I knew Valya was behind me, but I didn’t think I was exposing a vulnerability — not like he is. I look back, like Danny will magically reappear, then turn back to Valya, confirming his guess.
“You’d have to be good friends to come this far,” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
Everything we need to say, but can’t, and the things we’ve said and shouldn’t have, hover over us like clouds bearing a blizzard, heavy with snow, threatening to fall and crush this tenuous understanding. But neither of us speak. Not because we don’t want to break this feeble détente — I don’t dare imagine our friendship will ever be the same. We both understand how awful and deep these circumstances are, and no words can change that.
“Thank you,” I whisper again. Before he responds, I walk away.
A week for hollow victories.
I start on my SDR back to the hotel, changing in an alley in between the café and McDonald’s. (As if changing in the street wasn’t humiliating enough.) Wish it were that easy to shed the memory of Valya, what I’ve done, what I’m making him do.
For Melanyushka. All for her. But the shard of guilt that wedges into my gut doesn’t heed my logic.
I have one stop left when I get a text. I almost hope it’s Valya, reneging. But it’s Danny. Think I found something, he says. Hurry back.
Almost there, I reply. Let me pack up first. I try to shift my mindset to the person I need to be. Not Lori, though I do need to be her — but Talia, CIA operations officer. Like I told Danny, stealing secrets and recruiting spies is the job description you get Day One. Might as well be printed on the Agency seal. And yes, what I do isn’t pretty, but like any undercover cop, law enforcement officer or soldier, I signed up to take greater risks and do awful things to keep people like Danny safe.
Yeah, I don’t want to hear that any more than he did.
I made my peace with this long ago. I do have to make exceptions to my moral standards — but again, like any undercover cop or law enforcement officer or soldier, I do things a regular citizen shouldn’t have to, all to keep those regular citizens safe. If the price of freedom is me lying, yes, that’s not generally a “good” thing to do, but I believe God’s smart enough to figure this out, and to see my intent, my heart’s in the right place. Even if sometimes it feels like a very wrong place.
All for Melanyushka’s sake, I remind myself. That’s why Valya’s making this sacrifice. His choice.
So why am I still trying to figure out how to undo it?
I’m almost back to my hotel when a beat-up, boxy beige coupe cuts me off. I recognize the car: Semyon’s.
As soon as my door shuts, we pull away from the curb. “Okay, debrief,” Semyon says.
He may be the local station chief, but he’s not really my boss. After Valya, I don’t have the will to pick a fight. “Got the tablet yesterday. We’re going through the files. Danny says he might’ve found something.”
“Great. They’ll love that in Paris. How about the FSB officer?”
“Still points to Borislav Zverev. Bugs in his office. He alluded to conversations Danny and I had in the hotel. Oh, yeah, and he rendited me off the street last night.”
Semyon nods, his friendly eyes now pensive. “You’ve gotten a lot done in, what, two days?”
“Feels longer.”
“About that PCS—”
One more thing first. “One more thing: I recruited an agent.”
Semyon stops more abruptly than necessary to obey the red light ahead. “You did what?”
“I recruited an agent,” I repeat. Sounds clear to me.
“You mean you found an agent for us to recruit.” His tone sounds sure, but his face is begging me to agree.
“No, I pitched him. He accepted.” I try not to picture Valya. “I told you about him. Didn’t I?” I was going to text him while walking to the hospital — and then I picked up Eager Igor.
Oh, crap. I didn’t tell him.
“Think I’d remember that.” Semyon fumes, exhaling loudly, barely containing his fury. The light turns green and we jolt off the starting line as if fueled by his anger. “You cold pitched someone you just met, no idea—”
“I’ve known him five years. He’s totally trustworthy — he rejected me at first, but he needs the money for his daughter. She has cancer.”
“You fall for every sob story and outstretched palm that comes your way in Canada?”
“I approached him. He had no idea I’m CIA, and I’m pretty sure I ruined our friendship.”
Semyon practically chokes on his scorn. “Heartbreaking. Glad to know your priorities are straight. And I’ll bet we now have excellent access to, what, Rostvertol?”
The local helicopter giant must have a few agents in place. “How about the headquarters of the Southern Military District?”
“Okay, he works there, but does he have access? Or is he some low-level desk jockey?”
I assume he’s high up. We saw him in the Victory Day parade, riding in style instead of marching. But beyond that, I can’t be sure.
“Do you know his rank? Specialty? Branch?”
“Podpolkovnik.” As of five years ago. My voice is subdued.
“We haven’t vetted this guy — I don’t even know his name.” Semyon whips down a side street and parks. “We need people who can follow protocol, because here our lives depend on it.”
Everything inside me shrinks three sizes. Either I obey the rules too well and alienate my husband, or I’ve gone totally rogue. Complete no-win.
Semyon isn’t done. “Go do your own thing. Seems that’s what you’re good at. Enjoy your last day here.” His tone isn’t nearly as generous as his words.
Guess I won’t have to turn down that PCS. I’m so clearly cut loose, goodbye’s unnecessary.
The worst part? All Valya’s gone through is for nothing. He doesn’t even know it.
I get back to the hotel with enough time to pack before we need to check out. And somehow I’ll scrape together the will to keep moving.
I head to my room to gather my things. In a couple hours, this will all be over. I don’t know whether to be relieved or guilty.
Guilt wins, besieging my gut like a German-Fascist invader. I shove aside the disappointment and worry to scoop up my dirty clothes and clear my bathroom counter. I need to keep moving. I have one chance not to screw something up on this mission: all I have to do this afternoon is keep Danny away from ulitsa Novatorov. Hope I can manage.
The front desk should hold our bags until we go to the airport. I ring for a bellhop. Once I’ve double-checked my room and lined up my bags by the door, the bellhop arrives. He loads the bags on his cart, and I ask him to wait.
I knock at the door. “Danny? You ready? I have a bellhop.”
He doesn’t answer. Must not hear me. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. I pull out my key to his room and unlock it, hoping the bellhop doesn’t notice or note the abnormality. Like security’s one of his big concerns. (Hint: it’s on the same end of the scale as privacy.)
“We’d better get going. Check out time,” I say as I walk in Danny’s room. He doesn’t respond. The overhead light is off, though the lamp by the bed is on. But the lighting isn’t the only thing that’s . . . off.
I turn to the bathroom, dark beyond the door. I return to the hotel room, scanning like he’s hiding in a corner.
He’s not. I ignore the cold twinge at the back of my neck. “Danny?” I call, like he’s under the bed or in invisibility mode or something. (No, we don’t have a gadget for that.)
He’s fine. Just like he was two nights ago. Just like always. He’s fine.
Then it hits me: Danny’s not the only thing missing. His bags are gone. His stuff’s not on the table. I switch on the bathroom light. The sink and shelf are bare.
The chill spreads up my neck, tingling over my scalp.
“Devushka?” the bellhop ventures. “Is everything okay?”
&nbs
p; I don’t care if Danny would hate me for this: I don’t trust the bellhop. “Everything’s fine.” I march to the door and slap a five-hundred ruble note in his hand. “Take the bags to the front desk and hold them.”
The bellhop nods. I shut the door to the room and to the panic threatening to close in on my brain. I’ll figure this out. I’ll get through this. More importantly, Danny will get through this. He’ll be fine. He has to be.
The telephone on the table rings. I jump and whirl on it before I dare to answer. “Da?”
“Missing something?” returns a female voice in Russian.
The cold twinge bursts into a thin layer of frost across my back. I don’t respond to the question; clearly she knows the answer. “What do you want?”
She laughs, a patronizing arpeggio, and then I place the voice: Nadia.
Has Borya recruited her? Is she working for him?
“What do you want?” I grind out again.
“After the way you two always stared at one another, I assume you’d like Fluker back.”
I hesitate. Obviously, DUH, I want my husband back. But Nadia doesn’t know how much he means to me — I hope. And if she doesn’t, I won’t jeopardize his life by letting on. “I’d never work again if I lost a client like that,” I say. “What’s this about?”
“I think you know,” she says. “I think you know a great deal more than you pretend.”
Oh, yes. She played me.
But I’ll still play my cover.
“What do you mean?” When someone threatens you for knowing too much, playing ignorant is almost funny. You know, when the most important person in your entire world isn’t at risk.
“For example,” Nadia continues as if I didn’t say anything, “I think you have information about locals working for the CIA.”
Valya’s face when he finally agreed to spy for us, not thirty minutes ago, flashes through my mind. For a split second, I let myself feel just as broken, pleading, and defeated.
I would do anything for Danny. I would protect an agent with my life. I have to. How can I save them both?
I have to stay in cover. “I work for InterpretiRossiya. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Say what you must,” Nadia says. “But if you do not produce a list of CIA contacts in Rostov-on-Don in one hour, you’ll lose more than your job.”
She has no idea how much I stand to lose. She can’t. My heart shrivels at the thought. “Please — I can’t get that for you. I can’t promise that. I’m just an interpreter.”
“You have played it well thus far, but your cover will not work any longer. I hope you know not to involve the politsiya. They will only cause you more trouble.”
Yeah, calling the cops isn’t a great course for a spy.
“I can’t — I can’t—” Not sure whether the stammering is part of my cover or the real failure to understand coming through.
Play. My. Cover. Harder. “I barely know this guy. I don’t know if this is worth it.”
“I can always send him to Lubyanka Square.”
The deep freeze reaches my stomach and it turns to ice, falling faster than a doomed Russian dynasty. Lubyanka was once where the KGB tortured and executed thousands. Now the FSB is headquartered in the same building. Could there be two FSB officers at Shcherbakov?
Or did I guess wrong?
But why else would an aerospace executive meet with an arms dealer?
They’re in it together. They must be. And I have to get Danny away from them. “How do I know you have him? You could’ve watched him go to lunch and then come on this fishing expedition. Which is off the wrong pier, by the way. I don’t have what you want.”
The saying doesn’t translate, or maybe she doesn’t hear it, because she doesn’t respond. There’s still some sound on the phone, though, and I strain to make out the muffled words in the background. “No, thanks.”
Danny’s voice. Time stops, and so does my breath, my brain, my heartbeat.
She has him.
My mental clock restarts and fast-forwards to real time, replaying the minute I missed: Nadia telling Danny, “Say hello, anything.”
“Hello?” Danny comes on the line, full voice.
I grip the receiver, take in air, steel myself. I can do this. I have to.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him.
“Why would I do that?” he mutters.
More shuffling, then Nadia returns to the line and to Russian. “Satisfied?”
“I still don’t have what you want.”
“Do you know Svyato-Iverskiy Zhenskiy Monastyr′?”
Saint Something women’s monastery? “No.”
“Find it. Bring the list on a USB drive to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity there. One o’clock. Come alone, or you’ll be explaining why you’ve returned to Moscow alone.”
“Please, I don’t have any way to get that, and Danny—” I cut myself off before the emotion rising in my throat can. But it doesn’t matter. She’s already ended the call.
And then the reality knocks my knees out from under me. I sink onto the bed. After all the precautions, all the pleading, all the paranoia, they still got him. They have my husband, my Danny, and the only way I can get him back is to betray everything I’ve vowed to protect.
I could give her Valya’s name — by the time she verified that he isn’t an agent, we’d be safe. But I can’t betray Valya, or any other CIA contacts — I can’t. I don’t know anyone, and not only would that mean selling out my own country — exposing those assets would cost their lives.
As if that wasn’t enough, the loss could leave American intelligence crippled for decades. Regardless of how valuable Valya’s intel might’ve been, a ranking military officer exposed as a spy? The CIA would have to leave town if word got around we can’t protect our assets, and the FSB would see to it that word was splashed across the front page, probably in Valya’s blood. With that chilling effect, we’d lose so much access and intelligence in this country — and that would doubtlessly cost more American lives.
I’m a horrible person and a worse CIA officer, but how can I weigh even a hundred American lives, and any amount of Russian agents’, against my husband’s? I can’t. I can’t.
I have to.
I know of exactly one CIA (would-be) agent in Russia (not counting Semyon — he’s an officer, not an agent, and I seriously doubt he’d respond if I call). I find myself pacing outside Melanyushka’s hospital twenty minutes later. Like I can run upstairs and tell her father not to bother — like he’s there. Like I can take back everything.
My mind follows the tight circles of my feet, around and around the same logical arguments. There’s no CIA scale to weigh out personal feelings versus professional ones. Even if I could take emotions out of the equation, Danny’s supposed to be the one person who can keep me sane, keep me grounded, keep me from drowning in the paranoia that was supposed to save us both (ironically).
But all the precautions in the world weren’t enough. Because we’re American. And everyone assumes Americans in Russia are CIA. Nadia might have even kidnapped Danny thinking he was — but if she’s turning to me for intel, she must have ruled him out as an officer.
He’s more valuable than that to me. Danny’s my concrete connection, the thing that reminds me all the sacrifices I make for this job are worthwhile, because I’m protecting people like him. When I come home at the end of the day, exhausted and broken, he’s supposed to be the one person who sees what I’m giving up and reminds me that it’s worth it. Nothing is worth losing him.
Not even Valya. But I can’t sacrifice him, either. He’s more than a (would-be) agent. When you get to know people as well as I knew Valya and Ksena and Svetusya and Melanyushka, when you forever change their lives for the better, when you help them become different, better, happier . . . they don’t just get under your skin. They’re part of your soul.
I reach an intersection and snap
to attention before I wander into traffic across from the Jewish Tatar Cemetery where Danny and I argued.
The solution dawns on me like the sun on the Don.
I don’t have to choose. I only have to put one person in danger. I can save Valya and Danny.
I just have to sacrifice myself.
I can’t remember ever feeling more alone as the cab pulls up to the convent gates, like the façade amputated from a church. Orthodox crosses decorate the blue doors, only one standing open. Obviously the cab isn’t supposed to go any farther.
I’m not the first woman to come here as a last resort, but I could be the first to do it carrying such a deadly secret.
The cabbie leaves me, and I pass under the blue-roofed, gold-domed steeple to the road into the convent. Immediately I see a problem: on my right, there’s a big white church with black curved roofs and gold domes on its towers and farther down the road, another church that matches the blue-roofed gates.
My deadline’s closing in, and I have to get to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. No one’s around to ask which building that is.
Before I figure out where to go, a black sedan rolls around the bend in the road ahead of me. I wait for the sedan. It’d be fitting if it were the same car Borya used, but I can’t tell. I check the road. Still nobody around. No witnesses.
I should be scared to face the enemy alone. I should fear for my life. I should be petrified. But there’s only one thing I’m afraid of: not getting Danny back. Not getting Danny out. As long as I do that, nothing else matters.
When you accept your fate’s out of your hands — when you let go — you reach a point past fear. And it’s almost peaceful. I’m okay with whatever happens to me as long as I get Danny to safety.
The sedan’s driver is short and swarthy: Eager Igor who tried to tail me the other day. (I make friends wherever I go.) I get in the backseat and look at him in the rearview mirror. As soon as my door shuts, he flips a U-turn.
Asking questions isn’t worth my breath. Ready to accept my fate, I grip the USB drive in my coat pocket, holding in its fatal secrets.
Spy Another Day Box Set: Three full-length novels: I, Spy; Spy for a Spy; and Tomorrow We Spy (Spy Another Day clean romantic suspense trilogy) Page 76