Abramova told him: “You were right. It was a trap. They had undercover vehicles monitoring…” She turned a thumb toward the man in the back, who said, “Bernard. Sokolov.”
Abramova was speechless for a moment, turning in her seat to look at him, then: “Sokolov? You are the son? You are the asset?”
“Yes.”
“How did this happen?”
Sokolov said, “I didn’t know we were going to defect. I’m a Russian. I want to be a Russian again. Fuck this place. I thought we were on holiday in Istanbul, I was planning to buy some clothes. My mother thought the same—we were kidnapped, is what it was. They took us to Washington, to a CIA compound. A fort. I stole a phone, called the embassy and after a lot of talking, got the FSB representative. It took a while, but the CIA finally let me out on some nights togo to clubs. I stole another phone, gave my contact a club we were going to, and a date, and I got dropped a permanent phone. They call them ‘burners’ here in the States.”
“Who is your contact there? At the embassy?”
“A man named Kuznetsov, but I don’t think that’s his real name,” Sokolov said.
“That’s what we call him,” Abramova said. “How did you know how to arrange a drop…”
“My father arranged FSB training on Michurinsky Prospekt, the IOT.”
The IOT was the Institute for Operational Training; Michurinsky Prospekt was the location of the FSB Academy in Moscow.
Titov, disbelief in his voice: “You’re an operator?”
“No. I left after basic training,” Sokolov said. “I thought someday I would go back. Before my mother was killed, I even thought I might stay here as an asset. Find a job, stay on.”
Abramova: “You killed your father.”
“He wasn’t dead yet this afternoon. They are certain he will die.”
“But your father.”
“I’ve hated him since I was a child,” Sokolov said. “Until I was twelve or thirteen, I thought beatings were the way life was lived. He would beat me two or three times a week. Not child whippings with a belt: he beat me with his fists. Sometimes, I couldn’t walk. My mother…you killed my mother…my mother never interfered. She was bad as my father, or worse. She loved the idea that people feared her, feared what word she’d put in my father’s ear.”
A long silence, as they digested that, then Titov said, “Tell me about Lev.”
Abramova said, “The FBI agents from the club ran faster than wethought, than Bernard thought they could, and were too close to the place we were waiting. They would have shot us to pieces, just like at the safe house. Lev dropped them but before he could get back in the truck another FBI vehicle came around the corner and Lev shot at them, but one of the FBIs shot Lev. Lev told me to go; he was dying.”
“Ah, God, a disaster,” Titov said. “A disaster.”
“They will happen,” Abramova said. “Now we are done. We go back to the motel, pack, go south tomorrow morning. We will take the van, twenty-two hours to Matamoros. Take turns driving, stop for gas and food, nothing else.”
Titov said, “I don’t think so. Not now. Not with dead FBI agents…”
“We don’t know that they’re dead,” Abramova said.
“Lev was shooting at them. They’re dead,” Titov said. “That’s what he did: an angel of death. They will be looking at every face trying to get across the border. Every face.”
Sokolov: “What do you think? We have to get across…”
“I have a contact on the Canadian border, at Thunder Bay. Almost straight north from here. He can get us across a river into Canada, across the ice, pick us up. We have done that twice, in the past. There’ll be less attention to the killings in Canada than here in the U.S. Canada is not as good for getting back home, because their counter-intel people are better than Mexico’s, and Canada’s more hostile to us. But. The embassy in Toronto has a safe house. We stay there for a week, a month, and then we go. Private flight out of a small airport.”
“This sounds better,” Abramova admitted. “How many hours to this Thunder Bay?”
“Maybe six or seven, depending on the road conditions and theroute we take. But, one big thing: that’s all on back roads. No stops at all, one full tank of gas in each vehicle, which I can get tomorrow. I will call my contact tomorrow morning, probably won’t be able to cross tomorrow night. Maybe, the day after tomorrow. We’d stay out of sight in the motel for one more day.”
“Call your contact when we get back,” Abramova said. “We will hide Bernard in Lev’s room.”
She explained to Sokolov that they were spread across three motels in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Titov held the key cards for all three rooms, because if there was trouble, they didn’t want a card found on a team member who was captured or killed. Titov wasn’t an operator: he was the team’s concierge, driving and making arrangements for travel and equipment.
“I thought there were more of you,” Sokolov said.
