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“I will only speak to your section chief.”
The agents eventually left the room, which turned out to be the worst torture of all. I didn’t know how much time was passing, because there was no clock in the interrogation room. Was it hours? Mere minutes that felt like hours?
When you have precious little life left, you don’t want to squander it in a former Stasi interrogation room. I almost wanted the torturers to return, just to give me something to help pass the time.
CHAPTER 25
“WHO WAS HE?” the section chief asked, in English.
After enough time passed that I was certain I would indeed be dying in this musty room in the old East Germany, the SVR chief entered the room and ordered my binds loosened. I was even given a set of clothes—workout gear that fit surprisingly well. I knew it was a tactic meant to instill a sense of gratitude toward my captors. But you know what? It worked.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“The man in the hotel, posing as your husband. Clearly you were using him as some sort of cover. So Samantha Bell, ‘former’ agent of the CIA, I’d like to know why you chose him.”
“I chose him,” I said, “because I loved him.”
The section chief had at least twenty years on me, with lean, hard features and a severe military crew cut with salt-and-pepper temples. But there was also a tenderness in his blue eyes, and slight skin discoloration around the fourth finger of his right hand. Which told me he either removed his wedding ring before torturing people or was recently single.
“You say you loved him, yet you murdered him to stage an attack on one of our own citizens?”
“And kill myself in the process? Think about it… what is your name?”
“Oleg.”
Now we were on a first-name basis. The personal touch. That was an interesting play.
“Oleg, a suicide mission would be easy. I would have delivered the chemical agent directly, not caring if I perished in the attack.”
“But your government created the chemical agent, Samantha. Clearly, you would have an antidote on hand. Which brings us back to why you chose to kill this innocent businessman, Kevin Drexel.”
Was this an attempt to coerce a “confession” out of me? If the SVRdidmurder the oligarch and were trying to pin it on me, then of course they’d want to build a narrative around the possibility that I’d somehow snared a wealthy businessman in a honeypot-style operation, then killed him to cover my tracks. Except I’d been caught in the crossfire, and had accidentally succumbed to my own chemical weapon.
I asked Oleg: “How long have you been married?”
He covered it well, but there was a moment of surprise on his face before glancing down at his right hand.
“I was married,” he said, “for twenty-two years.”
Emphasis on the wordwas.
“How long has it been?”
“Not long at all,” he said quietly.
I realized his line of questioning was not about building a frame-up narrative around me. No, he was getting personal with me because this was personal for him. Oleg and his wife hadn’t divorced; death had taken her away from him.
I sensed that Oleg wanted to look me in the eye and figure out how I could so blithely murder a spouse, when all he wanted in the world was to bring his own back to life.
Which told me something even more important: the SVR and the Russian government actually believed the Americans were responsible for the attack in the hotel.
I was beginning to believe it, too.
CHAPTER 26
“YOU THINKIdid this?”
“You, or your government,” Oleg said.
