Chapter 9

The realization hit me like a slow train.

“You work for the CIA.”

She smiled weakly. With trepidation, she went to put a hand on my thigh again. This time I let her. Her hands felt nervous. I put my hands on top to calm them. They were cold from the weather.

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just know that George has been tipped off. He suspects me, but also you. Rage is a dangerous quality in a man. Which is why I am asking you to leave Vienna.”

My mind and my heart raced. I struggled to comprehend the things she was telling me, though I felt that she was telling the truth. My intuition told me she was telling me the truth. She let me sit quietly to process the information that was absurd yet plausible. The wind howled as it passed through the gaps in the windowpane. The car creaked as it swayed.

“Where do I go? For how long?”

“Just away from Vienna. For the weekend at least.”

“I don’t know. I need time to think.”

She sat back, her shoulders drooped, seeming defeated, but knew that’s how I would respond. Then she unclasped her handbag and reached in. The revolver, I thought. She’s going to use it against me. I curled up into a ball and held my hand out. “No!” I cried. I shut my eyes and tried kicking her away. She held my leg still. Nothing happened, so I opened my eyes again. She held out a book — my copy of Doctor Zhivago.

“I love this book,” she said. “Thank you for lending it to me.”

I took it silently, relaxing, apprehensive for her next move. She cracked open the cabin window and waved down below. The cabin lurched into motion and Vienna began to rise to meet us.

“Can I ask you for a last favor, Kirby?”

I stayed silent, only stared.

“The last one, I promise.”

My muscles relaxed. I let my guards down. My arms fell to the side. She moved in and kissed me tenderly on the lips, holding it there a long while. Her warmth, a warmth I haven’t felt what seemed like decades was lovely. Her scent, faint orange, reminded me of summer. It reminded me of the river, and of Venice.

When the Ferris wheel stopped again, we were at the bottom. The long kiss ended. She slid the cabin door open, looked back at me and said, “Promise me you’ll leave Vienna, Kirby, at least for the weekend.”

“Will I see you again?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said and was gone.

I left in a daze. Looked around for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. So, I went back home in a daze, trying to make sense of it all.

My apartment had an unsettling quietness to it in the darkness. Orange city light came dimly in and caused things to cast long phantom shadows. The window was cracked open. There was an arc of raindrops on the floor beneath it. Did I leave that open? Clothes strewn across my couch. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Just as I had left them. I think.

I set the book down on the coffee table and the first thing I did was get out a suitcase. I left the lights off for fear that turning them on would advertise that I was home.

I propped the suitcase open on my bed and started piling clothes indiscriminately into it. Just for a few days, I thought. Not that complicated. Maybe I’d go to Salzburg, or Innsbruck, or Milan, or back to Venice. Yes, maybe I’ll go back to Venice. I liked it there very much. No, Venice is too obvious. He would be expecting that, waiting for me at the train station. Oh God, I thought frantically, how do I hide from a rogue CIA agent? A trained killer? Not the sort of thing they teach us at the Foreign Service Institute.

What if he’s watching the apartment now? What if he’s in the apartment? I froze. Listened for any signs of life around me, feeling very vulnerable.

I laughed an exasperated laugh. What if I just called the security office? Tell them everything? I would be safe then. Surely, they have a protocol for such a situation. I picked up the phone and was about to dial. It was rather late in the evening, but there’s always a watch officer there. They would tell me what to do.

I pressed buttons randomly. No tone at all. The phone was dead. I lifted the phone base up and found the cable snipped. Real fear crackled through my body like sharp lightning. Fuck, what do I do? Someone had been in the apartment, or was in there still, and I didn’t have a weapon.

I grabbed my coat and went for the door. A large silhouette blocked the door. I screamed, fell to the ground, pushed myself up against the couch. The figure flipped the lights on. It was George in a rain-splattered khaki trench coat, his eyes and mouth creased in a raging calm. A black pistol with a silencer in a black-gloved hand.

“Well done, Kirb,” he said. “You got me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stuttered breathlessly. My hand reached out behind me, grabbing at air, hoping desperately for a weapon, something, anything, to defend myself. His sigh was a bull’s snort. His eyes narrowed on me. Lara tried to warn me. But her warning had come too late. He must have been waiting here while we were out riding on the Ferris wheel.

“Are you FBI?” he growled.

I shook my head. “No. Please, I’m not.”

“Don’t try that, you fucking dyke.”

He walked over coolly, kicked me hard.

“Didn’t know what?” He asked through gritted teeth.

He raised the pistol at my head. The muzzle of the gun was only a foot from my nose. He repeated his question. “Didn’t know fucking what?”

I suppose it was the adrenaline, or consignment to my fate, or both, but my fear suddenly vanished, and a calm purpose overtook me. I narrowed my eyes, looked at him with contempt and sneered, “That you are a goddamn traitor.”

He shook his head, chuckled. “Bye, Kirby.”

Then, a deafening cracking sound and a white flash. The air filled with an acrid scent. No sharp pain came. No thud of a round. No red. No turn to blackness. Surely, it was the adrenaline, making death easy for me. I held my breath for it to come, for the world to fade. But nothing.

I heard a wet cough. I opened my eyes, looked up at George. His mouth was agape. A gurgling wheeze issued out from it. A foaming pink blood oozed from his lips. He wavered. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell into a crumpled pile. His gun clattered to the floor. I dove on it and pointed it trembling at his motionless body. Then I saw the figure in the door. Her blue coat, strawberry blonde hair, wetted into heavy curls that half-concealed her eyes. She stood in a tall, broad posture with her silver revolver lowered. Smoke curled up from the muzzle. Her chest heaved rapidly; she was out of breath.

A tremendous relief on her face, she relaxed, took a step forward, knelt and pressed two fingers against George’s neck.

She stood, took a step towards me but froze as blue and red light flashed on the apartment wall.

“I need to run now. So long, Kirby,” she said. She blew me a kiss, then turned and flew down the stairs.

“Lara!” I called out after her. But she was gone. Finally gone.

Frank yawned, rubbed his eyes. He stopped the recording and removed the tapes from the machine. He adjusted his glasses and said, “Thank you very much for your cooperation, Ms. Sawyer. You’re free to go.”

I stared at him with a vacant expression.

“Did you hear what I said, Ms. Sawyer? You are free to go.”

“So that’s it then?”

He nodded as he leafed through his notes.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

He folded his file, slid it neatly under his arm. He loosened his tie a bit, then commenced to explain.

“She was telling the truth, Ms. Sawyer. She was born in Prague, and her father is in fact a general in the KGB. Her mother was assassinated, and this had put her on a long path of vengeance. She’s likely right in her assumption. That her father was the murderer. Or at least orchestrated the murder. As for George — he got rich passing military secrets. Did it for a very long time. Nuclear submarine technology, war plans, cables… if it was Top Secret, he passed it. He was a fucking headache we couldn’t figure out the cure for. She was it. She was the cure. Our magic bullet. She’d been working for us since Prague, even before she joined the KGB, and had been hunting him for years. The Vienna plan was her’s in fact. Didn’t think it would work to be honest, but goddamn if she wasn’t a fucking natural. It’s a shame we can’t use her on any more ops.”

“Everything she told me was true…”

“Can I see her again?”

“Why?” I sat forward. “Is she in danger?”

“I want to see her.”

Frank sucked his teeth and shook his head. “You and a lot of Russians. She has a new life and a new identity now. That’s all you need to know.”

I slumped back into my chair.

“So that’s it then? I’ll never see her again?”

He sighed. His mouth thinned in a sort of pitying compassion.

“I’m afraid so. Believe me when I say it’s for her protection. And yours.”

“I have one more question.”

“How did she know George was at my apartment?”

He smirked. Stood. Took one last long sip of his coffee, then responded,

“Know how to tell a good operative from a bad one?”

“The good ones always finish the job.”

He opened the door and signaled politely for me to leave.

“Have a nice life, Ms. Sawyer.”

After the meeting with Frank, I was sent back stateside. Back to D.C. I didn’t have time to move my stuff out of my apartment, but I was promised that it would all be taken care of. Meanwhile, I had a month off before my new job, so I planned to head back to Chicago to be with my parents and use the time to figure out my life. I flew back on a military ‘Space-A’ flight, a C-5 Galaxy cargo plane from Vienna International to Andrews Air Force Base.

I brought Doctor Zhivago with me. One of the few objects besides my clothes and toiletry. Many pages creased from dog-ears; I cherished the book knowing that Lara had left these marks. It filled me with comfort knowing that her eyes had passed over these pages.

I read it under the glow of an amber lamplight in a corner of the cavernous C-5 cargo bay, where I lay in an army-green cot wrapped in an army-green sleeping bag given to me by the loadmaster to fend off the frigid high-altitude air. I read it for hours.

On a particular page turn, the paper felt thicker than usual. The last sentence on the preceding page didn’t match up with the first on the next. I looked at the page numbers. The number on one side was 405. Flipped over, it was 408.

Intrigued by this discrepancy, I sat up, held the paper up to the light and, to my excitement, saw a dim outline of a card embedded within the page. I tore into it and discovered it was as I suspected: two pages neatly glued together along the edges, hiding something within. Carefully I peeled them apart. A yellow post-it note fell to the deck. On it, a note scribbled: My name is Zuzana, find me in Taos.

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