Palace of Treason

39

Seb Angevine had to run his fingers through his hair and compose himself before opening the door to Vikki’s apartment. He had driven away from the park in a panic, forcing himself to motor slowly through the city, shaken and looking in his mirror for flashing red lights, taking Columbia Road south onto quiet Twenty-second, across Buffalo Bridge, stair-stepping through deserted Georgetown, then north on Thirty-seventh into Glover Park. As he drove he had deleted the digital files stored in Gamma, and with shaking fingers pried out the tiny memory card. The little camera was flipped over the bridge into Rock Creek, and the memory card with 22GB of top secret internal CIA cables — including the true names of CIA sources — went down a sewer grate on Q Street. No matter: He had memorized the name of Dominika Egorova. Ten minutes later, Angevine parked Vikki’s car close to the back door of the apartment unit, partially screened from the street by a commercial Dumpster. He sucked at a bleeding knuckle and tried to think.

Putain de bordel, Godamn it, this was disaster, this was ruin, this was exactly why he had told himself he would not deal with the Russians in person. His new BMW was parked one car down, and its shark nose seemed to wag at him in condescending disapproval. He didn’t exactly know how Vikki would take the news that he was a disaffected and invidious senior CIA official treasonously providing classified US information of national security import to the external intelligence service of the Russian Federation in exchange for obscene amounts of money, and who had narrowly escaped being swarmed this evening in a downtown park by unidentified law enforcement officials — presumably FBI — who in all likelihood were driving to Vikki’s apartment at this moment to arrest him. He hoped she could handle it all at once.

“You fucking asshole!” Vikki said.

“I only passed background material,” Angevine lied.

“I helped you get that note to the fat Russian guy at the club,” Vikki said. She was not dancing tonight and had been sitting on the couch in her underwear watching television and sewing a new costume. She was now standing squared off in front of him, hands on her hips. Angevine registered how good her body looked and the thought flitted across his mind that maybe he should include her in his hastily formed plan. Nope, he thought, this bolt-hole was for one. Too bad, really.

“No one got hurt,” he said. “Nobody.” He had forgotten about the attaché recalled from Caracas, and about the thirty days of counterintelligence interviews endured by General Solovyov.

“I’m an accomplice, you bastard, they could charge me for helping you,” said Vikki. Her MemoryGel High Profile implants were heaving with emotion, and her hands were now clenched into fists.

“My information only provided insights that reassured Moscow that we could be better partners internationally,” said Angevine loftily, using the Aldrich Ames defense, though he sounded to himself like a United Nations delegate in a fez discussing global initiatives at a shrimp boil on Bayou Bartholomew.

“That’s just freaking great,” said Vikki. “Better partners.”

“I need your help,” said Angevine. “One last time.”

“I’ll help you, all right,” said Vikki. “I’ll help you pack your clothes and get the hell out of here.”

“I’ll leave, if that’s what you want,” said Angevine, “but I need you to drive me, just a little way, and that’s all.” This was going to be tricky, he knew, but he couldn’t do it without her. He had read about the technique when he was still in NCIS, and had never forgotten it. But now he had to work on Vikki. He dangled the keys to his BMW.

“I’m giving you my car. I was going to surprise you over dinner,” said Angevine. From her expression, it was clear that Vikki did not believe him.

“Look,” said Angevine, “I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve fallen for you, fallen hard. I need your help getting out of the country, to get to France. Once I’m out, you’re meeting me there… under the Eiffel Tower,” he added for effect. Vikki crossed her arms in front of her — defensive, she was wavering a little — and shook her head.

“We have to hurry a little, baby,” said Angevine. He walked over to the window that looked out onto the rear parking lot and peeked through the blinds. Nothing. Yet. He turned back to Vikki and put his arms around her, sliding them up and down her back. “We’ve been through a lot,” Angevine cooed, “and the good times are all ahead of us.”

“What do want me to do?” asked Vikki slowly, surprised to tell herself that she felt sorry for him, even though he was full of shit. And he was giving her the car. And she’d never been to Paris.

“Where’s Agatha?” said Angevine, smiling and holding her at arm’s length.

“In the closet,” said Vikki. “What do you want with her?”

“You’ll see,” said Angevine.

Zyuganov hung up the phone, having listened to his mother for forty minutes tell him how odurelnyy, how colossally stupid he had been. She was losing her mind: She scolded him while stirring a pot of Soupe a L’ail, creamy garlic soup, she was making for her lunch. Put down the spoon and listen, he thought. She told him not to do anything rash, stop giving orders to everyone, and stay quiet. Attract no attention to yourself, she advised. Nebylo u baby hlopot tak kupila porosya, Ekaterina Zyuganova told her son, a woman had no trouble so she bought a piglet, you’ve asked for trouble. She would make a call or two, revive old contacts, and would call him back. She told him his first duty was to the State, that the State would take care of him, that he owed his first and last loyalty to Russia. Zyuganov privately thought his mother was a throwback Bolshevik: He had forgotten how old fashioned she was.

Ekaterina Zyuganova had known Zarubina and was shocked to hear she’d had a heart attack — the news of her death had rocketed around the Center and to worldwide rezidenturi. She had told her son that she guessed that the fate of TRITON — and subsequently of the mole inside the Center — would not be known for some time but that, in her experience from the Stalin years, all traitors eventually were unmasked.

“Eventually may not be fast enough for me,” Zyuganov had told his mother. The investigators looking into the “quarrel” that resulted in Yevgeny Pletnev’s death had demanded that Colonel Zyuganov relinquish his service passport — it would be best if he did not contemplate foreign travel for the immediate future. A furious Zyuganov also had to sit still for an audit of his section — KR had been immune to such internal controls in the past. Interviews with all employees of KR were scheduled. Zyuganov knew the signs: For all intents and purposes he was under loose house arrest; his command of KR soon would be taken away from him; it would be a short step to arrest, trial, and prison. And Egorova — he absolutely knew she was the CIA mole — dined in luxury on the shores of the Gulf of Finland with the president and his guests.

Five vehicles from the Gs — the FBI’s counterintelligence surveillance team — took up positions characteristic to this special kind of surveillance: they would monitor Vikki Mayfield with the intention of seeing who she was with. Coverage did not have to be discreet; the goal was to identify the man who had escaped from the park. Fileppo and Proctor had provided whatever description of the man they could, arguing testily between themselves. They were in one car. Nate rode with another G named Vannoy, a phlegmatic twenty-six-year-old with a movie idol profile and Popeye forearms. At the team’s arrival, a blacked-out G vehicle had ghosted through Vikki’s building’s rear lot, the passenger reading the numbers of the license plates of the parked cars into his radio. These would be traced instantly by FBI in federal, metropolitan, and national databases. The team dispersed into “fore and aft” positions, four cars to cover all possible directions radiating from Mayfield’s building. Nate’s car was coordinating rover. They settled in.

“I’m always on the other end of surveillance,” said Nate. “It’s the waiting that’s hard, I never realized it.”

Vannoy looked at him. “You get used to it.” he said. “You were in Moscow, right?”

Nate nodded.

“They pretty good over there?” In the streetlight, he looked like a silent film star.

“They go in pretty heavy,” said Nate. “Unlimited resources and they don’t have to answer to anybody.”

He looked out the window for a second. “We lost an officer in Moscow a few weeks ago,” said Nate. “They hit her with a car. Accident I guess.”

Vannoy’s eyes narrowed. “Her?” he said.

“Yeah, Hannah Archer, bigger balls than you and me combined,” said Nate. They were quiet for a minute. “And now she’s got a star on the wall at Headquarters.”

“I’ve seen that wall,” said Vannoy. “Lots of stars.”

“I’ve seen your FBI Hall of Honor too,” said Nate. They fell silent, listening to the night sounds in the dark neighborhood. Dead leaves in the gutter rustled in the light breeze. It was colder now, past midnight. The radio, volume turned low, burped once.

“How long to run those plates?” said Nate.

“Takes a little longer at night,” said Vannoy.

“I’m sure Fileppo and Proctor want to get their hands on this guy, whoever he is,” said Nate. “Asshole dusted Fileppo pretty good.”

“Proctor will help him ice it down,” said Vannoy. Something in his voice?

“Those two are amazing on the street,” said Nate. “Seriously, I never saw two guys work together like that.”

Vannoy shifted in his seat. “They’re good, maybe the best on the whole team,” said Vannoy. “They piss off everybody, but they get results.”

“It’s like they know what each other is thinking,” said Nate.

“They should, they’ve been together long enough,” said Vannoy.

“What, like roommates?” said Nate.

Vannoy looked to see if Nate was fucking with him, saw that he wasn’t. “Yeah, roommates,” said Vannoy.

Nate opened his mouth to say something, but the radio hissed with three squelch breaks — someone moving — and Vannoy started the car. Vikki Mayfield’s cherry-red Kia pulled out onto Benton Street. A woman wearing a hoodie was driving. A passenger sat tall in the passenger seat and wore a brimmed hat. Looking through binoculars, Nate could clearly see him — a man with a prominent nose — as he reached over to touch the driver on the shoulder. Vannoy let two cars slot in behind the Kia and took the third position. There would be no need for fancy tactics like handing off the eye or leapfrogging ahead of the rabbit. Just follow the Kia, period. Vannoy reported by radio as the team started rolling. Two minutes later, Nate’s cell phone rang. Benford. Pissed. Seriously pissed.

“Nash, put me on speaker, your team leader needs to hear this,” said Benford. “Special Agent Montgomery and I are sitting in the Ops Center of the Washington Field Office surrounded by a herd of wildebeests from the FBI’s Office of General Counsel. A like-minded herd of gnus is sitting in CIA Headquarters. We are, forgive the hyphenated word, video-conferencing in real time.”

“Coming through loud and clear, Chief,” said Nate, winking at Vannoy, who suppressed a chuckle. There was a brief hesitation. Benford’s agitation was palpable.

“It is our belief that the man in the park, and the passenger in the vehicle you are following, is Sebastian Angevine, CIA associate deputy director for Military Affairs. It is his registered license plate on a car at Mayfield’s building. We are reviewing Angevine’s internal computer access profile as we speak. An audit of his finances and accounts will begin tomorrow morning. Mayfield is employed as an exotic dancer in Washington and is, presumably, his paramour.” Nate had a wisecrack in mind regarding “paramour” but wisely decided now was not the time.

“I am advised both by FBI and CIA counsels that at this time there is no proof that Angevine is guilty of espionage as described in either 18 U.S.C. 794 (a) or (b) or in 17 U.S.C. 794 (c). This may change if and when any compelling evidence surfaces. Accordingly, Nash, and listen carefully, there is no authority for stopping or detaining either Angevine or Mayfield. Please ensure that the team understands this. Special Agent Montgomery is telling me that ‘it’s an order,’ which in FBI culture must mean that it’s imperative.”

“Understood, Chief, we’ll make sure the team knows,” said Nate into the phone. “We’re leaving Glover Park and moving north on Wisconsin. She’s driving moderately through light traffic. It’s too early to predict direction. Maybe she’s taking him home. I’m assuming he lives in Virginia?”

Benford’s muffled voice asked a question to someone in the room. “Correct. He lives in Vienna, Virginia, off Beulah Road,” said Benford. “Nathaniel, that these two are moving on the street past midnight in the same evening of a busted clandestine meeting with the now-defunct Russian rezident is, for us sentient nonlawyers, a significant suggestion of guilt. We have no way to know how Angevine assesses his situation, especially in the context of proof. He may be confident or panicked. It is therefore your only job to stay close and not let him out of your sight. If they go to a bar at this late hour take a table beside them. If he goes to the men’s room, use the stall next door. If they go to his home, set up outside, making sure he cannot slip out the back door. Call it in and we’ll make sure the Vienna police do not shoot you. Am I clear?”

Vikki was muttering to herself as she followed Angevine’s directions on what turns to make. Wisconsin Avenue was nearly empty. Seb was sitting in the passenger seat with Agatha — a three-quarter-length dressmaker’s dummy — on the floor between his legs. Vikki used the padded torso to design stripper outfits and showgirl headdresses — Agatha had a featureless, smooth, white plastic head. A coat was buttoned around the torso and a beige plastic bag stretched over the head had been taped tightly around the neck. Vikki had complained when Angevine wrenched and twisted the metal stand out of the bottom of the dummy, but he told her she wouldn’t be making dresses any longer, she would be wearing Chanel in Paris by Christmas, to which she replied “bullshit” but secretly hoped so.

He obviously knew where he wanted to go — he had cased this route ahead of time. An animated Angevine told her to go through Tenley Circle, then take Albermarle into American University Park, a neighborhood of streets in a tight grid square, with parallel alleys running behind houses. Vikki saw three sets of headlights follow at a respectful distance turn for turn. Angevine told her not to worry about them, and made her repeat exactly what she was to do when he exited the car. This was it. He barked at her to turn right, then quickly left onto Murdock Mill Road, a short one-way street that they entered the wrong way. As the following cars’ headlights disappeared for a second around the double corner, Angevine tapped Vikki on the arm and she pulled the emergency brake to slow the car. Angevine shouldered the door open, jumped out, and ran into the shadows of an alley, skidding to a stop behind a row of garbage cans. He crouched and held his breath.

For a terrified amateur on her first time, Vikki nailed it. She released the brake and kept going without a check in speed, steering straight while she reached over, pulled the door shut, grabbed Agatha off the floor, propped her up on the passenger seat, and clapped Angevine’s discarded hat on the dummy’s head. Who’s the dummy? thought Vikki, bitterly, now on her own and once again in the headlight glare of cars behind her. She continued east on Butterworth, around Westmoreland Circle to Dalecarlia, which would take her via Canal Road and Chain Bridge into suburban Virginia. Her instructions were to drive to Angevine’s town house and straight into the attached garage. Vikki was to spend the night in the house with all the curtains drawn. She was to undress and stash Agatha in a junk closet in the finished basement. In the morning she could return to her house, leaving the FBI to wonder how and exactly when Angevine had disappeared into thin air.

Three cars back, Nate’s instincts were jangling off the hook. The stair-step route through AU Park was bullshit, illogical. That prick was planning something and Nate asked Vannoy to tell the car with the eye to close up and watch out for a car escape. He didn’t know whether Angevine even knew how to bail out of a moving vehicle under surveillance, but it was important that the lead unit regularly verified that two people were in the car. Nate was on the phone to Benford passing updates. Fileppo and Proctor were in the second vehicle, giving the rest of the team unmitigated shit, and Vannoy told them to shut the fuck up and take the eye. They immediately reported that there were two people in the car, the woman and the tall man with a hat.

Angevine had seen four, five cars pass his alleyway, and none of the cars had slowed, no one looked to the side — they had missed his escape. Now he needed time, it was all up to Vikki (and Agatha) to keep the ball rolling. He checked his watch. Nearly two a.m. He would have to hike out of the neighborhood, but the metro would be running by five a.m. He’d get to Union Station and grab the MARC to BWI — if they discovered he was missing they’d shut down Dulles and National airports first, then think about Baltimore/Washington International later. By then he’d be on the first foreign flight to anywhere — Mexico City, Costa Rica, Toronto — he’d buy tickets to his first stop with his credit cards and true-name passport, leave a trail, then disappear after a second flight into the European Union. He could get to Paris without a trace. Paris was the place: He spoke the language, knew the city, had relatives there. He had cash, and could eventually buy a black market alias French identity document. And the Russian Embassy, a modern concrete and glass fortress near the Bois de Boulogne on the Boulevard Lannes in the sixteenth, would welcome him with open arms, especially if he arrived with the name of the CIA source inside the Russian Service. It was imprinted in his money-grubbing memory: Dominika Vasilyevna Egorova.

Angevine did not intend to retire in exile in some overheated defector’s apartment in Moscow, like Kim Philby, or Ed Howard, or Edward Snowden, minded by dour FSB watchdogs, cooked for by a headstrong battle-ax, and serviced every ten days by third-tier slatterns with acne between their breasts and skin tags on their necks. No, thank you. All he required of the Russians was a retirement payout and access to his foreign account, which, by his conservative estimate, was somewhere around five million dollars. Money in hand, he would then disappear: a little house with a terrace shaded by flowering vines on one of the Aeolian Islands; maybe a penthouse on Avenida Atlantica along Copacabana Beach; or maybe a stone mansion on a hill in Tuscany, surrounded by his own vineyard. A girlfriend or two — those Brazilians girls were blazingly hot — but Angevine couldn’t see Vikki fitting in. He wondered whether she would realize that when she tapped him on the arm to signal his roll out, it was the last time they’d touch. Well, she got the BMW.

As he walked down alleys, sticking to the shadows and thinking about the girls in his future, Angevine randomly and suddenly remembered how Gloria Bevacqua, the sow who had stolen the top operations job out from under him, had mocked him the morning of the announcement. Chicks dig you, Seb, she had smirked at him, and in his fury he had been launched on this, this utterly insane, this utterly destructive journey with the Russians, and now he was walking footsore and sick with worry in the night, a fugitive. He had narrowly escaped from those galloping night-stalkers in the park, but there was no guarantee he’d even make it through the airport. He was not sorry for what he had done, but he felt sorry for himself. A sob caught in his throat and he cried silently as he walked. Chicks dig you, Seb, echoed in his head, the big spy, the big man. He wondered what Zarubina was reporting back to Moscow — probably that he was caught and arrested. They’d be amazed to see him surface in Paris. He brightened as he imagined how he’d coolly tell the Russian Embassy receptionist to telephone upstairs to the relevant office to inform them that TRITON was in the lobby.

Vikki had also been crying, gripping the wheel of her little car wondering whether she was going to jail for leading five ominous FBI cars behind her on a prolonged goose chase into the vastness of suburban Virginia, to give Seb time to get away. She might have been able to plead ignorance — he had lied to her, mislead her, she didn’t have anything to do with anything. But the stiff-backed presence of the dressmaker’s dummy with the floppy hat propped on the seat next to her would be proof of her complicity. Vikki contemplated pulling into the next strip mall parking lot and walking back to the cars and telling them everything she knew, which wasn’t much. She wasn’t guilty. With the instincts of a professional stripper, Vikki somehow knew Seb would never send for her to meet him in Paris. But she couldn’t hurt him. In any case, the decision quite unexpectedly was made for her.

A drunk pulling out of an all-night fast-food drive-thru crossed two lanes of Route 123 in Vienna and narrowly missed Vikki’s car, thanks partly to her violent swerving and locking of brakes. Behind her, Fileppo and Proctor likewise screeched to a stop, both of them braced for the thoracic thump of metal when cars collide. They slid to a stop inches from Vikki’s rear bumper, but the kettle-drum crunch came when the G car in position two collided with the rear of Fileppo’s car, subsequently pushing them heavily into Vikki’s car. The chain reaction shock wave was transmitted through bumper and frame, with the result that featherweight Agatha was catapulted first forward into the windshield, then backward against the seat and headrest, snapping off her plastic head, now hatless, which bounced and landed on the rear window shelf, where it rocked back and forth, a Cold War commemorative bobblehead. Vikki put her face in her hands. This is all the time you’re going to get, Seb, she thought. Proctor and Fileppo walked up to Vikki’s car. Fileppo leaned into the window, asked if she was all right, and told her to turn off her engine. She put her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes

She heard another voice talking into a phone. “Simon,” the voice said, “he used a JIB head, a goddamn homemade jack-in-the-box, and rolled out. Best guess is AU Park, no reason to have gone through there except for an escape. Probably forty minutes ago. Two cars are going back to sweep search the area, but if he’s in a cab or in the metro, he’s gone.” Vikki looked up from the steering wheel and saw a young man with dark hair with a phone to his ear. He was listening carefully. He thumbed the phone off and turned to the other two guys — all three of them younger than she would have expected, but with grim faces. The first young guy said, “Everyone stays put until a special agent gets here. None of us has arrest authority.” Nate leaned into Vikki’s window.

“You okay?” Nate smiled.

Vikki nodded.

“Just off the record, you have any idea where your boyfriend is headed?” Nate had just potentially violated Vikki’s rights.

“Dude, chill,” said Fileppo. Proctor nodded. They knew about this shit.

“We’ve fucked this up several times, man,” said Proctor. “Don’t do it this way.” Nate ignored them and looked at Vikki.

“I don’t know what you know, or what he told you, or what you think,” said Nate, “but if he gets away, a woman about your age is going to die by being fed alive, feet first, into a crematorium oven.”

Fileppo looked at Nate, surprised. “C’mon, miss,” he said, forgetting himself. “You can’t let that happen.”

“Not you too,” said Proctor. “Shut the fuck up, both of you.”

Vikki looked up at the three of them. “He said he’s going to Paris. That’s all I know,” Vikki said, contemplating for the first time in her career the irony of her stage name at the Good Guys Club — Felony.

Bring chicken stock to a boil. Sauté abundant minced garlic in duck fat (or olive oil) and add to the stock, along with a bouquet garni and simmer. Remove the bouquet and add beaten egg whites to the soup, let them set, and remove from the heat. Temper egg yolks, add them to the soup, and season with salt and pepper. Put a slice of day-old country bread in a bowl, sprinkle with Parmesan, then pour soup over. Egg whites can be cut into smaller pieces.