Lying and Kissing

by Helena Newbury

  I’d complained that I was stuck in a rut- that nothing changed in the sterile, airless world I inhabited. Then, suddenly, I’d been way out in a void, dangling by a hair-thin rope over a precipice. The way I’d reacted to him was deeply disturbing, completely alien to me and yet in some weird way familiar. As if he was a dangerous drug I’d tried for the first time and found to be perfect for me. Perfect, and addictive.

  The one reassuring thing was that it was over. My first op had been a success...just. And I might have pissed off Roberta, but I’d impressed Adam. Maybe he’d give me another shot.

  And, whether he did or not, my future lay a long way from Luka Malakov. Aside from listening to his phone calls, I’d never hear of him again.

  The next morning, I wasn’t granted a late start just because the debriefing had finished in the early hours. I dragged myself in, eyelids only held open by coffee, and tried to avoid Roberta. I figured she’d be mad that I’d ignored her order and ran upstairs, and also that I’d gone against her wishes and volunteered for the op in the first place.

  I started transcribing calls. Some banker, complaining to his friend about his wife. Then Luka, talking about another one of his women. That got my interest, but I was still half asleep as my fingers rattled over the keys, only vaguely aware of what I was typing.

  Then, suddenly, I sat bolt upright in my chair.

  The woman Luka was talking about was me.

  “She was the one in the string quartet,” Luka was saying.

  Another voice. “The short one?”

  “No. The pretty one.”

  The pretty one?!

  “You think she was up to something?” asked the other voice. I recognized it, this time. Luka’s head bodyguard, the guy with the scar on his face.

  “I think she’s an innocent,” said Luka. “But I want to know how innocent. Do a check on her.”

  “What if she’s not so innocent?”

  “Then I want to fuck her.”

  “What if she is innocent?”

  I could hear the smile in Luka’s voice. “Then I want to fuck her even more.”

  The call ended. I sat there staring at the screen, feeling as if I’d just had five espressos.

  He.

  Wanted.

  To.

  Fuck.

  Me.

  And in a few minutes, the head bodyguard was going to call Karen. And Karen would give him my false name. And he’d discover that Arianna Ross didn’t exist.

  If I didn’t want to blow the whole operation, I had to act now.

  ***

  I rushed into Adam’s office and told him that Arianna Ross was about to have her background checked. About two seconds after I’d finished speaking, I realized what he was going to ask next.

  “Okay,” he said. “Can I see the transcript?”

  There followed the most toe-curlingly embarrassing minutes of my life, as Adam brought up the conversation on his screen and read what Luka had said. To his credit, he didn’t comment. He just nodded a few times and then pressed a button on his desk phone. “Get me Solomon,” he said.

  A moment later, Solomon walked in. His tattoos, long black hair and the fact he was dressed in a black vest and jeans was strangely reassuring. For the CIA to make that many concessions to its dress code, he must be packing some serious tech credentials.

  “This is Arianna Scott,” said Adam. “She needs her face transferred to a blank, now, with the name Arianna Ross.”

  “Five minutes,” said Solomon in a British accent, and walked out.

  “Really?” I asked. “Five minutes?”

  “He’s being modest,” said Adam. “More like two.”

  Blanks are one of the CIA’s best-kept secrets.

  Being a spy used to be easy. You could walk into an embassy or a trade convention in the 1970s or even the 1980s and say you were Alice Smith when you were really Betty Jones. As long as your passport looked real, no one could tell the difference. We only had to think about fooling the enemy face-to-face.

  Then Facebook happened.

  Now, Alice Smith doesn’t just have to have a fake passport. She has to have an entire fake life, with a Facebook profile dating back years, school friends posting on her wall and ten thousand tweets conveying her every thought. And that’s impossible.

  Unless you’re us.

  Blanks are fake people. We have hundreds of them. They have birthdays and school friends and career histories. They have photos on their timelines and Twitter feeds showing them laughing in bars and falling off horses.

  These are the people who unexpectedly friend you on Facebook and you never know why. They’re the ones who don’t message you, and never really interact except to like your funny cat pictures.

  A blank’s photos are posed by actors. Now, hundreds of shots of my face, taken when I first joined the CIA, were being seamlessly edited into those photos, replacing the actress’s.

  Maybe you’ve seen this happen. Maybe you’ve noticed a woman on your Friends list and frowned and thought, Didn’t she used to be called Jessica? And weren’t her eyes green, before? But you don’t know her all that well so you shake your head and put it down to your imagination.

  No more than three minutes after Solomon had left, Adam turned his computer screen to me and said, “Google yourself.”

  I sat down and typed my name on the keyboard. Google told me that I had a Facebook profile and a Twitter account. I had an email address with emails from friends arranging parties and nights out. I had Pinterest boards filled with book covers and recipes. This is more real than my real life I thought, a little sadly.

  If Luka’s head bodyguard checked up on me now, he’d be convinced I was real...and “innocent.”

  Adam sat back in his chair. “Now we need to decide what to do,” he said.

  I blinked. “Do?” Hadn’t we just solved the problem?

  Adam looked at me appraisingly. “He still wants to fuck you.”

  I stiffened, partially from hearing a superior drop the f-bomb, partially from the reminder. “Maybe he was just kidding around,” I said, flushing.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s got plenty of women.”

  “And yet he called for a background check on you. He’s interested in you.” Adam stared at me. “That gives us an angle.”

  I can be a little slow to catch on, sometimes. I didn’t see where he was going. Then it hit me like a freight train in the face. “You don’t mean...you want me to see him?!”

  Adam leaned forward. “I want you to be his girlfriend. Meet him. Seduce him. Get him to confide in you.”

  “I can’t do that!” I jumped to my feet. My heart felt as if it was going to smash its way out through my ribs. “I can’t—” His girlfriend. Luka’s girlfriend. Kissing him and, inevitably...Jesus! “He’s only here for a few days.”

  “Yes. You’ll have to go to Moscow.”

  I just stared at him. He can’t possibly be serious.

  But Adam just sat there, watching me calmly, seeing how I’d respond. I stood there staring at him, panting. I don’t know what disturbed me more: the fear of what he was asking me to do, or the fact that there was a deep, dark part of me that actually wanted to do it.

  “I’d have to sleep with him?” I said, half to myself.

  Adam nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’d be on the cards, yeah.”

  I swayed, almost staggering. This is not happening. I am not discussing my sex life with my boss’s boss’s boss. I stared at him. How could he ask me to do this? Luka was a monster. God knows how many people he’d hurt or killed, between prison and his mafia days and now his arms business. And I’d have to smile at him and then close my eyes and open my lips for his kiss….

  If I did this, if I had sex with a guy because it was my job, did that make me a prostitute?

  Or—my chest tightened—if I wanted to be with him but couldn’t, because of what he was, did this make it okay? Was this just the excuse I needed?

/>   Obviously, this was insane. Obviously I had to say no. But I remembered how he’d made me feel. Not just the all-consuming lust, but that sense that I was waking up after three years asleep, that he was real and was making me real again. I’d give anything for another taste of that.

  I’d been staring at Adam’s desk as I thought. Now I lifted my eyes to his face. “What if he finds out? What if my cover’s blown?”

  “Then he’ll kill you,” said Adam simply.

  It felt like freezing water was sluicing up my spine. But, at the same time, I felt the ghost of Luka’s hand on my chest, pinning me to the wall. His other hand, exploring me. A flame sprang into life at my core, black as night yet furnace-hot. I could barely breathe.

  I was terrified and yet turned on. And some indescribable third feeling, a mixture of the two.

  “How long?” I asked. “How long would I be with him?”

  “Until we find out how big this deal is,” said Adam. “We don’t have jurisdiction to arrest him ourselves. But, once we have evidence, we can pressure the Russians to act.”

  My legs felt as if they were going to give out, so I flopped down into the chair again. I couldn’t meet Adam’s eyes anymore, the twisting heat inside me out of control. God, did Adam know how I felt?! It must be written all over my face. Certainly, he must have figured out what happened in Luka’s bedroom.

  “Arianna,” he said softly. “This is one of the hardest things an agent can be asked to do. I don’t do it lightly. But Malakov is a difficult man for us to get close to. He doesn’t trust anyone...except maybe you.”

  I nodded.

  “If you say no,” Adam said, “I swear to you, it won’t affect your standing or whether I send you on future field ops. You have a choice.”

  I could feel Luka’s hand on my thigh, his fingers toying with the waistband of my panties.

  “Take some time,” Adam said. “Think about it.”

  I didn’t need time. There was only one possible choice.

  “My answer’s yes,” I whispered. “I’ll do it.”

  A half hour later, Adam called in Roberta. He asked me to wait in the hallway while they discussed my reassignment. While they discussed me.

  It turned out that the soundproof walls at Langley aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?!” yelled Roberta. “She’s a languages geek, not a field agent!”

  She’d always seemed so proud of my skills. It didn’t feel that way now.

  “She’s smart,” said Adam calmly. “She’s resourceful. She handled herself well at his house.”

  “She could have been killed! If he’d seen her messing with his laptop—”

  “He didn’t. And anyway, it’s her choice.”

  Roberta’s voice rose further. “You don’t know her like I know her! She’s got issues!”

  “Do you think I’d be suggesting this without having read her file?”

  “That’s not the same as knowing her! She has flashbacks! Nightmares! She can barely get in a goddamn car, Adam!”

  Hot shame flared in my cheeks. I hated being a mess. I hated still feeling like a teenager.

  “She’s CIA,” said Adam. “She’s done her training. She wants to do field work. And Malakov wants to fuck her. That’s good enough for me.”

  “You know that kind of field work needs a certain kind of woman,” snapped Roberta. “Arianna is not it. Get Nancy!”

  I jerked at that. Nancy? They’d put my best friend on this, instead of me? My stomach tensed up. Nancy was the best. That showed how hard Roberta thought this mission would be. Maybe I should back out. Let Nancy have it. She was the mature one, the together one.

  But then I thought of her seducing Luka, effortlessly and professionally, and...part of me didn’t want that. Am I jealous?! That’s insane!

  “Nancy’s in Venezuela,” said Adam. “And Malakov doesn’t want that sort of woman. He wants Arianna.”

  “You can’t do this, Adam! Why do you even want Malakov so badly? Let the Russians handle him!” Their voices were getting louder. I winced. I hated hearing them fight.

  I heard Adam’s chair scrape the floor as he stood. “You need to back off. That girl works here and right now we need her and she’s stepped up to the plate. The only one who’s not on board here is you!”

  “I’m the only one who’s thinking straight! Arianna is—” She must have realized she was shouting, because she lowered her voice.

  A woman in a suit—someone from another division—chose that moment to walk by. She glanced at the closed door and raised voices and then at me, standing outside, and gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “Arianna is fucked up!” Roberta hissed at that exact moment.

  I did my very best to smile back at the passing woman, despite feeling as if I wanted to die.

  “Sorry, Roberta,” said Adam. “You’re going to have to let go of your little pet. Now get out of my office.”

  A moment later, Roberta marched out of the office. “Follow,” she snapped, without even looking at me. I scurried after her, despite being close to tears at what she’d said about me.

  When we got back to our department, she took me straight through to her private office and closed the door. I’d barely ever been in there. She normally liked to sit out in the open office with the rest of us.

  Today, though, she closed the blinds, nodded me to a chair and then leaned against the desk, gripping the edge of it so hard that her knuckles whitened. Her dark hair fell forward, hiding her face. I imagined her counting to ten in her head. Then she took a long breath and looked up at me. “Sorry, if you heard some of that.”

  “It’s okay,” I lied. I’d been loyal to this woman for years, ever since she’d recruited me. Now I just wanted to be sick. Was that what she’d thought of me all this time? That I was fucked up?!

  Roberta caught my expression. “I was just trying to protect you. That’s all I want, Arianna—to protect you.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Adam and how he believed in me. “I know. But I want to do this.”

  Roberta sighed and sat down heavily in her chair. “It’s my fault,” she muttered. “I should have let you move into field work.” She opened a filing cabinet and, from the very back of the drawer, pulled out a bottle of Scotch.

  Roberta drank?! During the day?

  She must have seen my look. “Only on special occasions,” she said. And she poured two glasses, handing me one.

  I stared at the amber liquid. My brain was still trying to catch up. “You’ve been a great boss,” I said truthfully. Until today. And maybe she had just been trying to protect me. And what she’d said was true—I was fucked up. But I hadn’t wanted her to tell Adam that and I hadn’t wanted to hear her say it. Hearing that conversation had made me want to prove her wrong and impress Adam even more.

  “I know you want to get out of here,” Roberta said despondently. “I just—You’re so good at what you do, Arianna. I need you here. And I don’t want anything to happen to you.” She looked me in the eye. “Russia’s nothing like America. It’s hard. Brutal. Adam should know better—he worked over there for years before he got moved up the ladder. I can’t believe he’s even thinking of sending you. I don’t even understand why he wants to do this op in the first place.” She shook her head. “Look—don’t do this. Not Malakov.”

  “I can do it,” I said, with a certainty I didn’t feel.

  “Can you? Really?” She sighed. “This sort of man can be charming, but underneath he’s pure ice. He’ll kill you if he finds out. He won’t hesitate. Mafia guys are all about loyalty. You’ll be violating that in the worst possible way. And if you can keep him fooled, you’ll have to be with him.” She sipped her Scotch. “God knows what he’ll want in the bedroom. A man like that, Arianna, he’s not going to be…” She sighed again. “He’s not going to be like one of your boyfriends.”

  A chill went through me. A chill that changed to heat when it hit my groin. God,
what’s wrong with me? I flushed.

  When I met Roberta’s eyes again, she was staring right at me, a worried look on her face. She can’t know how I feel about him...can she?

  “Arianna, reconsider,” she said. “You’re about to get into shit you can’t handle.”

  I took a deep breath...and shook my head.

  Airports all look the same. That’s what my dad used to tell me, when he returned from a business trip. But Moscow was utterly, terrifyingly alien.

  There was something in the air, as soon as I stepped outside the terminal building. It felt harsh against my lips, as if they were being scoured. It wasn’t just the cold, although it was snowing and a long way below freezing. It was the rawness of the air. It made the air back home seem warm and perfumed and soft as satin.

  Behind me, the terminal building was like a long, green bottle on its side, all clean lines and elegant curves. Beautiful, but uncompromising. And on top of it, in huge metal letters, a sign in Cyrillic that looked straight out of the Cold War. I spent all day listening to Russian, back home, but to see the unfamiliar letters was still a shock. Your brain gets used to the alphabet, ever since you were a kid watching Sesame Street. Stumbling over letters again is like suddenly forgetting how to swim.

  I hadn’t been ready for customs, either. It wasn’t that it had taken a long time, or that they’d asked all that many questions. It was just something in the look the officer had given me, the way he’d almost flung my passport back to me. Travelling from the US to Mexico or Canada—the only other countries I’d ever been to—I’d always felt welcome, or at least accepted. Here, I was tolerated.

  Maybe it was the jet lag but, when I climbed into a cab and heard Russian pop music on the radio, I almost wanted to weep. I just longed for something familiar.

  Pull yourself together! You wanted this! I asked the driver to take me to my hotel and we set off.