KESÄRANTA, HELSINKI, FINLAND
Alex and the prime minister sat in the gazebo of the prime minister’s official residence, gazing out at the sparkling waters of the Baltic Sea. A pair of servers had carried their plates and platters of food to them and topped up their wine as they continued their conversation. Prime Minister Rantala seemed to be avoiding answering the question Alex had asked about why Finland’s NATO ambassador had been aboard Aurora.
Instead, she deflected, and posed one of her own. “What did you think of Emmi?” she asked.
“The Supo officer who kidnapped me? She seemed nice. Intelligent.” Then, “Young.”
“Yes, don’t take this the wrong way, Alex, but all women in their twenties appear young compared to us. But we were once that age, too, and only a few short years ago,” she added, taking a sip of wine.
“I liked her. She seemed self-assured.”
“Very,” Sanna agreed. “And do you know why I asked that it be her to go see you in The Hague?”
“I presume because she is related to Valtteri and that she knew both him and Celeste.”
“Yes, and while there are others I could trust to deliver the same message and get you to come here, I thought you might relate better to someone so much like yourself and be less threatened by the request that you come to Finland to speak with me.”
“It wasn’t a request. In fact, quite the opposite.”
“I suppose it wasn’t. Still, you could have declined.”
Could I have? “None of this answers my original question, Madam Prime Minister,” she said.
“Mikko Selänne is a trusted emissary of my government. I wanted to convey important information to the head of Interpol, and I was afraid that doing so via electronic means or intermediaries would not be secure. Such is the nature of eavesdropping measures these days, as you know. A few years ago, an Israeli company created powerful spyware that can be placed in one’s phone without you ever being aware it’s there. Then the user can simply listen in or track your location for whatever illicit means they choose.”
“I’m aware,” said Alex, recalling her brush with such software not so long ago that had been traced to Russian hackers. She bit into a piece of flaky puff pastry. Reindeer? She couldn’t remember what Sanna had said it was.
The prime minister continued. “Finland has a complicated history with Russia. So, although we might have preferred to stay not so much neutral as unaligned, we have been forced to choose to join NATO. We knew in doing so there might be trouble, but with Russia’s unprovoked and illegal war of aggression and genocide against Ukraine, how could we not? Sergachev is worse than a tyrant—he is an animal. There is a revanchist movement underway in Russia, a rebirth of Sovietism, irrespective of what they call it. He strives to reunite the former members of the Soviet Union into a grandiose New Russian Empire, but he and the Russian Federal Assembly do not take into account that none of the former republics—save for perhaps his puppet state Belarus—is agreeable to this in any way. All the others have evolved systems of government that at least pretend at some form of democratic process.”
“But take me back to Mikko Selänne,” Alex cut in. “With respect, Sanna, you haven’t answered my question: Why was he specifically sent to see Celeste and Valtteri?”
“I’m sure you are aware of the many incidents in Finland that have disrupted our electrical grid, threatened our nuclear plants, sank ships in our coastal waters that contaminated our land and sea. We have had civil unrest in our streets like none we have experienced in our history before, much of it precipitated by agitators from outside our country that come in, stir things up, and then leave. All this within the last twelve months or so.”
“And you believe Russia is to blame—that their security forces have set these events in motion, hacked your infrastructure, vandalized ships and equipment?”
“That’s just it, Alex. I don’t.”
“What?” A flaky piece of reindeer fell off her fork on the way to her mouth.
“Are you telling me that the CIA has heard nothing about alternate theories regarding the cause of these disruptions?”
Alex wasn’t sure how much to let on that she knew. She bought some time by setting her plate aside and taking a sip of wine. “To be honest, until the other day, I wasn’t aware of these events at all. As you probably know, Sanna, I’ve only been with the Agency for a short while. Before that, of course, I was with Interpol on a secondment from the FBI.”
Sanna continued. “Mikko was sent to meet with Madame Clicquot to share our concerns—mine and our intelligence service’s—that a third party might be responsible. But the citizens of my country are demanding action against Russia, and the media continues to pressure my government into delivering on this blood lust, this thirst for justice or revenge—”
“A fine line for sure,” said Alex.
“So while everyone is out for the head of the Russian autocrat, some of us believe that it might not be him and his minions at all who were responsible for the attacks. And make no mistake—these were attacks. Lives have been lost.”
“Then who is responsible?”
“That’s why I sent Ambassador Selänne—to ask Interpol to open an investigation. Quietly, if necessary. On the surface, we and our allies would continue to raise the matter at the United Nations and with NATO, including at the summit that will take place here in Helsinki in a few days. Supo was gathering information to share with its sister intelligence and security agencies as well as Interpol. But the attack on the ship you were aboard happened before an official investigation—or any, really—could begin. I believe this was intentionally done to prevent any such thing from happening. You were just as much a target as Madame Clicquot or Valtteri Lehtonen.”
“Me?” Alex’s eyes grew wide at the revelation. The notion of being someone’s target was frightening, but it wasn’t the first time she had been singled out this way. Still, it was unsettling, and she reached for her glass of wine.
“Your reputation precedes you, Alex. Merely by being aboard that ship at the same time as Celeste and Valtteri, when an emissary of my government was requesting assistance from Interpol, was cause enough to paint a target on your back, too. Lucky for you, and much less so for the attackers, they underestimated you, as I understand many have done before.”
“Story of my life. And judging by the office you hold, Excellency,” said Alex, “perhaps yours as well.”
“You have impressed a great many people and angered more than a few, I imagine.”
“Comes with the territory.” Alex put aside her plate and took a sip of wine before continuing. “Madam Prime Minister—”
“Sanna.”
“Sanna, I’m not sure why you brought me here. I flew to The Hague to see Madame Clicquot. And if I’m to be one hundred percent honest, my only objective is to track down those responsible for putting her in the hospital and for killing Valtteri. I’m already guilty of abandoning my responsibilities back home to visit my friend, so I’m not sure I can also be of service to you.”
“Alex, I know more about you than you might think. I spoke with your deputy director before you arrived. I’m quite sure she wasn’t very happy about my perceived interference, and she made it very clear that she wants you back on your assignment. By the way, she wouldn’t elaborate on what that was.”
“Of course not.”
“But you have been provided with some degree of latitude to assist me—to help Finland—as a fellow member of the NATO family. You are in a unique position to do so, having worked with Interpol, the FBI, CIA, and I’m told in other covert, undisclosed assignments as well. That provides you with unique insights and abilities.”
“What can I do to help?”
Alex’s phone vibrated in her pocket. Sanna noticed her flinch and smiled.
“It’s alright. You should get that. It could be important.”
Alex apologized and reached for her phone, worried it could be bad news. In fact, it was a text from Caleb.
Caleb: Just checking in. How is Clicquot?
Alex: Not good.
Caleb: I’m so sorry. Where are you now? Anything I can do?
Alex thought for a moment about how to respond. She wanted to say he should get on a plane and join her, but she didn’t dare signal that she needed his help.
Alex: I’m having lunch with a friend. I’m okay. I’ll fill you in soon.
She tucked her phone back into her pocket.
“Everything okay?” asked the prime minister.
“Everything’s fine. Just someone checking up on me.”
“Where were we?” asked Sanna. “Oh, yes. I was about to tell you how you can help.”
ACCT OFFICE, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
Caleb tossed his phone down on the table next to his plate and shoveled some more mac and cheese into his mouth.
I’m having lunch with a friend.
Street? he wondered.
It could have been anyone, and it shouldn’t have mattered, but it gnawed at him. He told himself it was because she was a teammate, because she should be there with him and the rest of the team. He was concerned about what she did because she was his subordinate, and he was responsible for her, at least from an operational perspective.
But he knew it was more than that. He thought about her more than he should. How could he not? He had lobbied to get her on his team, and in the end, Kadeisha Thomas had cajoled the FBI into releasing her so she could join the Agency. Okay, cajoled them into firing her.
But it was more than that and he knew it, and that scared the crap out of him.
But Street? Seriously? Then he remembered that Street was injured in the attack the other night and was still in the hospital. Good.
He picked up his phone to make another call.
HELSINKI, FINLAND
She’d have given anything to hear what the two women were discussing while they sat at the bistro table, still sipping their wine, looking neither distressed nor excited.
So bourgeois.
This meeting should have been anticipated. Her colleagues should already have planted listening devices on the prime minister’s property. Or, at the very least, a team could have been deployed on the waters in front of the estate, armed with boom microphones capable of picking up the words being spoken.
Sometimes it was as if the Great Surveillance State forgot that the enemy often lay outside of Russia and not necessarily within the confines of her borders, where they wore the disguise of the ordinary working class, people whose employment and income were insecure and who committed the unforgivable sin of wanting to have more—to be more—than the state allowed them to be.
Special Agent Alex Martel, she thought. I knew one day our paths would cross again, and now here we are.
ACCT OFFICE, FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
Caleb dialed Deputy Director Thomas’s number. She answered and, without even a hello, said, “Your protégée has had an interesting twenty-four hours. But then, I suspect that’s just her normal every day.”
Caleb replied, “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I haven’t spoken to her.” Technically, he wasn’t lying. Text messages don’t count.
“Maybe you should change that, Copeland. She’s still on your team.”
“I’m aware. I texted her a few minutes ago. I’ll give her a call.”
“Do that. I’ve authorized her to assist the Finnish prime minister with an inquiry.”
“You what?”
“Is your phone secure?”
He checked for the small indicator at the top of his phone’s display. “It’s in secure mode, ma’am.”
“The Finns were chasing down an angle you should be aware of. The PM doesn’t buy the whole Russia-as-bad-guy story.”
“Oh?”
“And some other developments came to light. Copeland?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Alex is hanging out there with no cover. She has no official Agency protection. She’s not on official government business in Finland. So we can’t afford to get tangled up in any diplomatic wrangling, and we can’t make her official right now, either. There are too many eyes on this. The Russians get access to our embassy staff rosters all the time to screen Agency assets in-country, just as we do their SVR and GRU staff. So she’s by herself, Copeland. Understand?”
“Understood, ma’am.”
Alex was a big girl and she’d made her own bed by choosing to go on her own to see her old boss in The Hague. And now she was in Finland, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map without a lot of help. Being an intelligence officer with nonofficial cover was about the most dangerous role she could have in a foreign country, and it could land her in some serious jeopardy.
“Don’t get me wrong, though,” she continued. “As much as I wouldn’t mind seeing your girl suffer the consequences of her choices, now’s not the time.”
Your girl.
“Yes, ma’am.”