“Outside the Slovak Consulate on Sümbül Sokagi, Istanbul. I saw him outside the gates. Bekami spat at one of the soldiers as he watched me run inside.”
“A Slovak soldier said Bekami spoke to you in English and you responded in a language that wasn’t Slovak, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, French, or English. Which language did you use?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t speak to him?”
I’ve told no one except Aksel and my parents about what happened at the gate. I definitely didn’t tell my debriefer here in Berlin that I told Bekami I would send my father after him—told Bekami I understood everything he and his cell members had said. Now, Bekami knows my father succeeded in destroying his network. Bekami has come after us for revenge. This is my fault.
“No,” I lie, “I didn’t.”
With his eyes on the monitor, the man’s posture shifts. He raises his eyebrows. “You’re being deceptive.”
Now I realize why my parents tried to stop me. This cube must be a sophisticated polygraph—measuring my heart rate, body temperature, perspiration, eye movement—I shouldn’t have stepped inside here.
“Did Bekami say anything to you?” the man asks.
I watch my father. He appears calm, motionless, standing beside my mother, except he isn’t. He is breathing slowly, his eyes boring down hard on me—he wants me to drop my heart rate, confuse the technology.
I inhale for three seconds. Hold.
I exhale slowly. “He said, ‘I will find you,’ ” I answer, “ ‘and next time my knife will cut deeper.’ ”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He called me fahişe.” I clench my fists, remembering. “ ‘Whore,’ in Turkish.”
“And what did you say back?” He glances between my father and the monitor.
“Nothing.” I shake my head, lowering my heart rate again.
He stares at the monitor, longer this time. Then he says, “Clever, Ms. Hepworth, but if I don’t get an accurate read, we start over.”
After another moment, the man holds up Farhad’s picture. “Farhad was a young, charismatic, educated man. It’s not unreasonable that after eleven days together you developed sympathies for him—”
“Sympathies?” I spit the word.
“—and agreed to assist the Chechen Nationalist Front with acquiring weapons. Our intelligence indicates you were Farhad’s agent—”
“Your intelligence is wrong!” I shout. I got my heart rate down; now I need to maintain it.
“While in prison, Bekami told a Libyan national that Sinekkuşu—the code name for his agent—was helping CNF acquire a weapon more valuable than any on the market. I assure you, this intelligence is accurate.”
“And you actually believe it?”
“Farhad sent a text message an hour before his death that he was heading out to meet Sinekkuşu—you.”
“Farhad came to the safe house to kill me!”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Yeah, he said, ‘Hi, Sophia, I’m here to kill you,’ ” I say sarcastically.
The man’s eyes flit between me and the screen. “You say Farhad was sent to kill you. We think he was sent to get information from you.”
“I have no information, sir.”
“David,” he says easily. “My name is David.”
I smile. “Now, who’s being deceptive?”
He observes me carefully. Am I an enemy—or not? He taps the photograph against his hand. “How did you communicate with Bekami once you arrived in”—he glances down at his notes—“Waterford?”
“I didn’t.”
“Ms. Hepworth, Izam Bekami is running a skilled terror operation. Either CNF employs an advanced intelligence network or they have someone on the inside.”
An informant on the inside.
So, this is why I am inside the cube? They think it’s me? Claustrophobia creeps in. Now I feel boxed in, trapped. An interrogation cube must not only monitor my heart rate, but have other, more sinister capabilities …
David is still talking. “… You are suspected of disclosing intelligence to Ilyas Farhad and Izam Bekami and assisting the CNF terror organization—”
“You think I have Stockholm syndrome?”
“—in the acquisition of weapons—”
“Because Farhad entered your safe house with a key?” I ask incredulously.
“You lived in Chechnya, Ms. Hepworth, correct?”
“We visited.”
“You’re documented to have attended a local school and associated with local children. You learned the language, correct?”
“I was only there seven weeks,” I say.
“Nevertheless, you learned Chechen. You developed sympathies for radical Chechen nationalists.”
“I don’t sympathize with terrorists,” I say tartly.
David steps backward, reaches across the table, and switches out the picture of Bekami for the Chechen with hazel eyes who followed me in Waterford. “Why didn’t you tell your parents this man, Ramzan Dimayev, was following you?”
“He was just a man in a street. I’d been told not to worry, so I didn’t.”
“Or is it because you were meeting him clandestinely to discuss intelligence you’d stolen from your parents?”
“Excuse me?” I say softly.
“He was your new CNF contact after Farhad was killed, wasn’t he?”
“Never!”
“During your kidnapping, you developed feelings for Farhad. Afterward, you agreed to help CNF. Bekami sent Farhad to be your contact in Tunis, but your father killed Farhad and you moved to Montana. From prison, Bekami ordered a CNF member—a Chechen American—to be your new contact.”
David walks toward the cube until his nose is a millimeter from the glass. “You planned to deliver Bekami something, information, didn’t you?”
My fingernails dig into my palm. “You don’t have clearance to read it, do you?”
He stares me down. “What did you agree to give Bekami?”
“You haven’t read it,” I continue, “have you?”
I uncoil my fists and slam my open palm against the glass. “Because if you had read my previous debriefing, David? If you knew anything about what happened in Istanbul? You would know that if I saw Izam Bekami, I would not help him. Ever.” My words come out crystallized. “I would kill him.”
For several seconds the Bubble is silent.
Then, David presses the orange button beside the glass door, releasing me.
CHAPTER 44
It was never over.
We—traveling as Henrik, Karolina, and Helle Marcussen from Denmark—enter an art nouveau structure with a marble exterior and a slate pitched roof—the Hotel am Steinplatz.
After riding an elevator to the presidential suite, we enter a wood-paneled closet. My father pushes his index finger against the corner panel—it swings forward, revealing a steel door with an embedded screen. My mother scans her retina. The door opens to a staircase, leading to another suite, an annex.
Here my mother checks the closets: weapons, changes of clothes, stacks of canned food, and piles of electronic equipment. My father double-checks the air vents.
“Is Aksel safe?” I finally ask, desperate to hear anything.
“I’m going to a pharmacy.” My mother slips into a black trench from one of the closets. “No toothpaste,” she says placidly, like this is normal.
“Why aren’t you answering me?” I demand. “I need to know he’s okay!”
My mother drops lipstick and a knife into her purse and leaves.
I walk to the triple-paned bulletproof windows overlooking Berlin. Eleven stories below, people are shopping at the Christmas market and eating roast duck and apple dumplings in cozy, candlelit restaurants. In the fresh rain, the streets are glossy; headlights shimmer in the water sloshing against the curb.
But all the way up here in this black-site suite, I try to keep from screaming.
My old life is back
.
“These old Soviet safe houses will survive the apocalypse.” My father smiles warily.
At dawn, we left the hotel for Berlin Central Station, switched trains in Munich, and rode until we disembarked at a village on the outskirts of Budapest. After walking a mile in the cold sunlight, we reached an isolated hunting cabin in the woods beyond the city.
Now, my mother passes me a stack of folded clothes, adding, “There’s plenty of hot water.” I can’t believe I never realized she is part of this too—or that my presence enabled their cover. My mother is a veneer. Do I know her at all?
Showered, I dress in black jeans, boots, and a cashmere wool sweater. I braid my hair the way Emma does, leaving a long section loose at the end.
The cabin is sparsely decorated—an old wood table with several mismatched chairs and a slouchy sofa, burgundy with gold threads fraying on the edges. My father sits at the table, his briefcase open in front of him.
“It’s time you get this back,” he says, holding the barrel of my FN 5-7. “But first”—his gray eyes meet mine—“you need practice.”
Putting my gun in his waist holster, he stands and hands me a backpack.
“Why can’t I talk to Aksel? I need to know he’s safe, that he …”
My father stands beside the grimy window overlooking the cloudy sky, his eyes hollow. “If I could have let you stay, I would have. But we were this close”—he places his forefinger millimeters from his thumb—“to losing cover. We depart before anyone knows our destination. That’s how we stay safe. We don’t compromise this. Ever.”
“It’s all for operational integrity,” I say bitterly.
“Operational integrity.” A shadow of sadness passes over him. “Exactly.”
“Did he make it back safely?”
“Sophia, you need to forget about Aksel—”
“Forget?! I want to return to Waterford and explain what happened so—”
“You can’t, Sophia.”
“What are you not telling me?”
“All I’m asking you to do right now is forget Aksel and concentrate. You have only one job, Sophia, and that is to survive.”
We enter the dense woods behind the house, jogging twelve hundred meters to a clearing.
While I run, I adjust the strap on my shoulder; the backpack is heavy, like it contains a thousand rounds of ammunition.
I have so many questions: Why did we go to Waterford? Why did we leave? Why did Aksel ask: Is that what you told my father?
My father stops in the western corner of the clearing, which is shrouded in thick foliage and concealed from the sky by a canopy of frost-laced branches.
Holding my 5-7 in his left hand, he unwraps a wool scarf from around his neck and holds the fabric out to me.
I shake my head, casting my eyes to the snow-covered ground beneath my feet.
“Please?” he prompts. I see the hurt in his eyes. I’ve seen that look many times—it is a look that says: I’m sorry for all this, but not sorry enough to quit.
Relenting, I take his scarf, cover my eyes, and secure it at the crown of my head. When I reach my hand out, my father places the Belgian gun in my palm. Against my skin, it is hard. Cold. Powerful.
I wrap my fingers around the grip, relaxing as my fingers settle into the contours, modified on my fourteenth birthday to fit my slim hand.
Locking back the slide, I remove the magazine and clear the chamber. I drop the bullets into his hands: one … two … twenty …
Next, I pull down on the lock and release the slide forward. It too drops into my father’s hands. I remove the spring and take off the barrel. In less than seven seconds, I have the pistol field-stripped.
“Assemble,” he says. Feeling for each component with my fingers, I reassemble everything I took apart, insert the magazine, and in another few seconds I am finished.
I hold the loaded pistol in my right hand. My heart pumps in my chest. With my left hand, I reach around the back of my head, untie the scarf, and push it against my father’s chest.
He loops the scarf around his neck and points to a cluster of trees a short distance away. “We’ll start at twenty meters and increase from there.”
Slowly, I lift the FN 5-7 and prepare my body for the jolt.
Standing with my feet shoulder-width apart and my fingers wrapped around the pistol grip, adrenaline courses through me. My pistol has always given me the ability to defend myself, to protect myself.
But shooting like this is something I haven’t done since Africa.
Snow falls in a light dusting, but in these dense woods, little reaches the ground.
I hold the grip securely, resting my right hand on my left.
“The black knot on that tree.” My father points to the trunk of a spindly pine in the center of the cluster.
I miss the first two shots. Both bullets burrow into a mound of slushy earth behind the tree. Behind me, I hear my father shift his feet.
Keeping my gaze steady on the knot, I aim again—Taut but loose.
I try not to remember the last time I said these words. With Aksel. To Aksel.
Anguish tears through me so viscerally I wince. I suck cold air through my nose, hoping to quell the onslaught of memories I don’t want to endure.
In for three … Hold for three …
Slowly, I exhale, and empty the mag.
My father motions for me to follow him to the pine tree. The black center of the knot is decimated, ravaged by a clump of shiny copper bullets.
“Decent,” my father says. “Now move fifteen and hit the same target.”
Clipping in a magazine and racking another bullet, I walk fifteen paces west, aim, and fire.
While I shoot, my father asks me to recite the answers to the same questions he’s asked since I was five.
Rhythmically, I fire back answers as I unload the magazine.
“When I tell you to hide, what do you do?”
I shoot a pine tree. “I hide.”
“When I tell you to shoot?”
I hit the same target, a dead tree, from several more angles. “I shoot.”
“And when I tell you to run, what do you do?”
I check the bullets in my mag. Three left. One in the chamber.
I don’t know why he insists on this.
I fire all four bullets before answering. “I run.”
After hiking farther in, my father breaks. Eager to have the backpack’s ammunition weight off me, I drop it to the ground.
“Cuidado, mi amor,” he cautions, unzipping the bag. He unloads the contents: sausage, cheese, canned herring, and rye bread.
“That’s what I’ve been carrying?” I scowl.
Chuckling, he takes out two thermoses. He hands me a vintage thermos made of cracked taupe plastic. The bitter hot chocolate is still warm.
I look over at his nonsteaming thermos.
“Tokaji gets better with age,” he says in Hungarian.
How can he make me laugh when I remain so angry with him? Rebuking myself for giving him this satisfaction, I finish eating in silence.
“Let’s wrap up at forty meters,” he says, returning everything to the backpack. “Black pine over there with the sloped trunk.”
I spot the tree, stand, lift the gun, and pause.
“You haven’t answered my questions,” I say. “Is Aksel safe?”
“Yes. Shoot two.”
I shoot the tree forty meters away with two rounds. I drop my gun to my side.
“How long did you know that we’d be leaving Waterford?”
“Move ten left. Shoot two.”
I walk ten paces left and fire both shots. “How long?” I insist.
“The entire time, Sophia.” He hands me another magazine. “Ten left, shoot two.”
I pop another magazine into the chamber. After two shots I glare at him. “Why did we move to Waterford?”
“Sixty meters northwest. The tree with one root and two trunks. Shoot four.”
I grim
ace, but shoot.
He shoots a tree adjacent to my target. Then he drops his gun at his side. “Sophia, we needed you back.”
He walks to the tree to inspect our targets. I raise my gun in his direction and fire. I hit a branch above him. It breaks. Clumps of snow drop on him.
“Back?” I say.
Half smiling, he brushes the snow off his clothes. “Bekami was released weeks before we were informed. I assume that’s why you were interrogated. Bekami must have someone on the inside. ON-YX needs to find out who it is.”
“One of your people is working for Bekami?”
“There’s always someone—”
“—willing to betray you for a price,” I finish his sentence.
His smile fades. “With untraceable funds, Bekami has turned Farhad’s tiny cell of Chechen thugs into an effective team of terrorists, capable of transnational movement, and striking at will. He hasn’t forgotten I obliterated his first team.”
He picks up two pine cones from the ground. “But the problem is we can’t stay ahead of them.”
He holds the two pine cones in his right hand. “You have two remaining?”
I nod.
He throws both pine cones high into the air. They arc on different parabolas. I shoot the first, pulverizing it as it reaches the apex of its flight. The second I hit on its way down. Splinters of pine spray to the ground like brown snowflakes.
With both of our guns at our sides, we face each other. “Why did you lie and pretend it was over?”
“Sophia, after your kidnapping, it felt like we lost you.” His silver eyes glimmer. He looks younger out here in the snow and cold. In the elements. In his element.
“Everything you had learned, everything you could do … disappeared. For eighteen months, you were a shadow of your former self. So, we put our hope in Waterford, in small town American life. We hoped that if we let you believe it was over … you’d come back.”
Dusk is falling so we jog again.
“Take the lead,” my father says. You’re never safe unless you can see in the dark, he’s always said to me. He is sixty, and his eyesight remains sharper than mine.
From the direction of the fading light, a clearing emerges, trees pockmarked with bullets; moments later, we reach the old wood cabin on the edge of the meadow.
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