The room was soiled and small but she was familiar with filthy spaces, cramped rooms; the walls were white and there was a single red door locked from the outside. Through the door’s window she glimpsed people pass. But only their shadows, through a screen.
They did not want anyone to see her.
She’d been brought by plane. A short flight, though she hadn’t known it, and when the hood was dropped over her head it was the closest she’d come to terror. The black fabric against her face, Leo’s voice—they will strip you hurt you humiliate you—echoing as she stared into the dark. The woman’s voice against her ear like rough paper. And then, at the end, adding softly: “Shall I put the earmuffs on now?”
Julia had tried hard not to cry.
But so far none of it had happened. There had been no torture, no photographs; she had been stripped, but the guards were female, and they handled her cautiously but without feeling, like movers transporting an unwieldy antique.
She lay on the bed and counted the ridges above. It was a popcorn ceiling, which over her time in California she’d learned was actually tacky: something to do with them being cheap and old and all the other qualities that made something undesirable in America. But as she stared she found the jagged peaks and blotches striking. She tried to match them to countries she’d visited. China. Mauritius. Iceland. After she tired of this she went to the sink, where she wet the cloth and scrubbed at the toilet and floors, the wiped metal sparkling against the light.
At midday there was a knock, and one of the women from Sean’s presentation entered. “Nice to see you,” Julia said, and the woman raised her head, surprised by either the pleasantry or the sight of Julia kneeling at the toilet. She jerked a hand to indicate down the hall, and Julia retrieved her slippers from under the bed. After they’d left Tangerine she’d been allowed to go home, pack a bag, though there’d been two agents with her the entire time. Luna pushing Emily into her arms, Julia desperately kissing Emily’s hair; she’d been determined not to cry, had wanted their parting to seem ordinary, and so after a minute she’d gently returned Emily to Luna. “I’ll be back,” Julia said, and she struggled to recall if these had been Nina’s last words.
She told Charlie she had to leave. For a business trip. An inverse of what she’d emailed Pierre: Will need some time off. Personal matters.
“How long?” Charlie asked.
“Maybe a week. Or longer. I’m sorry,” she added. Meaning it. It seemed incomprehensible that just that morning she’d daydreamed of leaving him. Why hadn’t she said sorry more often, Julia had then wondered. What had she believed she’d be giving away? Maybe if she’d apologized more, given in to Leo more, Charlie more, she wouldn’t be in such a miserable position. Then again, she couldn’t go by how she felt at any one particular moment—she knew that misery, like happiness, could be a trick.
The woman walked her to the room. The walls were clean, carpet thin, left, right, left, right, twenty-eight steps in total. Having spent so long in her room, examining each crevice, in this space Julia was now overwhelmed; she didn’t even look at the person, so much did she want to save the interaction. She started with the ceilings, also popcorn, the door behind her, also red. But here were some new details: a metal table with rounded corners, two metal chairs; she ran her hand underneath her seat, to see if this metal felt warmer than in her room. They kept Julia’s room cool, the air conditioner running throughout the night. Her blanket was thin but she wore the cashmere sweater and pants they’d allowed her. Mixed signals.
On top of the table was a yellow pad, a recorder, two pens. And then, behind the table: Leah. Not a bad-looking woman, if rather brittle; Julia would have pegged her as difficult at work but submissive at home, with a brutish husband. Though there was the undertone of something else that threw off the calculation.
“And how are we doing,” Leah said. Her lipstick was slick and red. Julia inhaled—Leah was wearing perfume again, with neroli undertones.
“I’m fine.”
“Anything I can get you?”
“No.”
“Maybe call your lawyer?”
“No. Funny, though.” There was a moment when Julia had thought to call Paolo at Quinn Emanuel. She imagined sitting across from her attorney, a compact and handsome Mexican Princetonian whom so far she’d utilized only for her prenup, and asking him to get her off from espionage. Even the accusation would be enough to ruin her future. Hers and Emily’s.
“I would like to reiterate,” Leah said, “that you, Julia Lerner, formerly Julia Kall, are a United States citizen, with all the rights accorded to such. That you are here today of your free will, with the understanding that you may request to leave at any time, and that your request will be granted.”
“Yes.”
“And you acknowledge this has been the case since your arrival.”
“Yes.” Though Leah left the kicker unsaid. That were Julia to leave they would immediately pursue legal action, charge her—they had already played for her the video from her conference room. Julia was using her questions sparingly, to avoid ceding accidental ground, but she was desperate to know: Where was Leo? And HELPER? Who else had been taken, what else was known?
“I’ve been thinking,” Leah said. “About how it’s hard to do the right thing once you get cynical. You know what I mean?”
Julia smiled but said nothing, like one of those pleasant mutes who occasionally arrived at the institute. There had been one in particular, a pretty fox-like girl named Taya, who enjoyed helping Sophia sweep and mop; seeing her in domestic action, an Australian couple had adopted her, and last Julia heard, Taya had burned their house to the ground.
“I used to hate in high school when the girls said one day we’d die and get all heavy about it,” Leah went on. “Typical juvenile shit. If you keep thinking there’s no way to cheat death, what’s the reason for anything, right? I’ve accepted I’m going to die and put it out of my mind. Only focus on the near and present term. That’s the best way, in my opinion.” She played with the yellow pad, flipping it over and over. “You’ve been gone for six days so far.” Looking up. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Julia knew what Leah was asking. Not whether it’d be an issue for her family, or Tangerine, but for the SPB. The answer was possibly, but she couldn’t be sure. And still, what defined a problem? As she’d faced worse.
“Not necessarily. Depending on how it is managed.”
It had taken Julia some time to work it out. Why they hadn’t yet touched her. There was more to it than just fame, she knew: Americans worshipped celebrity, but only second to the joy they took in tearing it down. There were promotions to be had from her arrest, news cycles, political careers. And yet so far no perp walk, no attorney generals; from the flight time she guessed she was in another state, possibly Oregon or Nevada.
I am the COO of Tangerine, she reminded herself. In many ways, I’m more powerful than anyone in this building.
As if she were aware of Julia’s thoughts, Leah smiled. “I’d like for this to be a relationship. And I’m aware that in all relationships, there’s got to be some give-and-take. So why don’t I start with some give? We haven’t taken HELPER, for one. I know that’s something you’ve likely been wondering. Whether or not we’ve actually grabbed them, in which case your superiors at the SPB would be alerted, and you’d be screwed. Correct?”
Some inner pocket of tension released. Though Julia kept silent.
“You can keep it all, Julia. Your family, your money, your job. All you’ve got to do is change the people you work for. Don’t you want to be on the right side? The good side.”
“Don’t be patronizing,” Julia snapped. “It’s disappointing.”
She could see she’d managed to sting: satisfying, if potentially foolish. Leah put a fist to her lip. When she brought it down, her knuckle held a smear of red. “You chose to live here, right? You could have gone anywhere. But you chose to live in America.”
Julia studied her fingers. “I didn’t choose my life. Not all of us are so lucky.”
“I didn’t think you’d say that. Play the victim. Now I’m the one feeling disappointed.” Leah rose, and out of reflex Julia moved to stop her from leaving.
Leah returned to her seat, satisfied in her victory. “I don’t know what kind of life it is you had in Russia. I can’t imagine you want to share.”
“No.”
“No,” Leah repeated. “But I can assume it’s better here than wherever you came from. So now I’ve got a question: Where do you want your daughter to live, Julia? How do you want her to live? All the wealthy in your former country, the oligarchs, the securocrats, where do they send their children? Volgograd? Their old mining towns? Or, you know, do they send them someplace else, somewhere with reliable sunshine, the freedom to speak their opinion without falling out of a window, good democratic processes . . .”
The day she finally left the institute, Julia hadn’t said goodbye. She’d anticipated the moment for years, had studied how it happened for others. Sophia, now the institute’s director, arriving that morning with the customary stipend; Julia’s clothes and pencil box and the few textbooks she’d been allowed to keep all packed inside the blue parachute bag. Julia surprising herself the most when at the end she started to sob. She didn’t understand why, because who did she love that she was leaving? Not even Misha had come to wish her farewell, and as a parting gift he’d given her nothing but some old magazines, had not even spared her one of his toy planes.
“But you don’t even like planes or aviation,” he’d said when she asked him for one. “You never did. You won’t appreciate them.”
“I will,” she said, surprised by his resistance. “Besides, you don’t even use them anymore. You haven’t played with them in years.”
“Why do you have to take something from me just because you’ll miss me?” he asked, and she hadn’t known what to say.
“Why don’t we start with something easy,” Leah said. Her voice slow and inviting and gentle. “Your handler. How did you meet?”
Julia lightly scratched at the metal surface of the table and didn’t respond.
“I understand you might feel some loyalty. Honestly, it’s only natural. Admirable, even. But I think you know the choice before you. It’s the best one, the most logical one. And from what I know of you, Julia, you always make the logical decision, don’t you?”
Was there a way to recover, Julia thought. Or when you moved to a new phase of life, did you always have to shed some part of yourself, leave some precious item behind? She hadn’t known until she was leaving that she’d wanted a plane from Misha—to clutch in her palm when she wished to visit that stowed part of herself. And now she was back in Moscow, Leo before her, saying he was going to change her life. If he were next to her now, she knew he’d tell her she couldn’t save him, she couldn’t even save herself.
Julia took a deep breath. She exhaled. “Ned Daly.”
“What?” For a second Leah’s gaze went over her shoulder. “Who’s that again? The semiconductor guy?”
“Yes. I’m certain he’s given information to the SPB. Or is working for them directly. The same with Dmitri Marin.”
“Okay,” Leah said. “Okay, okay.” She was trying to remain calm, but her excitement was obvious; she punched a button on the recorder and drew the legal pad toward her. From behind the reflective glass of the window and the halls beyond, Julia could sense noise, movement. She cleared her throat and sat even straighter.
“Dmitri Marin,” Julia repeated. “Ned Daly. There’s more. If we work this out, if you let me go, if you let me return to my daughter, I could get you them. All of them.”