Max Karpov - The Children's Game

“Oh,” Christopher said.

“For all Turov told you, he never did give up Putin, did he?”

“So maybe that was the real fourth move. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Martin said. “ War and Peace being his idea of a little joke.”

Christopher listened to the leaves blowing. “Any chance I could get a copy of that file?”

Martin, as often happened, was already ahead of him, pulling a copy from his jacket. Chris skimmed the document in the light through the back windows. Had this been Turov’s real objective, then, with “the children’s game”? Operating undetected from inside the States, influencing its politics and policies, monitoring electronic communications, turning the generous but gullible United States into a giant, unwitting satellite of Russia? If so, did the game really end with Turov’s death? Could there still be a spy—or spies—in the house?

He slipped the document back into the envelope, thinking he would pass it on to his little brother. “I guess it’s a good thing we cut things off when we did,” he said.

Martin closed and opened his eyes, acknowledging only that he had spoken. “Who knows what other monsters are going to crawl out of the sea,” he said, “while we’re busy with our political jousts and televised distractions…” He paused to finish his drink.

Forget about crawling from the sea, Christopher thought. What about the ones already here?

Just then the back door slid open and they both turned to look: it was Martin’s wife Heidi, saying it was time to go. They had a forty-five-minute drive back home to northern Virginia, she reminded him.

Anna and Christopher walked them outside for a long goodbye in the driveway. They waved from the street as the Lindgrens finally pulled away, watching their taillights disappear over the rise in the road. Chris felt Anna’s hand close around his as they began to walk back through the mist.

“So. Here we are,” she said. Chris felt a tug of gratitude. A gust of cold wind shuffled through the dead leaves in the side yard.

By the time they reached the house, though, he was thinking again about Russia. He looked up at the clouds sliding past the moon and thought of his country’s enemies, those real and those imagined. And he thought about stories, the kind that people tell, with beginnings, middles, and ends. And the real kind, which were never so tidy.

Copyright © 2018 by Max Karpov

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Cover Photo: IStock

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3481-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3482-1

Printed in the United States of America