, oddly, a business major from Nashville. Thom fell in love with the boy on their first date, but the Buddhist broke off their fling because he had a laser focus that precluded fun and sex and pleasure altogether, a commitment, he told Thom, that just wasn’t fair to a boyfriend.
As they turned the corner and approached the compound gates, already swarming with activity, the agent nodded his head and turned to the backseat. “Sir, I’m sorry but CNN is reporting the ambassador was on board when the plane exploded.”
2.
Petrov sat at his computer terminal in the basement of an unmarked building near the American embassy, a covert office space used by the G.R.U.’s cybersecurity team, who went in and out of a series of doors using a variety of individual keycodes they had all committed to heart. A plane had just exploded at the executive airport, but their boss at the Kremlin had called immediately to tell Petrov’s team not to worry about it, that the Defense Minister and his staff would be investigating. Petrov thought this strange, but his mind was pondering other thoughts. He had lied to Thom, and though the lie about his job — just simple background checks — was justified, he still felt guilty. Petrov liked Thom. Petrov could see himself falling in love with Thom.
Petrov wanted to tell his closest friend at work, Demetri, the guy at the terminal next to him who was the same age and came from the same city as Petrov and with whom he always shared a Thursday afternoon beer at the bar down the street when they left the office, but Demetri didn’t know Petrov was gay. Nobody in the G.R.U. did. Or at least nobody that Petrov had told. It wasn’t easy to keep secrets around here. And though all the core departments of the Russi
an Federation frowned upon homosexuality — a euphemism if Petrov had ever heard of one, he’d heard of the camps, after all — if you were a good analyst and you pledged your loyalty to Mother Russia and didn’t flaunt your life outside of the bedroom, people turned their heads. But this gilded, circuit-boarded closet was not why Petrov had lied to Thom. He had lied to Thom because his unit was tasked with spying on the American embassy, and especially Thom’s friend and mentor, Ambassador Anderson.
It was a slow Saturday in the office, and after a long breakfast with Thom, then making out with him underneath a stairwell in an alley behind Thom’s hotel, Petrov came in to do some communications sweeps he’d fallen behind on. The process was fairly routine. One of his colleagues, Angelina, had been having an affair with an American embassy staffer, a Marine with a gorgeous set of glutes but lacking the sense to not leave his laptop on her nightstand when he went to take a morning shower. Angelina had installed a virus Petrov created on the computer that, once it connected to the secure embassy server, allowed Petrov an entry portal. The spyware worked so well Petrov was able to monitor everyone’s communications going in and out of the American embassy, from the low-level marine himself all the way up to the ambassador, who used not only his State Department email, but also a Yahoo account (mostly just to look at porn). As he worked, Petrov listened to the newest Beyoncé album, then switched to a Modest Mouse record that reminded him of his strawberry summer with Ivan. He allowed his thoughts to wander back there, to the banks of the Volga and the feel of Ivan’s fruit-sticky skin against his own under the blazing July sun. But then his computer emitted a quick, sharp error message.