Since neither Jenkins nor Alex had immediate family, they spent most holidays with David Sloane, who had lost his wife, Tina, to a murder.
“David said anytime,” Alex said. “It’ll be nice to see Jake again. I’m happy he’s back. Nobody should have to wake up alone on Christmas morning.”
Jake, Tina’s son, had been living in California with his biological father, but he had moved back to Seattle to attend law school and once again lived with Sloane at Three Tree Point on the shores of Puget Sound.
Jenkins stood. “I’m going to get the paper and another cup of coffee. You want anything?”
“I’m good,” she said.
Jenkins filled his coffee cup in the kitchen, then walked out the back door. The temperature felt cold enough for it to snow, if they got any precipitation. The meteorologist had indicated that was not likely. Jenkins picked up the paper and slid it from the plastic sheath. The front page included a picture of a homeless shelter beneath the headline Happy Holidays. Articles below the fold included the president’s Christmas dinner at the White House, and another on the continuing battle to increase national park fees.
Jenkins took the paper into the kitchen and stood at the counter, flipping through the pages and glancing at articles. On an inside page, in a section reporting on world news, a small headline caught his attention.
Russian Laser Pioneer Found Dead
Beneath the fold was a picture of a dark-haired man wearing glasses. Nikolay Chekovsky.
Jenkins felt the familiar rush of anxiety as he read the article. Chekovsky had been found hanging in his Moscow apartment, and his wife was pushing the police to investigate the death as a homicide.
Chekovsky, considered one of the leading laser scientists in the world, had been an outspoken critic of the use of lasers in military applications, which placed him at odds with members of the Kremlin.
Jenkins felt heat spreading throughout his limbs, and the now familiar ache in his joints. His right hand shook enough to rattle the newspaper. He set it down and rushed through the kitchen into his den, found the bottle of propranolol in the bottom drawer of his desk, and dry swallowed one of the green tablets.
9
Early evening, the day after Christmas, Jenkins walked Waterfront Park in downtown Seattle. The weather remained cold and blustery, with wind gust warnings for those traveling home from the holidays. Emerson stood at the railing at the end of the pier looking west, across Elliott Bay’s blackened waters. He wore a long tweed coat and black gloves. His hair fluttered in the wind, but otherwise he seemed impervious to the stiff breeze blowing whitecaps across the bay. To Jenkins’s left, the Seattle Great Wheel, festively lit in Seahawks blue and green, rotated high above the water. Farther south, the roof of the football stadium glowed purple. Faint notes, Christmas music, carried on the gusting wind, which also brought the briny smell of Puget Sound.
Jenkins pulled up the collar on his black leather car coat against the cold and thrust his hands deep into its pockets as he approached Emerson. Though he wore a black knit ski cap, he could feel the cold on his earlobes.
“Who was Nikolay Chekovsky?” he said.
Emerson never acknowledged the question, or seemingly even heard it. He stared blankly at a decorated ferryboat churning toward the pier.
“Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked above the howl of the wind.
“You read the paper.” Emerson spoke so softly Jenkins almost didn’t hear him. “He was a scientist and Russian dissident who spoke out against the Putin regime. In Russia that can be enough to get one killed.”
“Was he one of ours?” Jenkins asked again, this time more forcefully.
Emerson shot him a glance, then, as if thinking better of whatever he was going to say, disengaged and returned his attention to the crossing ferry. “Whether he was one of ours or he wasn’t is irrelevant.”
Jenkins stared at the side of Emerson’s face. “To you maybe, but not to me. I want to know. I have a right to know.”
“No, you don’t.” Emerson turned and looked Jenkins in the eyes, holding his gaze. “You have no right to know.”
“If I am back in this—”
Emerson raised his voice and his tone. “This is the way the FSB works. You know this. It’s the way the KGB worked. If you are interrogated, anything you know they will also know. So, I say again, you have no right to know.”
“I’m done with this. I’m done with this whole thing.” Jenkins turned to walk away.
“You can’t walk away this time, Charlie.”
“The hell I can’t.”
“If you walk away and this assignment fails, four women who have served this country for nearly forty years will die, and for that you will never forgive yourself.”
The words stopped Jenkins in midstep. He shut his eyes, fighting against the ache in his muscles and the burning in the pit of his stomach. Guilt, he knew, was a horrible reason to do anything, but it was also a powerful motivator. He turned back. “You could have got him out. I told you his name. You could have come up with some excuse, some reason for him to leave the country.”
“You know why the Russians told you his name,” Emerson said. “This was how the KGB operated in Mexico City. They told you Chekovsky’s name because they had already decided to kill him. Using him to test whether you would give his name to the agency was just a convenience. You know if I had moved to get him out, whatever the reason, they would have known you were not trustworthy, that you had given up the name and the information to someone at the agency. What then? What of your mission?”
“This isn’t about—”
“The next time you tried to enter the country they would have detained you and sent you home or, worse, allowed you to enter and made arrangements for you to permanently disappear. If pushed, they would have painted you as a traitor to your country who, when confronted, committed suicide, thereby ruining not just your good name, but that of your entire family. I told you, Charlie, the FSB is a more refined version of the KGB.”
A seagull, fighting the breeze, spread its wings to land on one of the piers, a relatively simple task, but the wind blew the bird backward, and it gave up without really trying.
Emerson changed his tone. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. You were given a name, and you provided me with that name. I made the decision that it go no further. If anyone is responsible for Chekovsky’s death it is me, not you.”
Jenkins hadn’t thought of how the news might impact Emerson. He’d been too busy being angry and feeling sorry for himself. Emerson was right. Jenkins had done all he could by disclosing the name. He had not made the decision to abandon Chekovsky. That decision had been made by people well above his pay grade. But it did little to assuage the angst he felt since he’d read the news of Chekovsky’s death.
“Federov will call,” Emerson said. “He will feel emboldened by these events, and he will try to make you feel responsible for not having disclosed Chekovsky’s name.”
This, too, had been a common tactic of the KGB to gain leverage over an informant. They used the information to blackmail the person so he could not back out.
“To Federov,” Emerson continued, “you will have put yourself in a no-win situation that requires you to do exactly what he wants when you next meet.”