“And that wasbeforeyour name and photo were distributed to every cop station and media outlet in the country. Thefirst wave of sales was just word going around the Intelligence Community. I’d show you the proof, but Carter here made me leave my phone with my assistant. And my other phone. And my laptop, and my watch. I’m amazed I was allowed my shoes.”
“Randolph, one more thing,” Carter said, jogging down the stairs behind Alice. “We need to get the video evidence of Nika’s interrogation at the FBI field office in D.C.”
“Already tried. My sources tell me it wasn’t taped. Neither was yours.”
“Your sources are lying. Or you are.”
“My sources are sound. If therewasvideo evidence—and I have no reason to doubt you, well not on that subject—it no longer exists.”
“Someone’s covering something up, Randolph,” Carter said, and Alice couldn’t tell if it was an accusation.
“It’s not me, as much as I’d like all of this to go away. My theory? You were a victim of your own success. Moscow wanted your operation shut down, and they had help within the CIA to make that happen. Maybe the COS got wise to who the real traitor was, so he got silenced.”
“Then why not kill Nika too? Why go to all the effort to help her to defect?”
“That’s what I want to know. What did she have, over whom? We all thought she was a pawn in this game, but at some point she queened herself, as evidenced by the book.”
“The thing that struck me, that I keep coming back to?” Carter said, lightly touching Alice’s back as they rounded a landing. “Nika described you perfectly, when to my knowledge you never met.”
“That’s the great danger of this book,” Randolph said, puffing heavily. Nika hadn’t mentioned his limp, though in their book he’d been sitting down when they’d met. “There’s just enough truth in it to make the fantasy plausible. There’s a lot of politicalpressure to finally solve this murder. Diplomatic will, too—the Russians want to be off the hook for this, and it’s a good look for them if it happens in a way that implicates an American spy and a Russian traitor in a dirty conspiracy. Plus, the current administration doesn’t want this over its head going into the primaries, and I sure as hell don’t want it over mine. It will be resolved, one way or another, and fast. Unfortunately for you, Carter, now that Elena—Annika—is dead, she can no longer protect you. If she was writing the book to clear your name, or clear her conscience—some kind of bucket list project—it didn’t work.”
They reached the bottom of the stairwell and Randolph opened a fire door. “We go this way,” he said, stepping out into another hallway, a wide service corridor with white walls scuffed with black marks, and pipes running along it.
“You think she was protecting me?” Carter said. “With what?”
“That’s what I would very much like to know.”
“When did you meet her, Randolph?”
“She came to the embassy in Moscow, a day or two before you left—incredibly risky, but I guess by that time she was desperate.” Despite the breathlessness, Randolph managed to sound offhand and conversational, like they were talking about nothing more significant than the traffic or the weather. “I sent her a message to meet me at a café I know—knew—where we could be discreet.”
“How did she know about you, where to find you?”
“I guess it’s how she describes it in the book—she followed me to the embassy from Restaurant Fyodor one night and heard the guard greet me, so then she knew my name. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that—contrary to the book—when we met, shedidn’tannounce that she had evidence that I was supplying intel to the Russians and blackmail me to get her to the U.S., in thesame way you don’t need to explain that you didn’t shoot the COS to save her.”
“Yeah, uh, that was me,” Alice said, feeling like she was mediating. “Creative license.”
“Problem is, both scenes are just plausible enough to raise eyebrows up on level seven at Langley, and of course, the embassy has a record of her visit, so the dates match. Like I say, just enough correct details to make the rest sound credible.”
“So whatdidyou discuss?” Carter said. Alice didn’t need to look at him to know he was speaking through clenched teeth.
“The same thing you and I had discussed. She wanted to marry you and get an exfil. She told me she knew who was sharing intel with the Russians, and she had documents to prove it. I said, ‘Okay, you give me your evidence, I’ll see what I can do.’ She said no, she wanted to go to the top. So I set up the meeting with the station chief. That’s as much as I know.”
“At the safehouse.”
“No, not that meeting. This one was earlier, at a hotel. I figure the first one was when she laid out her demands, the second, at the safehouse, was when the swap was made—and we know what happened there. At least, we know the outcome.”
“And what do you know about his death?”
“Ah. That’s the most problematic thing about the book. She describes the death in the kind of detail you wouldn’t know unless you were there, and in my very good recollection, it tallies exactly with the autopsy report, which is highly classified. This information has never been released, and yet in the book, she describes the sound the silencer makes, the way the bullets pierce his neck and then his chest before the final double-tap to the head. The way he gargles before the final, fatal shot. She describes the wounds, just as they were—the angles of the shots, the distance between shooter and victim. The blood spatter. Where he landed. The goddamn expression on his face, just as itwas in the crime scene photos. She watched him die, no doubt about it.”
“She might have been shown crime scene photos when she was interrogated in the U.S. I was.”
“It was much more than that. And in the book, of course, you’re the one pulling the trigger. Like I say, problematic.”
“That last part was my invention,” Alice said, puffing a little to keep up as they passed staff carrying platters of nibbles. Alice looked away so they wouldn’t get a good look at her face.
“And yet whoever did commit the murder let her go,” Carter muttered, evidently trying to keep his voice and his temper down.
