The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(39)

The woman paused and Jenkins could tell she had become emotional. After a minute she again found her voice. “I had taken him there many times. It had been a place to look at the lights of Moscow and to dream of what life had to offer each of us.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenkins said.

“Yes, for many years I, too, was sorry,” she said, now sounding more adamant, more determined. “I was sorry my brother could not see his way out of his misery. I was sorry my mother and I had to live with his decision. Then I realized that what happened to my brother was not his fault. It was not even the fault of this man who had abused him. What happened to my brother was the fault of the institutions that made this man go into hiding in the first place, that punished my brother simply because he had loved another man. I swore I would get my revenge, and I would not stop until Russia was a real democracy, and all the people had real options and real opportunities. I thought that day had come when Gorbachev took power, but it was a fleeting and false hope. Each year, Russia falls farther and farther away from a true democracy.” She looked at him. “So you see, Mr. Jenkins, I will not stop now. Not even if it means that I must die.”

If it was all an elaborate story, it was a good one, one she told with honesty and emotion. “How were you recruited?” Jenkins asked.

“I have a proficiency for computers and for math. I studied at Moscow University. One day I made a call to the US embassy. A week later I was at home and there was a knock on my door. The courtship took several months. I was asked to perform many mundane tasks.”

Jenkins knew from his own experience that an agent motivated by money could not be trusted. Instead, the agency recruited or responded to those who had an ideological or a more personal reason for wanting to betray their country. “They were testing you,” he said.

“Yes, whether I could be trusted.” She shrugged.

They drove in silence for several miles. Then Jenkins said, “What did you dream of on the roof of the Bolshoi?”

“It does not matter any longer.”

“You said you had dreams. What were they?”

She smiled. “I dreamed that I would become the Bill Gates of Russia. I would start my own business and develop my own software that would someday be used in every computer in the world.”

“You said that you used to dream of other countries, of America. Now you can go. You can still have your dream.”

She pointed out the windshield. “Tollbooth.”

Jenkins slowed as they approached flashing lights reflecting in the blinding snow. The tollbooth looked like a gas station, with multiple lanes beneath a solid-blue awning. Everything was automated, which gave Jenkins a second thought.

“Do they have cameras?” Jenkins asked.

“I would suspect so, but Federov will have no reason to suspect me, and I told you the plates are for a different car.”

Jenkins didn’t think the woman was giving Federov enough credit. He knew there were too many possible ways to identify her—and the car. “Maybe not. But I’d prefer we ditch this car and find another.”

“What is ‘ditch’?”

“Hide,” he said, “and take another car.”

“Look around you. There is no one. And if we steal a car, then they will look for that car.”

She made a point. Jenkins slowed and powered down his window, struggling to insert a bill into the machine. When he’d succeeded, the red-and-white arm across the road lifted. He drove from the tollbooth back into snowy conditions. “How many more hours do we have?”

“Many,” she said. “Stay on M4. I think that I will sleep. Try not to kill us.”

“Listen, if we’re going to be driving together for that many hours, at least tell me what I should call you if you don’t want to tell me your name.”

“You can call me Anna,” she said. “I always wanted the name Anna since I first read Anna Karenina.”

“All right, Anna. Will you ever tell me your real name?”

“Perhaps,” she said, tilting back her seat and turning her head toward the window. “Perhaps when I know that you are again to be free. Then I will tell you.”





20



Viktor Federov stood in his office watching his computer screen and drinking another cup of black coffee, despite his stomach’s protests. He hadn’t eaten dinner or breakfast, and the coffee felt as though it was burning a hole in the lining of his stomach. Federov wore the same suit as the prior evening, the pants ripped in the knees and wrinkled where they had gotten wet. He hadn’t bothered to go home to change. There was much to do, and little time to do it. Jenkins and the woman, whoever she was, would be working to quickly get out of the country, and with Russia’s vast borders, and its often disinterested border guards, that was not an insurmountable challenge. Federov had ordered that Jenkins’s picture be provided to every border-crossing guard, and that an alert be put on his passport, but those measures would only work if Jenkins used his passport and the border guard paid attention to the alert. Neither was a given.

Federov set down his coffee cup and pressed a button on his computer to fast-forward through another hotel security tape. He’d started with footage of the parking lot. They’d located the Hyundai Solaris, but the camera was of poor quality and so, too, was the image. They had enhanced it enough to read the license plate, but the plate number turned out to be for a Lada Granta, which further research revealed had been totaled in an accident. It would be of no help identifying the owner, only the car. He moved next to hotel footage of the reception counter and watched the woman in the dark wig and glasses approach. Her long coat nearly touched the floor. The scarf and large eyeglasses covered everything but small portions of her face, which eliminated any chance of obtaining a screen shot to perhaps identify her. Everyone who worked in a government office was fingerprinted and photographed. With facial recognition software, they might have been able to get a match. The woman appeared to know this—further proof, perhaps, of her employment at the FSB. A mole. In addition to the scarf, she kept her body turned to the left, as if she knew the location of the hotel cameras in the ceiling.