Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

“In what?”

“Does it matter? It will buy time. A few weeks, maybe more. And there is something else. He wants two hundred fifty thousand dollars wired to a Swiss bank account.” Garin waited for a response. “George, you’re quiet. You’ve never been this quiet.”

“What’s the money for?”

“Him.”

“ Christ. That’s crazy.”

“He’s corrupt. What choice do we have? He matched my visa to old photos in their files. He knows I’m CIA, but he doesn’t know why I’m here, and he hasn’t connected me to my earlier work. We’re buying his silence.”

“GAMBIT?”

“He’s heard rumors. He suspects something.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. Posner wants to make it look like he’s recruited me, but it’s a cover to explain his contact. He’s blackmailing me, putting me at risk. Play it out. Whose idea was it? Nothing happens by chance. You were set up, blown, expelled. I am being set up.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Get me the documents,” Garin said. “Wire the money. It will buy time.”

“How much?”

“We can’t wait for Border Guard Day. We need to move up exfiltration. You’re quiet again. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear. Shit. ” A beat. “You have to go dark,” Mueller said.

“And the plane tickets to Leningrad?”

“You’ll leave by train. Finland is what they’ll expect. You’ll travel to Uzhgorod, and we’ll pick you up on the Czech side.”

“And just walk across the border?”

“We’ve used a smuggler before. He’ll drive you across.”

“When?”

Mueller threw out a date. “If you can’t make that date, I’ll be there the next night. Same procedure. Same time. We’ll be there every night for a week until you show up. The Czech driver will pick you up at the train station. He’ll have a false trunk that will hide GAMBIT. You’ll ride up front with the wife. Understand? You have to get out of Moscow.”

“How will I know him?”

“We’ll get you what you need.”

“How?”

“Ronnie. She’ll be your contact.”

“You trust her?”

“Only her. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Mueller paused. “This is the last time we talk until we meet at the border. Is there a drop point she can use?”

Garin went down the list of places he was familiar with in Moscow. He considered the postal box by the metro station, but it was too public. It was suitable for messages, but there was no place to leave documents. He rejected the radiator in the apartment lobby where GAMBIT left film canisters. He couldn’t risk a mix-up.

“There is a small church at 25 Mayakovsky Street,” Garin said. “Below a Madonna and child icon, there is a gap between the wall and a cabinet. Tickets and documents go there. I’ve used it before. It’s safe.”

In the silence that followed Garin knew Mueller was writing.

“Leave your apartment tonight,” Mueller said. “Stay someplace they won’t look. Tell GAMBIT there has been a change of plans. Do you hear me? Go dark.”

Garin felt fear settle in like an old friend who’d come to visit. Things were not happening the way he had foreseen, but he’d been here before. Since early the previous week, many unexpected dangers had required an extraordinary faith in himself. That greedy wretch Posner, making his sudden demand and turning his job upside down. He had arrived in Moscow knowing he might be recognized, but he’d thought it a remote possibility. He had never expected chance to triumph over a reasonable plan.

“Go dark with what?” Garin demanded. “Where? What money?”

“There is a wall safe in my old office. I doubt Rositske changed the combination. You’ll find what you need there.” Mueller was emphatic. “Stay away from the embassy. Wait for Ronnie to make the drop, and then get GAMBIT to the Czech border. Understand? You’re not safe.”

When he stepped out of the Bubble, Garin saw the office light at the end of the hallway go out. Garin turned the doorknob of Mueller’s office and pulled the door shut, closing it softly. A muted click. He stood absolutely still in the darkness, his ears a tuning fork for danger. The alto clap of a woman’s heels approached down the hallway, passed the door, and then faded on their way to the air-lock entrance.

Garin went to work quickly. His butane lighter illuminated the combination safe on the wall, and Mueller had been correct about Rositske’s laziness. Garin emptied the emergency pouch on the desk and sorted the contents. He took the envelope of cash, a dozen krugerrands, and the list of emergency Moscow contacts, safe houses that wouldn’t be safe now. He considered the Colt pistol. He knew that if it came to the point where he needed to defend himself, he was probably already a dead man and a casual interrogation that uncovered the pistol would doom him. But there was comfort in knowing he was armed. He stuffed the pistol under his belt and put an extra magazine in his pocket. He pondered the cyanide capsule. He had known one compromised Russian spy who’d opted for suicide over torture, but he was not that brave.

GARIN’S LUCK HAD been on a good run, but everyone’s luck runs out—the car that careens around the corner as you step off the curb, the aircraft engine that fails on your flight home. How many times had death been his companion in a dream, his corpse in a body bag at a remote border crossing? Long ago he had tried and failed to banish those images. He reminded himself that his work in Moscow wasn’t his most dangerous. His work in Hungary during Prague Spring had been more daunting; his work in Beirut had been more terrifying. But every job had its moment of truth, when the unexpected met the unforgiving, forcing him to improvise.

It happened to him as he passed through the air lock and waited for the elevator, having impatiently pushed the button twice. At the sound of the arriving elevator, he patted his chest, a tic, to confirm that the things he’d taken were safely hidden. The elevator doors opened to reveal Helen Walsh, standing in the back. It would be hard to say who was more startled and equally hard to say who did a better job of hiding that surprise.

“I thought I was the last one on the floor,” she said.

Garin knew that he had only to muddy her judgment, not change it. “I had to call Langley.”

“How did you get up here? I’ll have to report this, Alek. Give me a reason why I shouldn’t. A legitimate reason.”

He gazed at her. “I’m authorized.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve been an odd duck since you arrived.”

Garin saw her eyes, alert, her mind working. A fragrant scent came to him in bright purples and pale lavender. He experienced the colors like a hallucination and under the elevator’s fluorescent light, he saw a phosphorescent glow on his hands. Purple tint like a faint inkblot. Dizziness, the smell. His mild case of synesthesia was accompanied by a pulsating headache.

He stared at his glowing palms. METKA. What did I touch? The doorknob? The light in the elevator became intense, and he fumbled for a stick of chewing gum, popping the peppermint stick in his mouth.

“It’s nothing,” he said, watching her stare. “Elevators make me nauseous.”

Blue latex gloves poked from her handbag, and seeing him spot them, she tucked them out of sight. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No. Gum equalizes pressure in my ears.”

The elevator made a slow, rattling descent, and they stood side by side against the elevator’s back wall, watching the floor-indicator light mark their descent. Garin was taller by three inches, and he had the advantage of strength, but weight and height weren’t of use to him in a situation that called for him to think clearly. He rubbed his temple to focus his blurring eyes.