Fidelity (9 page)

17

K
YRA
M
ARTIN
stood five foot seven, with dark hair and rather striking eyes. An academic, having received a doctorate in conflict management from an Ivy League university two years earlier, and she dressed like one: Her clothes were more conservative than stunning, but what could be expected of a young woman in an entry-level position at one of the innumerable think tanks that dotted the city? It was not as if she were a fashion consultant or arm candy for some Wall Street banker. No, perhaps her clothes left something to be desired, but the body beneath it was far from homely, and her lips were a bright and vivid red.

“Not bad for a woman that doesn't exist,” Kay said, checking herself one final time in the mirror. Walking to the door, Kay reached for her regular purse, caught herself with a quick and severe rebuke, then grabbed the one hanging next to it. Inside were tissues, lipstick, a few sticks of chewing gum and a Florida driver's license and credit card with her fake name emblazoned on the front. Outside, she managed to flag a passing cab, told him the address—a venue on the Upper East Side—and settled into her seat.

Deep-cover FBI Agents were required to undergo elaborate training before being certified to enter the program, but more
casual light cover, of the sort that would hold up to a brief investigation but not more than that, could be entered into by any Agent. It was not the sort of thing that had come up much when she was working violent crime: a young, pretty woman of her particular complexion would not have been very effective as a mole in the drug enterprises that blanketed the city of Baltimore. Here in counterintelligence, however, Kay's background and looks fit neatly into a far wider range of scenarios.

At least, that was the reason that Jeffries had given her the day before when she had explained the situation. “Tomorrow morning the Institute for the Advancement of Near East Relations will be having a talk, with drinks to follow. We'd like you to attend. We'll give you cover as an academic, get you an RSVP—not that you'll need one: these things aren't exactly velvet-rope events; most of the people going are there because they can't get out of it. Get a lay of the land,” Jeffries said vaguely. “See if there's anyone worth talking to, and talk to them, and remember what they say.”

Kay had wondered if there was more to it but knew better than to ask: Jeffries spent words like a miser does pennies, each weighed and measured and carefully chosen. If she elected to leave Kay's assignment vague, that was a deliberate decision. Asking for clarification would only serve to agitate her superior and leave Kay no more knowledgeable.

Kay stepped onto the sidewalk half an hour after she had gotten into the cab, adjusted the hemline of her dress and walked towards the entrance with what she hoped was confidence. The security guard—really more of an usher—scanned his list for the name Kay offered. There was no reason to be nervous, Kay told herself: surely her credentials could pass such basic scrutiny, and even if there was some mix-up, she could just walk off huffily. But she was nervous, and had to work to keep it off her face, and
didn't let go of it until the guard nodded and waved her inside and even then not entirely.

She found a seat in the back and sat quietly for a few minutes before the lights dimmed and the panelists came onstage. The next hour and a half passed by slowly. The discussion was, if not painfully dull, then far from memorable: standard boilerplate about the importance of continued good relations between Russia and the United States. Few members of the audience seemed any more interested; there were lots of dulled eyes and slack mouths. The applause afterward was cordial but nothing more, and then the assembled rose and filtered out through the foyer and into an adjoining bar for the reception.

Kay got a drink at the bar and scanned the assemblage: intellectuals and would-be experts engaged in animated conversation, a hard core of diplomats and consulate functionaries and political players discussing business quietly. From one corner Kay heard the loud strands of harsh Slavic speech, sipped her wine and began to pay closer attention, her limited grasp of Russian insufficient to give her much insight into the conversation beyond that it was taking place. It was a small group, several men in not-quite-nice suits drinking slightly more vodka than the moment strictly required, and an attractive middle-aged woman with a well-worn look of boredom. Kay spent some time trying to remember how she recognized the man sitting next to her. After she remembered, she finished her glass of wine, gathered up her courage and went to make a new friend.

“Privet
,”
Kay said to the woman with what she hoped was ingratiating half awkwardness.

“Dobry vecher,”
the woman said, smiling sweetly to assuage Kay's discomfort.

“Mogu li ya sidet?”
Kay asked, with a slightly more tortured accent than she was capable of.

The woman waved at the vacant seat in offer and Kay dropped down beside her. “Where did you learn Russian?” she asked.

“I think ‘learned' would be far too strong,” Kay said. “I took some classes back in school, but . . .” She shrugged. “A lot of water under the bridge since then.”

The woman smiled. “For you less than me. I'm Olga Stonavich.”

“Kyra. A pleasure to meet you.” Only the first half a lie. “You don't mind, do you? I don't really know anyone here. I suppose I feel a bit out of place.”

All of which was true, actually, which was probably why Olga seemed to believe it. “Don't worry, that will wear off soon, and then you'll just be left with the mind-numbing tediousness of the evening.” Kay laughed and Olga laughed also. “What are you doing here, exactly?” she asked.

“I'm part of the Fieldings Insitute,” Kay said. “Just joined, actually. Moved up here from Virginia two months back. Still trying to get my sea legs.”

“Don't feel bad, darling,” Olga said. “I've been here four years and sometimes I still have no idea what's going on.”

“And yourself? What brings you out this evening?”

Olga tilted her head at the man who had been sitting next to her earlier, now deep in conversation at the other end of the room. “Boris works at the consulate,” she said. “And our attendance is . . . strongly encouraged at all of these functions.”

“How lovely for you,” Kay said.

Olga laughed again and shrugged.

The conversation continued easily, comfortably. After that initial bit of dishonesty, and a few sentences of deceit that Kay found rolled off her tongue rather more smoothly than she might have expected, there was little need for falsehood. Olga, like most people on earth, enjoyed talking about herself, and Kay
made sure to keep the conversation moving in that direction. Nothing overt, nothing obvious, nothing interrogatory; just the casual empathy of one person trying to learn about another person, her life and history and habits and problems. Soon Olga's glass was empty, and soon after, Kay filled it and got one of her own. After forty minutes they were laughing and chatting like old friends, and Kay found that she was enjoying herself.

“How strange to have to move across the world,” Kay said, “and to bring your entire family with you! It must be difficult.”

Olga shrugged. “I knew it was a possibility when I married Boris. And it could be worse, far worse. You don't have much choice in where you get posted: I have friends that are whiling away their hours in third-world hellholes who would cut off a finger to spend a winter here in New York!”

“And your children?”

“They love it,” Olga said, smiling. “Children take easiest to new environments, new settings. Our eldest, Vladimir, never wants to go back.” The smile faded from her face, as if she had remembered something unpleasant.

If Kay were Kay and not Kyra, she would have ignored Olga's change in demeanor, recognizing it as one of those short moments of unhappiness that sometimes eclipse a good mood and are best left unremarked on. Instead she said, “Is something wrong?”

Perhaps it was the vodka, perhaps it was Kay's false good humor. Whatever it was, Olga found herself continuing. “Nothing, really. My husband's posting ends this summer; we'll all be traveling back to Moscow. Vlad is a senior; we were hoping that we could stick around long enough to see him into an American college. He's a very bright boy,” Olga assured her, as if Kay might think otherwise. “But he's had some . . . learning problems.
They're not very well equipped to handle that sort of thing back home. We had very much hoped that Boris's posting might be extended but it seems unlikely now that it will happen.”

“How unfortunate,” Kay said, her face a mask of sympathy, consciously mimicking Olga's own. “There is no chance for him?”

“There doesn't seem much of one,” Olga said. “It would be rather a difficult thing to acquire a visa for him.”

“Of course, of course,” Kay said, scribbling furiously in her mental notebook. “Keep up hope!” she said, patting Olga on the shoulder. “The world is a strange place, and fate sometimes lays unexpected plans.”

18

K
AY WAS
in the office early, very early, earlier than usual, with a large cup of coffee for herself, two dozen donuts for the rest of the squad, and a minor intelligence coup for the Federal Bureau of Investigation writ large. She was smiling.

Jeffries was next, businesslike as ever. She greeted Kay and went swiftly into her office. Kay waited outside for a few moments, feeling a curious sense of anticipation, childlike, as if she were back in school, about to complete an oral exam. She steeled herself and bit back her grin and got up and knocked on Jeffries's open door. “Do you have a moment?”

“Of course, Kay,” Jeffries said, gesturing to an empty seat. “I assume you want to discuss last night's business.”

“Exactly,” Kay said, taking the chair.

“Everything went smoothly?”

“There were no problems with my cover. I get the sense that these panel discussions are not exactly high-security events. They seemed happy to have someone to fill the auditorium.”

“I think you're probably not far wrong. And you? Did you enjoy yourself?”

“ ‘Enjoy' might be a bit strong. I believe that it proved . . . a valuable use of my time.”

“How so?”

“Olga Stonavich and her husband, Boris, are worried about their eldest son, Vlad: a bright young man, apparently, though he has had some struggles in school. Olga does not feel that the Russian educational system will do much to nurture his particular cocktail of ability and would very much like to find some way that he could matriculate to an American university.”

Jeffries didn't smile but for a moment it looked like she might. “Very clever, Agent Malloy.”

“That's why you sent me, isn't it? To see whether I could sniff out anything new on Boris?”

“In part,” Jeffries admitted. “Of course, anything which might further our objective with Boris is much appreciated. But, more than that, I wanted to see how you'd do in a more polished environment than you might have gotten used to in Baltimore.”

“It was a test, then?”

Jeffries didn't answer, not for a long time, just stared at Kay with her arid gray eyes. “Do you like working in counterintelligence, Agent Malloy?”

Kay swallowed nervously, wondering if she had come on too strong, if her enthusiasm to present her findings had been misplaced. “I'm not sure I understand the question.”

“It's not a complicated one. There's no hidden layer to it. I'm asking you if you enjoy coming to work in the morning. If you're happy being a member of the squad.”

“If there's some problem with my work,” Kay said, sitting up straighter in her chair, bracing for criticism, “I'll do my best to fix it.”

“Quite the opposite, in fact. Yesterday evening was a test, as was your surveillance work the other week, and you acquitted yourself well in both. In six months or a year I believe you could be as good at counterintelligence as you ever were at violent
crime and gangs—assuming, of course, that this is what you want. I'm well aware of the reputation that counterintelligence has within the Bureau, Kay, and I can even understand why. What we do doesn't end in a perp walk, doesn't end with drugs and money and a few AK-47s on a table for the evening news. It's a game in which the field, the players, even the outcome, never becomes entirely clear. You pit your skills against an opponent half a planet away, men and women you will never see or know, silently going about the business of corrupting our country. Your triumphs will go quietly unreported, unknown to anyone but a handful of brass inside the Bureau. Your failures will gain infamy. It is an exhausting and thankless task whose only saving grace is that it is absolutely necessary. My program is as good as it is because everyone here wants to be on it, understands its importance. Because they put the mission ahead of everything else, ahead of career advancement and often their personal life. Because they keep the good of the Bureau, and the country, front and center at all times.”

It was far and away the longest speech that Kay had ever heard Jeffries give, and when it ended abruptly Kay was not sure what to say.

“Take some time and think it over,” Jeffries said quietly. “I think that you could be good at it. I think you could be very good. But that's a choice you have to make on your own.” Jeffries set aside her cup of coffee and turned towards one of the folders sitting on her desk. After a belated movement Kay realized that she had just been dismissed, and she stood and left awkwardly.

It was only twenty minutes before the start of the working day, but the outside office was already filled, the members of the counterintelligence squad at their desks, munching on the snacks
Kay had brought in, sipping coffee, sifting through information on their computers, continuing the tasks they had set aside the day before—set aside but not forgotten. After a long moment sitting at her desk, running through Jeffries's unexpected challenge, Kay logged on and got to joining them.