The Good Liar

4

Oakbrook, Illinois

T he goal of babymaking had sapped all my energy and focus for the last few years. It had taken all of Scott and me. And since he left, my goal had been to get some peace in my life, less focus, less intensity, more freedom. No more hormone shots. No more doctor visits or blood tests. And I got that peace, I suppose. It had been very peaceful in the house that Scott built. But I was ready for some excitement. So when Michael left a message five days after my talk with Liza, I didn’t play coy and count the prescribed, recommended amount of days to reply. I called him immediately. I was geared up for something new, some craziness perhaps, maybe just a touch of chaos.

“How did Liza convince you to call me?” I asked him.

“Liza is very persuasive.”

“That’s the truth.”

We both chuckled.

We launched into a long get-to-know-you discussion. The next night, he called again. And again a few days after that. They were easy conversations, filled with stories that required a new audience to be fresh and entertaining, stories my old friends had heard way too often.

Michael was charming and interesting. He talked of jazz and art and restaurants all over the world. His conversations were filled with anecdotes from the numerous jobs he’d held throughout his life—a photographer in Washington, D.C., a pharmaceuticals salesman in Boston, a winery owner in Napa.

“How did you get from taking pictures all the way to stomping grapes?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see. The winery thing happened because I was having a midlife crisis, and I wanted a legitimate reason to drink a lot.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Hey, it was a rough time. My thinking wasn’t entirely clear.”

I laughed and listened to Michael talk about going from photographing senators to selling vaccinations to testing soil. He could be serious as well, mentioning the tough years in Vietnam, and his marriage afterward to a woman named Honey.

“Her name was Honey?” I said, a wry tone to my voice.

Michael wouldn’t take the bait. “She was Southern. And a lovely woman.”

I was silent for a moment. I liked how he wouldn’t engage in the usual divorcé pastime of ex-bashing.

“What about you?” he asked.

“His name was Scott. It’s still pretty raw.”

“Want to talk about it?” Michael had a smooth, melodic voice, and now there was a kindness in his tone that touched me.

I told him I wasn’t quite ready. Not yet anyway. But I had a strange inkling that Michael might soon be someone I could talk to about anything.

When he asked me out, a week and a half after our first conversation, I said, “Took you long enough.”

“Yes, well. I’m not as good at this as I used to be. So, what do you say? I’m in town on Friday. I’d love to take you to dinner.”

“Great.” My voice went a little high despite myself. “That would be wonderful.”

He called a few days later to say he was on his way. It was a moment I’d been thinking about all week, and I was nervous. There were the usual first date jitters, but they were multiplied exponentially because I hadn’t dated since I ran into Scott at our high-school reunion five years ago. Also, I was anxious about the age difference. I had forgotten about it during our conversations, but soon he would be on my doorstep—a fifty-five-year-old man. I was drawn to him on the phone, but what about when I saw him? Could I be attracted to someone so much older?

I flitted around the house, trying to apply lip gloss while straightening the crap that had accumulated during my self-imposed seclusion. I scooped up stacks of newspapers and shoved them in the recycle bin. I pitched old iced-tea bottles and rinsed a couple of crusty plates sitting in the sink. I wished I’d had the sense to get a Christmas tree this week, or at the very least a wreath, something to cheer up the place. But maybe it was just me who saw the house as gloomy, a mere receptacle of what-could-have-been.

I darted into my bedroom, and stood still a moment, gazing at the bay window with its padded silk bench and olive-colored pillows, and at the corner bookshelf filled with mementos. Finally, I let my eyes move to the bed. I hadn’t made up the linens before work this morning, and I debated whether to do so now. Wasn’t making the bed akin to wearing brand-new, skimpy underwear on a date? Weren’t you jinxing yourself? I reminded myself that I didn’t actually want to sleep with Michael. The thought of having sex with someone new was mortifying. Yet I did want the date to go well. Was there some kind of bad karma in making the bed?

I decided I was being ridiculous and quickly pulled the sheets straight, yanked the comforter up and plumped the pillows. I hurried back to the kitchen and opened a bottle of Merlot. It was a good bottle that Scott and I had splurged on last year when we were trying to get over the third miscarriage. We never did drink the wine. We never did get over it.

As I took glasses from the cabinet, the doorbell rang. I froze for a second. No one—save the UPS man—had come to my door in a very long time. I glanced down at myself. Presentable enough—slim black pants, a cream silk blouse, ridiculously high heels. And I’d gotten my hair cut and highlighted. But what was I doing going on a date? My divorce wasn’t even final for three more weeks. I thought of the rumors around town that Scott was dating a twenty-five-year-old law student, someone young and fresh, someone who could probably give him the children he wanted. The thought put my feet into motion.

When I opened the door, I saw a slim man nearly six feet tall, wearing a camel-hair sport coat. He smiled, showing white teeth. A light snow had started, dropping flakes on his brown hair, which had only a few shots of gray at the temples. In his hands, he held a small copper pot covered in cellophane. Inside was a white and purple orchid.

“Kate,” he said, his voice stirring something inside me to life. “This is for you.”

He handed the orchid to me, then leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the cheek. His skin smelled warm, like he’d been in the sun, and it reminded me of getting off a plane in Florida after a long Chicago winter.

I’d lived in or around Chicago for most of my life, and yet Michael took me to a place I’d never been before. It was called Cucina Carrissima, and it was far west on Grand Avenue.

We got a parking spot in front, a bad omen to my mind. In Chicago, the enjoyment of a restaurant seemed inversely related to how far away you had to park. To me, walking a few blocks or more usually meant good food and service.

“How do you know this place?” I asked Michael. He opened my door and helped me from the car. Scott had never done such a thing.

“The owner is an old friend. In fact, he might invest in my restaurant.”

“So, I better be on good behavior?”

Michael grinned, his hand still light on my arm. “You don’t have to impress anyone, Kate. You’re already marvelous.”

I flushed deeply. In my recent existence, compliments were as rare as a solar eclipse.

The door was a black industrial thing, scarred and nicked. The hallway was dark with low-hanging ceilings, the kind you might see in a tenement house. But when we reached the end of the hall and Michael threw open the inside door for me, the world opened up. The space was small and looked like a moonlit courtyard. The ceiling was painted with vines and a half moon and decorated with strings of tiny lights. The tables were covered with crisp white linen. Spotless silverware and vases of vivid blue irises adorned the tables. Violin music twisted elegantly through the room.

A man in a black suit approached us. “ Benvenuto, Michael!” he said loudly.

He and Michael kissed on both cheeks. “Tomaso,” Michael said. “How are you?” Michael’s words seemed strangely overenunciated.

They exchanged a few words, and I noted the man had an odd way of speaking, as if he had something in his mouth, but then he was clearly Italian, so possibly it was a language thing.

Michael turned to me and introduced me as “A new but very dear friend.”

I smiled and shook Tomaso’s hand. “So nice to meet you.”

As I commented on the restaurant, Tomaso bent his head slightly, his eyes intent on my mouth, his face close to mine. I almost pulled back in surprise.

Tomaso caught my expression. “I am sorry,” he said. “I read lips.”

“Oh, you’re…” I stopped short of uttering the word deaf, afraid such a term might not be PC somehow.

Tomaso and Michael both broke into laughs. “I don’t hear so good,” Tomaso said. He pointed to his ears, making Michael laugh harder.

“He’s one hundred percent deaf,” Michael said. “But be careful, because he’ll read your lips across the room.”

“Only with friends who I suspect might say something unkind about me.”

Tomaso led us to a table near the center of the room and pulled out a chair for me. “Champagne to start?” he said.

Michael looked at me. I nodded.

Michael and I began with champagne and moved to Chianti. After the glass of Merlot we’d already had at home, I immediately caught a wine buzz. I enjoyed the slight fuzziness of my brain and the electric stars over my head. Michael told me how he’d met Tomaso in Italy when he was still working in the pharmaceutical business.

“That’s how you met Liza, too, isn’t it?” I asked.

Michael nodded, pouring me more Chianti. “Liza is an exceptional young woman.”

I chuckled. “She’s not so young anymore. Neither of us is.”

“Well, you’re both young to me.”

There was a moment of silence. This was the first time we’d acknowledged our age disparity.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Is that not appropriate first-date banter? I have no idea anymore.” He gave me a shy smile that melted me.

I laughed. “I can’t remember either.”

“Vive la différence?”

“I’ll toast to that.” When I thought about it, I really didn’t mind being younger than Michael. In fact, I was enjoying it. He’d already introduced me to a new person and a new place, all within the span of half a date. And I could tell that Michael was filled with such people and places—he had an air of worldly experience that appealed immensely.

“So, you and Liza have known each other since you were kids?” Michael asked.

“Seventh grade.”

“You two must have made quite the pair.”

“Yes, hormones and the power of a new best friend will make you do just about anything when you’re thirteen.” I told Michael of the time I’d dyed Liza’s normally auburn hair jet-black because she wanted to try out for the role of Velma in the school’s production of Chicago, and the time we stole her brother’s bike and accidentally rode it into a pond.

“Her brother, Colby,” Michael said. “He’s no longer around, right?”

I shook my head. “Colby died when Liza and I were seniors in high school. Car accident. Drunk driving on the part of the other guy. I’ve always hated that, aside from the obvious reasons, because it seems almost a clichéd way to die, and Colby was so special.”

I thought of Liza’s older brother—a tall, big guy. He’d shared Liza’s smattering of freckles, but his hair had been a darker auburn, and he had a crooked way of smiling, one side up. His eyes were devious and fun. We both adored him, looked up to him. He was a few years older than us, while all my own brothers were much older and long gone from the house.

After Colby died, something crumpled in Liza. I didn’t know how to help her, and this failing of mine was one of the reasons I grabbed the opportunity to participate in an exchange program in France for six months. I left Liza alone, hoping that when I came back she might be better and we could return to the way we’d been for years. It was a coward’s way out, and I still feel guilty about it, particularly when Liza was the one who got me through my divorce. But we had been young when Colby died, and my time away seemed to have worked. Liza was never exactly the same—how could she be?—yet by the time I returned, she had lost the sad tinge to her eyes and the slow way of moving.

I took a sip of Chianti and looked at Michael. He was studying me, almost the way Tomaso might if he was trying to read my lips.

“ You’re special, Kate,” he said.

I opened my mouth to protest, to say I certainly hadn’t felt special for a very long time. But I stopped, because I realized that something had shifted over the last week since I’d met Michael. Instead of protesting, instead of telling this man that there was nothing unique about me at all, I smiled.

“Thank you,” I said. And then before I could think twice, I leaned across the table and kissed him.

5

Moscow, Russia

T he day after his date with Kate, Michael Waller entered the passport control area of the Sheremetyevo airport. He reached into his carry-on bag and removed a Russian passport, then he got in the line marked for Russian citizens. It was only minutely shorter than the massive, slow-moving line for foreigners. Some things about Russia would never change.

Michael lifted and dropped his shoulders to release the muscle tension and rolled his neck to try to shake away the headache he felt coming. He simply wasn’t the traveler he used to be. Rarely had he noticed his age all these years crisscrossing continents, but now he felt all of his fifty-five years.

He thought then of Kate. God, how unlikely that he should be thinking of her. That he should be thinking of any woman. He’d learned from his divorce that his life did not lend itself to marriage. While secrecy was everything in his business, he simply couldn’t stomach it in a romantic relationship. It made everything feel false, even the parts that were true. And yet now he’d found himself here, easing out of his business. He was pulling away, forcing the Trust to make him one of the outsiders, one of the support staff.

This mission to Russia would hopefully be his last. Thank God. Because age made it harder to stomach the missions, too. Or maybe it wasn’t age. Maybe it was the Trust’s recent descent toward the ruthless and the careless. That wasn’t how they used to operate. Luckily—if you could call it that—his mission in Moscow was absolutely necessary for the good of the organization, and most importantly for the good of the United States. And so he would do his job, no matter how distasteful, and then he would go home, and he would try to start living a more normal existence. And he would call Kate. Because if he was no longer playing the same role he used to, there might be room in his life for a partner. And he might have found her.

He moved forward in the line. He would be next to give his documentation to the agent. A flicker of anxiety hit him—a slight increase of his pulse, a knotty feeling in his stomach. Even though the Soviet Union had died and the cold war was over, Michael still felt nervous every time he arrived in Russia. The truth was, “Michael Waller” would have serious problems getting through the passport check. The U.S. government had placed restrictions on his passport for travel into any country once considered communist because he had, technically, worked for the CIA in the past. His presence in a post-communist country might be taken as an act of espionage. But Michael wasn’t “Michael Waller” today.

He took a full breath into the lower lobes of his lungs. He forced his pulse to slow. His anxiety calmed quicker than usual. He wondered if the speedy calm was because he’d done this so many damn times. Then another possibility came to him. Maybe it was because of Kate. She made him feel younger, and somehow cleansed of the sins he’d committed, although she knew nothing about those sins, nor would she ever. That thought stalled him for a moment—no matter how present he was now with Kate, no matter what the future held, she could never know his past. Michael felt a wave of sadness, but he let that emotion evaporate from his body. He focused instead on how Kate made him feel—virile and youthful, yes, but more than anything optimistic, actually looking forward to his future.

The customs agent signaled to Michael. He stepped up to the man and handed him the passport he was holding. The man flipped it open and read it.

“Sergei Kovalev?” the agent said.

“Da,” he said. Yes.

“What countries did you visit?” the agent asked in Russian.

“Italy. France.”

“How long were you gone?”

Michael continued to answer the man’s questions in Russian, all the while giving the air of a wearied traveler eager for his trip to be over.

The agent paused then, his eyes flicking from Michael to Sergei’s passport photo.

Michael felt his breath become shallow, but he continued to give the agent a bored look.

Finally, the agent lifted his head and stamped the passport with a hearty thud. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” Michael said. But really, his trip had just begun.

6

F ive hours later, Michael walked through the lobby of his Moscow hotel, a once shabby place that was now grand again, the gold ceilings sparkling like new. The combination of the shabby memory and the new gold made him think of Vegas. Like Vegas, Moscow now had its glamorous sides, its historically seedy sides and its always dangerous sides. Yet Moscow was still much, much tougher.

Michael stepped outside the hotel and walked to Red Square, where gray snow edged itself along the perimeter. He walked through the square, admiring, as he always had, the brightly colored, funhouse cupolas of St. Basil’s. The square was different now than it used to be. In the past, the cathedral and the Kremlin stood stark against the bleakness that used to permeate Moscow, making the square almost eerie, sinister. Now the square boasted a skating rink and a new mall filled with designer stores. Michael preferred the old Red Square, but it remained an excellent place to stroll and to search for a tail.

He crossed the square twice, stopping to gaze occasionally at the star atop the Kremlin tower. Yet he was always aware of all the people around him, most of them tourists, along with stylish Russian youths and a few babushkas seeking alms. Each person who came into his sightline turned away in time. He wasn’t being tailed. At least not right now.

Michael walked to the metro station with its arched marble doorways, bronze sculptures, ornate chandeliers and vaulted, chrome ceilings. Michael had always been intrigued by the stations. They’d been Stalin’s pride, built in the thirties, forties and fifties, and they were intended to display preeminent Soviet architecture and art, to show the privilege of the Russian lifestyle. Whether the opulent stations were optimistic, delusional or simply deceiving, he had never been able to decide, but he could certainly see their beauty.

He took one of the long, long escalators downward, studying the mosaic walls while methodically glancing over his shoulder, memorizing the faces of the other commuters. At the landing, he looked at a portrait of Stalin receiving flowers from a group of children. He walked to another lengthy escalator and took it farther into the bowels of Moscow. The landing boasted a mosaic of Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, made of colored glass.

The Muscovites pushed past Michael, no one stopping to notice the art, much less him. Two minutes later, he boarded a train, rode two stops and disembarked. Once street side again, he held out his hand and waited for a car to stop. Muscovites didn’t take cabs, they simply waited until a driver headed in their direction pulled over. A fare would be negotiated, usually a few hundred rubles, and off they went. It was sort of an elevated level of hitchhiking.

A car pulled over. Inside, it was cramped and smelled of cigarettes. The driver was a grim woman in her sixties who wanted no talk, only cash, which was fine for Michael.

After a mile, Michael asked her to stop. He took a minibus in the opposite direction. He got out after a few miles and took another metro ride on a different line, all the while calmly watching anyone he came into casual contact with. There was no indication that he was being tailed. Even if he was, the Moscow Metro was the best place in the world to lose a tail because there were so many levels in the stations, so many trains.

Finally, he disembarked again and went to the street level. Using an international cell phone he’d rented at the airport, he dialed a man he knew as Sebastian Bagley, a Trust operative stationed in Seattle. Sebastian, a man about ten years his junior, was probably the smartest person Michael had ever met, and one of the most humble. Sebastian and Roger Leiland were his two best friends at the Trust, and Sebastian, like Roger, had a medical background. But a long time ago, Sebastian became enthralled with computers and technology. Once he was a member of the Trust, Sebastian had willingly become backup staff, running things behind the scenes. He had never suffered dreams of glory, he just wanted to do an exceptional job, and as such he was a preeminent Trust staffer. Luckily, Michael had enough seniority that he got to work with Sebastian whenever he requested.

“It’s Andrew Marson,” he said when Sebastian answered, giving one of the aliases he used in the field.

“You’re ready,” Sebastian said calmly.

“Trotsky in his office?”

“Yes.”

“His usual staff in place?”

“Yes. How do you feel?”

Michael smiled. No other backup ever asked an operative how they felt. And he wasn’t sure if Sebastian did this for anyone else but him, but he liked it. It was nice to have someone give some small measure of appreciation for what he now had to do.

And so finally, he walked a half a mile to the squat concrete office building where he was to meet Radimir Trotsky.

Radimir Trotsky was a high-ranking member of the Mafiya, the Russian mob, and he was one of the most dangerous. Since the Soviet collapse, Michael had shifted his focus to the Mafiya, and he had not been satisfied with that shift. In days past, he’d felt his work made him an honorable warrior. Now he felt like a beat cop chasing gangsters. And these gangsters were even more brutal than the KGB had been. It was part of the reason why he wanted out of the game. But the Trust didn’t let people out, and it was only as a favor to him that they were letting him step down. Or they were trying to let him step down. The fact was, no one knew the Mafiya like he did, and Radimir Trotsky needed to be dealt with. Now.

Trotsky had seemingly come out of nowhere six years ago. They knew little about his early years. From what they could tell, he’d been raised in a small town in Siberia, and eventually became a hockey star for one of Russia’s many pro teams. A knee injury sidelined him for good, but he used his star power to get into business with Boris Petrov. Trotsky took easily to Petrov’s petroleum and cigarette running, the prescription-drug counterfeiting. But it was in the back office—with the skull bashing, the threats, the physical intimidation—that Trotsky’s hockey skills really came in handy. Brutality was highly praised and rewarded in the Russian Mafiya, leading Trotsky right to the top of Boris Petrov’s organization, where he became Petrov’s right-hand man.

Then Trotsky turned his sights on the U.S. He’d always had exceptional language skills and a particular affinity for English. So when Boris started looking toward the lucrative streets of New York, Trotsky was the man he sent. In the last few years, Trotsky was believed to have ordered the killings of at least twenty-nine men and five women who had crossed him in one way or another. And that was what the Trust cared about—the loss of American life, the potential for much greater loss. They cared even more when Trotsky stepped on the wrong toes, those of the oil and cigarette companies, many of whom had representatives in the Trust.

Michael hadn’t been watching the Mafiya for a while, but had been told by the Trust that Trotsky was still the poster boy for everything that was so keenly dangerous about the Russian mob—they had no code of ethics, and they were unbelievably ambitious. They would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, and what they wanted was money, power and control in the United States. Their kill-or-be-killed tactics worked, and they always carried out their threats. So the people who dealt with them gave them anything they wanted. But Michael was about to stop that. Or at least a piece of it. The Trust had asked Michael to get back in the game for this one mission because of his expertise. Michael had accepted because, from what he’d learned in the past, it was the right thing to do.

He entered the building through the glass-and-steel doors. He gave the name of Sergei Kovalev to the young man at the front desk who had feral eyes and, Michael could tell from the way he sat, a pistol tucked in the back of his jeans. Sergei Kovalev, thanks to Michael’s painstaking work in creating him over the last few decades, had a reputation as a quiet but very wealthy and respectable Russian businessman. A few phone calls to Trotsky’s people indicating Sergei wanted to join forces had led to this meeting while Trotsky was in the country. To get within even a block of Trotsky would have been impossible but for Sergei.

The young man with the feral eyes squinted into a computer screen. After a minute, he said something into a handheld radio. A door behind the man clicked open and a large, bald guy stepped into the lobby. He instructed Michael to take off his coat and to spread his arms and legs. He ran a wand over Michael’s body, covering every inch in a slow, meticulous fashion. He patted down Michael’s arms, chest, back, crotch, ass, legs and feet, then asked Michael to open his mouth and peered inside. He ran Michael’s coat through a gunpowder sensor. Finally, he stepped back, pointed to the elevator and said, “Four,” in Russian.

Inside the elevator was another young man with cold eyes, dressed in jeans. Michael asked for the fourth floor. The man eyed him and hit the button.

When they reached the floor, the man escorted Michael down an unadorned concrete hallway to a set of double steel doors. He pressed a bell. They both looked up at a security camera above the doors. Soon the doors clicked open. Inside, the man walked Michael down another concrete hall, past closed doors, until they reached the last door on the left. He knocked, then stepped back.

Radimir Trotsky opened the door and shook Michael’s hand. He was a pleasant-looking man with short brown hair, gray eyes and a blue wool sweater. He could have passed for a Midwestern, suburban father. But then, Michael had found benign appearances common to many heartless people.

Trotsky shook his hand, led him into the office and closed the door behind him. To steel his nerves against what he was about to do, Michael reminded himself of the man’s laundry list of crimes. He reminded himself of how much danger this man posed to the United States, should he continue his climb to power.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Michael said in Russian. “I won’t keep you long.”

Michael launched into his spiel about his business of making petroleum products, his exportation of his products, his contacts in the U.S., and how he thought their joining forces with Trotsky would benefit them both. When Trotsky turned his head to get a document off the credenza behind him, Michael leaped forward and over the desk, his body falling easily into a maneuver he’d performed too many times now. He locked Trotsky’s head with one arm, the other one covering his mouth and holding tightly to his chin. The Russian’s arm shot toward an emergency call button, but Michael anticipated the move and pivoted his body away. Michael knew he had to do this fast. The former hockey player was bigger than him, younger than him. If given even a second, Trotsky would gather his wits and make this a real fight, which would no doubt alert the guards. But Michael’s knowledge and experience trumped Trotsky’s brawn.

So Michael stopped reminding himself why this was necessary. He allowed himself no prayer for the soon-to-be-dead, no prayer for forgiveness for himself. He pushed down on Trotsky’s head and, at the same time, wrenched it to the left, then the right, then once back again, snapping the vertebrae, ensuring death.

Trotsky’s body slumped and Michael froze, listening for any sounds from outside. The breaking of a neck was a noisy maneuver, but it was the best alternative under the circumstances. His body was tingling with adrenaline and sick with the knowledge of what he’d done. He listened in fear for the sound of running feet. But Michael heard nothing.

Michael draped Trotsky’s torso over his desk. He took a tiny digital recorder from the lining of the waistband of his pants. It was nearly as thin as a business card and had escaped detection from the guard downstairs, as Michael knew it would. Pulling his sleeve over one hand, he lifted the phone off Trotsky’s desk and dialed the number for the security personnel outside Trotsky’s office.

When he answered, Michael pressed play on the digital recorder. The Trust had been watching and, more importantly, listening to Trotsky for over a year and had been able to splice together words they’d recorded.

Michael averted his eyes from the body, as he heard Trotsky’s voice shoot from the recorder. “He is coming out. And I want to be left alone for an hour.”

The security guard confirmed he understood. Michael slipped the recorder back in his belt, left the office and nodded to the guard on the way out.

Trotsky had been his last job, he reminded himself. It had to be his last, because Michael knew what would happen now. He would return to his hotel, check himself out and head for the airport. He would fly home in a comfortable first-class seat that folded out into a bed, but he wouldn’t sleep. He could never sleep for days after a job like this. During those days, he would remind himself why the Trust existed, why he had done what he had done.