I survived by looking out of the windows. If I concentrated really hard on the snowflakes whipping past the window, I could almost imagine I was safe at home and not in a car at all. Adam tried to make small talk but he could see I was distracted. He probably thought it was nerves. I wasn’t clear on why he was coming along on the mission—didn’t he have a whole division to run?
Maybe he just wants to make sure you don’t screw it up, I thought morosely.
I focused very intently on the scenery, trying to drink it in, trying to plaster the buildings and trees and sky all over my mind to cover up the slow-motion replay of another road trip, three years before.
There are two ways to reach the highway, from my apartment. One is through town and inevitably snarled with traffic. The other is to skirt around the back roads. When Adam turned that way, I tensed up completely. The road was still covered in snow, just like—
“Can we go through town, instead?” I asked.
Adam blinked and twisted around to look at me.
“I like to see it all lit up,” I said weakly.
He shrugged and then smiled indulgently. “Sure.”
I wanted to hug him.
***
About four hours later, in New York, Adam pulled up outside a red-brick building—some classy performing arts college. Two men in their twenties were standing there with instrument cases over their shoulders. A cello case stood upright in the snow between them.
“Where’s the third one?” I asked Adam. “Aren’t there meant to be three people, plus me?”
At that moment, a head poked out from behind the cello case. The woman behind it was so small, she’d been hidden behind it completely. She couldn’t have been much over 5’4”.
I jumped out and smiled goodbye to Adam, as if he was a dutiful dad dropping off his daughter. I was faking the smile but, the instant I was out of the car, I felt better. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding back the memories with sheer force of will, the entire journey.
The short woman reached out a hand. “I’m Karen,” she said. “Thanks for stepping in. Our normal violinist suddenly canceled. He’s never done that before. Stomach bug.”
He didn’t have a stomach bug, of course. He’d met some gorgeous woman that morning and she’d practically unfastened his pants on the spot. He’d agreed to a date that evening in a heartbeat. She’d stand him up, but by then it would be too late. He’d slink back home, despondent, and never tell his friends the truth.
This is how the CIA works. We give your lives tiny little nudges and you’re not even aware we’re doing it. We may have even done it to you.
I grinned at Karen. “Happy to help.”
***
We got a cab to Malakov’s place. Weirdly, cabs don’t bother me. They don’t feel like a car.
There was a cable TV repair truck parked a little way down the street. Even as I glanced at it, I heard Adam’s voice come from the earpiece I’d burrowed deep into my ear canal. “We’re right here,” he said. “I can see you. And we’ve hacked the house’s cameras, so we’ll be able to see you inside. He only has cameras in the hallway and living room, but that’s all we need.”
Most of the time, what I do is so abstract that I forget it’s wrong. It’s just recordings—somehow it doesn’t feel like people’s private conversations. But this—watching a guy in his own house, through cameras he’d installed to keep himself safe from intruders—this made some deep, moral part of me itch.
I started to walk across the street with Karen and the others. It was overwhelming to think that all this—Adam driving me all the way here, the elaborate ruse with the quartet, the truck full of monitoring equipment—was for me. What if I messed up?
And then a familiar voice came through the earpiece. “You okay?”
Roberta. She must have persuaded Adam to let her tag along in the monitoring truck. It was like receiving a warm, reassuring hug. I gave a tiny nod.
“You’ll be fine,” she told me. “Just stick to the plan. If anything goes wrong, get out. And whatever you do, stay away from Malakov.”
I gave another tiny nod and then we were at the door. It was opened by a bodyguard in a suit—a guy in his forties, massively muscled, with a ragged scar across one cheek. He checked our driving licenses. I had a brand new one, carefully aged to look ragged, with my name as Arianna Ross—Adam figured I’d be less likely to slip up if I only had a new surname to remember.
“In,” the bodyguard said at last in heavily-accented English. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Living room.”
I took a deep breath and stepped inside.