Moscow Sting

Street. West of Park Avenue. If you want to see me, I’ll be there. The cafe’s called Mendoza.” He turned away from her and walked to the exit and left.

“What’s happening?” Burt asked harshly from the car.

“He saw her,” came back over the speaker. “They talked. Briefly. He’s left the store.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s standing there.”

“Which way’s he headed?”

“He’s turned left out of the store and is walking fast. Now he’s stopped. He’s looking for a cab.”

“Anyone with him? Any tails?”

“None. Almost sure of that.”

“Be sure. Watch if anything follows his cab. Watch if he’s on a phone.”

Anna stepped out of the store onto the sidewalk and turned to the right. She walked twenty yards north of the store as they’d agreed, stopped, then recrossed the street when the pedestrian sign came up. The cab was waiting for her on the corner of the street, closer to the store than where it had dropped her. She stepped in.

“Where to?” the driver said with complete lack of urgency. It occurred to her he was playing his role too well, and she almost laughed out loud.

“Third Street,” she said. “On Park. A cafe called Mendoza. Drive past it and drop me about a hundreds yards farther on.”

“Hear that?” the driver said into the speaker.

“Check.” It was Burt’s voice.

There was silence.

The cab pulled out and waited for the light, then turned right as soon as it was green.

“What’s up, Anna?” Burt said through the speaker.

“We’re meeting.”

“Anything else?”

“He seemed as close to being convinced as we can expect.”

“Good. You okay?”

“Fine.”

“I hear you looked completely terrified,” Burt said and chuckled. “You got the part.”

“And a raise, I hope,” she replied.

She heard Burt’s laugh, but he said nothing.

As the cab took her steadily downtown, the speaker blared again. One of the watchers.

“He’s been in a cab for five blocks. Seems to be heading for the venue.”

“Give him time to get inside before getting close,” Burt ordered.

Anna’s driver usefully lost time by turning right instead of left and doing three sides of a square around two blocks, away from Park Avenue. Then they heard he had entered the cafe.

“Follow,” Burt said.

The cab took her across the street again where it had picked her up and headed fast towards Third Street. They passed the Cafe Mendoza. There were traffic lights fifty yards beyond.

“Before the lights?” the driver asked.

“Take me just beyond them,” she replied. She wanted a good walk in.

“The target has entered the cafe,” the speaker droned.

There was a pause of two or three minutes as the cab waited at the red lights.

“The cafe’s about half full,” the speaker reported. “Mostly students from the university.”

“I don’t want any comms in there,” she heard Burt say. “Get out of there and stay clear from now on.”

Anna walked the two blocks from the east of the Cafe Mendoza. She suddenly felt a feeling of freedom, unexplained. Perhaps it was because it was the first time she’d been free for nearly six months. Just this short walk, alone, raised her spirits. And Vladimir had been compliant.

She thought what it might be like one day to walk down a street like this, without the catalogue of aims and secrets, the needs of others, in just the freedom of her own mind.

It was a busy street, lined with tourist stalls and cheap restaurants and cafes. Pedestrians wrapped against the cold stopped only briefly or dashed inside, more for warmth than with any intention of buying anything. There were chestnuts roasting in a metal barrel. The vendor was stamping his feet and warming his gloved hands over the heat. He was wrapped in layers of clothing and a balaclava so that she could just make out a black face and a pair of eyes.

A few yards before the cafe, she stopped and looked at a stand that was selling postcards and scarves. She collected her thoughts, and made a check around her. She didn’t trust Burt’s teams to spot anyone following Vladimir. She could do it better.

Then she walked the few steps and turned right into the doorway of the cafe. She saw Vladimir immediately sitting with his back to her at the far end. He was in the process of ordering something from a waitress who stood, pen poised over her pad.

Anna walked to the counter, where there were bar stools, sat on one, and ordered a coffee. She adjusted her hearing to the low hubbub, not looking towards the rear of the cafe. She paid for the coffee and took a magazine from the pocket of her coat.

She then turned to watch as a waitress cleared the table next to Vladimir’s. Before anyone else could take it, she walked to the back of the cafe and told the waitress loaded with armfuls of screwed-up paper mats and dirty crockery that she’d like a menu.

She put the cup and the magazine on the table, took off her coat, and sat down in the chair that faced outwards. She sipped her coffee, watching from the corner of her eye as Vladimir saw her again from the next table.

It happened almost in slow motion. Vladimir glanced up from a copy of the New York Times and was interrupted by the waitress bringing a glass of water. He removed some utensils from a paper napkin, then apparently remembered from some previous existence that he’d looked up at her, seen her, but not registered what he’d seen with his eyes, and he looked up again. She was looking straight at him.

In her eyes, he saw alarm, the same alarm that she’d seen in the bookstore. They were like a mirror, but her face was invented for him, while he just couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.

“It’s really you” he said.

“And I guess it’s really you, Vladimir,” she said. She saw what she thought was a kind of loss or longing in his face, or it might have been grief.

A look of worry immediately replaced it. He looked startled now, his eyes flickering beyond her to another table. Then he carefully took in the whole cafe, turning slowly, pretending to be looking for a waitress. Then he looked back, and they both started the same sentence.

“What are you doing—” They both recognised the humour, and she laughed first. Then he laughed too, but it was a nervous response to hers.

“I’m living here,” she said.

“In New York?”

“Yes. And you too?”

“Yes.”

There was another pause, more awkward this time, neither wishing to ask a question that might seem too inquisitive.

“Anna,” he said. “I must ask you. Are you alone?”

She didn’t know immediately whether he meant alone as a former lover, or alone, with no watchers.

She smiled freely. “At this moment, yes,” she said. “I’m alone in every way.”

“And you have a boy.”

“Finn’s son, yes.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“And you?”

She saw him watch her to see if the question was disingenuous, to look for signs that she knew.

“I’m the same,” he said. But he didn’t wish to talk about himself. “I’m with the Russian mission here,” he said