by Owen Chance
“Paul, do you recognize this man?” she pulled a photograph from her red leather bag and slid it to Anderson. A young man in tight jeans and a leather jacket going into a bar. He squinted, and thought, “No, I don’t recognize him.” She slid another photograph to him, the same man, but this time leaving the bar with his arm around Thom, the C.I.A. agent whom Anderson had brought to Moscow. Vanessa knew this, and continued, “The boy with Thom is Petrov Lubyanka. He’s one of ours, Paul,” meaning an G.R.U. agent.
Anderson was shocked. “They’re already tailing him? Jesus. I thought I’d at least get a few months before y’all figured out he wasn’t just here to install network cables.” Vanessa shook her head, “Honest to god, Paul, this was a happy accident. They were actually tailing Petrov. One of the asshole G.R.U. agents had found out Petrov was gay and ordered he be followed, to see if he was doing anything that could embarrass the bureau.” They both sighed, and Vanessa continued, “I know Paul, I know. Our president and his ministers can fuck any girl in sight, but the second someone with the least bit of power in this country is gay. Well, I don’t have to tell you.” She paused. “Petrov is a good man, Paul, a boy who is the son of intellectuals and who believes in the future of this country, not in returning Russia to its past. I don’t know everything, but I’ll keep digging. I know they’ve asked him to use his relationship with Thom, whatever it is, to undermine your operation. And my guess is he had no choice but to say yes.”
Anderson’s shock turned quickly into worry. He coughed, “This is news, Vanessa. I care for Thom very deeply. If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom.” Anderson stepped into the bar’s grungy restroom and used a paper towel to turn on the sink, splashing his face with water. He didn’t know why Thom would cheat on his husband, but more than that, the ambassador was concerned he’d put his friend, the young man he viewed quite like a son, in harm’s way by bringing him here in the first place. He looked at himself in the mirror. He steeled himself. They had to figure this out. He would return to the table, take off his coat, order drinks for himself and Vanessa, and they would come up with a plan. Vanessa shared Paul and Popov’s concern over the American vice president’s coziness with the Kremlin. But now Popov was dead. Vanessa and Paul had to see this operation through.
Anderson returned to the booth, where Vanessa had finished her beer. She lay slumped over the table though, and he rushed to check her pulse. Vanessa Striknovik was already dead.
Anderson’s years in the C.I.A. had trained him to immediately move to safety in the face of danger. He quickly glanced around the bar. It had not been busy when he came in, but now it was completely empty. Even the bartender was gone. A note was sticking out from underneath Vanessa’s glass. He picked the note up and read it. Pull the thread, Mr. Ambassador, and the whole world unravels. Anderson knew he was in trouble, and that he needed to get back to the security of the embassy now.
He turned, pushing open the back door and rushing out with his hand on the pistol in his pocket. As soon as he cleared the doorway, a two-by-four struck the ambassador square in the shoulders, and he slumped forward, just in time to be sucker punched in the kidney as he fell to the ground. As he fell he managed to pull the gun out of his pocket and twist around. Pointing the pistol at his attacker, he asked, “Who the hell are you?” The man was not a typical bodyguard type, but a slim man of northern Russian origin, with pale, almost translucent blond hair and pupils so large his eyes looked like black marbles staring down at the ambassador. He didn’t answer Anderson’s question, but went straight for his own gun.
Paul Anderson fired six shots in quick succession. They hit the man square in the face and neck, killing him instantly. The shots reverberated off the brick walls all the way up the interior façade of the building, and soon, Anderson knew, the police would be there. Blood was spewing everywhere, covering the ground in a wide circumference and saturating the concrete and brick.
Anderson’s attacker had fallen down upon him, so he threw the man off as quickly as he could and stood to run. The ambassador was covered in blood, dripping from the tips of his overcoat and clogging in his already thick red hair. He lifted his right foot and jumped a bit to loosen his shoe from the concrete, landing in another puddle of the mystery man’s blood. “Fuck!” Anderson yelled. But there was nothing he could do about it now. Before running back through the bar and out to the Range Rover down the block, Anderson reached down into the man’s back pocket and pulled out his cellphone, taking it back to the embassy for Thom to sweep for information. He would have to bring Thom back to Moscow tonight, and bring him in on how dangerous this whole mess had just become.
5.
Trey’s cell phone rang as they finally began to come down off their high, sitting cross-legged on Thom’s childhood bed playing Uno and eating long-expired Ritz crackers they’d found in the pantry alongside a can of spray cheese. Trey glanced at the phone and picked it up, “It’s Langley,” he said quickly, “Put on your serious face,” and they both giggled.
After a brief pause, Trey handed the phone to Thom. “Thom, are you there?” Ambassador Anderson asked. He’d tracked Trey and Thom down all the way out at his father’s ranch through Langley, so Thom knew this was serious, and he sobered up quickly. He’d never heard Anderson sound so worried before. “Yessir,” Thom answered.
“I’m sorry to do this under the circumstances, Thom, but I need to get you back to Moscow stat. How soon can you get to the airport?”
“In Amarillo, sir?”
“Yes,” the ambassador replied, and Thom told him in just under an hour, that he’d need to get his stuff at the hotel but that it was on the way. “Good,” Anderson said flatly, “A Learjet will be waiting for you.”
Thom and Trey hightailed it to the airport, stopping at the Hilton only to throw Thom’s stuff in the backseat and then using the airport’s valet to return the rental Jeep. They were escorted to a private hanger and onto a Learjet stamped United States Department of State on above the eastern facing wing. An Air Force captain greeted them, “Hello gentlemen. Thom, I’m taking you all the way to Moscow. We’ll stop in D.C. to refuel and drop Trey off. Buckle in.”
They followed the captain’s directions and were leveling out at cruising altitude less than 15 minutes later. Trey unbuckled his seatbelt, “You look like I need a drink,” and walked over to the jet’s small bar. He pulled out a bottle of vodka and mixed double shots in two glasses, then stirring ginger beer atop. Finally, he squeezed a lime wedge into each and walked back over to his friend, still gazing out the window. Trey handed Thom one of the drinks the men clinked glasses. “A Moscow mule for my Moscow mule,” Trey said, and Thom smiled, although the smile was clearly panicked.
PART TWO
Chapter Twelve
1.
Thom landed in Moscow as the sun began to rise at the end of executive airport’s landing strip. He had slept on the long flight, Amarillo to Washington for refueling, where he briefly stood to hug Trey and thank him for everything, then onward to Russia, though he’d only slept in starts and fits. He was worried, and now carried around a box with his father’s ashes, his father who had left him upwards of four million dollars when he died. But the money and his father were the least of Thom’s worries right now. Who knew what awaited him back at the embassy.
Before leaving Amarillo, Thom had picked up his bag and cellphone at the Hilton. After drying out in an ice bucket of rice overnight, his iPhone came on, though the coloring on the screen was all screwed up. He’d missed several increasingly frantic calls and texts from Petrov, and though he wanted to ignore these — it was Petrov who had ghosted him for the last week, after all — he texted him. Sorry. Dropped phone in pool. Be back in Moscow tomorrow. Petrov replied, When do you land? But Thom ignored this text and boarded the Learjet.
As Thom disembarked the jet to a very unseasonably warm and humid morning, Petrov waited for him at the base of the plane’s stairs. He smiled, and Thom wanted to give him a what-the
-hell death stare, but couldn’t help but to smile back. The two met halfway and Petrov kissed Thom like Thom hadn’t been kissed in years, full and deep on the lips without any hint of pulling away. “How did you know when I’d get here?” Thom asked. Petrov cocked his head and laughed at the question. Of course Petrov easily found the flight plans. “I owe you an explanation,” he told Thom, “Let me drive you to the embassy.”
2.
At a round table in a minor dining room of the Grand Kremlin Palace, built originally for the czar and czarina to take their breakfast, a room overlooking a courtyard with a minor orthodox cathedral built for the private use of the royal family, sat three men: Russian President Nicholai Vasily, Foreign Minister Dimitri Plankov, and American Vice President Grant Adams. A trio of servants mirrored the three, serving the leaders lemony filets of salmon caught by the president himself alongside chilled beets and a salad of wild greens and pine nuts. Adams knew the Russian president, unlike many heads of state, preferred rustic meals. But as he followed the president’s lead and took his first bite of fish, he wondered if being a man of the people was lost when eating in a dining room flanked by three servants and overlooking a private, even if minor, cathedral. He wondered, too, if President Vasily wanted to return Russia to the age of empire, and to install himself, quite naturally, as the empire’s king.
As if he sensed Adams’ thoughts, President Vasily dismissed the servants, “That will be all, gentlemen. We will ring if we need you.” Vasily, Plankov, and Adams ate in silence for what seemed like an hour, but was actually less than two minutes. The president, Adams knew, would have to speak first. Finally, Vasily sat down his fork, wiped the corners of his mouth with the soft linen napkin, and cleared his throat. “Grant, if I may?” he asked. Adams nodded, and the president continued, “Minister Plankov informs me you are resistant to back a Czech call for a repeal to Article 5 of the NATO charter?” A Czech plan, Adams thought without speaking, that’s rich; the plan, he knew, was coming straight from the men in this room. “Mr. President,” Adams began to speak, but was interrupted, “Please, call me Nicholai.”
This was strategic. Just like the classic bad-cop-good-cop they had played in the marines with prisoners back in Afghanistan. Here, though, Plankov was the bad cop and Vasily was the good cop, asking Adams to call him by his first name. And Adams was the prisoner, a mule whipped to do the Kremlin’s bidding. A Moscow mule. “Sir,” Adams continued, “We are not friends and I would rather use your title. Mr. President, even if I wanted to see Article 5 repealed, which I don’t, President Myers and the American people would never go for it. Let alone the other NATO nations, who will think the amendment is a joke the Czech delegation is trying to play on them. And not a very funny one.”
Vasily slowly chewed a chunk of salmon, reaching his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and pulling out a frail, long, thin bone. He held the bone in the flame of a candle at the center of the table, and it quickly burned to a pinch of ash and fell to the melted wax pooled below. He cleared his throat, and Adams wasn’t sure what the president was about to say. But instead of speaking, he rang the bell beside his table setting. The servants returned to clear their dirty plates with the precision of a synchronized swimmers. The plates cleared, they returned with thin slices of strawberry cake and small pitchers of fresh cream for each man, which they placed in silence and left.
President Vasily poured a heavy portion of the cream onto the cake, and sighed, “Grant, we are not stupid. We know your president, your people, and the other NATO nations will not want to repeal Article 5. But as we see it, you don’t have a choice but to convince them otherwise.” He took a bite of the cake and licked his full lips, the faintest “mmmmmm” escaping them.
“Sir,” Adams finally said, “As I told the foreign minister, release the information about my affair if you must.” Adams knew the leak would be hard for his family, and his approval ratings would drop. But he’d been thinking about it all day. Plenty of men in power had survived such revelations. And given the nature of his affair, the BDSM, the dom/sub play, the piss fetish, he might even win over young progressives, a demographic he’d always struggled to connect with. He smiled, and took a bite of the cake dripping with the sweetest cream. Even if there would be horrible days ahead, it felt good to be released of his duties to an enemy state.
Vasily didn’t seem phased, however, and he swallowed another bite of cake before instructing simply, “Minister?” Plankov pulled a thick file from his briefcase and laid it in front of Adams. Adams didn’t want to open it, but after a minute curiosity won over. He opened the front flap and found a sheath of correspondence between himself and the Kremlin. It began with the Kremlin providing the information of the Ukrainian genocide to Adams senate office, “That foreign relations hearing made you famous, it gave you real power,” Vasily said quietly, “We gave you real power.”
The dossier moved forward in time, ending in correspondence from just yesterday, an email between Vasily and Adams where Adams agreed to push forward the Russian agenda at the NATO summit. “But none of this is real. No one will believe you!” Adams protested. Again, Vasily wiped his mouth calmly and set his fork down, having finished his dessert. “Will they not?” he asked, “After all, the information you presented to the C.I.A. and State Department regarding our Ukrainian neighbors has always been a mystery. And if you were willing to sleep with a young Russian dominatrix, would it be so hard to believe that you’ve been working with us as well? Honestly, Grant.”
Vice President Adams swallowed. He knew it would not be so hard to believe he’d committed treason.
3.
Thom thanked Agent McKesson, who was waiting at the side of the runway in a Range Rover to take Thom to the ambassador. “He wants you there right away,” McKesson reminded Thom, who replied, “I know. This won’t take long.”
Petrov led Thom to an S.U.V. parked about fifty yards down. As soon as they were safely inside, Petrov tore down a road parallel to the runway and stopped only briefly at the security gate to flash his G.R.U. badge. He pulled onto the expressway, but instead of heading east into Moscow, he turned west. “Petrov,” Thom said, “the ambassador needs me back at the office.” Petrov frowned, “I know, I know. There’s a beautiful bend at the river two exits down and I want to talk to you. We will hurry.” Soon Petrov was pulling off the highway and into a small nature preserve. At this hour, nobody was There yet. He parked, “Walk with me,” and they got out of the car.
“Thom, I’m sorry,” he said as they exited the parking lot onto a wooded trail leading down to the riverbank. “I tried to get ahold of you, and I can’t offer much in way of an explanation, though I hope you understand. You see, you and I are both in the intelligence business, and sometimes our countries call upon us and we must go. Last week, I had to go. I can’t say much more than that, but…”
Thom put up his hand to stop him, “I understand, Petrov. I do. All too well.” He paused, “And though it was sweet of you to want to go home with me, it might have been better you weren’t there.” Petrov asked him about his trip, and Thom wondered how much he should tell him, deciding, “Complicated. But you should know I’m single now.” Petrov smiled, then frowned, “I’m sorry. Are you okay?” Thom smiled, too, and nodded, then Petrov asked, “And are we okay?”
They had reached the last bend of the trail and now walked out onto a wide, sandy river bank shaded by towering willows filtering the morning sun beautifully onto them. Thom didn’t answer. He pulled Petrov into him and kissed him.
Soon, they unbuttoned each other’s shirts and dropped these to the ground behind them. Petrov kneeled and traced his tongue alongside the waistband of Thom’s jeans, sending shivers up Thom’s spine. Petrov kissed his oblique muscles lightly, tenderly, passionately, then faintly licked up Thom’s happy trail and a small circle around his belly button. He worked his way up Thom’s torso to his chest, playfully, but sensually teasing Thom’s erect nipples with the very tip of his front teeth. When
he reached Thom’s neck, then earlobes, they unzipped other’s pants and pushed them to the ground, followed by their briefs. The two boys stood there on the riverbank naked and hard like they were teenagers again, back in Samara or Amarillo.
But as they made love, both boys were glad they were men now.
4.
The vice president left the Grand Kremlin Palace in his motorcade after what had been, thus far, the most consequential dinner of his life. They drove along the Moskva River to the airport, where Adams would return to Washington and prepare for the NATO summit. As he watched barges move up and down the river, Adams wasn’t sure what he would do. He wasn’t sure if he was heading towards or away from the death of his career, of his literal death, or both. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and dialed Abigail. It was just after lunchtime in Washington, and she was leaving a luncheon for an architectural restoration society. “Hi Grant,” she said, “I’m so happy to hear from you,” and genuinely, she was. Adams thought about how his wife was too good for him, too loving to him and the children and the country, and how he didn’t deserve her. “Hi babe,” he said, “I was thinking, why don’t you take the kids down to the Outer Banks for a few days? I’ll join you on Thursday after my NATO prep is done, and we can spend the weekend on the beach.” She loved the idea. Adams loved his family, and thought this might be the last vacation they took together.