“Do you know what happened to her?” Lemore asked.
“She died.” Jenkins sipped his coffee and set down the mug. The subject matter remained raw and painful.
“You saw her die?” Lemore asked.
Jenkins recalled his and Ponomayova’s final moment in the run-down beach house in Vishnevka, Paulina stepping out the back door to a car they had stashed. She intended to create a diversion to give him time to flee. The diversion had worked. “No.”
Lemore sat back, clearly disappointed.
“Why are you asking? What was the rumor about Lefortovo?”
“That a highly placed asset was brought to Lefortovo and was being interrogated there—a female asset believed to have information on a clandestine US mission of a long-standing nature.”
Jenkins shoved his plate to the side, no longer hungry. “When? When did you first get word?”
“Several months after you returned to the States.”
His optimism vanished. “It has to be someone else then.”
Lemore spoke over him. “The woman had been in a military hospital in Moscow under heavy security for months. She’d had some sort of car accident and was in the intensive care unit for several months before being transferred to Lefortovo.”
Jenkins gave that some thought. “The Russians went to extremes to keep this person alive.”
“Which means the asset had to have been highly placed, and that the FSB was concerned about what she had already divulged and what more she might know.”
Jenkins tapped the newspaper on the table. “What did your asset tell you? What did he learn inside the prison?”
“He said the Russians were being cautious, and paranoid, more than usual. Prison guards usually talk for the right price. Not this time.”
“You don’t know her identity.”
“No. I thought you might be able to help.”
Jenkins shook his head. He couldn’t.
But he knew someone who could.
4
With Alex on Lizzie duty, Jenkins picked up CJ after his soccer practice at the middle school. Perhaps the only positive outcome from the trial had been the tutor they’d hired to ensure CJ wouldn’t fall behind in his classwork. The tutor had played professional soccer. CJ’s grades and his game both improved dramatically.
“Good practice?” Jenkins asked.
His son slid into the passenger seat in his uniform and soccer cleats. He slung his backpack into the back seat and buckled his seat belt. “It’s been a little boring. Nobody is able to stop me.”
Jenkins suppressed a smile, recognizing a fatherly opportunity. “Well, I hope you haven’t said anything like that to any of your teammates.”
“No, I didn’t say anything.” CJ turned on the radio. A middle schooler, he’d begun to pick up the social norms, like an interest in music. He’d also developed body odor, and they’d been working on getting him to use deodorant. Based on the smell, it remained a work in progress.
“Can we stop at Burger King?” CJ asked.
“Mom’s cooking,” Jenkins said.
He pulled onto the highway, heading across the bridge toward home. The conversation he’d had with Matt Lemore remained fresh. Jenkins had assumed Paulina Ponomayova had driven the car as far as she could and, when caught, that she had bit down on a cyanide tablet. This had triggered the Baptist sermons he’d endured as a youth.
Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13.
Letting Paulina leave the beach house in Vishnevka, knowing the sacrifice she intended to make, had been the hardest thing Jenkins had ever done.
I’m not quitting, Charlie. You have to understand that if you survive, if you get back, then I have done my job. You must get back and stop whoever is leaking the information on the seven sisters, before others die.
They’ll kill you, Anna.
Paulina, she’d said. My name is Paulina Ponomayova.
Now Lemore was telling him she might still be alive.
“Dad?”
Jenkins shook his thoughts. “What’s that?”
“Can I go to William’s after practice on Saturday? He invited me over.”
“Let’s check with your mom and make sure you don’t have any other commitments.”
CJ looked at him the way his son had when Jenkins had been on trial. Uncertain and concerned. “Are you okay, Dad?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”
“Really?”
Jenkins smiled. “I just have a couple of things on my mind.”
After the acquittal, Jenkins had done his best to be present at home, to help CJ overcome his fear that his father would again be taken away. Still, it had been months before he regained the boy’s trust.
When they arrived at home, Jenkins helped CJ with his homework and participated in the dinner discussion, struggling to stay engaged so his mind didn’t drift back to the Russian beach house, and to Paulina. He was not always successful.
Do not be sad for me, Charlie. This is a day I have anticipated, and for which I have long prepared. I am at peace with my God, and I am anxious to see my brother dance the ballet in the greatest ballroom in all eternity. Give me this gift. Give me this opportunity to know that I have harmed them one last time.
Paulina had been as tough and determined as any KGB or CIA officer Jenkins had ever known. She’d made dying sound honorable and heroic. Now Jenkins struggled with the possibility that she had not died, and the consequences if she had not. Lefortovo was notorious. The Russians would slowly and painfully squeeze every ounce of information from her.
Then, they would execute her.
“I’ll finish the dishes if you take care of Lizzie,” Alex said.
Jenkins smiled and cleared plates.
“You okay?” Alex asked.
“Yeah. No worries.”
Nights at home had returned to routine. Jenkins and Alex took turns putting CJ and Lizzie to bed. CJ still asked to have a book read to him, though he was more than capable of reading the books on his own. As Alex liked to say, There are moments he doesn’t want us around, and moments when he just wants to be a little boy. Cherish those.
Jenkins changed Lizzie’s diaper and put her in her crib, cautiously handing her the bottle of water, which she had recently become prone to throwing in protest; Alex had read that formula would rot Lizzie’s new teeth and gums. But tonight, Lizzie stuffed the nipple in her mouth, sucking contentedly.
“Elizabeth Paulina Jenkins,” Jenkins whispered, rubbing his daughter’s curly black hair. They had named Lizzie after his mother—and the woman whose sacrifice allowed Jenkins to stand at the crib this night.
“Good night, baby. Daddy loves you,” he said.
Jenkins went downstairs to the family room. Alex would be another half hour reading to CJ. He made a fire, smelling the sap from the pine and dogwood logs. When the fire lit, the wood crackled and popped. He sat on the brown leather couch but made no move to turn on the television and channel surf. He thought again of that final conversation with Paulina, and her desire to reunite with her brother, who killed himself when his dream of dancing for the Bolshoi was taken from him.
I will tell them that for decades my brother did them more harm than they could ever have imagined doing to him, or to me. And they will have to live with the knowledge that revenge has eluded them, once again.