An hour later, Komarovsky sat across the table, hand trembling as he reached for the coffee mug, into which Amanda had just poured two inches of whiskey.
“Calm down,” Kath said. “You’re getting carried away.”
He gulped the liquor and held out the mug. Amanda obliged with another two inches. “He knows,” he said hoarsely. “He definitely knows.”
“This is based on what?”
“He was angry. Very, very angry.”
“Because David Hopkins is threatening to fuck things up and Gruzdev won’t be happy about that. Of course he’s angry.”
“Kath,” Amanda cautioned.
“What? I’m not going to baby him, Amanda. He’s a grown man. So it didn’t go like we planned. There’s no need to go crazy like this. Honestly, Ivan. You’re fine.”
There had been a moment, right after Komarovsky emerged from the gallery. When he caught sight of Amanda, sitting at the café across the street, the little color that remained in his face suddenly drained away, and she thought: He’s going to bolt. He’ll take his chances with the GRU and FSB rather than keep working with us. Quickly, she’d stood up, crossed the street, brushed past him, and slipped a scrap of paper into his hand. He’d obeyed the instructions for now, but he could change his mind at any moment. So Amanda spoke softly, patting his hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Take your time.”
He gave her a weak look of gratitude. Kath rolled her eyes.
A minute later, she inquired gently: “Can you tell us what happened in there?”
“He didn’t believe it. He insisted Hopkins was bluffing. ‘He won’t pull out. Of course he won’t pull out.’ He thought I was an idiot for thinking that he might.”
“So what does he want you to do?”
“He wants me to get Hopkins to shut up and do his job. He doesn’t care how it happens. These Polish missiles, Vitsin made clear, they are very important to Moscow. So if I don’t fix this, Moscow will be very disappointed.”
Komarovsky grimaced and stared down at the table. The three of them were silent for a moment. Then he looked up. “But wait. Why are you asking? You know this already.”
“Well,” Amanda said. “Actually. About that.”
When she told him about the jammed signal, Komarovsky jumped to his feet and yelped. “It’s okay!” Amanda said. “I promise you, Ivan. It’s okay. I understand how scary this sounds. And I’m not going to stop you from leaving. You’re not our prisoner. But you should let Kath explain. I think you’ll find it reassuring.”
Kath nodded. “Vitsin is a professional. This isn’t any cause for alarm.”
Komarovsky was breathing hard, overtaken by animal panic. “If you’ll just sit down,” Amanda said, steering him back to the table. “There. There. There you go.”
Kath explained. The explanation was good. Even Amanda, despite knowing it was just guesswork, found herself convinced. Kath didn’t try to soothe his panic like Amanda did. Instead she cut through it, summoned his more rational self. A reserve of trust had accumulated between them over the past three months; now was the time to cash that in. Gradually, she managed to calm him down.
“But none of this solves my problem,” Komarovsky said. “Which is that, if I don’t get Hopkins in line, it’s my head on a platter. So what do we do?”
The truth was that Amanda didn’t know. She didn’t yet have a plan. Komarovsky gazed at her like a frightened dog, as if she were his owner considering euthanasia, as if she held his life in her hands. Which I kind of do, she realized. It might be that they had reached the end of this operation. That pushing it any further was too risky. “Miss Clarkson,” he pressed. “Please. You must have an idea. We’ve come this far. I want to see it through. I owe it to Bob.”
She squinted at him. I owe it to Bob? Those words left her slightly unsettled. Suddenly there was a question she wanted to answer. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.
Afternoon was turning to evening. The room was growing dimmer. They kept the lights off in the kebab shop to avoid drawing notice. She turned toward the newspaper-covered window. And then, at that moment, the windows brightened slightly. The streetlights on East Ferry Road had just switched on.
A satisfying click of an idea.
She turned back to Komarovsky. Stared at him for a beat. Then said: “You go ahead and do it. Give Hopkins what he needs. Get him to cancel the missiles. Keep your cover intact.”
He blinked at her. “Go ahead?”
“Yes.”
“But… but this… Are you sure?”
She cocked her head. “You’re not relieved? I thought you’d be relieved.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You just do what you have to do,” Amanda said. “And I’ll worry about the rest.”
After Komarovsky left, Kath said: “So what is it?”
Amanda started clearing their coffee mugs from the table, throwing the empty whiskey bottle into the trash. “What is what?”
“The plan. ‘Give Hopkins what he needs’? You’re not really going to let him commit another round of securities fraud, are you?”
“I’m going to let him try,” she said. “He won’t actually be able to pull it off. But that’s assuming my hunch is right. I need to get to Washington.”
“Washington?”
“I have to check something. I’m going to try to get a flight tonight. I’ll call you in the next few days.”
When Jenny Navarro took the job on K Street, she could imagine the scowl on Senator Vogel’s face. He detested lobbyists as a rule. That’s nice, she sometimes thought, when her old boss bragged about never taking a dime from special interests. But, you know, not everyone on Capitol Hill is as rich as you. At some point during his ascent from the lower class to the global elite, the altitude change had caused Bob Vogel to forget that, in modern-day America, integrity didn’t come cheap.
But Jenny had student loans to repay. Her parents had just refinanced their house for the third time. The brakes on her sixteen-year-old Civic were worn out. The lobbying firms waited a few days, out of respect, but the week after Vogel’s funeral she had several offers from the biggest shops on K Street. They paid six times what she’d been making as his chief of staff. She said yes to the most ethical-seeming option.
Now, several months into the gig, Jenny had concluded that this wasn’t a bad life. The work wasn’t particularly interesting, but it was a new language to learn, and she’d always liked a challenge. And she liked her colleagues. A lot of them were in similar situations, trying to save a little money before going back into government service, enough to pay off their debt or pull together a down payment. They cashed their paychecks with their eyes wide open.
Of course, some grew addicted to the comforts. A new car, an upgraded wardrobe, a bigger mortgage. Jenny made a private sport of it, trying to predict which of her coworkers would succumb to the glow-up, and the expensive maintenance thereof. (Inevitably, the person in question would also stop calling themselves a lobbyist, preferring the easier-to-swallow “public affairs consultant” instead.) Not that she went around saying these things. Her boss had no idea of her true feelings about the job. “You’ve got a knack,” he observed. “You’ll make partner in record time.”
Jenny didn’t bother correcting his assumption. The truth was that she knew she would work there for a few years, and then she would leave. It wasn’t her job to explain herself to him. It was her job to, for instance, persuade the junior senator from South Carolina of the benefits of offshore wind farms.
On a Thursday in March, Jenny and the junior senator had just finished lunch at Charlie Palmer. He’d ordered the oysters and the Wagyu striploin and a dry martini. Jenny had stuck to her usual seared scallops and club soda with lemon. On this early spring afternoon, the sunlight was changeable and watery, clouds scudding rapidly overhead. Blink and they’d be back in the oppression of D.C. summer, soupy heat and soaked blouses. Out on the sidewalk, she extended her hand and said: “I’ll send over the draft when I’m back at my desk. I think you’ll find it interesting. And if you don’t, I’m sure we can find a way to make it interesting.”
The senator laughed as he shook her hand. “Always a pleasure, Ms. Navarro.”
As she watched the senator walk away, across Louisiana Avenue toward the Capitol, a voice behind her said: “You’re good.”
Jenny startled. When she turned around, there she was: Amanda Cole. That horrible woman! That sower of paranoia, that causer of nightmares, that figure of deceptive innocence. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling politely. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“Yes.” Jenny took a step back, her heart thumping. “You definitely did.”
“Can I walk you to your office?”
Jenny took another step back.
“Or I could come to your apartment tonight? What would be convenient?”
“What would be convenient is for you to leave me alone.”
“Look, Jenny. I know I made you a promise. And I hate breaking my promises.”
“I’m serious. Leave me alone.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. This is really important.”
Diane was right, Jenny thought. This was exactly what she warned me about.
Months earlier, on the July morning after the funeral, Diane Vogel asked Jenny Navarro to come over. In the penthouse kitchen, Diane was surrounded by platters of food. “When my father died,” Diane said, unwrapping a tray of Danish and muffins, “my mother said, ‘Well, Diane, maybe now you’ll finally lose that baby weight. Grief is a natural appetite suppressant.’ It was just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Are you hungry? I’m starving.”
The windows were open to the warm summer morning. Sounds of traffic drifted up from Park Avenue. Diane reached for a blueberry muffin, separated the domed top from the cakey bottom, stared at each piece for a moment. Then she stood up, threw out the bottom half, sat back down, and took a big bite of the top. “Bob had this thing about wasting food,” she said, through a mouthful of muffin. “But I don’t like the bottom half. I’m old and I don’t care. So I guess that’s one perk to being a widow. Okay.” She brushed the crumbs from her fingertips. “Jenny. About yesterday. That woman who pulled you aside.”
“Oh,” Jenny said. “I didn’t realize you saw.”
“I’m assuming she told you the same thing that she and Director Gasko told me? Right. So you know, too. Honestly, when they did, I was relieved. I knew it couldn’t be a stroke. Bob was healthier than ever. They didn’t tell me much. Only that they—how did they put it?—they possessed intelligence suggesting that the Russians were involved in the assassination.”
She nodded. “That’s pretty much what she told me, too.”
“Which means that my suspicions were correct. And his, too, I guess. In a different way.”
Jenny frowned, puzzled.
“So Bob didn’t tell you about it either? No. Of course he didn’t. You know, Jenny, that you were like a daughter to him. He would have wanted to protect you from it, too. That’s what he always said. He was just trying to protect me. Protect me.” Diane grimaced. Then she said: “And here I thought he was being paranoid.”
Diane slipped into a silent fugue, staring down at her mug. Jenny noticed that the coffeepot in the middle of the table was empty. She jumped to her feet, eager to combat the moment with some useful action. A few minutes later, when the coffee was ready, Diane was still lost in her thoughts, her hands wrapped around her mug. “More coffee?” Jenny said. No response. But she refilled it anyway, and the revived warmth of the mug snapped Diane back to attention. “Oh, bless you,” she said.
“Some people compartmentalize,” she resumed. “Not him. You saw how he was. His work was his family was his life. Everything mixed up with everything else. We were each other’s sounding boards. But whatever he was up to with Ivan Komarovsky, he decided it was too dangerous to share with me. And I told him that if this thing, whatever it was, if it really was that dangerous, he had to tell me. He had to think clearly.”
“Komarovsky,” Jenny repeated. “I don’t know that name.”
“He was our neighbor in London, years ago. He and Bob hadn’t spoken in a decade, maybe more. Until January. Bob ran into Ivan at Davos. And then again in February, at Courchevel. Our paths kept crossing. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t accidental. Bob wouldn’t tell me what they were working on. ‘It’s important,’ he said. And I said, ‘Why are you getting into bed with this man? This Russian oligarch. Why do you trust him?’ And he said, ‘Because I have to. Because I’m the only person he can trust.’ And now he’s dead. So you see what I mean? I was right about Komarovsky. Bob was right to be paranoid. It’s like a twisted O. Henry story.”
Jenny swallowed. “Did the, um… Did the people from the…”
“From the CIA.”
“The people from the CIA. Did they know about this? About Komarovsky?”
“No.”
“But did you…”
“Did I tell them about my suspicions? No. I didn’t. Would that have been useful to them? Probably. But do I want to get dragged into it, the way my husband got dragged into it?” There was a long silence. “I have children. I have grandchildren. I’m sure you can understand that.”
In that moment, Jenny had been wrestling with what to say about the papers in Senator Vogel’s office. Telling Diane, not telling Diane: both avenues felt like a betrayal of some kind. But Diane had just said it herself: she didn’t want to get dragged into it. So that settled it.
“The reason I’m telling you all this,” Diane said. “If it comes to it, Jenny. I think you should do the same. Stay away from it. I was dismayed to see that woman talking to you. She shouldn’t have done that. If she ever tries to talk to you again—”
“She won’t,” Jenny interrupted, thinking of the promise Amanda made, the evening before, on the bench in Central Park. “She promised she won’t.”
“Well, good. But if she does—or if anyone else from the CIA does, for that matter—for your own safety, I think it would be best to steer clear.”
Amanda stepped forward and touched Jenny’s arm. Jenny’s first instinct was to slap her hand away and tell her to fuck off. But they were standing here in broad daylight, in this sea of D.C. power lunchers, and Amanda’s fingertips were barely grazing the fabric of Jenny’s jacket. Jenny didn’t want to be the asshole here.
“It’s about Senator Vogel,” Amanda said quietly. “We’re close to cracking it. But we’re not there yet, and you’re one of the only people who can answer this question. He gave his life for this, Jenny. And now I’d be really grateful if you would talk to me. Just for a few minutes.” Amanda seemed to take her silence as assent. She gestured down the sidewalk. “Do you want to walk for a while?”
And so they walked for a while, through a wide canyon of grand government buildings and glassy law firms. Amanda craned her neck, peering up at the clouds. “I wish I was in town longer. I always manage to miss the cherry blossoms.”
The small talk was meant to calm her down. Jenny resented this. She also resented the fact that it was working. A few blocks later, her pulse was almost back to normal. Amanda, seeming to sense this, said: “So. We’ve made a lot of progress, continuing the work Senator Vogel was doing. We’re very close to getting the evidence we need.”
“Good for you,” Jenny said tartly. Then: “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did. And I get it. You think we’re on different sides here.”
“No, I don’t. It’s just that…”
“That someone warned you to stay away from us.” Amanda gave her a sideways glance. “Was it Diane Vogel?”
“How did you know?”
“An educated guess. The point is, we now know what Senator Vogel was trying to expose. And we know who his source was. But what we don’t know is how much the senator trusted this source. So. Did he ever talk to you about a man named Ivan Komarovsky?”
Jenny thought for a moment. She thought carefully. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well. Okay.”
Amanda was visibly disappointed. Jenny felt bad about this, even though, strictly speaking, her answer was honest. Bob hadn’t ever talked about Ivan Komarovsky to her. Literalism was the fastest exit ramp from this stressful conversation. But the literalism didn’t feel great. Jenny knew a lawyer who once managed to defend his client from a class action lawsuit because a comma changed the meaning of the word dismemberment. Jesus, Jenny, she thought. When did you become one of those people?
“But Diane did,” Jenny blurted out, before she could think twice. “Talk to me about Ivan Komarovsky, I mean. The day after Bob’s funeral. That’s when she told me. She assumed that Bob was working with him on—well, on whatever it was.”
Amanda lit up. “That’s great. That’s great, Jenny. And what did Diane say about Komarovsky? Did she say whether Bob trusted him?”
Jenny shrugged. “She implied as much. And, for my part, I don’t think Bob would have taken that risk if he didn’t trust him. And he obviously knew he was taking a risk. That’s why he kept it such a secret from us.”
“Us?”
“Me and Diane,” she clarified. “He didn’t usually conceal things from me. He basically never concealed things from Diane. So I think she felt weirdly vindicated. She thought Bob should have listened to her, asked for her opinion. If he had, she would have told him to stay away from Komarovsky. And then he would still be alive.”
Amanda raised her eyebrows. “Stay away from Komarovsky?”
“Yeah. Bob trusted him, but she didn’t trust him. She didn’t say why. But Diane clearly assumes that Komarovsky is the reason her husband wound up dead.”
They were stopped at the corner of Fourth and E, waiting for the light to change. Jenny squinted at Amanda. “But why aren’t you just talking to Diane directly?”
“Diane made it very clear that she didn’t want to get involved.”
“So did I.”
“Yes, but I could tell you didn’t mean it.” After a beat, Amanda added: “That’s a compliment, by the way.”
The light changed, and they crossed the street. They were silent during the rest of the walk back to K Street. Amanda was clearly preoccupied, thinking through whatever came next. Jenny supposed she ought to feel annoyed by this, at being used and discarded like an empty soda can. But she didn’t, and this surprised her. If anything, she felt envious. Jenny would return to her meetings and conference calls, and Amanda would return to her—well, what did her life look like? Jenny had only the vaguest notion. Surely it was more interesting than the life of a corporate lobbyist. (An admittedly low bar.)
Jenny extended her hand. “Good luck,” she said. “I hope you get to finish what he started.” And she was surprised, again, to find that she meant it.
First thing the next morning, Amanda had an appointment to see Director Gasko. He was a notorious early bird, but she had arrived even earlier, and she clocked his approving glance when he spotted her outside his office. Inside he gestured for her to sit. Without preamble, she said: “I think Komarovsky is playing us.”
Gasko, who had been hanging his suit jacket on the back of his chair, paused. He cocked his head, pressed his hands into the top edge of his chair. “Explain.”
“Earlier this week, when we tried to record his conversation with Vitsin, a frequency jammer blocked us. Kath said this was standard operating procedure for the FSB. No cause for alarm. At first, I thought she might be right. But afterward, while we were debriefing Komarovsky, something felt off.”
“How so?”
“Komarovsky was expecting us to tell him to cancel the Aeromach push. It was almost like he wanted me to tell him to cancel. Like he was suddenly actually concerned about the fate of this company. It felt fake. Like, you know, the lady doth protest too much.”
“And that’s it?” Gasko lowered himself into his chair. “A hunch, in other words?”
“No. There’s also our source inside the GRU. He talks regularly to the goons from Unit 29155, and every once in a while, he asks about the ‘bad guy from Iceland.’ The last time our source brought him up, they were hesitant to say anything negative. Which is highly out of character.”
At this, she felt a stab of guilt. She should have listened to Semonov. Should have known that, if he was picking up on something weird, there was something weird. But when she’d read the contact report from Moscow, back in January, she’d decided there could be lots of reasons for Tweedledee and Tweedledum suddenly clamming up about Komarovsky. Maybe they realized it was stupid for them to tell tales out of school. But Semonov had thought enough of this change to report it to his handler, and Amanda should have taken it seriously. She’d had weeks—months!—to take it seriously, and she hadn’t.
“And there’s one more thing,” she continued. “Yesterday I went to see Jenny Navarro. You remember her? Senator Vogel’s chief of staff. I wanted to know if Vogel had ever talked to her about Komarovsky. If she had any sense of how much Vogel did or didn’t trust him.”
“So she knows the truth about how he died?”
“Yes.”
Gasko frowned. “A little over your skis there, Cole.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Anyway.” She forged ahead. “Vogel never talked to Jenny about Komarovsky. But, after the funeral, Diane talked to her about him. Diane knew that her husband and Komarovsky were up to something suspicious. For some reason Diane didn’t want to share that information with us, even though knowing it was Komarovsky would have saved us a whole bunch of time—but anyway. Fine. Okay. Spilled milk. My point is that Diane Vogel never trusted Komarovsky. She’s a smart woman. I’d take her judgment seriously. The Vogels and the Komarovskys spent a lot of time together last year.”
“So she thinks, what? That Komarovsky ratted him out? But why?”
Amanda shook her head. “I’m not necessarily sure Komarovsky was the one who betrayed Vogel. Any number of things could have tipped the Russians off. Vogel and Komarovsky weren’t airtight. But all these bits and pieces got me thinking. Step back for a minute. If we know anything about Komarovsky, we know that his loyalty is fungible. He’ll do whatever he needs to do to survive. That’s why he agreed to work with us in the first place. He likes to keep the doors open.”
Amanda paused. She was aware of how much of this was pure guesswork. But she was inclined to believe the theory, and more urgently, she needed Gasko to believe it, too. She continued: “So what’s one more door, when it comes down to it? I think Komarovsky has shifted allegiances yet again. I think he’s working with the GRU. I think he came clean to them about his relationship with us, and I think he was the one jamming the signal, not Vitsin, with the GRU’s help.”
(There was, of course, another obvious alternative: that Komarovsky had nothing to do with the blown operation. The CIA very possibly had a mole, and the mole had very possibly warned the Kremlin. Though the circle of the London operation was small, it was still penetrable. This could have been the moment to come clean and tell Gasko about her father. But then what? She wanted to see this through. She had to see this through.)
“Huh,” Gasko said. A long pause. “I guess I could see it. I’m not saying I buy it. I’m saying it’s possible. Either way, we have to figure out what to do about Aeromach. And how we’re going to get the proof we need.” Gasko squinted at her. “But I’m getting the sense that you already have something in mind.”
“I do,” she said. “Although it’s sort of… blunt.”
“Nothing wrong with blunt,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”