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And what do I do about Sheridan?He’s standing alone in the middle of the parking lot, still frozen in place where I shoved him. Months ago, he told me he loved me. Now he might be helping to frame me for murder. For treason.
He knows too much for me to cut him loose. If I ditch him, he’ll call Marshall, and then the whole United States government will know I’ve run off with Anatoly.
No, he’s stuck with me and I’m stuck with him. We’re both each other’s prisoner.
“Sheridan, get in.”When we’re buckled back into the SUV, I hold out my hand. “Give me your weapon.”
He’s staying, but I’m not stupid.
He passes it over without a word.
I shove his weapon—our service issue, not a .45—into my waistband and follow Anatoly back toward DC.
The SUV is too small for all this betrayal and heartbreak.
We pull into an alley behind a row house off U Street, north of downtown DC. Anatoly is right: I didn’t know about this place. Which is a fucking problem, because it’s only a mile from the White House. Merde.
Inside, it’s comfortably, if cheaply, furnished. The decor is Goodwill eclectic: mismatched dining chairs and kitchen table, a sagging plaid couch beneath the bay window in the front room. The curtains are sewn closed. The whole place is dim and dusty. “There are bedrooms upstairs,” Anatoly says. “Maybe you want to rest, no?” He’s looking at Sheridan.
“Go,” I say. I need him away from me.
Without arguing, he stomps up the stairs. We listen to his heavy footfalls move along the upstairs hall and into the bedroom above the kitchen. A door squeaks open. Doesn’t close.
Anatoly and I sit at the wobbly table. He’s brought a laptop from his car. “Now, let us begin.”
“No more games. Who is the cutout?”
He spins his laptop toward me. He’s pulled up a photo, a publicity shot, and it’s a man I know well.
A month ago, he sat across the table from Brennan in the Roosevelt Room and briefed him on the escalating hair-trigger tensions in Ukraine, asking Brennan to send more arms and aid to the insurgency.
“General Adrian Quinten? The deputy head of Allied Command Operations for NATO?”
General Quinten of the British Army is the right hand of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He’s read into all classified briefings, knows the movements of every NATO member’s military forces. He’s sat in the Situation Room with Brennan. He’s worked up dozens of strategies for countering Russian aggression in Eastern Europe in coordination with the Pentagon, the British and German Ministries of Defence, and France’s Ministry of Armed Forces.
“A devastating blow, no?”
The world is tunneling, my vision narrowing, my heart pounding so hard my skull feels like it’s going to explode. I can’t speak. All I can do is run my teeth over my lips, try to blink and open my eyes on a different world.
“Many years ago, Quinten fell in love with a beautiful young woman.”
“The old Russian love story: a honeypot?”
How many men have fallen victim to the perfect Russian lover? She’s everything they ever imagined, ever desired, until suddenly it’s not her hand caressing their nuts but Mother Russia’s, and they have him in a vise grip until he does exactly what Russia wants.
“Not exactly. They were both truly in love, and she was not an operative. At the time, he was only a mid-ranking officer and did not have dreams of a long military career. He was going to finish his term of duty and then leave to be with the woman he loved. They knew they couldn’t marry while he was serving, and they thought they had covered their tracks well enough that no one knew they were together.”
“Why would they need to cover their tracks? Who was she?”
“President Kirilov’s half sister.”
“Kirilov doesn’t have a sister.”
“No, but he did.” Anatoly’s eyes flash. “She was the first-born of Kirilov’s father’s first wife, the Siberian peasant he left behind when he moved up in the party and transferred to Moscow. Kirilov’s father tried to erase those years, and Kirilov kept up the charade. Except for a few summers he spent in Siberia when he was a teenager.”
I shake my head, my thoughts crashing.
“Lena Kirilov was killed in Finland twenty years ago. Run off the road after crossing the border from Russia. Her car tumbled into a fjord so thick with snow and ice her body was left there for almost two years before she could be recovered. I only learned of her existence because of a single hospital record. Kirilov broke his arm when he was fifteen in Tomsk. Why was he there, I wondered. Why Siberia?”
