The Seventh Floor, page 28
She heard the whump-whump of rotors overhead. More sirens. She pointed the gun at the door and resolved to shoot if anyone so much as knocked. But no one came.
Her mind was racing, though, and it was only a matter of time before FBI agents or cops showed up to ask questions at the hotel. The front desk manager had seen Peter.
Where is your husband? they would ask.
She had known all along that she and Peter would be hunted, that there would be a decisive break with their past, that at some juncture they could never again return to their house in Texas. Instead, they would go home. She and Peter had researched how the police and the FBI would use facial and gait recognition algorithms to search for them. How forensics technicians would evaluate the scene. Vehicles leave track marks. License plates would be photographed. There would be deposits of blood or hair or fingerprints or saliva. Were they in any databases readily accessible to the police or FBI? They did not think so. That she’d not already been captured meant one thing: she had time. But not much.
Irene took a shower, packed up, and checked out. She walked two blocks to McDonald’s.
She ordered the Mir Aimal Kansi. The precarious nature of her situation hit home about halfway through the Big Mac. Her husband was gone. She had no car. At some point the investigators would connect the remains of her husband to Peter Venable, and her face would be splashed all over the news, right? Or might they get away with it?
For a few moments she considered bolting: fly to Mexico City, walk into the Russian Embassy, perhaps? She set down the burger to research flights until a sickening thought dawned on her: She and Peter had failed. They had failed. You failed, Irene, you dumb little bitch. And she was in her aunt’s car fleeing her father and Sheepshead Bay, driving south—driving anywhere—and again, for an awful moment, she was young and scared and ashamed. If things are bad, it’s probably your fault. To the other McDonald’s patrons she appeared to be a quiet woman—slightly out of place, no doubt—enjoying her meal. But inside, Irene Venable was a blast furnace of warring voices, feelings, and memories, her temperature eventually rising until she felt one thing, one feeling, one word slash through her: No.
No, she thought, no. No, no, no, no, no.
He had failed. Peter failed. Then he got himself killed and left me here—his wife!—alone, to sort through the wreckage and soldier on. These are his mistakes. Not mine. She took the last bite of her Big Mac.
She needed wheels. But how?
Walk? Too far, too conspicuous.
Hail an Uber?
Rent a car? Then, at the rental counter, pay cash? They would ask for an ID, though. It would be entered into a computer system. She did not like that.
And then, from the corner of her eye, she felt attention on her. Heat. She looked up, and a young man looked sheepishly down, back to scrolling on his phone. Irene Venable’s reptilian operating system ran a quick calculation: early twenties, weak eyes, lean and handsome but not strong, clean—no manual labor—likes women, key fob on the table.
She put a fry on her tongue. A salty ball of saliva clung to the back of her throat. She could float beneath the waterline. She had done so before, on the bolt from Sheepshead Bay, and she could muster the cunning and grit to do it again. She could hunt, and be hunted.
Irene smiled, flapped a coy, inviting wave his way. “I’m Steph,” she called. She smacked the bench of her booth. “Plenty of room at my table.”
40
THE FARM
The approach to the farm was a stockade of trees, chain link whipstitched with razor wire, and a gatehouse swimming in sodium light. From the SUV, Procter regarded this with the somber appraisal of an escaped convict being returned to her prison. In part this was because the Farm could be credited with a certain penitentiary atmosphere; but it was also because Procter hated the place for entirely different reasons. The Farm was a reminder that life had once unrolled out before her and now most of it—probably the best fucking parts—was miles behind.
The guards waved the two SUVs through. Procter was in the lead vehicle, the jailhouse vibes reinforced by the two Security officers riding with her. Debs was in the trailing car. They clacked onto the compound, toward a gravel road that led to a few of the houses CIA used for special guests.
The Farm smell, though, was what really got her all bothered. It tackled her, as always, upon opening the door of the rental car: the scent of freshman year. The grounds reeked of river water, the buildings of school lunch and disinfectant, the occupants of sweat and sex. A school bus lumbered around the Base, for god’s sake, wending by dorms, gyms, open quads, a chow hall, a bar—the SRB—with darts and ping-pong. The place was lousy with ticks and deer and hornballs, many of whom were also instructors.
Procter’s lodging—or cell, depending on perspective—was one of the many homes dotting the expansive Base, nestled along the river. Debs’s car idled in the drive; the DDO was probably on a call. The security officers led Procter inside, where she was greeted by a Support officer who informed Procter that her cottage was typically used by VIPs: Seventh Floor leadership, visiting members of Congress, senior members of friendly foreign intelligence services. “You’re lucky, Ms. Procter,” he said, “that this place is available.”
Hale House: A two-story red-brick colonial with a wraparound porch colonnaded by flaking white pillars. The rooms were decorated like a Virginia tidewater plantation: walls were wood-paneled and haphazardly slung with tired antebellum paintings of fox-hunting aristocrats. It was nestled into the woods, set away from the larger neighborhoods on the Base. Easier to keep track of her, she figured.
“Fun fact,” the Support officer said, opening the door to her bedroom. “Nosenko stayed here from June of ’66 to August of ’67.” She grunted in recognition—the old defector was a legendary figure in Russia House. The poor bastard had fallen victim to Cold War fever dreams: for three years CIA wasn’t sure if he was the real deal or a KGB double, so Angleton locked him up at the Farm and turned the screws to get to the bottom of things. Procter carried with her the firm belief that espionage in those days had been more adventurous and piratical. There’d certainly been lots more leash, even if in the Nosenko case it had been extended only for CIA to mistreat (“torture” showed up in some of the histories, which Procter thought a stretch) a true-blue defector who’d been telling the truth, of all the goddamn things.
“I hadn’t realized they preserved the room as it was in his day. That a diktat from the conservation society, or just run-of-the-mill incompetence?” Procter asked, flicking on the lights in a well-worn sitting room stripped of furniture. “Is this where they got him wild on LSD?”
The Support officer shrugged, said to call if she needed anything. Though he did not appear to mean it, and he never did offer a number. Not that she had a phone, anyway. It had been impounded by one of the Security officers. She also had no car; they had whisked her from Orlando in one of the Air Branch Bombardiers Gosford had loaned to the DDO for domestic travel. Debs’s SUV was idling outside.
Procter sank onto the bed in a shadowy limbo. A part of her thought she could wait them out, see what they threw at her, and for how long. The other part remembered the felonies she had committed as of late, namely her participation in the theft of highly classified documents from safes and databases inside CIA Headquarters. She’d run into the sick plot twist of an intelligence Service turned inside out. She could not have run the investigation without breaking the law. And now that law could be turned against her by the mole, the very person most committed to its destruction. Tangles within tangles. Suddenly she felt very tired.
The front door sighed open. “Artemis,” Debs called up the stairwell, “let’s do this. Come on down.”
She found Debs on one of the faded green couches in the living room. Debs gestured for Procter to take a seat. “Our worst nightmare is upon us,” Debs said. “We are going to have a nice long chat.” Procter plopped down across from her old friend. The doilies on the coffee table reminded her of Petra Devine, which, to her great alarm, she found a strangely comforting memory. Best I’ve got, she thought, and picked one as her focus object. She’d need it for the segments of this conversation in which she would be sorely tempted to either break things or attack her former friend.
“Let’s start with Las Vegas,” Debs said flatly. “Your visit to see IMPERIAL. Known as Frankie out there. Tell me why you went. And who was with you? Was it Sam? What exactly did you discuss?”
“It was a stroll down memory lane. Happenstance meeting.”
“You met him at the high-limit tables, eh? A typical haunt, I suppose, for an employee of Gatortown.”
“Gatorville,” Procter mumbled. “Gatortown’s the competition.”
Debs smiled and shut her eyes and took a deep, meditative breath. When she opened them she said, “Frankie told his babysitter you visited with a friend named Charles. Who is Charles? Is Charles in fact Sam?”
“Charles is Charles.”
“Artemis, is Charles Sam Joseph?”
“How could Charles be Sam? Charles is Charles.”
“Oh fuck you, Artemis. If it was a happenstance meeting, why did Frankie tell his handler that you called him before you went out there? Why did he complain?”
“Frankie won big that night,” Procter said. “And I’m fairly certain he screwed no fewer than three very attractive women. I can’t imagine what he had to complain about.”
“What exactly are you up to?” Debs repeated. She was speaking quietly, as if she did not trust herself to raise the volume above a whisper. She crossed her long legs. After a few seconds of exchanging dumb stares, Debs said, “Let me set the table for you, Artemis. There is a general malaise in Russia House and the CIA writ large upon Finn Gosford’s arrival. He’s a former officer who sold out, they say, he’s unconventional, he’s a maverick, a—”
“Unconventional maverick,” Procter said, “is a nice turn of phrase for his directorship. Bravo. You have a future in PR after the Agency.”
“Oh shut up,” Debs sputtered. “You get the point. The Agency rejected him. And the Reversion idea. No one wanted us sticking our noses into their cookie jars, questioning things. Interfering. Finn and I receive a general cold shoulder upon touchdown. And I rile and rankle my old friends in the Russia House Bratva all the more because I’m demanding to be kept in the loop. And who hates transparency more than CIA’s Russia hands?”
“Probably just the actual Russians,” Procter said.
“Clever. Finn’s entire mandate is to keep CIA out of the news. No fuckups, that was literally what POTUS told him when he was sworn in. In the Oval, those words. And then week one on the job Singapore happens. It’s your brainchild, and it’s a disaster. You call the Director a cunt, in a meeting. And of course we needed a scapegoat, and you’ll do just fine because you’re both responsible for the disaster and also insubordinate. So you’re fired.”
“I said he was acting cunty, remember? Procter clarified. “Not that he was one.”
“You’re such a prick, Artemis. A pain in the ass. And everywhere else. Point is, Langley was primed for rebellion. And you know what I think? That you are searching for material to use against Finn and me. I do not know what it is, but you’re pushing at something. And I think that something just shoved you back.”
“As we have discussed,” Procter said, “the Russians have long-standing reasons to target me.”
“That is true,” Debs said. “But this most recent shove happened right after you met with a Russian defector. And it follows you dredging up the Russian-tinted past with all your old chums. It leaves a girl wondering, Artemis, doesn’t it? Like, what the hell is going on?”
“Russkies blew up my trailer, Debs,” Procter said, eyes boring a hole through the doily. “What the hell are you insinuating? You’re going to full-court-press a former officer who almost got her shit kicked in by a Russian bomb? Even that’s a tricky spin for the Gosford regime’s propaganda department. And, honestly, you know what? Fuck you. You ran me out of CIA, you poisoned me, cut my team, put me in the basement, hid a bunch of dirty pictures around my office, got the OEEO on my ass, you—”
“Hold on. I denied your promotion, and yes, I gutted Moscow X. But I didn’t put any pictures in your office, that’s for sure. Why would I? And I sure didn’t get anyone in Equal Employment Opportunity involved. Why bother? I’m the goddamn Deputy Director for Operations and I don’t need a reason to sunset senior officers, only a story.”
The fight had burned through its fuel: a silence settled between them.
“There were a number of ethics complaints,” Procter mumbled, “in those months.”
“I’m sure there were, knowing what I do of your morals and management style. But am I to understand, Artemis, that you are just going to stonewall? That you will not answer any of my questions?”
“Well, it depends on what they are.”
“How about this one: Why did you ask to meet with me a month ago?”
“Stroll down memory lane, as I said.”
“Ah yes. Lots of memory strolling for Artemis Procter. With me, your old friends, Frankie.”
“What can I say, my midlife crisis has made me a sucker for nostalgia.”
“It’s interesting, Artemis. After our weird little conversation last month I put out feelers to a few friends who are up to their eyeballs in the contracting world. They then asked a few of their friends at DynCoTel, who said you’d never applied for a job there, much less come in for an interview.”
“Huh,” Procter said. “Well, DynCoTel is a big shop. Information sharing’s a problem, too. Worse than the Agency. If your sources are in the wrong division, they’d never have heard of me.”
“That so?”
“That’s so.”
“What division did you say you were interviewing in?”
“Insider Threat,” Procter said, her eyes finding the doily on the table.
“Now, that’s fascinating, because that is precisely where my friend’s sources work. How about that? And Insider Threat has never heard of you.”
“It’s a big shop,” Procter said, staring through the doily into nothingness.
Debs looked right at the doily, too, sporting a wide, wicked smile. “A team of Security debriefers and polygraphers will be out here first thing tomorrow. Good luck.”
In Hale House that afternoon Procter tried in vain to take a nap, only to twist and turn in the scratchy sheets. After a while she padded downstairs and flicked on the TV. A memory seeped through her mindless stupor. It was twenty-five years earlier and she was driving away from the Farm.
Their class had straddled Christmas, so she’d gone to join her then-future-ex-husband Tom and his family for the holiday. No one there knew what her job was, really. Except Tom. And by this point she knew that she loved the work, that nearly all of her could not wait to be done with the family, get back to the Farm, pronto. But the other part of her, the part she increasingly hated, had to spend a few days suffering in a thick cowl-neck Christmas sweater in wintry southern Ohio, gold wedding ring snug on her finger, Carpenters Christmas album blaring, everyone gathered in the kitchen like a goddamn Norman Rockwell painting, Tom chattering on an endless loop about applying for Ph.D. programs—all in the U.S. He didn’t want her going overseas, was the bottom line. He’d prattled on about how maybe they could get a loan from his parents—they’d be happy to do it, thrilled, they wanted to help—so she could quit the Agency and they might rent a place in Boston or Palo Alto depending on the program he chose. And maybe also, he said plaintively, maybe Artemis could find it in her heart to go to Crate & Barrel over the holiday, for a spot of girls’ time with his mom and the older sister who lived down in Houston with four kids and a peppy smile and a husband who did something with mortgages.
And Procter, who was then Artemis Jackson, having finally caved to the pressure and changed her name, was in the kitchen and said, hey, give me a job, something to help with, and Tom’s mom had her start carving up one of the turkeys. More than twenty people were in the house that day. Whole extended Jackson family jammed in there together—Merry Fucking Christmas!—and that included four nieces and three nephews under the age of six, and she was pretty agitated while she sliced the bird, a smidge distracted, she’d say later. In the moment the looming Crate & Barrel outing was certainly a thundercloud on the horizon, but deeper still was the growing sense that she was on a collision course, the various trains hauling Artemis Aphrodite Procter’s life were going to slam into each other and it was going to suck.
She saw the turkey breast turn bright red even before she felt the searing pain in her finger. And she let it fly, called the bird a fucking cocksucker and about a dozen iterations of that same sentiment. The adults were earmuffing the kids with their hands, bystanders had taken a sudden interest in their shoes, there were many sad shakes of the head all around. Her mother-in-law said, Artemis, please, the children, and she said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it just hurts like a bitch, can someone hand me a fucking towel. What?
Later, she and Tom were snug in their sexless bed, staring at the ceiling, her finger bandaged up with tape and gauze because she hadn’t wanted to further demolish the family dinner by making Tom drive her to urgent care, though she probably did need stitches. Finally, Tom said, Where did that come from? And she wanted to ask what, but she knew what he was talking about. She had said, I’m sorry, okay? It hurt like hell and I’m sorry. Then they had one of those long pauses where the tension was unbearable but maybe also someone might just fall asleep. And even now she wished one of them had. Because Tom finally said, I don’t like what the job is doing to you. It’s twisting you up. Changing you into something else. And I sometimes don’t recognize the woman I married.
