The Helsinki Affair : A Times Thriller of the Month (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE

IT WASN’T EXACTLY the sensible thing to do, standing outside in the hot noon sun in July in Rome. Semonov paced back and forth, mopping his brow, his handkerchief long since soaked with sweat. No, this wasn’t sensible. He ought to have done as the Romans did, escaping the summer heat by stopping at Giolitti for a cone of gelato, or napping in a shuttered bedroom, or fleeing the city altogether for the breezy hills of Umbria. But Konstantin Nikolaievich Semonov was not standing here, pleading to be admitted to the American embassy, insisting that he had urgent information to share, because he was an entirely sensible person.

In his air-conditioned booth, the soldier hung up the phone. ‘You need to make an appointment. No one can see you today,’ he said.

‘Sir!’ Semonov exclaimed, leaning toward the pinprick holes in the glass. ‘You are a Marine. I am speaking to you as a fellow military man. I am an officer in my nation’s army. My nation which is Russia.’ A needless emphasis, as ten minutes earlier he had slid his passport under the bulletproof glass barrier to identify himself. ‘You must understand. I have information that matters today. Not tomorrow, not next week.’

In fairness to the soldier, Semonov was a hard man to take seriously. His shirt buttons strained to contain his plump stomach. His pockets jingled with loose change. Behind his round glasses, his eyes were wide and guileless. But when the Marine hesitated for a moment, Semonov’s instinct, which was well-honed, told him to seize his opening.

‘I am from Moscow.’ Semonov lowered his voice. ‘I am here in Rome on holiday with my wife. It would not be possible for me to communicate this information while in Moscow. The nature of my work means that I am closely watched. Do you understand? The nature of my work has also exposed me to certain information that I believe your officials will value.’

‘Even if that’s true,’ the Marine said, ‘you still need to make an appointment.’

The Marine was no more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old. Crew cut, clean shave, trim as a sharpened pencil, a good soldier, a rule follower. To grant exceptions to the rules – to take pity, for instance, on a sweaty stranger with a thick accent – required the seasoning of age, which he didn’t have. And so Semonov realized, with some reluctance, that he would have to resort to blunter tactics.

Semonov stood up straight. A change passed over his features, like a shadow passing over the sun. Staring at the Marine, he said: ‘My information concerns Robert Vogel.’

The tiniest flinch in the young man’s brow as he registered the name.

‘Senator Vogel’s flight is due to land in Cairo in one hour,’ he continued calmly. ‘His life is in danger.’

As postings went, Rome was one of the sleepiest. It had its perks, of course. The glamorous garden parties at the Villa Taverna, where the American ambassador plied his guests with crystal flutes of prosecco. The wine-soaked weekends in the hill towns of Tuscany. The simple ability to walk safely home from the embassy without an armed escort. But Amanda Cole would have gladly given up any of those perks for the chance to do her job.

Her real job. The job she had trained for. Back in Washington, when she received news of this posting, her boss in the Directorate of Operations only shook his head, both sympathetic to and bemused by her obvious disappointment. ‘Enjoy it,’ he’d said. ‘Try to make some memories, Cole. You’ll be glad to have them when you get to the next Third World bunker.’

Italian-style lunch breaks were another perk of the posting. On any given day, between the hours of noon and 3 p.m., most of her colleagues were nowhere to be found. They went home to eat and take a midday siesta, or they enjoyed a leisurely meal at one of the city’s finer restaurants, entertaining a source on the government’s dime. They had learned to take the work for what it was. If they were bored, at least they were bored in comfort.

On that hot July afternoon, Amanda Cole was halfway through her two-year posting as deputy station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency. She was forty years old – though everyone said she looked much younger – which meant that she’d been in this line of work for almost seventeen years. It was the only career she’d ever had, if you didn’t count her stints as bartender and dishwasher and au pair. After graduating high school, she had no interest in college. Beyond that surety, her sense of her future was painfully unclear, so she decided to travel the world, paying her way with a series of short-lived jobs. It wasn’t until she eventually came home and started at the agency that she learned to channel her restless curiosity to more productive ends. To succeed in the Clandestine Service required an appetite for the world’s chaos. Travel had whetted that appetite.

Her success, over time, had made her more disciplined. Amanda knew how to play the game. From the moment her flight landed at Fiumicino, not a single word of complaint had passed her lips. She nodded, smiled, acted the team player. And yet she wasn’t exactly one of the gang. The ambassador’s dinner parties, for instance. They tended to run late, but Amanda always left early. After she had slipped away, when her colleagues were deep into the Montepulciano, they sometimes speculated. Was she running something off-the-books? Was she trying to set an example? In any case, they agreed, among themselves, that there was something obnoxious about her workaholism.

Regardless of her reasoning, the fact was that Amanda was the only person there, in Rome station, to answer the phone on that summer afternoon, and to tell the young Marine not to admit this strange Russian man to the building. This was a problem for their embassies around the world. All kinds of people liked to bang on the gates and demand an audience. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they were utter kooks.

After hanging up, Amanda stared at her computer screen, trying to regain her concentration. She was in the midst of approving a spreadsheet of expense reports, which (no one ever warned you of this) comprised a significant portion of her work as deputy station chief.

The phone rang again. She picked it up and said, irritably: ‘You know, Sergeant, if you want to talk to me so badly, you can just ask me on a date.’

‘He says he knows something about Senator Vogel,’ the Marine said. ‘He has all the details about his trip to Egypt.’

‘Bob Vogel?’ Amanda sat up slightly. ‘What else did he say?’

‘He said…’ The soldier hesitated. Amanda could imagine the young man’s gaze flicking back to the visitor, wondering if repeating the words would make him sound like an idiot. ‘He said Senator Vogel’s life is in danger.’

She could have laughed at the melodrama of it. But when she glanced around, taking in the deserted station, the dull windowless chamber with its beige walls and gray carpet, with its lone fiddle-leaf fig plant yellowing in the corner, she found herself thinking, Anything is better than these spreadsheets.

‘Fine,’ she sighed. ‘Send him up.’

At least the conference room had a window and made for a change of scenery. Amanda slid a bottle of water across the table. Konstantin Nikolaievich Semonov took it gratefully and gulped it down. Amanda raised an eyebrow and said: ‘Would you like another?’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘It is very hot today.’

Despite the air-conditioning, Amanda noticed beads of sweat kept gathering on Semonov’s brow. She noticed too the wedding ring on his right hand, and the meticulous care with which his shirt had been patched and mended, and the gold watch on his wrist. She folded her hands atop the table. ‘So,’ she began. ‘Mr Semonov. I understand you have some information you’d like to share with us?’

‘I apologize. My English isn’t very good,’ he said.

‘It sounds quite good to me. But if you’d rather continue in Russian, we’ll have to wait until one of my colleagues returns, because I don’t—’

‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘I am your guest, of course we will speak English. But I say this because I must have misunderstood. You work on economic affairs for the U.S. State Department?’

‘That’s right. I’m an attaché in the economic section.’

‘But my information does not concern economic affairs.’

‘Well.’ She smiled brightly. ‘It’s July in Italy, Mr Semonov. The embassy is a little bare-bones at the moment.’

‘I see.’ After a long pause, staring at her, he said: ‘So you are Amanda Clarkson. Amanda Clarkson, the economic attaché.’

She could perceive, beneath his sweaty brow, a deeper perception. Something inside her twinged to attention. The detached part of her brain carefully registered it as another data point.

‘That’s me!’ she chirped.

‘Very well.’ Slowly, he nodded to himself. ‘Very well, Amanda Clarkson. Even if you are the economic attaché, I hope you can help me. I come to you today with information concerning Mr Robert Vogel. He is a senator in your country, from the state of New York. A powerful man, I understand. An aging man, too. I have read...