The Target

by Saul Herzog

  He realized that he was expected to live and die for a Motherland he’d never seen.

  To risk his life for missions and objectives he didn’t understand.

  But mostly, he learned to wait.

  He wasn’t a physical asset. He couldn’t run fast. He couldn’t control his heart rate. He could barely hit a paper target at twenty feet with the aid of a laser sight.

  But that didn’t matter.

  He was just one asset. Out of how many, no one knew.

  Truly, no one knew.

  Their handling was segregated.

  They were operated out of autonomous cells.

  Someone in Moscow knew about Alex. But that same person didn’t know who else was out there, waiting, sleeping, available for activation.

  He was in his apartment in Brooklyn on a lazy Saturday morning, watching a black and white western movie, when the door buzzed.

  He looked through the peephole and saw a delivery guy in a brown uniform.

  “Package for Sherbakov,” the guy said.

  Sherbakov opened the door and received the package. It was nothing out of the ordinary. He was no stranger to online shopping, to deliveries. He brought the package to the sofa and opened it.

  That was when he realized he’d just been activated.

  28

  Alex’s apartment was in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. It was an area that had declined during the seventies and eighties but got a new lease of life after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the steady stream of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants that followed.

  There were so many Russians there that everyone called it Little Odessa. Russian could be heard in the streets and in the dozens of ethnic groceries and restaurants. Eventually, the money arrived, and a property consortium funded by Russian oligarchs built an enormous luxury condominium complex known as the Oceanic.

  Suddenly, chauffeur-driven Bentleys could be seen double-parked outside luxury stores selling everything from beluga caviar to diamond-encrusted Cartier watches.

  Like Russia itself, it exhibited that same jarring mix of hardy Slavic thrift, juxtaposed with the most extreme displays of opulence and wealth.

  Deli counters selling pierogies, smoked fish, and fried cabbage rubbed soldiers with the trendiest designer boutiques in the city. Within a hundred yards of his building, Sherbakov could buy kielbasa, fur hats, illegal Cuban cigars, and thousand-dollar sneakers.

  The GRU had expressly forbidden him from visiting Russia, they said it would needlessly attract attention, but Sherbakov felt the neighborhood gave him a good taste of what it was like there.

  The delivery had contained a note giving him precise instructions, and he walked past the bakeries and kiosks until he got to a little café on the corner of Twelfth and Ocean View called Red Square.

  Outside the café, he picked up a copy of the Daily News and brought it inside with him.

  It wasn’t far from his apartment, but he’d never been to that particular café before.

  “Just me,” he said to the waitress, who was busy making coffees for some customers at the counter.

  The note had been very explicit on what he needed to say and do.

  “Sit anywhere,” she said without looking up.

  Sherbakov sat at a table at the far right of the counter, facing the cash register, with his back to the window. If the table had been occupied, he would have left and come back later.

  The girl was stretched thin, it was just her, and a steady stream of customers demanded her attention. Coffee to go, sandwiches to go, it was that kind of place. Everyone had a specific way they wanted their coffee prepared. Steamed milk. Frothed milk. Hot milk. Cold milk.

  He waited, reading the newspaper, and as soon as the customers cleared, she came over to him.

  “What can I get you?” she said.

  “How are the plyushka this morning?”

  The girl looked up from her notebook at him. “The plyushka?”

  Alex nodded. He’d been told to order the pastries but didn’t know what exactly to expect in response.

  “They’re good,” the girl said, almost suspiciously.

  She looked around the café. There was no one there but them.

  “I hear your grandmother makes them,” Alex said.

  The girl nodded.

  “Can I speak to her?”

  She looked at him closely, then said, “Follow me.”

  She led him behind the counter and through a curtain to the private staff area. There were a few chairs, the strewn personal effects of the staff members, a desk with a computer, some dirty coffee cups, and a full ashtray on it.

  “Have a seat,” she said.

  He sat at the desk, and she brought him an old-style landline telephone, the cord dangling behind her. It looked like something Perry Mason would have used, big and black with a metal chime built into the body.

  “You know her number?” the girl said.

  Alex nodded.

  She disappeared behind the curtain, leaving him alone in the room.

  He looked at the phone for a moment, then dialed the number. It was a thirteen digit number with a double-zero prefix, and when he dialed it, he heard a series of clicks and buzzes before a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello,” she said in Russian.

  Alex cleared his throat. He spoke Russian, but with the fluency of a high school student.

  “This is Alex Sherbakov,” he said. He hesitated then, unsure of himself. He felt as if he was playing a role in an old spy movie. It didn’t feel real. Then he added, “Reporting for duty.”

  He was scared. He’d never been asked to do anything before. He had no idea what to expect. He trusted that the GRU knew what he was capable of, how inept he was with a firearm, how utterly unsuited to the role of breaking into buildings or jumping out of airplanes. He prayed they weren’t expecting him to be like the Russians in the movies.

  Sherbakov was good with numbers, but that was it. He wasn’t athletic. He had few friends. He was physically inept.

  And as for social graces, he was about as charming as a bowl of porridge.

  The seminal experience of his life hadn’t been the revelation of what he was, but something that followed from it. The GRU needed his loyalty. They needed to know that, when the time came, he would do what they asked of him.

  They might have tried bribing him, but money proved a poor motivator for Sherbakov. They might have tried threatening him, but his psyche profile suggested that was more likely to paralyze him.

  And, in the absence of a suitable carrot, or an effective stick, they turned instead to honey.

  They’d sent a woman.

  He was sure she’d been sent, although he had no evidence of it. He’d heard that the GRU made use of highly-trained, highly-sophisticated honeytraps. They were, if the rumors were true, women who could make blood flow from a stone.

  And that was exactly what this woman had done. She’d played the role perfectly. Almost too perfectly. She said she was all alone in America, abandoned by the people who’d brought her there, and needed desperately for someone to step in and save her. It was like the fantasy of a thirteen-year-old boy.

  And on Sherbakov’s undeveloped romantic mind, it worked. In the space of a month, he was so deeply in love that he would have died for her.

  He knew she was out of his league.

  He knew she was too good to be true.

  She had GRU written all over her.

  But he didn’t care.

  For one month, she spent every waking moment with him. She cried for him. She laughed for him. They made love over and over. He woke up in the morning to her loving gaze and fell asleep, exhausted, with her head resting on his panting chest.

  She was his angel.

  Too perfect.

  Too innocent.

  Too beautiful.

  And then, one morning, she was gone.

  She’d slipped out in the night, leaving only a phone number for him on the kitchen
counter. He called the number and was connected to a man named Igor Aralov at the GRU’s Main Directorate in Moscow.

  Aralov explained that the woman Sherbakov had just spent the last month falling in love with was an agent in a GRU program known as Black Widow. He called her the crown jewel of the whole thing, the very best agent in his stable. He said that the name Sherbakov knew her as was false, that her real name was Tatyana Alexandrova. And he said that one day soon, someone from the Russian government would call on him to do something very important.

  When that call came, Sherbakov would have to make a choice. Either he would do as was asked of him, fulfill his duty to the Motherland, and everything would be fine.

  Or, he could choose to do things the hard way, and whatever happened to him, worse would happen to her. She would suffer a fate so brutal, so hideous, so barbaric, that tears were falling down Sherbakov’s face by the time the call ended.

  He was on hold for a few minutes, and when a voice finally came on the line, it was so raspy, so dry, that just listening to it made Sherbakov thirsty.

  “My name is Jacob Kirov,” the man said. “I think you know what this is about.”

  Sherbakov’s hand was trembling. He had to clear his throat and try twice before managing to say, “I think so.”

  The man was Russian but spoke English as if his accent had been cultivated at an expensive British boarding school.

  “The time has come for you to fulfill your duty to the Motherland, Sherbakov.”

  Sherbakov said nothing.

  He thought of Tatyana. She’d told him her name was Anya. It wasn’t so far from the truth. Maybe the rest of their month together hadn’t been so far from the truth either.

  He should have known better.

  He did know better.

  She’d been sent to tempt him. It had all been a lie.

  But what his mind knew with certainty, his heart was utterly incapable of accepting.

  All that mattered to him was seeing her again, and somewhere in the words Aralov had said to him, there’d been an implicit promise, a hook, a lure, that maybe, if he did exactly as he was told, he would get her back.

  “You were promised something by my colleague, Aralov, were you not?”

  Sherbakov stammered so badly he barely managed a response. “I was, sir.”

  “He said you could win back your whore.”

  “Sir,” Sherbakov said. “She wasn’t…”.

  “She wasn’t what?”

  “I mean… yes, I want her back.”

  “Well, I’m afraid there’s been a little, how should I put this, change of plan.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sherbakov cried. “I’m ready to do my duty, sir.”

  “Oh, if only it were that simple.”

  “But it is that simple,” Sherbakov stammered. “I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll do my duty for the Motherland.”

  “Sherbakov,” Kirov said, his voice sickly sweet, toying with him, “you’ve never even set foot in the Motherland, have you?”

  “You know I haven’t, sir.”

  “And your physical performance? How would you describe it?”

  “It’s,” Sherbakov said, looking down at his lap, “it’s an embarrassment, sir.”

  “You can barely hold a gun, Sherbakov. How am I to give you a mission when you have proven yourself to be so utterly inept?”

  “I don’t,” Sherbakov stammered, “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You’re soft, Sherbakov. You’re a slob. You know what I think?”

  Sherbakov didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t see why they would get him to call in if all they were going to do was humiliate him.

  “I think you’re more American than you are Russian.”

  “I assure you, sir, I swear to you, I’m loyal to the Motherland.”

  “You want to see her again, don’t you?”

  “Sir,” Sherbakov said, and his voice failed him.

  There it was. The lure. The bait. The one thing they knew he wanted.

  “You want her back, Sherbakov. Am I right?”

  “Aralov said I would be asked to do something.”

  “Aralov’s dead, Alex.”

  “What?”

  “Your little whore double-crossed him.”

  Sherbakov couldn’t believe his ears. “Sir?”

  “That’s right, Alex. Your sweet little Tatyana. She defected. Betrayed all of us.”

  “No,” Alex said, shaking his head. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, because you knew her so well?” Kirov taunted. “What did you think? That she was sitting by a window somewhere just waiting for you? Pining?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You thought you were her way out?” Kirov said, laughing a dry, wheezy cackle. “You didn’t even know her name, Alex.”

  “She was…”.

  “She was a whore, Sherbakov. Plain and simple.”

  Sherbakov had gone over in his head a million times the last night he’d spent with her. The inflections of her voice. The look in her eyes. The rhythm of her breathing when she fell asleep.

  He was more than another job to her.

  He had to be.

  “No,” he said.

  “A whore, Alex.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Sherbakov said, raising his voice.

  Kirov went silent. He was letting the news sink in. He was waiting to see what Sherbakov would do about it.

  “What happens to her now?” Sherbakov said.

  “Don’t ask me that.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You know what happens to her, Alex.”

  “You can’t.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You wouldn’t have called me if there was nothing that could be done.”

  “Her name’s on a list, Alex. The list has been stamped and signed and sent up the chain. You betray the Motherland, the Motherland hunts you down and kills you like the dog you are.”

  “There must be something, some way…”.

  “There’s no way.”

  “If she defected, the Americans, they’ll protect her.”

  “They can’t protect her. Not forever. Not when she’s being hunted by someone with as much patience. You of all people, Alex, know how long we’re willing to wait for something we want.”

  Sherbakov’s hand was shaking so badly he could barely take his cigarettes from his pocket. Eventually he managed, and even got it lit. He put it in his mouth and took a long draw.

  “How will she die?”

  Kirov let out a hollow laugh. “How? Who knows? Who cares?”

  Sherbakov pictured her alone in some alley, her head on a concrete pavement, a bullet in her skull, and a halo of blood around it.

  “I care,” he stammered, “you know that. That’s why you’re speaking to me.”

  “You’re an interesting case, Alex. I’ll give you that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you’re unique, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re certainly not the GRU type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “You don’t look like one of us.”

  “I wouldn’t know what a GRU agent looks like.”

  “No,” Kirov said. “I suppose you wouldn’t. But I do.”

  “And I’m not it.”

  “There’s somewhere I want to send you, Alex Sherbakov. If you’re willing to go.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll have to have your wits about you. No fuck ups. Do you hear me?”

  “Are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, this never gets back to me. It never comes back on the GRU. No Russian involvement whatsoever.”

  “What is the mission?” Sherbakov said.

  “There’s a man. A CIA asset. Highly professional. Highly trained. Used to watching his back.”

  “I’ll go after anyone,” Sherbakov said,
“if you can promise me…”.

  “He knows how to recognize a GRU agent from a mile away,” Kirov said, cutting him off. “I don’t know what it is about us. The diet, maybe. Perhaps it gives us a distinctive odor.”

  “Sir, if you’re saying…”.

  “I think it’s the training. The muscle development, the gait, the posture, we all become … you know…”.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The same, Alex. We all become the same.”

  Alex sucked on his cigarette.

  “But not you, Alex. You’re different. You’ve never been anywhere near a GRU facility. Our stench, it never got on you.”

  “Sir, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you’re a fat, lazy, American couch potato. You couldn’t shoot someone if your life depended on it. One look at you, and he’d know that.”

  “So you have a mission for me? Something else?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t decided yet, Alex.”

  “Sir, if you, if you spare…”.

  “Tatyana? It’s too late for that, Alex. The wheels are already in motion. I’m reeling her in as we speak.”

  “Don’t do it, sir. I beg of you.”

  “Tell me, Alex, are you a gambling man?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “There’s something you could do that might be useful to me, Alex, but I need to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain. I need an ironclad guarantee that if you fuck up, if you get caught, that there’s absolutely zero chance of it blowing back on me.”

  “Sir, I swear.”

  “You’re lucky, Alex. There’s not a lot of men I could ask to do this, but you, you have a legend. You have cover. Real cover.”

  “I do, sir.”

  “You were born on Long Island. Just another American slob. You talk like one. You walk like you. That means you are one, Alex. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re a, how do they say it, a regular Joe Schmo.”

  “I am, sir.”

  “That might be your ticket, Alex. That might be how you save your whore.”

  “Sir, I won’t let you down.”

  “If I send you in, Alex, I need a guarantee. Something rock solid. I need you to put something on the line too.”