The Good Traitor (28 page)

“Most of Langley thinks you’re working with him,” he said, nodding down at the ground but keeping both his eyes and the Sig Sauer trained on her. Kera glanced down at the young Russian. He lay facedown and motionless on the concrete between them. Both shots had struck him, rendering two exit wounds—rough edged and ringed with glistening pink, white, and black flesh—one at the back of his head, the other at the base of his neck. She guessed that either would have been fatal on its own. A bright pool of blood expanded slowly from beneath his face.

“I can prove that I’m not,” she said.

“I don’t care. If it were up to me,
I’d
just as soon shoot you. You leakers have put a lot of my colleagues in danger.”

“I didn’t—” Kera started, but then thought better of trying to defend herself here. “Listen. I have a flash drive on me with some sensitive files.” She held up her hands higher to stop the thought that she knew had immediately entered his head. “Files that I don’t intend to leak. Files that must not be leaked. The files were stolen from a secret cyberespionage division of the MSS known as Unit 61398.”

“I know what Unit 61398 is.”

She could hear a change in his tone; even if he didn’t fully believe her, he seemed to understand the implications if she was telling the truth.

“Good. These files provide, among many other things, an explanation for what happened to Ambassador Rodgers. They are very time sensitive. I need your help to get them to Lionel Bright at Langley.”

The American squinted, unconvinced that she wasn’t trying to play him.

Kera pressed on. “Here’s your dilemma, though. The data is on an encrypted flash drive. It’s a long encryption key, one that might take the guys at the NSA weeks to crack.” She paused to make sure she still had his attention. “I, however, memorized the key. And I’m not going to give it up until I can personally deliver the files to Lionel Bright. So it’s your call. You can shoot me and then explain to Lionel why you weren’t able to deliver intel that’s going to be pretty valuable in the wake of this clusterfuck. Or, my personal preference, you can give me a lift to the embassy so we can catch a goddam flight out of here.”

The American had fallen into a silent deliberation with himself. But like her, h
e’d
been trained to make tough decisions quickly.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s go. But we can’t go to the embassy. The MSS will anticipate that. We’ll never make it. Besides, you don’t have any friends at the embassy.”

L
ANGLEY

Bright was in his office, sitting on the back of the couch and watching the dawn light seep into the courtyard outside his windows. It was now past six in the morning and he was still wearing the jeans and untucked collared shirt h
e’d
dressed in hastily when h
e’d
been summoned to the ops center in the middle of the night. After the director kicked him out, h
e’d
retreated to his office, too furious to go home and get some sleep.

Maybe it was the sleeplessness, or the lingering effects of the previous evening’s unsatisfying exchange with Karen. Or maybe it was just the sting of being chastised and suspended from his own case—but suddenly he felt the pull of a dark undertow threatening to upend his whole world. He pictured the agency’s immense, color-coded parking lots beginning to fill, badge-wearing bureaucrats taking up positions in cubicles and conference rooms. This was how a multibillion-dollar bureaucracy brought itself to life. Every day.

It all felt suddenly so
routine
. Maybe, he thought for the first time with real conviction, maybe it was time for him to get out.

Bright could sit no longer. He looked at his desk phone, willing it to ring with a conciliatory call from the director. But the phone was quiet. He got up, fuming again, to pace his office while he gamed out his options.

Finally a phone rang. He looked hopefully at the secure phone on his desk. But the call wasn’t coming from the director or anyone else in the ops center. The ringtone, he realized, was coming from the pocket of his jacket on the couch—his personal satellite phone.

BLACKFISH.

“Did you find her?” Lionel asked immediately. He had to know that first. He shut his eyes, bracing for grave news.

“Yes. I have her here with me.”

“She’s unharmed?”

“Yes.”

“What about the hacker?”

“He didn’t make it.”

“Where are you?”

“At a safe house.”

Bright’s mind raced. “Did she come in voluntarily?”

“Sort of.” BLACKFISH gave a brief summary of the encounter at the construction site and, particularly, the files Kera claimed to have, which she would only deliver to Bright in person. “She might be bullshitting about the files. But I figured that wasn’t my call to make.”

A calm clarity possessed Bright’s mind. “Does anyone know she’s with you?” he asked.

BLACKFISH assured him that he had not yet checked in with the station chief at the embassy; no one was aware that h
e’d
brought in Kera Mersal.

“Good,” Bright said. Then he gave BLACKFISH careful instructions.

A
NDREWS
A
IR
F
ORCE
B
ASE

On the plane, Kera had slept in short fits. She awoke picturing life in a cell, where she was visited only by lawyers and let out only to give sealed depositions or to attend secret hearings. Eventually, she might hope for the opportunity to agree to a plea bargain that would give her a life to look forward to. She knew these were not dreams—they weren’t even nightmares. They very probably were glimpses of her future after she set foot on American soil.

The American had driven her to the airport in a beat-up Peugeot that was parked in the safe house’s driveway. At a gated entrance to a cargo terminal, he produced a magnetic card that got them past the perimeter fence. The car rolled right onto the tarmac and dropped her off almost directly at the base of a stairway that had folded out of a small jet with no tail markings. The American never told Kera his real name. When she asked, he said only that she could call him BLACKFISH, which she assumed was the cryptonym assigned to him by the agency. Then he said good-bye and wished her luck.

The plane touched down at Andrews after dark. A fresh pulse of adrenaline—mustered from where, Kera couldn’t imagine—woke her body from the fourteen-hour flight. The stone-faced steward, with whom Kera had exchanged at most a dozen sentences throughout the duration of the flight, opened the cabin door. When the stairway extended to the tarmac, Kera disembarked. A charcoal-suited man waited for her beside an idling black SUV. She noticed the clear, coiled wire running from his ear down into his collar. There was not another human being in sight. By the time he opened the backseat door for her and she climbed in, the plane’s stairs had already retracted, the cabin had been sealed, and the aircraft began to taxi away.

The man climbed behind the wheel and steered the SUV in the opposite direction. He left the headlights off. They glided through the dark for only a minute or two before the vehicle turned off the taxiway and onto a wide square of tarmac. Through the blackness, Kera could see a line of UH-1N Huey helicopters. The birds rested quietly in the humid night, with no hint that they were tuned to spring to life at a moment’s notice.

The SUV pulled up to a hangar. The driver got out, but only to open her door. “Here you are, ma’am.” He pointed to the small human-scale door set within the towering, sectioned hangar wall designed to slide open for aircraft. A dim light illuminated the door, but otherwise the hangar’s exterior, like the tarmac, was dark. Kera walked toward the light.

The hanger housed two Hueys, their fuselages partially disassembled for maintenance. The scale of the cavernous room made the helicopters look like miniature toys. Seated at a break table between the two birds was Lionel Bright. Walking toward him, she scanned the office doors along the walls and the overhead catwalks. As far as she could tell, they were alone.

Lionel stood when she approached. “Kera,” he said. The
y’d
not seen each other in weeks. With everything that had happened, it felt like years.

“You look good,” Kera said.

“Do I? I’ve been seeing someone. It’s kind of an ordeal, but maybe it keeps me young. Welcome home,” he said, appraising her cautiously.

“Is that where I am?”

He stepped back and looked at her with sad eyes.

“How’s this going to work?” she said. “We talk for a bit and then you give a signal and the building’s surrounded?”

“There’s no one here but us,” Bright said. “I’ve taken precautions to protect you.”

“And to protect yourself, I’m sure. It’s OK. You want cover if the files I claim to have aren’t legit. Go ahead, say it. You don’t trust me. No one does anymore, and you’re not willing to be the last one to go down with my ship. That’s fine. I’ve changed my mind about Langley. I don’t think
I’d
go back anyway. Not after what you guys did to Angela Vasser.”

“That wasn’t us, Kera. Not the pictures and the private files.”

“Bullshit. That was never about pictures, not really. Why can’t anyone see that? She’s innocent, Lionel. She always was. An American diplomat, and she was treated like a traitor.” She looked right at him. “I know how that feels.”

“Kera—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Do you have a computer? Let’s get this over with.” She felt the snap in her voice and regretted it. It was the fatigue, closing in around her.

Bright produced a laptop from a shoulder bag lying on the table. He pushed it toward her, inviting her to sit. She did, after taking the small flash drive from her pocket. She slipped it into the USB port. When prompted for the encryption key, she entered it without hesitation and turned the computer back to Lionel, who started scrutinizing the contents of the files immediately.

Kera sat back. For the first time, she felt real relief—relief for learning the cause of so many deaths, for getting out of China, for recovering the flash drive and delivering it to Lionel. Especially for that. It felt surreal being here with him. The dramatic events of the last few months had taught her that Lionel Bright was not the man sh
e’d
believed he was when sh
e’d
worked under him at the agency. But didn’t that mean she knew him better now, just like she knew herself better too? In a weird way, having cause to question their trust in each other had brought them closer.

She watched Bright for a few minutes as the expression on his face changed from curious to astonished. The files were legit, all right.

“What is Vasser saying?” Kera asked.

“About you?” he said without looking up. He was engrossed in what he was seeing on-screen. “Nothing. She’s driving everyone crazy.”

Kera smiled. “She did everything right.”

Then she fell silent for several minutes and let Bright absorb the details of OPERATION MAYFLOWER and the stolen Unit 61398 files.

“Do you think a war can be avoided?” she asked him. “Or is it already too late?”

“That depends. Does Beijing know these files were stolen?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I like our chances. If we do it right, we might be able to unwind this thing before they even know it’s blown. As long as no one panics, we can all wake up tomorrow morning.”

“And me?”

He pointed at the computer screen. “Do you realize what you’ve done here? Not just getting us details of this operation in time for us to diffuse it. But this other stuff on Unit 61398. It’s like a decade’s worth of work, dropped right in our lap.”

“You’ll be a character witness at my sentencing hearing, then?” It wasn’t a joke exactly, just sarcasm.

His eyes grew serious. “All the things that were done to Vasser after she was falsely accused—they’ll be done to you too. And worse, probably. I can’t bear to see that.”

“It’s not up to you, I guess.”

“I’m being serious. Do you have somewhere you can go?”

“To go?” she said, finding his eyes. She didn’t fully understand what he meant until she saw the steadiness in his gaze. “I . . . I don’t know.” And then, after a moment of catching up, she said, “Who knows I made it out of Beijing?”

“No one. Just BLACKFISH. I told him that his internal report of the incident in Beijing should suggest that yo
u’d
been killed in the gunfight that got a11Egr0. Of course, if you prefer, you can turn yourself in.
I’d
be honored to be a character witness at your hearing. But I hope I never have to.”

Kera stepped back, studying his eyes for a hint that sh
e’d
misunderstood him. But he was serious. He was telling her that h
e’d
left her a way out. It felt dangerous to want something as badly as she wanted to believe him. “Remember what you used to tell me?” she said. “‘Never forget that there’s a difference between your undercover life and your real life. And your real life matters more.’” He nodded. “I don’t have a real life anymore.”

“Well, now you have a chance. You deserve that much.”

She nodded. And suddenly, now that sh
e’d
glimpsed the potential for a new life, a life that wouldn’t be defined by the four close walls of a prison cell, she couldn’t look back. Her mind had already begun to formulate a plan.

Bright held up the flash drive. “I need to get this back to Langley right now. Is there somewhere I can find you, if I need to?”

Kera shook her head. The beginning of a smile formed at the corners of her mouth. “No. You won’t be able to find me. But when you want to be in touch, leave a five-star review on Amazon, using your initials, for
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
. When I see it, I’ll find you.”

He chuckled. “That was a smart move, getting our attention with the David Cornwell backdoor.”

“It only looks smart now because it worked. Thanks for recognizing it for what it was,” she said.

“We used to be a good team. I hadn’t forgotten that.”

“See you around, then?”

He nodded. She gave a little wave, and then she turned and he watched her cross the hangar floor. She never looked back.