by Owen Chance
Adams closed the door and walked over to Mrs. Popov. “My wife and I are so sorry for your loss. Abigail is sorry she couldn’t join me today.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President. You mean a great deal to me and my family. Forgive my brevity, but we must take my husband back to the sea. You know how much he loved it.” Grant Adams nodded, “Of course. I understand, Mrs. Popov.” She smiled. “Grant, I have just given some digital information to Ambassador Anderson that Andrei had been collecting over the last few years. I have no idea what it is or what it means or what it might necessitate, but Andrei trusted you and Paul more than anyone else in the United States. And sadly, as of late, more than anyone at all at the Kremlin. Before he left for the G8, he instructed me to give Anderson the drive in the case anything happened to him. I think Andrei knew he was in danger, Grant. Can you work with Paul on this, Mr. Vice President?”
What could Adams say? He took her hand, “Of course I can, Mrs. Popov. For Andrei.” Sylvia’s beautiful, young assistant came back in the room, and Mrs. Popov bid the Vice President farewell.
As Adams walked back through the nave flanked by two Secret Service agents, he worried over this information. What it might mean for him and his family. And how he could work both with and against Ambassador Anderson.
5.
Thom and the ambassador climbed into the backseat of the embassy’s Range Rover. As soon as they pulled away from the church, its spires disappearing behind a row of ancient pines behind them, Anderson pushed a button to raise the sound-proof glass barrier between the front and back seats. He didn’t need to offer an explanation to the agents in the front, used to the glass going up and down at will as the ambassador needed to speak in private with a passenger or on his telephone.
The ambassador pulled a small flash drive from the breast pocket of his suit. “Sylvia Popov just gave me this, Thom. Andrei suspected he was in danger. And he told her to give me this in the case he was to succumb to that danger.” Anderson handed the flash drive to Thom, who turned it over in his hand. “Not an official communique holder,” Thom said, “There’s no Russian Foreign Service stamp or external lock on it. I’ll have to run it and see what we have on our hands.”
Anderson wasn’t surprised his friend was using a personal drive to store information, especially if he suspected he was vulnerable at the hands of his own government. He took the drive back from Thom and slipped it back into his blazer. “Let’s worry about his when you get back from Texas, Thom. Andrei is dead, and whatever is on here won’t bring him back.”
Thom thought this nonchalance odd, but his friend was right. The information would likely be highly encrypted anyway, and he couldn’t make much progress before he left for Amarillo the next day. Jason would meet him there, having booked two rooms at the Hilton, saying he wanted to be there for Thom, of course, but it had been a long time since they’d slept soundly next to each other. Thom pulled out his phone and checked for a message from Petrov. On the day four days prior that both Andrei Popov and Thom’s father had died, Petrov sweetly demanded to go to Texas with Thom.
And yet, Thom’s text messages and phone calls to Petrov had gone unanswered ever since.
Chapter Eight
1.
Thom was, quite literally, travelling back in time.
He boarded a flight at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport at 4:30 on Thursday morning, the day after Popov’s funeral. Thom had tried to sleep after the service, but to no avail. Like the younger college lad he had been, he was nervous about going home. Or about going to the place that had once been home. He arrived in Amsterdam at 4: 15 in the morning local time, with just enough time to catch his long-haul flight to Dallas. At ten hours and thirty-five minutes, Thom was glad Natalie had bucked State Department protocol and booked him in first class. He would need to thank her for this kindness. Natalie had been with the ambassador for 15 years. She had started as his scheduler and risen with him through the ranks of the C.I.A. When he left The Company for State, she left, too. She traveled everywhere with Anderson, taking care of every detail of every one of his days seamlessly, and caring, too, for the people Anderson cared about. Natalie, who never married and never had children and whose personal life was rather a mystery, had a soft spot for Thom, viewing him like a beloved son, just like Ambassador Anderson viewed him.
As Thom sat in his plush first class seat, he took out the small notebook from his pocket, the place he kept copious to-do lists, often in code, and wrote down “thank Natalie.” A flight attendant brought Thom a cashmere blanket and fresh pillow, and he asked her not for coffee or tea, but for a whiskey neat, orange twist. “Are you sure, sir?” she asked him, “It’s only 5:20 in the morning.” He smiled, “I’m sure. I’m trying to sleep and the drink will help.” She smiled back at him, took another passenger’s drink order, and left for the galley. Thom reached into the small backpack at his feet, unzipping the front pocket and retrieving a prescription bottle. Clonazepam, the anti-anxiety medicine Thom rarely took, and hid ever taking from his doctors at the C.I.A. He opened the bottle, dry-swallowed two of the small pink pills, sat back, closed his eyes, and waited for the flight attendant to return with his whiskey. As he drifted towards a tenuous sleep, Thom hummed Ottis Redding’s smash “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay,” snoring lightly by the time he reached the line “Looks like nothin's gonna come my way.”
By the time the flight attendant did return, Thom was dead to the world. She reached over to close the window shade and pulled the blanket up to his chest. Thom didn’t wake up until they began their final descent into Dallas.
2.
The room where Petrov sat was not cold, or damp, or any of the things one would expect for a room used for interrogations and coercions. He sat, not handcuffed or blindfolded, but without his cellphone or laptop or any communications device for the fifth day in a row, on a down-filled sofa slip covered in clean, soft white linen. The sofa was flanked by two buttery leather club chairs and faced a flat-screen television with thousands of international stations. In Russia, Rossyia-1 was reporting on the conclusion of the investigation into the terrorist bombing of Ambassador Andrei Popov’s foreign ministry plane. Chechnyan extremists, the correspondent told the camera, posed beside the tarmac at the executive airport, where planes of foreign dignitaries in town for Popov’s funeral were already taking off. Petrov thought Popov an odd target for Chechnyans, but he changed the channel without thinking twice. The BBC was reporting on protests outside the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh. CNN covered midterm congressional elections in the United States, and Japanese InfoNews featured an interview with an engineer designing metal trusses able to withstand an earthquake measuring an eight on the Richter Scale.
Five days ago, right after the phone call during which Thom told Petrov about his father’s death back in Texas, G.R.U. agents entered Petrov’s office and asked he come with them peacefully. They drove him to another unmarked building beside a small lake on Moscow’s southern edge, brought him to this room. Once there they asked Petrov to spy on his new boyfriend. They asked this quite calmly, and without much hint of asking, but rather telling. Petrov protested at the label of boyfriend, and the agents laid out a series of photographs before him. Petrov and Thom having breakfast at Kabinet. Walking through the park on a bright Saturday morning. Kissing in an alley. Lying together, naked, in a bed at the Metropol Hotel.
Petrov lowered his head. One of the agents cleared his throat, “We will give you some time to think about your decision.” Petrov knew they wouldn’t let him leave this place unless he agreed to spy on Thom, to use him on behalf of Mother Russia.
3.
When Thom landed in Dallas, he was in no rush to get off the plane. He was in no rush to pass through customs and in no rush to collect his single suitcase from baggage claim. He was in no rush to get Amarillo, and that is why he had told Natalie not to book a final connecting flight into his hometown. He would rent a car in Dallas and drive the six hours wes
t.
Which is what he did now. He walked to the Alamo counter and asked for a Jeep Wrangler. As soon as he asked for this car, he laughed, remembering the Jeep he’d driven away from the ranch all the way to Atlanta for college and then north to D.C. for graduate school, a Jeep he’d poured so much money into fixing over the years and only gave up when Jason complained the Wrangler guzzled too much gas and was both irresponsible and juvenile on so many levels, eventually guilting Thom into selling it to some teenager way out in Chantilly, Virginia. But he was asking for the car to go meet Jason now and to bury his father, events he wondered if were leading to an early-onset mid-life crisis. The agent gave Thom a series of forms to fill out, took his credit card and drivers license, returned with the keys, and wished Thom a safe and fun trip.
In the parking lot, Jason threw his bags down next to the slick black Jeep Wrangler, much fancier than the model from his youth he had been fanaticizing about. He worked his way around the car, taking off its hard-shell top and placing the pieces in their built-in compartment. Into the passenger seat he flung his backpack, and in the backseat his suitcase. He pulled out of the airport, and within twenty minutes he was on Highway 287, the two-laner that would take him from DFW all the way to Amarillo.
Thom tuned the radio to a station playing all hits from his teen years in the 1990s. Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls, No Doubt, Matchbox 20, Green Day. This playlist was pure nostalgia, perfect for his drive home, reminding Thom of the hours he spent in his bedroom at the ranch, listening to the radio and thinking, like every teenager thinks, but especially a young gay one on the plains of West Texas, that nobody understood him. It was a parade of songs he hadn’t listened to in years, but songs, it struck him now, he knew every word to. Thom was thankful for the time he had to drive and think before he went back to Moscow. He glanced at his phone. Still no message from Petrov. Why was he so concerned? They’d spent one night together. But it had been the best night he could remember in years, and that didn’t bode well for what he had to think through.
As Weezer broke into chorus — “Say it ain’t so, your drug is a heartbreaker. Say it ain’t so, my love is a life-taker” — Thom’s thoughts turned to Jason. And as he drove for the next five hours, he went back and forth on the likelihood he would leave Texas still blissfully married. When he pulled into the parking lot of the Amarillo Hilton around 6:30 that night, he still wasn’t sure he could fix his marriage. Or that he wanted to.
4.
There were two safes in Ambassador Anderson’s office, both hidden from plain sight. The first, for official State business, was as big as a small refrigerator and installed behind the painting of William Henry Seward overlooking the expansive mahogany desk. It required an elaborate nine-digit code be entered on a keypad and a retina scan. Those with top security clearance with the State Department, mostly Anderson and his deputy ambassadors, had access to this safe, which held mostly correspondence, gathered intelligence information, and diplomatic passports.
The other safe was even more cleverly hidden, as it was placed in direct sight of everyone who entered the ambassador’s office. A large urn placed in the middle of a bookcase was thought, so the plaque upon its base proclaimed, to contain the ashes of Anderson’s dear mother. In reality, Mrs. Jaqueline Roosevelt-Anderson was buried on her family’s estate, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Newport, Rhode Island. A painting of her hung in a building she’d commissioned at Brown University, and a bust of her sat atop a marble obelisk in the lobby of the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters in Washington, D.C. But none of her ashes were Moscow, and in fact, she had not been cremated at all. If one were to slide off the false front of one of the square urn’s sides, one would find a panel with a keypad requiring a sixteen-digit code and an infrared scanner upon which one placed their thumb. The only ones who knew about this safe, the only ones who had the sixteen-digit code and the totally unique thumb prints that allowed entry, were Ambassador Paul Anderson and his trusted assistant, Natalie Simpson.
Anderson walked over to the bookcase and performed his liturgy of secrets. “Hi, mom,” he said, laughing at himself like he always did. Then he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one else was in the room, as if he didn’t already know this, and slid the false side off of the heavy urn. Anderson keyed in the code, a combination of his children’s Social Security numbers and the latitudinal coordinates of his cabin on the coast of Maryland. He then placed his thumb lightly on the sensor beside the keypad. A tiny light flashed once, then twice, in quick succession, followed by the infinitesimal sound of gears unlocking just below the cool marble surface of the container. When the sound stopped, Anderson popped the top off the urn, lifted a graphite colored interior shell up, and carried this to his desk.
Placing the box on his desk, Anderson continued the ritual only he had ever performed. He checked the contents of the box one by one. Two passports bearing his photo but pseudonyms. $10,000 in American dollars, and half as much in Russian Rubles, Japanese Yen, and Euros, all in tight clips ready to be slipped into a coat pocket or briefcase with ease. A 19mm SIG-Sauer P228, standard issue sidearm for C.I.A. agents from 1992 until 1998, and still Anderson favorite weapon in Company history. He placed these items back in the box one by one, and on top of it all, now placed the flash drive Sylvia Popov had given him at her husband’s funeral. Anderson walked the box back over to the bookcase and reversed the process to secure it back into place. “Bye, mom,” he said, slipping the false side back onto the urn.
The speaker on his desk lit up, then Natalie’s voice came through, “Sir, the Vice President is here to see you.”
Adams was in town for the funeral and the opening of a new children’s hospital. It wasn’t so strange, this visit. When he was in congress, children’s health had been Adams’ pet issue. But it was strange the embassy hadn’t been formally notified of an administration official’s visit. Such a supposed coincidence only served to strengthen Anderson’ suspension that Adams was working for the Russians. But he couldn’t turn the V.P. away. “Bring him in,” Anderson said to Natalie.
5.
Jason was waiting for Thom at the bar just off the lobby of the Amarillo Hilton, a combination sports and western-themed bar serving cheap beer and wine and nachos and chicken strips, a bar simply called Reggie’s. He sat at a high-top table with two barstools and a giant glass of red wine the bartender had poured from a box below the counter. Outside the window beside Jason, a few children splashed in the outdoor pool as a man whom Jason took to be their father read a paperback in a plastic white lounger. Thom put his hand on Jason’s shoulder as he approached from behind.
Startled, Jason slipped off his barstool to embrace Thom, though he didn’t kiss him. Thom didn’t kiss Jason either, and neither of them knew if the kiss was missing because of where they were or how they were. “You have to be exhausted,” Jason told his husband, asking, “What can I get you to drink?”
“Thank you, Jace,” Thom said, “I’ll have a BudLight.” Jason sighed, “You can take the homo out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas…” and walked to the bar. When he returned with a bottle for Thom, and a new glass of wine for himself, Jason asked Thom about work, which Thom shrugged off, saying, “Oh, you don’t want to hear about boring analyst shit,” and smiling. Jason didn’t, and he was just being nice. Or stalling. “I haven’t gotten to tell you,” he said to Thom, “Or not really, at least. I know your relationship with your father was strained, to say the least, but I’m sorry he passed before you could see him again. Before you could make things right.” Thom sipped his beer, then snorted, “I’m not sure time would have helped us.” Jason reached across the table and took Thom’s free hand into his. “Are you okay?”
As their fingers laced, Thom suddenly remembered a thing he loved about Jason. How he could push you so far away or hold onto you too tightly, how he’d be so self-centered and unaware he moved through the world in a way very few people were able to, how he’d drive you
to the edge of asking for a divorce and then lightly hold your hand and ask if you were okay and you would know in that moment how much you loved him, have always loved him, will always love him. It drove Thom crazy, but it worked. “I haven’t been letting myself think about it, to be honest,” Thom said, beginning to cry for the first time since collapsing outside the ambassador’s office.
Jason scooted off of his barstool and walked around the table to Thom, taking his husband into his arms and holding him tightly as the man sobbed. If anyone in the bar was looking, neither Jason, nor Thom cared. Thom just pressed his face into Jason’s chest and cried until he was done crying. A few minutes later, Thom looked up at his husband, the man whom he’d been with for the last eight years—many of them happy, even if not all—and kissed Jason, a kiss that caught Jason off-guard, but was returned with a fervor neither of them had felt in a year, maybe even two. Grief does that, and this fact is sickening, maybe, but also honest.
They would not make out in this hotel bar, they were not that kind of couple, so Thom broke the kiss and laughed, “You’re sweet when you want to be.” Jason returned to his seat and took a sip of wine. Thom turned to wipe his eyes and looked out the window towards the pool. A man was dangling his legs into the water, perched on the pool’s edge checking his cellphone. Thom looked up to his face, and his breath caught in his throat. It was Steven, Jason’s ex-boyfriend.
Chapter Nine
1.
Thom didn’t give Jason a chance to answer.