Kate's Gifts
Lydia doesn’t answer. Instead, she gazes back at Kate with a mournful, pleading look. “What happened, Kate?”
Kate looks down in shame. “It’s what I’ve done, and it’s what I have to do. I have to go, I have to leave my babies, to protect them from who I was, who I am.”
In the long smothering silence that follows, Lydia can feel the pain radiating from her old friend. “What are you running from, Kate?”
She looks up at her now, the emotional frailty fading away.
“From myself. You told me once, we’re only as sick as our secrets. Well, I’m pretty fucking sick, Lydia. There are things I didn’t tell you about me, about who and what I really am. Everything I ever told you about me, from the very beginning, was all a lie.”
Lydia recoils in disbelief. “No, Kate. That can’t be,” Lydia shakes her head, not wanting to believe.
“It’s all bullshit.”
“So tell me and get over it! The past is gone, and lies can be undone.”
Kate’s low, cold voice chills Lydia. “Not my past, not my lies.”
Lydia sits back, “Oh, my God, are you dying?”
“I wish it was that simple.”
“Tell me how to help you.”
Kate opens her purse and pulls out a piece of paper. She hands it to Lydia. “These are my sponsees. I need you to take care of them now, especially Sheila. She’s getting out of the hospital today. She really needs someone.”
Lydia isn’t sure, but she thinks she saw a gun in her Kate’s bag. “You’re not going to hurt anyone, or yourself, are you?” she asks cautiously.
Kate stands up. “I hope not. I’ve done enough damage.”
She turns to go but stops, not wanting to leave the safety of the room. Closing her eyes, Kate remembers what she once said to Lydia, and the irony of what Sheila said to her.
“Sheila told me she loves me,” she says with a pitiful laugh. “The same way I told you once. We love the ones who help us, or the ones we help, until they break your heart, or you break theirs.”
“Stay, Kate, we’ll talk it out.”
Kate looks around, recording the images she may never see again.
“It’s too late now. I learned so much in the time we spent in this room. I’ll never
forget that, Lydia, what you’ve done for me.”
Kate comes over and gives her a hug.
Lydia wants to follow her, but she knows she cannot. She calls after her, “How did I fail you, Kate?”
Kate stops, tuning at the door with a mournful smile. “You didn’t fail me, Lydia. I failed.”
The little bell on the shop’s door tingles again, and she is gone.
Lydia stares at the door long after Kate leaves, confused by what just happened. We are all capable of only seeing what we want to see. That piece of Kate that was missing had always bothered Lydia,. She just ignored it.
She had thought she knew Kate better that anyone, but not anymore.
“No, the good is real. You can’t fake that.”
Now Lydia finally understands the source of the sadness Kate hid so well: the pain of having to live a lie. Lydia knew in her heart that whatever was going on, the good inside Kate would save her, somehow.
Her heart also told her, she would probably never see Kate again.
Chapter 19
Stani’s Workshop
Freaks picks up a crowbar and heads over to the big metal dumpster with McDowd inside.
BANG BANG BANG!
“FUCKING SHIT!” McDowd shouts, jumping out of the container. “What the fuck are you doing, Freaks!”
“Come on, Bob finally got us some pictures of the Russian cell. We’re heading back.”
“Hey, McDowd, you find anything in there beside stink?” Mayo laughs.
He laughs back sarcastically. “You’re a real funny guy there, Mayo.”
Mayo turns suddenly serious. “What do you mean, funny? Like I’m a clown? Like I’m here to amuse you?” he says, playing out the famous scene from Goodfellas.
Haddad puts it to an end before it starts. “Enough nonsense. What did you find?”
McDowd hands him a sheet of paper. “Just this. It may explain the connection to the cage fighter.”
“Mixed Martial Artist,” Freaks corrects.
“Whatever.”
Haddad reads the crumpled page aloud. “Tuesday Night Fights at The Blue Horizon. Could be a connection. It isn’t far from here. You guys get back to the base. I’ll check this out.”
He suddenly realizes he’s too close to the smelly McDowd. “You. Go home and take a shower, and get back fast.”
Chapter 20
Moscow
The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is finding it very hard to sleep. On the desk before him is an assortment of newspapers, most notably the New York Times, trumpeting the round up of a nest of Russian spies, leaving one of them dead. It can be a messy and dangerous business. Fredrik Karlov knows this all too well, having come close to meeting his maker on several occasions. If that mess isn’t enough, he also has a missing embassy worker in Washington, and a dead chief of station in Kabul.
He would like to think that it’s all just a run of bad luck, plain coincidence. He knows better. There are no coincidences, just like the knock on the door.
“Come,” Karlov says loudly enough, and his deputy enters holding several folders.
“The New York office just finished debriefing the remaining operative from the New Jersey cell,” Leonid Tosten says, handing him one of them.
“This should be good…” Karlov breaths.
“You have no idea. They were activated by the GRU.”
“You’re joking, yes?”
“I know. It’s part of their operational plans “to assist our sister agency when requested,” but wait, it gets better,” Tosten adds, handing his boss another folder. “Just in from Kabul, the report on Yuri.”
Karlov eyes the report. “Caught red handed passing state secrets to the Americans? Resisted arrest and was shot and killed by GRU security?” he reads incredulously.
“These pictures are of him with the CIA station chief, though there are no images of a handoff, or proof of payment. They say the documents were recovered in his office, but they won’t say what they are. Classified by GRU.”
“This is bullshit. I’ve known Yuri for over twenty years. He’d never give up anything, unless it was absolutely necessary,” Karlov says dismissively.
“Well, you may be right,” Tosten says sitting down. “It seems there’s more to this. The pictures were taken at the city morgue. He went there to pick up the remains of one Sasha Illyich Malekov.”
A distant neuron fires in Karlov’s head. “Malekov. I know that name,” he says, trying to remember.
“GRU, attached to the embassy in Washington. Expelled after a fatal traffic accident,” Tosten reads.
“What was he doing in Kabul?”
Tosten shrugs. “Freelance, but he died under enhanced interrogation.”
“The Americans?”
“No. It was in a hotel room. It had Iranian fingerprints all over it.”
Karlov leans back in his chair. The two men sit quietly for a few minutes while their mysterious stew simmers.
“It seems a lot of people are going to a great amount of effort to cover their tracks,” Karlov finally says, thinking out loud.
“Before he was killed, Yuri sent his two operatives to the U.S. We also have information the CIA man flew commercial from Dubai to Washington, after a stop in Tehran,” Tosten adds.
“What was Malekov doing in Washington, do we know?”
“He was Second Directorate…”
“So he could have been running agents,” Karlov guesses.
“Or wet work, a hit squad perhaps? Let’s find out. We need to have a little chat with the GRU.”
“Call the defense minister?” Tosten asks.
br />
Karlov thinks a moment. “No, We’ll talk to the 2D guy himself, Petre Kurtsin.”
Chapter 21
Willow Grove Naval Air Station
“Hey! Where’ve you been?” Bob shouts playfully to the returning crew.
“Why you in such a good mood?” Edwards asks warily.
“Because someone up there likes me,” he answers, pointing to a computer screen. A program is running, seemingly on every screen, searching through DVM files of driver’s licenses. The facial recognition program compares the new photos they received from Tillman to those in the state database.
“How long is this going to take?” Freaks asks.
“God knows, but it’s progress, not perfection.”
Edwards eyes the hard copy of the photos of the Spetsnaz team. “These gotta be twenty years old,” he warns.
“Aging isn’t supposed to be a problem. The FBI uses it on cold case missing kids. The basic facial framework, so I’m told, remains the same, though the trait isn’t as unique as a fingerprint or retinal scan. We might get several hits on one picture,” Bob explains.
Just then a chime sounds, and a printer jumps to life. “Looks like we may have a winner already!” Bob says, handing Mayo the sheet.
He reads it aloud as he enters the information into a second database. “Edward Fisher. 727 Easton Road, Glenside.” The location comes up on a map. “Ten minutes from here. It’s also a business address. Eddy’s Bike Shop.”
“Go. You’ve got the first one,” he says to Mayo. “Take Team One.”
“Roger that, Boss,” he says, while making a taunting face at Freaks. In return, Freaks gives Mayo the single-fingered salute he heads out the door with ten other heavily armed men.
“We have to let the locals know,” Edwards warns.
“You’re right. You call,” Bob smiles.
Chapter 22
Woodcrest Road
Kate knows death. Not as well as some, but better than most. She has seen it at her job, in the eyes of children who lost parents to the streets, some quick and violently, others slow and painfully.
Death, inflicted by others, the butchery she witnessed in flowing fields of Afghan poppies.
Death, inflicted by herself over the barrel of a gun and the hood of a car.
Death, with her bare hands, remembering the sickening snap when she was forced to break the neck of the woman in the prison camp.
Death circles every life, coming ever closer in the vortex of time, eventually snatching each of us up in its tender embrace.
Death circles Kate Wilson now, patient, knowing it’s only a matter of time. Just like her disease, just like Katrina, and none of them wholly unwanted.
This is what Kate is thinking as she forms a meatloaf at the kitchen counter as her sons do their homework. In her experience, sudden death is the best. Here today, gone tomorrow, no lingering or dreaded anticipation. That was how she wants to leave her boys. No shame, no anger. Just loving memories and the hope that she had gone to a better place.
“Enough! Not yet, not now.”
Now is for counting freckles on Robbie’s face, and watching Tom blush when asked about his girlfriend. Now is the time for laughter. There would be plenty of time for tears later. If only she could be there to help them cry and move on with their lives.
23
Eddy’s Bike Shop
All Officer John Harris of the Abington Police Department knows is that someone from the FBI asked that a patrol car meet an agent outside Eddy’s Bike Shop. He had just put his car in park when a slew of unmarked vehicles sweep in around him, and nearly a dozen of agents in full tactical gear spring into action.
“What the…” Harris says, scrambling out of his car.
The team breaches the building in seconds. He’s worked with the FBI warrant squad before, and these guys aren’t them. They look military, more like those scraggly looking contractors he’s seen on the TV news. Only one of them wears an FBI raid jacket, a woman. He catches up with her because she’s stopped over a body. As he approaches, she holds up a finger for him to wait. She’s calling the office. Edwards answers.
“Hey, it’s Linda. We’ve got two DOA’s. White male, late forties. Multiple GSWs. Second is a white female, early forties, single GSW to the head, dead center forehead. I’m sending pictures in a minute.”
“Linda!” Mayo shouts from the back room.
“Hold on, Mayo’s found something…” she tells Edwards.
Linda Carpenter finds Mayo in the back office. He’s found the video system. He plays it back. It’s captured the entire killing. “Edwards, we’ve got a tape, but the perp doesn’t match the description of the Russian woman. The killer’s a blonde.”
Officer Harris cranes his neck for a look at the deadly blonde.
Chapter 24
Woodcrest Road
The Wilson boys are in the basement playing a video game. Upstairs, Kate sits naked in her big rocking chair, looking at her costume laid out on the bed. Prokofiev’s Cinderella suite plays gently on her CD system. Just like the hapless young girl in the fairy tale, she too had enjoyed the ball, pretending to be someone she isn’t. Now as the clock grows closer to midnight, she knows what has to happen. However there is still time for a final performance before the curtain falls. A parting gift.
Tonight, she will be the little girl from long ago who danced in the light. A child again, innocent and unfettered by the stark and awful reality of her destiny, her sentence and her madness.
She gets up to dress.
Chapter 25
Moscow
The door buzzer startles Kurtsin out of his sleep in his posh apartment. He is supposed to have a guard at the door. He wraps himself in a bathrobe and stuffs his pistol in the deep front pocket. He goes to the door and looks through the peephole. What he sees makes the hairs on his neck stand up.
He quickly opens the door to let Karlov in, followed by Tosten. Two other SVR men wait outside, along with Kurtsin’s guard.
“Comrade Director,” Kurtsin says, now fully wide-awake.
Karlov glides past him, bringing the darkness of the night with him. “Please forgive the unexpected hour of our visit, General. However, we have something of importance to discuss with you,” he says, sitting on the couch without taking off his black fedora and raincoat. Tosten discreetly helps himself to a look around to see if anyone else is there. The modern one-bedroom apartment is furnished with all the tackiness of bachelor pad.
“I’m sure a phone call in the morning—”
“No, in the morning I will be talking to the president. I wanted to talk to you before then. You see, I want to hear from you personally about what has been going on.”
“If this is about Yuri, it is out of my hands—”
“Tomorrow, the President will ask me how it came about that eleven of our deep-cover operatives were exposed. What do you suggest I tell him?”
“I don’t follow you, comrade director, ” Kurtsin responds.
Karlov takes out his glasses so he can read his smart phone. “From the operative who gave the FBI the slip…” he says, pointing to his phone, “Request for assistance in breaking active surveillance came from Major Elayna Boradin, GRU.”
Kurtsin stand motionless, trying to decide how to play it. “That can’t be. She’s on vacation in Thailand.”
Tosten glances at Karlov to see if he’s buying it.
“Well, it seems that isn’t the case, but that is besides the point. She works for you, General. In fact, I am told she’s your closest associate. You have no idea what she is doing in the United States, trying to shake the FBI off her tail?” Karlov asks, sympathetically wanting to understand.
Kurtsin shakes his head in disbelief. “This is beyond impossible. She must be running some sort of rouge operation. I don’t know what to say. I will get on this instantly, comrade Director!”
Karlov glances at Tosten. “A rouge operation of some s
ort, then. This is what I will tell the president, and that you are working hard to get to the bottom of it.”
“I promise you, we will get you the answers,” Kurtsin says with confidence.
“She must be particularly cagey in order to fool such an experienced man as yourself,” Karlov suggests.
“Everything in my power will be undertaken on this. You have my word, comrade Director,” Kurtsin assures him stoically.
“Excellent. I am sure that our end bears some culpability as well,” Karlov says, getting up. “The death is regrettable, but the operation was not critical. It is an unfortunate set of circumstances that we will learn from,” Karlov smiles. “We will save the Yuri incident for another day. In the meantime, there is one more thing you can help me with.”
“Certainly, comrade Director.”
“What was Sasha Malekov’s capacity when he was in Washington?” Even in the dim light, Karlov can see the color drain from Kurtsin’s face.
“Malekov. The name is familiar. I will find out for you,” he tells the two, eager to usher them out the door.
On the bookcase is a framed picture, a strapping man and a beautiful blonde, a summer vacation picture. They stand warmly together, posing in front of the U.S. Capitol. Karlov picks it up for a closer look. Kurtsin squirms inside.
“Thank you. As soon as you can,” Karlov finally says, placing the picture back. “Good night, comrade General,” Karlov says as he puts on his hat and walks out the door.
Downstairs, on the street, Karlov looks back up at Kurtsin’s apartment.
“He’s lying like a cheap rug, and he’s not protecting state’s secrets,” Tosten says.
“I know. I think I am beginning to understand. His first wife’s maiden name was Malekov. Put full coverage on him and make sure he knows it.”
“And what about the defense minister?” Tosten asks.
Karlov just smiles before getting into the car.
Chapter 26