The Right Hand (9 page)

“The DCI asked me to head EurOps. It won’t be announced until the district heads’ meeting in Prague, but I want you to start thinking about the transition.”

“Yes, of course. Discreetly, of course. Yes. I’m on it. Right away.”

“I knew you would be, Warren.” Adams hesitated for a second, then proceeded. “I’m going to promote you to case officer after I settle in. You’ve proven to me you’re ready.”

“I appreciate that, sir. Nothing would please me more.”

“I know. I’ll talk to you after I land in Europe.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you for your faith in me.”

“You’ve earned it.”

Adams hung up and smiled. He felt a paternal pride, and maybe that was why he had risen as far and as fast as he had: because he felt as if the Agency were a family. His family.

A couple passed him on their way toward the Washington Monument, and he watched their hands clasp in the reflection of the pool.

H
E LET
her cry.

Two hours directly north of Vladivostok, they found an empty country house, not much more than a log cabin that would’ve made Huckleberry Finn feel right at home. It stood alone, deep off a crooked dirt road, surrounded by old-growth forest and so dusty as to cause clouds to rise from their footsteps. In the years since Communism, so many of these dachas had simply been abandoned. With a confusion of property rights, elderly owners found it easier to just jettison a property than to fill out the mounds of requisite paperwork. Of course, many of these citizens had died, and the records of the houses’ existence had died with them.

Clay didn’t interrupt her sobbing, didn’t offer a handkerchief, didn’t rest his hand on her shoulder. Her stepbrother had died, her world had crumbled, and every dream she had held for her life had evaporated. She had learned one of life’s cruelest lessons: sometimes you pay for other people’s mistakes.

So he let her cry and he did not hold it against her. He had learned that lesson many years before, a different life ago.

Austin Clay was born to Craig and Melissa Clay under a blisteringly hot Louisiana sun. His father had waited too late to drive his mother to the hospital, and she had given birth to Austin pulled to the side of the road, his father stooped half in and half out of the passenger seat. Austin was the city in which he had been conceived. Although his parents remembered the location, the night itself was a little fuzzy. That town did three things right—barbecue, beer, and music—and the Clays partook of all three over the course of that weekend.

Austin was loved. That had been clear to him from the time before he could consciously remember. It was a feeling; it was images: his father’s arms, his mother’s hair, the toys, the crib, a laugh, a kiss, friends, a blanket, a bear, sunshine, a fire, a song, bare feet, warmth, laughter. They were there, with him, part of him, real, as real as he made them.

His father worked for a candymaker and smelled of sugar. His mother worked in the front office of a car dealership but took a leave of absence to have him and never went back. They lived in a house on a street lined with houses just like theirs, where wooden fences marked the property lines but all the neighbors knew each other by first name. He remembered that his mom made costumes for him: a pirate with a paper beard one day and a cowboy with a gold star pinned to his shirt the next. He was loved; she loved him; she told him every morning, whispered it to him every night. He could climb into her voice and take a nap.

They died with their names on a police report but not in the paper. They had hired a babysitter to give them a night out, a respite, an evening for themselves. When they stopped at the grocery store, it had been because of a joke. He pretended he was going to take her to the deli counter, but he really had reservations at the French restaurant downtown. It was their sixth anniversary.

A former employee named Larry Blank walked into the store holding an automatic pistol. He had been fired three days earlier, when it was discovered he had drilled a hole into the women’s bathroom and he was caught with his pants down in the adjacent broom closet. When his wife learned of the circumstances surrounding his sudden dismissal, she absconded with their two children. Blank thought the manager of the store, Steve Latier, must’ve told her the details of his sudden ouster. Latier was a gossip who liked to flap his gums and had ogled Blank’s wife on more than one occasion when she came in to buy diapers. The disgraced employee didn’t have much of a plan except to kill that prissy asshole, but—as he admitted to the court-appointed psychiatrist later—when he psyched himself up to walk into the store and shoot, he  saw only red, bright red, went through the automatic doors, and started firing. He remembered nothing from there, not how many times he pulled the trigger, not how long it all took—just red, and then he was knocked off his feet by the same officious son of a bitch he had walked in to kill. When he later learned he had ended the lives of seven people, including a state senator, his response had been “No,” as if they were telling him something that had happened to someone else. “No, that couldn’t be right.”

The state senator, a popular Mormon who had served three terms and was short-listed for a congressional run, received all the press, of course. Clay’s mother and father were always included within the phrase
and six others.

They left no wills. They weren’t yet in their thirties and thought they had all the time in the world. Wills, trusts—those were for old people, for sick people. What did they have to bequeath, anyway? They were just getting started.

Craig Clay had a brother named Bobby. A court investigator found him on a sailboat docked in San Diego. He was the only living relative of the six-year-old boy left behind when his parents were murdered simply for walking into the wrong grocery store at the wrong time.

Bobby cleaned himself up, put on a button-down shirt, clean jeans, and socks, flew halfway across the country, and appeared in court to claim the boy and the two-hundred-and-eighty-seven-thousand-dollar life insurance payout. Forty-eight hours later, Austin Clay stepped onto his uncle’s boat for the first time. He would rarely step off it for the next nine years.

The abuse was never sexual. With the hefty insurance claim, Uncle Bobby loaded up with liquor, pulled anchor, and set sail for open water. He had a vague notion—maybe the only romantic notion he’d ever had—that he would sail around the world, teaching the boy about life, about sailing, about travel, about women, and would give him a real education, not the kind they taught you in brick-and-mortar schools. He had always kept his drinking in check before; he’d been responsible enough to support himself chartering out to tourists from Baja to Santa Barbara. But something about the open water, about the financial windfall, about the plentiful supply of liquor in the stores, loosened his will, and he found himself nipping more from the bottles each day.

Any plans he had to teach the boy died in the first three months at sea. Austin discovered a survival instinct that was innate—if he was going to live, he would have to teach himself every inch of that boat. He’d have to know how to tie the knots, how to jib, how to tack, how to adjust the boom, how to keep the engine tuned, how to keep the oil out of the bilge, how to fish, how to cook, how to clean, and how to make himself small when his uncle balled his fists.

He woke to see Marika staring at him. She had pulled all the curtains across the windows so the only light inside the cabin came from a dusty floor lamp. Her hands were in her lap and her eyes were wide, like a naturalist observing a wild animal.

Clay sat up and rubbed his temples. Truth be told, his head was pounding. He didn’t get headaches often, but when they came, they were beasts. He stood up, and she flinched. He thought about ignoring it, but something made him hold his palms up and say to her, “It’s okay. I’m on your side.”

She nodded but kept her expression neutral, closed.

“Is there clean water here?”

She nodded and pointed to a tiny kitchenette.

He returned in a few moments with two full glasses and set one in front of her. He gestured for her to drink and she complied.

“None of this is your fault. I want you to know that.”

She nodded and then said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Well, that is good,
Clay thought.
She’s rational about it, which means she’s not in shock.
He wondered how long he’d slept. His headache was easing. He fought the urge to go over and open the curtain, gauge where the sun stood in the sky, but the next few minutes would go a long way toward establishing trust, and Marika wasn’t ready to be exposed to windows anytime soon.

“Do you know if there’s a phone here?”

“Next to the bed in the bathroom. I did not try it.”

“Okay, listen. I’m going to make a call to a man in the United States. He is going to arrange for us to leave the country and go where no one can harm you, where no one will find you, yes?”

“How do you know?”

“Because this is what I do. I promise I’ll keep you safe if you’ll do as I say when I say it.”

“You didn’t keep David safe.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m not infallible. But I am very good at my job and I hate to say it, but David was not my mission. You were my mission. And now my job is to get you out of here. You have my word that I’m going to successfully do that.”

She nodded again, but he wasn’t sure whether it indicated acceptance or was just to get him to stop talking.

He stood and finished his water. She stared down at her half-filled glass. He wanted to hold her, to hug her, to protect her with his arms, but he didn’t.

Stedding’s voice was gruffer than usual.

“They want an exchange.”

“What?”

“Nelson for the girl.”

“How did you— Who wants an exchange?”

“Both sides. Deliver Marika Csontos to the embassy in Moscow, then check in when you’re out of the country. I’ll meet you in Europe for a debriefing and we’ll discuss your next assignment.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Stedding.”

He waited a moment, unsure if his handler was still on the line. Finally, the voice came through, strained as tight as a guitar string. “What don’t you understand?”

“I found her just as an elite FSB team was trying to put an end to her. Now you’re asking me to turn her over so they can…what? Finish the job?”

“Wrong. I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m commanding you. These marching orders are directly from the DCI, and you will follow them. There’s a shitstorm brewing between Moscow and DC right now, and you’re at the heart of it. Getting Nelson back was the mission; it still is the mission. The key, as you said, was finding the girl, and you did that. Now dropping her off will get our asset back, and you’ll get to keep working autonomously and anonymously, and some secret commendation will go in some secret file in the basement of Langley and you’ll be on to the next thing.”

The dull ache in Clay’s head was back.

“All right, Stedding.”

“Now I’m worried. Where’s the wise-ass response?”

“My head’s pounding. I’ll work up some barbs later.”

“When can you get to Moscow?”

“Three days.”

“Talk to you then.”

The line clicked and buzzed and fell silent.

He waited a few minutes, then returned to the big room. Marika had not stirred from her spot.

“If you want to clean up or rinse off or do whatever you need to do to get ready, we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

“Where are we going?”

“Moscow.”

She whitened, so he added, “The American embassy there,” but he kept his eyes lowered. He knew what he had to do, so he had already thrown a mental switch. She was not a
she
anymore, not to him. She was a folder, a file, a pack—something he had acquired and now needed to turn over to his own government. It had to be this way. He had a job to do, and this assignment ended in Moscow, and it didn’t matter what happened after that because she would be somebody else’s problem. There it was again. Not
she.
It.

She watched him, unblinking, but didn’t say anything. It was as though she’d been reading his thoughts and now didn’t know how to handle him, as if she couldn’t keep up with the shaking sand underneath her feet. After a minute, she rose, went into the bathroom, and shut the door. Soon after, he heard the water in the shower running. It would be cold but clean.

The water in Brazil was warm. His uncle had guided them to Paraty to stock up on gas, food, and most importantly, liquor. It was January, so the weather was sunny, and they had hugged the Brazilian coast for more than a month, parked outside Ilha Grande, fishing and keeping to themselves. Occasionally a yacht would sail close. His uncle would be awkward on good days and rude when he was drunk, and the chance for human contact would evaporate like a mirage. Every now and then, Clay would spot a child on board one of these cruisers and they would stare at each other, but they might as well have had the entire ocean between them.

“Check on the bilge,” his uncle would say. Or just “Head below,” and he would enter his tiny cabin, lie on his bunk, and stare at the ceiling until his vision blurred.

Run
.

He couldn’t say when the idea first crept into his thoughts, but it had seemed to possess him from the time he was seven.

Run.

He had been through kindergarten before his parents died, and he had been one of the early readers in Ms. Britton’s class. He had learned all the sight words—
the, a, into, but, and, go,
a hundred others—and he had the foundation for putting sounds to letters. Blessedly, his uncle liked to read while he drank and had a collection of historical and crime fiction Clay could pinch. Books like
Eye of the Needle
and
The Eagle Has Landed
became his elementary school primers.

The book that saved him, though, was
The Mouse That Roared.
He picked it up thinking maybe he’d finally found a book written for him, for his age, but though it turned out to have been written for adults, it was different from anything else he’d read. The book centered on a tiny forgotten pissant country that stole an atom bomb out of New York City and brought the world’s powers to their knees. It was hilarious and ludicrous and satirical, but an idea was planted in his mind and took shape. The mouse
could
roar.

Run
.

Two girls with long legs and short bikinis told his uncle about Paraty. If he docked there, he could load up on everything he needed,
anything
he needed. Clay was ten, but even he knew what they meant.

He was only allowed off the boat to help load supplies, and this time would be no exception. A few bruises under his shirt and a cigarette burn on his side let him know the price of trying to talk to anyone while they were docked.

Run
.

He would wait until his uncle had been gone an hour and then he would do it. Any shorter than an hour and he risked that the bastard would have stopped at the nearest bar with a clear view of the port. Any longer and maybe his uncle would stumble home early after annoying the wrong bartender. One hour and then he’d take off.