The Asset

by Saul Herzog

“The best I can give you right now is a BMW 5 series.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Black.”

  “That would be perfect,” Lance said.

  54

  “Stay down,” Sofia hissed.

  Olga ducked out of view, just in time to avoid being seen by a passing army jeep.

  The two women had been hiding out in a convenience store a few blocks from the hospital. They’d been there since the airstrike, when they’d been able to escape the hospital grounds during the chaos that followed the explosion.

  Sofia had been shot, and Olga practically had to carry her. The windows of the surrounding buildings had all been blown out and Olga chose the first place to hide she could find. It was a small store, and the entire front window had been shattered during the impact.

  The shop was already deserted. The army had evacuated the entire district when they began spraying the streets with chlorine. It explained why the government had been able to claim the explosion at the hospital had been a gas leak without anyone questioning it.

  The story being circulated was that the explosion occurred because the morgue was running at overcapacity. They were saying the hospital had been locked down when a shipment of bad meat caused an anthrax outbreak in the south of the city. A number of workers had been poisoned at the Empress Catherine factory and surrounding area but the situation was under control. The explosion was an unfortunate tragedy that had needlessly added to the death toll and the hospital administrators were already being rounded up to face the full force of the law.

  Sofia and Olga had watched the story on local television news. They’d even seen the television crews drive past on the street outside.

  The store had turned out to be a good hiding place. Olga made sure no one found them. She brought Sofia to the small office at the back of the shop and cleaned her wound with vodka from the store and a sewing set.

  They spent the first night in the office, huddled next to a small heater. The next morning, when they realized the entire building was empty, they slept in real beds in an apartment on the top floor. Using vegetables and other ingredients from the store, Olga made soup while Sofia rested in the bed.

  The area was still on lockdown while the authorities made sure any evidence of what really happened at the hospital was taken care of. That first night, the hospital was overrun with soldiers and they could still hear gunfire coming from it periodically. The government was making sure there would be no witnesses.

  Olga and Sofia knew that anyone looking for them would think they’d been killed, either in the airstrike or by the wave of soldiers who’d followed. It would take days to sort out the bodies and figure out who was accounted for and who wasn’t.

  The women had come back down to the convenience store to get supplies and to see if they could get a better idea of what was going on. The area had been evacuated but it wasn’t completely empty. The evacuation had been conducted hastily, and soldiers were still roaming the streets in search of stragglers. Sofia and Olga even saw them gunning people down from the window of the apartment.

  It wouldn’t be long before they started searching the buildings too.

  “There’s hot cocoa here,” Olga said, taking a canister from a shelf and showing it to Sofia.

  Sofia’s wound was tender but she’d been lucky. The bullet had only grazed her and it wasn’t serious.

  “We have to find out what’s going on,” she said.

  “Why don’t we wait here another day?” Olga said. “It’s safer than going outside.”

  As if to punctuate her point, they heard a burst of machine gun fire from somewhere out on the streets.

  “They’re clearing the area,” Sofia said.

  Olga looked at her. “Why are they doing this?”

  Sofia didn’t know, but she intended to find out.

  Her cell phone was dead but there was a landline in the store office. She went to it and dialed the number of Vasily’s cell.

  There was no answer.

  “None of this makes any sense,” Olga said.

  “It makes sense to the military,” Sofia said.

  “If they’re trying to orchestrate a cover up, they’re being too heavy-handed. They’re only drawing more attention.”

  “This is what they do,” Sofia said. “They’re keeping us afraid. They want us to know they’re up to something. And they want us to know they can get away with it.”

  Olga went to the window and peered out at the street. The entire neighborhood was deserted.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said again.

  Sofia knew this was difficult. Olga had done nothing wrong. Unlike the research Sofia had published about smallpox and paleo-pathogens, Olga had never done anything to draw the attention of the Kremlin. She hadn’t been plucked from civilian life and forced to work in the underworld of national security and bioweapons. She was still innocent.

  Or at least, she had been. Now, the life she’d known was over. They’d never let her back. She’d be lucky if she survived this without being executed.

  “Olga,” Sofia said. “They want the world to know what they’re doing. They want every citizen in Russia to know that they can be killed, at any moment, right in front of the eyes of the world, and no one will ever lift a finger to stop it. Not the Americans. Not the Europeans. Not NATO. This is how they maintain power.”

  Olga shook her head. “But they’re shooting people down in the middle of the street.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to stay here,” Sofia said.

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got to get back to the institute. I’ve got to speak to Vasily.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Olga said, horrified.

  “There’s less chance of me being spotted if I go alone.”

  “No,” Olga said, and Sofia knew she meant it. “I’m coming with you.”

  Reluctantly, Sofia agreed. The truth was, she didn’t want to face what was ahead of her without Olga. She didn’t think she could do it.

  “Thank you,” she said, quietly.

  Olga nodded.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Sofia said. “We’ll leave then.”

  They went back to the apartment and checked the closets for civilian clothing. Their doctor’s scrubs would be a giveaway.

  Whoever lived there was similar in size to both Olga and Sofia, but also clearly older. She dressed the way their mothers would have.

  Olga grinned when Sofia presented herself. “You look like one of my old school teachers,” she said.

  “You look like my father’s secretary,” Sofia said.

  Both women had cars in the hospital parking lot but going back for them now was out of the question. As soon as it got dark, they left the building on foot, avoiding street lights and any open spaces where the soldiers might spot them.

  It was relatively easy to get out of the immediate area without being seen and once they’d done so, they were able to hail a cab.

  “I have to go back to my apartment,” Sofia said. “I’ve got papers there. Computer files. Research. I don’t want the government to find it.”

  “We can’t go back,” Olga said. “It’s too risky.”

  “I have to,” Sofia said. “The government has done enough harm with my research. I have to put a stop to as much of it as I can.”

  “What if they’re already there, waiting for you?”

  “We’ll have to be careful.”

  They told the driver to let them out a block from Sofia’s apartment. She lived in one of the most expensive buildings in the city, right downtown, and as they walked down the busy street, it was hard to believe that the atrocities at the hospital were happening just a few miles away.

  Here, everything was going on completely as normal. The fancy restaurants were full of diners. The streets were full of expensive cars. It was as if the airstrike had happened in another country.

  The truth was, the people in this area, the lucky o
nes with high-paying jobs and security, were on the same side as the government. These were the ruling elite, and their loyalty had been purchased long ago.

  These people didn’t want to know about airstrikes and soldiers gunning people down in the street.

  They just wanted their waiter to open another bottle of expensive wine.

  The doorman at Sofia’s building recognized her.

  “Dr. Ivanovna,” he said as they approached.

  “Petr,” Sofia said. “Has anyone come looking for me?”

  “I just got here,” he said. “They called me in. It was supposed to be Mikhail’s shift but his wife works at the Empress Catherine.”

  “I see,” Sofia said.

  She felt a wave of guilt as they hurried past him into the elevator.

  “What happened wasn’t your fault,” Olga said when the elevator doors shut.

  Sofia almost couldn’t see the numbers on the buttons through her tears.

  “Yes it was,” she said. “These germs were in the middle of the permafrost, thousands of miles from the nearest town. There’s a reason God left them in such a remote place. They should have stayed out there forever, and they would have if people like me didn’t go out searching for them.”

  “You did what you had to do,” Olga said. “They gave you no choice.”

  “Mikhail’s wife never should have been within a thousand miles of those pathogens.”

  Olga said nothing.

  Sofia suddenly felt it all coming down on her. Now that she was back in her perfect world with her expensive things, the full weight of what she’d done, of what she’d allowed herself to be used to do, came down on her like a ton of bricks.

  She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She had to get out of the elevator. Without thinking, as soon as the doors opened, she brushed past Olga into the corridor.

  The instant she stepped out, a man grabbed her around the neck.

  55

  Igor looked at the clunky phone on his desk for a long time. He was painfully aware that what he was about to do could well end up being the thing that killed him. Maybe not soon, maybe not for years, but when death came, as it surely would, it would trace back directly to this call.

  And yet it was a call he had to make.

  It was the price of admission, the path to power, the key to the kingdom. Whatever his fears, he’d long ago learned that the only way to do this job, to inhabit this world, was to accept that one day it would kill him. Anything less would be a weakness, and men like Davidov could smell weakness a mile away.

  He picked up the phone and was about to dial when he stopped himself.

  He put down the receiver.

  His hand was trembling. He wanted a drink. He glanced at the cupboard under his desk. He’d told himself he needed a clear head but reached down anyway.

  He pulled out the bottle and poured four ounces of vodka into his tea cup.

  He went to the window and looked out at the massive construction site. He remembered the first time he’d set foot in that office, the first time he’d seen that view. He’d thought it was the grandest moment of his life. Before that, he’d spent sixteen years in a windowless office on the second floor, categorizing NATO intercepts.

  There’d been times when he thought he was destined to spend his entire life in that second-floor office. It was little more than a closet. There’d been an old clock on the wall above the door, and he was certain he’d spent more of his life looking at its round face than at anything else on earth.

  But then, advancing in an organization like the GRU was above all, a waiting game. And it was in that closet-office that Igor learned to wait.

  He waited, he watched, and eventually, something happened.

  His job had been to read intercepts, to categorize them. Someone else, higher up the chain, would decide what they meant. In sixteen years, he must have read over fifty thousand intercepts. While some related to important developments like troop movements along the frontier, or the location of NATO defensive missile systems in former socialist states, the vast majority were exceedingly mundane. They covered topics like the seating arrangement at a formal function in Paris, or the maintenance records for water heaters at a military housing facility in Berlin, or parking permits for visitors at the American embassy in Madrid.

  Igor read them all, and in sixteen years, no one ever asked him his opinion on them.

  They should have. Because alone in his closet, Igor was paying attention. The names and codenames gradually became actual people to him. When ambassadors’ wives sat next to each other at dinner parties, he pictured them in their gowns and pearls. He imagined what they spoke of. He figured out who liked each other, who were friends, and who hated each other. When someone lost their parking spot at an embassy, or gained a corner office at a consulate, Igor noticed.

  He had a talent for picking up on patterns, and the intercepts formed a vast tapestry in his mind. The people became more real to him than the people in his own life. Their petty communications took on the status of groundbreaking revelations.

  He became a machine for decoding the soap opera of intrigues that played out across thirty nations, from the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the shores of Turkish Anatolia, and from the Finnish Arctic to the North African coast.

  He saw NATO for what it was. He saw the players as characters in a tragic play. They were a different species to him, people who loved, and laughed, and cried, and had hopes and dreams. They were people who lived life.

  Igor was not a person like that. Igor was the person who watched.

  And when a low-level embassy staffer in Vilnius began passing information to a contact she met at a Paris ball, Igor saw it with all the vividness of an opera.

  And when a member of the German parliament was assassinated in his Berlin apartment a few days later, Igor felt like he was watching the blade actually slit the man’s throat.

  And, of course, he made the connection. He saw how the two events, a thousand kilometers apart, were connected.

  He saw the bigger picture.

  And more importantly, he saw how to exploit it.

  Bringing his findings to his bosses had been a gamble, but within six months he was on the eighth floor. Two years later, he was in the direktor’s office, with its view, and its nubile secretaries, and its armed guards in brass-buttoned uniforms.

  Now, for the second time in his life, he was going to take a risk.

  He’d spent the night reading every single entry in Agniya’s restricted database. He’d figured out what the codes stood for, who the players were, and how they related to each other. In a single night, he’d put together in his head the rich tapestry that was the Russian top tier, the Kremlin’s elite players, and the Dead Hand organization that furthered their interests.

  He knew what they wanted, and what they feared.

  As he dialed, he took a sip of the vodka and told himself that fortune favored the bold.

  A voice answered, a female, and to Igor’s ear, her accent put her in Krasnogorsk. Exactly where he’d expected her. This woman knew who was calling, and that was the point. She provided verification, like an escrow service. When she called Davidov, she would be able to assure him that Igor was who he said he was.

  “I need to place a call,” Igor said.

  “Destination?”

  “Evgraf Davidov. Prime Directorate.”

  “Authorization code?”

  Igor gave Agniya’s authorization code.

  “Stand by. I will call you back at this number in exactly fifteen minutes.”

  Igor hung up. He was nervous, and lit a cigar to calm himself. He waited, smoking and sipping vodka, and almost knocked the phone off the desk when it finally rang.

  “This is Aralov,” he said.

  “Please hold for Direktor Davidov.”

  He waited and a moment later heard the connection click.

  “Direktor Davidov?” Igor said nervously.

  “Direktor Aralov,” Davidov
said.

  The two men had never met, and Davidov’s voice sounded odd to Igor, like he was sucking a lozenge. He found it faintly nauseating.

  “Please, sir. Call me Igor.”

  “Very well,” Davidov said without reciprocating the courtesy. “You have some nerve making this call, Igor.”

  “It’s not what you think, sir.”

  “You shouldn’t have killed Agniya Bunina. She was under my protection.”

  “She betrayed me, sir.”

  “You let your feelings for her cloud your judgment.”

  “I had no feelings for her.”

  “You had a camera installed in her bedroom, you creep. You accessed the feed every single night. I know you, Igor Aralov. I’ve seen your hand pumping your little cock at that desk you sit at now, so don’t lie to me.”

  “Sir,” Igor said.

  “The only reason you’re still alive is because I thought you might be useful. But I was wrong.”

  “Wrong? Sir, please” Igor said. “I can break the American for you. Laurel Everlane. I know her weakness.”

  “I don’t need you to break her.”

  “I know what you’re planning, sir. I know what you need from her.”

  “I’m not planning anything,” Davidov said, his voice betraying his agitation.

  “Of course not, sir. But I can break her for you. Torture her for you.”

  “Timokhin is going to break her, Igor. He’s got a knack for that sort of thing.”

  “Spector then. I can get you Spector.”

  Davidov laughed. “How do you propose to do that?”

  “I’ll pick up where Tatyana left off.”

  “She had a real connection with him, Igor. She and the American had a … thing.”

  “I know what they had.”

  “I hardly think you’re going to have quite the same appeal to him.”

  “I know how to trap him. If she’s still out there, I can pretend to be her. I know everything about her. I can draw him in, make it look like she’s still trying to make contact.”

  “Spector is already dead, Igor.”

  “What?”

  “All of Roth’s assets are dead.”