“Of course not,” she said, bristling.
“Nika…”
“Once. I made a mistakeonce, and never again. My neighbor mentioned that she saw my ‘cleaners’ leaving. I don’t have cleaners. No one but me has a key to my apartment.”
“Were you followed?”
“Not this time. I was careful, as always.”
“This time?”
“I have had the feeling for a while that I’m being followed.”
“Just a feeling, or…?”
“I haven’t actually seen anyone, okay?”
“Is this about the list of names everyone’s talking about, that’s supposedly on its way to the Kremlin? You know we don’t even know if it’s real, let alone if we’re on it. It could be just a rumor—possibly started deliberately to scare our assets into going dark.”
“It’s working. Many of my sources in the Kremlin have mentioned this list. Two have already gone dark. They are terrified for their lives.”
“Have any actually seen it?”
“No, but?—”
“Ah, excuse me?” called one of the tour group. “Can you take a photo of us? Jake, Manny, Tania, get in here. Make sure you get the cathedral in it.”
Carter shot Nika an apologetic look as he took the man’s phone. Nika shrugged, still smiling. The front must comefirst. Could she be right about the search? Americans living in Moscow assumed their homes were bugged and behaved accordingly. CIA employees were trained to behave at all times as if Russian counterintelligence teams were watching them—including Carter, whose alias, according to their own counter-intel, was thought to be secure. But Nika was a local and supposedly clean—that was one of the reasons she was so valuable. Could she have drifted onto the Russian FSB radar because of her regular contact with Carter’s American front company, or with wealthy foreigners? A routine check? Would she slip off the radar again if she played it cool?
Nothing in her apartment or pocket litter would suggest she was anything but a freelance tour guide. The best defense for any of them was their cover. The best way to hide incriminating evidence was not to carry incriminating evidence. The best way to act like you had nothing to hide was to have nothing to hide—nothing tangible, anyway. Counter-surveillance equipment in your home would just confirm any suspicions. He and Nika both carried more cash than a regular person, but that could be explained away by their cover—sometimes they had to pay a bar or a bribe in cash. Otherwise, they stayed clean. They rarely even took notes—his brain held intel as reliably as a flash drive. If they did have to smuggle documents or photos, there were ways to hide or encrypt them within their tourist company paperwork. They saved frank conversations for walks in parks, never hotel rooms.
But if this list truly was on its way to the Kremlin, and their names were on it…
“All done,” Carter said, handing back the phone. He returned to Nika and slung an arm around her. “What do you mean about being followed?” he murmured.
“At first, I thought I was imagining it. But there are other things.” She laughed, wryly at first, then forcing it into a girlygiggle for the sake of onlookers. “This all sounds so silly when I say it aloud. I have not been able to say it aloud before now. There is no one I can…” The smile wavered slightly. “You always tell me to trust my gut. Moscow Rules. Well, my gut is telling me something is wrong.”
Carter resisted the instinct to check over his shoulder. It wasn’t like Nika to get cold feet, and the suggestion of closing down their operation would not go down well at Langley. Together they had set up one of the CIA’s most reliable and secure outflows of intel from the Kremlin. The take had been invaluable, or so he was often assured. Most of what he passed on meant exactly nothing to him—encryption codes, passwords, names, dates, meetings—but it didn’t take an analyst to figure out that much of it was related to Russia’s disinformation campaign in the U.S. and its ambitions to push out its borders and create a new world order. And it wasn’t just Nika’s intel that was at stake. Carter’s alias gave him an excuse to circulate at the five-star hotels where much of Russia’s government, diplomacy, and business was conducted, and recruit and run agents who had eyes and ears in those gilt suites, boardrooms, stretch limos, saunas, massage parlors… People who were more than happy to supplement their meager salaries or get help for a disabled daughter or a gambling debt—it was just a case of finding that desire. The whole cobweb would be compromised.
“I’ll keep an eye out, talk to my guy,” he said.
“That is not enough. You must take me with you out of the country, to America. Take me with you, on the train, when you leave.”
“That is not an easy thing to do, Nika, especially if you’ve been blown. Even if I could make it happen, I’m leaving in two days. That’s not enough time.”
“Your government can make anything happen that it wants to. Have I not earned this?” She continued to smile, but her blue-gray eyes were glossy, and not from the cold. He steered her toward the cathedral, an arm around her waist to give them an excuse to stay close and talk quietly. “Four years I have worked with you, risking my freedom and my life to betray my country.Yourecruited me after Yuri died.Youtold me you’d protect me.”
“I told you I’d do everything I could to protect you. There’s a difference and you know it.”
She gave a slight scoff, which killed him. So much of how they behaved was an act, but their friendship was genuine, and the tears she was fighting were real. Even at her fiancé’s funeral she hadn’t cried.
“I didn’t say it was impossible but it’s a massive process. We’ll need to run it by the station chief, consider counter-surveillance to confirm it. If you’ve been blown, documents would need to be arranged… The logistics… And, I’ll be honest, we don’t usually help people at your level to defect.”
“Because I am not an asset,” she said, bitterly. “I am not important. What is the term? A throwaway? A discard?”
He bit down on his lower lip. “You are incredibly valuable here but?—”
“But I am just the go-between. I do not possess the intelligence, I do not generate the information, I merely pass it on. I would be worthless the second I landed in America, and the CIA does not operate on pity. Yes, to all of the above?”
