The Asset

by Saul Herzog

  “No one and nothing gets in or out,” he said.

  The base commander assured him the cordon would be set up and then Roth called back McKinsey at the lab.

  “How you doing, son?” Roth said.

  “I’m all right, sir.”

  “I’ve had the base commander set up a protective cordon around the lab. I’m afraid you’re not going to be allowed out for a while.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I want you to start sending everything you have to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.“

  “I’ll get started right away.”

  “Digital data only,” Roth said. “Under no circumstances are you to unseal that lab. I understand you have state of the art containment at that facility.”

  “Yes we do, sir.”

  “So you send all the data to Atlanta, and you keep that lab sealed.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Laurel looked out the window at the passing traffic. She allowed herself to imagine, just for a second, what would happen if a virus like this got on the loose. Then she shook the thought from her head.

  “You keep the containment intact,” Roth said. “Do not attempt to recover the bodies of the technicians. I’m sorry, but this virus can’t be allowed to get out. You’re on lockdown, son. You hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir.”

  Roth hung up the phone.

  “The man’s a professional,” he said to Laurel, as if trying to reassure her. “He understands how dangerous this thing is.”

  “You think we locked things down quickly enough?”

  Roth looked at her and she saw the moment of terror as he thought what it would mean if they hadn’t.

  “I think so,” he said. “That lab’s the only place that opened the vial. It’s completely sealed.”

  “You better be certain,” Laurel said.

  Roth picked up the phone and called back the Pentagon. “I need the base commander again,” he said.

  They connected him and Roth said, “When the CDC has all the data it needs, I want you to destroy that lab.”

  “What about the scientist?” the base commander said.

  Roth had been looking at Laurel but he looked away. He picked up the phone to take it off speaker.

  “Him too,” Roth said. “Nothing comes out of there. Not a lab rat, not a computer, not the scientist. It’s all got to be burned down.”

  He hung up and stared out the window.

  “Sir,” Laurel said, “has it crossed your mind that if our scientists had a leak, even with the best procedures in the world, how much greater the risk is at a Russian lab?”

  Roth nodded but didn’t say anything. He was silent for the rest of the ride into the city.

  When they finally pulled up outside Laurel’s apartment she looked at him. She felt sorry for him. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the time it took them to drive home from the airport.

  “Good night, boss,” she said, getting out of the car.

  “Get some sleep,” he said.

  She looked back. “I wish we got Lance.”

  “We gave it our best shot.”

  Laurel wanted to say something else, something comforting, but she couldn’t think of anything.

  Geopolitics was a giant chess game to him, and this envelope, the vial, the message for Spector, it changed everything. His job, the job of the entire CIA, was above all else to preserve the status quo. This virus, it changed the position of every piece on the board. It threatened the entire game. Ever since 1949, when Stalin successfully tested his own version of the twenty-kiloton Fat Man, the global chess board, to a mind like Roth’s, had changed not at all.

  Now, it had been upended in a single stroke.

  “We’ve still got the mailbox,” Laurel said.

  Roth nodded. “Look into it in the morning,” he said through the window of the car as it pulled away.

  Laurel saw the world differently than Roth did. To her, it wasn’t a chess board. It was personal. And she intended to look into the mailbox lead very closely indeed.

  She waited for Roth’s car to round the corner then began walking, not to her apartment but to the closest metro station. She caught the metro to Union Station and bought a ticket to New York on the last train of the night.

  She got a little sleep on the train, an hour or two, and was in Penn Station by midnight. From there she caught a cab to Bleeker and Tenth in the Village.

  She stepped from the cab into the cool New York night. It felt good to be in the city in December. It had an energy unlike anywhere else on earth.

  She pulled her phone from her pocket and called Langley, where she was connected to one of the specialists on night duty.

  “It’s Laurel.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Do you have contact with the surveillance detail on the mailbox?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “I’m a block away. Tell them I’m paying a visit.”

  The phone clicked and when the specialist came back he said, “There’s a gray van across the street from the store.”

  Laurel was walking in that direction and could see the van. “Are they expecting me?”

  “Yeah, they see you.”

  The back door of the van opened and Laurel got in.

  “Gentlemen,” she said.

  One of them pulled the door shut behind her and she was immediately overcome by the smell. Three men, cramped in a confined space on eight-hour stints, eating as much takeout as they wanted.

  “You Everlane?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “This your stakeout?”

  The guy asking the questions was sitting up front. The other two were in the back with the equipment.

  “Roth’s,” she said.

  “What’s he hoping to find? Because we ain’t seen a peep.”

  They had a camera inside the store feeding them a live view of the mailbox. Someone had drawn a circle around it with a sharpie right on the monitor.

  “That the one we’re watching?”

  “I can see why they like you,” the guy said.

  Laurel sat back.

  She took a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and the guy in front said, “Oh hell, lady. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Laurel smiled. “I thought it would mask the body odor.”

  “That’s musk,” he said.

  Laurel looked at him.

  He said, “Hey, you want to sit here all night, let’s see how you smell at the end of it.”

  “Well,” she said. “I guess I can take a hint.” She wrote her number on one of the takeout containers. “Call me if anything happens. I’ll be close by.”

  “You don’t want to wait with us?” one of the guys in the back said. He was wearing an Oakland A’s ball cap.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I’m cramping your style.”

  They’d been cooped up so long they were going stir crazy.

  “We could crack a window,” he said to the guy up front.

  “Let her smoke,” the third guy said.

  “Fine,” the guy in front said.

  She leaned back and lit her cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the tiny crack in the window.

  She looked out at the mail store.

  Whoever sent them the message had been careful. They knew enough to leave the envelope where it would find its way into the consulate. They knew how to avoid the CCTV cameras.

  Whoever they were, they were sending a warning, and they’d risked their life to do it.

  It had to mean a deal. A defection. She knew Lance had been right about it being a Russian.

  Russia had the bioweapons labs. They contravened every treaty they ever signed. They sent agents to places like Istanbul and New York and gave them reason to want to defect.

  “I’d bet dollars to donuts we’re waiting for a Russian,” she said.

  The guys nodded.

  “I bet it’s a woman,” the g
uy in the A’s cap said.

  “What tells you that?” Laurel said.

  “Stakeouts like this are all we do. You get a feel for them.”

  “A feel?”

  “Yeah, like the location. Lots of people around. Nothing too secluded. Women don’t go in for secluded meets.”

  “Unless they have to,” the guy in the front said.

  “Right,” Laurel said.

  The danger to a defector always came from their own side. The GRU had more assets operating on the east coast of the US than anywhere else on earth. The White House, the UN, the embassies, Wall Street, K Street, Capital Hill, there was a concentration of power there that was unmatched anywhere else. Nothing in London, Berlin, or Tokyo compared.

  When Russians defected, this was where they did it.

  The land of the free.

  The home of the brave.

  But there was more to this. Someone was telling them something. Why ask for Lance? They must have known he was more than just another Delta Force operator. And why this mailbox, this location? They had to know it was being watched.

  This mailbox wasn’t an accident. And the surveillance team in a van outside wasn’t an accident either.

  Laurel worked through what she knew for certain. What she knew and what the person who’d sent the message knew.

  They’d know that if anyone came to check the mail, they’d be tailed by the CIA. The store was so small, there was literally no chance of sneaking in unnoticed. A locker at Grand Central would have been better for that.

  For an anonymous message, a phone number or email address would have sufficed.

  Or better yet, an encrypted messaging service.

  “Why are we here?” she said.

  “Roth gave us the address.”

  “No,” she said. “Why this place specifically? Why would anyone want to meet at a place like this?”

  “They’re scared,” the third guy said. “And not of us. If they gave this location to our guys, it’s because they wanted us to be here.”

  “We’ve got a Russian defector on our hands,” Laurel said.

  “A female Russian defector,” the guy in front said.

  “I’ll give her some diplomatic immunity,” the third guy said, smirking.

  The others laughed.

  “One minute in this van and she’d wish she was in the gulag,” Laurel said.

  The guy in the A’s cap asked Laurel for a cigarette.

  “You too now?” the guy in front said.

  The man shrugged and lit the cigarette. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “Whoever owns that mailbox wants to know exactly who’s delivering her mail.”

  Laurel nodded.

  She called Roth’s cell. It was redirected to his operator.

  “I need to talk to him,” Laurel said.

  “He’s with the president,” the operator said.

  “I know,” Laurel said.

  The operator sighed. “You’re sure it can’t wait?”

  “It really can’t.”

  The operator put her on hold and then Roth’s voice came on.

  “Sorry, boss.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m in New York with the surveillance team.”

  He cleared his throat. “I had a feeling you weren’t ready to let this one go.”

  “I want him, boss.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “As an asset.”

  “Of course. They spot anything yet?”

  “No, and they’re not going to.”

  “Well, they might as well keep waiting.”

  “No, I mean the message we got. This mailbox.”

  “What about it?”

  “That’s the thing. They’re never going to come.”

  “Then why give it to us?”

  “I’m right outside. It’s a tiny store. There’s no way of accessing it without being seen.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a hole in a wall, boss. Someone’s got to stick their hand through first.”

  “And hope the person on the other side doesn’t cut it off?” Roth said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So you’re saying they’re not going to stick their hand through first.”

  “Would you?”

  23

  Being an agent of the Main Directorate came with perks. They might not have compensated entirely for the downside, but Tatyana knew enough about life to enjoy them while they lasted.

  A first class transatlantic flight.

  A fully-reclinable bed.

  A flute of champagne on landing.

  She took it all, and would have taken more if it was offered. As far as she was concerned, she’d earned it.

  The Russian government had taken everything from her, and she was under no illusions they’d eventually come for her life too.

  She wasn’t bitter about it.

  As a young, single woman in Moscow, she was fucked anyway.

  Her allegiance was to herself.

  “Lie to them,” her grandmother told her. “Lie to your husband, to your boss, to the government. All of them. But never lie to yourself.”

  Tatyana took the lesson to heart.

  And whatever she did for the GRU, regardless of what she thought of it, regardless of whether she found it palatable or not, she never lied to herself. She never once told herself she was doing it for her country.

  Another thing her grandmother told her was that she could do anything, anything at all, so long as she didn’t work for free.

  And working for the GRU paid. You just had to know how to work it. Like so many things in life, it could screw you, but also get you off. It kept her in the things she’d grown accustomed to, things she valued not for what they were, but for what they stood for. And what they stood for was that she’d beaten the odds.

  She wore Chanel, Dior, Prada, Hermes. When she got off the plane she was in Saint Laurent ankle boots and a matching alligator skin purse. She was a classics girl. She didn’t go in for the brashness of Gucci or the flamboyance of Louis Vuitton.

  If it meant she had to sleep with the occasional diplomat, or shoot a politician, or strangle someone with a length of wire, she’d learned long ago that she could stomach that.

  They paid, so she worked.

  At least she had a modicum of control over her life. It was a life of her own making. She’d taken each step that led to where she was. She’d brought herself to this place.

  Sometimes she didn’t sleep, or woke drenched in a cold sweat so terrified she didn’t dare move until the sun came up.

  Sometimes she went so many days without keeping food down that the doctors had to put her on an IV.

  Sometimes she broke out in a rash that covered her entire body and had to be treated with antibiotics.

  But it was a job. And it paid. And nothing lasted forever. One way or another, it would all come to an end.

  She passed through immigration at JFK with doctored documents and made her way to the taxis in front of the terminal.

  “Your bag, madam?” the driver said.

  “Don’t bang it,” she said.

  She got into the backseat and checked her phone.

  “Where to?”

  “The Four Seasons.”

  “It’s between Park and Madison, right?”

  The driver was Russian. She could tell from the accent.

  “Yes,” she said in Russian.

  “What street?”

  “Fifty-eighth.”

  They got out of the airport and he said, “Nice place.”

  “The airport?”

  “No, the Four Seasons.”

  She nodded.

  It was a nice place, one of her favorites. They called that stretch of the street Billionaire’s Row. Rooms started at a thousand a night. There was a penthouse suite, the third most expensive in the world according to the hotel’s website, that was over sixty-thousand.

  According to agency legend, it was in that v
ery suite that the Russian and Chinese presidents had met to discuss their new joint strategy. It was there they’d formulated the policy that set the future course of the GRU, and which would see Russia and China oppose American hegemony on every front in every theater.

  If America was a mighty bison, Russia and China were the wolves nipping at its heels, letting it tire under its own lumbering weight until it faltered and they could get it by the throat.

  It all served to give the hotel a special place in GRU lore, which was evinced by the fact they charged more nights there to their expense accounts than any other hotel in the world.

  The driver was eager to talk but Tatyana stopped answering his questions. She was thinking about the operation.

  After speaking to Sofia in Novouralsk, she realized that she needed to make contact with Spector. She needed to speak to him personally and make sure the Americans understood the seriousness of the virus she’d sent them. It had been easy to manipulate Igor into sending her to New York. There was a Canadian trade negotiator who she said was worth targeting. The target was real. He’d been to the Ukraine multiple times and his profile was rising on the GRU’s exhaustive list of people around the world worth pursuing. He was currently ranked 4,893rd. Not exactly a top priority, but enough to be plausible. Everyone was talking about Ukraine. The target was outside his home country, he was rated as corruptible. Why not hit him?

  It was a mission that would attract little attention in Moscow.

  Even still, she knew the risk she was taking. A statistic that shocked many foreigners, but not Russians, was that the GRU spent more of its resources monitoring its own people than those of other countries.

  It had to.

  Tatyana was a good agent, with a clean record, but there was a defection-risk profile for agents like her. She was an unmarried female under thirty with no children, no living relatives, and few reasons to miss Moscow if it should ever transpire she couldn’t go back.

  That was the reason they paid so well. The Russians realized long ago, after an embarrassing number of defections, that if they wanted to send young women overseas to seduce foreigners, they had to give them a lifestyle they wouldn’t willingly throw away. At a time when Russian GDP per capita was under eight thousand dollars, Igor’s budget per widow was three million. Line items for specific operations were in addition.

  Tatyana traveled with GRU credit cards and could buy whatever she wanted. As long as she kept coming home after assignments, the faucet would keep flowing. And as long as everything she bought was chargeable to American Express, and didn’t look like it would be useful to a person planning a life outside Russia, no one asked any questions.