Mission Critical
Three minutes later Zoya looked on as a bearded man with dark hair entered the room at a fast clip, his eyes wide and searching. Zoya did not recognize the man as her father, but she stood anyway, because he clearly was looking at her.
He smiled; she could see emotion on his face and in his gait, and when he was just a dozen steps away she saw his eyes.
She looked at the right side of his neck. Just above the starched collar of his dress shirt, a single stress hive was pink and splotchy, much like hers were right now, she imagined.
He stopped a few paces from her, but his body language said he wanted to come closer and embrace her. In English he said, “Zoyushka. My little girl. We have so much to discuss. Can your father give you a hug after all this time?”
Despite all her best intentions, Zoya began to cry.
CHAPTER 42
Zoya Zakharova embraced her father. She felt her knees weaken when he kissed the top of her head. But even with her emotions threatening to overtake her, she felt a perfunctory, almost reserved nature to his touch. She’d spent the last few hours anticipating this moment, and it did not hold nearly the tenderness she expected to receive from him.
Soon Zoya and her father sat in wingback chairs in front of each other. Their feet inches apart. Belyakov had removed himself from the room silently, and Zoya wiped her damp eyes, waiting for her father to speak first.
In his faultless British accent, the man calling himself David Mars said, “I am sure you must have a lot of questions for me. Where shall we begin, my darling?”
She wiped her nose. “We’ll begin with this question.” She switched into Russian. “Do you even speak Russian anymore, Papa, or do you love this cover of yours so much you’ve forgotten your language?”
Zakharov switched effortlessly into his native tongue. “Of course I do. I am a proud Russian, and that will never change. How about you? You always were more Western than I.”
He smiled at her, but even though she hadn’t seen her father since she was in her teens, she could still sense a coolness from him that she hadn’t expected or prepared herself for.
She next asked the question she’d come all this way to find out. “What happened to Feo? The cancer.”
Zakharov nodded solemnly and leaned closer. “You might have heard rumors. I tried to keep it all from you. It was polonium. The Brits had the isotope ready to use in an assassination in Russia. An assassination of me. They wanted to punish the general directing the GRU for our assassination of the GRU defector with polonium the year before in London.”
This seemed like madness to her. “How do you know it was the British?”
“I saw the files from SVR and FSB. I am sorry I did not tell you at the funeral.”
“You mean after the funeral. You had the funeral without me.”
“Yes, of course. It was a difficult time, Zoyushka; I did what I was ordered to do, and I did what I thought was best for my young daughter.”
Zoya nodded and looked at the parquet floor until her father spoke to her again.
“The British killed your mother, as well, you know.”
This she had been told, but she never really knew whether to believe it. She knew her mother had been working with illegals, grooming them to live in England, so she knew it was a possibility, but she never saw any of the evidence herself, and she remained dubious.
Zoya’s father said, “After Irina died, after Feodor died, something within me died, as well. I wanted to destroy them, and I was willing to say good-bye to you to do it.”
She looked back up to him. “Forever?”
“Nyet. I knew there would be a day I would return to my life . . . some life. I would reach out for you again. I have been following you in your career at SVR. That is . . . until you ‘died’ on a boat off the coast of Thailand. When that happened, when the last of my family was killed by Western intelligence, then I decided there was no reason for me to use any half measures. I had to destroy the West. Grandiose, yes, I am just a humble operative trying to effect outcomes, but that is my goal.”
Zoya looked down again at the design in the parquet.
“I’m not dead, Papa.”
“Flipping to the Americans is worse than a valiant death in the field. You’d be better off gone forever.”
Zoya said, “I am still your daughter.”
“I know you are. The Americans broke my heart when I heard they killed you, and now you have broken my heart by your actions. I know you were held by the Americans in Virginia, which means I know you were giving them information. You were turned in Thailand?”
Zoya weighed the question a moment. Finally, she said, “I went to them out of necessity.”
Zakharov stiffened at this. “What does that mean?”
“I was recalled to Moscow, but I didn’t go. I went off mission, and for this an SVR operative tried to kill me. I couldn’t go back after that. I would have been killed or imprisoned. I had to run.”
The sixty-two-year-old Russian switched into English. “But you didn’t have to run to the bloody Americans!”
She shrugged. “Our objectives coincided. They won’t always, but they did during that operation.”
“I’m sure they sucked every bit of intelligence value out of you in the past four months.”
“I haven’t hurt my nation with anything I said. I told them about corruption in the Kremlin, in the SVR, things that would only help Russia if they came to light.”
Zakharov shook his head. “That’s insane. You aren’t helping your nation by talking to the West.”
“Who do you work for?”
Zakharov pumped out his chest. “The Rodina.” The motherland.
Zoya furrowed her brow. “You mean the Kremlin.”
“No.”
“So what you are doing doesn’t have the backing of your government?”
“My government? Listen to yourself. Aren’t you Russian, too?”
Zoya didn’t answer. She said, “What insanity are you involved in here? What is your connection with the Russian mafia and the other organized crime groups in London?”
Zakharov seemed surprised by the question. “Who’s been talking to you about such nonsense? Why were you sent?”
“No one sent me. I am here on my own. I snuck away as my safe house was attacked the other night.”
Zakharov did not respond to this.
“Do you have any idea who tried to kill me?”
This time Zakharov did reply, in an apologetic tone. “It was me, I’m afraid. Only because I didn’t know it was you. You were just some unknown compromise that needed to be eliminated.” He added, “I am very glad you survived.”