Court raised an eyebrow. “So . . . treason against the U.S., right?”

Zoya shrugged. “Pretty much. My dad was a major in the GRU, so they sent him to the classes Mom was teaching. He already spoke fluent English, he was her star pupil, and she got the GRU to spring for private classes for him. She made him better and better at various English dialects, virtually a native.

“He asked her out on a date and they got married a year later. My dad was a real charmer. By then the Union had collapsed, but the government in Moscow kept paying my mom for her training. Russia needed spies just like the USSR did.”

Court sat quietly, letting her talk and trying not to think about the throbbing in his jaw.

“Mom got pregnant, they had Feo Feodorovich—my brother—and two years later they had me,” Zoya said. “Eventually, my dad was sent to London undercover as a military attaché at the Russian embassy, and in his free time he would do what he could to learn to assimilate as an Englishman. He ran operations while there, but I don’t know anything about that.

“Next my father was transferred to D.C., and he remained under cover. He’d been rising through the ranks at GRU. He was a colonel in D.C., and I imagine he was very good at his job.

“I went to American schools and spoke English better than Russian, my mom said, which annoyed my dad but made my mom proud. I returned to Russia when I was six; I lived in Moscow till I was fifteen, but all the while my mom kept teaching me languages and dialects from around the world, and my father taught me tradecraft.”

“You told me once your mother died when you were very young.”

Zoya shrugged. “A lie. I’d just met you, wasn’t ready to reveal how I had the ability to ‘turn’ American at will. This is the first time I’ve told anyone.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

She looked at him a long time, took a sip of vodka, and said, “I know. I trust you. I’m sorry.”

She continued. “My brother was interested in medicine from a young age, so they knew he’d be a doctor. I wasn’t as smart, so I was going to go into the family business, I guess.”

“Your own father was grooming you for life as a spy?”

She looked off a moment, considering the question. After a sip of vodka she said, “It’s all my dad knew. The focus of his life. That, and my brother and me. It was a way for me and my dad to connect.” She shrugged. “Anyway, it was fun. I learned rock climbing and judo . . . In Russia it’s a little different, it’s called Systema. Dad taught me how to service dead drops and shoot guns and interrogate and run agents, and I was sent to the best gymnastics school still around in the nineties. My dad’s connections didn’t hurt . . . I was training with Olympic gymnasts even though I wasn’t nearly as talented.”

“I bet you were pretty damn good.”

She smiled at this. “When I was eighteen I moved back to America, to LA, and went to UCLA. Just like my mom, and hers before her. I wasn’t operational, had no association with Russian intel other than via my father, but I decided to try to build a cover, to live life as an American. I told everyone my name was Zoë; it was close enough to Zoya. I was obsessed with assimilation, the family talent. I became Zoë Zimmerman. Got fake IDs, credit cards in my American name, and I pulled it off. Other than my Visa, my passport, and my college transcripts, everything I had in LA had Zoë’s name on it.”

Court laughed at this; it hurt his rib cage to do so. Zoya laughed, as well, thinking about herself fifteen years earlier.

Court said, “The things you’re doing now . . . you’ve been in training for them since the day you were born.”

“That’s true.”

“So . . . by the time you were in college you knew you were going to be a spook?”

She shook her head with conviction. “No way. It had nothing to do with a future career. Sure, my dad wanted me to join SVR after college; he didn’t want me in GRU because he had a thing against women in the military. But I planned on charting my own path.”

“Why?”

“That’s the easiest question you’ve asked. I grew up in Moscow in the nineties; I saw what a horrible place my country had become. Impoverished and crime ridden, corrupt and desperate. I envied Westerners I saw on TV. Their food, their safety, the stability of their government and their economy. Their money. When I was a little girl I watched Friends on TV and I wanted to wear clothes like that, to have a beautiful apartment like that, to sit around and talk to my friends all day and drink coffee. That’s what I thought America would be. It sounds superficial, but it became fundamental after years of seeing people starving in the streets or shooting one another over bread.”

She said, “I didn’t want to spy on Americans. I wanted to be American.”

“But something happened,” Court said, finishing his second drink.

Zoya poured him another, and added lukewarm vodka to her own.

Four drinks in a half hour, Court said to himself.

“Yes, something happened. I got a call in my dorm room in the middle of the night. It was my brother. My mother had been hit by a car on her way to meet friends for lunch in Tverskaya District. She was dead.” Zoya stared off into space.

Court poured another splash of vodka for them both this time. His sore body allowed the movement, albeit with some discomfort.

“I went home for the funeral, of course. My father was inconsolable. We all were, I guess. But he told me, in a whisper, that British agents killed my mom to stop her from doing her work against the West. He was obsessed with it. Of course the official accident report indicated no foul play, but he changed when she died. Became more radical. More focused on his work.

“I returned to California a few days later, and then, within a few months, I got another call. This time in the middle of the day. It was my brother again.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he had stage four cancer, and days to live.”

Court shook his head in disbelief. “Christ. Had he been sick for long?”

“Not at all. Never anything more than a head cold in his life. I rushed home, but my flight was delayed. By the time I’d arrived, he’d died and I’d missed the funeral. I never got to say good-bye.”

Court felt for her. She was speaking dispassionately enough, there were no tears about these terrible events, but he knew her emotions had to have been high, even in the retelling.

He said, “And then . . . your dad.”

She gulped vodka now. “Another damn phone call. This time it was Uncle Vladi . . . I mean Vladimir Belyakov. He was crying. He told me my father had been killed on the front lines in Dagestan. I believed him, but I did not understand. Never made any sense that he would be there, a GRU general. He should have been behind a desk at the Aquarium in Moscow.”