After a little less than forty-eight hours in Washington, Amanda boarded a red-eye back to Heathrow. The plane touched down on Saturday morning. On Monday, Aeromach would announce their changes, and Komarovsky would juice the stock price. They would have to move fast.
A few hours later, they gathered in a secure room in London station. Kath was carrying a plastic bag from Pret a Manger. She caught Amanda’s look. “What?” she said. “I’m starving. I brought extra. Amanda? Bram?”
Amanda shook her head. Bram shrugged. “I could eat.”
Kath slid a sandwich across the table. “Turkey and cheddar. Amanda, are you sure? You should eat something. You look upset. Or was Gasko that intolerable?”
“He was fine. Listen, Kath, you remember the time we lost power in the kebab shop? And I went outside to see what was happening, and that construction crew was working down the road, and it turns out the crew has permission to shut down power on stretches of East Ferry Road when the project requires.”
“I remember.”
“And we left, and went out the back alley, and we walked past Komarovsky’s spot. There’s that bathroom window in the back. I remember thinking it was weird that the bathroom light was still on. Because the whole block had lost power.”
“Yeah,” Bram said. “Because they have a generator.”
“Exactly!” Amanda exclaimed. Then she turned to Bram. “Wait. You already knew?”
He shrugged again. “I may have gotten up to some extracurricular activities.”
Kath arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means that after the frequency jammer, or whatever that was, I wanted to do a little extra digging on Komarovsky. Their security was a joke, by the way.”
“And when were you going to tell us about this?”
“Chill out, Frost,” he mumbled, through a mouthful of sandwich. “It’s not a big deal. See, she’s happy I did it. Aren’t you, Cole?”
Truthfully, she was overjoyed. Amanda felt like kissing Bram. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea for the OTS guys to be running rogue, breaking-and-entering on their own initiative, but still: Bram had just saved them a whole lot of time. Trying for sternness, Amanda said: “Kath is right. You should have told us.” Then: “But this is great, Bram. What did you find?”
“Honestly, not much. That’s why I didn’t mention it. But yeah, like you were saying. They have a generator. Not surprising. They can’t risk losing power in the middle of the work.”
“How big is this generator?”
“Two hundred kilowatts. Like what you’d park outside a football stadium. It has a diesel tank, holds enough fuel for twenty-four hours.” He shook his head. “Those really aren’t supposed to go inside, you know. The fumes are bad for your lungs.”
“Is there a way to drain the tank without them realizing it’s been drained?”
“Sure. No sweat.”
“Great,” Amanda said. “Great. Next question. How hard would it be for someone to turn off the power for East Ferry Road? For, say, thirty minutes on Monday night?”
“Normally impossible.” Bram balled up the sandwich wrapper. “But I’ve talked to some of the guys on the construction crew. The foreman is paying them under the table. I bet he’d be happy to take a bribe. And, if not, we can always threaten to report him to the tax authorities.”
Around 5 p.m. on Monday, Komarovsky stood across East Ferry Road, watching Yulia enter the hair salon. The other programmers appeared soon after.
He glanced to his left, to his right. The street was quiet. He walked past the old kebab shop, slowed his stride to peer through the gaps in the yellowed newspaper. The room was empty. Amanda had told him to go ahead and give the Kremlin what they wanted. There was no other way to keep his cover intact. This was what she had said. Yes, he told himself nervously. Yes, it was okay, because this made sense. He was important to the Americans.
Komarovsky keyed in the combination. When he entered the back room, Yulia and the others didn’t even glance up. He found himself envying the code monkeys their tunnel vision. The nauseating uncertainties of the bigger picture didn’t affect them. They only had to worry about the algorithm, which always worked exactly as designed.
Yulia pulled up a page on her computer screen and sighed. Komarovsky jumped to attention. “What? What is it?”
“Shell closed above sixty-five today.”
“What? Why? What does that mean?”
She frowned at him. “Why are you acting so strange?”
Heat climbed through his face. “Answer me!”
“It’s bad for me,” she said, leaning forward, unzipping her backpack, retrieving a twenty-pound note. “But it’s good for Sergei. I just lost a bet. Do you understand what a bet is? Or do I need to explain this, too?”
Time crept past. His uncooperative stomach twisted and roiled. He went into the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, dry heaved, but nothing came out. He told himself it must have been something he ate. Probably the salmon he’d had for lunch. It hadn’t looked right.
Komarovsky kept a close eye on the market. There were only slight fluctuations in MACH’s price, nothing out of the ordinary, but every spike and dip caused his chest to tighten. At 9:15 p.m., after close of the market in New York, Aeromach would announce they were canceling their $6 billion contract with the Polish government. Immediately after, a user by the name of Porno_Bacon_God would declare that this was a genius move. MACH to the moon, followed by a string of emojis. At the same time, Yulia and the other programmers would breach the digital wall and make the necessary changes to the algorithm, which would send that post to the top of the feed. It wouldn’t take much. Just a little gasoline, here and there, to get the fire started. MACH was now trading at $312 a share on the NYSE. But after Porno_Bacon_God’s post went viral, it would climb even higher in aftermarket trading, and David Hopkins could rest easy, knowing the market had just given him the cover he needed to carry out this move.
Almost there, he told himself. Soon enough, the whole thing would be over. He just had to get through the next hour.
At 9:07 p.m., he became aware of pressure in his bladder, having drunk six cups of tea in the past two hours. He stood at the toilet, and for several wonderful seconds, as he stared out the chicken-wired window to the back alley, the satisfaction of relieving himself quieted the mania in his head. He zipped up his pants, washed his hands, caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked terrible. He looked so old. He blamed this on the harsh light above the sink. A rusty pull chain dangled from the bulb. He began to reach for the chain, but before he even touched it, the light went out.
In the darkness, he blinked. A coincidence?
And then he heard a shout from outside the bathroom door.
The entire back room was in darkness. Yulia was using the flashlight on her phone to illuminate the fuel gauge on the generator. “It’s empty,” she shouted.
He hurried over. “That’s impossible. I checked it yesterday. It was full. Sergei!” he barked at one of the other programmers. “Go see what happened. It must be that construction crew. Tell them to turn it back on!”
“It’s nine ten,” Yulia said, as Sergei ran out the door. “We have less than five minutes.”
“Let me see that.” Grabbing her phone, he saw that Yulia was right: the black needle on the fuel gauge rested at empty. He opened the tank, used the flashlight to peer inside. Empty. He banged his hand against the machine. “Where’s Sergei?” he barked. “What’s taking so long?”
Sergei returned, breathless from running. “Power is off for the whole street,” he said. “It won’t be back on for at least thirty minutes.”
“Tell them that isn’t acceptable! Go! Tell them!”
Sergei shifted uncomfortably. He was skinny, pasty, and completely unintimidating. He didn’t need to tell Komarovsky how unlikely that was to work. Their computer screens were black. The room, normally filled with the dense mechanical hum of the servers, was dark and silent. Yulia looked at her phone. “Two minutes.”
“The petrol station, then! Sergei! Buy as much diesel as you can carry!”
“The gauge is probably broken,” Yulia said calmly. “It gave you a false reading.”
“No! I checked the tank, too. It was full. Someone emptied it!”
The programmers stared at him. They had never seen him lose his cool like this.
“Shit!” he shouted. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Yulia checked her phone again. “It’s nine fifteen.”
He was in the grips of a wildness. His heart pounding like a drum, his brain filled with a screeching wail. He had known something was wrong. He had known. But he had plowed ahead, stupid, stubborn, because he didn’t want to think through the logic of what something-being-wrong would mean. And now!
And now Aeromach was making their announcement. And now the stock price was plummeting. He stared at his phone, watching this unfold. And now that phone was ringing, and he wanted to ignore it, he wanted to run away and disappear forever, but he couldn’t. Because right now, if he didn’t try to save himself, no one else would.
Komarovsky pressed the button. Before he could even say hello, David Hopkins’s voice hissed through the speaker: “You rat-fucking bastard. What the fuck is going on?”
Across town at London station, Amanda and Kath listened to the call unfold in real time.
“Out!” Komarovsky barked at the programmers. “Get out!”
“We had a deal, Ivan. So, what? You think I’ll keep playing along? You think I’m just going to sit here and fucking swallow this? You motherfucker.”
“David. David! Let me explain. We lost power. And our generator failed. Just give us a little time! We can fix this. I know how this looks, but I swear to you—”
“Your generator failed? Are you kidding me? Isn’t that convenient. I knew it, Ivan. I knew it from the moment I walked into your office, and you told me about this little plan of yours. Fucking Gruzdev. Sit! Stay! Lie down! Cancel the missiles! I’m not your puppy, Ivan. I’m not just going to run around doing whatever you and Gruzdev—”
(Although this wasn’t the point, Amanda found herself borderline impressed by Hopkins’s lunatic, foul-mouthed rage. Too many years of military deference, she supposed, and eventually you were bound to snap.)
“David. David. We can’t do this on the phone.”
“—want me to do. So you thought you could have your cake and eat it, too, huh? String me up like a puppet and embarrass me while you’re at it. I’m done, Ivan. It’s over. I’m calling the Feds. I’m telling them exactly what you’re up to. And by the way. The missiles? Forget it. We’re keeping the contract. We’re walking it back. My people are putting together a new announcement right now.”
“It was just a hiccup. Give me a few minutes. I promise you, the market will love this.”
“Why the fuck would I ever trust you again, Ivan? Your generator failed? You’re playing me, and I’m done.”
A beat of silence. Komarovsky had one last card to play. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he said: “David. Please. I need your help.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m begging for mercy. My life is in danger.”
“You should have thought of that earlier.”
“I didn’t want to do it! Any of it! But they had a gun to my head. They’re going to kill me, David. Please. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Don’t put that on me, you asshole.”
“I have a wife. I have children!”
“And I have a wife! And I have children! And who the fuck knows what you were planning for them! This isn’t my problem. I’m going to hang up and I’m going to call the FBI and if Gruzdev doesn’t kill you first, we are going to fucking bury you. Goodbye, Ivan. Enjoy burning in hell.”
When the call ended, Kath opened her mouth to speak, but Amanda held up a finger. Her laptop gave her a readout of the activity on David Hopkins’s phone. Back in D.C., she’d persuaded Gasko to call his friends at the FBI and issue the tap. Hopkins losing his temper in such incriminating fashion was exactly what they hoped would happen.
“He was bluffing,” Kath interjected. “Obviously he’s not calling the Feds.”
“I know,” Amanda murmured. “But I want to see…”
To see if he was having an attack of conscience? To see if he was at least googling the protections afforded to whistleblowers? But, no: Hopkins was fighting for his own survival. He was approving the new press release; he was checking the market reaction; he was entirely engaged in crisis management. Several minutes passed. Nothing. Of course not. It had been too much to hope that he might turn himself in.
She sighed. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s see what happens now.”
Komarovsky, like any self-respecting billionaire, was deeply paranoid about his digital security. They had never been able to tap his phone, but on Sunday night, when Bram was draining the generator, it occurred to her that he could plant a bug in that back room on East Ferry Road. Normally the interference from the servers would make it impossible to get a clear signal, but maybe, during the blackout on Monday night, the signal would work. Maybe they would catch something useful. So Bram stuck a coin-sized microphone to the underside of one of the desks, and stashed a signal repeater behind a dumpster in the alley, and now, across town in London station, the audio was crystal clear.
Komarovsky breathing heavily, muttering to himself. “He doesn’t know where to go,” Kath observed. “He doesn’t know where it’s safe.”
His phone rang again. He took a deep breath. “Vitsin, hello,” he said calmly. “Yes. Yes, I know. We had a power outage. It’s just a hiccup. Yes, I saw that. I just spoke to him. It’s okay. We have a plan. It’s all going to be fine. You will tell them that? Yes. Good.”
He hung up. Several more minutes passed. Amanda’s own phone vibrated. She picked it up and saw a text from Bram, who was stationed outside the Komarovsky mansion in Mayfair. Visitor incoming, he reported. Mystery man. Older, sixties or seventies. Gray hair. Dark suit.
Older. Not Vitsin, then. And not the thugs from Unit 29155, either. Someone they didn’t know. Anya just answered the door, Bram texted. Didn’t seem to recognize him.
A moment later, Komarovsky’s phone rang yet again. “Oh fuck,” he whispered to himself. “Oh, no. No. No.”
He took a deep breath and answered: “Annushka?” Pause. “Who?” Pause. “And what is his name?” Pause. “Yes, darling, let him in. Right away. Offer him a drink. Make sure he is comfortable.” Pause. “I’ll have Osipov drive me home. No, darling. Nothing to worry about. I was… expecting him. I had just forgotten. That’s all. I’ll see you soon. Okay? Very soon.”
Osipov was parked a few blocks from East Ferry Road. Another OTS officer was waiting, ready to tail the black Rolls-Royce. Komarovsky ran toward the car. He slammed the door and the Rolls peeled out with a screech. It wove through traffic, blew through yellow lights and stop signs, making it back to the mansion in Mayfair in record time.
The CIA had no way of knowing what was happening inside the Komarovsky home that night, but Amanda felt certain, agonizingly certain, that this was it. This was the conversation that would reveal the truth. Who was he working for? Where did his true allegiances lie? Had the whole thing been for show? Was he, after all, the one who had turned on Vogel? She texted Bram: Tell me THE SECOND there’s any movement.
An hour later, Bram reported: Mystery man leaving the house. The gray-haired, dark-suited man walked to his Volkswagen and drove away. The other OTS officer now switched to tailing him, radioing the movements to Kath and Amanda.
The Volkswagen drove slowly through Belgravia, through Westminster. Almost strangely slow. He crossed the Vauxhall Bridge. Amanda felt a mounting sense of dread. “Turning on Lambeth Road,” the officer said. “Turning on Parry Street. Oh, shit,” he said. “Shit. We’re—”
“You’re outside the embassy,” Amanda said.
“I didn’t think—”
“He saw you tailing him.” She sighed. “It’s fine. It was too much to hope for.”
So that was it: the gray-haired mystery man was Komarovsky’s GRU handler. A handler would have known, of course, to expect the surveillance. He made a U-turn outside the embassy and, winkingly, flashed his lights at the OTS officer on his way past.
In the conference room, they waited for updates from Bram. Right now it was Komarovsky’s move. Until he made that move—until Amanda had a sense of his plan—she could only sit here, waiting, doing nothing.
Finally, as dawn approached and the sky faded from black to gray, Bram texted: Leaving the house. Both of them. Suitcases.
Suitcases. Do they look scared? Worried?
Too far to tell. Then: I’m following. And then: They’re taking the M4. Probably headed to Heathrow.
Kath leaned over to look at Amanda’s screen. “Heathrow?” She stood up. “We should go. We can stop him before he gets on the plane.”
But Amanda stayed seated, staring at her phone. Heathrow meant one thing: Komarovsky was headed back to Russia. She shook her head. “No.”
Kath looked at Amanda like she was having a stroke. “Are you crazy? So we know he was working with the GRU. So let’s use this. Let’s squeeze him. We can get so much more juice out of this!”
Kath wasn’t wrong. This was the ultimate leverage. Komarovsky was scared of Gruzdev; scared of the FSB; scared of the GRU. The Americans were his only chance at safety. And think of what he knew! About the inner workings of the Kremlin, about Gruzdev, about what might be coming next. Now, finally, he would have to tell them the truth. And Kath was making these points, but Amanda wasn’t really listening. She was thinking, instead, of that afternoon in the Winter Palace. The dim chill of the Baltic sky outside the Rembrandt Room. Double agents. Triple agents. Mole hunts. Conspiracies inside conspiracies. If you loved the game, why would you ever want it to stop?
“No,” Amanda repeated. “We can’t believe anything he tells us.”
“But we don’t—You’re not—you’re not seriously considering letting him go.”
“He was working for the GRU this whole time. We can’t trust him.”
There was genuine pain on Kath’s face. Her rapport with the oligarch hadn’t been an act, then. “They’ll kill him,” she said faintly. “You know they’ll kill him, eventually.”
“Maybe. But that isn’t our problem.”
Kath sank back into her seat. “Brutal,” she said.
After a beat, she added: “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”