The Throwaway

by Michael Moreci

  A young woman, shimmering in a sequin party dress, pointed at him and Ania, and though she was speaking in Russian to her friend, Mark knew what had happened: She’d recognized them.

  Word was spreading among the crowd. This was Pyotr and Ania, their national heroes, and they were being accosted by those filthy Americans.

  The crowd started to yell. It was unintelligible to Mark, but he got the gist. He could see their facial expressions, disgusted and indignant. They were sticking up for one of their own; they were spitting in the faces of the capitalist American pigs.

  And, best of all, they were causing a distraction.

  “Are you sure you’re not a spy?” Ania whispered into Mark’s ear right before she began yelling to the crowd and gesturing at the embassy, riling everyone up even more.

  More people clumped in the crowd, and they were starting to encroach on the embassy’s grounds. Their yells grew angrier. More phones were out, ready to capture any evidence of wrongdoing. Mark and Ania continued to back out, hands up, watching a sneer grow on the barricade guard’s face.

  “Get out of here,” he snarled. “Go join your damn comrades.”

  Mark did as he was told, falling into the crowd at his back—his supporters, his protectors. But as he drifted out of the embassy, something caught his eye. Something that made his blood run cold.

  Directly above the embassy’s entrance—a lone ornate door with an intricate pattern carved into gilded wood—was a small balcony that hung just a few feet out from the building itself. One of the French doors leading from the building swung open, and out into the night, directly beneath one of the spotlights that cast the façade in a dull glow, stepped a woman with flowing blond hair and a scar over her left eye.

  The woman from the car on Sadovaya Street. The assassin.

  Mark felt his chest cave. Disbelief and rage bottlenecked in his throat as Mark struggled to make sense of the inconceivable truth that was staring him right in his face:

  The assassin was an American.

  The Americans wanted Mark dead.

  Mark had to flee. He had to get as far away as possible from the embassy guards he’d thoroughly pissed off and the killer whose job was to see him dead. The crowd continued to push him back, out of the embassy, and he moved in a daze, like he was being carried along without any movement of his own. He stared at the assassin, straight into her impassive eyes, which looked at Mark—through Mark—like he was nothing. She had made herself visible just to taunt him, to reinforce, in the coldest way possible, that he had no sanctuary. He was a dead man no matter where he went.

  Mark stumbled out of the courtyard, separating himself from the protective mass that had once felt like a shield to him but was more like a tomb now. He turned his attention to where the Russian agents’ SUV was parked. As if following the script of a nightmare, Mark spotted the agents immediately. They were out of their car already, heading right for Mark and Ania. Pursuing them. Stalking them.

  Ania spotted it, too. She tugged at his arm, leading him away from both the embassy and the agents.

  “Come on!” Ania yelled. “There’s a train station across the street—it’s our only way out of here.”

  This time, when Mark screamed “Pogomi mne!” he didn’t have to fake his fear. He didn’t have to manufacture a sense of frenzy. Both were clawing at his insides like a feral animal trying to get out.

  “Pogomi mne!” he bellowed again, stabbing a finger at the agents, who were closing in fast.

  The crowd surrounding Mark, worked into a patriotic frenzy, interpreted their hero’s cue exactly as it was intended. Save me, Mark pleaded. There are more enemies I need protection from.

  Obediently, the crowd directed their attention, and their fervor, at the agents. They marched to cut them off. Mark saw the agents’ faces shift from sadistic anticipation as they picked up their pursuit to confusion when the people they assumed were their allies turned on them. The last thing Mark saw was the crowd swarming the agents, smothering them physically and vocally. They screamed the agents down, neutralizing them. Mark didn’t know how long it could last, and he didn’t care to find out.

  Following Ania’s lead, Mark darted into the traffic crisscrossing the street, almost getting plastered by a speeding Bimmer the second he stepped off the curb. He didn’t have time for caution. His window for escape was narrow, and it was the only window he’d get. The Russians wanted him dead. The Americans wanted him dead. His only shot was to disappear and pray he could find a way out before either side got to him.

  Car horns blared from both directions as Mark and Ania weaved through traffic. He heard screeching tires when an SUV swerved out of his way, but he hardly paid it any notice. All that mattered was getting on the train. Barrikadnaya Station was straight ahead, no more than thirty yards away. Mark recognized the massive relief carved into the entrance—three workers intertwined with one another, representing events from the Revolution of 1905—and he knew that just beyond the station’s double doors were trains. Trains that would take him far away from where he was right now, and that’s all he wanted.

  Mark and Ania raced through the square leading to the entrance. His heart thumped in his chest and sweat rolled down his forehead as his furious sprinting combined with raw fear to accelerate his entire body into overdrive. Without breaking stride, Mark whipped his head over his shoulder to see if they were being pursued. He scanned the lane between them and the embassy, but the assassin was nowhere in sight. It was little comfort, though, as Mark assumed that she was skilled enough to elude Mark’s perfunctory glance. She could be anywhere, Mark thought with a shiver, and the first sign of her presence would likely be his termination.

  With another quick turn, Mark looked for the agents. They were shoving and pushing people out of their path, shedding Mark’s protectors. Mark met their cold eyes just as they broke free of the crowd and took off in a full sprint after him.

  He turned back around and bowled into a couple right in front of him. They all tumbled to the ground, but Mark wasted no time getting back to his feet. Ania helped him off the cold ground and muttered what sounded like an apology to the couple. The man, a beefy linebacker type with a flattop haircut to suit his build, yelled after Mark, but he didn’t care what was being said. He ran, pumping his legs harder than he ever had in his life; he felt every muscle below his waist burn, every ligament stretch to what felt like the point of shredding.

  Inside Barrikadnaya Station, Mark and Ania were stymied by the throng of people clogging the space between the entryway and the escalators descending to the underground tunnels.

  “Damn it,” Ania grumbled. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Come on,” Mark said, taking Ania’s hand. “We’ll just have to be a little rude.”

  Mark cut a serpentine path through the crowd and onto the escalator, nudging and shoving past people and squeezing by others. Finally, the escalator emptied them out to a tunnel lit by overhead fluorescent lighting that shone off the multicolored marble tiles lining the walls. Just a few feet ahead of him, the tunnel forked.

  “Where to?” Mark asked.

  “Out, away from the city. This way,” Ania said, pulling him toward the tunnel on the left. Mark followed her, slicing between the people peppered between the artful walls. Sprinting the entire way, they reached the end of the tunnel, and Mark cursed. Sure enough, there was a train waiting at the platform, and it seemed ready to depart. But, as Mark’s mom liked to say to the point of annoying overusage, there were no free rides. The train was no exception. A line of turnstiles bisected the platform, separating Mark from the train. They’d need a pass to get through, but there was no ticketing booth in sight. Mark had seen just one since entering the station, and it was upstairs.

  “Damn. It,” Mark growled.

  “I never take the train,” Ania said, apologetically. “They have cars that take me everywhere now.”

  “Okay, okay—think,” Mark said to himself. He surveyed the sce
ne. Every system had a weakness, a design flaw of some kind. It was just a matter of finding it.

  The turnstiles were airtight: Passengers scanned their transit cards, and the thick plastic partitions that separated the two sides of the platform opened, letting people through before whooshing shut again. The turnstiles ran from the wall on one side to the wall on the other, interrupted only by a narrow service kiosk. There was no maintenance access in the tunnel that Mark could see, which meant the only possible directions were ahead through the turnstiles or back the way they came.

  Error, though, came in all shapes and sizes. Mark knew this, and he also knew that his favorite flavor of error was the human variety. It’s practically what his career had been built on. As skilled as he was at capitalizing on someone’s wants and desires, he was as equally skilled at identifying weaknesses and exploiting them. Granted, Mark was much happier to be bribing, flattering, and gifting people into submission instead of blackmailing them. But Mark always justified his maneuvers by contending that you walk through the doors that are opened for you. And the grimy station agent that was out of his kiosk trying to make time with a pretty young commuter was just the door he needed.

  The agent was doubtless distracted, and Mark considered leaping the turnstiles and hoping his attention was diverted enough not to notice. But he needed better assurance, and he’d be damned if he wound up back with the FSB because some sloppy station agent who looked like he hadn’t bathed in weeks busted him trying to get a free train ride.

  “I’ve got it,” Mark told Ania. “I hope you’re okay with some minor theft.”

  “I should be able to live with myself. What are you going to do?”

  “Just … be ready.”

  Mark hurried toward the agent and the girl caught in his snare, his eyes locked downward on the broken phone in his left hand. Acting the role of the oblivious commuter too busy fiddling with his phone to pay attention to the world around him wasn’t difficult to pull off. And that’s when he made his calculated move, bumping straight into the back of the young woman, toppling her right into the agent. Mark cringed at what he’d done; however gross the agent was to him, he had to be about ten times grosser to the woman.

  As she fell into the agent, Mark kept walking, hardly breaking his stride. He turned, shrugging apologetically, but didn’t slow for a moment. The agent, Mark took full notice, was practically having a conniption fit, awkwardly trying to help the woman regain her balance and his own at the same time. Profoundly distracted, he didn’t even flinch when Mark and Ania hurried to the nearest turnstile and glided over the partition.

  They were in.

  They hurried onto the nearest train; all the seats had already been taken, but Mark didn’t care. He didn’t need to sit, didn’t need to know where he was going. His time in Russia had wound him tighter than the strings on a violin, and he finally had a moment to exhale. To not feel the pressure of the surveillance watching his every move, of Oleg breathing down his neck, of someone coming in the middle of the night to deliver a bullet straight into his head. He was regaining control, and control was everything to Mark. He could do a lot with a little—like get out of Russia, prove his innocence, and reunite with Sarah.

  An automated voice crackled through the overhead intercom, and Mark prayed it was announcing the train’s departure. His gut knew better.

  “That’s bad news, isn’t it?” he asked Ania.

  “They say there’s work being done on the track ahead. But they always say that.”

  “How long?”

  Ania shook her head. “Hopefully not long.”

  Mark glanced over his shoulder through the still-open doors. He let his eyes scan every inch of the station, capturing the hustle and bustle of commuters fishing for their transit cards and pushing through the turnstiles. He was about to turn away from the crowd, from the idea that he was still being pursued, when his burgeoning hope was snuffed out by the sight of one of the agents racing toward the station. Mark whipped his head back around and hugged the wall. Ania pressed closer to him, also doing her best to stay out of view.

  Unless Mark did something.

  Mark poked his head out again; the agent was searching, frantically, but he was alone. He and his partner must have split up at the fork, Mark assumed. That was good—one less enemy to deal with.

  Inside the train, another announcement was made; the commuters chattered in response, and while Mark couldn’t understand what they were saying, he recognized the relieved tone.

  “We’re about to depart,” Ania said. “Maybe our friend won’t get on.”

  Mark espied the agent as he pushed through the turnstiles on the far end of the station, parallel to the train car behind Mark’s. Mark seethed. He was never one for moaning about catching breaks; luck, he believed, was nothing more than perseverance plus presence. You had to work harder than the person next to you, and you had to stick around long enough for your number to be called. Still, while Mark wasn’t about to renege on his perspective, the hurdles being thrown in his path—the unending hurdles—were getting ridiculous.

  “He made it through the turnstiles,” Mark grumbled. “He’s coming.”

  “If we can just make it to the next station, we can get off and—”

  “No,” Mark said. “I can’t let him on this train—it’s too much of a risk.”

  Shuffling, squeezing, and elbowing, Mark pushed through the crowded train car, drawing his fair share of groans and angry glares. Through the windows that lined the train car, he saw the agent head toward the adjacent car. Mark shoved harder and reached the rear exit; he lowered his shoulder into the metal door and crossed from his car to the next, again hurrying his way through the crowd. He pushed his way forward, focused on the agent who was approaching fast. Mark, though, was a step ahead, and when he finally purged himself from the sea of bodies cramming one end of the train car to the other, he found himself face-to-face with the agent. Mark was ready for the confrontation; the agent was not.

  Mark drove his forehead into the agent’s nose; the blow sent him tumbling back and nearly knocked him off his feet. Blood erupted from the agent’s nostrils, and Mark used his disorientation to deliver another blow, driving a hard kick straight into his gut; the agent doubled over, and Mark shifted all his weight and strength to grab the agent by his shoulders and spin him away from the train and into the wall. His head smacked against the tile and he dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Mark stepped back, secure on the train, just as the doors slid closed in front of him. He turned to find every set of eyes attached to him, every jaw agape.

  “No ticket,” Mark said, knowing no one would understand what he was saying or the reference, and as the train rumbled to life and pulled away from the station, everyone went back to eyeing their phones, talking to friends, and focusing on wherever they were going. Mark rejoined Ania, who had followed him into the rear car. She nodded approvingly.

  “You’re full of surprises, Mark Strain,” she said. “I like it.”

  “Let’s not pop the champagne yet—we still have a long way to go.”

  Mark and Ania agreed that word of what happened would reach someone—train authorities, police, the FSB, who knows, and they’d be pursued once again. But by the time they got to this train, they’d be long gone. Mark and Ania would get off at the next stop, they’d switch from one train to the next with no discernible pattern until, finally, they vanished.

  17

  Sarah wanted to believe she was paranoid.

  Riding the Metro, her fist clenched around the standing rail, Sarah couldn’t stop searching the morning rush-hour crowd for eyes watching her. Or for eyes suspiciously not watching her. Armed men breaking into her home and abducting her husband by force had shaken Sarah to her core. The memory played over and over in her mind, each iteration feeling more violent, more intrusive into her life even weeks after the fact. Aaron had set her up in his guest bedroom, yet there were nights when Sarah would startle awake
to the sound of a creaking floorboard or the hissing furnace, and her mind would fool her into thinking she was back home, in bed with Mark, in the moments before the agents came and took him away. She’d feel the anticipation of the moment strangle her throat and collapse her chest; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but wait for the terrible thing to happen. But then she realized that she was living a memory. Mark was gone, and she was alone. The anxiety would pass as Sarah lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. She managed to keep herself together during the day, chewing at her waking hours by talking to friends, going on walks, and binging whatever show the internet told her was worth the investment. Work decided it was best she took a “temporary personal leave,” though she knew it was anything but temporary. They wouldn’t dare trust the lives of their patients to a woman whose husband had betrayed the country. At best, that meant Sarah had been living in oblivion the entire time Mark’s treachery took place right under her nose; at worst, she was complicit with his traitorous operation. Either way, the hospital wanted nothing to do with her. That left Sarah with more hours to fill, more time to consider what had happened and what in the hell she was going to do next. And most days, despite the trauma she knew was a wound inside her that wouldn’t heal, she got along well enough. In time, she’d move back in with her parents. She’d have her and Mark’s baby; she’d love it and do anything in the world to keep it safe. If that meant moving to Canada, if that meant changing her name and starting her life over in the middle of nowhere, then that’s what she’d do.

  But then came Mark’s call and his warning that she was in danger. Even in her most secure moments since Mark’s abduction, Sarah knew it wasn’t over. She couldn’t just walk away from being a Russian spy’s wife without facing a reckoning of her own. Sarah now lived in a world where federal agents could kick down her door at any moment and take away everything she knew and loved, and that fear—palpable and paralyzing—was only the tip of the iceberg. Because if it wasn’t a federal agent that came after her, maybe it’d be a lone psychopath—furiously “patriotic”—looking to do his part to make America great and safe. Or maybe the Russians would come calling, looking to tie up loose ends. Or who knew what else.