The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(18)

“Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked above the howl of the wind.

“You read the paper.” Emerson spoke so softly Jenkins almost didn’t hear him. “He was a scientist and Russian dissident who spoke out against the Putin regime. In Russia that can be enough to get one killed.”

“Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked again, this time more forcefully.

Emerson shot him a glance, then, as if thinking better of whatever he was going to say, disengaged and returned his attention to the crossing ferry. “Whether he was one of ours or he wasn’t is irrelevant.”

Jenkins stared at the side of Emerson’s face. “To you maybe, but not to me. I want to know. I have a right to know.”

“No, you don’t.” Emerson turned and looked Jenkins in the eyes, holding his gaze. “You have no right to know.”

“If I am back in this—”

Emerson raised his voice and his tone. “This is the way the FSB works. You know this. It’s the way the KGB worked. If you are interrogated, anything you know they will also know. So, I say again, you have no right to know.”

“I’m done with this. I’m done with this whole thing.” Jenkins turned to walk away.

“You can’t walk away this time, Charlie.”

“The hell I can’t.”

“If you walk away and this assignment fails, four women who have served this country for nearly forty years will die, and for that you will never forgive yourself.”

The words stopped Jenkins in midstep. He shut his eyes, fighting against the ache in his muscles and the burning in the pit of his stomach. Guilt, he knew, was a horrible reason to do anything, but it was also a powerful motivator. He turned back. “You could have got him out. I told you his name. You could have come up with some excuse, some reason for him to leave the country.”

“You know why the Russians told you his name,” Emerson said. “This was how the KGB operated in Mexico City. They told you Chekovsky’s name because they had already decided to kill him. Using him to test whether you would give his name to the agency was just a convenience. You know if I had moved to get him out, whatever the reason, they would have known you were not trustworthy, that you had given up the name and the information to someone at the agency. What then? What of your mission?”

“This isn’t about—”

“The next time you tried to enter the country they would have detained you and sent you home or, worse, allowed you to enter and made arrangements for you to permanently disappear. If pushed, they would have painted you as a traitor to your country who, when confronted, committed suicide, thereby ruining not just your good name, but that of your entire family. I told you, Charlie, the FSB is a more refined version of the KGB.”

A seagull, fighting the breeze, spread its wings to land on one of the piers, a relatively simple task, but the wind blew the bird backward, and it gave up without really trying.

Emerson changed his tone. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. You were given a name, and you provided me with that name. I made the decision that it go no further. If anyone is responsible for Chekovsky’s death it is me, not you.”

Jenkins hadn’t thought of how the news might impact Emerson. He’d been too busy being angry and feeling sorry for himself. Emerson was right. Jenkins had done all he could by disclosing the name. He had not made the decision to abandon Chekovsky. That decision had been made by people well above his pay grade. But it did little to assuage the angst he felt since he’d read the news of Chekovsky’s death.

“Federov will call,” Emerson said. “He will feel emboldened by these events, and he will try to make you feel responsible for not having disclosed Chekovsky’s name.”

This, too, had been a common tactic of the KGB to gain leverage over an informant. They used the information to blackmail the person so he could not back out.

“To Federov,” Emerson continued, “you will have put yourself in a no-win situation that requires you to do exactly what he wants when you next meet.”

“And what do I give Federov when we meet?” Jenkins said.

Emerson opened his coat, reached inside, and handed Jenkins an envelope. Jenkins snatched it before the stiff breeze blew it down the pier.

“The fourth sister,” Emerson said.

Jenkins eyes narrowed. “How did you get her name—”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

Emerson nodded to the envelope. “Uliana Artemyeva died two years ago of cancer at sixty-three years of age. She worked in the Russian nuclear industry sector as a top-level analyst. For the past decade she provided the CIA with classified information exposing Russia’s energy officials engaging in bribes, kickbacks, and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business worldwide. Of course, the FSB does not have any knowledge of this individual’s betrayal.” He nodded to the envelope. “That will prove it, and it will again prove that you are capable of providing them with highly classified information.”

“Federov told me his superiors are not interested in information on dead Russian double agents.”

“But he also expressed interest in identifying the remaining sisters, did he not?”

“Artemyeva was one of the sisters?”