Amanda Clarkson, the economic attaché, was in St. Petersburg to attend a conference on multilateral trade. During her time at the State Department, Ms. Clarkson had coauthored several white papers on agricultural tariffs. It was the top result when you googled her name.
Amanda Clarkson would surely have found the conference fascinating. Amanda Cole was bored out of her mind. But she went through the motions—nodding along to the keynote talk, raising her hand to ask a question, conference badge on a lanyard around her neck—for the benefit of the FSB agents stationed throughout the Four Seasons. Though the FSB was entirely separate from the GRU, where Semonov worked (as she’d learned in her training, the GRU dated back to the Russian Revolution, whereas the FSB had emerged from the post-Soviet wreckage of the KGB), that didn’t make the agents any less dangerous.
The hotel was a grand old palace that had once housed the Ministry of War. Her room had a view of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. That first night, as she settled into the deep soaking tub, her limbs buoyant in the warm water, she remembered her first trip to Russia, back in 2004. Funny to think how her relationship with this country, this backbone of her career, this pillar of her identity, had begun with such a lark.
It was easy, as a solo twentysomething traveling the world, to make friends. Those years were one long experience of letting herself get caught up in the slipstream of other people’s plans. When she befriended a group of sunburned Australian backpackers in a dollar-a-night hostel in Berlin, and they said they were headed to Finland to see the northern lights, she thought: Why not? And when they decided to continue onward to Russia: What else did she have to do? She still had some of the money from her stint teaching yoga in Morocco, enough to keep her going for at least a few months.
Closing her eyes in the bathtub, the memories of that trip felt as immediate as the warm water on her skin. From the very first moment, Russia had been different. When the plane had landed in St. Petersburg, the border officers pulled her aside and grilled her for hours, certain that this American woman was lying to them about the true nature of her travels. Later, after they released her, she reunited with the Aussies at a divey spot on Nevsky Prospekt. Together they laughed at her misadventure, and there was reassurance in that laughter, in the pierogis with dill and sour cream, in the cold glasses of vodka. And yet she woke up the next morning with a residue of caution. An awakened sense of alertness. A week later, her antipodean friends decided to heed their homing instinct and head south for the winter. But she decided to stay on, to see more of what this place had to offer. Why not?
The overnight train to Moscow, third class. The flyer in the coffee shop, ENGLISH TUTOR NEEDED. The money was enough to pay for the room she rented from the Belarussian widow. In the apartment next door to the widow lived a young man named Jakob. He, like the border officers, was puzzled by Amanda’s decision. Frowning, he said: “You are brave to travel alone. Brave and stupid.” But she stayed, and she stayed. There were October snowfalls. Poetry readings in clandestine bars. Jakob and his friends adopted her, lent her warmer clothing for the winter, called her their stray American puppy. On New Year’s Eve there was a party, fireworks over the Moskva, Jakob kissing his boyfriend Ilia at midnight, a rare semi-public display of their verboten affection. She remembered looking around that party, the sleeves of the borrowed wool sweater dangling long over her hands, and feeling so peaceful. This place, strangely, was beginning to feel like a home. She wondered if she might find herself ringing in the next year, and the next, and the next, here in Moscow.
She shook her head. The splashing sounds echoed against the bathroom tile. She concentrated on the warmth of the water, the floral scent of the soap. It always happened like this. Crossing the border into Russia was a trip wire, reactivating the most potent parts of her memory. She had to actively remind herself that nineteen years had passed since then. Now wasn’t the time to lose herself in the past. Things in the present demanded her focus.
The next morning, when she came downstairs for breakfast, Ambassador Romanoff was already waiting for her, seated at a table in the back corner of the glass-ceilinged Tea Lounge. “Am I late?” Amanda asked, glancing at her watch.
“Alas, no. I got a wake-up call at four thirty a.m., though I’m certain I asked for the call at six thirty. I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I gave up.” Romanoff gestured at the silver French press. “Already on my second pot.”
“It’s smart. You have to admit. Earlier wake-up calls mean they sell more coffee.”
“You always did have an active imagination,” he said, smiling. “So. Ms. Clarkson. How are you finding the conference?”
“Interesting, so far. I’m especially looking forward to today’s agenda.”
“Ah, yes. I’m sure you are.”
When the waitress came to take their order, she was predictably hostile. Abe Romanoff, the American ambassador to Russia, possessed several qualities that served him well in this job. He was fluent in the language; he had a lifetime of diplomatic experience; he had a long record of integrity. But most useful was his high tolerance for pain. Men followed the ambassador everywhere he went. The harassment ranged from scary to absurd. They broke into his house, slashed the tires on his car, planted slanderous stories in the media, requested unwanted wake-up calls, ordered waitresses to treat him badly. But this, Romanoff knew, was simply the price of doing business.
They gossiped their way through breakfast. Romanoff had been at the State Department for almost forty years, and he knew where the skeletons were buried. He had the diplomat’s gift for remembering those intricate webs of human connection, the rivalries and affections and relationships. As the waitress cleared their plates, he said: “I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s your father doing?”
“He’s still driving,” Amanda said. She had made her father’s fictional counterpart into a long-haul trucker, because, well, because she had to pick something. (“A trucker, huh?” he’d said, when he got wind of her legend. Strangely, he seemed delighted. “I might actually like that. As long as I could bring Lucy.”)
“Must take a lot of stamina,” Romanoff said. “Is he ever going to retire?”
“The end of this year, apparently.” She paused. “I think he’s dreading it.”
“He’s worried he won’t know what to do with himself.”
“Something like that.”
“Well.” Romanoff reached across the table, patted her hand. “He’ll figure it out.”
The gesture looked genuine. With his bushy beard and kind eyes, Romanoff was just the type to offer such avuncular reassurance. And he meant it, probably, but even as he did, a slip of paper passed from his fingers to hers. When he stood up, Amanda moved her hands into her lap.
“Thank you for breakfast,” she said. “It’s always nice to catch up.”
“Good luck today,” he said pleasantly.
Partway through the panel, Amanda stood up and squeezed past her neighbors. “Bathroom,” she whispered apologetically. “Sorry. Pardon me.”
A woman was at the sink, washing her hands. Amanda went into a stall and waited for her to finish. After she heard the door open and close, she stepped out. Just as the note had indicated, the backpack was waiting behind the potted palm in the corner. Several minutes later, Amanda emerged from the bathroom wearing glasses, curly brown hair, jeans, sneakers, and a windbreaker, bearing no resemblance to the suit-wearing diplomat who’d entered.
The backpack also held a glossy brochure and a ticket for the 10 a.m. hydrofoil to Peterhof. She had thirty-two minutes to make the short walk from the hotel to the ferry embankment on the Neva River. She took the side exit from the hotel, toward the golden dome of St. Isaac’s. She turned left and then left again. Her leisure was purposeful: stopping at a coffee shop to order a pastry, circling the block, meandering through the park that faced the hotel, snapping pictures of the sculpture of Nikolai Gogol. She arrived at the embankment a few minutes before the hydrofoil left, certain that she hadn’t been followed.
Though it was a gray and gloomy day, the boat was nearly full. The last passenger to board was a man in a brown leather jacket. The engine roared at a deafening pitch as the boat accelerated into the open water of the Baltic Sea. The cabin was damp and chilly. From her seat in the back, Amanda pretended to examine her brochure for Peterhof, the lavishly restored summer estate of the tsars, but her gaze kept flicking up, toward the man in the leather jacket. If she arrived at Peterhof and suspected she’d been followed, she would take the red scarf from her backpack and wrap it around her neck. That would be her signal to Semonov that she had been spotted, and the meeting was off.
She stared at the man. This was nothing like their meetings in Rome. Here in Russia, if things went wrong, they would go seriously wrong. When was the last time she had actually felt the trailing breath of danger? Life in Rome was too safe. Danger kept you sharp. It occurred to her, belatedly, that this might be yet another reason she wanted to take this trip, her desire to skirt that edge. Maybe her ego was clouding her judgment. (In her head, she could hear Kath laughing. No shit, Sherlock.)
After about forty-five minutes, the roar of the engine subsided. In the quiet, the waves sloshed against the hull. The passengers shuffled down the gangplank, onto the pier, in single file. Amanda, sitting in the back, was the last to disembark. It had started raining. The wind, stronger here than in the city, blew the rain sideways. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker and walked slowly down the pier. The man in the brown leather jacket was moving toward the entrance to the park, without so much as a backward glance. By the time she made her way through the ticket queue, he was far ahead, disappearing into the crowds.
She exhaled. Thirty minutes until she was due at the Pyramid Fountain. Now it was up to Semonov. If all was well, he would walk past the fountain bareheaded. But if he had detected surveillance, he would be wearing an orange knit hat. And then Semonov would return to Moscow, and Amanda would return to Rome, and that would be that, all their careful preparations for naught.
She arrived at the Pyramid Fountain a few minutes early, scanning back and forth. It wouldn’t be difficult to spot him amid the crowds of tourists. Semonov was tall, and he would be alone, and God willing, he would be bareheaded despite the foul weather.
Right on time, he appeared. No hat. Another exhale. Amanda waited for him to notice her. He glanced around, clutching a rain-soaked brochure, visibly nervous. Finally he spotted her, across the fountain. She held his gaze for two seconds, three seconds, four seconds. Longer than was necessary, strictly speaking, but she wanted to communicate that it was okay. They were safe. Everything would be all right. He needed that reassurance, and honestly, so did she.
Amanda walked east, away from the central axis of the palace. As she traveled deeper into the sprawling grounds, the crowds of tourists thinned. Jakob, her friend from Moscow, had once told her the story. The estate was the lavish result of Peter the Great’s jealousy. The tsar had visited Versailles in the early 1700s, and when he returned from his French sojourn, he scrapped the existing plans for his summer retreat outside St. Petersburg. He would build something even bigger, even better than Versailles. Peterhof was a good metaphor for the country writ large. Just like Russia herself, it was warped by its size. The park was far too big to see in a single visit, so the tourists stuck to the heart of it, to the palace and the fountains and the formal gardens. The rest of the park—which was to say most of it—was virtually empty.
But Amanda always thought the edges were the most beautiful part. The dirt roads, the old trees, the out-of-time solitude. When she reached the easternmost edge, she stopped in front of a glass booth. The guard inside was snoozing in his chair. A wall separated Peterhof from the adjacent Alexandria Park, and a separate ticket was required to enter. She rapped on the glass and handed over three hundred rubles. In this gloomy weather, she and Semonov might be the only visitors the guard saw all day. She didn’t love this—she would have preferred the concealment that came with a crowd—but they were making do with what they had.
Alexandria Park was opposite in spirit to the manicured gardens and golden fountains. Tsar Nicholas I created it a century after Peter the Great’s death, wanting his own summer retreat, an untamed rural idyll to escape the public eye. The Romanovs had built a private chapel on the land. The Communists had let the chapel decay, but it had been restored in the last few decades, and was now gleaming white, a bright jewel nestled in the dark forest.
The chapel was enclosed by a fence. Amanda stood outside the locked gate. Another security guard appeared from around the corner. “The chapel is closed today,” he said.
“That’s too bad,” Amanda said. “My mother told me not to miss it.”
“The organ is undergoing repairs,” he replied.
“Hopefully it will be fixed in time for her birthday,” she said.
The guard looked at her warily. Then he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the gate. As she followed him into the chapel, she muttered: “Thank you.”
The guard was the brother of a bellhop at the Metropol in Moscow. When they were scrambling for a secure location for their meeting in St. Petersburg, Amanda remembered the bellhop’s brother, and decided to call in the favor. With his sullen expression, he clearly didn’t like what he was being asked to do. Though the guard didn’t know their names, or the reason for the meeting, his involvement still came with a risk—but, she reminded herself, everything came with a risk.
Semonov was waiting by the altar. Amanda touched his arm. “Everything okay?”
“I think so,” he said.
The guard could only guarantee them thirty minutes of privacy. They had to get right to it. “Those two men from Unit 29155,” she began. “Do you see them often?”
“Not often,” Semonov said. “But from time to time, yes.”
“They work in a different building? They don’t mix with the rest of the GRU?”
He nodded. “I’m not even meant to know who they are. But they seem to like me. Or, I should say, they are amused by me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They like to tease me, to pass the time. They get bored, they come see me.”
“And what kinds of things do they talk to you about?”
“Ah. Well.” He looked away, cheeks reddening. “That’s the thing.”
“Something happened,” she said. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
He shook his head at the floor. “Just teasing. That’s all.”
“Kostya,” she said. “It’s best if you tell me exactly what happened.”
It happened back in the summer, not long after he returned from Rome, and the goons from Unit 29155 returned from Cairo. The two men appeared in his doorway. “Semonov,” Tweedledee said. “I have a question for you. Where did I get this sunburn?”
Semonov frowned. Was it a trick question? “You were in Egypt.”
“Wrong. You don’t know where I was. You have no idea. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Semonov blinked once, twice. Then he understood what Tweedledee was saying. Belatedly, the men had recognized how stupid it was to brag about killing Vogel. If their superiors found out, they would be furious, or worse. But Semonov was also, unfortunately, a stickler for detail, and there was a flaw in the reasoning. “Yeeees,” he said slowly. “But you see, I have the memo right here. Look. Papers needed for two men arriving in Cairo on July twenty-first. I don’t know why you were in Cairo.” He arched a meaningful eyebrow. “But it would be illogical for me to say I didn’t know you were even going to Cairo.”
Tweedledee stepped forward and planted his fists on Semonov’s desk. “You are a very stupid man,” he said. He noticed the framed photograph on the shelf. “This is your wife, yes? Why did this woman marry such a stupid man?”
Tweedledum sneered, “She must be a stupid woman.”
His wife! It was one thing to insult him, quite another to insult Chiara. His heart thumping, he spun around, snatched the picture from the shelf, covered it with his hand. “Please leave my office,” he said tightly.
“Ha!” Tweedledee barked. “You wouldn’t want her to see you like this, would you? Cowering like a dog? Then get this into your thick head. You don’t know who we are. You don’t even know that we exist. Understand us now, you idiot? Or do we need to pay you and your wife a visit in that pathetic apartment in Tagansky that you call home?”
Even months later, in the cool quiet of the chapel, Semonov blushed in the retelling. The memory of humiliation was just as bad as the humiliation itself. “After that, I thought I would never see them again,” he said. “But every so often, they appear in my office.”
“As a threat?” Amanda asked. “They want to make sure you’re being obedient?”
Semonov shook his head. “I doubt they consider me capable of disobedience. To them I am like an animal, easily trained. Whip a dog once, he learns his lesson. No, no. It’s as I said before. They get bored, they like the distraction. And also, I should say, these men are very insecure.”
She cocked her head.
“You can see it in the way they talk,” he explained. “How they act, how they behave. They kill for a living, but they are insecure. They like to spend time with sad little Semonov to make themselves feel more powerful.”
“Huh,” she said, the gears starting to turn.
“But as harmless as sad little Semonov might be, they do realize how foolish they were. Sometimes they brag, but never about specifics. I’m certain they’ll never mention anything like Vogel again. I don’t expect for—what is the phrase? For lightning to strike twice.”
True enough, she thought. Unless you attached a tall metal rod to the roof of your house.
The wind was picking up, spattering rain against the windows. The guard outside would be checking his watch. Amanda drew a deep breath. This was reckless, she knew. But they needed results. “Kostya,” she said. “We found out why they killed Senator Vogel. Would you like to know the reason?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Would I like…?”
“After the risks you’ve taken for us,” she barreled forward, “I think you deserve the truth. Senator Vogel was in the middle of uncovering a corrupt scheme being carried out by the Russian government. That’s why the GRU killed him. Because he was going to expose this awful, illegal, dangerous corruption. And we also found out how Vogel discovered the scheme. He was working with a man named Ivan Komarovsky. Do you know who Ivan Komarovsky is?”
“The businessman?” he said. “The one who owns the football team?”
“That’s right. Komarovsky was ordered by Gruzdev to carry out this scheme. At first he went along with it. You understand what it’s like. You are told to do something, and you must do it. But eventually Komarovsky became so disgusted, so appalled, that he decided to speak out. His conscience couldn’t stand it. So he was working with Vogel to expose the truth.”
His eyes widened.
“Now, as for the scheme itself. I want to tell you about it, but it’s risky. You only need to look at Senator Vogel to see that. The less you know, the better off you’ll be. Unless—”
“No!” Semonov interrupted. “No! You don’t need to tell me.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s fine! I believe you!”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
He shook his head vehemently. “I won’t.”
“Good. Okay. So, Kostya. Here’s what I need from you. We need to talk to Komarovsky. But before we do, we need to know what they said to him in Iceland.”
Semonov gave her a blank look.
“You remember Iceland. Back in August, you were asked to make those papers? Those two men from Unit 29155 were there to see Komarovsky. To deliver a message.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And we need to know what that message was.”
“But I can’t…” Semonov started sliding the zipper on his jacket up and down, trying to calm the trembling in his hand. “But they’ll know. They’ll know!”
“Of course they won’t,” she said soothingly. “Kostya, listen to me. These men are idiots. You’re a thousand times smarter than them. You’ll make it seem like the most natural thing in the world. They’ll have no idea what you’re doing. They might act like thugs, but listen to me. They’re not in charge. You’re in charge.”
The zipper slid up and down, up and down.
“I promise you,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
She made it back to the hotel in time for the last event of the day. After stopping in the bathroom to change back into her suit, she found a seat in the back, just as the speaker began expounding on the fascinating subject of (she checked the program) “International Cooperation on Intellectual Property Law.” She spent the rest of the evening in a daze of relief. Had Semonov resisted, she would have had to resort to coercion, which was much more unpleasant. But Semonov, in the end, had acceded to her request with a stoic nod. Thank God, she thought. He’s one of the good ones.
The next morning, as she was checking out, Amanda asked if she could leave her bags at the hotel for a few hours. Her flight back to Rome wasn’t until the afternoon. Outside she began walking toward the Winter Palace, merging with a stream of tourists. That morning was clear but cold for October, the brilliant blue sky highlighting the fading reds and oranges of autumn. She jammed her hands in her pockets, having failed to pack gloves.
The Palace Square was packed with visitors, mostly Chinese tour groups. Not many Americans chose to travel to Russia these days. They pictured the country as a dark, forbidding, unhospitable place. But here in St. Petersburg, on this bright blue morning, the picture looked different. The Winter Palace gleamed in the sunshine. The ticket queue stretched across the plaza. Plenty of well-to-do travelers were happy to spend their money in Russia, to buy museum tickets and restaurant meals and hotel rooms; they just weren’t American. Tourism was a big business, a lifeblood. How strange to realize that America was utterly irrelevant to this lifeblood.
Inside the Winter Palace, she climbed the staircase and wove through the crowds, eventually reaching the Rembrandt Room on the second floor. Ambassador Romanoff waited in front of a gilt-framed painting, hands clasped behind his back. Amanda stopped beside him. “So what’s the big deal with this Rembrandt guy?” she murmured.
He turned to her, eyes twinkling. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I’m not even being sarcastic. I don’t know anything about art.”
“This one is called Sacrifice of Isaac. Do you know the story?”
She shook her head.
“So,” he said. “Abraham had a son named Isaac, whom he loved very much. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham brought Isaac to the top of a mountain. He had the knife in his hand, he was about to plunge it into Isaac, and then—as you can see—an angel appeared to stop Abraham. He had passed the test, the angel declared. His son could live. Abraham didn’t have to actually do the unthinkable. He only had to show God that he was willing to do it.”
“Wow.” Amanda tilted her head. “Still, if I were Isaac, I’d be pissed.”
“That’s one interpretation of the story,” Romanoff said. “But there’s another. I actually like the other one better. This one says that, actually, the test was the other way around. Abraham was testing God. Even as he raised the knife, even as he was about to plunge it into Isaac’s heart, he knew that God would put a stop to it, because the God he believed in was good and moral. The God he believed in would never permit such suffering. And when the angel intervened, Abraham’s belief was proven true. Powerful, isn’t it? That extreme, extreme form of trust.”
Amanda felt her face flush. When she’d first glanced at the painting, it seemed… well, frankly, it seemed like every painting in the room. Which was to say, not her cup of tea. But Romanoff’s story had caused her to see something in the dynamic between Isaac and Abraham, between Abraham and God. She felt uncomfortable for reasons she didn’t understand. Or, rather, for reasons she preferred not to understand.
Romanoff touched her arm. “Over here,” he said. “This one is very popular.”
The Return of the Prodigal Son hung on a nearby wall. Several tour groups jockeyed for space in front of the painting. As Amanda and Romanoff edged closer, they were bumped and jostled by the crowd. Amid this chaos, Romanoff’s minders wouldn’t be able to hear what they were saying. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I know it wasn’t easy to pull everything together on such short notice. I owe you one.”
Romanoff dipped his head. He had been told the agency needed to arrange a crash meeting with a high-value source. That was it. The rest was strictly need-to-know. Plenty of other ambassadors would have resented this, believing that intelligence ought to be the tool of diplomacy, not the other way around. But Romanoff seemed content with the separation. Side by side, he and Amanda gazed at the painting. Sometimes she envied people like him. His way of living was cleaner. Kinder.
“So,” he said. “You’re heading back today?”
“I wish I could stay longer. I’ve missed this place.”
“I’m sure you have.” After a beat, he added: “You know, I always find it funny, Amanda. Where the line gets drawn.”
“What line?”
“Well, if your vice is booze, or sex, or gambling, then that’s it. The agency will never let you past the first interview. But they still hire junkies. It’s just junkies who are addicted to other things. The action. The adrenaline. The never-ending drama.”
She bristled. “You can’t actually compare those things.”
“I’ve seen just as many people ruined by that kind of addiction as by the others.”
“It’s not some lark.” She was suddenly remembering how annoying Romanoff could be. “I had a good reason for coming to Russia.”
He squinted at the painting, leaned a little closer. “I worry about history repeating itself,” he said. “Do you know why the Cold War lasted as long as it did?”
“Because they wanted to kill us and we wanted to kill them.”
He smiled, bemused by her tone. He was, at least, aware of how annoying he could be. “That was part of it, of course. But, also, it’s because certain people were enjoying themselves too much to stop. Not most people. Most people aren’t that cruel. But a few powerful people, on their side and on ours: They loved the game. They loved having an enemy, having a crusade. My God, you look back on those years and they seem almost baroque. Double agents. Triple agents. Mole hunts. Conspiracies inside conspiracies.” He turned to her, no longer smiling. “You’re a smart person, Amanda. I know you had a good reason for coming. I’m saying you ought not to get confused about what that reason is.”
Amanda flew back to Rome with his words circling in her head. No, she thought. Romanoff didn’t get it. Conspiracies inside conspiracies: that wasn’t her. He thought she liked this kind of thing? He thought she was choosing this kind of thing?
In the last few weeks, she’d started to realize she needed to tell Kath the truth about the situation. And this, finally, this intense desire to prove the know-it-all ambassador wrong, gave her the push she needed. The next day, back in the station, Amanda told Kath about the meeting with Semonov, and then she said: “And I have to tell you something else. It’s kind of… it’s hard to explain.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It can’t possibly be worse than trying to untangle these stop-loss orders.” Kath smiled, then noticed Amanda’s stricken look. “What? Amanda. I’m joking!”
“You’re going to think I’m a terrible person.”
“No such thing as a terrible person. Only terrible actions.”
“It’s just… I don’t know how to…”
“It’s okay,” Kath said. “Just start at the beginning.”
So Amanda’s mouth began forming the words, the story of her father meeting Jenny Navarro, of her father burning that piece of paper, of her father asking her to lie for him. It felt surreal, and slightly idiotic, this crossing of a bridge she couldn’t uncross. But every time she thought about scurrying back to the solitary safety of the secret, she thought of Romanoff, that arrogant jerk. So she kept talking. Kath remained remarkably calm, which made it easier. Finally she said: “But he showed you the paper.”
“He said he wanted it to be my decision, not his.”
“Well, that’s just about the most cowardly thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Cowardly?”
“Your decision. Sure. Okay.”
“I don’t know.” Amanda felt defensive. “Maybe he was trying to be honest.”
“Although I guess, in a way, it makes everything much simpler. Look at it this way. If Charlie really wanted to keep this a secret, whatever this is, he wouldn’t have told you about it. Simple as that. He gave you that breadcrumb because he wants you to find out. So you’re really just doing what he wants. Right?”
“I don’t think it was like that.”
“What year did you say he left the DO? The early nineties? I wonder if—”
“Kath. Please stop.”
“A strange time, of course. So many loose ends. The thing is—”
“Please!” Amanda shouted. “Stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“Stop doing your voodoo Sherlock Holmes thing! This is my problem. Okay? And don’t pretend like this is going to be some easy decision to make. The idea that he actually wants me to find out? Jesus! Isn’t that a convenient way to look at it.”
“I’m not saying that the desire was entirely conscious.”
“Just shut up! Just stop!”
Amanda dropped her head into her hands, pressed her palms into her eyes. After a minute, when the adrenaline passed, she realized she was acting like an asshole. Kath was just being Kath; she was only trying to help. Come to think of it, Kath was the one who ought to be upset. Hadn’t Amanda just done to Kath what Charlie himself had done to her? Burdening her with this awful secret? Hey, so I’ve been lying to you this whole time! And now you’re stuck with it, too! Fun, right?
But Kath touched her on the arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It can be hard for me to switch off agency mode. I’m aware of this.”
“I made a huge mistake,” Amanda mumbled.
“In what way?”
“I should have told Gasko.”
“Absolutely not. You did the right thing.”
Amanda lifted her head, surprised at this. “It’s a conflict of interest.”
“It’s a motivation. You just need to harness it.” Kath shook her head. “I’m glad you told me. I was beginning to wonder.”
“You could tell I was lying?”
“Going to Russia. Pestering me for updates every five seconds. You’ve been like a woman possessed! Has anyone ever told you, Amanda, that you’re an exceptionally annoying boss? Well, clearly there was a reason for this madness. I couldn’t see it, but now I can. You need to get in the room with Komarovsky. He’s the one who gave Vogel your father’s name. He’s the one who can connect those dots. So you’ll stop at nothing to get there.”
Despite herself, Amanda smiled. “You thought I was crazy.”
“Sweetheart. You are crazy.”