“Who are you?” he demanded, the questions coming out far ruder than he’d intended.
The woman stood, blue jacket and khaki pants not hiding her curves very much. “You can call me Kyra,” she said, smiling. “They told me that you would be expecting me. I promise, I’m harmless.”
He noticed that she didn’t explain who “they” were, and as for her being harmless, Ettleman doubted that very much. He tried to take some deep breaths, and it took a few seconds for the shock the adrenaline had given to his system to subside. “They told me that someone was going to meet me at my place,” he said. “They didn’t say you were going to let yourself in. I thought my locks were better than that.” He regretted the stupid observation as soon as he said it. She’s CIA, moron. She knows how to pick a lock.
The woman shrugged. “Sorry, not so much. You know the Russians probably have already been in your apartment at least once, right?”
“I… State is supposed to install a security system, but they haven’t gotten to it yet… you know, paperwork… our security office moves at the speed of government—”
Kyra smiled. “A security system won’t help. The FSB isn’t going to let a commercial system stop them if they want to come in here. I can show you some other ways you can figure out whether you’ve had an intruder, but you’re not going to be able to keep them out. Don’t worry, I swept the place, didn’t find anything. Doesn’t mean it’s clean, but you probably haven’t really come up on their radar yet.”
“I’ve only been here since July,” Ettleman stammered. His initial panic was gone, finally, and now he was finding himself anxious for another reason entirely. The young woman was the first visitor to his apartment and he was sure that he hadn’t made much of an impression on her.
“I know,” Kyra said. She smiled.
“You do?”
“Your clothes are all American brands, suggesting that you haven’t been in-country long enough to need to shop at any of the local stores for replacements,” she replied. “And I don’t see any obviously Russian souvenirs. You have some very nice ones from Turkey and Argentina, nice enough to show you have decent taste. So the lack of anything local means this isn’t your first overseas assignment, but you haven’t been here long enough to pick up anything you think is worth showing off to visitors. And there was that lack of a security system.”
“Oh,” Ettleman said.
“Sorry, but that’s probably why they picked you,” she told him. “They needed someone who the locals probably figured was an unlikely candidate to act as a courier.”
Ettleman was silent for a moment while he absorbed her admission. “And someone dispensable if they got caught.” He cursed himself. The ambassador picked me because I’m nobody.
The woman looked at him, as though she could divine his thoughts from the look on his face. “Have you read Churchill?”
“Winston Churchill?”
The woman nodded. “ ‘To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.’ ” Kyra smiled at him. “Right now they needed someone to do a ‘very special thing’ that was fitted to you. They needed someone who could fly right under the Russians’ radar, and you did. I know that carrying a bag around doesn’t seem like much, but if everything works out, what you just did is going to help a lot of people. Your moment came and you stepped up… your finest moment, until you have a bigger one. You should be proud of that.”
Ettleman tried not to gape at the woman who had just turned his anxiety into elation with a few words. She nodded toward the nylon bag. “I assume that’s for me?” she asked.
She was looking at his laptop bag. “Oh, yeah,” Ettleman said. He offered it and Kyra took it from him. She unzipped it and looked inside.
“I don’t know even know what’s in it—”
“A quarter million euros,” Kyra said. She pulled out one of the bundles and rifled through the bills to prove the point. “And a disguise kit and a false passport, all sent through the diplomatic pouch from Langley.”
“A quarter… million?” Ettleman repeated in quiet surprise, his voice quavering, much to his embarrassment. He looked inside. The bag held euros, all €500 banknotes. The foreign service officer didn’t know the day’s exchange rate, but he was sure that he’d been carrying more than his annual salary, enough that any Russian thug would have gutted him for the pile without a thought. “They told me not to open it. I didn’t, swear to—”
“I believe you,” the woman assured him.
Idiot, he thought. Now she thinks you didn’t have the stones to even check out what you were carrying around. “I mean, I wanted to, but I thought, maybe, you know, operational security—”
“You followed your orders. That means you’re not stupid.” She exhaled, then smiled, sheepish, which sent Ettleman’s heart rate up again. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me. It’s been a tough week and I’ve… the guy who trained me was kind of blunt and I’ve picked up the habit.”
“That’s okay,” Ettleman said. He would’ve forgiven this woman of murder if she would smile at him again. “They said you’d need a few other things?”
The woman nodded. “Nothing exotic,” she advised. “I’ll raid your closet later. Do you have a laptop and a printer?” Ettleman nodded. “Unplug everything from the Internet and shut down any wireless connections you have running. You’re fluent in Russian? I need to type a letter and I’ll need you to translate it after I’m done. And a hot shower would be very kind.”
“Oh, uh, sure,” Ettleman said. “The shower is at the end of the hall. I’ll get you a towel.”
“That would be lovely, thank you.” Kyra smiled at him again. “And you don’t have to be nervous. You’re doing fine.” Then she turned away and headed for his shower.
The man’s heart soared and sank at the same time. Maybe he’d applied for the wrong career after all, Ettleman thought. Delivering huge piles of money to strange and attractive women who showed up in his apartment, reading his mind through his body language and asking for his services and amenities? He could get used to that.
CHAPTER TEN
A craft, her father had once explained, is a marriage between science and art. You have to master the science before you can aspire to the art.
Kyra was an analyst now, but she’d been a case officer once and had worked the street before. She understood both the science and the art of it. She’d been in war zones before, had been involved in some serious fights, violence and gunfire coming from plain enemies out to do her harm. Street work was different; it was subtlety and advance planning. There was a learning curve to it, but just knowing the science of a spy’s tradecraft would not be enough here. It was not a place for beginners and Kyra was wondering now whether she truly was ready to face the Kremlin machine. The Russians were efficient and unforgiving. They had practiced on these streets for a century now and Kyra was neither stupid nor arrogant enough to imagine that her experience and intelligence alone put her on equal ground with them anywhere on earth, much less here.
This was their home. They knew it intimately and would defend it. She was the criminal, the invader, the thief come to rob and steal. She was the villain here.