Leo was already changed, ready for bed, when his phone rang.
“Your passenger was retrieved. At the airport.” The voice was familiar but unknown.
Leo hung up. His bedroom was empty, the walls creamy and blank. Besides the bed, the only furniture was a wooden table and chair, both of which he’d assembled the first weekend of his arrival.
“Okay,” he said to himself, as he was alone in the room. He felt an odd pang of regret, though the news was positive: Jefferson had been on the wish list for over a decade. Directorate Eight had learned his American identity years earlier, via a compromised translator out of Langley. The woman lacked access to case files however, and they’d been unable to determine his location. Until Julia.
On Leo’s table were the remnants of dinner: chicken soup with bread, and stuffed cabbage he’d driven forty minutes to a Hungarian bakery in Morgan Hill to buy.
“Okay,” he said again. “Very good.” His voice weak and faraway.
The first time Leo saw Natalia was in a house.
Not his and Vera’s, which was an apartment. But a mansion, a leeringly baroque residence off Zachatyevsky Lane. Leo had only been invited to the party because of Vera: they were married by then, and she promoted to a full anchor at RCM, leaving at five each morning for hair and makeup.
At the event Leo had stood on his own in a corner, amiably biding his wife’s socializing. There were at least a dozen others from RCM circulating in the rooms; though they were always polite, Leo had the impression that Vera’s colleagues thought little of him. After all, here were the real men, the opinion makers, some with yellow phones on their desks, direct lines to the Kremlin. How could a simple water bureau manager compare?
After his wine was nearly gone, Vera disentangled herself and floated back to his side. She breathed: “Look.”
“What?”
“There.” Making a quick movement with her chin toward a knot of people. “Natalia Vishneva. You know, the journalist? It’s crazy that she’s here. I wonder who brought her.”
The name was familiar, though Leo couldn’t place it. He glanced at the group, in which Natalia was the only woman. She looked to be in her forties, and was wearing the kind of shapeless garment Leo had come to associate with women who wished to be taken seriously and asked about their work.
“She’s an employee at RCM?” Given her appearance, he pegged her as a researcher.
Vera snorted. “No. Though that would be funny. Don’t you know her? She works for the New Press.” The pro-opposition media company, the last in Moscow still to publish a daily paper. And then, in a low voice: “The one suing the SPB.”
Ah, Leo thought, keeping his face steady. That Natalia. Her lawsuit against the SPB, sparingly covered by the international press, was either ingenious or idiotic, depending on your politics and practicality, though Natalia’s considerable legal expenses were paid not by her but rather by Alexander Mironov, a self-proclaimed “kingmaker” and energy oligarch now in exile from the president he professed to have throned. Alexander, bored and rich in his home in Knightsbridge, had at any given time at least a dozen projects in flight—Natalia being merely a small quiver in an arsenal of attempts to irritate, complicate, and otherwise infuriate the Kremlin. Natalia had been working as a Moscow correspondent for Agence France-Presse when her sister was killed in an apartment bombing in ’99. The attack, attributed to Chechen separatists, was now publicly asserted by Natalia to have been organized by the SPB.
As he finished the last of his wine, Leo observed Natalia. She was wearing all black: shoes, dress, stockings; the only color came from a pair of cut-glass earrings, which dangled in drops of pinks and reds. Surprisingly—for Leo had found that most public moralists exhibited a good deal of ethical flexibility in the face of material rewards—she appeared true to her persona. No surreptitious scans for the wealthy and important who might benefit her career; instead Natalia was animatedly engaged with a gray-suited academic type, and Leo overheard the phrase “disgusting thugs.” Likely speaking of the SPB, though Leo bore her no enmity. He could not imagine suing the bureau—to him it seemed akin to pelting ice cubes at the sun—and, as a junior officer, the activities of the Alexander Mironovs of the world did not touch him, but for the rare times the aftereffects seeped to his level in the form of paperwork.
Vera tapped his back. “Ready?”
“Yes.” He set down his glass. Relieved, as always, to depart from one of these events. Though as they neared the front he was compelled to turn for another look. Natalia was still standing in the same place, gesturing with both hands in the air—either not noticing or not caring that her companions were no longer paying attention.
Two years passed. Leo began to travel to Turkey, to make contact with a source within the ongoing if reduced Chechen insurgency, a minor criminal named Artur Dimayev. Artur, a Vedeno-born weapons trader currently based in Istanbul, loved foreign cars and prostitutes but lacked the funds to procure either in the quantities he desired; in exchange for the envelopes of cash Leo brought with him each visit, Artur shared updates on weapons orders and operational positions. Normally they met at a hotel, but in this instance Artur suggested they try a restaurant specializing in Chechen cuisine. When Leo arrived, Artur whispered to a server, and the girl led them to a private room to drink.
The restaurant was new, garish with neon lighting, qualities reflected in Artur’s own wardrobe. As Artur passed his latest intelligence, Leo entertained the suspicion that his asset was, if not outright playing him, at least taking advantage: their last few meetings his information had been negligible, names Leo already knew, general statements that could not be traced or confirmed. There was a tacit understanding that the bill was Leo’s responsibility, and by the end of the night, Artur was fully intoxicated.
As they exited the restaurant, Leo reluctantly supporting Artur under his shoulder, they passed the Chechen separatist field commander Halid Yusopov as he entered. Halid, possibly recognizing Artur, gave him a nod, his lips turning as he noted the stench of drink—and then, after a glance at Leo, he continued inside.
Faced with one of the SPB’s top targets, his hand still on the door, Leo briefly entertained lunatic acts of heroism. Trailing Halid were six bodyguards, one with a Borz submachine gun half visible under his jacket. In the midst of this group Leo also noticed a slighter figure, a scarf over her head.
It took Leo a second to place her. “Is that Natalia?” he asked, once they’d passed. “Natalia Vishneva,” he added in a low voice.
“What?” Artur said. “Who?” But it was clear he understood—for a moment his eyes lost their glassiness and a tremor moved through his face, as if he were experiencing a light aftershock.
Back in Moscow, Leo debated whether to report the sighting. That Natalia was in contact with Halid was a concern—besides the SPB’s natural interest in the commander, Halid also claimed to hold evidence of Russian war violations, mountains of civilian bodies. Leo knew his job was not to make judgments. But rather only to collect all available facts and package them for another person to decide.
But he was hesitant.
“If I saw someone of interest,” Leo said to Vera that evening, “do you think I should report it?”
Vera set down her spoon and looked at him. They were eating sorrel soup for dinner, her favorite—on his way home he’d stopped at the market and purchased fresh dill. Vera liked it when Leo cooked. She bragged about his willingness to her friends, though carefully, in a way he knew was meant not to emasculate him.
“Are they a bad influence?” Vera was always careful to keep to generalities, and Leo occasionally wondered if she believed their apartment was bugged.
“No.” Then, thinking better of it: “It is debatable.”
“Would Vlad be interested?” Meaning Vladimir Klebanov, the head of the SPB, who Vera had once interviewed on-camera.
“Yes.”
“Then report it.”
So Leo did. Wrote up the Natalia sighting, along with the rest of the trip. He assumed it was Halid who would be of most interest; the prevalent thinking was that the commander had gone underground, so the discovery that he was openly dining in Istanbul, Leo knew, would be enough to earn Artur another cash-filled envelope or two, despite his negligible contributions in the matter.
Two days after Leo filed the report, Ivan called him into his office. Did he recognize anyone else, Ivan asked, was Leo certain it was Natalia who’d been with Halid? Did he observe documents being passed? Did they seem to know each other well, appear comfortable?
And then, after: nothing. Nothing because it meant nothing, which he should have known. Leo chided himself for even hesitating, for being afraid—of what?
A week later, back in Moscow, Natalia left the apartment she shared with her husband, Joseph, and their son, Erik. Erik, who was eight, had stayed home from school that day, complaining of a headache. Their space heater was broken, and so Natalia left to purchase a replacement. Upon returning to the apartment, as she searched for her keys, the new heater in a bag on the ground by her feet, a man came around the corner and shot her in the head.
The shooting made the news that night. Leo saw the photos, the blanket pulled over the body—the TV was on RCM, as was custom in their household, though Vera wasn’t reporting but rather one of her colleagues, Ekaterina Golubeva. The police were investigating, Ekaterina said, though the range of potential suspects was wide. When you are reckless, there are risks, she added, and Leo stared at her mouth, the coral O’s it made as she spoke. Vera wore a similar color, he realized.
The next morning, Leo woke to a powerful inertia. He left a message stating he was sick on the answering service that was purportedly the water utility’s employee help line. He then slept until late afternoon, and repeated this routine the next day. The third morning, Leo upgraded his illness to pneumonia, after which Ivan called. “You don’t sound well,” he said, hearing Leo’s greeting.
Leo cleared his throat, in which there was a web of phlegm, as if he were actually sick. “I’m sure it is nothing.”
“Don’t play the tough man. Stay home and recover. We don’t always need you, I can manage some things on my own, you hear?” From the laughter in Ivan’s voice, Leo understood that Natalia’s shooting had indeed been ordered—and though such a hit would have been executed not via Directorate Eight but rather Directorate Four, the “Executive Action” group tasked with such wet work, Leo knew that his boss had claimed his share of recognition.
On the fourth morning, Leo drove to their dacha in Voronezh. Over their marriage he and Vera had amassed a handful of the accessories of good living: opera tickets, a wine collection, extended holidays twice a year, in which they’d evolved from Thai and Turkish package tours to places like Marseille and Bali. They had two cars—a Volvo and a BMW—and twice a week employed a Filipino housekeeper to cook and clean. All these things, these accomplishments, and still sometimes there would come crawling a little man up Leo’s spine, whispering that there was something terrible about his life.
This sensation rose full force in the dacha. Leo lay against the progressively grimier sheets, napping during the day and sleeping long stretches at night.
He was pathetic, he understood. He’d known from the beginning the bureau’s charter. Had applied to the academy, because like so many others he’d associated an SPB job with excitement—had envisioned himself skulking undercover and foiling plots to disrupt country and state, upon which he was wildly successful and pursued by a bevy of gorgeous women. And even when he outgrew such ideals, Leo still held in his head the idea of a man with a gun: a man taking charge, changing history and saving lives. And now here had come someone, presumably a man, a gun, one life—of a woman he’d seen only twice and never spoken to—and he had gone to pieces. A woman presumably friendly with Halid Yusopov, a violent terrorist who’d be first to claim the loss of human life as relative, and certainly when it came to war.
On his third day in Voronezh, Vera came to see him. From the bedroom Leo heard the engine of the Volvo and, like a child whose parents have returned unexpectedly early, hurriedly began to straighten. There was the sound of the front door opening, the tap running in the kitchen, followed by the efficient strides of his wife. Who, until this moment, he had not realized was more competent than he was. “You are sick,” she said, entering the bedroom.
“Yes.”
Vera looked healthy and had on full makeup, as if she’d come directly from work. Normally Leo’s routine upon entering the dacha was to air it out, opening doors and windows—but he’d not possessed the energy, and he belatedly realized that the room bore the damp, decayed odor of a neglected basement. Vera sniffed the air and then fanned herself. “With what?”
“A fever.”
She touched his forehead with the back of her hand. “You don’t feel sick.”
“I was.”
“Well, likely you are better now. It’s been nearly a week, hasn’t it?”
When he didn’t answer, she sighed and went to the kitchen, from which she returned with a cup of milk, as if he were a baby. He sipped and found it near scalding.
Vera circled the bed, stopping to wipe some dust from the dresser with a tissue. “Is it to do with Natalia?”
He felt a jolt at the name. “No.”
“I saw the news. I remember our conversation, over dinner. I’m the one who first pointed her out to you, right?”
“It isn’t to do with any of that.”
Vera gave him the tissue. “You’ve always been soft when it comes to women. Of course it’s appreciated, but you can’t let it become a serious weakness. Do you understand women are just like men, capable of terrible things? Natalia’s a good example. It isn’t as if she cared who she harmed when writing her articles—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said sharply.
Vera pursed her lips, a look she assumed only when extremely disappointed. Between them was a length of quiet, and he reached for her.
“Yours isn’t a job you can quit.”
Leo nodded and dropped his hand. “I know.”
Vera stroked his hair.
It wasn’t really Natalia who ruined their marriage. Her death was more a distraction, spilled wine on a piece of clothing, a jacket you’d loved when you first bought it but which hadn’t fit you quite right for years. In the early period of their relationship, Vera would occasionally return home and tell him about the politicians and oligarchs she’d interviewed. “We are so lucky,” she’d say. “To have proximity to such success, such people, so we can learn all their lessons.”
Later, Leo would sometimes find Vera waiting after such anecdotes, studying him with a quizzical expression. “Don’t you want to be like that?” she’d asked once.
“No.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t have a good answer. “I’m happy where I am.”
“But that’s the problem,” Vera said. “Because you’re not.”
Had Jefferson suffered, Leo wondered now. Had he felt any pain?
Leo had seen him once, early in his career. At a Spaso House function even a minor if well-connected water bureaucrat might conceivably attend. There Jefferson had orated, resplendent in a well-cut charcoal suit, to a crowd of admirers and sycophants. Leo had watched with passive interest while a redhead in a green dress, a translator with the foreign service, circled for his attention—he’d brought her home that evening, and had not thought of Jefferson again until the Florida operation. He knew that at a stage in his life when a man might dream of retirement, Jefferson had instead made an ideological stand and paid dearly. And though everyone knew that the things he said were logical, the only question they all asked was: Why? Why do this, why say that, why risk it all? Why not keep it in your head, as the rest of them did?
Ah, Leo thought, climbing into bed: I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed and yet I’m alive and I would not change the circumstances.
The next morning, he woke up hungover.
Leo had a vague recollection of drinking the night before. He’d gradually lessened these binges over the years; the last time he’d been drunk was Julia’s wedding. All the dazzling people, glad-handing, whatdoyoudo wheredoyoulive—by the end of the first hour he’d begun to feel increasingly anxious, and so spent most of the evening at the bar, instead of by the admittedly alluring though simultaneously frightening tech mogul’s widow he’d been seated next to.
Leo went to the kitchen and started breakfast, stirring oats and dropping a single sausage into the frying pan. While he waited for his food to cook, he returned to his desk and opened his laptop. He first searched for “Fort Lauderdale,” and, finding nothing, tried “Miami Airport,” which brought up the articles. No identity. A local resident was all the pieces said. Possibly a health issue. A few remarks from onlookers, one who insisted that Jefferson had shown signs of Ebola, which was why there’d been so many police. And then another statement, from a woman they said had spoken to him, had even touched him right before he died, who’d been checked by the authorities and released:
“He was a lovely-seeming person,” she said. “But one thing stuck with me. He kept saying, I’m nobody. I’m nobody special.”
I’m nobody. I’m nobody special. The words wobbled in Leo’s head.
He had to leave. He needed to get away from his apartment. The atmosphere inside was suddenly so heavy and airless—he had to go somewhere, and as he stared at his room, the plain white walls, the dark marks on the floor from renters past, Leo decided on IKEA.
Inside, he wound through the aisles. He selected objects at random: a wall clock, okay; an oversize teak bowl, why not? There was still a part of him that found a well-stocked store thrilling, since for years the shelves at home had held nearly nothing, and he’d been taught to purchase any object of quality regardless of utility. Which was how in his twenties he’d found himself with a box of canned tomatoes, six bottles of soy sauce, a package of maxi pads, and two packs of shoelaces in his pantry. The shoelaces came to use months later, when the department store received a shipment of sneakers from Korea—there’d been a long line for those, stretching blocks.
Leo pushed his cart to the register. Here were the extras, the brilliantly colored candies, all the cleverly priced trinkets designed to separate you from your money. To his right was a baby hat with embroidered giraffes, which reminded Leo of his gift to Julia. The slippers had been an impulse purchase: returning from the bathrooms at Nordstrom, he’d made a wrong turn and ended up in the children’s section. The shoes were five times what he’d pay in Moscow, but that was the deal with America, where some things were less and others much more. He’d intended to bring them on his next visit, only for Julia to go dark that Friday and refuse his calls.
He’d known what she was doing, of course. At some point most assets attempted it: the proverbial “drawing of the line.” Leo had pondered the issue overnight and then the next morning taken the package from his closet and driven to Julia’s. He’d been to her home enough to know when the mail was delivered; had waved to the courier, named Oscar, several times, whom that afternoon Leo politely asked to include an additional package in the day’s deliveries. At home, Leo contemplated whether to report Oscar as a security hole and decided against it; the man was only doing his job, after all.
“Would you like help out to the car?” the cashier asked. Her face was bare and her chin marked with acne. Her unpainted hands took his credit card, and now part of Leo fell in love, because of her competence. Sometimes he thought the worst thing about his job was how it made you disappointed in people: it was so hard to respect life when you saw how poorly most of it operated. The revered statesman-like star (Tim Gersh, winner of two Oscars, most recently for his portrayal of Lyndon Johnson in The Baffler) and his frantic cover-up of the teenage actress drowned in his pool; the elder politician campaigning against the deep state, the abortionists, the gays—all while messaging for his favorite young men to come spit in his mouth at night (Ted Bunk, Senate Majority Whip, Kentucky). All the terrible things people were capable of, to the point where a young woman simply doing her job, moving things back and forth, could appear the most noble thing in the world . . .
“No thank you,” Leo said.
At his apartment complex, he found a line of cars waiting to turn. The Wisteria had seventy units, and shared an aboveground parking lot with a commercial development. Leo’s assigned parking space was in a convenient location, near the front lobby, and turning in to his spot, he abruptly braked upon seeing an orange Porsche already in it. That there were two empty guest spaces within sight—usually occupied—only compounded the insult.
Leo had just begun to veer away when the door of the Porsche opened. He stopped and rolled down his window. “Hey!” he said. He expected to see an older man, the well-fed sort who dressed poorly on holiday, or else someone young, the greased son of some real estate developer. In another second, it was revealed to be the former. “I believe you are in my spot,” Leo called. “You may not know, but there is guest parking.”
“Yeah,” the man said, and turned and disappeared through the front doors of the lobby.
Rage swept over him. Leo shoved his hands against his lap to fight against the impulse now coursing through, of following Porsche Jerk and punching him out. Clearly a man like this had never actually been threatened with physical violence in his life, and instinctually Leo knew such an act would change him. Never again would he move with the same blithe confidence; he would think of his humiliation, and the world would never again seem so secure . . .
The air inside his car was hot, and Leo realized he wasn’t breathing.
Stop. He exhaled.
A delivery truck honked, and automatically Leo drove forward and parked in a guest space. Leaving his car, he found his anger undiminished. Why couldn’t Porsche Jerk have parked here? Why couldn’t he have more consideration for the others sharing this world? The air was cool and his apartment stuffiest in the late afternoon, so he decided to linger outside; there was a bench facing the shared green, and he sat and faced the scenery.
In between two of the office buildings was a small patch of grass with an adjoining playground, currently filled with children. There was a skinny boy with brown hair running too close to the swings, who looked soon to have his head kicked in. At the last moment, the boy veered away with a loud scream. Leo’s neighbor Mrs. Jeffries darted a nasty look at the noise, and instantly Leo was on the boy’s side. Mrs. Jeffries was a retiree who hated Hillary Clinton; she had once cornered him for his thoughts on the 2016 election, and, not satisfied with his response, now studied him in the halls as if he were a banana accumulating brown spots. On the other side of the playground, supervising her brood, was his downstairs neighbor Jenny Sugimoto, who from Leo’s observations was a depressed albeit highly productive housewife. The children’s hysteria reached a pitch and again fear fell through him—was this self-pity? Or perhaps there was something wrong with his brain.
STOP.
But his heart only beat harder.
Another woman was walking back and forth, who Leo belatedly recognized as the mother of the boy who’d run by the swings. Her hair was piled atop her head, and she wore a shawl that looked as if it had been painted by someone on drugs. “Patrick,” she called. “Let’s go.” Leo had never seen her husband. Was he around? A workaholic? Divorced? Dead?
Really, it was so easy to die. Not only in his job, but in any. Or just walking down the street. The human body, so soft and vulnerable to the weather, falling objects, a gun, anything.
I’m nobody.
Leo hit the air as if this phrase—which had popped into his head with sudden force—were an insect, one to be swatted. Too late, he saw that the woman had noticed his movement, and after a hesitation, she began to walk in his direction. Their eyes met and he dropped his head.
He didn’t belong here, Leo knew. He had not chosen to come. How had he ended up here, his life tethered to Julia, a woman for whom he’d done everything yet who begrudged him every little bit she had to give in return? He wanted to rise, but as soon as he bent forward he found he wanted nothing more than to be back on the bench, and there was a pain in his chest, and was he having a heart attack?
The woman was almost next to him. “Hey,” she said, but Leo was already staggering. The sky took on a strange hue and the world grew dim and then black.