Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

Now he understood. “You’re talking about Russia.”

Gregory didn’t reply.

“Wait, so you’re in a position to offer full protection of the Russian security services?”

“I am.”

“Are you Russian?”

He shrugged, said nothing: a simple acknowledgment.

“Are you WikiLeaks or are you — Russia? Which is it?”

“Do I have the support of certain Russian assets? Distinctions like that have become meaningless these days, really. There’s no clear line, and it doesn’t finally matter. It’s complicated, but the world is a complicated place. What does matter is — I can help you. I can protect you.”

“In Russia. ”

“We’re talking a luxury apartment, a dacha — the life. You’re not going to be like Philby, drinking yourself into obscurity. We’re a capitalist paradise now. And I’ve had your coffee. It’s great. Your coffee could be huge over there — it’s an untapped market. Point is, we can protect you. You can have any kind of life you want.”

“And, what, I have to move to Moscow for the rest of my life?”

“May it be a long life. Which I wouldn’t put odds on over here.”

“I’m still alive,” he pointed out.

“I’m impressed; I really am. You’ve done well in the last few days, staying out in the cold as long as you have. You are an amateur, after all. Not a trained operative. Clearly, some combination of resourcefulness and luck has served you well. But how long do you think you can keep going? Even a hot hand cools eventually.”

Tanner shook his head.

Gregory picked up a fork and traced a pattern on the countertop. A windy sigh. “Mr. Tanner, listen to me, please. You go back out there, and they’ll grab you. It’s only a matter of time. Now, will they kill you, an American citizen? I don’t know. Then again, they have ways to do that untraceably these days.”

“Well, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“The wrong Michael Tanner?” Gregory asked with a glint of amusement.

“I’m not a whistle-blower, and I’m not a hero.”

He set down the fork carefully, like a surgeon handing off his instruments. “You know, Ed Snowden didn’t plan to be a hero either. One day he just woke up and realized, enough is enough. That’s all. He did the right thing. He listened to his conscience.”

“That’s got nothing to do with me.”

“You can decide to be a hero. And change the world. Do you realize how powerful you are? If we’re right about what you’ve got, this could change everything. Mr. Tanner, there are moments in history — hinge moments, they’re called — when the world suddenly changes. This is where we are, I think. Will America become a surveillance state, eventually a dictatorship? Or do you have it in your power to stop all that in its tracks? See, you can become the Nathan Hale of our time. Nathan Hale could have remained a schoolteacher, but he made a decision and he became a hero. To save the American Revolution.”

“Wasn’t he executed by the British?”

“Well, he’s probably not the best example. But you can become someone truly important. You probably think of yourself as just a common man, a small man now. But you’ve proven yourself to be a brave man — and a man of conscience. A righteous man who’s about to become someone truly important in the history of our world. You alone can stop the abuses. Turn over the rock and reveal the, the writhing maggots. Let the sun shine in. Save your country.”

“I’m not handing classified documents over to Russia. That’s not who I am.”

“Because, what, you love your country? Given what your country has done to you? Look, the Cold War was over years ago. Russia isn’t the enemy anymore.”

Tanner shook his head mutely.

“‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Someone wise said that once.” Gregory looked up, cocked his head. “Mr. Tanner, the time to decide is now. You have very little time left.”

Tanner said nothing.

Gregory turned away. Something in the window seemed to have caught his eye. He turned and looked outside, squinting. Tanner looked where Gregory was looking. He saw a black Chevy Suburban pull into the diner’s small parking lot.

“A Suburban weighs five thousand pounds,” he said. “An armored one weighs ninety-five hundred. It tends to sit low on its run-flat tires.” Suddenly the man sprang from his stool and stood. “Oh dear. I told you that you have little time. In fact, you have no time.”

Trailing behind the Suburban were two, no, three smaller black four-wheel-drive vehicles. Tanner heard the loud squealing of brakes.

Gregory put an urgent hand on Tanner’s shoulder. “There’s no time! I know a way. Come with me.”

Tanner glanced outside again, at the team that he knew was forming to apprehend him. He thought for a moment. “No, thanks,” he said.

Tanner had lost track of time.

For a long time, he had been sitting at a steel table bolted to the floor in an all-white room. He’d been in the small, windowless room for more than an hour. He had nothing to read, no phone, no way to entertain himself. He just examined the dense white foam on the walls, the small camera lenses in each corner of the room. The metal-halide lights inset into the ceiling, with their constant high-pitched hum, like tinnitus.

He had been taken to this room about an hour ago, he estimated, from the windowless room where he ate and slept. Which was not much different from this room, except that it had a bed and a chair and a toilet. All were steel and bolted to the floor too. On the bed, a thin mattress.

He didn’t know where he was. His captors did not talk to him. All he knew was that he was in solitary confinement somewhere.

He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been here, but he thought it had been around two days. He had determined that by how many meals he had been given. Which was complicated by the fact that the meals had mostly been the same: a brown brick of something he was pretty sure was nutraloaf. Which he’d once read was given to prison inmates only as punishment. It was inedible, a flavorless neutral-tasting substance, like chewing Styrofoam. He tried a few bites at first and spit it out.

So it had been two days and two nights since four black vehicles had slammed to a halt on either side of the diner in Framingham. Agents swarmed out of the Suburbans: men in plain black windbreakers and unmarked green military uniforms, with black helmets and black vests. A few of them toted assault rifles. Two agents grabbed him and yanked him out of the diner. Behind him, he could hear a few patrons scream.

He didn’t resist. What else was he to do?

They whisked him into one of the Suburbans and put the blacked-out goggles over his eyes and headphones over his ears.

He was driven somewhere for about thirty minutes and then the Suburban came to a stop. The doors opened and cold air entered.

He said, “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

He’d begun to sweat profusely. He must have sat there in the middle row of the Suburban for ten minutes. He detected aviation fuel, which smells very different from gasoline, and he knew he was on the grounds of an airport.

Then he was hustled across a broad expanse and up a flight of stairs into what smelled like a plane. They locked his handcuffs to the arms of a seat.

“Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” he said again. “Anyone? Or where you’re taking me?” He raised his voice. “Or what all this is even for ?”

But even if someone did reply, he couldn’t hear.

The plane taxied and then took off. The flight was short, maybe an hour or an hour and a half. He found himself disappearing into his thoughts.