The Flight Attendant(105)
“No, Cassie. Don’t call. Put the phone down,” Buckley said. “You’ll find Elena’s purse in the bathroom. It’s beside her body. And in that purse is a gun. Another gun. It’s a Beretta that’s already loaded, and so, thank God, you won’t have to load it. You won’t have to do anything. There’s also a knife. Even if you really aren’t with the CIA, I’m sure by now you have some new friends with the FBI in New York. Call them. Tell them to call their legal attaché in Rome. Tell them that Elena Orlov is here in this hotel in room six twenty-one. She’s dead. Tell them Evgeny Stepanov is in room four zero six. I’m two floors below you. I’ll be waiting for the FBI attaché there. Then when I’ve left your room, count to thirty, fire the weapon, and scream for help.”
Enrico shook his head. “Don’t do it, Cassandra. He’s just going to run away.”
“No, man, I won’t. I have no place left to run.”
“I want to know one thing,” Cassie asked. “Is my brother-in-law clean?”
“As far as I know.”
“So you have an inside elsewhere?”
“So it would seem.”
Cassie put down the phone. She took her finger off the button for guest services. The she retrieved Elena Orlov’s purse from the bathroom, careful at first to avert her eyes from the corpse in the tub, but then incapable of not glancing at it. There she was. Miranda. Elena. She was on her side, but Cassie could still see how deeply into her neck Buckley had run a knife and the blood that was pooling near the drain. She took the bag from the bathroom and in the hallway went through it. She wasn’t sure what to make of half of what was inside it—the pills, the restraints—but she found the knife and the Beretta. She flipped off the safety on the weapon.
“Remember: that gun is properly loaded,” Evgeny said to her when she returned.
“Go on.”
“Point the gun at me. It’s fine. You’ll feel safer. Then your friend can let me go. He’ll stand next to you. You’ll hand me the knife. Or if you want to keep your distance, you can toss the knife onto the mattress. I think I’ve already left enough blood on the bedspread and the carpet, but a little more couldn’t hurt. And my tooth is already there—on the floor. So there will be plenty for forensics. Then I’ll go to my room, and you’ll call your FBI contacts and tell them where I am.”
“And hotel security?”
“No. Don’t call them. That will lead to the Italian police and a real investigation. I want the world—at least my world—to believe you shot me dead. You killed me.”
Enrico was shaking his head no, his eyes imploring her not to do this. Cassie wondered if he’d even release Evgeny when she asked him to. He might not. She thought of all the mistakes she had made with her life—all the pain she had sown and reaped, all the things she would never have and never do—but she had a feeling now that listening to Evgeny wasn’t going to be one of them.
“What about me?” she asked. “You said that even if I kill you or call the police, there will just be someone else coming after me.”
“You’ll be someone new. Your people will see to it.”
“I assume by my ‘people,’ you don’t mean the airline.”
“Look, Cassie. Think about it. Do you really want to go through life as the Cart Tart Killer? I doubt it. Right now we share something I never expected when I followed you to that bar in the East Village: the need to start again.”
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
FD-302: MEGAN BRISCOE, FLIGHT ATTENDANT
DATE: August 7, 2018
MEGAN BRISCOE was interviewed by properly identified Special Agents NANCY SAUNDERS and EMORY LEARY at the FBI office in Washington, D.C.
SAUNDERS conducted the interview; LEARY took these notes.
When asked point blank if she had ever acted as a courier or delivered classified documents or information to a foreign government, she broke down and said that she had. She admitted that she and her husband were both paid by the Russian Federation. He would use his security clearance as a consultant to bring her materials on, most recently, the U.S. chemical weapons defense program at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland, and she in turn would deliver them to her handlers overseas.
She asked for a lawyer, and the interview ended with her arrest and the arrest of her husband.
* * *
= = = = = =
Subsequent to the interview, BRISCOE’S home and garage in Centreville, Virginia, were searched, and two flash drives with classified chemical weapons information were found hidden in an electrical outlet box, behind the plate, in their master bedroom.
Epilogue
REMEMBER THAT PERSON YOU WANTED TO BE? THERE’S STILL TIME.
?
On the night flight to Moscow, Cassie brought the passenger in 4C his vodka and tonic and hovered over him an extra-long second, a noctivagant cat on the headrest of an easy chair. If she hadn’t known who he really was—or, at least, what the agency had told her about him—she would have pegged him for a retired ice hockey star. The sort of red-haired Russian Adonis who as a very young skater had led his own country’s team to Olympic gold and then taken the NHL by storm in his twenties. He’d clearly broken his nose at least once. His shoulders were still broad, but his hair was thin and his skin was leather. He used reading glasses. She guessed he was, much to her horror, her age.