“You fucking snapped, or maybe you were always a piece of shit. Don’t matter.
Every day you live is a day when our lives are in danger.”
“That’s what they told you?”
“It’s the truth,” she spat. Another writhing attempt to throw him off her passed
through her body like a powerful shudder. “Shit,” she said. “At least you don’t
have bad breath. I should be grateful for that, huh? So what’s on the agenda?
You gonna kill me, or is it just gonna be a lot of dry humping?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “A sharp cookie like you—you believe
everything they tell you?” He grunted. “No shame in it. I did once.” Their
foreheads were still pressed together, nose to nose, mouth to mouth: the strange
and unsettling intimacy of lethal combatants.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You got another story? I’m listening. Can’t do
anything else.” But she made another convulsive effort to shake him.
“Try this on. I was set up. I served in Consular Operations for over two
decades. Look, you seem to know a lot about me. Ask yourself if what they’ve
told you about me really fits the picture.”
She said nothing for a moment. “Give me something real,” she said. “If you
didn’t do what they say you did, give me something to show you’re telling me the
truth. I realize I’m not in any position to negotiate. I just want to know.”
For the first time, she spoke without hostility or japery. Was it something in
his own voice that gave her pause, that made her wonder if he was the villain
she’d been told he was?
He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding next to hers: again, an odd, unwanted
intimacy. He felt her relax beneath him.
“OK,” she said. “Get offa me. I ain’t gonna rear, ain’t gonna run—I know you’d
get to the rifle first. I’m just going to listen.”
He made sure her body was completely slack and then—a crucial decision, a moment
of trust in the midst of deadly combat—rolled off her in a quick movement. He
had a destination in mind: the Beretta, now nestled under a nearby ash tree. He
grabbed it and stowed it in his front waistband.
Looking wobbly and uncertain, the woman rose to her feet. Then she smiled
coolly. “Is that a gun in your pocket, or—”
“It’s a gun in my pocket,” he said, cutting her off. “Let me tell you something.
I was once like you. A weapon. Aimed and discharged by someone else. I thought I
had an autonomous intelligence, made my own decisions. The truth was otherwise:
I was a weapon in the hands of another.”
“That’s just a bunch of word music as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “I’m into
specifics, not generalities.”
“Fine.” He took a deep breath, dredging up an old memory. “A penetration
identified in Stockholm … ”
He could picture the man now. Blunt, pudgy features, a soft-in-the-middle,
sedentary soul. And scared, so scared. Dark smudges under his eyes spoke of
sleeplessness and exhaustion. Through Janson’s scope, those features formed a
rictus of anxiety; the subject made quiet popping noises with his lips, an
absurd, nervous tic. Why so scared, if this was a typical contact? He had seen
such contacts, men going about their business, making a dead drop, the twentieth
or thirtieth dead drop of the year, with a bored and vacant expression. This
man’s face was different—filled with self-loathing and fear. And when the Swede
turned toward the other man, the putative Russian contact, his face read not
greed or gratitude but repugnance.
“Stockholm,” she said. “May of 1983. You witnessed the subject make contact with
the KGB control, and took him out. For a nonspecialist, it was a pretty neat
shot: from an apartment rooftop to a park bench two blocks away.”
“Stop the tape,” he said. Her knowledge of these things was unnerving. “You’ve
described it as I did in my report. Yet how did I know he was a penetration
agent? I’d been told he was. And the KGB agent? I recognized the face, but that,
too, was a datum I’d been provided with by operations control. What if it were
wrong?”
“You mean he wasn’t KGB.”
“In fact, he was. Sergei Kuzmin was his name. But the man who met with him was
frightened, blackmailed into the meeting. He had no interest in providing the
KGB with anything useful. He was going to try to persuade the man that he had
nothing further to offer, that his diplomatic rank was too low to make him a
valuable asset. He was going to tell him to buzz off, damn the consequences.”
“How do you know?”
“I spoke to his wife. That wasn’t part of my mission instructions.”
“That’s so random, man. And how did you know she spoke the truth?”
“I just did,” he responded, shrugging. It was not a question that a highly
experienced field agent would have to ask. “Tutored intuition, call it. It’s not
a hundred percent reliable—but accurate enough.”
“How come this wasn’t part of your report?”
“Because it wasn’t news to those who designed the mission,” he said coldly. “The
planners had another game in mind. Two objectives, both fulfilled. One, to send
a message to any other member of the diplomatic forces that entanglement with
the enemy could carry a steep price. I was just ringing up the sale.”
“Two objectives, you said. The other?”
“The young Swede had already given dossiers to the KGB. By killing him, we
conveyed the message that the information leak was taken seriously—that valuable
information had been transferred. In fact, it was planted. Carefully designed
disinformation. But it became validated by the man’s blood, and KGB analysts
bought it.”
“So that was a win, too.”
“Yes, within narrowly defined parameters. Kuzmin actually got a promotion out of
the whole thing. Pull the camera back, though, and you ask another question: Did
it matter? The KGB was misled in this particular, but with what ultimate
consequences, if any? And was it worth the man’s life? He had a wife. Had he
lived, they would have had children, probably grandchildren. Decades of
Christmases and glogg and skiing vacations and—” Janson broke off. “Sorry,” he
said. “I didn’t mean to make heavy weather of this. None of it will make much
sense to you, not at your age. But there are instances when your instructions
amount to a web of lies. And in some cases, the person giving you the
instructions is perfectly unaware of that fact. I expect that’s the case here.”
“Jesus,” she said softly. “No, I do understand. I do. You’re telling me they had
you take this guy out—without ever letting you in on the real reasons for the
job.”
“They had me kill Kuzmin’s contact as part of a manipulation. And one of the
people being manipulated was me. What a directive specifies and what a directive
signifies are two different things.”
“Jesus, this is making my head swim worse than any goddamn sucker punch.”
“I don’t mean to confuse you. Just to make you think.”
“Comes to the same thing,” she said. “But why? Why would they target you?”
“You think I haven’t been asking myself that?”
“You were a legend in Consular Operations, especially among the younger people.
You’ve got no idea, Janson. No idea how demoralizing it was when they told us
you’d turned traitor. They’d never do that on a whim.”
“On a whim? No, that’s not how it works. Most people lie to save themselves, or
better themselves, anyway. Maybe they claim credit for an idea that wasn’t
really theirs. Or they shift blame from themselves to another. Or they luck out,
somehow, and let on that the outcome was the result of skill. That’s not the
kind of lie that worries me. The kind of lie that worries me is the ‘noble lie.’
The lie spread for higher purposes. The sacrifice of small men for larger ends.”
He spoke bitterly. “The liars who lie in the interest of the greater good, or
what they decree to be that greater good.”
“Whoa,” she said. She made a whizzing noise, passed a hand over her head like a
discus. “You’re losing me. If somebody’s scapegoating you, they’ve got to have a
good reason.”
“What they believe to be a good reason. A good reason that might strike others
of us as an administrative convenience.”
“Lookit,” she said. “Earlier, you said something about your profile. That
happens to be something I know a lot about. Well, you’re right, now that you say
it. Something about the story doesn’t make sense. Either you weren’t as good as
you were supposed to have been or you’re not as bad as they’re saying you are.”
She took a step closer to him.
“Let me ask you something. Does Lambda have operational authorization from
Whitehall?”
“Wasn’t time to cross the diplomatic t’s. It’s all extraterritorial.”