Pia Sabel watched players practicing on a summer afternoon in Washington, DC. Her phone buzzed in her hand. She sent the call to voicemail without a glance.
She felt the longing she so often fought. She wanted to be back on the grass, chasing a ball, pushing past defenders to send in a cross to her forward. At twenty-six, she could easily play for another ten years. Life had been simpler when she played for her country in the Olympics and World Cup. The rules were clear; the skills were practiced, the players civil. At least, some players.
Pia smiled and let her mind wander back to the first foul language that ever assaulted her young ears. Playing for her future high school while still in sixth grade, she’d tried to weave around the other team’s sweeper, who was a slower but massive senior. A hip check from the girl sent Pia sliding across the grass on her butt. “Don’t come back,” the defender yelled. “Ya fuckin’ punk.”
Pia came right back—only to be knocked on her ass again. Then a third time. And a fourth. On the fifth, she nutmegged the senior, leapt the girl’s outstretched leg and launched the ball over the keeper’s reaching glove and into the upper corner.
That was the language she preferred: actions over words.
The executive office she’d left an hour earlier was a foreign land to her. It was all words: analyses, reports, synergies, metrics, excuses, results—words, words, words. Business is a game of lies and secrets and half-truths and circumstances. Soccer is a game of actions: attempts, successes, and failures.
Her adopted father, Alan Sabel, had built an international conglomerate that ranged from technology and satellites to security and finance. Money poured out of the company coffers and into her hands like an overflowing fountain. She had no idea what to do with it. All it meant to her was the chance to improve a few lives. Today was one of those chances. She intended to block out the business world and relive her passion for just a few minutes. On the field before her, the inner-city team she sponsored played a practice game. Her heart ran with them.
Charnay, center mid, struggled to get ahead of the competition. Tired and angry, she committed foul after foul.
Pia kicked off her business flats and ran onto the grass in her pantsuit. She pulled up to Charnay’s shoulder. “Stop trying to score. They know you’re the power on the field. They’re double-teaming you. Keep the ball, draw the defenders, and pass when your teammates are open. Play only for name on the front of your jersey, not the back.”
The ball came to Charnay. Pia grabbed her shoulder as the high school senior began to run.
“Don’t look at the goal—look at your options.” Pia pointed left and right where the opposing team’s players ran. “Who’s open?” Then in a whisper. “Fake, and when she lunges, fake a second time, so her backup also lunges. Look left, then pass to the right.”
Charnay did precisely what the retired star of the national team told her. She turned upfield, dribbling into a row of defenders who crowded around her. Just before they closed her down, she passed to her wide-open midfielder.
Pia admired her work for a moment as the action moved to the other end of the pitch. It made her wonder if her boyfriend’s children—since he’d suddenly acquired a family—would play soccer. But then, what did she know about toddlers? Or, more to the point, was Stefan still her boyfriend?
Pia sighed at the question and jogged back to the sidelines.
Agent Miguel waited for her with a stern look. The tall Navajo handed her a phone.
Halfway into the first syllable of Pia’s greeting, Bianca Dominguez interrupted her. “A man named Pozdeeva has been frantic to get hold of you, flaca. Something just came up, and I think you should meet him. Our people who monitor passport control for the NSA picked up Pozdeeva’s arrival in DC. He’s a Russian national. Several FSB officers on that same flight turned around and immediately flew back to Moscow.”
Pia watched as Charnay repeated her lesson. Again, she drew three defenders and crossed to her forward. “Sounds like spy stuff. Why would I be involved?”
“I don’t know.” Bianca lowered her voice to scolding-mode. “But your assistant says you’ve been ignoring calls from Director Shikowitz all afternoon.”
Ignoring the FBI director was not a good thing. Especially since he had been a lifetime friend of her father.
“Do you know what he wants?” Pia asked.
“Something about Pozdeeva.” Bianca hesitated. “By the way, I told Mr. Pozdeeva where to find you. I figured you and Miguel could handle him if he turns out to be a nutcase.”
Pia thanked her and clicked off. As she started to dial Shikowitz, a voice shouted from the street. Miguel planted his feet and faced the man running across the grass.
The figure staggered more than ran. He called out Pia’s name and dropped an overcoat and trudged a few more steps. Miguel and Pia exchanged a glance. The man was now thirty yards away, his arms stretching to reach them. He shouted something unintelligible, then fell.
Pia ran to offer aid. Miguel tracked slightly behind. As she approached, the man rose to his hands and knees. He pulled something from his pocket, tossed it on the grass, then threw up pink-and-yellow bile.
Instinctively cautious about his condition, Pia slowed and stopped two feet away. “What’s wrong?”
“They kill me.” The man’s Russian accent was thick. He barfed more. “In the … tashnit.”
The man rolled on his back and thumbed at his pool of lunch slowly sinking into the grass.
“What is tashnit?” Pia looked at Miguel, who was busy dialing 911. “What happened? How can I help you?”
“No help. Too late.” He coughed uncontrollably. “They kill me. Kaliningrad.”
“An ambulance is on the way. Hang in there. Who killed you?”
The man spluttered, “Job fifteen…verses fifteen and sixteen.”
Screeching tires on the street drew her attention. Eight men jumped from two plain sedans and ran toward them, shouting over each other.
“Are you Pozdeeva?” She knelt next to the man.
He ran his fingers through his thin, black hair and pulled out a shocking handful. “Poisoned. Like … like Litvinenko.”
His eyes rolled back in his head.
A mass of men in dark suits crowded around them. “FBI. Stand back.”
“Wait a second!” Pia pushed her shoulder into one of the agents. “He was trying to talk to me.”
“We’ve got this under control, ma’am. This is an international incident. Step away. Now.”
He and another man politely pushed her back.
Pia finished dialing her call and spoke in a loud voice. “Director Shikowitz, this is Pia Sabel. I’m sorry I couldn’t take your call earlier. Several of your men are here along with the man I think is Pozdeeva.”
The FBI agents stopped what they were doing and faced her.
“Pozdeeva is a Russian officer trying to defect,” Shikowtiz said. “It sounds like they got to him. Let me speak to an agent.”
Pia handed the phone to the nearest Feeb. After the director spoke to him, the tight circle opened wide enough to let her in. One agent held Pozdeeva’s head up and gently poured water into his mouth.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Pozdeeva?” Pia knelt again, her phone on speaker for the director. She examined his cold, clammy skin. His lips looked frozen despite the summer heat. More clumps of hair fell as the agent holding him up adjusted his grip.
“Radiation.” Pozdeeva opened his eyes. “In my drink. I was … not careful.” His head lolled. He tried to raise his hand to Pia’s face. It fell into his lap. “You remember me?”
She wanted to help him, remember him, cure him, but the threat of radioactivity froze her in place. Pia tried to remember his face—round and pleasant, the far end of middle-age—but came up with nothing. She shook her head sadly.
“Job.” He coughed again, deep and horrible, ending with a spit of blood. “FSB. FBI. CIA. Don’t …”
He puked again, this time on the knees of an agent. Everyone but Pia stepped back.
“You remember …” He gasped for air and reached for Pia’s hand. “You will love your neighbor as yourself.”
He spasmed and shook. The life blinked out of his eyes. Black bile oozed from his mouth.
A siren preceded the ambulance. No one moved from the dead man. They stood and stared at his form while the paramedics grabbed their gear and ran to join them.
The huddled group backed up to give the first responders access.
An agent turned to Pia. “Did he give you anything?”
“No. He was puking his guts out. I didn’t get too close.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“All he got out was that they killed him.”
“What did he mean?” The agent leaned into her personal space.
“I have no idea.” Pia planted a hand on the agent’s chest and pushed him back a foot.
“Why did he tell you to love your neighbor?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“What’s your guess?”
“He’s religious, maybe? Jesus said to love your neighbor was the second most important of the Ten Commandments.”
The agent squinted and took a moment to think. “You sure he didn’t give you anything?”
“One hundred percent.” Pia held her hands out as if to invite a pat-down.
She could see the gears working in his head: did he want to search a friend of the director, or take her word for it? He said goodbye and turned away.
The agents went through Pozdeeva’s pockets and bagged everything. Then they returned to their car and drove off. The ambulance crew packed the body on a gurney and wheeled him back to their ambulance and roared away.
Pia pulled up a translator app on her phone and thumbed in a few phonetic spellings of tashnit until one of them made sense.
A respectful distance behind them, the practice squad had lined up to watch the commotion. They stared at the empty place where Pozdeeva died.
“Charnay,” Pia called over her shoulder, “would you bring me your water, please?”
A moment later, the midfielder handed her a one-gallon Bubba Keg. Pia opened the spout and poured water over a specific place in the puke. A shiny piece of silver and black emerged.
A large USB drive.