by Jack Mars
Back on the street, she targeted a chubby man in a striped polo with a camera hanging around his neck. He couldn’t have been more of a tourist if he was wearing a sandwich board that said so. She bumped into him roughly as they passed, gasping and immediately apologizing. His face turned red and he opened his mouth to shout at her, until he saw that she was a slight, pretty brunette. He muttered an apology and scurried along on his way, unaware that his wallet was missing. Karina had always been quick with her hands. She did not condone stealing, but this was a time of necessity.
The wallet had a little less than a hundred dollars in cash in it. She took the money and dropped the rest of it, ID and credit cards and photos of kids, into a large blue postal box on the next corner.
Finally she took a cab east, across town, where she headed into the dive bar, its windows darkened and the place smelling like cheap beer, and took a seat at the bar and ordered a soda.
The television suspended over the beer taps was on and tuned into a news station, the current story an update on sports scores from the night prior. She sipped her soda, calming her nerves and wondering what she would do next. She couldn’t go back to the hotel; that would be a fool’s errand. Besides, there was nothing for them to find there but clothes and toiletries. She had one phone number memorized, but she was hesitant about finding a pay phone. They were getting rarer, even in the cities. The Secret Service had her cell phone, and they might be watching the pay phones.
She was considering asking the bartender to use their phone, but her contact was an international number and that might draw undue attention.
The next time Karina glanced up at the television, the story had changed. A male anchor she didn’t recognize was talking at her, and though the volume was too low to hear she could clearly see the words on the black ticker across the bottom of the screen: HARRIS AND KOZLOVSKY HOLD PRIVATE MEETING.
“Korva,” she sighed. Shit. Then in English: “Can you turn this up, please?”
The bartender, a Latino man with a handlebar mustache, scowled at her for a moment before turning his back to show just how blatantly he was ignoring her.
“Zalupa,” she muttered, an unkind curse in Ukrainian. Then she leaned over the bar, located the remote, and turned the volume up herself.
“…anonymous source inside the White House has confirmed that a private meeting was held earlier today between President Harris and Russian President Aleksandr Kozlovsky,” the anchor declared. “The two days since Kozlovsky arrived in the United States have been highly publicized and well documented, yet the notion of a closed-door meeting held in a conference room of the White House basement has many people nervously reminiscing on the events from nearly a year and a half ago.
“In response to the leak, the press secretary issued this statement, and I quote: ‘Both presidents have been under a veritable microscope these past two days, due largely to the indiscretions of their predecessors. President Harris and his guest simply wanted a brief reprieve from the limelight. The meeting in question was less than ten minutes in length, and the subject of this meeting was for each leader to become better acquainted with the other without the pressure of media presence or scrutiny. I can assure each and every person here and tuning in that there was no clandestine agenda. This was simply a closed-door conversation, and nothing more,’ end quote. When questioned further about the specifics of this meeting, the press secretary joked, ‘I wasn’t privy to details, but I believe the meeting was largely about their mutual love of scotch and dachshunds.’
“Though the true nature of the meeting remains shrouded in secrecy, we have confirmed through our anonymous source that there was only one other person present in the room with the two leaders—an interpreter. Though her identity has not been released, we have confirmed that she is female, and a native to Russia. Now the world wants to know: were the two leaders discussing drinks and dogs? Or does this unidentified female interpreter hold the answer to a question that many Americans have on their—”
The television suddenly flickered out, the screen turning black. Karina looked down sharply to see that the Latino bartender had grabbed the remote and turned it off.
She was about to call him an asshole in plain English but stopped herself. There was no point picking fights; she was supposed to be incognito. Instead she mulled over the report. The White House had not released her identity, at least not yet. They wanted to find her and silence her before she could tell anyone what she had heard. What the two presidents were planning. What Kozlovsky had asked of the American leader.
But Karina had an ace in the hole—two of them, in fact. She again absentmindedly caressed the pearl studs in her ears. Two years earlier, she had been translating for a German diplomat who had accused her of misinterpreting his words. She hadn’t, but it had almost landed her in some real trouble. So with some help from her sister and her contacts in FIS, Karina had the earrings made. Each of them contained a tiny unidirectional microphone that recorded a speaker on either side of her; together, the two earrings combined would capture any conversation that Karina interpreted. It was, of course, highly illegal, but also very handy, and since she had begun using them she hadn’t found any reason to need the recordings and subsequently deleted them.
Until now. Every word that had been spoken between her, Harris, and Kozlovsky was contained in those two studs. Getting them into the right hands was all that mattered now.
She slid silently off the stool and stole toward the rear of the bar, making a beeline for the bathroom, but then kept on going down a dingy corridor and pushed out through a metal security door and into a rear alley.
Out on the street, Karina tried to look as cool and casual as possible, but inside she was terrified. It was bad enough that the Secret Service was looking for her—and no doubt had the police involved, possibly even the FBI—but when Kozlovsky found out, he would send his own people to find her, if he hadn’t already.
And worse, any John Doe citizen who heard the news might look twice at her and wonder. Americans were not the most open-minded when it came to foreigners. Luckily she could do a decently passable American accent. At least she hoped it was passable; she’d never had to use it in any serious situation before. So far she had gotten by just fine pretending to be Russian.
I need a phone. She couldn’t risk a pay phone. She couldn’t steal a cell phone; the victim would report it and the Secret Service could easily run down the device’s location and last-called number, which would put Veronika at risk as well.
Think, Karina. She pushed the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and looked around—a-ha. The answer was right there in front of her, half a block away and across the street. She glanced both ways and trotted over to the cellular store.
The shop was tiny, smelled of disinfectant, and harshly lit by too many fluorescent tube lights. The young black man behind the counter couldn’t have been more than twenty, poking idly at a phone in front of him with his chin in his hand. There was no one else in the store.
Karina stood there for a long moment before he looked up at her, his gaze flat.
“Yeah?”
“Do you jailbreak phones here?” she asked.
He looked her up and down. “We’re not allowed to sell that service.”
Karina smiled. “That’s not what I was asking.” She hoped her American accent wasn’t betraying her. It sounded rough to her ears, tinged with a Ukrainian lilt. “I’m not a cop, and I don’t have a phone. I want to use one. I need to make a call on an off-network device via Wi-Fi. Preferably through a third-party app. Something that can’t be traced.”
The kid blinked at her. “What do you mean, you gotta make a call?”
She sighed curtly, trying not to grow irritated. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.” She leaned over the counter and lowered her voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the store. “I’m in some trouble, okay? I need five minutes with the type of phone I just described. I ca
n pay. Can you help me or not?”
He eyed her suspiciously. “What kind of trouble you in? Like with the police?”
“Worse,” she said. “Look, if it was the kind of thing I could tell you, do you think I’d be here at all?”
The kid nodded slowly. “All right. I got what you need. And you can use it. Five minutes… fifty bucks.”
Karina scoffed aloud. “Fifty dollars for a five-minute call?”
The clerk shrugged. “Or you can try someplace else.”
“Fine.” She pulled the wad of cash she’d stolen from the tourist, counted out fifty, and slid it across to him. “There. The phone?”
The kid rummaged around under the counter and came out with an iPhone. It was a few years old, one corner of the screen cracked, but it powered on just fine. “This one here is off-network, and has a Chinese calling app on it,” he told her. “It reroutes through a randomized out-of-service number.” He slid it over to her. “Five minutes.”
“Great. Thank you. You have a back office here?” To his frown she added, “Obviously this is a private call.”
The kid hesitated, but then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” She headed into a tiny back office with wood-paneled walls and a melamine table as a desk, covered in invoices and assorted other paperwork. She opened the calling app on the phone, dialed the number she knew by heart, and waited as it rerouted. It took several seconds, and for a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that the call wouldn’t go through, but at last it rang.
Someone answered. But they did not speak.
“It’s me,” she said in Ukrainian.
“Karina?” The woman on the other end of the line sounded confused. “What are you doing calling this number?”
“I need help, V.”
“What’s wrong?” Veronika asked urgently.
Karina did not know where to begin. “There was a meeting,” she said. “Between Kozlovsky and Harris…”
“I saw the news.” Veronika sucked in a breath as she realized. “You? You were the interpreter in that meeting?”
“Yes.” Karina quickly recounted what had happened, from her time with the two presidents to fleeing from the Secret Service agent. She tried to keep her voice steady as she concluded, “If they find me, they will kill me, V.”
“My god,” Veronika said breathily. “Karina, you need to tell someone what you know!”
“I’m telling you. Don’t you see? I cannot take this to the media. They will stifle it. They will deny it. You are the only one I can trust with this information. I need to get the earrings to you.”
“You have them?” Veronika asked. “You recorded the meeting?”
“Yes. Every word.”
Her sister thought for a long moment. “FIS has a liaison in Richmond. Can you get there?”
Veronika, Karina’s older sister by two years, was a top agent of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Ukraine’s version of the CIA. It was no secret to Karina that FIS had several sleepers in the United States. The thought of being under their protection was an attractive one, but she realized she could not risk it.
“No,” she said at last. “They will expect me to flee. I’m certain they’ll be watching the airports and highways carefully.”
“Then I will tell him to come to you—”
“You are not understanding, Veronika. If they find me, they will kill me. And anyone who is with me. I will not be responsible for that.” Her voice caught in her throat. Standing there in the dim back office of a shady cellular store, the events of the past few hours finally caught up with her. But she would not let her emotions get the best of her. “I’m scared, V. I need help. I need a way out.”
“I will not let anything happen to you,” her sister promised. “I have an idea. I will have our liaison make an anonymous tip to DC Metro that the meeting was recorded—”
“What? Are you insane?” Karina snapped.
“And I will have him tell the media as well.”
“Christ, V, you have lost your mind!”
“No. Listen to me, Karina. If they believe you possess a recording, then you have a bargaining chip. Without it you are as good as dead. This way, they will want you alive. And if the tip comes from Richmond, they will believe you have fled the city. In the meantime, I will work on an extraction and get you the hell out of here.”
“The heat is too much for you to send one of your own to retrieve me,” Karina said. “I won’t have anyone compromised or killed because of me.”
“But you can’t do this alone, sestra.” Veronika was silent for a moment before adding, “I think I might know someone who can help.”
“FIS?” Karina asked.
“No. An American.”
“Veronika—”
“He is former CIA.”
That clinched it. Her sister had truly lost her mind, and Karina told her so.
“Do you trust me?” Veronika asked.
“A minute ago I would have said yes…”
“Trust me now, Karina. And trust this man. I will tell you where to go and when to be there.”
Karina sighed. What choice did she have? V was right. She could not elude the Secret Service, the Russians, and anyone else they sent by herself. She needed help. And she did trust her sister, even if this plan sounded ludicrous.
“All right. How will I know this man?”
“If he is still good at his job, you won’t,” Veronika said. “But he will know you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Sara inspected herself in the bathroom mirror as she adjusted her ponytail. She hated her hair. It was too long; she hadn’t had it cut in months. Her ends were split badly. About six weeks earlier she’d let Camilla dye it red with a box from the drugstore, and though she’d liked it at the time her bright blonde roots were showing through the first inch from her scalp. It wasn’t a good look.
She hated the dark blue polo she had to wear to work. It was a size too big for her slight frame, with the words “Swift Thrift” screen-printed on the left breast. The letters were faded, the edges chipped from repeat washings.
She hated going to the thrift shop, with its constant odor of mothballs and stale sweat, pretending to be nice to rude people. She hated that nine bucks an hour was the best she could do at sixteen without a high school diploma.
But she had made a decision. She was independent.Mostly.
The bathroom door swung open suddenly, forced from the other side. Tommy slid to a halt when he saw her standing in front of the mirror.
“What the hell, Tommy!” Sara shouted. “I’m in here!”
“Why didn’t you lock the door?” he shot back.
“It was closed, wasn’t it?”
“Well, hurry up! I have to take a piss!”
“Just get out!” She shoved the door closed and left the older boy cursing on the other side of it. Life in the co-op was anything but glamorous, but she’d gotten used to it in the year that she’d been living there. Or had it been more now? Thirteen months or so, she reasoned.
She brushed some mascara on her eyelashes and inspected herself once more. Good enough, she thought. She didn’t like to wear a lot of makeup, despite Camilla’s best efforts. And besides, she was still growing into her looks.
She exited the bathroom, which opened onto the kitchen, just in time to see Tommy leaning away from the sink and zipping up his fly.
“Oh my god.” She winced. “Tell me you did not just pee in the sink.”
“You were taking too long.”
“God, you’re disgusting.” She crossed to the old beige refrigerator and took out a bottle of water—no way she was drinking tap water now, that was for sure—and as she closed it again, the whiteboard caught her eye.
She winced again.
On the refrigerator door was a magnetic dry-erase board with six names in black marker, each of the tenants of the co-op. Written beneath each name was a number. The six of them were responsible for a share
of the rent and equal part of the bills each month. If they couldn’t pay their share, they had a three-month grace period to wipe out their debt, or else they would have to leave. And the number under Sara’s name was the largest.
The co-op was far from the worst place to live in Jacksonville. The old house needed some repairs, but it wasn’t a disaster. There were four bedrooms, three of them occupied by two people each and the fourth used as storage and workspace.
Their landlord, Mr. Nedelmeyer, was a German guy in his early forties who had a bunch of properties like this one in the Jacksonville metro area. He was pretty laid back, all things considered; in fact, he insisted that they simply call him “Needle,” which to Sara sounded like something you’d call a drug dealer. But Needle was an easy man to deal with. He didn’t care if they had friends over, or threw the occasional party. He didn’t even care about the drugs. He had only three major rules: If you get arrested, you’re out. If you can’t pay after three months, you’re out. If you assault another tenant, you’re out.
At the moment, staring at the whiteboard on the fridge, Sara was worried about the second rule. But then she heard a voice right in her ear that made her worry about the third rule.
“What’s the matter, little girl? Worried about that big scary number under your name?” Tommy laughed like he’d told a great joke. He was nineteen, lanky and bony, with tattoos up both arms. He and his girlfriend Jo shared one of the co-op’s bedrooms. Neither of them worked; Tommy’s parents wired him money every month, more than enough to cover their co-op expenses. The rest they spent on coke.
Tommy thought he was some kind of badass. But he was just a suburban kid on vacation.
Sara turned slowly. The older boy was nearly a whole foot taller, and standing only a few inches away he towered over her. “I think,” she said slowly, “you should take a couple of steps back and get out of my face.”
“Or what?” He grinned maliciously. “You gonna hit me?”
“Of course not. That would be against the rules.” She smiled innocently. “But you know, the other night I took a little video. You and Jo, doing a line off the coffee table.”