Hacker, staring out the window at the snowy courtyard. “She’s not going to kill him.”
“What?” Charlie said.
“Look at them.”
Across the courtyard, the Russians had hoisted the duffel bags over their shoulders. They were walking back toward the stone arch. Charlie blinked. No, he thought. No! Mary wanted to kill Ahmad Baraath. He knew this. He knew this. This was the foundation upon which he had built his redemption.
But the three Afghans were standing in the courtyard, unharmed, watching the Russians retreat.
“No, see, look,” Hacker whispered. “She actually respects him. You can just tell.”
(Respect. This was why Mary had sounded so different.)
And then Baraath, his breath visible in the frosty night, turned to Khalil. The microphones picked up their exchange in Dari. Khalil grew animated, evidently trying to dissuade Baraath from something. But just before the Russians reached the arch, Baraath said: “Wait, please! I have a question.”
Seppanen was practically foaming at the mouth. Hacker glanced over at him. “He’s right, boss. We should be moving by now. We don’t want to wait any longer.”
But Charlie held up a hand. The moment the police swarmed the courtyard, that would be it. The truth about Mary’s intent would escape his grasp. He needed to know whether he had been right.
Outside, Mary turned around. With a placid smile, she said: “You’re wondering why we’ve agreed to this.”
“We’ve been your enemy for a long time,” Baraath said. “You could have sold these weapons to Najibullah and his men instead. My people have told me—what is the phrase? Not to look the gift horse in the mouth. That there is probably a simple explanation. That, probably, we are willing to pay more than Najibullah is willing to pay. But I don’t believe that this is the real explanation.” His eyes twinkled. “I suspect that you are playing both sides. Is that so?”
Mary’s smile faded. The other Russians behind her, the muscle, the non-English speakers, exchanged confused glances.
“In fact, we have a source inside the Communist Army,” he continued. “He has heard rumors that Najibullah recently procured these very same nerve agents.”
“Perhaps they were stolen.”
“Perhaps. But, again, I don’t believe this.”
“Well, General Baraath. The truth is that this is your war now. Not ours. This was merely a business transaction.”
Baraath laughed. “A business transaction! Oh, no. I think you’re interested in much more than our money. I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?” His tone remained tauntingly light. “You’re doing this to sow chaos. To make the fight bloodier than ever. Let the two sides slaughter each other. You want us weak. A weak Afghanistan is a useful Afghanistan.”
Mary took a tiny step backward. One of the Russians moved his hand to his waist. The dark metal of a gun glinted in the moonlight.
Baraath held up his hands. “No, no. I’m a man of my word, as you said. We agreed to this business transaction.” He chuckled. “I was curious about your motive, that’s all. I don’t particularly care about your motive.”
In a tight voice, she said: “You are free to believe whatever you want.”
“You aren’t frightened, are you? We have no intention of hurting you.”
Then, a flash in her eyes. A hardening.
In a split second, Charlie foresaw what was going to happen. “Shit.” He whipped around. “Shit, shit. Seppanen. Let’s go. Let’s move. Now.”
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten how to count,” Mary said, with suddenly furious pride. “Excuse me, General Baraath, but you hurt us? And how would this happen? Do you not see that you’re outnumbered?”
The radio crackled and screeched as Seppanen started issuing orders to his troops.
Mary glanced over her shoulder. On her cue, the Russians drew their weapons.
But Baraath, hands still in the air, kept smiling. “Only if you don’t count the Americans,” he said. “And, given that they’re here for you, I think you ought to count them.”
Chiara and Semonov had climbed aboard the boat. Amanda was next. She was wading into the water when she heard the shout behind her.
She locked eyes with Bram. She was familiar with moments like this, when it felt like the terror might take over, when you were tempted by paralysis. But if you had trained hard enough, if you had the discipline to endure that fleeting moment—the muscle memory would kick in. She and Bram stared at each other in silence. They both knew exactly what to do.
Her back to the forest, Amanda raised her hands high. In the boat, Bram did the same. They waited one second, two seconds, three seconds. And then, in perfect unison, they moved.
Bram shoved Chiara and Semonov into the bottom of the boat. Amanda pulled out her gun and spun around. The man on the beach had his gun raised, pointed right at her, but Amanda was faster. She squeezed the trigger and clipped him in the shoulder.
As he stumbled backward, she sprinted forward and tackled him at the legs. She kneeled on his back, shoving his face into the sand. Bram was right behind her, gun aimed at the tree line. He’d seen movement in the forest. He shouted in Russian: “If you run, I’ll shoot!”
The crack of another shot, then a strangled yell. Higher-pitched, feminine. The man beneath her began to thrash. He was tall and strong. Amanda’s weight wasn’t enough to keep him pinned down. “Bram!” she shouted. “Bram!”
But Bram was in the forest, wrangling the other person. You have a gun, she thought, struggling to keep the wounded man down. Use it, you idiot! One shot to the head, it would be over. This, too, was part of the training. But the wounded man was yelling in Russian, and Amanda spoke Russian, and she understood what he was saying. “Don’t touch her!” he was yelling. “Don’t touch her or I’ll kill you!”
They were a couple, she realized. She’d heard of these deadly husband-and-wife teams in Unit 29155. Sham marriages that sometimes turned into love, that sometimes even led to children. This man loved his partner, or at the very least he cared about her. The proof was in the anguish in his voice, the desperation of his fight. “Stop it!” Amanda said, with equal desperation, because the more he talked, the harder this would be. “Shut up! Stop talking!”
It happened all at once. Charlie, Hacker, and Seppanen burst through the door. The police swarmed the courtyard. Mary reached into her coat and pulled out a gun.
She aimed at Baraath, her eyes glittering with rage. She had respected him, trusted him, and this was how he repaid her? By betraying her to the Americans? She strode forward, ignoring the volley of bullets, squeezing the trigger with each step. Bang. Baraath ducked. Bang. He swerved. The stone wall was right behind him. Mary was getting closer. It was only a matter of time until she—
But then she reeled backward, clutching at her shoulder. A bullet had struck her in her right side. She whipped around. There was Hacker, gun in his hand. And there was Charlie, several yards behind him.
Seeing him, the understanding clicked into place. Charlie Cole: the cause of this betrayal. Face contorted with pain, Mary switched her gun from her right hand to her left. She raised her left hand with horrifying ambidexterity and aimed at him. Charlie was paralyzed. Why couldn’t he get his legs to move? The snow was so deep. The cold air burned his lungs. Bodies prone around him. Red splatters in white snow. This is it, he thought. This was the end.
But she paused. Then she turned around. Baraath was the target worthy of her respect, of her fury. She aimed again at the general. Bang. Another step forward. Bang. She was mere feet away from Baraath. Next time she wouldn’t miss. But just as she squeezed the trigger, Awad ran forward and threw himself in front of his commander.
Bang. Awad doubled over, his skinny teenage frame closing on itself. Bang. He dropped to his knees, swaying, eyes turning glassy. Behind him, Baraath and Khalil had their backs pressed up against the wall. Now Mary had a clear shot at both of them.
“Hey!” Hacker shouted, sprinting toward her. “Hey, MARY!”
Her head jerked at the sound of her name—just for a moment, but enough—and Khalil took the chance to step in front of Baraath and draw his gun. When Mary turned back around, Khalil fired.
The shot landed in her abdomen. She bent over and clutched at her stomach, yelled something inaudible in the chaos. Khalil and Baraath sprinted toward the stone arch that led out of the fortress, back toward the dock. They moved like the field soldiers they were, nimbly ducking and dodging the hail of bullets. In seconds, they had slipped away.
When Mary stood up again, her expression was one of madness. And there, square within her sights, was Charlie.
She couldn’t do it. So, instead, Amanda shot him in the knee. The man screamed in pain. Bram emerged from the trees, pinning the woman’s hands behind her back. He shoved her to the ground alongside her partner. Breathing heavily, Bram said: “They made us.”
“It’s dark. They could barely see our faces.”
“Doesn’t matter. Too risky.” There was a bloody scratch across his cheek. The woman had fought hard. Bram stared at her with pure hatred. “We let them live, the Russians will know exactly what happened tonight.”
“And you think if they find these two dead, they won’t put it together?”
“Too risky,” he snapped. He began to raise his gun, but Amanda grabbed the barrel.
No, she thought. This isn’t how it ends.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop. That’s a direct order.”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Listen to me. Go get the first aid kit.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We’re going to clean and tourniquet these wounds, then we’re going to tie them up and gag them. By the time anyone finds them, we’ll be long gone. Do you speak English?” she said to the man and woman. After a beat, the woman gave the barest twitch. “Good. So you heard what I just said. My partner is about to stand up. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you both in the head. Understood?”
Mary raised her gun and aimed right at him. And here he was, paralyzed again. Charlie felt a vague sense of absurdity. Really? Again? Had he learned nothing? But he didn’t have the strength to run, to move, to fight. So maybe this was good. He was going to die. Maybe he deserved to die.
With one hand Mary held her bleeding stomach. With the other she held the gun. Her finger was on the trigger, and her finger was squeezing the trigger, and—
And Charlie’s head snapped back, falling, shattering the glazed crust of snow. His vision filled with darkness. A total darkness, on the inside rather than outside. He no longer had eyes, because to have eyes implied the ability to open those eyes. And even if he could open his eyes, he understood that this darkness wouldn’t vanish. It was thick and immovable. It was a limb-sucking mud, tugging him closer to the surface of the earth, to the primordial warmth that lay beneath this frozen snow. It wasn’t so bad, actually. For the first time in days (in weeks? in years?), his mind was quiet. He couldn’t move, but if immobility was the price of such peaceful silence, maybe it was okay.
It lasted for one second, two seconds, three seconds. Possibly longer.
And then a glimmer. A thin gold interruption to the black. The gold blossomed, beautiful and menacing, like barbed wire strung across the ceiling of his eyelids. Oh. He had eyelids again. If he wanted to, he could open them. His ears were working, too. He heard the night above him, full of gunfire. He was pinned to the ground. He felt pressure, but not pain. He tried to move, and discovered the body atop him. He lifted his head slightly. “Hacker,” he grunted. “Hacker. Come on. Get up.”
His movement caused snow to slip down the back of his collar. Cold water trickled down his neck. Hacker’s weight was making it hard to breathe. Charlie struggled for several seconds, and finally, with a heave, he managed to shift Hacker enough to sit up.
The starry sky and the moonlight. Glistening white snow pitted with blood. Three Russians slumped lifeless against the stone wall. Awad’s skinny form, his glassy eyes. Policemen sprawled across the snow, groaning in pain, moving gingerly, or not moving at all. In the middle of the courtyard, the crumpled form of a woman.
The two surviving Russians were running toward her, returning fire from the surviving police. One of them kept firing while the other bent down and lifted Mary into his arms. Her head lolled back, her body limp and light as a rag doll.
Seppanen, blood gushing from his forehead, was leading the charge after the Russians, yelling wildly, squeezing off shot after shot. The Russians were outnumbered. But the air, by now, was clouded with gunpowder. Ears were ringing. Eyes were stinging from sweat and blood. It was hard to see.
They were getting away.
That was the last thing Charlie saw.
When the boat finally pulled away from shore, Semonov and Chiara were in mute shock. Bram wasn’t speaking, either. He gunned the engine with angry abandon, taking the waves at hard angles, sending cold spray over the bow.
Amanda sat alone, her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands.
It was late. The Russians had been bleeding badly from the gunshots, and the care she had taken in binding those wounds had cost them valuable time. The boat wouldn’t make it back to Helsinki before dawn. So they would have to return to the island near Primorsk, to set up camp again, to wait through the day for the next nightfall.
Another twenty hours in Russian waters, during which anything might happen.
When Charlie woke up in the hospital in Helsinki, his head was dense with pain. An IV was taped to the vein in his left arm. He was surrounded by thin white curtains. He tried to make a noise, but his throat was too dry.
Anyway, no one could hear him. Beyond the curtain lay the rest of the emergency room. Doctors and nurses shouting for backup, sprinting patients toward surgery, applying paddles to chests. Charlie tried to sit up, but the pain tore through his head. He leaned over the railing of the bed and vomited.
A minute later, a nurse whipped the curtain open. She noticed the vomit and disappeared, reappearing with a cup of ice chips and a metal basin. She pointed at Charlie’s mouth, placed the basin on his lap. He couldn’t remember a word of Finnish. He said raspily: “Hacker. Benjamin Hacker? Hacker?”
She shook her head, uncomprehending. A janitor came to mop up the mess.
He lay back. His vision was blurry. It was easier to keep his eyes closed, to stop fighting the pain, to slip back inside this relentless skull pressure. He must have slept, because, later, he was aware of waking up. The noisy chaos had subsided into regular beeps and low murmurs. And there, at the foot of his bed, staring at him, was the station chief.
“Seven people dead,” Jack said. “Ten if you count the Russians. Seven people dead and six more in critical condition.” Charlie swallowed, opened his mouth, but Jack held up his hand. “Don’t talk right now. They tell me you have a concussion. We’ll get into it later. Jesus Christ, Cole. What did I just say? Stop fucking trying to fucking talk.”
Charlie ignored him. “Hacker?” he croaked. “Hacker?”
Jack jerked his head. One short, final, unmistakable motion.
They set up camp in the same place, in the clearing deep within the island forest. Dawn was approaching. The air was cold. Chiara was wrapped in an aluminum heat blanket, but she couldn’t stop shivering. When Semonov asked if they could build a fire, Amanda shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The smoke is too risky. But I’ll make us some coffee.”
A few minutes later, with the help of a butane stove, Amanda handed each of them a small metal cup of coffee. Then she poured a third cup for Bram, who was leaning against a distant tree, ostensibly guarding the camp. She stood next to him, gazing in the same direction.
After a minute, Bram said: “Did I ever tell you about Jalalabad?”
She shook her head.
“My buddy and I were headed back to base. We passed this cute kid. Eight, maybe nine years old. It was a market day. The square was crowded. I turned around and my buddy was a dozen yards back, squatting down, talking to the kid. But the kid was wearing a vest.”
Her heart thumped. “Jesus,” she said.
“I know this isn’t Afghanistan.” He closed his eyes. “But sometimes everything feels like Afghanistan.”
In the clearing Semonov and Chiara sat huddled on a log, her head tilted on his shoulder. Eventually Amanda drew a breath and said: “Did I ever tell you about my friend Jakob?”
Now Bram shook his head.
“I met him in Moscow, in my twenties. I’d been traveling, and I’d been drinking a lot, and I was kind of lost, but then I met Jakob, and I decided to stay. He was a good friend. A good influence. He was a dissident, and he was so smart, and he was so brave. I was happy in Moscow. I said, ‘Maybe I’ll even move here.’ But Jakob said, ‘No. No, Amanda. This isn’t the place for you. You have to figure out what you want to do with your life.’ ”
How strange to be talking about Jakob. How unfamiliar his name was in her mouth.
“I guess I knew he was right, because that’s when I was starting to realize that I wanted to do this. Apply to the agency, I mean. I dreaded telling him. The FSB made his life hell. He didn’t think highly of the CIA, either. So I said to him, ‘I know what you’re thinking. That they’re a bunch of heartless murderers.’ And Jakob was quiet for a while, then he said: ‘You can live your life any way you like, Amanda. But if you don’t want to be heartless, then don’t be heartless.’ ”
After a stretch of silence, Bram said: “What happened to Jakob?”
She shook her head. From this, Bram seemed to understand. The whole story was too much for her to speak aloud—the midnight arrest, the slow starvation in a prison cell—but he could see the outline. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
There was a bird’s warbling melody, and the soft rush of wind through tall pines. There was the sense of being her forty-one-year-old self, here on this island, and also of being her twenty-two-year-old self, there in Moscow, reeling in the hours after Jakob’s arrest. Jakob’s other friends were devastated, too—but they weren’t shocked, they weren’t scared, because this kind of loss ran in their blood. But she was scared. So she left. And often it felt like everything that had happened in the nineteen years since was an attempt to repair that leaving.
She looked over at Bram. His head was leaning back against the tree, his gaze tilted up to the sky. The branches made a moving pattern against the translucent dawn. She settled back against her tree and did the same. They would never talk about what had happened on the beach, but they had said what needed saying.