Orwell named names, you know that? He fell in love with a British spy, much younger than him, while he was dying of TB and bitter over the Reds who’d betrayed his faction during the Spanish Civil War and shot him in the throat, so he made a list of all the people who trusted him, but whom he didn’t trust, wrote it on a piece of paper in his own handwriting, and gave it to this spook lady. As far as anyone can tell, she never acted on it.
Orwell must have been one hell of a compartmentalizer, is what I’m saying.
* * *
In the elevator, I made sure my phone and laptop were powered down with their encrypted drives unmounted. Then I checked my hair in the mirror—it looked, basically, like I’d just been drinking my face off—and remembered that I’d forgotten to put on any eye makeup. Ilsa always looked like she’d come from a salon, and wore these severe suit-y numbers that looked like they’d been made in East Germany and then tailored in Hong Kong by a master couturier. I liked the contrast. My Mr. Robot hoodie/jeans drag made a statement: I am not a lifer, I am the talent, I can’t be easily replaced, and so I can wear whatever I want.
She was in the lobby, standing by the bar, looking at her phone. She slipped it inside her handbag—Faraday fabric; I’d snuck a feel once when we were going through airport security together—and zipped it.
“Ms. Maximow.”
“Ms. Netzke.” Ilsa’s real (ish) name: Herthe Netzke (that was what her ID said, anyway).
“Come.”
The car was waiting out front. No driver. She drove. Better opsec, no need to trust someone not to repeat what they overheard.
“Ms. Maximow.”
“Yes?”
She pulled the car over. We’d only gone a couple blocks. It was very cold out and weird colors swirled through the fog as the bubble-lights of the police checkpoints a few blocks away filtered back to us.
She looked at me. She never Botoxed, I can tell you that. Years in the hard-smoking Soviet era had bequeathed her with a set of wrinkles of magnificent fracticality, wrinkles in the wrinkles, which she finished off with a short, severe iron-gray haircut like Judi Dench as a Marine commander. She had one of those German noses that looked like a ski jump, and hazel eyes that were big and wide-set, eyebrows full and expressive. Her dangling old-lady lobes were pierced, but I never saw her wear anything in them.
She had the terrible gift of fixing her attention, cobra-style, pinning you under it. Even with the lights off inside the car, I felt her stare. She was waiting for me to talk. I would outwait her. This game was easy, and I’d already learned to play. I was better than her at it.
“It was very foolish.”
Foolish was about as emphatic as she got, and it was reserved for monumental fuckups.
I shrugged. My heart thudded. I kept my face cool. I’d been slapped around before, and even worse, but this was scarier in its own weird way. Maybe knowing that Ilsa had overseen so many executions, so many nights in numberless cells … All the bad dudes I’d ever met were just boys LARPing GI Joe: she was the real deal. Far as I could tell, there was nothing underneath Ilsa but more Ilsa. It was amazing. I wanted to be like that someday. In one of my compartments, anyway. In another compartment, I hated her and myself for that.
“You realize that you’re compromised now.”
I shrugged. Compromised is only a few letters away from compartmentalized. “You’re overreacting. You think that the next autocrat looking to hire Xoth is going to call Litvinchuk for a reference?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
I hadn’t really thought about that. It’s not like there was a LinkedIn for dictators where they all hung out and traded notes on cyberwar contractors—as far as I knew, anyway.
“Well, for one thing, I think there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be dead in a ditch.”
She considered it with Teutonic cool. “Even so. His own people, his contractors, they will get out. There’s also the chance that a reporter will publish—”
“No there isn’t.” There hadn’t been a functional press in Slovstakia in eight years. They rated a part-time stringer from RT who reported on a neighboring basket-case republic, a dissident who published anonymously on Global Voices, and the state broadcaster, the sole TV Slovstakian channel on the air, rebranded as “The Choice.” Borises are not without humor.
“Probably not. But it’s not a domestic story. If anyone knew about this, it would be news in many countries. Everywhere Xoth operates, and then some.”
“Better make sure I don’t tell it, then.”
Boy, was that the wrong thing to say. “Masha, you’re out.”
“Come on, I was just—”
“You can’t unsay that. This was going to be a disciplinary meeting. Now it’s a termination. You made your choice.” She was not without tenderness.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are. I wish you the best in your future endeavors. Needless to say, there will be no references.”
My stupid tears welled up in my stupid eyes. I put them in their own compartment, but they were slippery. “Herthe—”
If it wasn’t sympathy in her eyes, it was a perfect fake. The wrinkles gave her a lot of expressive range. I think she practiced with them in front of a mirror. “Masha, I know you. I used to be you. The things you’re doing, you’re trying to destroy yourself. It’s not that you threatened Xoth, it’s that the threat shows how far gone you are. If you’re going to crash and burn, my job is to make sure you do it far from Xoth and the rest of us.”
“Herthe, I swear, it was just a smartass response. I haven’t been sleeping so well. Why don’t I get a few hours’ sleep, why don’t we both get a good night, and start over?”
“Disbelief, denial, bargaining. Guilt and anger are next. Then depression and hope. Good luck, Masha.” She popped the locks.
She was good at this. I was about to leave the car when I thought to ask, “Severance? Notice?”
“This kind of job doesn’t fall under those sorts of rules. Besides, you’re being terminated with cause. You may keep your equipment and we will pay your hotel bill for the night. You have your outbound plane ticket.”
I did. Xoth’s travel agent always booked full/flexible fares and seemed to get stellar deals on them, the kind of thing you need an IATA membership and a backdoor password to get normally. Hell, I could probably even cash it in at the airport ticket desk for euros, dollars, or Swiss francs.
I shivered on the street as Herthe’s car pulled away.
I grasped for a landmark to orient myself, and found a familiar church spire. I was only steps from the Danube Bar Resto. It was 2:30 in the morning, which meant that the bar would just be closing, unless it already had.
I hugged myself and pulled my hood up. I still had my dazzle makeup on and it made my face itch. I could taste it on my lips. I rounded the corner and slowed down. The Bar Resto still had its lights on, and I could see shadows moving behind its plate glass. I was about to hurry over when something stopped me, I wasn’t sure what. I looked around again more carefully. There had been a kind of ambient state of emergency on the streets on the way over, the fog and night sky reflecting back the bubble-lights on the tops of the police cars and roadblock fences, a kind of diffuse light show.