by Leslie Wolfe
Numerous pictures, clippings, and Post-it notes covered the corkboard, pinned down with colorful pushpins and tied with yarn. Every color she used had a meaning. Green yarn reflected a verified connection between two people, events, or pieces of information. Blue was for plausible, most likely to be true, yet unverified connections. Yellow marked a suspected connection, while red was for surprising, unverified, wild hunches.
Pictures of several individuals were pinned to the corkboard, together with country names, maps, locations, dates, all organized on a timeline illustrating events that had started taking place roughly two years earlier and had stopped in November of the previous year. That was the timeline of her most recent case: a corporate investigation that had uncovered a terrorist plot. She hadn’t been able to paste a whole lot of information after that November date. Just scattered Post-it notes with single words followed by question marks, her guesses, and hunches, all unverified, pasted on the timeline wall to stay at the forefront of her attention.
Focused intently on the upper midsection of her timeline wall, Alex stared for minutes at the yellow Post-it marked with the X and a question mark. The position of that Post-it with the letter X showed that he was the leader of the entire structure reflected on her timeline. Underneath that Post-it, there were several others listed facts, conclusions, and hypotheses, using the appropriate marker color. She knew he was Russian, rich or well-funded, mobile, and a male. Those facts were written in green. She wondered whether he was working for the Russian government—SVR maybe? The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, or SVR, was just as powerful as the KGB had once been. After all, it was led by mostly the same people and had the same agenda. That Post-it held the letters SVR and a question mark written in yellow marker. Then a little lower, another Post-it held the initial V written in blue. During The Agency investigation, she had learned this valuable piece of information. His initial was V. His name most likely started with the letter V. Last name or first name? Unknown. She knew nothing more. Not a shred of information, nothing. In almost four months.
Absentminded, she almost missed the doorbell chime. Steve’s here, she thought.
“Come right in!”
She started getting up from her chair, extracting her long, slender legs from underneath her and looking for her missing left slipper. There it was, almost buried under the armchair.
When she looked up, Steve was leaning against the doorframe, a look of deep disappointment clouding his blue eyes.
“Hey,” she greeted him happily, “good, you’re here! We can leave in just a few.” She had to reach up and stand on her tiptoes to peck him on the lips. He didn’t meet her halfway, and his kiss wasn’t all that warm.
“Come right in? Seriously?” Steve’s frown was prominent. “In how many ways is that just plain wrong? How can you be so careless?”
She looked at him sheepishly. It was gonna be one of those days, when he treated her like a child. She hated that more than anything.
“Look, I knew you were coming. I had unlocked the door just minutes before you came, really.”
“But that doesn’t make it OK, Alex. Not in our line of work.”
“Yeah, I know.” She sighed, and tried to deter his attention. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. Won’t happen again. Let me grab my bag and we can go.”
She tried to pass by him through the door, but he stopped her in her tracks.
“Not so fast, Alex.”
She turned to face him, feeling her blood starting to boil.
“And this?” Steve pointed at the timeline corkboard. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
She sighed again, trying to calm herself and salvage the evening. She wanted them to have a good time, to enjoy their weekend at the cabin, but she also needed to make a point.
“Look, Steve, this is my home. I do what I want in my home, in my time.”
“I agree,” he conceded, “but it’s unhealthy, and I’m worried about you. You’re obsessing over a case we closed four months ago. It isn’t good for you. You have to move on.”
“I’m not obsessing; stop being a shrink, all right?” Anger tinted the pitch of her voice.
“I can’t,” he smiled bitterly. “I am a shrink, and I can’t just turn that off and pretend I don’t see you heading in the wrong direction, although sometimes I wish I could. The case is over, let it go.”
“It’s not over, not until we find him!” Alex pointed at the Post-it note marked with the letter X.
“We may never find him, Alex. Sam told you it could take years! You can’t live like this. Have you been to work today?”
She blushed and ground her teeth angrily, repressing a groan. She remembered the sweatpants and wrinkled T-shirt she was wearing, her unkempt hair, and lack of makeup. Yep, busted, she thought.
“Brian said he didn’t need me today, so I took the day off.”
Steve paced slowly toward the window, and then pulled back the thick curtains, letting the sunshine in through the sparkling white sheers. She squinted.
“What’s wrong, baby?” His voice was warm, concerned, and almost parental. “Talk to me.”
She stood quietly, unwilling to have that conversation. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d had it, and it would probably be a waste of time again. He just didn’t get it.
“You used to like your job,” Steve continued. “Just two years ago, when you came to work with us, you couldn’t get enough of it. You were so excited, so happy to have the opportunity to do the work we do. What happened?”
“Almost three years,” she said.
“All right, almost three years. But still...You are a fantastic computer engineer, you’re a great investigator, you have this super-intelligent brain, you’re analytical, brave, and bold. Do you remember what you liked the most about working for The Agency?”
She stood quiet, uncooperative. She’d been through this before. Oh God...make the preaching end already, she thought.
“I’ll tell you if you don’t remember.” Steve continued unperturbed. “You liked that you could go inside organizations and right the wrongs you found, making people’s lives better. You liked you could make a difference for so many. You loved to dig around, chase the facts, and find the corrupt, greedy, evil individuals who made everyone else suffer. You loved saving lives. And you loved taking a new client every few months, keeping your mind challenged and alert, helping you learn new things and celebrate the achievement with every closed case and happy client. Where did all that go?”
Silence engulfed the room for several seconds, interrupted only by chirps and trills coming from the birds in her eucalyptus tree. The world outside was alive, was filled with sunshine, life, and happiness, while she was buried here, with her ghosts. Maybe he was right.
“It didn’t,” she finally spoke.
“Huh?”
“It didn’t go anywhere. I still love doing all that; I wouldn’t change it for the world. But my case isn’t over, that’s why I can’t let go.”
“Do you trust me professionally?” Steve asked.
“Sure I do, with my life.”
“Then trust me when I say you delivered your case successfully. The client was happy. You saved the day. You made us all proud: me, Tom, Brian, Richard, Claire, and Louie. Louie would follow you into a burning building; did you know that? And you made Sam proud too, and he’s hard to impress.”
“But somehow I can’t let go. I’m still twisting my mind looking for clues, and there are none. Did we overlook something? Who knows what he’s up to next, our Mr. X? Will we even see it coming? He is scary brilliant!”
“Yes, he is. But if you can’t take any of our advice for it, take Sam’s. We’re all corporate investigators, I agree, but Sam’s ex-CIA. He knows the spy-and-terrorist business better than we’ll ever know it, and he said the same thing. Keep your eyes open, but move on with your life. We might never get to him; he might never resurface again. He might be busy doing time in Siberia for failing
his mission, for all we know. Who the hell knows?”
“We’re definitely never gonna find him if we stop looking, that’s how I feel. Someone’s gotta keep on looking. No one knows we’ve worked this case. Sam’s retired CIA. He’s not active anymore, so he’s not looking either. So, who is? Or who should be?”
She knew she had a point, and he didn’t argue.
“All right,” he said, “what if you continue to search for him, but with a time limit?
Say...two hours per week, not more?”
“I tend to not trust you when it’s about me. You’ve always been overprotective. Will two hours per week keep me sane?”
“Yes, it will teach you to control this urge you have to obsess about the puzzle piece you’re missing.”
“Can I do four?”
“Huh?”
“Hours. Since you tend to be overprotective and all that,” she said, tilting her head to the side in a flirting gesture.
“No. Not more than two hours per week. Please promise me. Go back to doing what you loved to do, put your heart in each client you’re working. If your mind is elsewhere, your work will suffer.”
“This client’s fine, it’s Brian’s client anyway, not mine. I can afford to do it. I’m just support, not that important or essential anyway.”
“Would you be comfortable repeating that statement to Brian?”
She blushed and pursed her lips. Damn.
“Umm...No.”
“Why do you let yourself think that? We’re all risking our lives when we go undercover. Our support is critical, and you know that. You should know that better than anyone. We’re all counting on one another, and we’re all counting on you. When you’re primary on a case, we don’t cut corners on your support, or allow ourselves to become preoccupied by something else.”
“All right,” she admitted. “I’ll give you that. But if I limit this to only two hours, the only question is what would I do for fun?”
He let out a long, pained sigh.
“That’s your choice too. I could be here with you every day, if you’d only let me. We could spend our lives together.”
“No. We’ve discussed this. As long as we work together, we can’t have that type of relationship. Weekends and vacations, and only if we go out of town. That’s it, and I’m not budging.”
His blue eyes didn’t hide his sadness very well.
“You know we talked about it,” she continued in a softer voice, “you know why I can’t. It would be risky for us both, for the entire team. We can’t, and you know that. Even if Tom doesn’t mind, I do.”
“Then let’s get going,” he said, trying to put some cheer in his voice and mostly failing.
She took a quick shower, changed, and got ready for their weekend trip at his cabin up in the mountains near Alpine. He grabbed her bag, opened the door for her, and loaded the bag in the trunk of his black Mercedes G-Class.
Alex turned on her heels and headed back into the house.
“Be right there, I forgot something,” she said, as she closed the door behind her.
She went straight for the blue bedroom. She pulled the window curtains shut, turned on the powerful track lights, and took several pictures of her crazy wall with her phone. Satisfied, she turned off the lights, pulled the curtain that concealed the corkboard shut, and locked the main door on her way out. Two hours, four hours, whatever, but who’s counting?
“I’m ready,” she said, smiling, and hopped in the car. “Let’s go.”
...4
...Wednesday, February 24, 11:39AM Local Time (UTC+3:00 hours)
...The Kremlin
...Moscow, Russia
President Piotr Abramovich, the most powerful man in Russia, felt nothing, if not powerless, that morning, irritated by his prime minister’s continued inability to name a new defense minister.
Arkady Dolinski, the chair of his government, just couldn’t get it right. He had suggested a few names, but none of those generals had what it took to drive Abramovich’s military vision. They were weak, comfortable with their set ways and their overflowing vodka guts. None of them was the crusader Abramovich was looking for.
He missed Dimitrov, his former minister of defense, his old friend Mishka. Abramovich paced his Kremlin office slowly, remembering the last time he’d seen him. Hearing that a critical intelligence operation had failed, Dimitrov had collapsed of a heart attack right there, on that rug, breaking the Bohemian crystal coffee table on his way down. He didn’t die that day, though. He recovered, but Abramovich had no other choice but to announce his retirement to the entire world.
Almost five months later, the defense minister seat on Russia’s government was still empty. Dimitrov’s shoes were hard to fill. Abramovich still remembered the days when they had worked together in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, in Foreign Operations. It was the two of them and Myatlev, all three united by their ambition, their willingness to pay all costs only to win, advance, and lead, and their pledge to have one another’s backs, regardless of circumstances.
Unlike Myatlev, Abramovich’s early life hadn’t benefitted from having a father as a high-ranking KGB officer. His parents had been blue-collar workers in a system that squeezed them dry and spat them out, sick and forgotten. After a lifelong struggle, working twelve-hour days in noisy, toxic manufacturing plants, followed by standing in long lines to buy the bare necessities of food and supplies, his parents didn’t even live long enough to make it to retirement. His mother had died of bone cancer, her screams of pain waking up their entire neighborhood for weeks. His father had a stroke before he reached age fifty, leaving young Piotr to figure out how to survive on his own.
He had sworn to himself he’d never follow in their footsteps. Not him. Let the rest of the Russians sweat their lives away in god-forsaken factories. That life was not good enough for him. He was going to be different. He was going to have it all.
He had to claw his way into the system and hadn’t hesitated in doing so. He’d started at the ground level, at eighteen, fresh out of high school with no other place to go that would have been in alignment with his ambitions. He joined the KGB’s Seventh Directorate as an entry-level surveillance agent, locked in windowless rooms and listening all day to the conversations that key party leaders had in their secretly bugged homes.
Most Russians knew there was no such thing as a private conversation in the apparent privacy of one’s home. The KGB bugged private residences without hesitation, especially those belonging to men and women holding ranks of power in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even though they suspected their homes could be under surveillance, the occasional slipup still happened, and Abramovich was there to hear it, record it, and use it. A political joke told by a visiting relative, a snide or bitter comment, or just the stating of a simple fact, such as the absence of heating on a cold winter day, could be easily taken out of context, manipulated, and turned into a life-ending report.
Abramovich figured out that once he filed his reports, most of the people in question were never heard from again. Inspired by the newly gained awareness of his secret power, he started building a strategy.
His boss was easy to manipulate and quite indifferent, but his boss’s boss, a man named Konev, was a hardheaded, old-school idiot who disliked him and was never going to let him advance. Abramovich spread the seeds of doubt regarding Konev’s allegiances, and then offered to the right people to bug Konev’s home and spend a couple of weeks recording his conversations.
A few days later, carefully edited tapes played back, in front of a shocked audience, the voice of unsuspecting Konev responding to his wife’s comment about the scarcity of meat in their meals with a phrase expressing angrily that the situation had gone on long enough, was intolerable, and he was going to do something about that. Only Abramovich knew that Konev had said that phrase in the context of his ten year old getting bad marks in school. Abramovich had learned how to cut tape, edit, adjust the sound levels to make it
smooth, and recopy the edited pieces onto a brand new tape. He had also learned how to dispose of the fragments, how to destroy magnetic tape without leaving a trace of evidence behind.
Last he had heard, Konev was being shipped to Perm-36, a forced labor camp administered by the GULAG. The GULAG, just as dreaded as it was notorious, was an acronym for the Russian Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements; in short, the forced labor camps management.
Konev never resurfaced; few people who entered the GULAG’s camps ever did. But Konev was not the only one Abramovich had sent to Perm-36; he was just the first.
In recognition for his exemplary work in the identification and capture of an enemy of the people, Abramovich was offered the chance to enter the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. He took the opportunity enthusiastically and started on the path to become a career KGB officer. He was only twenty-two.
At Dzerzhinsky he met both Myatlev and Dimitrov, just as young and ambitious as he was, and their early friendship evolved into a mutually benefitting long-term alliance, forged to help one another propel their careers. They grew to rely on one another, even trust one another to some extent. People like them knew better than to fully trust anyone.
Then Abramovich started ascending to power. His reputation for ruthlessness and his deep knowledge about how to destroy lives parted the crowds in front of him; nothing and no one stopped him on his way up. No one who wanted to stay alive or see his or her family again dared oppose unrelenting Abramovich.
After graduation, he had the choice of service, and he chose to lead a small division within the Fifth Chief Directorate reporting to Lavrentiy Beria, later known to have been responsible for the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR. Fascinated by the incredible power he’d have in that role, he didn’t go for the coveted Foreign Intelligence unit in the First Chief Directorate. Although foreign intelligence was his next goal, he wanted to learn new ways to control opponents, to extract information, and to incarcerate indefinitely without anyone questioning the validity of his decisions. What better place to do all that than the psychiatric unit?