The Seventh Floor, page 1
Again for Abby, my love
And for Miles, Leo, and Mabel
The building doesn’t love you back.
—CIA proverb
PART I
BREACH
1
MOSCOW PRESENT DAY
The Russian’s suicide pen, a montblanc, was upstairs. Should have kept it down here, he scolded himself, even with Alyona around. If he was right about these cars, there was precious little time. He slid shut the drawer on his office desk and gently tipped Alyona from his knee.
“Up,” she insisted. “Up, up, up.”
Her hands were extended, fingers flapping into palms, but he was distracted by the monitors. Alyona mashed her face into his thigh with a squeal, imprinting his pant leg with sticky red stains. He looked down in panic, only to realize the stains were strawberry jam, which he himself had slathered on her breakfast toast. Normally this would have made him furious. Not now. He tickled her belly, and she laughed so hard she curled up around his feet in giggles. “Go find your mother, my sweet,” he said warmly, yet with firm undertones Alyona could not miss. The toddler scampered off, running too fast, as always, nearly catching her head on the doorframe on the way out. He heard her dash out toward the kitchen, where a teakettle had begun whistling.
Back to the camera feeds: The two black cars had come to a stop in the drive. No government plates, but he knew. On the lead car he saw the telltale triangle of dirt smeared on the top right corner of the rear passenger window. The brushes at the Lubyanka’s motor pool car wash did not reach that spot.
The Russian did not once consider going with them; he’d made up his mind on the matter long ago. But why had they given him this choice? They should have a rope in my mouth by now, he thought. His arms should be pinned to his sides, shirt and pants off, rough hands searching the lapel and pockets. And yet . . .
He stared at the jam Alyona had deposited on his pants leg. He dredged his finger through it and brought a sickly sweet dollop to his tongue.
Ten a.m. A slow Saturday morning at his dacha. He’d missed his ritual morning walk because he and Vera had stayed up too late, drunk too much, and, consequently, slept too late. The men outside were growing impatient since he hadn’t come out, he sensed. They’d driven up to the house along the drive tracing his normal path into the woods, their cigarette smoke seeping through cracked-open windows. For a few seconds the Russian watched the cars idling outside, trying to read the energy. And what he felt, he did not like.
“Vera,” he called. “I have visitors. Take Alyona into the garden to pick strawberries. We might have some with lunch.”
Vera appeared in the office doorway, her gaze settling immediately on the screens. “Is this about Athens?” she said, an edge in her voice, as Alyona tumbled in behind her. “Because it would be decent of them to finally explain why they asked you to come home so quickly.”
“I don’t know. Take Alyona outside,” he commanded.
“We’d just had Alyona all set in her school, and—”
“Outside,” he snapped. On the screens, five men had emerged from the cars. She looked at him worriedly. With a small sigh, he stood up and shooed her out with a peck on the cheek, whispering, “I’ll come get you when they’re gone.” Then he picked up Alyona and swung her around and buried his face in her sweet hair, all thick and lustrous again after the treatments, and he remembered why he had done what he had done. He took one more long sniff and kissed her head. He had no regrets. He’d make the trade again. He’d make the trade a thousand times.
He set her down. “I love you, my klubnichka,” he said.
“I’m not a strawberry, Papa!” She giggled, wagging her finger at him with a riotous smile.
Alyona followed her mother through the kitchen and outside into the garden. His lip quivered at the slam of the door. Alyona could not shut doors any other way.
The first knocks hit the front door. He flung open the lower drawer of the office desk. Ripping out the false bottom, he found the large envelope stuffed with smaller ones. One envelope held a letter for Vera. It was a formality, loveless, but kind, even generous, he’d like to think. Twenty envelopes were addressed to Alyona, bound together with a rubber band and labeled with a note bearing the following instructions: She is to open one on each birthday from her fourth through her eighteenth, and then when she turns twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty. Another envelope bore the name of his grown son and contained a letter written with as much love as his disappointment could manage. Hidden inside the folds of that letter was another, smaller envelope addressed to an apartment in Athens and affixed with an abundance of postage. Please drop the other letter in the mail for me, he had scrawled in a postscript to his son.
The knocks, which had grown louder as he reviewed the letters, now stopped. On the monitors he saw one of the men start working on the lock.
In the bathroom, the Russian jimmied the collection into Vera’s makeup bag. In his panic he worried the letters would be discovered in the inevitable and painstaking search to come. Why had he not seen to sewing them into Alyona’s clothing—perhaps a jacket—as he knew he should? But time was up: the front door squeaked open as he huffed upstairs to the spare bedroom. He sat at the old dusty desk, listened to the footfalls in the foyer, the hushed murmurs, the sounds of men padding up the stairs. For a fluttering moment he wondered how he’d been made. He could not know. He doubted the Americans ever would.
The Russian threw open the desk drawer. Picked up the Montblanc. “My daughter is here, you animals,” he bellowed in the direction of the stairs. “For god’s sake.”
A young heavy, his hair shaved close on the sides like a punk idiot, burst into the room. A second man followed close behind. Their eyes widened at the sight of the pen.
“Shame on you boys,” he said. Slipping the pen into his mouth, the Russian bit down into the barrel, sinking his teeth into the cyanide capsule snuggled inside. He heard Jack’s words, from long-ago Bogota: Three breaths, my friend, cup your hands over your face.
He did, taking the air in gulps: One, two. On the third they were over the desk and on him, crashing into the wall, cursing, shouting, grasping. Rolling him over, one of the men unfastened the Montblanc from his mouth. The Russian was already dead.
2
SINGAPORE
In the moment, Sam Joseph did not dwell on the awful significance of Golikov’s words, the blood that was sure to be spilled, the lives that would soon be wrecked on their account. That was all for later.
He first had to memorize them. And his recall had to be perfect, precisely as the message had crossed Golikov’s lips. Sam was using his childhood bedroom as a memory palace, stashing each word, in order, into different colorful storage bins, the ones under the bed where he’d kept the Lego. But to commit the message to memory, he had to be certain he’d heard it. And even though Golikov was seated next to him at the baccarat table, he was having one hell of a time with that.
The two subminiature strontium-powered mics had—shocker—performed beautifully at Langley, only to malfunction upon arrival in Singapore. So he had no backup. The analyst’s profile on Golikov had indicated that he spoke English fluently. Not true. He’d been forced into a meet on a casino floor, the type of camera-clotted surveillance environment that was precisely the opposite of where you’d like to meet a Russian. And the casino floor plans used to choreograph this bren—a brief encounter—had specified that the high-limit baccarat rooms were tucked well off the casino floor, and were therefore, in the estimation of the cable he’d written, all but certain to be appropriately quiet. Also false. Wildly, maddeningly false. A bank of high-limit slots just off the bacc room was jangling with the subtlety of a suit of armor pitched down the stairs. And it was Friday, two a.m., at the Sands: the tables were cheek to cheek. This was the emulsifying, brain-swirling din favored by the casinos, and, because he considered casinos to be something of a second home, by Sam Joseph himself. At least when he was gaming on his own dime. But now the racket was endangering his op, to say nothing of the cameras, and there was precious little margin to exploit.
He asked Golikov to say it once more. This time the Russian’s tone was still abraded with the texture of sandpaper and broken glass, but the gruff English had thankfully slowed to an annoyed crawl. Sam smiled, as if the Russian had shared a joke, and then leaned away from Golikov to bank the message while examining his cards. He had ten thousand dollars of taxpayer money in the pot. On this matter, the warnings from DO Finance had been stern, if ultimately toothless: He was required to pay attention, and instructed to lose as little money as possible. Under the lip of the table, Sam’s left hand placed his key card, labeled with his room number, in the Russian’s lap. At the same moment his right hand tossed his cards to the dealer and he whispered: “Two hours.”
He wouldn’t have executed the pass if he’d thought he’d been made; but for a flickering moment, as the Russian deposited the card in his pocket, uncertainty overtook Sam, and he wondered if someone was watching.
Golikov bet player on the hand, and lost. He bent his cards and flung them across the felt lawn of the table and tossed back two healthy fingers of scotch. “Enough,” he said, his hand slicing the air. “Done.”
He tipped the dealer, patted his hands on the table, and stood. With friendly nods and good-luck wishes to Sam and the other players, he stalked off. Sam caught Golikov’s eyes bouncing around the room. Appropriately afraid, Sam thought. Mark in his favor. Only the worst mental cases—the sociopaths an
Baccarat was not Sam’s game: it was all superstition, no skill. He’d already lost fifty thousand dollars of U.S. taxpayer money in sixteen minutes. The next few hands would put his remaining twenty thousand in play. In that instant, he was far more concerned with the Finance paperwork than he was with the implications of what Boris Golikov had just shared.
Over the next ten minutes Sam worked himself back up the hole: down a mere thirty thousand dollars. Then, with a stingy tip to the dealer, one he could justify operationally to the nags in Finance, he took his leave. He exited the high-limit room onto the main casino floor, an expansive atrium swelling with tables overhung by soaring gold sculptures, and humming with energy.
Sam scanned for obvious heavies or any compatriots from the Russian’s trade delegation, but it was so damn busy it was impossible to know if the opposition had him or Golikov made. And he didn’t think there was a way to change that. He bought a coffee and strolled through the casino. He made a few stops: bathroom, blackjack table for a few hands, one of the bars.
Nothing amiss—he was feeling good, despite what the Russian had told him. That still hadn’t sunk in, and, further, Sam was operational, ticking through a tightly scripted plan built with two goals in mind: Protect the agent, and collect the intel. Analyzing the intel was someone else’s job, and his mind was already overcrowded, running hot. There was space only for the air pressure of the moment, and what it meant for the weather of the op. Gin and tonic in hand—untouched—he went upstairs to his room, where he pitched the drink into the sink. The room service tray went into the hall; DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob; a napkin tucked under the door. In the brief seconds of indirect discussion they’d managed at the tables, Sam had proposed this as the safety signal. All clear. He shut the door, careful to keep the napkin in place, peeking out.
From a compartment hidden in the side of his suitcase, he removed a thin pouch lined with a material that resembled aluminum foil. Unzipping it, he thumbed the cash and set the pouch on the cabinet near the television. One hundred thousand dollars: the down payment authorized if the Russian’s information was gold. Wellspring of another war with Finance. On the coffee table he arranged a bottle of Russian Standard, two glasses, and a spread: olives, nuts, chips, popcorn. He tossed the pens and notebooks into the desk drawer. No notes during the session, CIA had decided. Might put Golikov over the edge. And if the Russian’s trying to sell us what I suspect, the Chief had said, guy’s gonna be pretty spooked already.
Sam settled in to wait, and he was bad at waiting. He knew it, and so had the Performance Review Board, though they’d written it up using slightly different words (struggles with impulse control). His foot was tapping the carpet at a solid clip. He had nearly picked the popcorn bowl clean, then he had finished it, setting the bowl in the closet, out of sight, to avoid the appearance that he’d started the meal before his guest. He took up a sentry position at the desk, where the food was well out of reach.
An hour later Sam stood upright at the click of the key card and the clack of the handle. Two men he did not recognize entered the room. They wore suits. Their eyes darted around, searching for threats: other people, weapons, items he might turn into weapons. They moved fluidly, like men who entered other people’s rooms with some regularity. Sam had edged back toward the desk, with its lampstand made of marble.
“Get out of my room,” Sam said, with another half step toward the lamp.
“You are Samuel Joseph,” the blond-haired one said in heavily accented English.
Not a question. But it answered Sam’s: They were Russians. He considered which man to start with. Both were about the same height and build. He scanned both sets of eyes, looking for weakness, and decided: the one with dark hair.
But the dark-haired man drew a pistol fitted with a suppressor and pointed it at Sam. “You move, I kill you. I no hesitate. Sit down, Samuel Joseph.”
Sam did, heart in his throat. They had doubtless used the room key he’d passed the Russian at the table. If they’d made Golikov, what did they need with him?
“Much vodka for one,” said the blond-haired guy, lifting the full bottle of Standard to nail the point. “For one American, I think too much.” He eased into the chair across from Sam. Still standing, the dark-haired guy moved behind him. He heard the zipper of his suitcase. The heaping of clothes and shoes across the floor.
“Drinking problem,” Sam said, twisting his neck for a look at what the guy was doing. He was greeted by the unfriendly end of the dark-haired guy’s pistol, which jerked: Turn around.
The blond-haired guy snapped his fingers. “You look here. Otherwise, mess you up.”
“I think you’re in the wrong room,” Sam said.
“Why you talk to Boris Golikov?” The second whir of a zipper meant the one with dark hair had found the money pouch. Sam watched Blondie’s eyes widen slightly, then his hand beckoned for the cash, which he flopped on the table. “This for Boris?”
“This is a casino,” Sam said. “It’s for gambling. And who the hell is Boris?”
“What Boris say to you at tables?”
“Who is Boris?” Sam said.
“Look, we not patient guys,” Blondie said. “You see us, you know. You work for CIA. Also we know this. And we know Boris wanna hava chat. Now, you sit by Boris tonight. We see this. And here’s thing. We gotta know what he say. Gotta know. You tell us what he say, tell us full, and we walk out, clean and dandy.” Here, hands were wiped together for emphasis. “But you play dumbass and we got some problems. Okay?”
“Boris is the Russian who was at my table?” Sam asked. “Guy who got cleaned out, that right? I’ve got no idea why you’re in my room or who he is. Now get out.”
“Samuel Joseph, now, don’t play dumbass. Tell us now what Boris say to you.”
“I don’t know your Boris,” Sam said.
Blondie glanced right through him, at his partner, and Sam knew the look—he’d seen it on agents, on security investigators, on players across a poker table. A man who’d made a call. Blondie picked up one of the snack bowls, lofting it toward the ceiling.
Humans tend to keep an eye on objects thrown into the air.
Watching the nuts spill across the floor as if in a trance, Sam sensed a flash of movement behind him. Felt a prick in his shoulder. Heat flooded his body and limbs. When the warmth reached his brain, his head began to feel quite heavy, as if his neck were unsuitable for support. Then Sam was slumping forward, crashing into the bottle of vodka.
3
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Artemis Aphrodite Procter was squinting into the reflection of the rising sun shimmering orange across the surface of her beer. She slapped her card onto the bar with instructions to keep the tab open, collected her glass, and eased into her usual booth to wait for Theo. Procter was a regular at the Vienna Inn, but she was typically a night owl, and though she was also a well-known reprobate, this was her first time ordering booze during the breakfast rush, hand to God. Half the glass went down in the first gulp, the remainder at the jangle of Theo Monk pushing open the door. When her old friend reached the table, she hoisted her empty with a shake. “My tab’s open.”
Theo squinted into the glass and sniffed it with a wry smile. Returning with two, he wheezed into the booth, sliding one across to Procter. He thumbed the fabric on her rumpled tweed blazer, which she’d been wearing yesterday. “Walk of shame?”
“I wish. Left the office an hour ago.”
Regarding the sunrise beers with disapproval, a waiter unknown to Procter deposited menus on the table. Without picking one up, Theo ordered toast, bacon, and eggs over easy. “I’m drinking my breakfast,” Procter said, and shoved the menus to the table’s edge.
“Still no word from Singapore?” Theo asked, after the waiter was out of earshot.
“Radio silence. Station’s working their stringers at the Sands.”
“Plenty of explanations.”
“All bad.”
Theo’s silence signaled his agreement. He turned his gaze out the window and put back a good deal of his beer. She’d been drinking with Theo on and off and all around the world for about a quarter century. Drink made him a chameleon: chatty or silent, morose or joyful, kind or cruel—he might assume any combination or measure, and occasionally an anarchic blend of them all, during the same drinking session. The silence had become more pronounced in recent years. Their friendship extended back to their Farm days, and over twenty-five years they’d said most that needed saying—and an awful lot that didn’t.
