Authors: Tod Goldberg
“Mikey,” Sam said, “are you sure you should go in there alone?”
“We can’t risk both of us being seen ahead of time,” I said. “Besides, I want you listening in on those bugs I placed in Odessa.”
“Thus far, it’s just been a lot of people remarking on how good the butter cookies are when paired with the Prince Vladimir tea,” Sam said. “Unless that’s someone speaking in code.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I got out of the Navigator and examined the street in front of the consulate. Even though it was hours before the event, already a valet service was getting set up at the corner, which meant it was going to be difficult to have a getaway car parked right where we’d need it, so I had to hope a million dollars was enough to get me a reserved space for the evening.
Unlike the consulates you might see in Washington, DC, or even Los Angeles or New York—the kind of big, ornate structures that announced the presence of an entire country, or at least the presence of a few key government and goodwill officials who were, most likely, spies themselves—the building that housed the Moldovan Consulate was more like a building that happened to house several very nice law firms, which in this case were called the Isle of Man, Morocco, Antigua and Moldova. There was a security presence in the outer foyer where three very large men who looked bored and tired and hot sat stuffed behind a sunken circular desk. All three wore black suits with white shirts and blue ties, and gold name badges, though no actual badges. They each had Bluetooth earpieces and matching BlackBerrys strapped to their belts, but no guns. Surrounding the men in the sunken area were a dozen closed-circuit televisions showing alternating shots of all sides of the building, including one that showed Sam sitting in his new Navigator. There were also several laptop computers open on the desk. One was running a program that controlled the closed-circuit cameras: Three of them showed open Facebook pages, two were on
ESPN.com
and the other one I could see appeared to be running an in-progress game of solitaire.
Behind the men and the security console was a bank of elevators that were guarded by yet another large, bored, tired, and sweaty gentleman. The only difference I could see between this man and the others was that he had a key card around his neck on a chain, which probably meant he had to scan visitors in who wished to go upstairs to the various consulate offices. That he also was holding a clipboard made it all the more clear that he was a man of terrible importance, at least in this ecosystem.
To the left of the security console, there were several tables being set up in front of the grand entrance to a surprisingly ornate ballroom that I could see was filled with people dressing tables and such. A woman with a walkie-talkie in one hand stood in the middle of the ballroom and barked out orders, first in English and then in Russian and then, for good measure, in Spanish. I couldn’t make out what she said exactly, but the general thrust was clear from the way the workers suddenly picked up their pace. Somewhere in the building food was being prepared. Prime rib. Something made primarily of garlic. A million-dollar meal, no doubt.
“May I help you?” one of the security guards asked. He had an accent that sounded vaguely British, but not like he grew up in Leeds. His name tag said MR. CHISOLM and beneath that THE ISLE OF MAN. I looked at the other two guards and saw that they were Mr. Plutak and Mr. Reigor, from Moldova and Antigua, respectively. Morocco must have been guarding the elevators.
“Yes,” I said. “My name is Dr. Liam Bennington. I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment, but I’d like to purchase a table for this evening’s benefit.”
“All of that is handled by the consulate’s press office,” Mr. Chisolm said. He began clicking away at the computer directly to his left, one of the Facebook-enabled ones, but nothing seemed to be happening, perhaps because it was on a page of photos of a young woman. “I’m sorry, sir. Just give me a moment.” He kept clicking, but all that was happening, as far as I could see, was that he kept letting everyone on the planet know that he was quite fond of a photo of the young woman standing in front of the Empire State Building. “Bloody hell,” he said under his breath.
I pointed at the computer. “Is that your wife?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “That’s the problem, sir.”
“Is it Reva who handles this? If so, I can find my way upstairs while you untangle this.”
“Oh, that would be a relief,” he said. He scribbled my name on a guest pass. “Just show this at the lift.”
I gave Mr. Chisolm a two-fingered salute and headed off to the elevator, where I showed my pass to the guard from Morocco, who barely looked at it before swiping his key card and hitting the UP button.
“Fourth floor?” I said.
“Third,” he said. Morocco had no accent at all and his name badge said CAPTAIN TIMMONS on it. I was right. A man of power. And a man without a country, apparently, since his name badge didn’t actually say MOROCCO beneath his name. What he was the captain of was anyone’s guess. “You are seeing?”
“Reva,” I said.
He finally lifted his head up and I saw that he was older than the other guards—where they were in their late twenties or early thirties, he was clearly in his late forties or early fifties. “Reva is the Mary of Moldova. What department?”
“Press office.”
“Oh, oh,” he said, with a laugh. “That’s Ms. Lohr. Ask for her by that name or else you’ll be greeted by eleven different women.”
“Could be worse,” I said.
“Don’t I know it,” he said. He looked down at my pass. “Dr. Bennington. What are you a doctor of?”
“What hurts?” I said. Another laugh. Just two old friends waiting for an elevator. “I’m a scientist, I’m afraid. I can’t get you any medication but I can get you an excellent deal on a Bunsen burner.”
Captain Timmons slapped me on the back. “Some days, a Bunsen burner would be just fine, if you know what I mean. Place it over one of the fire detectors and get me off early before all the fuss gets started here.”
“I’m afraid I’ll be part of that fuss tonight,” I said.
“Oh, you’re fine,” he said. The elevator doors opened then and I stepped in. “It’s all those Russians with machine guns that make me nervous.”
The doors closed in front of Captain Timmons and for a brief moment I was alone with his final observation. If I were still a spy, a full-time spy, I could have defused this whole situation in a much easier fashion. I would have placed a call to my handler in DC, told him about this poor kid wrapped up in a situation beyond his comprehension, and asked if there wasn’t something that could be done. My handler would call his counterparts in Ukraine and Moldova; they’d both probably be ex–KGB agents grown fat and happy on Yuri Drubich’s graft, but they would be able to see the value in averting an international situation. They would call Yuri personally and ask him to please stop tormenting a child and his crazy father and Yuri, ever the statesman, would say certainly, I will certainly do that, and it would be over.
But what I also knew was that one day Brent Grayson would die in a terrible, unexplainable car accident. Or one day Brent Grayson would be the victim of an apparently senseless home invasion robbery gone terribly wrong. Or maybe it wouldn’t be Brent Grayson at all. Maybe it would be his wife, a woman Brent didn’t even know yet, who would be walking down the street on her way to her job, or maybe she’d be walking her dog, or maybe she’d be pushing a stroller with their baby in it, and then suddenly she’d be on the ground, a bullet in her head. And then she’d be a statistic. An unsolved murder.
I never liked bureaucrats anyway.
So instead, I would catch Yuri doing what our own government somehow hadn’t managed to do during all the years he’d been in business. I’d set him up for the same kind of bad beat Henry Grayson had taken so many times before: a sure thing, a favorite, that ends up being the worst possible bet. And maybe Yuri would be put away forever. Or maybe he’d have favors to cash in down the line that would set him free, but I’d catch him in such a public forum that it would be impossible for him to ever set foot in America.
And if that didn’t work? Well, I’d let Fiona shoot him. Because if what I was planning didn’t work, that might be our only way out, though the idea of going Old West in a foreign consulate didn’t excite me.
The elevator doors opened directly into the reception area of the Moldovan Consulate. It was an airy and open space—windows went from floor to ceiling and the view stretched all the way to the water, or it would if the afternoon haze hadn’t already begun to roll in—and because Moldova had no natural enemies in the United States, that they knew of, anyway, there was none of the implied military presence (like armed men lingering about doing very little of anything but looking intimidating) that one might find at the Pakistani Embassy.
Instead, there was a reception desk behind which a young woman sat reading a copy of
InStyle
, the distinctive blue, yellow and red flag of her home country emblazoned behind her in an ornate frame. There was also a framed photo of a man in a suit, who I assumed was the last president of the country, though it could have been anyone, really, since their last elections had been plagued by fighting between upstart Communists and the loose group of opposition parties and had failed to yield a new leader. If this had been a few years ago, I would have known the precise reasons behind all of it. I may have even played a role. These are things I used to care deeply about. Things I just can’t summon any feeling for anymore.
I told the receptionist that I was there to see Ms. Lohr because I was interested in purchasing a table for the evening. The receptionist said, “Yes?”
And I said, “Yes.”
She exhaled through her nose and rolled her eyes ever so slightly as she stood up, as if this was going to be the annoying and time-consuming task of her day. She led me down a brightly lit hallway, past a small cubicle farm filled with young Moldovans who barely looked up as I walked by. The cubicle farm was surrounded by offices, none of which had open doors, which was either a fantastic metaphor for life in Moldova or, more likely, a statement that the leadership keeps its own hours, which was made clear enough by the computer screens I spied here, too, which were largely on Twitter. I had to hope no one would tweet that a burned spy just walked by.
The receptionist, who walked at a pace that would make a slug frustrated if it were following her, finally brought me into a conference room that featured the same framed Moldovan flag and presidential picture as the reception area, only smaller, and an executive-length conference table that was covered in stacks and stacks of programs bearing Yuri Drubich’s face, presumably ready to be taken downstairs, and a water and tea service.
“It will be a moment,” the receptionist said and left me alone for another ten minutes until the woman with the walkie-talkie I saw downstairs ordering the troops about stepped into the conference room and essentially fell into one of the chairs. She was dressed in a finely tailored Chanel skirt suit. It was gray and she wore a white shirt beneath it that was open far enough to reveal a demure single-diamond necklace. Her hair was professionally done, but it was obvious by the way her bangs stuck to her forehead that she was having a long, stressful day.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Bennington,” she said. “The security, they do not bother to find out where in the building anyone is, so we must go running around blindly half of the day when we have guests.” Her irritation with the guards seemed outsized and apparently she realized that, too, because she quickly added, “I’m sorry. They do a good job. I am at the end of a rope that was already much frayed and you are not here to listen to me complain about having a good job, yes?”
Reva had only a slight Russian accent but still hung on to some of the charms of her language, ending a sentence that was not a question with a rhetorical question no less.
“Why don’t you have a glass of water?” I said. I stood up and poured her a glass and then handed it to her. “Everything feels better once you’ve had a glass of water. My mother taught me that.”
Reva took the glass from me without a word and drank it down and then she smiled, revealing perfectly straight, white teeth. Another sign she hadn’t lived in Moldova her entire life. That or her insurance plan at the consulate had a strong dental component. “Your mother is very smart,” she said. Her walkie-talkie squawked but instead of answering it, she set it on the table and made a big show of turning it off. “You are a doctor? Is that correct?”
“A scientist,” I said. “My company, InterMacron, will be much in the news soon.”
“Science I was never good at,” she said. “I am a people person, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. But I have always been fascinated with people who understand how the smallest things on the planet can open up the biggest secrets.”
“Like Mr. Drubich,” I said.
“Like Mr. Drubich,” she said. “He is a remarkable man. Have you had the chance to meet him?”
“I am hoping to tonight,” I said, “but I have admired his work from afar for many years.”
“He is most remarkable,” she said, “a man of science but also of great faith and erudition.”
I pointed at the photo on the cover of the program. “And a family man, too,” I said.
“He met his wife in Moldova when they were just children,” she said, “and they’ve been married now thirty years.”
“We should all be so lucky,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” she said. I saw her quickly gaze down at my left hand, and when she looked back up, I was staring directly at her, which made her blush, but I didn’t look away.
“I’ve not been so lucky,” I said.
“Your mother must be upset about that,” she said.
“Among other things,” I said.
This got Reva to laugh again. She was an attractive woman, but she wasn’t Fiona. For the purposes of my needs that day, however, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“I’m sorry,” Reva said. “You must be a very busy man and here I am going on about silly things.”