“The street sign there.” Yuri pointed. “It is same style as Moscow. Nika’s shoemaker friend said Nika came to her one day in hurry, very worried, and got her to make new shoes she couldhide things in, and she drilled hole into boot she was already wearing. She said she made one new pair too big, but they ran out of time to fix.”
“That’s where she hid the list,” Alice said.
“Nika also asked to borrow a bag and clothes, but she would not say why. She gave friend big hug and left. This was dropped off next day.”
On the video, a man appeared, strolling along the pavement.
“That’s the station chief,” Florence said, “the one who was killed.”
He jogged up several steps to an apartment, kicking snow from them with his shoe, removed a key from his pocket, and let himself in.
Florence groaned. “This is the footage that Carter was shown when he was interrogated. He told me it shows Nika arriving, and then leaving again some time later, in a panic. It’s not going to be any use to us—the FBI’s already got it.”
They watched for a few minutes, but the street remained empty. Yuri sped up the playback, slowing it whenever someone came into shot. All false alarms until a woman appeared, hunkered down, walking quickly.
“Nika,” Yuri said. He lightly touched the figure on the screen. She looked up, seemingly reading the house numbers, and then took the steps up to the door and rang the bell. It swung inward, and she disappeared from view. “I will speed up again.”
They watched in silence, a heaviness settling into Alice’s chest. Every time it felt like they were getting somewhere, they seemed to slip back. Rashida pulled her laptop toward her and resumed cross-checking names.
“So what will we do?” Alice said. “Take what we have to the authorities? Let them start digging?”
Florence straightened. “My concern is that some of the people named in these documents are deciding Carter’s fate, aswe speak. If the level of infiltration is as bad as these documents suggest, then what’s going to happen to him, and to all this? I mean, we have plenty of dirt on them, but there’s nothing to prove that it was related to selling secrets to the Russians, or anything like that. But yes, right now we don’t have a hell of a lot of options. You all have done well to get this much.”
“What if we confronted Tania? Is that just impossibly naive?”
“The likes of her wouldn’t give anything away. If what you say is true, and she is a sleeper agent, her whole life is a well-practiced lie. The greatest interrogator in CIA history—the woman who owns this apartment, incidentally—wouldn’t be able to break her.”
“Hey, look,” Yuri said, stopping the playback, and rewinding. “Watch this.” As he pressed play, a dark car pulled up on the street and two men got out. “I know one of those guys. He is FSB enforcer. He came after me.”
The men walked up to the apartment. One turned around to keep watch while the other picked the lock, and they disappeared inside. Alice covered her mouth with her palm. No one said a word as they watched the now-empty street on the silent screen.
“Here they come,” Yuri said as the men emerged. They pulled the door closed, returned to their car and drove away. Yuri fast-forwarded again, his hand noticeably trembling. “And here she comes. So scared. Poor Nika.”
“Surely this exonerates Carter?” Alice said. “Do you think the footage he was shown was manipulated?”
“Easily done,” Florence said.
“Flo,” Rashida said, darkly, pointing to her laptop screen. “I found Tyler Wade. He’s now a security guard at the D.C. field office. He was questioned over the deaths of two suspects in FBI custody, a while back, including a Russian national who was asuspected sleeper agent. They were both ruled suicides and he was exonerated.”
“Is that where they’ll have taken Carter?” Alice said.
“Rashida, get on the phone to Li Mei. Time to get that stubborn son of mine lawyered up, whether he wants to or not.”
Yuri’s phone rang again. He answered, listened for a second, and abruptly stood, his chair clattering to the floor behind him. “People are coming up the stairs,” he announced, picking his gun up off the floor. “Both sides of building. Not FBI. They are armed.”
Alice stood frozen for a few seconds, as Florence snapped orders to the others. Then she grabbed Carter’s laptop and the list and ran into the bedroom. This time she would be ready.
Chapter 34
Alice
Alice was shaking so much that it took three attempts to hook the sheet around the steel railing that ran around the top of the glass balustrade and tie it tightly. Girl Scouts hadn’t prepared her for this level of knot work. Forbidding herself from looking down, she climbed over and stood clinging to the railing and the sheet, her boots jammed between the bottom of the balustrade and the balcony tiles. Wind blew her hair into her eyes. What was she doing? This was Darwin-Award-level madness. The noise seemed to intensify—traffic and distant power tools from neighboring properties battling with shouts from inside the apartment. A smash of breaking glass, a thud. She’d closed the bedroom curtains and the sliding glass door in the hope it might buy her time, but that meant she couldn’t see what was happening to the others.
A gunshot cracked—at least, she figured it was a gunshot—and she wobbled and lurched backward, unbalanced by the weight of Carter’s backpack. She clutched for the sheet and heard a faint ripping noise as she dropped, just a little, her boots slipping from the tiles. The sheet tightened, and her shoulder smashed into the side of the balcony. Momentum spun her away, into space, and back, thumping her spine into a steelsupport. Another gunshot. Before she could come back for a third bump, she scrambled down the sheet, trying to wrap her legs around it but only succeeding in making it swing even more wildly, her arm muscles complaining as they took her weight. Careering around, she caught glimpses of water, boats, concrete, glass, concrete, boats, water, glass. She forced her body to relax, counted to five. As the sheet stopped bucking, she risked a look down. The balcony was still a bone-shattering drop away and at this angle she could well miss it altogether and plummet four floors onto concrete.
Survive the day.
Or at least the next five minutes.
