And she saw the sense in that too.
“And then what?” she asked him. “If he makes a drop?”
“Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll bring whatever he leaves straight here. Nothing happens without you.”
But maybe something can happen without you, she thought.
After lunch, Burt had checked that the package had safely arrived, accepted and signed for by a receptionist at the cultural centre, and he was in an even more jovial mood than usual, though none of his staff at the apartment knew the reason for his elation.
For them, it was a time of waiting, as they believed, for Anna’s meeting with Vladimir. Anna retired to her room to rest. But once there, she began to work out her own mission, her plan that, once again, had to be unknown to Burt.
In the evening, they all ate supper—Burt, Anna, Marcie, and Logan—and there was the desultory feeling of nothing happening among all of them but Burt.
After supper Logan suddenly suggested, in front of them all, that he and Anna go to the movies. There was nothing going on, he reasoned. With the usual security, surely a visit to the movie theatre was a good way to relax. But he didn’t suggest that Marcie accompany them.
It was completely unexpected and, Burt said, all the more welcome for that reason. They could go to see a matinee in the next few days, he said, but only if she wished to.
It was the first moment of near freedom she would have had since the last day with Little Finn at the house in France, back in August.
“Let’s see,” she said. “Sometime in the next few days I’d love to, Logan. Maybe a walk would be better, though, rather than sitting in the theatre.”
And so, the next morning, Logan, Anna, and six watchers walked “for miles in the damn cold,” as Larry complained afterwards. She and Logan stopped and drank coffee and watched the watchers as they stamped their feet outside the cafe, trying to look like normal people who happened to be standing in subzero temperatures in a New York street in January.
Meanwhile, inside the cafe, Anna found she was more relaxed than she’d been for a long time.
Deemed a success by Burt, the exercise was repeated the following day, to the consternation of the watchers, and then on the third day after the dagger had been sent, she agreed this time to accompany Logan to the movies.
Logan had asked her this time in a way that carried a suggestion of something more than just time spent in her company. She had consulted Burt about this developing relationship and about the wisdom of accompanying Logan on what looked remarkably like a date.
Burt took her alone into one of the many small ops rooms in the apartment that was vacant.
“If you’re all right about Logan, I want to ask you something,” he said.
“So I have the right to turn you down?” She smiled.
“Oh, yes. Nothing’s changed. I want you to know that. You are highly respected here, and always will be by me. More so than before, if anything. No. This is a request, Anna. I’d like you to be friendly to Logan.”
“Friendly?”
“Yes.” He looked at her and grinned. “Be sweet with him. Can you do that?”
“Sweet with him? That seems to be a role I can’t escape,” she said.
Burt paused and seemed to be deciding what to say. Then:
“It’s something about Logan,” he said eventually. “I don’t live with my mistakes. But I’m going to have to live with this one a little longer. If it is a mistake.”
“Is Logan a mistake? Is he unreliable?”
“Logan was one of the best officers I ever had at the agency. Maybe the best.”
“And now?”
“Let’s say I’m giving him a chance—a reward too—with this assignment in the past months. I’m not certain how he’s responding to the opportunity. But I know he’ll respond to you, Anna. People do. As an SVR colonel or as a beautiful woman, I couldn’t say.” He smiled conspiratorially as he turned to her. “This isn’t something I’d ask you, Anna, unless I thought it was important.”
“I can be friendly to Logan,” she agreed. “Is that it? Or am I watching him?”
Burt walked away from her in the windowless room and sat in a swivel chair that was too small for him. He looked as if he’d been forcibly squeezed into it.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” he said. “It might help you understand Logan a little.” His rotund body fit the chair like a cushion. “Logan ran agents in the Balkans in the nineties,” Burt began. “He was involved in an operation at the heart of the Milosevic government. Running an agent inside the Tigers, you know, the organisation led by the notorious paramilitary Arkan. As I’m sure you know also, Arkan was responsible for the murder of at least twenty thousand Bosnians. He was a killer, politician, warlord, bank robber. . . . Logan got very close to him through one of his female agents. So the agency decided to bring Arkan down.”
Burt paused, as if unwilling to divulge what he was going to say.
“But then the CIA station in Vienna made a mistake. They confused two communications sent out from our embassy there. One of these communications was intended for Arkan himself. It was a warning, a threat. We were going to get him, and he had nowhere deep enough to hide. The warning was intended to panic him into making the mistake that would allow us to follow through with his assassination.
“The other, second message was a detailed account of Arkan’s internal operations that could only have come from his inner circle. This communication was intended for our station head in Sarajevo. The two messages got mixed up, would you believe—they were sent the wrong way round. Arkan received the CIA assessment of his own operations, clearly aided by inside sources, and our station head in Sarajevo received the threat to Arkan. Incredible, isn’t it?” he said, looking at her.
“It happens,” she replied. “I’m sure I could match you for any mistake of the CIA’s with mistakes from the Russian side. Even mistakes as crass as that.”
“There are mistakes, and there are spectacular mistakes,” Burt said. “Arkan learned everything we knew about him, and he soon found the source of this information inside his own circle.” He paused. “She was tortured to death.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
Burt paused, discomfited, it seemed to her, by this unaccustomed departure from his regular world of relentless optimism.
“And it was a ‘she,’ ” Anna added.
“Yes. Logan’s agent was also Logan’s woman,” Burt continued. “And as if that weren’t enough, Logan was made the fall guy for the whole mistake, to save someone else’s skin at the station.”
Anna said nothing, but was thinking what Burt said next as he was saying it.
“Logan became what you might call a compromised, angry, washed-up piece of emotional wreckage,” Burt said.
“Who you’ve hired again,” she said. “Not the best material for an intelligence officer. So why? Why wasn’t he pensioned off? Why is Logan working for you?”
He looked at her.
“Two reasons. The first is a personal loyalty to him. If this doesn’t bring him back,” Burt said, “I fear he’ll be lost for good. And by ‘bring him back,’ I don’t mean bring him back to this world of ours necessarily, the world of secrets, but bring him back to any kind of life at all.”
“That’s taking a big risk,” she said. “Surely your heart isn’t that big, Burt. It’s a charming thought, but not much use in our operation now.”
“The second reason may seem odd to you. But it’s important to what we’re doing. Naturally Logan hates the CIA. To me, that’s a valuable asset. In this business of private intelligence companies, the revolving door between the CIA and us contractors is constantly spinning. It’s mostly one way, CIA people coming over to our side. They can earn twice, even three times, what they earn with the government. Department heads and even heads of the CIA come into the private sector, bringing their knowledge and government contacts with them.” Burt paused. “That’s all good, or nearly all good. But we’re in a situation of concealing something from the CIA, and the revolving door can in theory go both ways. I have to be careful that former CIA employees now at Cougar aren’t talking to
