That was a mistake, as I could have told her. Even with her “peeps,” Audrey disdained physical affection. She shied back from Kristen, whose arms dropped to her sides in embarrassment.
“Ah, Ms. Chiu,” the woman who appeared to be leading the BME room said. “You’re late.”
Audrey’s mouth opened and closed.
“Now,” the woman said, “let us begin.”
The BME leader, in her midfifties, was massive. Not fat, precisely, but taller than tall—probably more than six feet tall—with the shoulders of a swimming champion, meaty hands, and forearms as large and muscled as Leo’s. Audrey, standing next to her, looked like a tiny child. The woman’s name was, I kid you not, Brunnhilde.
Brunnhilde ran the meeting like a drill sergeant—or the Latvian prison matron she had probably been in a former life. Under the new order, each of the original Atlantic Bank officers would be teamed with a BME officer, and she doled out the assignments briskly and then sent us out just as briskly. Muriel, Kassim, and I were the only ones who did not need BME supervision, she decreed. To me, she said gruffly, “Ms. Schumann, you come highly recommended by one of our most valued clients.”
The PYTs were owl-eyed with astonishment.
I played along. “Oh, that would be—”
“Schlumberger, of course.”
“Yes, of course,” I murmured. Audrey just stared at me, her eyes narrowed.
I delighted in watching the PYTs with their new partners. The BME team was truly multinational. Kristen the Younger’s minder was a large, overly made-up, overly talkative Russian woman with bright-red dyed hair who boomed instructions in Kristen’s ear while expressing her loud astonishment at Kristen’s lack of quantitative skills. Matt S. drew an African American giant with bulging biceps and hard eyes who could only have been former Special Forces; Matt shrank in terror every time the man gave him a curt order. Jake S. was teamed with a small Asian woman who spoke almost no English but manipulated multiple, massive spreadsheets at warp speed on the computer while poor Jake watched uncomprehendingly. And Kristen R.’s partner was a thirtysomething Frenchwoman who exuded ennui and chic with every breath; next to Clarice’s soignée sophistication, our sorority girl looked almost dowdy.
As for Audrey, she was evicted from her office and given a plebeian desk on the floor, with Brunnhilde herself as her minder. I thought that if Brunnhilde had tried to give every PYT their worst nightmare, she had succeeded with flying colors. It was almost enough to take my mind off Leo and my other troubles. Almost.
As I had expected, the agency’s Internal Security division was deeply distressed over my “close and continuing” with Leo, especially after I had revised it to disclose his Mossad affiliation. They recalled me to Washington for a long, tedious week of questioning that involved two polygraph tests and a thorough dissection of our relationship. When I admitted I hadn’t seen him in more than a month, they strongly “suggested” I simply withdraw the “close and continuing” report, thus signaling an end to the relationship (and to Internal Security’s angst over it). I told them I would think about it, but I just couldn’t make myself close that final door.
Back in London, I had almost persuaded myself that I was starting to get over him when, one morning, I clicked on my Google feed to see the headline “Terror in Oxford! Bomb Explosion on Campus, ISIS Suspected.” Suddenly, I wasn’t breathing; I was only feeling. I grabbed my phone and tried to call Leo—or, at least, the last number I had for him. “This line is out of service,” I was told.
I called Kali, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. “Have you heard from Leo?” I asked, without any preamble. “Did you see that there was an attack at Oxford? Is he there?”
Kali said slowly, “He’s at Oxford. He’s been working with some students on their dissertations. I just saw the news; it’s so scary.”
“Have you heard from him?” I asked again. Leo, the family protector, would surely call his sisters to let them know he was okay. If he was okay.
“No,” Kali said. She coughed slightly, perhaps to cover tears. “I’m so worried, Ju—I mean, Amy.”
She must have been really upset to use my real name. She knew better.
“Okay,” I said. “Calm down. I’ll drive up there right now and track him down. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“Thanks,” Kali said fervently. “Thank you, Amy. I’ll go and tell Élodie now; she’ll be so relieved.”
I hung up and looked at my phone for a moment. Was there anyone else I could call? But no, the agency didn’t have assets in English university towns—at least, none that I knew about. I was on my own.
So I hopped into my car and drove at breakneck speed, tearing through roundabouts and recklessly passing slower cars to the right and left. It was a miracle that no police pulled me over, but then, I recalled, they had more pressing matters on their plate right now. And my heart sank again.
I pulled my car into the first garage I passed in the town center and threw the keys at the bemused attendant. Then I ran straight toward the plume of smoke that was still rising from a building on the outskirts of the university area. The sidewalks were packed with pedestrians, some wielding cameras and others running away. I shoved through them with equal recklessness.
Then I came to an abrupt stop, so abrupt that my sneakers skidded on the uneven pavement. The building, surprisingly gray and concrete and modern, was surrounded by a sea of police officers, firefighters, fire trucks, and ambulances. I had been at such scenes before, and I had to pause to catch my breath as grief and anger warred in my jumbled brain. Goddamn those fuckers anyway, I cursed silently. This—this was why I did what I did, why I masqueraded as mousy Amy and bribed scummy informers and spent thousands of tedious hours tracing dirty-money flows all around the globe. In my mind, I echoed the words of Harrison Ford in Air Force One: Be afraid. Be very afraid. We’re coming to get you.
It was my mantra.
A small knot of reporters was standing to the side, chattering among themselves and into small recorders. I made my way toward them. And then I stopped short, for Leo was in the middle of the knot, reporter’s notebook out and sunglasses on.
The flood of relief I felt was, of course, immediately followed by one of fury. He looked up and saw me. Our eyes met and clung for one electric moment, until he glanced away again. Grimly, I started toward him.
He preempted me, calling out as I approached the circle. “Amy! Are you covering this story too?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
“Don’t you remember me?” he asked. “Sam Lowenstein, producer for France One. We met at—”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember you.”
“This isn’t much of a story, though,” he said, grinning at the other reporters.
“Can’t believe I got out of bed for this,” one of them complained.
“A ten-liner on page thirty,” another groused.
I looked around at the sea of first responders, astonished at their casual air. Leo said, “So long, mates. Come on, Ames. I’ll fill you in.”
Still flabbergasted, I let him draw me away.
“So, Sam,” I said, “what’s the deal here?”
“Some eco-crazies,” he said casually. “The scientists are working on genetically modified crops in this lab. Nothing to do with our line of work at all.”
I stared at him suspiciously. “How do you know?”
“Why? Don’t you believe me?”
“What do you think?”
“Interesting,” he drawled. “Three questions in a row, and not a single answer. I know, my dear girl, because one of the idiots called in the threat at three o’clock this morning, describing exactly when and where the bomb would explode.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Doesn’t sound much like ISIS, does it?”
“Any injuries?” I asked.
“One night watchman sprained his ankle running away after he heard about the phone call.”
“Then why .
. .” I gestured at the ocean of first responders, who were now beginning to pack up their equipment.
“Oh, you know,” he said. “Poor old Brits are skittish. Can’t blame them, can you?”
I gazed around at the scene, trying to decide if he was telling me the truth. Then I remembered. “But why didn’t you call your family?” I demanded. “You must have known they would be frantic with worry when they heard about a bomb at Oxford.”
“I did,” he said, surprised.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
We glared at each other. “I talked to Kali this morning,” I said, annoyed that he would lie about something so simple. “She was really worried, said she hadn’t heard from you.”
“But I . . . oh,” he said.
“Oh what?” I asked.
“I called Rachel, my second-youngest sister—she’s our great communicator—and she contacts everyone else. She would have called Élodie.”
I shook my head, still not understanding.
“Your Kali,” he said, “is quite a minx.”
And then I did understand. Technically, she had not heard from Leo. Not directly, anyway. “That little brat!” I exclaimed. “She got me running up here in a panic, when she knew all along you were perfectly fine.”
“Our own little matchmaker,” Leo said. “Now, motek, exactly how worried were you?”
“Not that worried,” I snapped. I knew that I had failed to penetrate Kali’s deception only because it was Leo—danger to Leo.
He put his arm around me. “But worried enough to drive up here at—I’m guessing—a hundred kilometers per hour?”
I scowled.
But my adrenaline rush had faded, leaving me, as always, a little shaky and vulnerable. I leaned against him, and he dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m sorry you were worried,” he said, in quite a different voice. “I should have called you.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, and he put his other arm around me, holding me close and rubbing my back.
Then I remembered everything, and I drew away, furious at him, at Kali, and, most of all, at myself. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” I said. And I hurried away.
Chapter 46
I slogged through the next few weeks, grimly determined to wipe Leo from my mind and concentrate on my work. Work and my Syrian teenagers had been enough for me before I met him; it would be enough for me again.
So it seemed as if I was being rewarded for my efforts when I received a coded email from one of my Russian assets in early May, asking for a meeting. I had met Lyudmila Petrova years before, when I first started working, supposedly for IDC, in Moscow. She was a statuesque bottle blonde, towering over my five feet, three inches, a fast and loud talker who nattered incessantly in heavily accented English while playing with her clanking array of bracelets and necklaces.
I could never figure out what was real and what wasn’t with Lyudmila. We weren’t particularly friendly, but I enjoyed her bombast and chatter. It was a pleasant diversion from the rigors of everyday life in frozen Moscow.
We stayed sporadically in touch after I left Russia. Lyudmila eventually became a midlevel official at the Central Bank, responsible for handling the biggest international financial transactions. So I was surprised when she emailed me a few years later and suggested we meet for a weekend at a five-star beach resort in Portugal. As we lay side by side in our lounge chairs, it quickly became clear that Lyudmila was trying—clumsily, I thought—to recruit me (in my incarnation as an international development expert) as a Russian intelligence asset. We quickly came to an amicable arrangement; each of us would pass information to the other when it suited us.
Obviously, it suited Lyudmila right now to have an all-expenses-paid vacation in Portugal. It suited me pretty well too.
We carefully arranged our dates so that I would arrive on the day Lyudmila was leaving, so that there would be no record of us in the same place at the same time. I left London on a gray, drizzly day to land in the glittering sunshine of the Lisbon spring. Feeling almost cheerful, I rented a sporty little convertible, using my Marina Ostrova persona (London-based Russian émigré), and drove the three hours to the seacoast.
Once I had checked into my oceanfront room (what the hell—the agency was paying), I put on a demure one-piece bathing suit and topped it with an almost sheer, slinky cover-up. Then I filled a brightly colored beach bag with all the accoutrements of my disguise—sunglasses, sunscreen, face lotion, water bottle, Kindle, cell phone, and earphones—and wandered down to the pool. It was a lovely, undulating infinity pool with the unending horizon beyond it. The deep blue of the pool, sea, and sky was dazzling, and I paused for a moment to drink it all in.
Then I strolled around the pool, looking for just the right lounger. I selected one next to a tall, statuesque blonde who was wearing a teeny white bikini with an assortment of jangling bracelets and long necklaces; the jewelry covered more of her body than the bikini did. She was pretending to gaze out at the sun-drenched horizon, but behind the dark sunglasses her eyes were ceaselessly scanning the people at the pool. Lyudmila was not the world’s most subtle spy.
“Is anyone sitting here?” I asked casually.
Lyudmila stared blankly at me, so I repeated it in Russian.
“Nyet,” she said.
“Spaseeba.” I settled myself next to her and began the annoying routine of applying sunscreen and lip cream. Lyudmila watched me in silence.
“Are you here for long?” I asked in Russian, making polite conversation.
“No, I’m leaving today,” she said.
“Oh, too bad; I’m here for the weekend.”
“Lucky you,” she returned.
It was our scripted patter. If anyone had been watching, she would have veered from the script to warn me off. The coast was clear.
“Can I buy you a drink?” I inquired.
“Thank you. That would be lovely.”
We chatted pleasantly while we waited for the drinks. If anyone understood Russian, all they would hear was two women of a similar age soaking up the sun and making idle conversation. Suddenly she said, “There’s something different about you.”
I started. “What do you mean?”
She studied me and then shrugged. “I don’t know; I can’t put my finger on it. But there’s definitely something different about you.”
I shrugged too. “My hair? It’s a little bit shorter than—”
“Nyet,” she said scornfully.
“Anyway,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable, “what’s up?”
She pursed her lips and stared at me some more. I waited.
“Well,” she said, giving up for the moment, “I recently facilitated a foreign transfer by Vladimir Ossipsky. A very large foreign transfer.”
Ossipsky! He had been on our radar screen forever; he was a money man for the Russian Mafia who had stolen and plundered hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, with the full approval of Putin and his cronies. My skin prickled.
“What kind of transfer?” I asked.
“I think he’s trying to transfer his money out of Russia,” Lyudmila said.
He must have outlived his usefulness to Putin, I thought, and is launching his exit plan.
“Really?” I said, trying not to seem too eager. In this periodic game I played with Lyudmila, it was never a good idea to let her get an elevated idea of her own value.
“Yes. Sixty-five million euros. To Barclays Bank of London.”
Wow. He was taking a big risk, moving some of his wealth to London, where scrutiny was so much tighter and bribery so much more difficult. If he was getting desperate, then we might just get lucky. I held my breath and said, without much hope, “I don’t suppose you have a name or number for the account.”
Lyudmila gave me a silky smile. “But that’s the good part,” she said. “I do! The account is in the name of VONE Limited. The Barclays folks are super paranoid after being indicted last year fo
r the Iranian money-laundering scandal, and they insisted on an account name and number.”
“The number?” I asked, no longer trying to hide my excitement.
She nodded and gave me the details. “You should be able to trace it from there,” she said, with a trace of smugness.
I nodded, committing the name and number to memory. “Good intel,” I said, stating the obvious. “Thanks, Lyudmila.”
She waited a moment. “And what do you have for me? You know I take a big risk every time I leave the country to meet with you.”
I glanced around at the beautiful pools and waterfalls, thinking that this wasn’t exactly a hardship assignment. Lyudmila loved to pick posh resorts for our meetings. She insisted that nobody would notice us there. She persisted, “I really need something from you, Marina.”
“Okay,” I said, with a show of reluctance, having expected this and prepared a nugget. “We’ve learned that the Grosinski family in Crimea is agitating against Putin. You might want to take a look at them.”
“Really,” she said, a little skeptically. “And why would you pass this on to me? Is this a double cross, Marina?”
“Of course not,” I said indignantly. The indignation was real; I would never be stupid enough to burn Lyudmila, who was a good source of intel. “The Grosinskis are also major-league cocaine traffickers. We’d be very happy to see them go away.”
“Well, then,” she said. “I know just the man for the job.”
I tried not to think about what that “job” might be.
We clinked our glasses in a satisfied toast.
Suddenly she exclaimed, “I know what it is! You have a man! You’re in love!”
“No,” I protested.
“But yes,” she said firmly. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I insisted.
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow, and I turned my face away. “Goodbye, Lyudmila,” I said. “You don’t want to miss your plane.”
She laughed, for a moment an old friend and not a Russian agent. “You need a man,” she advised.
“Goodbye, Lyudmila,” I said again.
The Long-Lost Jules Page 26