“Well then, I can’t help you. I don’t know anything. It was Yuri who had the information, Yuri who was on the inside, who knew how things operated.”
“But there are other people who do have access, people as frustrated as you are, people who need our help. The people Yuri was working with.”
Her lips flattened into a line. “If you know who they are, why not approach them yourself?”
“I don’t know who they are. I don’t want to know. Safer to use a go-between. Yuri’s plan was sound, he just wasn’t the right person to carry it out. You are. His contacts need a safe funnel to get their intel out, intel that might help bring proper democracy to Russia, without their names coming near any CIA database—and neither would your name, of course. You and I can be that funnel, working together.”
She’d scoffed. “You are an idealist, like Yuri. You really think it would make any difference?”
“The right information can. I can make sure it gets to the right people, who can act on it. And sometimes it’s empowering just to do something, rather than watch helplessly from the sidelines. Do it for Yuri.”
He fell silent, giving time for the thought to circulate in her head. She was intelligent enough to come to her own conclusions without a hard sell. With her family’s wealth and power, it was pointless to offer money or protection. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t do it for her ego or for the thrill. He could threaten to hand her family evidence of her love affair with a dissident, but that was hardly damning enough to convince her to betray hercountry, and blackmail wasn’t the best way to gain trust. Which left ideology. Plus, the satisfaction of secretly rebelling against her family. The idealists were the most valuable, the ones doing it for the right reasons: justice, freedom. The ones who were in it for the money? Someone else could pay more. If it was about flattery, someone else could flatter more. The trick with an idealist was to ensure they kept believing in the mission, even when, over time, nothing tangibly improved.
Eventually she said, “If I get you what you want, can you get me to America to live?”
“For the foreseeable future, you’re more useful to your compatriots here.”
“And after the foreseeable future?”
“I can’t see that far,” he said with a wry smile. “But,” he added as her expression hardened, “that’s been known to happen, for our very best contacts.”
Finally, she nodded, more to communicate something to herself than to him, he suspected. “I have felt so helpless for so long. And Yuri’s friends… If anything, this has motivated them more, though I cautioned them to stay quiet. You understand that I love my country? It is just this administration that I hate. It has defined our country for too long. I can’t imagine not ever doingsomethingto try to change things.”
“I do understand. You think you can convince these friends of his to work with you?”
“I know I can.”
And she had, Carter reflected, as he passed steaming cups ofsbitento the tourists, the vendor ladling them from a cauldron guarded by a three-headed stone dragon. The cinnamon-and-clove scent alone seemed to defrost the inside of his nose. One of the tourists nibbled the last chunk of lamb off ashashlikand handed Carter the chewed kebab stick, which he tossed into a garbage can right under her nose. If he was blown, he surewouldn’t miss babysitting rich people. But then where would that leave Nika?
Still, by early evening, as his group reached the hotel to change for dinner and the opera after their private tour of the Kremlin, Carter felt confident. As he walked through the foyer toward the elevators, Nika caught up with him and linked arms, her heels tapping on the marble floor.
He leaned down, pretending to brush his lips on her hair, which was newly liberated from her hat. “We live to spy another day,” he whispered.
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t see anyone today. And I know what I’m looking for.”
Once in his room, he sat on the bed to remove his boots, and opened his laptop to check for emails. Only one message, from his “booking office” in New York. He opened it, frowning. It was a tour cancellation, for Elena Petrov—Nika’s code name. He swiftly shut the lid.
A burn notice. They were leaving her to the Russian wolves.
Chapter 9
Alice
Present day
“Hungry?” Carter asked as he and Alice pulled into a near-deserted rest stop. A food truck was parked nearby.
Alice shakily climbed off, followed by Carter. “Not thinking about my stomach at all, given that someone just shot at me, someone else tried to grab me, and someone in a cheap suit is right now searching my underwear drawer. Who were those people?”
“Which ones?”
“The van, and the shooter, for starters!”
“No idea. You get the plates on the car?”
“I was too busy being terrified. I saw the driver, but very briefly. The rest of the windows were tinted—pretty much blacked out.”
