Before Gaia

by Francine Pascal

  “I think I understand,” he said tentatively.

  “And I do want to touch you, Tom,” she said, feeling her heart leap from her throat and fall to the ground when she said it. She began to feel like either the ground was shaking or her legs might be giving out on her. “And I want you to touch me.” Yes, and now she felt thoroughly sick and light-headed and dizzy. It was all so unexpected. All these crazy fears. God, if only she didn’t have all these crazy fears…

  She dropped back down on the bench and tried to gather herself. But Tom was next to her before she had the chance to harden.

  He stared at her profile as she stared out at the water. Now she couldn’t even look at him. She was terrified. Terrified that he might try to kiss her… but much, much more terrified that he wouldn’t.

  Thankfully he did.

  He cupped her face gently between his two hands, maybe to savor it, maybe to give her a moment’s warning. But that was all the warning she would get, and it was all the warning she would need. She craned back her neck and fell into his hands as he pressed his lips to hers, taking in whatever breath she had left—taking every bit of her elation and desire and fear and breathing it in.

  And for at least this moment, buried warmly in his arms in the freezing cold, with the wind kicking up off the river and the moon lighting their way, she believed she always could be fearless. As long as they were together. And now she knew that they would always be together. They’d be together until the day she died.

  Doubtful Whispers

  “OLIVER… MY FRIEND,” NIKOLAI said, with his thickest smile of the night, “I think maybe we are good friends now, uh? Are you my good friend?”

  “Well, absolutely!” Oliver agreed, raising his glass high in the air. “You’re the best friend I’ve got, Nikolai!” He downed another vodka shot, barely noticing that the sting of the booze had long since disappeared.

  “Shhh.” Nikolai laughed, clamping his hand rather forcefully on Oliver’s shoulder to quiet him down. “No need to be so loud, my good friend.”

  “Sorry,” Oliver slurred. “Sorry,” he whispered, proving to his good friend Nikolai that he could in fact whisper if he needed to.

  “Good,” Nikolai said. “Much better.” He slid his chair an inch closer to Oliver’s. “So, my friend… about working together…”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” Oliver laughed, smacking himself on the head. “That just flew right by me. You want to run that whole scenario by me again?”

  “Of course,” Nikolai offered generously. “I run it by you as many times as you need, my friend. Okay,” he began, locking his eyes with Oliver’s. “It is like this. I work for some people. Some very powerful people. And these people are very interested in Katia, you see? She is extremely important to these extremely important people.”

  “Uh-huh.” Oliver nodded.

  “Now, these people,” he went on. “They think, and I think, that you could help us. You could help us to win her over, you know? Win over her trust.”

  “And how would these people know that?” Oliver asked, with a sly drunken smile.

  “Well.” Nikolai smiled back. “My ‘people.’ They hang around a lot. They see things. They know things. Maybe I could even say to you, my friend… they know everything.”

  Oliver had suddenly begun to realize what this sounded like. And somewhere way back in the recesses of his head, there was a tiny little sober Oliver that had begun to scream at him, telling him to leave the bar immediately and go find one of his superiors at the Agency and report this. But sober Oliver was miles and miles away. Drunken Oliver could hardly hear his echoing voice so far off in the distance. And right now, in all honesty, the way drunken Oliver was feeling about the Agency, with all their disappointed blank stares and doubtful whispers about his capabilities… right now he truthfully didn’t care if he was having this conversation or not. Not tonight, he didn’t.

  He probed Nikolai’s eyes dizzily. “I’m too drunk for euphemisms,” he admitted. He would just need to ask him point-blank. “Are you KGB?” he asked quietly, trying not to fall off his chair as he leaned forward.

  “Good.” Nikolai nodded. “The direct approach. I like that. It shows character. Yes, let’s be direct, Oliver. This will make things so much clearer. Am I KGB? No. This is what many people believe, and I let them. But I don’t work for those bureaucratic dinosaurs. I’d have to be a fool, uh?” Nikolai laughed quietly. “No, my people are far more powerful than KGB. Their intelligence is far superior—in every sense of the word. More powerful than your precious Agency, too, I think.”

  “Ah, we’re not so precious.” Oliver laughed. Stop talking like that! little sober Oliver was screaming from the bottom of some well in his brain. But he wasn’t being serious. He was just playing. He was just blowing off a little resentful steam, that was all.

  “You’re wiser than I thought.” Nikolai grinned.

  “You better believe it,” Oliver said with not so comic pride. “You want wisdom?” he asked. “Well, how about this… I get it. More powerful than the KGB or the CIA? The Organization, right? Why don’t you just come out with it? You work for the Organization.”

  No agency knew enough about the Organization to truly understand it. All anyone could really understand was just what Nikolai had said. They seemed to be more powerful than any government agency, maybe for the sole reason that they were not a government agency. They seemed to consist entirely of international terrorists and blacklisted agents who’d simply been too smart or too power hungry to stick with the Agency. They were mercenaries, spying for the highest bidder; whether it was the U.S. government or moneyed neo-Nazis, they didn’t care. That was what made them so ruthless. They weren’t in it for honor or justice or country. They were in it for the money.

  “I’m impressed,” Nikolai said. “Then you know of us?”

  “Know of you?” Oliver huffed. “I’ve been trying to break one of your damn codes for the last month. Who the hell does your encryption? ’Cause he’s losing me my goddamn job.” Oliver drunkenly dropped his head on the table with a self-deprecating laugh. Yes, at this point he’d pretty successfully drowned little sober Oliver in that well deep inside his brain. Drunkenly joking about national security, Oliver? Jesus, what has happened to you? But he knew the answer to that. Two things had happened to him. Two things that he could never in a million years have even conceived of happening in his entire young life. (1) He had fallen in love. And (2) he was screwing up his job. He might as well have been another person. On another planet.

  He looked back up at Nikolai, who was laughing heartily at his encryption joke. “Yes, well, you see?” Nikolai said. “You’ll never solve that code, my friend, because you’re on the weaker side. You should come over to our side. Why try to break the codes when you could be making them, uh?”

  “Yeah.” Oliver laughed, too. “Working for a bunch of terrorists and anarchists. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “No, but you are missing the point,” Nikolai said, finishing his laugh and becoming more serious.

  “What’s the point?”

  Nikolai leaned in much closer, and it was clear that he was done joking. “The point, my friend?” he said. “The point… is Katia. We know you want her, and so do we. It is like I said before. We want the same thing. And if a man as exceptional as you and an organization as exceptional as ours want the same thing… well, if we worked together, how could we possibly not obtain that thing, you see? It’s rather foolproof logic, I think.”

  “What do you mean, obtain her?” Oliver asked. “Obtain her how? And who are these ‘very important people’ who are so interested in her?”

  “Look…” Nikolai began, pouring out what was left of the vodka into Oliver’s glass, which Oliver quickly swigged down without thinking. “Have you ever heard of the First Principle?”

  Oliver just stared at him blankly. In other words, no.

  “The First Principle,” Nikolai said. “It is the guiding principle of our enti
re organization. It is how we obtain all of our intelligence and the basis for all of our operations. Let me educate you. The First Principle states that when you have a ‘mark,’ you must earn that mark’s trust slowly, you see? You take as much time as necessary to earn their trust fully, and then you have complete control. Once you have earned their trust successfully, well, then you can tell them what to think, you see? Then you can have whatever it is you want.

  “That is why I have been sent here,” he went on. “I came to New York to win over Katia’s trust. There is only one problem,” Nikolai explained, raising his finger in the air like a pompous schoolteacher. “I make her sick.” He laughed, drinking down the rest of the vodka in his glass. “You see? I tried to strike up conversations, you know? To get to know her, but nothing. It’s the same with five or six other of our men, Oliver. Each of them has tried to get a little closer to her. To win her trust, you see? To win her over so that they could deliver her to the interested parties.”

  Oliver had come to realize that he was never going to hear exactly who these interested parties were. What had she gotten herself wrapped up in? It must be something that went back to Russia. All the interested parties were Russian. Except, of course, for him. “So we are thinking that is it,” he said, raising his arms up in a big shrug. “You, with the perfect American face. You, with the brains and the charm. She likes you. I tell this to all my superiors. I tell them I can see it even from the back of the club. She likes him so much, I tell them. He could win her trust. He could win her love, even.”

  Oliver would have been lying straight through his very numb teeth if he said he didn’t love to hear this. Apparently Nikolai, a complete stranger, could see what Oliver thought he’d been seeing, too. Spy or no spy, he could sense it even from the back of the room. That Katia was singing to him when she sang. That she was falling for him all those beautiful nights of the last month.

  “Now you are beginning to understand, I think.” Nikolai smiled, searching deeper in Oliver’s eyes. “We need fresh blood, Oliver. A new face with a new perspective. We need an American face. The perfect American face. That could be you. A simple deal I’m offering. You help to deliver the girl’s trust to my people, and we help to deliver the girl of your dreams to you. Simple.”

  Oliver’s head was swimming. Not just with inhuman levels of alcohol, but also with confusion and resentment and more confusion. He had taken an oath when he joined the Agency. An oath to protect the world against a world of nefarious people just like Nikolai. But goddamn, if the man wasn’t offering the one thing Oliver couldn’t resist… Katia… Katia, who should have been with him tonight, at this very moment… not out on a date with his brother after they’d been dating for a month? Ridiculous! So utterly ridiculous! When did you become such a selfish son of a bitch, Tom?

  But a moment more, and thank God, Oliver’s senses snapped back and slapped him in his own face. What the hell was he thinking here? Was alcohol that demonic a drug that it could alter one’s thinking so completely? Yes, he supposed it was. For a moment there, he had actually felt more connected to a self-proclaimed terrorist than he had to his own twin brother. And that was when Oliver finally remembered exactly where his alliances were. And exactly what insanity looked like. And maybe what it felt like, too.

  “God, what the hell am I doing here?” he said finally, staring ashamedly at the empty bottle of vodka and the repulsive little sly smile still pasted on Nikolai’s face.

  “You are seeing my point.” Nikolai laughed, slapping him again on the back. “That’s what you are doing. You are recognizing a good thing when you see it.”

  “Get your hand off me,” Oliver slurred, swiping Nikolai’s arm off his back. “This conversation is over,” Oliver stated, standing up out of his chair and using every ounce of his will to maintain his balance. He leaned down and pointed his wobbly finger in Nikolai’s face. “I can’t believe I was cursing my own brother because of you. Of all the pathetic things I’ve done tonight, that is the worst.”

  Oliver turned away from Nikolai and started for the door, but Nikolai suddenly grabbed his arm with a surprisingly firm grip and turned Oliver back toward him.

  “Your brother?” Nikolai scoffed. “Is that what’s standing in your way of working with us?”

  “Let go of me,” Oliver insisted, drunkenly debating whether or not to snap his neck with one swift move. It wouldn’t be the honorable thing, but what on earth was honorable about Nikolai?

  “Please tell me you’re not that much of a fool.” Nikolai snorted. “Believe me, if you want to talk about morality here, then you are certainly the one who deserves her. Not him.”

  “What are you talking about?” Oliver asked in spite of himself. “Let go of me.” He broke his wrist free of Nikolai’s grip, but he didn’t walk away. He wasn’t sure why. “What do you mean, ‘a fool’?” he asked. “Why am I a fool?”

  “No,” Nikolai said, standing out of his chair. “You are right. Why listen to me over him? You ask your brother what I mean, Oliver. You don’t need to hear about all our surveillance. You ask him. But make sure he tells you the truth this time. Not that nonsense he was giving you in his apartment. ‘On my honor as a soldier’ and all that nonsense. Disgusting. Truly disgusting…”

  Oliver’s eyes widened. The Organization had heard every word in Tom’s apartment that morning. Of course, he knew the Agency could bug just about any location they wanted, but this, he just hadn’t ever considered this.

  “What are you talking about?” Oliver demanded.

  “I’m talking about loyalties,” Nikolai said, staring coldly into Oliver’s eyes. “If I told you the truth, you probably wouldn’t even believe me. If I told you that your ‘noble’ brother had been seeing Katia the entire time you and she were together, you’d call me the liar. If I told you that they never stopped seeing each other since the day they met in that bookstore and that every night when you dropped her at her door nice and early, she would get onto the number one train at Sheridan Square, get off at 110th Street, and spend the night at his house while he ‘worked on his thesis’? Then you would call me a liar, uh? You’d want to punch me in the face. But some part of you would know, Oliver. You’d hit me, but some part of you would know that every word I just told you was the truth.”

  “You shut your mouth,” Oliver insisted, feeling his entire body simmering with the need for some kind of violence.

  “If this is why you don’t want to make the deal with us, then you truly are a fool, Oliver. Your brother? Loyalty to your brother? Why on earth would you want to be loyal to your brother when he shows absolutely no loyalty to you? When he goes behind your back and sleeps with the woman you love, all the time lying about it to your face?”

  “That’s enough!” Oliver howled, leaning his face into Nikolai’s and clumsily bumping his chest.

  “Believe me, Oliver,” Nikolai said, “we can show you the infrared videos if you’d like. But I don’t think you could stomach them—”

  “Shut your mouth, you liar! Stay away from me, do you understand? Stay the hell away from me.”

  Oliver swiped Nikolai out of his way and ran out of Chumley’s and straight toward the river. He had to shake all those lies from his head. Maybe he needed to puke them all out.

  Maybe he needed to figure out just how much of it was lies.

  1983

  It was all he could do to keep from fidgeting in nervous frustration and anger. He could almost smell Katia’s perfume all over his brother.

  Sick Wave of Nothingness

  IT WAS STRANGE, COMING BACK TO Chumley’s the next afternoon, but Oliver didn’t mind. Right then he wouldn’t have minded anything because Katia was meeting him. He still had a slight headache from the previous night—his second hangover in a row. It hurt just badly enough to convince him that he had been right to swear off drinking, as he had, late last night, while trying to ward off a bad case of the spins.

  He sat by the fireplace with a glass of club sod
a, feeling happy—happier than he’d felt, well, in days. Since before that terrible moment when he turned his head and saw Tom joining him at the front table at the Bitter End.

  The only problem was that he had been told to report to CIA headquarters for a meeting in the late afternoon—four hours from now. And he was a bit nervous about it—he suspected that Rodriguez was going to press him about his lack of progress with the Organization’s code.

  Oliver shrugged that off. After a meeting with Katia, he would be happy to meet with five Rodriguezes.

  While waiting, Oliver looked over at the bar and reconstructed his conversation with Nikolai from the previous night. He was glad he’d decided to leave before he became drunk enough to believe Nikolai’s stories about Katia.

  Each time the door opened, Oliver squinted at the blinding rectangle of daylight, holding his breath, expecting Katia to walk in. But each time it was someone else. He was checking his watch and trying to decide whether to ask for another club soda when he looked up.

  And there she was…

  “Katia!” he called out, waving as he leapt to his feet. She saw him, and her face lit up—she beamed at him as she walked over.

  “Hello, Oliver,” Katia said warmly. She let her hand rest on his arm as she leaned in to kiss him.

  “So, where do you want to go?” Oliver asked excitedly. He had some ideas, actually. Since spending the past month with Katia, he had started noticing restaurants, nightclubs, galleries—all the places that couples went, that he had never paid attention to before.

  “Actually, can we just sit here for now? I’ve been walking all morning.”

  “Fine, fine,” Oliver said, pulling a chair nearer to the fireplace and beckoning the waiter. “I think of this as ‘our place,’ anyway.”