by Eva Hudson
“Oh, hi,” he says, “how long have you been there?”
The camera then cuts to his point of view and we see who he’s looking at: a short, brunette girl whose brown eyes and full lips made her look like a young Jackie Kennedy.
“Oh my God,” Ingrid said, instantly realizing she was sounding like Jennifer.
“Oh, wow,” Don said. “It’s her, isn’t it?”
“It totally is. She played the big sister. Remember now?”
“Of course it’s her,” Ingrid said. “How did I not know this?”
The three of them carried on watching the scene in which Brandon suggests a casual night of fun under the stars. Even though Frances Byrne-Williams’ Betty has fancied him for the entire length of the movie, she tells him that he only just broke up with her friend and there are rules about that sort of thing.
“You know, when she becomes secretary of state the news channels are going to have this on a loop,” Jennifer said.
“Thank God she didn’t do a sex scene,” Don said, “then she could never run for president.”
Ingrid wondered how many sex scenes Ronald Reagan had filmed and flinched at the thought. She sat back down at her desk as Jennifer explained that Frances Byrne-Williams, or Frankie Byrne as she appeared in the credits, lived next door to the director and had been a last-minute replacement for Andie MacDowell.
Ingrid glanced at the target practice reminder and then at the clock on her computer. It was 3:10pm. She may as well get it over and done with. “When does the shooting range shut?”
Jennifer looked up from her desk. “You don’t know?”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“I mean, you don’t know it’s closed? They’re deciding whether or not to refit it before they shut this place down.” Jennifer’s phone started to ring.
“And until they do, where am I supposed to do this target practice refresher?”
Jennifer picked up her phone. “Hello. FBI Legal Attaché program.”
Don piped up. “There’s a facility not far from here.” He rifled through some papers on Jennifer’s desk while she took down extensive notes from whoever she was talking to. “Here you go,” he said, handing Ingrid a piece of A4 paper. “Bayswater Road.”
“And how, legally, am I supposed to get my Glock from here to there?”
“You mean you can’t carry a gun here?”
“Please tell me you haven’t been—”
“Me? No! Never held a gun in my life. Not my thing.”
Ingrid thought that was just as well: Don’s arms didn’t look like they were strong enough to handle the spark from a cigarette lighter let alone the recoil from a Glock 23. She looked at the sheet of paper: the place was a twenty-minute walk, five minutes on the bike. If she took the gun there in a locked flight case, who would ever know? She crossed the room and knelt in front of the safe. She entered her security PIN. It was the first time she’d used the code since Megan’s funeral: the date her friend had disappeared, the date she would never forget. The door popped open and Ingrid reached in for the pistol.
“Right,” Jennifer said. “That’s going to have to wait. You know Congressman Whitford?”
“Represents the 3rd district in Nebraska,” Don said, attempting to be helpful.
“Well, his wife just got arrested for shoplifting. A boutique in Notting Hill.” Jennifer handed Ingrid the notes she had just made. “She has requested consular assistance and the call desk has assigned the task to you, Agent Skyberg.”
Ingrid kicked the safe shut and sighed. She hated these Rich-American-In-Peril gigs. “Well, isn’t it my lucky day.”
8
Ingrid stood in the wood-paneled corridor outside Sol’s office on the fifth floor. She couldn’t think of any good reason why she was feeling so nervous. She remembered a night in a bar near Quantico, sinking beers with an instructor, and asking her what the most frightening part of the job was. She’d answered: it doesn’t matter how much armor you wear, it doesn’t matter what weapon you carry, walking through the door is always the scariest part.
Ingrid knocked.
“Come in. Good run this morning?” Sol asked.
“I came on the bike. You wanted to see me?”
“I did indeed. Come, have a seat.”
Sol’s office was one of several rooms on the fifth floor that hadn’t been remodeled since the embassy had opened in 1960. Blond wood mixed with molded concrete and a view out over Grosvenor Square, it was one of the nicest spots in the entire building. However, Sol, as a forty-a-day man, would rather have had something nearer the front door or the roof. A packet of Marlboro lay next to his keyboard: this was the first meeting Ingrid had had with Sol in a long time that hadn’t coincided with a nicotine fix. He crossed the room and closed the door.
“So,” he said, and cleared his throat, “Louden’s been in touch about your new role.”
“You’re not making it sound good.”
He sat back down behind his enormous steel and oak desk. It was probably a collector’s item. What were the designers calling it these days? Mid-Century Modern. The embassy was finally hip and they were abandoning it for a place on the other side of the river. “She’s been going through your files.”
“Uh-huh.”
He moved a mouse on his desk and his computer screen flashed into life. He started reading from a document. “Recruited as a language specialist after serving with the Jackson County sheriff’s department. Graduated cum laude, naturally, from UIC. You speak three fluently, conversational in another two. But you didn’t ever do international work, did you? Until now, that is.”
Ingrid was a little worried about the data the Bureau had compiled on her. “No, I wanted to specialize in child protection. It’s why I joined the VCAC. What’s Louden seen in my file?”
Sol ignored her question. “Get to use your languages in Violent Crimes Against Children?”
“No, not much. Came in handy with a people-smuggling gang once.” She was trying to sound relaxed, but she desperately wanted Sol to tell her what Louden’s problem was.
Sol looked away from his screen and directly at Ingrid. “Let me guess, it was your Russian that was required, not the Italian or the French.”
“Correct.”
He placed his palms on the desk and spread his fingers. Behind his steel-rimmed glasses, his eyes narrowed. “And how are your languages now?”
“I imagine the French and Italian would benefit from a long vacation, but the Russian is kind of embedded.”
Sol inhaled deeply, and a rattling noise emanated from his chest. It was only a couple of months since he’d almost been killed in a brutal attack: Ingrid wondered if his chest trouble was part of the healing process, or a sign that the smoking was going to achieve what a serial killer had failed to do. “So that brings us neatly on to your mother.” He clicked his mouse and started scanning a new document. “Svetlana Kashlikova. Grew up in Leningrad, recruited into the Soviet gymnastics program aged seven, competed at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, won two bronzes, one for the vault, one for the beam—”
“Sol,” Ingrid interrupted. “I do know all this. She is my mother.”
For a moment he looked surprised and pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “Of course you do. It’s just that, well… she might be the fly in your ointment.”
It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Look,” he said, his hands once again spread out on his desk, his little finger gently nudging the carton of smokes, “there are a couple of problems we need to address before we can officially make you our oligarch POC, our oligal, if you like—”
“I don’t.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
“The problems?” Ingrid’s rising frustration made her want to stand and pace, but she knew she had to stay calm and seated. Now wasn’t the time to let Svetlana ruin things by showing her exasperation.
“First we need to get you armed. Islamic extremists might get th
e resources, but the statistics since 2005 tell us you’re in greater danger infiltrating the Russian underworld than an al-Qaeda cell.”
Ingrid thought about the intel Ralph had given her. “Jennifer’s already booked me in for target practice.”
“That’s just the first step. Once you get the certificate from us, you’ll have to get a license from the Met. And if you want to use your Glock, we need to file for special permission with the home secretary.”
“I’m going to need the Glock. It’s kind of hard to conceal a rifle.”
Sol nodded. “So, we’ll get that ball rolling, then—”
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” Sol looked over Ingrid’s shoulder to the security guard in the doorway.
“We need to do a sweep.”
“Now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you only searched this place two days ago.”
“Got the anniversary coming up,” the guard said.
In six days’ time it would be September 11th. Security was always raised as a precaution in the week before. Sol logged out of the system and grabbed his cigarettes. “Shall we take this outside?”
A few minutes later they were walking down one of the streets at the back of the embassy where the low fall sun hadn’t yet warmed the air. Sol inhaled on his cigarette like he was planning on swimming a length underwater. “We should be careful,” he said, “that no one overhears us.”
Ingrid glanced round. The proximity to the embassy meant the street was one of the most scrutinized addresses in the world. More security cameras than residents, given how many of the apartments were empty. There were probably listening devices too.
“How’s your Italian?” Ingrid asked.
“About as good as my Swahili. I was recruited as a data specialist.”
“I never knew that. Well then,” Ingrid said, “we’ll just have to whisper. Do you want to walk and talk, or just talk?”
They perched on a low red-brick wall that marked the perimeter of one of the most luxurious apartment buildings in London. Even a ground floor studio would be over a million dollars.
“So what are the other problems?”
“We need clear boundaries between you and the counter-terrorism team. No overlap.”
“There’s bound to be overlap.”
“Then we need to agree procedures.”
“We absolutely do. Agent Simmons isn’t going to play nice.”
“He’s an ass.”
“Aren’t you his boss too?”
“And that’s why you didn’t just hear me say that. We’ll iron everything out with him. After that, it’s just your mother.” Twin vortices of smoke billowed from his nostrils.
Ingrid sat with her legs apart and leaned forward so her elbows were on her knees. Svetlana had never made anything easy. “You’re seriously worried that the daughter of a defector will… what? Be a double agent?” Ingrid stood up and moved to the other side of Sol in an attempt to get upstream of the smoke.
Sol pushed his glasses onto the top of his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “God no,” he whispered. “With your pedigree you’ve been more closely monitored than most agents.”
“My pedigree?” It was hard to sound indignant while whispering but Ingrid was giving it a good go.
“Look, it can’t be a surprise to you that someone with your background was seen as a risk. You were monitored. You proved yourself. That’s how it works.”
Ingrid looked up to see two armed officers from the Diplomatic Protection Group patrolling the street. There were security barriers at both ends of the street. Did proximity to the embassy make residents a target, or immeasurably safer than people living a few blocks away?
“So what’s the problem?”
Sol ground his cigarette beneath his scuffed lace-up shoe and turned to face Ingrid square-on. “We don’t have a problem with you, we’re just wondering how the Russians will feel about your past. Some of them will see your mother as a hero, others as a traitor.”
Ingrid pressed her fingers into her knees in a subconscious attempt to expel the anger from her voice. There had been so many occasions during her FBI career when rooms had gone quiet when she’d walked into them, or invites had got lost in the internal post. Her current security-level clearance was way below where it should be: was this all because of Svetlana. Still? She took a deep breath to steady the quiver in her voice. “And how would they know who my mother was? Surely I’ll have a cover story?”
“Well,” Sol said, turning the carton of Marlboro over and over in his hands, “that’s what we have to work out. An agreed identity. You’ll need documents.”
Ingrid considered helping herself to one of Sol’s cigarettes: it would do her less harm than punching a wall. “You know, it’s not nice hearing that my mom’s defection nearly forty years ago, before I was born, means I’ve got a permanent mark on my record. My dad was born in Minnesota. I was born in Minnesota, and you have never seen anyone celebrate the 4th of July like Svetlana Skyberg. Has the FBI also been monitoring my family links to Sweden? I believe I have some third cousins there.”
“Take it easy, agent. It’s how things work.”
Her fingers dug a little tighter into her thighs. She didn’t like it when Sol called her ‘agent’ instead of using her name. It wasn’t as if she needed a reminder of her place in the hierarchy. “Well, how would you like it?”
“You have noticed I’m Jewish? You think I haven’t been on some internal Zionist watch list the whole of my career? Who knows, maybe it’s why I report to someone ten years my junior. It happens to us all. Don’t take it personally.”
“Guess we should just be relieved they let the pinko and the yid work together.”
Sol stood up. “This wall is cold. They must have finished checking my office by now.”
Ingrid followed him back toward the embassy. If she was going to take on a new role, she wondered if it was the right moment to bring up her other duties. “You know, if I’m going to do this Russian gig, I really can’t be bailing out tourists who break the law. I spent three hours yesterday with some private security firm persuading them they didn’t need to call the cops.”
“Ah, that. I hope you gave the embassy’s regards to Mrs Whitford and explained what an honor it was to be able to help her?”
“Sol, I’m serious. It’s not a good use of my time.” They showed their security passes to the guards at the rear entrance and filed back into the building.
“Doesn’t help your case that just yesterday Louden got a note from Byrne-Williams praising your professionalism. You’re stuck with the criminal division. I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it work.”
Ingrid’s cell buzzed in her pocket. “I better take this.”
Sol nodded and made his way toward the elevators. Ingrid stepped back outside.
“Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg. Legal Attaché program.”
“Thank God you’re there.” It was a man’s voice. East Coast accent.
“Mr Kerrison?”
“Can you come over right away?” In the background she could hear Truman Cooper spewing expletives.
“What’s going on over there? What’s happened?”
“It’s Kate-Lynn. She’s gone missing.”
“Again?”
9
The gate slammed behind her and Ingrid was once again trapped inside the courtyard of Truman Cooper’s impressive riverside home. She stopped to admire the Triumph Thunderbird. It only had 575 miles on the odometer. What a waste. Having just sold her Harley Fat Boy, she lingered more in regret than envy. The Triumph Tiger 800 she had parked outside might have been a practical choice for the city, but it was hardly the kind of bike you grow up dreaming about. Ahead of her, the steel door opened. Manuela stood at the threshold; even though she was wearing an A-line tunic of gray utilitarian felt, she still managed to look like a supermodel.
“You are here.” Her manner had not softened since the
last time they’d met.
“I am indeed,” Ingrid said. Before she had even stepped into the hallway she could hear Truman Cooper sounding as angry as a Mob boss who’d just found out the money was missing.
“Upstairs,” Manuela said, her conversational skills as simple as her attire.
Ingrid climbed the cast-iron stairs but Manuela did not follow. With each step, Truman Cooper’s tirade became a little more decipherable. Someone with such anger issues was not a great candidate for parenthood. An image of a toddler cowering in a corner popped into her mind.
“… well I won’t be there… I don’t damn well care… you’ll just have to make it work without me. Give my lines to Woodbridge… how many times do I have to tell you… I do not fucking care!” Truman Cooper slammed his cell phone down onto a granite kitchen worktop just as Ingrid entered the room. The shattered battery casing skidded along the surface. “You? What are you doing here?”
“I called her.” Tom Kerrison was sitting on a stool behind a counter that divided the kitchen area from a large vaulted dining space. He pushed his MacBook Pro to one side and got to his feet. He was wearing zipper-covered jeans and a grubby tee, revealing arms covered with faded tattoos. It was hard to square his disheveled appearance with the tuxedoed charmer she’d met at the gallery. Truman was still in his pajamas. Neither of them looked like they had showered.
“Why?” Truman shouted.
“Because I can help,” Ingrid said, her training kicking into action. Calm voice, affirmative message, cool things down, even if you have to tell a lie. Truman Cooper’s rage was instantly downgraded to fury. “Let’s take a moment, tell me what’s happened and we’ll see what can be done.”
Tom Kerrison opened the refrigerator and pulled out a half-liter bottle of water. “Would you like one?”