The Asset

by Saul Herzog

  That meant no real estate, no securities, no transferable assets, no savings.

  Just luxuries. Things of no use to a defector.

  Which was fine by her. She was authorized to shop, and shop she would.

  It would have been suspicious if she didn’t.

  Besides, the boutiques in the hotel lobby alone would put Moscow’s luxury district to shame.

  She got to the hotel and checked in under the same name as the passport she’d entered the country under.

  Widows generally traveled under one of two honeytrap covers.

  Either they were the young, disaffected trophy-wife of some rich oligarch, or they were a penniless translator toiling in a low-paying government job at the nearest Russian embassy. Either way, they were desperate for a savior, a foreign man, who would whisk them away from their drab reality into the glamor and sparkle of the west.

  That it worked at all was proof to Tatyana of how the world really operated. James Brown had it right all along. It was a man’s world. And Tatyana had learned that men were driven by one thing. Not lust, not greed, not even the desire for power.

  The force that really made the world go round was the delicate, tender, all-too-easily-wounded snowflake that was the male ego. That was what brought nations to war, what brought soldiers to the battlefield, and what brought men to women’s beds.

  Either version of the cover story worked, but the top brass preferred the penniless translator version. It was cheaper, but it was also more effective. It turned out powerful men were significantly more turned on by a woman who was broke than one who already had everything she wanted.

  The trophy-wife version was reserved for operations where access to the target required wealth or status to be plausible.

  Like all government agencies, the GRU was a bureaucracy.

  And like all Russian bureaucracies, it was on a gargantuan scale.

  It lumbered like a T-34 tank. It was not nimble, or reactive, or innovative.

  In university, Tatyana heard people debate whether Tolstoy, and Stalin, and Russia, better resembled a hedgehog or a fox. The fox knew many things. The hedgehog knew only one thing, but knew it well.

  Tatyana asked the same question of intelligence agencies.

  The CIA was a fox. MI5 was a fox.

  The GRU was a hedgehog, and no matter how sophisticated its adversaries grew, no matter how large a technological gap they opened up, they would never be able to deny a simple fact the Russians had learned long ago.

  That at their core, Westerners were not equipped for war.

  They could never truly be warriors because in their hearts they still clung to the promise of peace.

  They lived their lives as if those Memorial Day barbecues, those Thanksgiving turkeys, those Christmas presents under the tree meant something. As if they were real, and would go on forever. As if all those quaint, familiar comforts, somehow protected them from the reality of the world.

  They were slaves to their delusions as much as any Soviet apparatchik.

  When they told their children about Santa Claus, they believed the story they were telling.

  They indulged in their weakness. They basked in it.

  They enjoyed their lives, and wanted to preserve them.

  And it led the GRU to focus intensely on the pursuit of Kompromat. Because the men who led the west slept with their eyes closed. They slept like babies. They let their guard down. They were more afraid of a fight with their wives than the terrors their enemies might bring to their door.

  Hence the lists, thousands of names long, of foreigners worth targeting.

  Russia knew it couldn’t win in the skies, it couldn’t win in the oceans, it couldn’t win in space, so it won in the bedroom, in the toilet, in the brothel.

  Russia knew that no matter how advanced an army became, a photo of a general cock-deep in a Russian whore would stop him in his tracks as surely as the Siberian winter stopped Napoleon, and the Wehrmacht, and everyone else who’d ever thought they could march into it and win.

  24

  Igor Aralov stood by his office window blowing cigar smoke against the glass. They were building a new shopping mall outside and the workers crawled around the site like ants.

  From where he stood, he could see the newly built offices of KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Norton Rose. It wasn’t enough that they’d won the war. Now they’d come to build monuments on the ashes of the vanquished.

  Even German firms were building dazzling new towers, glittering edifices taller than anything Moscow had ever seen. AEG, IG Farben, ThyssenKrupp, the very companies that brought the Wehrmacht within sight of the Kremlin. Hitler hadn’t been able to knock down the door by force, so the Duma did it for them.

  And now, rumors of a hundred-floor hotel bearing the American president’s name.

  Within a year, the last of the aerodrome, including the runway, would be gone.

  The GRU itself was being rehoused in a modern building that would share services with the headquarters of a French defense company.

  In fifty years, he doubted the country would exist at all. At least not the one he’d spent his life defending.

  He’d been a sniper in a previous life, and his Dragunov SVD rifle was still in its case beneath his desk. He had thirty-two confirmed kills with it. He thought about taking it from its case now and picking off a few construction workers, adding to his total. They were dismantling the country as surely as any foreign soldier ever had.

  A knock on the door pulled him from the thought.

  “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed,” he said irritably to his secretary.

  “It’s Timokhin,” she said.

  Igor turned. He looked at her a second. Her face betrayed nothing. The spectacles, the mole on her cheek, the thin lips. She was as impervious to his suspicions as a stone.

  She took no joy in her life, and allowed none in his.

  And they’d assigned her to him permanently.

  He’d never trusted her. She was too intelligent. Too quiet. And she’d pretended to orgasm when they slept together. No one did that without an agenda.

  “Igor,” she snapped.

  “Bring him in,” Igor said. “Bring him in. We must not keep such an important visitor waiting.”

  Her lip curled. She knew something.

  She left and a moment later, a dark hulk appeared in the doorway.

  “Mr. Direktor,” Igor said, scuttling around the desk.

  Timokhin had always been more bear than man. He didn’t walk, he lumbered. As he entered the room, he ducked slightly.

  Igor pulled out a chair for him.

  “I’ll stand,” Timokhin said.

  “A drink then? Or cigar?”

  “This will only take a minute.”

  “Of course,” Igor said, backing away.

  Timokhin looked around Igor’s little kingdom like a landlord come down to the slum. The place was distasteful to him, unsanitary, disease-ridden. He stepped as if the carpet might soil his shoes.

  “I see you got a view of the runway after all.”

  Igor nodded. He didn’t know whether to sit or stand. He pulled out his chair but stood behind it.

  “You’re comfortable here,” Timokhin said.

  His voice was a guttural grumble. Over-sized vocal cords, Igor imagined.

  Timokhin’s office was on the top floor, the lofty heights, with the Spetsnaz men and the sycophants. Igor hoped to join them one day, once he’d sufficiently demonstrated he’d sold his soul.

  But until that day, Timokhin was a danger to him, a scorpion in the cradle, a ferret in the hutch.

  Timokhin stood still, his eyes narrow.

  Igor shifted his weight from one foot to the other. When he was a boy he’d kept lizards as pets. The way Timokhin looked at him now was exactly how the basilisks looked at the mice at feeding time.

  No one spoke, but Igor could hear the heave and pull of Timokhin’s breathing.

  “I’ll get to the point,�
� Timokhin said.

  “Please do.”

  “This concerns your operative in New York.”

  “New York?” Igor said, as if he’d never heard of the place.

  “Tatyana Aleksandrova,” Timokhin said.

  Igor’s jaw clenched.

  Timokhin continued. “I’m afraid her name’s been brought up.”

  Igor felt his heart thump. Decades of practice had taught him to keep a steady hand. At moments like this, one had to show nothing, betray nothing.

  “I don’t see why Tatyana Aleksandrova would be of concern to anyone,” he said as evenly as he could.

  Timokhin smiled. “Oh, but she is, Igor. She is. She’s being watched from the highest level.”

  There was that look again. The lizard sizing up its prey.

  The mice could never fight back. They could only freeze in the gaze of the predator. There was no terror on earth like that. When the lizards were young, he fed them baby mice that were so tiny, so helpless, they hadn’t even grown fur. Their eyes were closed. They didn’t know what was happening to them. That bored him. It was when the lizards got older, and the mice were large enough to know what was happening, that things got interesting.

  Igor thought of that, he thought of what this was going to mean for Tatyana, the mouse, his mouse, and felt an overwhelming urge to attack Timokhin. He imagined flinging himself over the desk, his hands outstretched, clawed, ready to grip Timokhin’s thick neck and jerk it back and forth until it snapped.

  “You look like you need to sit down, my friend,” Timokhin said.

  Igor shook his head. “We’re not friends, Fyodor.”

  “Come, Igor.”

  “What’s your interest in Tatyana? The operation in New York is minor by anyone’s standards.”

  “If it’s so minor, you won’t mind my incursion.”

  “I mind all incursions,” Igor said.

  “Igor,” Timokhin said, observing him closely. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had feelings for her.”

  Igor took a deep breath. “Even you know better than that.”

  “Do I?” Timokhin said, as softly as if soothing a child. “Do I really?”

  “What’s this about, Timokhin?”

  “Fathers love their daughters, don’t they, Igor?”

  “You better start making sense or I’ll have the guards come in.”

  “They love all their daughters, but they have a special place in their heart for the slut of the litter.”

  Igor felt his blood boil.

  “I’ll be sorry to have to slit the slut’s throat before getting to taste her other slit,” Timokhin said.

  Igor’s mind went blank. The chair in front of him was solid oak, carved decades ago. He heaved it up and flung it across the table.

  Timokhin didn’t flinch. He raised a hand, just one, and caught it mid-flight.

  “Igor, Igor, Igor,” he said, putting the chair back on the ground with mock care. “It seems I’ve poked a tender spot.”

  “Fuck you, Timokhin.”

  “I had no idea she was so dear to you.”

  “I think you better leave,” Igor said through gritted teeth.

  Timokhin raised his hands. “Fine. I’ll leave. I’ll pursue this another way. Just remember, I came to you first, Igor. I came to tell you that your favorite little slut betrayed you. And you sent me away.”

  He turned for the door. Igor indulged the fantasy of pulling out his pistol and shooting the man in the back. He pictured him stumble. A man his size would take more than one bullet to bring down. He would turn in time to see Igor pulling the trigger a second time. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. He wouldn’t stop until the gun clicked empty.

  Tatyana had betrayed him? How was that possible?

  “Fyodor, wait,” he said.

  Timokhin smiled. He turned and looked at Igor again with that lurid, reptilian gaze.

  “Tatyana would never betray me,” he said.

  “If you truly believe that, then we have nothing to talk about,” Timokhin said.

  Igor could barely stand to look at the man. He was so pleased with himself. So content. So smug.

  “Why is it,” Igor said, “that every time you look at me, I feel like Gregor Samsa?”

  Timokhin smiled. “Who’s Gregor Samsa?” he said.

  25

  Sofia looked down as the chopper descended. The entire hospital had been cordoned off. There were soldiers everywhere, on the roofs of the surrounding buildings, in vehicles on the streets, even in other choppers in the sky around them.

  “This isn’t going to end well,” the pilot said through the comms.

  Sofia nodded. What the hell did the generals think they were doing? They’d cut off the hospital as if they were containing a zombie apocalypse.

  She’d told everyone at the staging area the same thing. The outbreak wasn’t a virus. It wasn’t going to spread. Contagion wasn’t an issue.

  The only one who’d listened was the woman, Tatyana, but she’d disappeared after their meeting and left her alone to explain the situation to the military boneheads who were in charge.

  The only thing they’d been concerned about was sealing off the hospital and keeping everyone affected inside. It was like they heard the word anthrax and their minds went blank. All they could think of was their jobs. The city had seen outbreaks before, and it had cost a lot of officers their positions. If there was one thing the top brass was good at protecting, it was their own skins.

  The chopper touched down on the rooftop helipad and Sofia leapt out. She kept her head low and ran to the door, where two soldiers let her pass.

  Once inside, she made her way to the ground floor of the hospital.

  “Olga,” she cried when she saw her.

  Olga was standing by the window, looking out at the situation.

  “Sofia, where have you been?”

  “The military is staging this operation from Novouralsk.”

  Olga grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed her tightly against her chest, as if afraid she would disappear again.

  “I was so worried,” she said.

  Sofia looked out the window. “What’s the situation?”

  “Apart from the army surrounding us?”

  “How fast are new cases coming in?”

  “They’ve slowed,” Olga said, “but they won’t stop for days. You know that.”

  Sofia nodded. The fact they’d slowed was something. “They must have figured out the source of the leak,” she said.

  Olga looked at her cautiously. The two had never talked openly about what it was Sofia actually did inside the military compound.

  “Let’s hope so,” Olga said.

  Sofia nodded. Outside the window, they could see soldiers running everywhere.

  “If they’ve stemmed the leak,” Olga said, “why are they still here? It looks to me like they think they have an outbreak on their hands.”

  “They don’t know their asses from their elbows,” Sofia said. “They’re following orders, and right now, their orders are to keep us contained.”

  “They’re creating a pressure cooker,” Olga said.

  Sofia nodded. For now, it seemed the people inside the hospital were willing to allow a quarantine. They understood the need for precautions. But tensions were high. Ambulances were still bringing in new patients. The hospital was getting more and more crowded. One wrong move, one trigger-happy recruit, and things would get ugly real fast.

  And as Sofia looked out the window, she saw that the military was doing nothing to calm the situation. Men were in the process of setting up machine gun posts on steel platforms right outside the fence. The guns all pointed inward.

  It was already starting to make people nervous. There were groups forming in the parking lot, men standing around smoking cigarettes, eyeing the soldiers.

  Sofia saw a huge tanker truck like the ones used to transport fuel driving slowly toward the gate. It stopped and four men in hazmat suits g
ot out. The truck was equipped with two hoses and the men, like firefighters working in teams, uncoiled the hoses. Then they opened the valves and began spraying down the street in front of the hospital. The smell of chlorine wafted over the hospital grounds immediately.

  Chlorine was toxic in concentrations as low as eighteen parts per million. At eight-hundred parts, it would kill fifty percent of people exposed to it. She wondered what concentration the military was using, and whether they were smart enough to ensure they didn’t allow the concentrations to become dangerous.

  She got her answer when they hosed down the hospital gates, taking no precautions to protect the people in the parking lot, or even their own men guarding the gates.

  “We better get those people back inside,” Olga said, looking out at the scene.

  Sofia nodded. “The last thing we need is more poisonings.”

  The truck finished hosing the entryway and began driving along the street. The soldiers walked along next to it, spraying everything.

  “A week from now, the trees will be dead,” Olga said.

  Sofia nodded. She turned to Olga. “So, what now?”

  Olga spread her hands helplessly. “Everyone exposed is dead,” she said. “There’s nothing to do but bring the bodies to the morgue.”

  “Are they being burned?”

  “No, the military said to preserve them but the morgue isn’t equipped for so many bodies. They’re just piling them up.”

  “If they want to perform autopsies, they better come soon,” Sofia said. “I’ll make a call.”

  Olga went to the samovar and poured two cups of tea. She handed one to Sofia. Neither of them had slept since the outbreak and they were close to exhaustion.

  “We should try to get some rest,” Sofia said.

  Olga nodded. “There’s something I don’t understand,” she said.

  “What?”

  “If the outbreak came from the military’s own compound, which we know it did.”