The corner of his mouth quirked in that Anderson Holt way she absolutely shouldn’t find sexy in these circumstances. “I would feel compelled to prevent you from making that choice, since it’d be such a bad one.”
“For you or me?”
“For you. Which also, right now, means me. Looks like we’ve been dumped in this together, like it or not.” By the tone of his voice, she guessed he joined her in the “not” category. He leaned down and murmured into her ear: “And, in case it influences your decision, I amnot a man to be underestimated.” He unlocked the door but held the handle still, caging her betweenhis arms. His body wasn’t touching hers, but it might as well be for the heat it generated. “Not gonna pretend—this is a hundred percent about my self-preservation. Maybe ninety-nine, now that we’ve bonded, and you seem like a good person who’s gone and stumbled into this. You want to preserve your own life? That’s up to you. But first I need to know what you know, and I need that computer. So I’m gonna go ahead and give you the hall pass.” He turned the handle a fraction, and stilled. “Don’t worry, Alice,” he said, dropping the teasing tone and becoming deadly serious—and honestly, she wasn’t sure which one she found more unsettling. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. But I can’t speak for anyone else.”
Alice let out a noise that sounded annoyingly like a whimper.
“Are you ready?” he said.
“For what?”
“No idea. But it’s guaranteed to be interesting.”
Chapter 3
Carter
Red Square, Moscow
Eighteen months earlier
For the sixteenth time that year, Carter Beck found himself staring at Vladimir Lenin’s waxen face with a twinge of sympathy. Here was Carter, an actual capitalist spy, leading half a dozen of America’s One Percent in slow procession past Lenin’s glass casket, not sixty feet from the Kremlin’s Senatskaya Tower, and the old communist’s preserved nose didn’t even twitch.
Vlad had been lying dead and stuffed for nearly twice as long as he’d been alive, frozen in middle age as Carter’s own middle age crept closer, week by week, bourgeois tour group by bourgeois tour group.
Lenin’s voice popped into his head, as clear as if the guy had sat up and started talking:Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.The irony of this luxury tour company being Carter’s front for the last four years? He could now extensively quote Lenin—not the bullshit memes on the internet, either—and you had to sympathize with the guy’s basic gripe about rich folk, even if some of his methods had been shady. Case in point: the entitled, demanding American elite following Carter through the tomb, their wealth growing by more every minute on vacation than he earned in a year of risking his life to protect their national interest. Not that they knew his real job. To them he was waiter, concierge, manservant, secretary, photographer, ass wiper…
Carter massaged the back of his neck as he ushered his charges—three couples from Connecticut celebrating a sixtieth birthday—back up to Red Square, blinking to adjust to the sun, weak and crystalline as it was. He pulled his gloves from his pocket and shoved them on as he walked back to the corner of the roped-off area where Nika waited. A distorted, echoing version of Abba’sFernandofloated over from the ice rink outside the GUM store. He picked up his backpack and dusted snow from it as Nika handed the tourists the belongings she’d been watching over.
“Remind me to add to my will that I don’t want to be buried with my head propped up like that,” he muttered to Nika, swinging the bag onto his back. Inside, six glass bottles of mineral water clinked. Rich folks didn’t carry their own water, and didn’t drink out of plastic. “Gives me a neck ache every time I look at him.”
“Do not worry, I will flatten you out personally.” Nika’s monotone made her sound murderously serious.
Then again, her smile had seemed forced today, and she was keeping watch on her surroundings more obviously than she should. He narrowed his eyes slightly, in a question. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. Which meant what? Nothing was up, or something was up and she didn’t feel secure sharing it right now?
“I don’t know if the wait was worth it, Jake,” one of the tourists grumbled to her husband, loud enough to make it clear that Carter and Nika were the intended audience. She was a return customer, the birthday girl of the party, and she’d complained loudly at having to wait in line with the regular tourists and queried if there was someone Nika could bribe to skip the lines.This is the problem with free entry—anyone can get in.Can you imagine how much money they could make from this place?Inside, she’d whined about being told to check in her phone at security—despite Carter’s instructions to leave all belongings outside with Nika—and at being reminded to take off her hat.But it’s so cold in here. Can’t you ask them to turn down the air-conditioning? How am I supposed to take photos without my phone? I refuse to pay for a postcard—you know the money will only go straight to the Kremlin’s coffers.
As Carter tugged his beanie on, he shot Nika a sly grin. Talk about a tour of duty, but at least he had the company of his best agent for this leg of it. St. Petersburg and Novgorod had been hell on ice. He’d left JFK a week ago—traveling economy while the One Percent reclined flat in first class—and already it felt like months. Only a couple of days in Moscow, this time, to collect the intel Nika had gathered from her Kremlin contacts and check in with his other assets, leaving Randolph to transmit it to Langley via the embassy’s secure link. To allay any suspicions—and no doubt to raise funds for the CIA from their oblivious patrons—he would continue as scheduled with the tourists along the Silk Route aboard the mega-luxury Imperial Princess, and then it’d be rinse and repeat with his Beijing assets while the One Percent cuddled panda cubs and flew by helicopter to a private banquet on the Great Wall.
The thought of the train trip made his back ache all over again. His attendant’s berth was little bigger than a coffin, with a bunk several inches too short. Meanwhile, the One Percentwould complain, as someone always did, that the bathtub in their Royal Carriage was “disappointingly small.” After Beijing, he’d spend a few days debriefing at Langley, then return to Moscow with a fresh batch of One Percenters. A longer stay next time. Always varying the schedule.
We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire.Lenin, again.
They crunched over the snow toward the bulbous pastel towers of St. Basil’s Cathedral, Nika pointing out landmarks to the tourists, whose breath emerged in puffs like half a dozen smoke signals. Her voice was a little shaky. Her Moscow guide routine was so well rehearsed that she could probably recite it backward in German, so why the nerves? He wasn’t picking up on any unusual activity in the square. As they reached the Minin and Pozharsky Monument, she wrapped up her lecture, swept up beside him and linked arms, her red boots leaving a trail of gray bullet holes in the snow. Only Nika could wear five-inch heels on snow-covered cobblestones without breaking all four limbs. He’d never seen her in flat shoes, though her cover job demanded walking all day. She claimed wearing stilettos her entire adult life had given her the balance of a gymnast.
He looked down at her, suppressing his surprise. She was usually friendly but distant. Never physically demonstrative. “Everything okay?” he whispered.
“Moydroog,” she said, “you have to get me out. Get me to America.”
“What? Have you been compromised?”
She flicked her blond hair back as a pretense for checking over her shoulder, a smile pasted to her face, as if this were merely a lover’s moment she didn’t want overheard. “My apartment was searched while I was out meeting a contact, two nights ago.”
His stomach knotted but he took care to match her playful expression. At least, he hoped his expression looked more genuine than hers. “And…?”
“Of course, they found nothing. And nothing was taken or moved. Which is why I know they are professionals.”
“Then how do you know they were there? You don’t have a motion detector? A camera trap?”
