“You wouldn’t have been here?” she said.
He shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“And you wouldn’t have met me.”
She looked at him as she said that, and, as Milton looked up, she held his eye and reached her hand across the table. She slid it over his and left it there for a long beat. Milton found that he was holding his breath; he exhaled, moved his hand away and forked another piece of fish, sliding it into his mouth. He looked up and saw that she was still looking at him. She held his gaze again, her eyes sparkling, and then smiled.
Milton smiled, and then looked down at his plate. He started to think about tomorrow.
Milton knew that he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t stop himself. They kissed in the car as soon as he parked it in the lot next to the hotel, both of them hungry for the other. They hurried inside, running their hands over one another in the lift, their mouths pressed together, each drinking in the smells and the tastes, oblivious to the impatient buzz as the elevator reached the fourth floor. They reached the room and tumbled onto the bed, tearing at their clothes, their hands clasped together as she rolled atop him, then sliding underneath the crew neck and pulling it up and over his head, revealing the litany of scars that covered his body.
“Jesus,” she breathed, her nails tracing the raised edges of stab wounds and bullet holes, injuries that told the story of Milton’s career. She laid her palm on his mouth, stifling his retort, and then leaned down and kissed the point where a thug in Macedonia had shivved him. She kissed the burn beneath his left breast and the puckered entry point of the 9mm slug that had just missed his liver. She kissed down and down and Milton closed his eyes, loathing himself, knowing that he was betraying her and hating what he knew he was going to have to do.
PART VI
Komsomolsk-on-Amur
68
Milton slept lightly, and when he awoke, it took him a moment of staring up at the ceiling before he remembered where he was. He felt the warmth of a body next to him, and when he turned over, he saw Jessie Ross lying there. She was on her front and had pushed the covers away from her body at some point in the night. Milton reached for his watch and checked the time: six. He got up as quietly as he could, padded across the room and, checking that Ross was still asleep, collected his clothes and took them into the bathroom. He took out his phone, opened the encrypted messaging app and sent a quick message. He showered and dressed with a pulse of anxiety in his gut. That was to be expected. There was no way of telling how the morning would go. He reminded himself that he had no choice, and that he should have no sympathy, either. Jessie had brought all of this on herself.
A return message buzzed onto his phone. He opened the door to the hotel hallway. A plastic bag containing a newspaper had been left on the handle. He took the bag—it felt heavier than it ought to have done—and replaced the Do Not Disturb sign. He closed the door as quietly as he could and edged back into the room.
“Morning.”
He turned to the bed. Jessie was awake, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Six fifteen,” he said.
“What’s that?” she said, nodding at the plastic bag.
Milton took the newspaper out of the bag. It was Komsomolskaya Pravda, the paper that Anastasiya Romanova had said he should be carrying when he went for the meet. He sat down and laid the bag on his lap; it wasn’t empty. He reached inside and took out a Beretta 92 with two spare, fully loaded magazines. He placed all three items on the bureau and watched as Jessie’s eyes were drawn to them.
“Where did you get that?” she said.
“I know, Jessie.”
“You know what?”
“Everything. I know it all.”
Ross sat up, reaching down to wrap the sheet around her body. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“How about by making sense?”
“You’ve been working for the SVR.” He gave her a chance to confirm it, but she said nothing. He ignored her truculent silence. “Directorate S? It doesn’t really matter—you’ll give us all the details later.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Just listen—” Milton began.
She ignored him, surging up out of the bed and trying to pass him on the way to the door. Milton got to his feet and stepped across to block her way. Ross tried to shoulder her way past but he was too strong for her; he grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place.
“Get off me,” she spat.
“Calm down,” Milton said.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” She shook his hands off, raising her hand to strike him. Milton grabbed her wrist with his left hand and then used his right to take her arm at a point three fingers down from her elbow. He dug his thumb into the pressure point. Her face crumpled with pain and Milton used the moment to guide her back over to the bed and down onto it once again.
“Relax,” Milton said, releasing the grip.
“I’ll scream,” she threatened.
“I wouldn’t do that. Think about your parents, Jessie. Your son.”
Milton hated to have to threaten her like that, but he had no choice. He had to get through to her quickly, and she had brought everything on herself. Her face slackened as the anger drained out of it. She gaped for a moment, but then her eyes burned again.
“You bastard,” she said.
“That’s what happens when you play the game and you get caught. What do you expect?”
“My son—where is he?”
“He’s with your parents. They haven’t been approached, not yet, and the preference is that they won’t be. But that’s up to you. You get to choose what happens next.”
“Really?” She shook her head derisively. “Do I?”
“You’re lucky.” He ignored the resentment shining from her eyes. “You can offer valuable service—valuable enough, perhaps, to balance out what you’ve done. You have two choices. One is more palatable than the other.”
“Let me guess: one choice is bad for my son?”
Milton hated himself for what he had to say. “He’ll be placed into care. And life will be made difficult for your parents, too. Your father’s business will lose its export licence, for example. It will find itself in legal trouble, and then it’ll be bankrupted. It would be a simple thing to wipe them out—all it would take would be a word from the people I work for. They’d do it without thinking twice. You’ve pissed them off, Jessie.”
She stared at him, daring him.
“It’s not a bluff—none of this is a bluff.”
“And what about me? What if I don’t agree?” She looked at the gun. “You going to use that?”
Milton’s throat was dry, and he feared that if he replied he would betray the nausea that bubbled in his stomach. He hoped that Ross would see sense, and that he was not in the business of making baseless threats. His palms began to sweat.
“The other choice?” she asked.
“You work for VX—properly, this time, against the Russians.”
“Just like that?”
“It doesn’t need to be difficult. You just follow through with the operation as you planned it. We go to the rendezvous with Romanova. There will be an incident. I know that the Center is using us to get to her. They’ll have agents waiting, but I’m going to take care of them. We take Romanova and leave the country, just like we planned.”