Bringing in family is generally considered poor form, particularly if you're doing sanctioned work, since killing civilians is frowned upon.
That Natalya brought up my mother was a tell.
That Natalya brought up my mother was also a bluff.
First problem: Natalya Choplyn isn't a normal person. Dying to her would probably be considered upsetting but expected. After spending two decades working first for the KGB and then later the FSB and then, well, whatever agency Putin had her fronting in, occupational hazards are fairly terminal.
Second problem: If Natalya Choplyn really wanted me dead, as seems to be the case more and more frequently with people I encounter-a disturbing trend, certainly-she could have done so that morning as I sat with my mother, my guard whittled down by the persistent gnaw of my mother's voice.
Third problem: All of this had transpired in public. Natalya needed something. Maybe she wanted something, too, but above all else, there was need.
"I'm leaving," I said. "See you at your war crimes trial."
"Please wait," Natalya said. She reached out and grabbed my arm. Not hard. Not insistent. Softly.
Need it was.
I looked at my watch. "Five minutes," I said.
Natalya nodded slightly. "Will you sit?"
History told me that I shouldn't trust Natalya. We were both sent to Bulgaria to take care of the same problem: Vitaly Sigal. Sigal was a low-level administrator at the Kremlin when the Russians entered Afghanistan in 1978, but since he spoke Farsi he ended up getting a cushy assignment in the country, which he turned into an even cushier black market career that extended to buying and selling large arms and propellants throughout the Middle East during the nineties. When the building blocks of the Iraqi Tammuz-1 missile were traced to a few key purchases made through Sigal, I was dispatched to find him.
When I finally found Sigal, he was holed up in the Dryanovo Monastery as a guest of the monks. Natalya had likewise been sent as protection, since word of his worth on the world market had made its way to the people who had lingering interests in Sigal not landing in U.S. hands, not that that was what my orders were, precisely. I'd encountered Natalya on several other occasions-Chechnya, Bucharest, twice in France, once outside a nuclear sub docked in San Francisco, once Christmas shopping in Dubai-and though we'd never tried to kill each other directly, there was a sense of general animosity that broiled between us by virtue of nationalistic genetics and a few "incidents" involving guns, Black Hawks and covert operations involving oil, of course. One on one, on even ground (Dubai), we'd had a few drinks which turned into a few more drinks, which turned into, well, something. Sometimes, it's safer having sex with someone you know absolutely is the enemy.
But in Bulgaria, there would be none of that. I wanted Sigal or at least certain information he could provide. She wanted to protect Sigal. We agreed to meet in the Bacho Kiro caves, an ancient labyrinth of caves located above the monastery where Sigal was housed. For the first two days, we negotiated off and on for hours in the stone forest section of the cave, the tourists milling past us none the wiser that two superpowers were trading information, making concessions, looking at the soft points of each other's musculature. On the third day, Natalya produced Sigal and allowed me to interrogate him for several hours… and then, well, she tried to poison me.
I stepped out of the cabana, found a bar stool and dragged it back in front of the opening. "Talk," I said.
"It seems we have a problem," she said. "I've been informed that I'm marked for expulsion from this life, never mind my present position."
"Not my problem," I said.
"But it is," she said. Natalya explained that her sources had informed her that I'd implicated her in concert with the Colombians; that she'd been the point person in a long-running drug enterprise, through the Port of Miami and Panama, all under the Russian flag without sharing in the profits. A big no-no, even to the Russians.
And, moreover, that I'd been the facilitator, had my own hands in this business, and had flipped information on Natalya to save my own life.
"That's not true," I said. "And if you thought it was true, we wouldn't be sitting here. And if you were doing it, you wouldn't care if I'd implicated you or not. You can disappear just as easily as you've appeared here."
"Things have changed, Michael," she said.
It was hard to tell when Natalya was lying, but something in her voice seemed tickled, as if there was a real person beneath the old Cold War exterior. I looked around the floor of the bar, at the beautiful people milling about, at the bumping and the grinding, at the common luxury, the thugs and dealers looking unimpressed across the way, the Armani suits, the diamonds, the gold, the drinks, the absolute benign-ness of it all, compared to the life Natalya had already lived. Her cover had always involved the travel industry-in Dubai, she ran a resort for the sultan-but this wasn't travel. It was excess. And it wasn't even remotely interesting.
But there was something more. I looked again at Natalya, tried to really see her. She'd been a flawless beauty before-if that's possible-with an intellect equal to anyone I'd come up against. She was also relentless, always in motion.
Sitting on a love seat in a cabana would be like being submerged underwater.
Her body back in the day was all coiled muscle, but I thought I saw the tiniest roll around her midsection.
I snapped my hand out and grabbed her left wrist.
She didn't flinch.
I put my thumb and forefinger around her wedding ring, all two carats of it, and pulled, but there was little budge. I let go of her hand and sat back on the bar stool. Natalya hadn't moved an inch. "Boy or girl?" I asked.
"One of both," she said.
"That's good," I said. "Me and my brother, it was always a competition, never a friendship. Even today, there's that space between us. Brothers and sisters, it's more protective."
"I hope they don't need to be protected."
"You made the wrong career choices," I said. "There will always be someone out there, Natalya."
She nodded once.
"The way I look at it," I said, "you have something to lose, you maybe make a concerted effort to avoid conflicts that might bubble out into your real life. You come after someone's family, that changes things. You maybe try to get out of the life you've made. You don't threaten people who could make your children motherless."
Natalya exhaled and I realized that the entire time we'd been talking, she'd been taking only the tiniest of breaths. You can train yourself to do anything, but it's difficult to override the nervous system. "Be that as it may," she said, "the information I have comes from a very good source. Until I see proof otherwise, I have to trust my source."
"Let me guess. A mole in the FBI? A mole in the CIA? A mole in the NSA? It's a lie, Natalya. I've got so many problems right now, the last thing I need is to be selling out other agents, even ones who tried to poison me."
"I've been given the courtesy of a week's time to settle this situation," she said.
"Let me guess. You either come up with the missing money or proof that it's a lie or you're dead. Would that be accurate?"
"Somewhat," she said.
"Oh, wait," I said. "There are pictures somewhere, would that be correct? Or, better, someone is taking pictures right this very moment." Natalya indicated that was the case. "So now I'm not only burned- I'm also potentially a double agent?"