Chapel had been a prisoner for only a few days, but it had been long enough to make him think he needed to be asked first. He sat down, gratefully — the drug in his system still made him feel weak — and rested his hand on the table.
“I’m supposed to check you out and give you something, and then Colonel Valits is going to show you a video. Shouldn’t take long. I hope not — I’m supposed to be at a poetry reading tonight back in Moscow.” She rolled her eyes again. “Arts outreach. I hate poetry, but you have to show a pretty face every once in a while to keep everybody happy.” She looked up at Valits. “Is there any coffee?”
The colonel reared back as if she’d spit in his face. He was not the kind of man that fetched coffee for other people. “I’ll see what I can do,” he told her, and walked away.
“God, I hate this part of Russia. The smog is thicker here than in L.A., I swear,” Hobbes said. She looked up at Chapel for a moment. “You don’t look so hot. Were you mistreated while you were detained here?”
Chapel couldn’t help it anymore. He laughed — a full-body belly laugh, enough to make him double over and make tears run from his eyes.
Natalie Hobbes stood up from the table. “I really don’t need this,” she said. “I think I’ll be going, now.”
Chapel started to reach for her, to grab her and make her sit down again. She flinched away from him, though, and he held up his hand to show he meant no harm. “Please,” he said, “I apologize. I didn’t mean to—”
“To freak me out?” she asked, looking very angry.
“Right. Look, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve come for me. I thought I was going to… well, I thought I was going to be here for a very long time.” It was clear she had no idea what kind of hell he’d been through in the hospital. No point freaking her out more. “I know what I must look like. But, please, I’m ready to go. Right now. The sooner the better.”
She squinted at him, her nose wrinkling upward, as if she had forgotten her glasses and was having trouble seeing him clearly. He realized it must be how she expressed confusion. “They didn’t brief you, did they? I’m not here to take you home. You’re still under arrest. You’re not going anywhere unless Colonel Valits says so.”
Chapel glanced over to the door of the room, where the colonel had reappeared holding two steaming coffee cups.
“I was given two tasks here,” Hobbes told him. “One was to verify you were still alive and in no immediate danger. That’s done. The other thing was — this.” She reached into her purse and took out a small manila envelope. She threw it down on the table. “It came over this morning in the diplomatic pouch, addressed to you. Even in this stupid country, prisoners are allowed to get mail.”
Chapel could only stare at her. This wasn’t a rescue? He was still under arrest? He couldn’t bear the thought of going back to his cell, to wait for Kalin to come for him.
He picked up the envelope and turned it around in his hands, almost afraid to open it. Kalin had nearly broken him. If this was just a message from Hollingshead, telling him he was on his own… But the envelope was too heavy to just be a letter. It bulged from trying to hold its contents.
Only one way to find out what it meant. He tore open the envelope and spilled it out onto the table. A cheap disposable cell phone and a hands-free unit.
It might have been gold and rubies. Chapel put the hands-free unit in his ear and powered up the phone.
“Angel?” he said.
She answered him a second later. “Chapel? Is that… of course it’s you. Oh, sugar, I am so glad to hear your voice, you can’t even know.”
“I bet I can,” Chapel told her. He closed his eyes and tried not to weep. The sexy voice of his operator in his ear was something he had thought he would never hear again. “Angel,” he said. He couldn’t think of more words. “Angel.”
“Sweetie, there’s a lot to talk about. But you’re alive — that’s the main thing. Oh, thank God. You’re still alive.”
“First things first,” Angel said. “This signal is encrypted, and the hands-free set has noise-canceling technology. But if they have a powerful enough microphone — and I bet they do — they can still hear what I’m saying in your ear. And of course they’ll hear everything you say to me. There’s not a lot we can do about that, but we’re going to try to be discreet, right?”
“Of course,” Chapel said.
Across the table Hobbes took her coffee from Valits without a word and sipped at it. She made a face.
“You’re probably looking at Natalie Hobbes,” Angel said. “She’s the real deal. A junior staffer from the American embassy. Rich parents, went to Harvard, pretty much fell into this job — we’ve vetted her from this end and we don’t see any reason to think the Russians might have turned her. She’s on our side, in other words. As long as she’s in the room you’re safe.”
“She’s already talking about leaving,” Chapel said.
“Just make sure she sticks around until you talk to Colonel Valits. As for him — he’s not an FSB agent, I’m about eighty percent sure on that. He might shoot you, but… look, I don’t know what you’ve been going through there in Magnitogorsk. I think maybe I don’t want to know the details. But, sweetie, whatever he is, he’s better than the people you’ve been dealing with. He’s your best bet, so keep him happy.”
“Got it,” Chapel said.
“You’re not free. You’re still under arrest, and you’re a prisoner of the Russian legal system.”
“What am I charged with?” Chapel asked.
“They claim they picked you up just inside the Russian border, raving and disoriented. They’ve arrested you for a couple penny-ante crimes — being a public nuisance, defacing public property, whatever. That’s enough for them to hold you. They claim you’re a danger to yourself and others, and they’re working on having you committed as a mental patient. If they do, that’s the last anyone will hear of you. Ever.”
“Jesus,” Chapel said.
“It’s bad. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but… it’s bad. And you know there’s not much we can do to help you. Until Colonel Valits came into the picture, we were following the standard protocol for agents captured in the field.”
Which meant that the United States government had disavowed Chapel, just as he’d thought. They’d denied all knowledge of him, or any responsibility for his actions. He nodded. He understood that. “What I don’t get is why that changed.”
“I’ll let Colonel Valits give you the details,” Angel said, “but… he’s got a problem. A very serious problem. I convinced him you were the only person in the world who could fix it. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t convince him otherwise.”
Chapel looked over at the colonel. The man was staring at Hobbes with open hatred. He clearly couldn’t wait for her to leave.
“There are no guarantees here, sugar,” Angel said. “No promises that you’re going to get to come home. But if you play your cards right, you might have a chance to do some good, still. To fix things.”
“Fix things?”
Angel was silent for a moment. “You know I’m on your side,” she said, softly. “You know I care about you.”
“I do,” he told her.
“But even I have to say… look, Chapel, you really fucked up. We really fucked up here. Trusting Nadia… I think about it now and I wonder how any of us were fooled, even for a second.”
Chapel wanted to ask what she meant, but Colonel Valits had turned to stare at him. The Russian cleared his throat noisily. Clearly he was ready to begin.