The Seventh Floor, page 18
“Shit, Petra, I show up unannounced in biker shorts and a ball cap, and you think they sent me?”
“You always were a nasty little one,” she said with a cackle, and flung open the door.
The dogs badgered them for at least ten minutes. Petra would squawk at them in Dutch, Procter would shove them away, but a scrap of peace could not be found until a few squirrels skittered along the pine trunks outside the living room and the dogs focused their energies out the window. Petra made lemonade and laid out a spread of tea cookies on the coffee table and the wiener dogs poached about half before they were swatted and treated to more Dutch profanity, to which they were all quite obviously accustomed, or perhaps deadened.
Pictures of Petra’s dead husband and their foreign adventures filled the tables and walls: Helsinki, Amman, Beirut, Paris, London. She’d become a citizen after marrying Chester. The Dutch usually make such nice things, Theo had said once. But Petra? All the goodwill from the flowers and cheese and fancy wooden shoes nullified by the export of one psychotic molehunter.
The woman wore a black vest over a baggy red sweater dress that swung at the ankles. When the dogs had finally settled, she melted into an easy chair and brought her hands to rest on the pouch of her belly. Procter set her lemonade on a doily and ran her tongue along her teeth to dissolve the grains of sugar. We’ll have a nice cool drink, Petra had insisted, but she’d skimped on the water. Procter’s mouth was a goddamn sandy beach. Squirrels reappeared outside the window and the two women sipped their drinks for a few minutes listening to the dogs go wild.
“Well?” Petra said, crunching on the sugar, after the dogs had calmed down.
“I need your help,” Procter said. “I’ve been thinking about a few things on Singapore. It still bothers me, for the obvious reasons.”
Petra was pulling on her chubby fingers. “Huh,” she said. “Trip down darkened memory lane?”
“That’s about right. You mind traveling with me?”
“Never liked stories with happy endings. So you go right on ahead.”
The sun was about an hour above the horizon. The house was a well of shadows. Procter flicked on a lamp next to the couch. “It took some balls for a Russian team to enter Sam’s hotel room. That’s off brand right there, and we’re not even to the kidnapping, exfil, and prolonged interrogation. I know we had some reports that said it was all a mistake. But why would they go through all that trouble? Take on all that risk? What do you make of it, hand to God?”
“There’s no God, Artemis, just the cold black stillness.”
“All right, hand to the cold black stillness.”
“That Golikov was going to tell us we had a big problem. A penetration. Mole in the CIA. It’s a theory, though. Nothing more.” Petra stiffened as she spoke. Her gaze, which had been adrift, anchored on Procter’s and remained stuck there for a few significant seconds until her attention flitted to the lemonade. Petra had said as much during the briefing for Gosford months earlier, the morning after Singapore, but then there’d been no specifics. Only vague mentions of big problems.
“And it’s no more than a theory?”
“That’s what I just said, Artemis.”
“Your Derm shop make any progress after I got canned?”
“Well, we never did have another briefing with Gosford or dat pokkenwijf, Deborah Sweet. They did not want to hear a word about a molehunt, wouldn’t even consider the possibility, all those kankerhoeren cared about were their own careers. Oh, we had the matrix, all right. Every shred of reporting scoured; every anomaly surfaced. But you know how it goes. Those things are unwieldly and inconclusive. You end up with several theories that fit the facts. Which meant I didn’t have the right facts, or close to all of them.”
“Did I figure into any of these theories?”
Petra cackled. “Well, you were right at the top of the list. I’d say you’ve fallen a few spots down since you shat your pants at the Director’s table while he was firing you. Maybe a few more after you came here tonight, asking after moles.”
“Maybe I’m here to find out what you know before I off you. I did tell you I was here to kill you.”
Petra cackled. “No, no, I’m afraid it is unfortunately all too clear that you’re not here for that. You hated my guts when we were inside. You wouldn’t draw it out, with all this chitchat and lemonade. You would have slid that trusty shotgun of yours into my mouth when I opened the door, painted me across the wall in here. Nice and quick.”
“Maybe I’d have used the bat,” Procter said. “Once you let me inside.”
“Oh, well then the dogs would have killed you,” Petra said, and laughed. The lamps cast a warm glow over Petra’s flabby face. She’d been pawing at her sculpted hair and it was now tilted, off-center. Maybe a wig, Procter thought.
“Petra, who was on your short list?” Procter asked.
Petra shot her an unkind glare. These were not uncommon, but this one felt different: mirthless, and brutally cold. It said: You found the line. They hung in a short, stilted silence.
“If there was a penetration,” Petra said, tugging on her lower lip and shutting her eyes to knock the conversation onto a new path, “it would be run out of the SVR’s Special Section. Rem Zhomov’s shop. That name”—she chuckled—“Rem. R-E-M. I mean, goodness, it’s an acronym for the Russian phrase revolutsky mir. World revolution. His shop’s a home for the true believers, the fanatics. And it’s old school, through and through. Though I do wonder how those fanatics are getting on in old age. Could be they’ve evened out. Maybe their extremism has been eclipsed by a few young turks so it’s now quaint and faintly pitiable. Zhomov’s only a whisper, of course. A shadow. We know so little.”
“The wife had a doozy of a name, too,” Procter said, “if memory serves.”
“Ninel,” Petra said, and a cackle came out. “Lenin spelled backwards.”
“Remind me: Where’d we hear about Zhomov? About his group?”
Petra’s eyes snapped open. “Oh, well, yes. That traces back to IMPERIAL.”
Procter snorted. “Oh for fuck’s sake. That degenerate?”
“He is an insufferable rake and a giant pain in the ass, but IMPERIAL did have impeccable access before his defection. For a while he was our taproot sunk deep into the Kremlin.”
“Where did he get resettled, anyhow?”
“That most American of towns: Las Vegas. Retiring from both Russia and espionage, IMPERIAL sensibly chose a spot where he might gamble and drink and screw himself to death.”
Petra stood and muttered something about feeding the dogs their dinner. When she returned to the living room Procter was patting one on the head. The dog slunk over to Petra’s lap with a low growl.
“Zhomov, Zhomov, Zhomov,” Procter said, “I seem to remember a file you maintained on the opposition, on the Russians who were trying to wreck our shit, recruit us, penetrate Langley. You’ve been in the Game so long, so invested in the struggle, that I’d wondered if it might’ve been something that made the trip out here after retirement. Little memento, I don’t know . . .”
“Possession of such material would be illegal, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure would, hon, but I’d be a pretty unlikely candidate to honey-trap you into a confession, wouldn’t I? You think they’d send Artemis out here to wreck you over a box of pure nostalgia?”
“They’d have sent the gigolo for that,” she said, her voice firm.
“Now you’ve got it.”
Petra shooed the dog from her lap and heaved up from the couch, wincing as she stood. “Go into the garage and get one of the shovels,” she said. “Insect repellant is on the shelf by the door. You’ll need it.”
The spray did nothing, because Procter’s legs were devoured when they reached the thicket behind the house. The woman led with the flashlight, three wiener dogs slithering behind, Procter trailing the hounds with the shovel on her shoulder, whistling show tunes.
“Stop that,” Petra hissed, pushing aside a branch. “It’s insufferable.”
They soon reached a clearing with a sagging bench and a headstone. Procter squinted at the name in the frayed moonlight.
“Chester’s buried out here? Lord almighty.”
“Oh, can it. What was I to do? Send poor Chester off to a goddamn cemetery on the edge of town with visiting hours dictated by some dopey rent-a-cop? Pay for a plot when we have land? He agreed. Wanted to be close to me, close to the house. I’m not in the business of looking the other way. Death is all around us, Artemis, why cover it up?”
Procter, caught in a rare speechless moment, paused, looked down at the headstone, then to the shovel. “It’s not . . .”
“Don’t be absurd, Artemis, I buried them over here.” Petra was tapping her foot around in the pine bramble. The bench accepted Petra with a loud creak. She steadied the beam on a brick.
“You’re not going to help?” Procter asked.
“You only brought one goddamn shovel.”
After a few minutes Procter struck something solid, and a while later, with Petra watching in obvious amusement, she hauled out a Pelican case wrapped in a large bag. Petra shimmied off the bag and clicked open the case to begin sorting. Procter noted classified commendations from past Directors, grainy surveillance photos, a few pieces of hard-copy SIGINT. “My mementos,” Petra mumbled, though Procter had not asked. “This one”—she shoved the SIGINT report into Procter’s hands—“is a favorite.” Putin, she explained, had mentioned Petra by name in a phone call intercepted by the NSA. Procter read the transcript. Mention of Petra: brief, offhand, wildly obscene. The woman let out a riotous laugh and stuffed the report back into the bag. “Russian animals,” she said. “As brutal as they are perverse. Ah, here it is . . .”
Petra clutched a folder stuffed with documents, a few photographs peeking haphazardly out. On it was inked: “SVR S.S.”
Petra grasped Procter’s wrist to stand. Held it tight and didn’t let go. “You can read it on three conditions,” Petra said. “One, you give me your phone. No pictures, no writing. Two, I’m going to lock you in Chester’s study and let you out in the morning. And three, you tell anyone about this little stash and I send someone for you. There are plenty of boys outside Gettysburg who like their meth, and there never is enough money for it. I’m sure they’d be willing to manage your mouth if the money was right.”
Procter shook loose her wrist with a half smile and tucked her phone into Petra’s vest pocket. Sealed it with a pat.
“No meth heads,” Procter said. “I want the sexy gigolo to do me in. Same one you asked for.”
Books were piled throughout Chester’s study: Military history, spy novels, academic journals, hard-boiled detective stories. There was also a shelf holding Chester’s self-published erotica, of which Procter had heard rumors but never seen. The titles alone made her wish she’d known Chester before he died (The Ministrations of Herr Doktor Blunderbuss; Dame Rita Knocker; Dee Flowers Gets His).
Procter had flipped a few pages into the Dee Flowers book searching for clues as to what was his and how it might have been gotten—she had hunches—but it was getting late. She spread Petra’s files under the green glow of the desk lamp, starting with a folder labeled “The Opposition.”
Out of what Procter imagined to be a grudging respect—and certain hatred—for the Russian crew attempting to wreck CIA, Petra had shuttled mementos on her tormentors out of the building. There was a profile on Zhomov that she had drafted, with sources running back to the eighties, when he’d joined the KGB. There were incomplete biographies of Zhomov’s lieutenants, a roll of grainy photographs of his known associates, a transcript of Petra’s debrief with IMPERIAL, with the parts referencing the Special Section highlighted. Procter ticked through a draft roster, compiled by Petra, of the likely composition of the Special Section. The interviews with IMPERIAL stopped around the time of his resettlement in Vegas, two years prior.
After a few hours of reading, with calculated breaks to stand and stretch and patrol the room, Procter had grown as certain as she could be that the study was not wired with cameras. A few hours before dawn, Procter began snapping photos of each document and picture with her prepaid phone, the one she’d not surrendered to Petra.
26
GETTYSBURG
Procter awoke to one of the dogs licking her bug bites. She had fallen asleep at the desk. Petra, standing in the doorway, was cursing at the dog, using the same Dutch profanity she’d chosen for Debs the day before. Procter, sitting up to rub sleep from her eyes, noticed the reports had been plucked from the desktop and replaced with the phone she’d turned over the night before. “Rise and shine,” Petra said.
Breakfast was cornflakes. Petra sat across from her, one eye shut, the other squinting at a crossword puzzle, pencil tapping on the table. She was sipping coffee from a mug that bore the faded remnants of the seal of the U.S. Embassy, Amman. Chester had been a case officer out there a hundred dim years ago. After ten minutes of silence broken only by occasional bursts of Dutch profanity and the sound of an abused eraser, Procter couldn’t take it anymore. “How do you figure IMPERIAL’s grasp of the Special Section?”
“Accurate, but incomplete. Man’s a degenerate, but he sometimes tells the truth, and he’d received initial briefings from Zhomov when they were standing up the Special Section. Her eyes slatted at Procter, then turned to the crossword. “Five-letter word for the law.”
“What does it start with?”
“Maybe an E. Or a G.”
Procter took a spoonful of cereal. “Fuck if I know, hon.”
Petra pushed aside the crossword. “IMPERIAL was a nutcase. He’d managed to get a bunch of his money out, so he was rich, too. Felt like he didn’t need us. Hard to hold his attention. He was—is—a wild animal. An appetite inhabiting a human body. But he was the only one we had who’d had a look, as it were. He’d met the team running their moles.”
“You think Zhomov would’ve been the one, ultimately, running any penetration?”
Petra was back in the puzzle. “E-D-I-C-T. That might work, well, isn’t that nice? And yes, to your question. He’d be the top man on the case and he’d have a team in place to manage the details. His prints would be on it, in a way.”
“You think you could help me arrange a chat with IMPERIAL? Quiet and casual, no need to involve Vegas Station or, god help us, Langley. Little chat between friends.”
Petra sighed, plunked her pencil on the table, said, “It’s not a normal process to meet with a man such as him. Last time I saw him, in Vegas, out at his place, he got on a roll at the tables and wouldn’t come for the meeting.”
Procter was pointing her dripping spoon at Petra, who now had a cheery smile on her face. “How’d you manage to pry an Olympian gambler away from a run of cards?”
“Three-letter word for confidence.”
Procter crunched on a spoonful of cereal. “Ego,” she said.
Petra shut one eye to write. She got up, collected a pencil sharpener from a drawer, and twisted the shavings into the trash.
“We had to lure him from the tables with a girl,” Petra said. “He can procure his own, of course, but I thought, what else separates a demented and horny Russian from his gaming? Strange ass, that’s what. Moral of the story: two days in Las Vegas, about twenty minutes of cogent discussion, all the next day.”
“And what’d he have for you?”
“Well, when we land on the topic of Zhomov and the Special Section, Frankie—that’s his new name, of course—well, Frankie says that Zhomov wasn’t normal. Zhomov’s not one of Putin’s Chekists, the shills with the slick suits and cushy apartments suckling off the state. He was a spartan monk who lived simply, Frankie said, a middle-class worker bee stiff who still referred to the SVR as the First Chief Directorate. His religion was the idea that Russia—in the eighties, Petra said, he would have subbed-in communism—was in a death struggle with the United States. His mission wasn’t to steal our secrets, it was to wreck us. He was out to smash America and CIA. To usher in the collapse, Frankie said, as the Sovs and the KGB had collapsed a generation earlier.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Procter said. “You believe that?”
An unfriendly cackle escaped Petra’s lips. “I told you last night: I believe in the cold black stillness. Now, Artemis, finish your cereal. Time to go.”
“Wait,” Procter said. “One more stroll into the darkness of Singapore. The vague warning we received before Sam went. From REMORA. Mac and Theo’s case. You wrote the assessments. And you—”
Petra cut her off: “You’re going to ask me what I think about him. That right?”
Procter poured herself another bowl of cereal. “If you’d humor me. It seemed like you thought something was wrong.”
Petra had shut her eyes; the lids shivered as if her brain were vibrating inside her skull. She hiccupped. “REMORA passed us some goodies, no doubt. But the quality was uneven, I would say, and I wondered about that. You know how we Derms can be, Artemis, always hunting for an anomaly, and I merely wrote that I would have expected more consistency in production. Bluntly, some of his gruel was thin. And some of it was very specific. I wrote the assessment a few weeks before they fired me, I said—and you know how it is, always with the caveats, like a goddamn analyst—I said, Look here, it could be nothing. Could be he’s getting his feet wet with the espionage and doesn’t want to give us the goods. Possible? Yes, yes, but still anomalous.” Said slowly, as if Procter wouldn’t understand.
This is why, Procter thought, case officers despise the Derms. Fact was: Derms shut down cases, or shackled them, and you didn’t get promoted, didn’t get that tingle in your tits, from saying no to cases, from not recruiting assets. You got it from hunting and scoring, and if case officers were hunters, the Derms were sniffing at the meat the hunters brought in, concocting reasons to pass on the meal.
“So who yanked you, in the end?” Procter asked, crunching through some cornflakes.
