by Owen Chance
If there was a way to guarantee peace between Russia and the West, Anderson wanted to explore it. But he also questioned Plankov’s motives, and knew before he could move forward in favor of such a plan, he needed to know more about the data Popov had been collecting over the last few years. This, too, presented risks; Anderson knew that once he and Thom found out what was on that flash drive, they couldn’t back down from it. He walked over to his bookcase, said “Hello, mother,” and went through his routine of opening the safe tucked inside the urn. He walked the inner chamber to his desk, and took out the items one by one. The passports, the money, the gun. The flash drive, however, was missing.
4.
Thom had asked the ambassador to take his iPad for the time being, suspecting the virus at play was originally snaked through the device, which Anderson always took with him to meetings at the Kremlin or anywhere else in Russia. But also to meetings in Washington and around the world given his position, so Thom knew that if the Russians were playing the long game of espionage and digital surveillance he thought they were playing, the roots of the virus might be too thick or too deep to find. Anderson complained the iPad had been running more slowly since he came back from the G8 meeting in Geneva a few weeks prior, so Thom started there. He hooked the iPad up to his mainframe terminal and scrolled through the device’s memory board to the dates in Geneva. There was a jump in time between activity, a strange hour lapse during working hours when the iPad went dark, but should have been in use. Since Natalie had been in Geneva with the ambassador, and since she kept detailed schedules of his comings and goings, Thom made a note to ask her about this hour.
As Thom jotted this reminder down in his tiny notebook, he received an email alert from his own account. He clicked to delete what appeared to be a message from a spam bot, but then stopped when he glanced at the subject line: Pull the thread and the whole world unravels. Per usual, he hiccupped loudly, bringing his hand to cover his open mouth.
5.
The agents snagged Petrov as he rounded the corner from Drago’s gym on his way to Nude Coffee & Wine, where they knew he would meet Thom and the two would eat oatmeal and sip coffee and read their respective newspapers. Petrov shouldn’t have been walking around the city with his guard down, but he was surprised when the white van pulled up next to him and two agents in ski masks pulled him inside. Luckily, Petrov was trained for this type of situation. He knew to cooperate, to not fight, and to remember the path the van was about to travel, which his training had prepared him to do even when blindfolded as he was now. Unfortunately, these men were trained for this type of situation, too. After they blindfolded Petrov, they injected his arm. Before they reached the next block, Petrov was passed out cold.
The agents took Petrov’s cellphone out of his jeans pocket, using his thumbprint to unlock its screen. “Sorry,” an agent typed in response to a missed text from Thom, “I forgot about a meeting at work this morning.” He shut down the cellphone so it couldn’t be tracked. The van drove east out of the city.
Chapter Sixteen
1.
Three British agents listened to Manchester United play the Liverpool Reds on the radio as they drove the van east out of Moscow on Interstate M7 towards a series of lakes. Lakes where, once upon a time, the czars and czarinas and their dukes and duchesses had summer dachas, lake houses where they would swim and eat strawberries and make love on docks above the clear, deep water as the moon rose above their heads. Where the czars would write poetry for the czarinas over thin, tall rosewater vodka lemonades. During the Soviet era, the great villas were leveled to make way for factories running off the lake’s steam energy. After the fall of the Soviet empire, the area had largely been abandoned, and it lay now in both literal and figurative waste.
After 45 minutes, the van turned south off the highway and drove alongside one such lake. Near the Biserovo Campground, the van pulled into the parking lot of a long-abandoned laundromat. Two more agents walked to the van, and the lot of them carried Petrov’s still body inside, stripped him of his clothes, and laid him flat on a metal table once used for folding the uniforms of nearby factory workers. The agents looked almost like medical students, and they were here to examine Petrov, who looked like the most pristine and beautiful cadaver. They carefully combed over his body, none of them speaking, as if in prayer.
2.
“The mess makes this chicken salad from my mother’s recipe,” Ambassador Anderson told Thom and Natalie. They were sitting on a small but private balcony off of the ambassador’s office overlooking the gardens of the British embassy next door. Thom had requested the meeting, but Anderson had invited Natalie to join them. This made Thom nervous — even though he trusted Natalie, he couldn’t ask the ambassador about the iPad’s dark hour, or update him on the progress of his search for the virus’s origin, or, perhaps most importantly, tell the ambassador that he, too, had received the message about pulling the thread with Natalie, or anyone else for that matter, in the room with them. Something was off about the ambassador, too. Anderson was waxing nostalgic as they ate his mother’s recipe for chicken salad sandwiches with strawberry salads and sweating glasses of iced tea. It was unseasonably warm for late April in Moscow, and the ambassador had shucked his coat. He wiped sweat from his brow with a cloth napkin and continued.
“Though I doubt my mother made it herself more than once, if she ever made it all. We had a cook named Elsa whose twin sister Hillary was our housekeeper. Elsa and Hillary raised me in many ways. When I was a boy, I would sit at the kitchen table after school and do my homework while Elsa quizzed me. Before the war, her husband had been a professor and she a pastry chef at a famous Berlin hotel. He died. Elsa and Hillary came to live with us, and unlike my mother’s sisters, whom my mother fought with constantly, Elsa, Hillary, and Mother laughed all the time. They taught me to play bridge on the summer porch as we ate chicken salad sandwiches. Elsa and Hillary looked so much alike, they’d often try to trick me, trading places for whole days. But when I ate what Hillary cooked masquerading as her twin sister, I always knew and the gig was up. She couldn’t get Elsa’s chicken salad just right, for instance. She always put too much lemon juice in it so that the mayonnaise soured.” The ambassador took a gulp of his tea and cleared his throat. “But they do a good job here. Better than Hillary’s, but not quite as good as Elsa’s.”
The ambassador stared out over the British gardens to the south. Thom wondered when he’d get to tell Anderson what he needed to tell him. Natalie checked something on her phone, “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I need to call the Vice President’s office to confirm your conference call for this afternoon.” Natalie left, and before Thom could tell the ambassador all of his news, the ambassador spoke quietly, never braking his gaze over the gardens: “Thom, the flash drive with Popov’s intelligence is gone. And I don’t know how it could have been stolen, but I’m afraid we might have a mole here in the embassy.”
3.
Ambassador Anderson waited at his desk with the secure phone pressed against his ear. He dreaded the conversation ahead, as he dreaded every encounter with Vice President Grant Adams. But in a surprising turn, Foreign Minister Dimitri Plankov had presented Anderson with a plan for reorganizing the world’s peace-keeping organizations by strengthening the United Nations. He flipped through the dossier containing the Russian proposal, which he planned to discuss with Adams.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Ambassador Anderson,” Adams came on the line, “Are we alone?”
“We are, Grant.” Anderson had considered the possibility that Vice President Adams, if he really was working for the Russians, had coordinated the heist of Popov’s flash drive. But how could he have pulled off such a thing? Nobody but Natalie knew of the safe’s existence in his knowledge, and he trusted her wholeheartedly. Anderson knew the Russians lifted the memory stick, and though he didn’t know how since it had been kept in a very secure box in a very secure room in a seemingly very secure American embassy,
he knew he had to inform the vice president as to its theft, especially since Sylvia Popov herself had asked them to work together to bring her husband some justice, and hopefully, her country some peace. “Grant, I need to tell you something, and this isn’t easy to admit. As you were told, Sylvia Popov did give me a flash drive with intelligence information gathered by her husband.”
Adams felt immediately vindicated, but voicing this would do no good, not now, “Thank you for telling me, Paul.” The ambassador continued, “Don’t thank me yet. The flash drive is missing, Grant. Stolen from a very secure safe only my assistant and I have access to.” On the other end of the line in Washington, Adams gritted his teach. Goddamn it, Paul, he wanted to yell, how the hell could you let this happen? But he didn’t.
He took a deep breath and asked, “The Russians took it, didn’t they?” Anderson sighed, “I think so, Grant. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to ask, but I know you have friends in the Kremlin,” a statement at which both men silently cringed, “Do you think you could do some digging?” Adams knew he couldn’t, or that he wouldn’t, but also that he couldn’t flat-out refuse the request, lest Anderson begin to suspect how deep into the Kremlin Adams actually was. Or, perhaps better said, how deep into Adams the Kremlin was. “Of course,” the vice president replied, “I’ll see what I can find out and report back directly to you.”
“Thank you, Grant. I wanted to let you know as you prepare for the NATO summit next week,” Anderson said, flipping through the dossier in his lap, “that Plankov presented me with a plan for uniting the world’s peace-keeping efforts under the single arm of the United Nations. I was skeptical at first, as it calls for dismantling the African Union, the League of Arab Nations, the Pan-Asian Partnership, and, biggest news for us, NATO itself. But I find the case compelling, and one that could move us towards a more peaceful, demilitarized and economically-thriving, world. I’d like to sit down after the summit and discuss it with you and Plankov. He’s going to be in Madrid, too, you know?”
The vice president dry-swallowed a gulp of air stuck in his throat. “Oh yes,” he managed to say, “His people have already insisted we meet.” Sitting in his office at the O.E.O.B., Adams felt the onset of a heart attack or panic attack or complete and utter breakdown. Again, he cleared his throat, “Mr. Ambassador, if you’ll excuse me, I must go now.” Panicked, Adams hung up the phone. The Russians had found a way to sell the gutting of NATO as a move towards peace, but Adams knew, better than anyone else perhaps, that peace wasn’t the agenda the Russians planned to pursue.
“Grant, Grant, are you there?” Anderson said, but the vice president had already hung up. Before he hung up his phone, too, Anderson noticed something strange. When one end of a secure call is terminated, an automated message usually informs the remaining party they alone are on the line. Anderson waited for the message, but it didn’t come. And for the briefest of seconds, he could swear he heard breathing on the other end of the call.
4.
Petrov woke, frantically checking his surroundings. He was naked, in a soft bed. He forced his eyes to focus. Petrov was in Thom’s bed at the Metropol Hotel, but how long had he been there? His clothes were in a pile beside the bed on the floor. His keys, wallet, and cellphone were on the nightstand, beside the clock reading only 7:30 in the evening. The shower shut off in the other room, and Thom walked in, toweling off his naked body. “Oh!” Thom said, “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Petrov forced a smile, though he was terrified. “You didn’t.” Thom walked over and sat down on Petrov’s side of the bed, leaning in to give him a kiss. Petrov kissed him back, but pulled away quickly. “Thom, this might be an odd question.” Petrov paused. “How long have I been here?”
Thom laughed, “Jesus, you must be tired! I got back from work at 5:45 and you were out cold. I went for a run, got back about 15 minutes ago, and you were still asleep. After you cancelled our breakfast for a meeting this morning, I figured you needed the rest.” Petrov couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He hadn’t cancelled breakfast with Thom. He’d been kidnapped. But by whom? And had he dreamed it all? Or blacked out? And if so, how did he get here to the hotel?
As he began to doubt his memory, Thom looked behind Petrov. “Are you bleeding?” Thom asked, and Petrov turned to see what Thom saw: the tiniest spot of blood on the pillow where he’d been sleeping. Thom turned Petrov’s head to look behind his ear as Petrov reached up to finger the spot. Thom leaned closer and saw it as Petrov felt it: the tiniest scar where a thin, clean incision had been made. Immediately, they both knew a tracker had been implanted into Petrov’s head.
5.
Grant Adams walked through an interior door leading to his chief of staff’s office. “Sully,” he said, “I’ll debrief you later today on my call with Ambassador Anderson, but for now I need to lie down. Can you intercept any calls or visitors for the next hour or so? I think I’m getting a migraine.”
Sullivan thought this strange, as he never knew his boss to take a migraine before, but he nodded, “Of course, sir,” and Adams left him to his work. Sullivan hit the reply button on the top email in his inbox. In his hand, he rubbed the casing of a flash drive, the flash drive Sylvia Popov had given Ambassador Paul Anderson, which had been delivered to his office first thing that morning.
Chapter Seventeen
1.
“You must have hit your head at the gym this morning,” Thom said, holding his right index finger up to his lips, cueing Petrov not to say anything, “But it’s just a small scratch, so don’t worry.” Thom opened the nightstand beside them, moved aside the half-used bottle of strawberry lube he’d bought at the lingerie shop on the other side of Revolution Square, and pulled out the notepad of Metropol Hotel stationary. We need to sweep the room, he wrote, turning the notepad to Petrov, who nodded.
“Turn on CNN,” Thom said, a little too loudly, and Petrov flipped to the right channel, turning the volume way up. In more ways than one, the two were in over their heads. Sure, Thom and Petrov were both intelligence agents, but they largely hid behind computer terminals, where the dangers of terrorism and international plotting were mostly just a series of ones and zeros. They had programmed and wired the bugs field agents put in hotel rooms, sure, but they had never installed them, let alone been the target of such surveillance. As a CNN correspondent reported on a special election in Mississippi and the development of a new “peace” drone by Apple in Silicon Valley, Thom and Petrov tore apart the hotel suite.
Under the cushions of the sofa, they found Thom’s Wells Fargo debit card, which had been missing since his first night in Moscow. Tucked into the pages of a book on the coffee table, a flyer for another underground gay bar, and in the pages of another book, a picture of Thom and Jason on the beach last New Years. All things Thom had tucked away, he knew now, in those first, insomnia-filled nights here. Petrov felt around the lip on the lid to the toilet tank in the bathroom. As he reached the edge beside the shower, where he and Thom had made love that first night together, and many nights since, Petrov pulled a tiny disc from the porcelain, and showed it to Thom. Thom grabbed a glass tumbler from beside the sink and they continued their search. Beneath the lip of the nightstand, they found another listening device, this one, Thom was able to ascertain, with a British serial number. On the bed, they found two more, one American and one Russian, tucked behind either end of the headboard. The headboard where for the last few weeks, Petrov had held down Thom’s wrists as they sweated onto each other until the sheets needed changing. They had put on a good show for whomever was listening, but the performers only now understood their relationship, even in these early stages, had never been theirs alone.
2.
Sullivan Andrews knocked quietly on the door leading directly from his office into Vice President Grant Adams’. “Come in, Sully,” Adams said. Sullivan entered and asked, “How did you sleep?” The vice president shook his head, “I didn’t,” and sat up on the sofa. He looked exhausted, dark bags forming u
nder his eyes and his sleeves rolled up, his tie askew. It was 11:30 in the morning, but on the coffee table before his boss, Sullivan spied a near empty tumbler and the decanter of North Carolina whiskey open beside it. Adams straightened his hair, then his tie, and reached down for his shoes on the floor. “Sully, you saw the president laugh at the prospect of repealing Article 5. I say we chalk it up to naïve thinking and move on. What was the French request for aide in Tangiers?”
Adams put on his shoes, and Sullivan didn’t speak. He was trying to think of how to play this until finally the vice president finished tying his loafers and asked, “Sully? Hello?” Sullivan sighed, “Sir, I don’t think you should let the president, or anyone for that matter, steamroll over you. I’ve spent the last few hours poring over the Russian plan for U.N. expansion that Ambassador Anderson sent over.”
The vice president looked up, cocking his head, “Paul sent that over already?”
“Yes,” Sullivan continued, “Dismantling NATO, however slowly, might seem insane, but imagine: your legacy becomes a peaceful world through a centralized United Nations. And all as vice president! Let’s not pretend like it doesn’t set you up to become the defacto nominee when Meredith is done.” Adams knew his chief of staff was right, but also that his chief of staff didn’t know the whole story. Adams’ secretary knocked on the door to his office, “Mr. Vice President, the car is ready to take you to the Capitol.” He had a long afternoon of meetings ahead, and grabbed an apple off of his desk and put on his blazer, “Sully, let’s talk about this later. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Can I take the plan Anderson sent over with me?”