Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

Garin turned away from the mirror. He walked to the bedroom and switched on the light. Everything was in order. The bed perfectly made, each vacation photograph squared on the wall, fluffed bed pillows arranged as she liked them. It was an odd thing, he thought, to leave the room in perfect order at the moment of her flight. There was a part of her he’d come to discover that needed predictability, order, safety. His work had none of that. When they understood this, they both knew the marriage was doomed. For a long time they refused to admit they’d made a mistake. He had known her as well as he’d known any person, but now, seeing her gone, he wasn’t sure he’d known her at all.

She had taken some clothes, and when he checked her jewelry box, he saw that she had taken a pair of heirloom earrings and her pearl necklace. There were empty hangers in the closet, and her rolling suitcase was missing.

He opened his desk drawer and felt underneath. Tape fixed the hidden manila envelope to the bottom. She hadn’t found his documents, or hadn’t looked. He removed the envelope and confirmed that the seal was unbroken. He tossed it on the bed.

Garin moved to the kitchen and stood at the sink, looking out into the dark, snowy night. He drank a glass of water and saw his reflection in the mirrored smokiness of the window. His hand was trembling. The glass fell, shattering in the porcelain sink, and a shard pierced his palm. He bled out the cut under the faucet’s cold water.

Suddenly, the telephone rang, startling him. On the second ring, he lifted the receiver.

“Sophie?”

“Alek Garin, please.”

“Yes.”

“I’m James Slattery. I am with the Agency. I’m calling on a secure line. Are you alone? Can we talk?”

“I’m alone.”

“I’m calling at the request of the deputy director. Sorry to bother you at this hour. There has been a problem in Moscow. Your name came up. We have a request for you.”

Garin’s eyes came off the snow falling out the window. His silence was a sort of consent.

“Is there anything that will keep you from flying out of JFK the day after tomorrow?”

Garin closed the faucet and put pressure on his cut, cradling the phone against his neck. Sophie’s sudden departure and the surprise call combined to create a surreal sense of displacement. He knew he couldn’t live alone in the apartment. Memories in the familiar place would be a terrible reminder of their failure. His mind went over the half-dozen ties that would prevent him from going. “When do I have to decide?”

“Now, actually. On this call. It’s an urgent matter. The Air France flight leaves at five P.M. We can have a car pick you up Wednesday afternoon. The driver will brief you.”

“How long?”

“Stopover in Charles de Gaulle for a further briefing. From there, you will fly to Sheremetyevo. You’ll be in Moscow in seventy-two hours.”

“How long will I be gone?”

“We’re not sure at this time. Weeks, certainly. Months, perhaps.”

“The money?”

There was a pause. “We are prepared to deposit twice your usual fee in the account you’ve used in the past.”

The offer surprised him, not simply because of its size but because the amount implied the seriousness of the matter, and possibly also the risks. One day earlier, the danger would not have appealed to him.

He looked around the apartment. This was to have been his new life, but there had never been an end to work’s demands, and never enough money. Contract jobs paid well enough, but they were unpredictable. He’d stuck with it because the work had never been just about the money. He had a figure in mind—the amount he needed to start over in another city.

Garin wrote two numbers on the notepad that hung by the wall telephone. He gave Slattery the larger number and was prepared to accept the lower, but that wasn’t necessary. When the call ended, Garin placed the handset in its cradle and considered all that would now follow.

Garin entered the bedroom and lifted the manila envelope, tearing the seal. His American passport was the logical choice for the job—the name matched his driver’s license, and it was the name on his marriage certificate—but there was also good reason to use the name that appeared on his Soviet passport and his birth certificate. He looked at both passports, considered where he was going, the risk of being stopped at immigration, and made his choice.

SHEREMETYEVO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’S WEATHER WAS unseasonably warm the morning that Garin stepped off Air France 1744. Winter fog was deep and gray on the tarmac, and it turned aircraft into ghost machines. His overnight flight from Paris was the last to land before air traffic controllers announced a ground stop. Passengers walked in the light mist from the plane’s remote location to the new terminal under the watchful eyes of armed border guards. Garin was alert to the surveillance, becoming for the moment another fatigued passenger happy to get out of the rain.

When it was his turn at immigration, he presented his American passport and forged visa to a stern, middle-aged officer with bloodshot eyes, a loosened necktie, and a mysterious badge on his uniform. He looked twice at Garin’s visa, matching photo to face, comparing the likenesses with the inscrutable expression of immigration officers everywhere, looking for a single reason to doubt the documents. Garin followed the example of other passengers, who did as they were told, moving from one queue to the next, until they extracted their bags from the carousel’s conveyer belt. He opened his bag for the customs agent, who poked through his underwear and then waved him through to the glass lobby.

The embassy driver sent to collect Garin stood beyond a roped perimeter that held back eager parties waiting to greet arriving travelers. Garin nodded at his handwritten name on the driver’s card and let the driver take his duffel bag.

Garin didn’t talk on the drive in. His mind was preoccupied by the view from the car’s window. The dense fog had lifted enough for him to see landmarks he thought he’d never see again—the brutalist architecture of grim apartment blocks, wispy coal smoke that rose straight into the air, and the sameness of the cars. How many times had he driven this route, the exact drive? There was something illusory about time and space that in the moment made him feel as if he’d never left the Soviet Union. The low visibility darkened his mood and reminded him of the morning he had been forced to flee. It still haunted him that he hadn’t seen, or chose to ignore, the obvious dangers. His wishful thinking had blinded him to the treachery of men he trusted, and it was only when he’d gotten out that he had time to reflect on what had gone wrong. On instinct, he looked behind and saw a black Volga following.

“They’ve been there since we left the airport,” the driver said, catching Garin’s eye in the rearview mirror.

Nothing has changed , he thought. But things were different. He was older, with a scar on his neck, another name, and a new assignment.

GARIN WAS SIX feet, and slender for his age, which made him appear younger than he was, and his knees hit the front seat. After thirty-six hours of airport lounges and coach travel, he was exhausted, and he looked it. His cheeks had the rugged shadow of a hiker just back from a four-day trek. It was a masculine face but not a tough face, and fatigue had darkened his preoccupation. His slacks had lost their crease, his shirt was gray with perspiration, and his wide tie was loosened at the neck and fell across his chest like a lanyard. When he saw the embassy, he tightened the necktie’s knot and swept back his hair.