As Leo opened his eyes he was startled by a brilliant flash of gold; thinking it was the sun, he squinted and the object became a dangling pendant. This surprise was followed by the realization that he was not upright, or even sitting, but rather flat on his back, prostrate on the bench. Worried he’d been injured, he brought his hand to his head and touched something soft behind it.
“It’s my shawl,” the woman said. She was about his age, dramatic looking with big eyes and thick hair. “I put it under your head when you passed out. I’m Miriam.” By her side was her son, who stared at Leo with alarm. While most of the playground was deliberately ignoring them, two others had come near: another woman Leo recognized from the building, who was already edging back, and a man looking at his phone. Since moving to California Leo had never had so much attention on him; he needed to get away, to be in a private space, but his body was weak and also there were too many people. Damned American do-gooders!
“Are you all right?” the man asked, dropping his phone into his pocket. His face was familiar yet remote, and for a second Leo feared this was an operation. But then the man moved out of the sun’s glare and Leo realized it was Porsche Jerk.
“It’s getting cold out,” Miriam said. “I think you should lie somewhere else.” She hesitated. “Why don’t you come with me and Patrick? My apartment is right there on the ground floor.”
“I—I live here,” Leo whispered. He tried to say it again, louder, but could not—was worried if he spared the oxygen, he would once again pass out.
“Yes,” Miriam said. “I know. That’s why I invited you.” She spoke with placation, the way a person might to a child unrelated to them who is in the midst of an inappropriate tantrum.
Leo didn’t want to go with Miriam. He didn’t even know this woman, and he especially wished to avoid any unnecessary neighborly interactions, given all he’d done to sequester himself from the terrible Mrs. Jeffries and Jenny Sugimoto. But before he could extricate himself, Porsche Jerk spoke:
“We should call the police. Or an ambulance.”
Leo was seized by a desire to throttle him. This degenerate, who could not even respect a written sign marking a personal parking spot, now thought to summon a cadre of authorities? Though a greater concern then broke—Leo did not want to be interviewed by some medic or policeman, his name entered into an American system. The wonks in the SPB might catch it, and then he’d have to explain, and likely be subjected to all sorts of physical tests on his next return to Moscow.
He tried to rise but was still shaky, and so lay back and evaluated his options. Miriam had her boy with her, and Americans were mostly guileless when children were involved.
Leo summoned the energy to speak. “I’ll go.” His breath, the act of steady breathing, felt near impossible. He raised a hand to Miriam. “I—I’ll go with you, let’s go.”
Her apartment was close. Still, on the short walk, Leo felt exposed—as if there were people observing from above, and he had the intense desire to seek closed quarters. Once inside her apartment he was unceremoniously dropped onto a couch: “Lie down,” Miriam ordered. The couch was comfortable, made out of a soft tiger-print velvet, and Leo brushed it with his hand as he might a real animal.
Am I going crazy, he thought. Am I dying?
The apartment’s layout was congruous to his own, only in reverse. The ceilings were speckled, and if he turned his head, he could see the sliding door leading to the balcony. He heard movement behind him; after another minute, Miriam returned from the kitchen with water.
“So,” she said, sitting on the coffee table. “You’ve had a panic attack.”
“What?” He understood the individual words, but together they were incomprehensible.
“Yup. A panic attack. At least I’m fairly certain. You can say anxiety attack, if that makes you feel better. Some men don’t like the word ‘anxiety.’ Wait, don’t say anything, first take ten breaths. Measured. In and out.”
In, out. “A panic attack,” he echoed.
“Yes. Have you had one before?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No,” he said with emphasis, although now Leo thought of the first night he’d spent in the dacha after Natalia. For dinner, he’d boiled himself frozen pelmeni and then sat at the kitchen table, a fork and spoon in hand. Only to wake on the floor minutes later, a lump on the back of his head. “When I was younger, maybe.”
“Right,” Miriam said. He was relieved she did not inquire further. Her hair had almost completely escaped its ties and was now sprung about her face as if she’d gone down a slide with static electricity. Her apartment was in similar disarray: half the cabinets in the kitchen were open, and scattered about the living room were stacks of unopened boxes and toys in clear plastic containers.
She passed him the water. “I warmed it on the stove, so it’ll go down easy. Drink. But not too fast.”
Leo gulped, greedy for the liquid. Afterward he felt as if he might vomit, and lay on the couch on his side. His head was inches from the now-empty cup, made out of a wispy porcelain, on which there was a tawny spotted jaguar leaping over a wash of blue. He was surprised that such a messy person could own such an elegant item, and allow a stranger to use it.
“I am having a problem at work,” he said. It slipped out in a monotone and instantly he regretted it.
Miriam surveyed him. “You are stressed,” she said, as if confirming a prior statement.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
His first thought was a resolute no—it was already lunacy that he was on her couch. Although, having confessed the problem, he could admit he now felt more at ease; he’d already said the worst of it, so was it so terrible to share a little more?
“I—have some stressful projects.” Thinking of Jefferson. “There’s also a . . . subordinate of sorts, who is causing some trouble.”
“Subordinate. That’s an interesting word. Man or woman?”
He debated whether this was too nosy, but settled on it being one of those annoying yet harmless questions asked by California liberals when they’d already decided you were a certain sort, anyway. “Woman.”
“Can’t you just fire her?”
“What she does is hard to hire for.”
Miriam thought about this. “Like a specialized engineer.”
“Exactly. Her expertise is . . . hard to source. And would be difficult to replace.”
“Right,” Miriam said. “Right, right.” And in fact she appeared sincere, as if she truly meant what she said—the opposite of most interactions he had with Americans, who liked to pretend a conversation was a relationship when really it was only a mirror, one in which to admire their own labored self-reflections.
Bolstered, he added: “She’s been with me a long time. There’s a certain amount of loyalty.”
“How is she causing you trouble?”
Leo paused. “She’s not listening to me.”
“What if you tell her she has to listen? That there are consequences if she doesn’t?”
“I think”—though now Leo could not recall if he’d had that conversation with Julia, at least recently—“I think she would just do what she wants, anyway.”
“Hmm,” Miriam said. Taking the beautiful cup with her as she returned to the kitchen. “That is a real problem.”
Later, after Leo finished another cup of water, he felt strong enough to sit and immediately had to urinate. When he returned, Patrick was on the ground by the sofa, opening one of the plastic boxes. “Do you want to show me?” Leo asked, not meaning it, and to his horror the boy nodded. They played for an hour, constructing elaborate towers from plastic bricks.
“Are you a psychiatrist?” Leo asked as Miriam came toward them with a plate of cut fruit. A furtive expression crossed her face. My God, she’s one of those, he then thought. A hypochondriac whose greatest joy was the diagnoses of extreme conditions in others. Perhaps she was going to say she could smell that he had cancer next, or that his cooking pans were poison.
“No,” Miriam said flatly. She wore an apron, a beige pullover with a giant pocket, out of which drooped a wooden spatula.
“Oh,” Leo said.
Miriam sighed and kicked an enormous stuffed bear upright. “I was a therapist,” she explained, dropping onto the lap of the bear. “Before. Had my own practice, but gave it up after my divorce. Please don’t think I’m hitting on you!” she cried, one of those unbelievably forward statements Americans occasionally favored. “I’m just explaining, because when you give up a healthy business, people have all kinds of theories. Like maybe you’re a drug addict or an embezzler. Anyway, I work in video games now. I enjoy my job. Sometimes I even help the designers with dialogue. You wouldn’t believe how little these people know about a woman’s interior process. Or a man’s, for that matter.”
“Wow,” Leo said dumbly. To him it was incredible that a divorce should bring someone to give up their job, one he assumed they enjoyed and were richly compensated for. In Moscow nearly half the people he knew were divorced, and he’d read that in the United States the percentage was similar, so why did they all make such a big deal out of it here? “Do you miss it? Your practice,” he added, in case she thought he meant her husband.
She sighed again. “I was good at it. But it got to be too much. I had clients tell me they were going to kill themselves if I went on vacation. When I had my C-section, I came out of surgery to forty messages, all from the same woman promising that if I didn’t answer she was going to come to my house. And the thing is, I know I had some talent. But I couldn’t handle it anymore. And then one day I realized that somehow months had passed since me and my husband had bothered to eat a meal together.” Her laugh was low. “I mean, here I am supposedly helping people, but at a certain point I couldn’t even manage my own affairs.” She met his eyes. “Does that sound crazy to you?”
“Not really,” said Leo.
A week later, Leo flew to Moscow.
A considerable benefit of Russo Import/Export was how it simplified travel—no need for him to construct an elaborate cover, to strap on Henk Van Tiel’s sandy wig and prepare the fat Dutchman’s documents and Samsonite trolley. Every six months when he returned he could simply be Leo, struggling logistics consultant operating out of Santa Clara; at SFO he stood before the immigration officer, patiently waiting for his passport to be scanned, while behind him a mass of passengers heaved with messy energy. The airport official, her auburn hair tied back, looked at him for less than a second. “Have a nice trip,” she said, and turned to the horde.
Per routine, Leo spent his first two days conducting real work for his fake job. He arranged a meeting with the uncle of a client, one looking to import what was pitched as the best honey vodka from Primorsky Krai. Leo met the uncle, a tall, furry man with childish eyes named Konstantin, at the Star—an overpriced café near St. Peter’s Cathedral that bore a depressingly similar menu and pricing to the coffee shops in San Francisco. Leo had hoped to discharge his responsibilities there, but had not been able to escape being taken to Kotelniki to visit the distributor: “There are big margins in alcohol,” Konstantin bellowing as he pressed another sample on Leo, come on, have another, don’t be a sissy! “Money, that’s the universal, isn’t it so?”
Now it was the third day, and Leo was at an apartment building in Shchukino. Though the complex was SPB owned, its units were rented publicly, as even the SPB couldn’t pull off an entire building remaining vacant in the local real estate market without unwanted scrutiny. On the seventh floor, two apartments were occupied by what were marked in the building’s plans as “storage equipment and telecommunications,” while another three were furnished but empty, allegedly an extended pied-à-terre for a wealthy factory owner in Kazakhstan. Leo went to the apartment at the end of the hall. He knocked twice, deliberately not looking at the lamp hanging adjacent, which contained a motion-activated video recorder. After a few seconds Ivan answered. The chief of Directorate Eight was rosy faced, wearing a suit with no tie. He waved at Leo to enter and then returned to the kitchen, where he was arranging smoked salmon on bread.
The apartment was one bedroom, with an open kitchen separated from the seating area by a long counter. Leo sat on the couch, where he fought a low drowsiness. As was generally the case when he traveled, it was only on his last day that he’d finally had his first good night’s rest.
“I have an update on Florida,” Leo began while Ivan fussed with his food. At the end of the counter was a wicker basket of the sort used to collect mushrooms. On this one was printed the name of an expensive local deli, and Ivan reached inside and removed a jar of roe, using a small spoon to sprinkle the caviar over his plate. He’d begun to assemble progressively more elaborate and calorie-rich meals during their meetings—Leo had heard Ivan’s wife was strict, and he wondered if his superior was secretly violating some agreed-upon diet. “The Jefferson job,” Leo added. “I have the final report.”
“Good!” Ivan came around. “So it was clean?”
“Yes. It appears one woman was taken to the hospital but released hours later.”
“Are the Americans allowing his name to be published?”
“No.” As of yesterday, Leo had yet to see the name Jefferson Caine in print. “They’ll likely conceal it, don’t want the embarrassment.” I’m nobody special. His heart thumped, and he recalled Miriam’s instructions should he feel light-headed again. Above Ivan’s head Leo now imagined a five-pointed star—he started at the top and then, each time the line bent, breathed in and out. His pulse returned to normal. “Why was he targeted?”
“Who knows. Someone in the Kremlin wanted a victory. Timor, most likely.” Timor Poliakov was the head of all three intelligence services; he sat on the Security Council and met with the president weekly. “Timor’s been clocking off a whole list of them in London. Each time there’s a success, his wife’s construction company receives another contract.” Ivan opened his mouth, as if to add more, but instead went to the kitchen and returned with espressos.
They drank and traded gossip. Leo was entertained to learn that Peter had remarried: “To a dentist!” Ivan exclaimed, and they both laughed, even though neither could explain precisely why it was funny. Leo shared the latest on Ned Daly: Ned was cooperating, as Leo had known he would. Had already passed sensitive engineering papers detailing LinkTel’s next launch, with promises that he’d design a back door within the hardware.
“Is he truly cooperative?” Ivan touched his fingers together. “Not fooling us? He hasn’t gone to the authorities?”
“Not per the latest from MINERVA. Ned spends a lot of time on FreeTalk; he seems to use it for nearly all his private communications.” Including with his latest girlfriend, who’d once again been sourced through CanBuyLove, though Leo didn’t tell Ivan this. Just as Julia managed information to him, so Leo also managed information upward. And so it went, and went, until the people on top had an entirely different view of things from the people on the bottom.
“MINERVA, she’s doing good work.” Ivan offered the last piece of smoked salmon to Leo. Leo waved him off and Ivan happily sailed it into his mouth.
“Yes,” Leo agreed. Then: “I think she needs a break.”
“Oh?”
“A short one,” Leo caveated. “She needs to rest, recover. She is a new mother.”
“Interesting,” Ivan said, and Leo could not discern what his superior was pronouncing interesting: his suggestion about Julia, or Julia’s becoming a mother. Ivan returned to the kitchen, where he removed from the wicker basket a round covered tray. As he sliced its contents, he called: “I leave it to you. From an operational standpoint, you have full oversight.”
“Of course I will still manage any requests from the bureau.” Leo suddenly felt he’d been too hasty. He didn’t know what had prompted him to ask this favor, especially since Julia hadn’t even been particularly forthcoming as of late. Still, she’d ended up tracking Jefferson, hadn’t she? And a break for Julia meant one for himself, some breathing room, as they liked to say in California. “Not a full stoppage. Just a temporary lessening of responsibilities. We’ll continue to execute any special requests, like with the Tangerine Mail source code.”
“Right, the code . . .” Ivan returned with a wedge of Black Forest cake. “That was something I meant to mention. It seems there was an error.”
Leo was instantly alert. “What sort?”
“Oh,” Ivan said, waving a blobby hand. “I don’t know. The cyber team said the vulnerability was no longer there. So they were unable to complete. But what do they know? Likely they messed up from the start.”
Leo wanted to believe this. “Do you have details?”
“Let’s see . . .” Ivan reached for his briefcase. “I’m sure I brought it—here, here it is.” He passed Leo a folder. “You know, there’s a good chance it is the computer men on our end who are making problems,” he said as he ate. “Perhaps there was never a vulnerability to begin with. Or they ruined something, entered a wrong password too many times. So instead they come back to us and complain, something’s wrong, data is corrupted, oh no!”
“Maybe,” Leo said. But I don’t think so.
Back on the plane, it took Leo an hour to review the papers. By the end, not only was he certain that the vulnerability had been fixed by Tangerine, but that given the timing, it was Julia who’d instigated it.
Leo set down the notes and let out a deep sigh. Julia was lucky, he thought. She was lucky her company had been purchased for millions and that she could fly private. She was lucky that Ivan both liked her and had a rich and powerful father, which meant he was more laissez-faire than nearly any other SPB directorate head. And because Julia knew this—because she couldn’t help but dig and chip when before her was a weakness to exploit—she’d gone and done this.
Of course, she would have to be taught a serious lesson.
It was as he was waiting to be picked up that Leo thought of it. As he stood on the curb outside San Francisco Airport’s arrivals terminal he turned the idea over in his head: it was always satisfying when a solution was elegant. Though there would be difficulties. Julia would be difficult.
A blue Mazda slowly curved to a stop. The driver popped the trunk but did not emerge, and after depositing his bag, Leo opened the passenger door. He knew it wasn’t totally secure for Chester to retrieve him—it went against recommended procedure, especially if Chester was somehow compromised—but at the last minute Leo hadn’t wanted to be picked up by a stranger. Had wished to be like the other returning travelers, craning their necks for specific cars and faces.
“How was your trip?” Chester asked. He sat straight with both hands on the wheel, at ten and two, as if he were a driving student. “You have a good time?”
“I did,” Leo said. He passed to Chester the bottle of honey vodka he’d saved for him, as well as a porcelain jar of paprika he’d purchased from duty free. Outside, the sun was a highlighter to the sky. Leo pressed his cheek against the glass and they set off for home.