by Saul Herzog
He hit enter.
Instantly, it found a match.
Identifier: RP_008374
Name: Tatyana Aleksandrova
Loyalty: Russia (compromised)
Agency: Main Directorate
Lead Agent: Igor Aralov
Status: Manhunt in progress. Kill on sight.
Restricted Database
Below the match was a list of entries, literally hundreds of them, going back years. They detailed Tatyana’s every movement down to the finest detail, her operational assignments, transcripts of phone calls, location coordinates taken periodically from her phone. Some of the entries had been made by Agniya, sitting at that very desk, but there were many others. Real field surveillance. Agents had been assigned to follow her, to monitor her every moment, both in Russia and abroad. Bugs had been planted in her apartment and hotel rooms. Drones had been requisitioned to watch her movements from the air. There were even transcripts of her meetings with Igor, meetings that had taken place between the two of them in the privacy of his office.
Agniya truly had betrayed him.
She’d listened to everything.
Everything.
There was a specific date he remembered and he scrolled through the transcripts and found it. He scanned it, looking for the part he was concerned about.
Transcript
Igor Aralov: You know what I want.
Tatyana Aleksandrova: The same thing everyone wants.
Igor Aralov: And you want to give it to me?
Tatyana Aleksandrova: I want to serve my country.
Igor Aralov: Then come closer, my dear. If you want to serve your country, this is the best way.
Tatyana Aleksandrova: [Indistinct].
Igor Aralov: Don't be shy.
Tatyana Aleksandrova: Like this?
Igor Aralov: That’s it, my dear. You know how.
Tatyana Aleksandrova: You like that?
Igor Aralov: Yes.
Tatyana Aleksandrova: [Indistinct] Oh, baby. [Indistinct].
Igor Aralov: Oh god, oh god.
Restricted Database
Igor felt his face redden. He’d taken liberties with many of the women under his power, but that was the only time he’d done it with Tatyana. For some reason, he hadn’t ever been able to bring himself to repeat it. It brought him too much embarrassment when he looked at her afterward, too much shame.
But he knew that wasn’t the encounter that would matter to the top floor. They’d marked the ones they were interested in with red flags, including Tatyana’s most recent trips to Istanbul and New York.
Igor ordered the entries chronologically and opened the very first file on the list. There was a red flag next to it.
Identifier: CI_050303
Target: Tatyana Aleksandrova
Agency: Main Directorate
Location: Hotel Europa, Damascus, Syria
Restricted Database
This was the oldest thing they had on her. He checked the date. It was four days later that Igor’s actions with his secretary had gotten him into trouble and the top floor assigned Agniya to his desk.
This was the reason.
If anything marked the beginning of Tatyana’s downfall, the beginning of her being put onto the radar of whatever agency had created this database, it was this incident.
And it was a mission Igor had sent her on. Her first overseas mission. He remembered it clearly. It had been a complete failure. The target was a Syrian military commander, a nasty piece of work named Hammoud Hassan, and Tatyana came back empty handed, reporting that she hadn’t been able to get the man to so much as look at her. That had surprised Igor. He remembered being suspicious about it. Hassan had a well-documented fondness for prostitutes. Dark features like Tatyana’s were his favorite. For her to completely fail to even catch his eye didn’t add up.
He remembered thinking that maybe Tatyana wasn’t cut out for the job. It wasn’t unusual in their business for a girl to lose her nerve. Some of them just weren’t built for it. Her being so new at the time, with so few successful jobs to her credit, made him question her abilities, her commitment to the cause.
The incident of him taking advantage of her in his office had occurred soon after. He now recalled that part of the reason for it was to see if she could even go through with it.
Now he saw the real reason she’d been unsuccessful in Damascus.
The report was difficult to read. There were so many code words and redacted segments that Igor had to go over it a few times just to make sense of it. But from what he could gather, a Russian Agency with the code RA_999 had been following a high-value American target coded as AP_000245.
The high-value target was an assassin for an elite CIA unit, and his arrival in Damascus had been leaked to the GRU by someone on the American side coded as AP_006758. The leaked information included not only the cover the target was traveling under, but also the hotel he’d be staying at, the Hotel Europa. They didn’t know the room number, but because of the target’s value, the Russian Agency pulled out all the stops, placing microphones and cameras in all ninety rooms of the hotel, as well as the hotel lobby, bar and other public areas.
Igor remembered something about that. There’d been complications for his own operations at the Hotel Europa during that time.
He needed to refresh his memory.
He opened a new SQL terminal and accessed the Main Directorate database. He accessed his own file for Tatyana’s Hammoud Hassan operation and scanned through it until he found what he was looking for. It was all there. Hammoud Hassan had been staying at the same hotel, the Europa. Room 55. Igor had been denied authorization to bug Hassan’s room because the top floor had a conflicting surveillance request that took precedence.
Igor had to tell Tatyana to take Hassan to her own hotel across the street, the Royal Damascus, as it was the only way he could film the liaison.
Igor flipped back to the other terminal and continued reading. The American high-value target checked into the Europa under room number 57, putting him directly next door to Hassan’s room.
Tatyana had come back from Damascus reporting to Igor that she’d never made meaningful contact with Hassan. She’d said she approached Hassan in the hotel lobby and he ignored her. She’d tried a second night at the bar and was unsuccessful again.
According to this report, on the second night, Hassan hadn’t ignored her, but bought her a drink at the bar. Igor watched the video footage, there was no audio but he could see Tatyana doing her job perfectly, drinking with Hassan and flirting with him.
According to the file, when Tatyana left him at the bar to use the washroom, she set up a sound recorder in her purse. Hassan must have told her he wasn’t going to go to her hotel, in which case, she was following the correct protocol by capturing audio of the liaison on her own recorder. Audio wasn’t nearly as useful, but it was better than nothing.
Tatyana was doing her job exactly to protocol.
While she was in the washroom, Hassan ordered her another drink. When it arrived, he drugged it. Igor watched the footage. He did it right there at the bar, right in front of the bartender. Hassan pulled a small bottle from his pocket and sprinkled it into the drink. Igor rewound the footage and watched it again. The bartender definitely saw him do it.
By the time Hassan and Tatyana left the bar, Tatyana was barely able to walk and Hassan had to almost carry her to the elevator. A hotel employee actually pressed the button on the elevator for them.
Hassan brought Tatyana to his room, room 55, and handcuffed her to the bed.
The top floor’s surveillance team watched the whole thing. They weren’t there because of Tatyana, it was just coincidence that she was in the same hotel as their American target, but because they’d bugged the entire hotel, they had eyes on everything that followed.
According to the background research, conducted by the top floor after the fact, Hassan apparently had a history of violence against prostitutes. He’d tortured over
a dozen of them. Four died. One of the survivors was actually brave enough, or naive enough, to go to the Syrian police and file a report. The case was buried. The woman was later found dead in a public drain outside the city, shot by the same gun issued to Damascus police. No cop in Syria would ever dare look into a man as powerful as Hammoud Hassan, and that was why Igor had had no knowledge of the report when he sent Tatyana in.
If he’d known, he would have included it in her briefing.
He’d sent her in blind.
And that was why, for her first ever overseas mission, Igor had placed Tatyana into the hands of a man who spent over four hours slowly strangling her to death, raping her, and reviving her.
Igor read that and had to stand up. He needed a breather. He opened a button on his shirt. He poured himself a drink.
He’d had no idea. Her first mission. The start of everything.
And the thing that got to him, the thing that really bothered him, was that the Russian surveillance team who’d bugged the hotel just watched the entire thing. They watched one of their own, a female GRU agent on her first real mission, get strangled to within a hair’s breadth of her life, for over four hours.
How could they do that?
They sought authorization from Moscow to intervene, but when the request was denied, they simply sat on their hands and watched.
Moscow said the American was too valuable to lose for a single GRU prostitute.
Igor couldn’t believe what he was reading. It was a wonder Tatyana had ever been able to go back into the field again. It made him feel even more guilty about what had just happened to her in New York. He’d misjudged her. Underestimated her. It made him wonder what else had happened? What other things had she suffered in the line of duty that he didn’t know about?
The surveillance team watched for hours, certain Tatyana was going to die.
But just when death seemed most imminent, as Hassan’s cycle of strangulation and revival was coming to its inevitable end, someone intervened.
The footage was all there and Igor clicked on the file marked Room 55.
He was looking at Hassan’s room. Tatyana was naked, splayed out on the bed, her wrists cuffed to the bedposts. Hassan was also naked. He straddling her, both hands on her neck, choking her until the very last second.
She was struggling, writhing in the bed, but it was clear her movements were very weak.
A knock came on the door and Hassan turned to look at it. He put a rag in Tatyana’s mouth and grabbed a handgun from the table by the bed. The knock came again. Hassan crept toward the door and peered through the peephole.
The second his face touched the door, it burst open into his face and knocked him to the ground. A man entered the room, struck Hassan in the face with his knee, looked at the bed, and saw instantly that Tatyana was choking. The rag had been jammed too far down her throat.
He ran to the bed and pulled the rag from her mouth. Tatyana gasped for air, and then her eyes widened when she saw what was about to happen. Behind the American, Hassan rose to his feet, holding his gun out in front of him.
The American turned in time to take a bullet to the chest.
Miraculously, the bullet didn’t stop him.
Hassan pulled the trigger twice more, but the man leapt at him, somehow dodging the bullets. He grabbed Hassan by the waist and brought him to the ground, where he proceeded to slam his head against the ground, over and over and over until Hassan’s body went limp and his skull began to give way.
The man looked down at what he’d done and rose slowly. His hands were covered in blood and his chest was bleeding where he’d been shot. He wiped his hands on his shirt and went back to the bed.
Tatyana looked at him, her eyes wide with terror, as he opened the cuffs.
There was another video file that had been flagged, this one of Room 57, and Igor opened it.
They were in the American’s room now. A few hours had passed. Tatyana had recovered somewhat from her ordeal. She was dressed and was making tea. The American’s gunshot wound had been tended to and he was sitting in a chair watching Tatyana.
“Thank you,” he said to her when she handed him the tea.
“You’re welcome,” she said, her voice weak.
“You’re Russian?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in Damascus?”
She looked at him for a minute, then said, “Please don’t ask me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to lie to you.”
He nodded and they sipped their tea.
“That man was a Syrian military commander,” the American said.
Tatyana said nothing.
Then he said, “Don’t you work with any support?”
“What do you mean?”
“The team that sent you in. Weren’t they watching? Making sure something like this didn’t happen?”
“What team?”
“The GRU team.”
“How do you know I’m GRU?”
“Call it a hunch.”
The American had finished his tea and Tatyana poured him some more.
“How’s the wound?” she said.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“You’re angry.”
“They send you in alone, don’t they?”
Tatyana nodded.
He shook his head.
“What do they do when something like this happens?”
“Things like this don’t happen.”
Lance laughed.
“Is that what they told you at the academy?”
Tatyana started crying.
“This was my first operation,” she said.
“Well, no offense, but I think you might want to consider a career change.”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I don’t do this, I’ll never get my freedom.”
Lance looked at her a moment, then he got up and went to his bag and took something from it.
“What’s that?” Tatyana said when he came back.
“They didn’t give you a gun, did they?”
“A gun wouldn’t have helped me tonight.”
He handed her a handgun. Igor saw it was the old Browning Tatyana brought with her on every mission. It was against regulations, a gun was a potential giveaway, but Igor hadn’t challenged her on it.
“Never go on another job without this,” the American said. “It will save your life one day.”
She looked at him.
“Why are you helping me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t have to come into that room. You got shot over it. Now you’re giving me your gun.”
“I’m American,” he said. “I’ve got more guns.”
She sat on the bed. “What are we going to do about the body?”
“Leave the body to me. I’ll get rid of it.”
“Thank you.”
“And don’t tell your handler anything about this. Just talking to someone like me would put you on a watch list.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask.”
“All right, I won’t.”
“You just say you were never here. Tell your handler the guy wasn’t interested. No one’s going to think you killed him.”
“All right.”
“Do you have somewhere you can go?”
I have a room at the Royal.”
“Go back there. Act like this never happened.”
Tatyana got up, but as she was putting on her coat, she started to cry again. The American looked at her for a few seconds, and when she didn’t stop, he stood up and held her. She leaned into him and cried into his neck.
“I can stay here,” she said to him.
“What?”
“With you,” she said.
She started to kiss his neck.
When he didn’t respond, she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I thought you’d want me to stay.”
He shook his head. Then he said, “You’ve got to look after yourself. Don’t tell your handler everything. Only tell them what they ask. And always carry a weapon when you work. Even hookers carry weapons.”
She nodded.
“That’s what I am, isn’t it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No,” she said. “I understand. You’re right.”
“I wasn’t judging you.”
She put on her coat. She was embarrassed.
“You’re a soldier,” she said.
He nodded.
“What’s your name?” she said.
He paused for a moment, then said, “Lance Spector.”
She looked at him. “Is that your real name?”
He said nothing.
“If I ever wanted to contact you, if I needed help, I could use that name?”
“Sure you could.”
“And a message would get to you?”
“If you gave it to the right person.”
“And who would the right person be?”
“The military. Delta Force.”
She nodded and went to the door. She opened it and then looked back. “Thank you for the help. If I can ever return the favor, my name is Tatyana Aleksandrova.”
The video ended there. Igor could see why Tatyana had been put on a watch list because of it. That American was a priority. She’d formed a connection with him.
A real connection.
All they had to do was watch her and wait. Eventually, she’d contact Spector, or he’d contact her.
They knew enough about human nature to know that was inevitable.
Everyone in the GRU wanted to have a way out, a plan B. Something they could comfort themselves with when they fell asleep at night.
Tatyana’s was this American.
Igor didn’t take it personally. It was only natural. The work they did took a toll. She’d just been through a terrible ordeal. This man helped her and asked nothing from her in return.
The question Igor needed to answer wasn’t why Tatyana wanted Spector. That much he understood perfectly.
What he wanted to know was who’d been watching the Hotel Europa?
Who’d placed Agniya?