by Alex Dryden
Anna and Logan decided to follow a herd of elk that Larry had seen up on the ridge, and maybe bring one down. Burt had a cupboard full of rifles at the house.
They walked off up the meadow at nine in the morning and onto a path into the forest. When they emerged on the far side through the trees, they were on top of the ridge. Logan looked through binoculars and then handed them to her.
“They’re over a thousand yards away,” he said.
The herd of elk, she saw, was moving slowly through trees on another ridge. There was snow everywhere up here, deep in places, and it would be slow, quiet work. Between them and the herd was a deep ravine, treeless, and they would have to go around somehow, find other cover, if they were going to get a shot.
Anna pointed down to the right, where some rocks afforded a good place to remain unseen. From there, they could approach in the shadow of the far ridge where the herd was. If they didn’t spook them, they would be able to get as close as 250 yards. She beckoned to Logan and began to crawl belly-down through the snow, over the top of the crest, and down towards the rocks.
It took half an hour of crawling, stopping to check their direction, or to lie completely still when one of the herd looked up. But they reached the rocks, and as they did so, he offered her a silver flask.
“Whisky and ginger wine,” he said.
She drank and handed the flask back to Logan.
“You take the shot,” she said, nodding in the direction of the herd.
“It’s yours,” he replied. “I want to see how good you are.”
She wasn’t going to argue.
When they began to get cold again, they crawled beyond the rocks, until they were in the shadow of the ridge, where they couldn’t be seen. Then they stood and walked slowly up until they reached the far ridge she had spotted earlier. She’d been right—it was 250 yards or so from the herd. The elk were still there, in the shelter of the trees.
She took the rifle from her back and removed it from its cover. Then she put one shell up the barrel, the other five in her pocket. She looked back at Logan and, crouching down again, began to crawl to the rim of the ridge.
He watched her reach the top and bring the rifle round, lying flat in the snow, legs splayed, and then begin to take aim. He waited for nearly a minute of dead silence. Then he heard the crack of the shot, the echo that chased around the valley and up to the mountains, and the silence that returned deeper than before. He saw her standing and waving him up.
They walked together up to the edge of the forest. Thirty yards inside the trees they found the elk, killed immediately from a shot to the right of its foreleg and straight to the heart.
“Okay shot,” Logan said. He grinned at her. “For a KGB colonel.”
She knelt by the animal and carefully cut its belly with a thin-bladed knife; the stomach sac spilled out into the snow.
“How are we going to get it back to the house?” she said. “We’ll never drag it up the ravine.”
“Something for the boys to do,” Logan replied. “They’ll bring a mule. I think they’ll be happy to have a job.” She watched him scrape some snow from the forest floor until he’d made a bare patch. Then he walked farther into the trees and returned, carrying tinder for a fire.
When he’d got the fire going and they were sitting warming themselves, Logan retrieved some bacon and eggs and an old pan from his pack. He propped the pan up on some stones and put the bacon in first, for the fat, then broke the eggs and tipped them carefully in afterwards.
While the food was cooking and they’d been silent for some time, he asked her a question so casually that it put her on her guard once more. The freedom of the morning evaporated.
“You still miss Finn, Anna?”
“What difference is it to you, Logan?”
“Well, put it this way, it’s not of national importance,” he said, without rising to her response.
She didn’t reply at first, and he poked the bacon over with a fork.
“So,” she said finally, “it’s not work, then?”
“On a beautiful day like this, it’s all one as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
“Why don’t you tell me about you?” she said. “Why you were thrown out of the agency?”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s true, then.”
“Marcie?”
“Touchy about it?”
“The best people get thrown out of intelligence services,” he said. “Finn included, I understand.”
She sat back against a tree and took the bacon and egg sandwich he was offering.
“I don’t think about Finn,” she said, “or miss him—not as a lover or a husband, not anymore. Does that answer your question?”
“I find that hard to believe,” he said.
“And you, Logan? Who do you think about? Tell me about the women you’ve betrayed,” she joked.
He looked startled.
“No wife and kids when the job’s over?”
“No longer a wife, and one daughter I never see,” he replied.
“What’s her name?”
“Angelica,” Logan replied.
“Your wife made the wrong choice, or did you?” she asked.
“She did, since you ask. She left me about ten years ago. We were married in our early twenties, we were young, and we were still young when it was over. Then—” He didn’t go on.
“Why did she leave?” Anna said.
“It wasn’t what she’d expected, I guess. We began to fall out. Small things, bigger things. Neither of us seemed prepared to make the effort. And I was away a lot.”
“The job was more important?”
“I lost the job. That was the end.”
“So your wife left you, and after that—or maybe before that—it was one in every port,” Anna said. “That was Marcie,” she added and laughed.
“Oh, not just the ports,” he replied, smiling in return.
When they’d finished, he refilled the pack. They descended into the ravine and up the far side to the ridge above the house.
“What’s the best way of getting to know someone, do you think?” he asked suddenly.
The innocence of the question reminded her of something that Little Finn might have said. And then she realised it reminded her of Finn himself.
“Sitting in a study asking personal questions all day not enough for you?” she replied.
“I find I’m enjoying getting to know you,” he replied.
“Better be careful then, Logan. There’s a string of dead spies behind me.”
He was shocked by her casual reference to Finn.
They walked out of the forest and into the meadow in front of the house. He stopped, took her arm, and faced her.
“I know you know who Mikhail is,” he said suddenly. “So Burt must know too.”
“Well, just don’t tell anyone else, Logan,” she said mockingly. And then she pulled away from him. She walked back to the house twenty or thirty yards in front.
When they reached the house, they found that Burt had left, and Marcie wasn’t back.
“Marcie won’t be back until the morning,” Frutoza told Logan. “She and Mr. Miller left in a helicopter.”
Frutoza cooked dinner for the two of them, and afterwards they settled into the sitting room to watch a movie. She didn’t particularly want to watch the one Logan chose, but said nothing. What she wanted was to observe Logan with as few barriers between them as possible, to see what he was like when he was doing what he wanted to do.
Afterwards, she decided to have a whisky before they said good night. Not to her great surprise—she had grown used to it—he let his eyes linger a moment too long on her.
“Good night, Logan,” she said, and walked to her bedroom at the back of the house.
When she’d switched the shower on and was about to undress, she was aware of someone and turned to find Logan in the doorway. He hadn’t entered the room, but leaned against the jamb of the do
or. He was fiddling with an ornamental dagger she carried with her and had put on the table by the door. It was a gift from Mikhail. Finn had given it to him, and he had passed it to her the night that Finn died.
“What’s this?” he said. “You used it on the mountain.”
“It’s a gift from a friend,” she said.
“Where’s it from?”
“It’s Caucasian. From Chechnya. My grandmother gave it to me.”
“It’s a very beautiful thing.”
“Was that it?” she said. “I’m going to bed.”
He paused.
“Why not come over to the guesthouse?” he said.
She stopped and looked at him. He was smiling, relaxed.
“What for, Logan?” she said. “To play Scrabble?”
There was a moment of tense silence.
“Sure. Okay, sure. I’m sorry, Anna,” he said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Logan. It’s been a nice day.”
Chapter 19
ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Anna was reading on her own in the sitting room while Larry was showing Little Finn how to sit on a horse. Logan hadn’t appeared. She heard the distant sound of an engine, and as it came closer, she saw it was the helicopter. She glanced up, but saw that Larry was removing Little Finn from the saddle. He’d heard it too.
She stood and looked out of the study window, watching it touch down on a pad at the bottom of the meadow. She could make out three figures descending before it took off again. Burt, Adrian, and Marcie moved up across the meadow, talking closely.
It had been four, maybe five, years since she’d seen Adrian. When Finn had first left the SIS, and she was living with him back in London, they saw Adrian from time to time. She was still watching Finn then—at least as far as her controllers in Moscow were concerned. The KGB believed that Finn’s departure from MI6 was a decoy to fool them.
Adrian had been very attentive, she recalled. He’d been very complimentary about Finn’s work in Moscow, but he was watching Finn too, she knew. Adrian wasn’t convinced that Finn had bought the lie that Mikhail was a fraud.
On one occasion, she and Finn had even spent a weekend down at Adrian’s country house, with his wife, Penny. Even in front of his wife, Adrian had practically pawed her.
But when two years later Adrian found that Finn had been disobeying his instructions to stay away from Mikhail, Adrian turned nasty. He’d finally issued a very ugly threat to Finn—as ugly as if it had come from her own side—and then he’d told Finn he’d wreck him, and destroy her too. It was for that reason that they’d disappeared and fetched up in France at Willy’s place, where they’d stayed until Finn’s murder.
After Finn had died, Adrian organised a memorial service for him in London. She hadn’t gone to it. It wasn’t worth the risk. And anyway, the hypocrisy of Adrian celebrating Finn in death when he’d threatened him in life disgusted her.
She watched Adrian approach the house now and felt a surge of anger.
When the three of them entered the house, she stayed in the sitting room. Finally Burt came in alone. She could see he was no more pleased to have Adrian here than she was.
Burt sat down opposite her. He made a halfhearted attempt to be good-humoured, but she wasn’t buying it. The thought of Adrian in the house with her and her son made her sick.
“Adrian’s presence here is a formality,” Burt said, without preamble. “It’s a gesture to our British friends.”
She didn’t believe that and made no attempt to hide her feelings. There was more to it.
“Certain events that have recently come to light have forced a change of pace,” Burt continued. “We no longer have as much time as I’d hoped. In fact, everything has suddenly become very urgent, as I told you.”
She’d never seen Burt like this, operating at a pace other than his own.
“Your cooperation is critical now. You don’t have to say anything to Adrian—in fact, if you have anything to say, I want you to keep it between us. But Adrian has Langley’s ear, or will have if he thinks you’re not cooperating.”
Burt looked her in the eye, and she saw an urgency in his face.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “If they take you up to Langley, if you’re taken off my hands, you’ll be drugged.”
“Why would that yield anything different?” she said.
“Only you know that.”
“I also know that drugs aren’t reliable.”
“That may not be what they think at Langley,” he said. “I just want you to know the score, Anna.”
So the men of power were at war, she thought. She paused and watched him.
“Thank you, Burt,” she said, and meant it.
“I’ll tell him you’re in the study,” Burt said.
Adrian made no attempt to greet her, or even to shake her hand. He stopped in the centre of the room and acknowledged her with a brief nod—almost embarrassed, she thought. He seemed to know he’d be unwelcome, and he had no way of dealing with this except brusqueness.
She stayed in her seat.
Adrian walked over to the study window and looked out of it sightlessly as he spoke to her behind him.
“You must realise, Anna, the time for silk gloves is over. It’s time to move on to something stronger. Either we have your help, or you are of no help to us. In the latter case, it is merely a matter of our kindness—or not—whether we send you back to Russia. So this is the moment of truth. We need Mikhail.”
“I’ve said everything I know about him,” she replied.
“Which is nothing,” Adrian said coldly, without turning round.
She didn’t reply.
Adrian finally looked round to face her, but didn’t step away from the window.
“What about your son?” he said.
“I don’t think a two-year-old is going to be much help to you,” she said.
“On the contrary,” he replied. “It’s his future we’re talking about, just as much as yours.”
“What do you mean by that, Adrian? Why don’t you say what you’ve got to say and get out.”
“What are the orphanages like these days in Russia?” Adrian said. “Any better than they were?”
She saw no reason to reply.
“So you’re prepared to face being returned to Russia. With your son,” Adrian added, grinding his teeth irritably at the necessity for such crude threats. “For whatever fate awaits you both,” he added.
“My fate, as you call it, is not in my hands.”
Adrian looked at her coldly from the window. She couldn’t see his face with the brightness behind him.
“Fatalism is not a defence against events,” Adrian said. “It simply encourages those events. You can make your history. Here—in America. I repeat, we need to know Mikhail. That is your choice, for yours and the boy’s future.”
“What do you have in mind to exchange me for?” she said. Adrian at last left the blindness of the window and walked over to the desk in front of where she was sitting. He perched himself on the front of it and crossed his feet on the floor a few inches from her—too close. She felt his breath and the smell of his clothes and saw the livid anger in his eyes.
“We’re not planning to return you, my dear,” he said, “if we have your cooperation.”
“You want me to invent Mikhail, Adrian? Threats don’t work if the person you’re threatening has nothing to give up.”
“So that’s it.” Adrian stood up abruptly. “I hope you’re prepared for what happens.”
“It’s not in my hands,” she said.
“Can you imagine what they’ll do to you—and the boy—if we send you back?”
“There’s nothing they’ll give you for me,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Adrian looked even more furious. From the headmaster who’d leaned on the front of the desk to the street fighter who stood before her now, he looked ready to break her neck.
“We might just return you to Mosco
w to encourage a better quality of defector next time,” he sneered.
“Not a strategy I’d rely on,” she said.
“You’re a tough bitch, aren’t you,” he snapped. “But I wonder how tough you’ll be in a cell at the Lubyanka. With the boy,” he added.
“So you’ve come to fuck up Burt’s operation when it’s hardly begun,” she said, and saw, as she’d predicted, that Adrian liked to see a woman swear.
“We haven’t got the name we want,” was all he said, taking a seat behind the desk now. His attitude suddenly changed. He became less threatening—a new approach, she saw.
“If this is about Finn,” he said, “you know the way it was.”
“This isn’t about Finn.”
“Finn left MI6,” Adrian said, ignoring her. “He disobeyed every agreement to stay out of the way. And tragically he died—as a result of getting in the way. Do you have any idea how sad that made me? Finn and I were close, Anna. For sixteen years. He was like a son.”
“If this is about your absolution for Finn’s death, you don’t get to use me as a tool.”
“Finn would have been more forgiving.”
“I’m not Finn.”
“No.” Adrian paused, then leaned his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands together like a prayer. “But revenge for Finn’s death, however, is within our grasp,” he said.
She looked up at him, for the first time. There was no need to speak.
“We’ve found Finn’s killer,” he said. “The man who administered the nerve agent.”
Her eyes flickered. For the first time since she could remember, the closeness to Finn’s death was almost unbearable.
“How sure are you?”
“We know. And once we have Mikhail, my political masters will allow me to deal with him,” Adrian said.
She looked at him. She didn’t know what to say
“The two hang together, you see,” he explained.
A silence descended on the room. Her thoughts were humming over what he’d said. She imagined the car park in Paris, two years before, Finn’s rental car, and the man who had dealt death to him.
She pictured too the laboratory itself, a building she knew well in Moscow, where the KGB made its poisons. Right in the heart of a residential Moscow district, it was. That was typical of the regime she’d escaped from. They built their poison laboratories in the centre of the city.