By Ed Ahern
The Pitch
I was approached at my health club, in the middle of huffing and sotto-voce groaning. The skinny man in his thirties wore a Polo shirt and slacks, but looked like he was longing for a suit.
“Fred Burrows?”
I nodded. No point in gasping away words.
“I’m Ben Alford. I have a proposal I think Ted Pauley would find interesting.”
He had my full attention. Ted had been a shallow cover alter ego I’d used for several years. I skipped all the stupid questions. If this guy knew about Ted, he was one of the tribe I’d belonged to. “I’m staying early retired, sorry.”
He smiled, with the easy grace of a government con man. “Please let me describe the opportunity for you. If you hate it, I’ll walk away, and we never talked.”
I opened my mouth like I wanted to offer a polite rendition of ‘Fuck off’ but shut it, thinking super spook that I am, they still need me. “Okay.” I gestured toward a corner with no mirrors or equipment. “Over there.”
Once positioned, he pitched. “We need you to approach and, if possible, recruit a Russian woman whom you knew. In the biblical sense.”
I had a sensory flush from four years before. “She’s committed to her service; she wouldn’t be swayed by a one-off of spionem sexum.”
“She appears to have fallen out of favor at the SVR, and is back out in the cold. She already knows you, so the time-consuming development can be largely eliminated.”
Natalyia had been a failure of mine in the professional sense, but was a vibrant memory. “She’d just tell me to go to hell, and they probably have her cloistered somewhere in Russia.”
“Not quite. She’s part of a small group that will be taking a Norgefleet cruise up the Rhine.”
I smiled. “She wouldn’t give a damn about canned scenery and culture, so she is working. How did you learn about it?”
“Never mind that. The cruise is two weeks long, and we’ve already booked Ted Pauley on it.”
I kept my expression blank, but thoughts churned. She would know that name, and would be more than ready for me. “Oh.”
“Precisely. We calculate the usual low chance of success in your recruiting her, but the temporary access to her makes it worth trying. We’ll reinstate you at your highest pay grade and cover your expenses.”
I kept my enthusiasm under control. “Two weeks in the field means three weeks prepping. I’ll need three months’ pay, no taxes payable.”
His eyebrows wrinkled in bureaucratic stress. “I’m afraid…”
“If you say no, we’re done, and I go back to wheezing.”
Ben Alford (not his real name, of course) dwindled down his charm and studied me like a pinned bug. “Okay, but on completion.”
I was impressed. They were concerned enough to send an operative senior enough to make that call on the fly. That meant a game worth playing. It also meant they’d already done most of their updated vetting of me.
We smiled at each other, genuinely this time. Two seasoned hands understanding the corsets we were required to wear. I nodded. “So, I’ll wait for your call?
“Please. We’ll activate you in one or two days; we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
He didn’t offer me a phone number, and I wouldn’t ask for one. We shook hands, and he was out the door in thirty seconds. His tradecraft has been careful and creative. The gym was a non-threatening environment for me, and my car keys were in my locker, so there was no way to follow him.
The Cruise
The Nordic Valkyrie was tucked in at the lower end of cruise ship size, maybe 400 feet and 900 tons. It was berthed in Rotterdam, a clean but relatively unappealing city. I’d been provided with gee-wiz gadgets I probably wouldn’t get to use, Natalyia being who she was.
In order to navigate the river, the ship was skinny, but all the staterooms had windows rather than portholes. Natalyia was a deck above me, listed as Robin Franklin from Omaha, which fit her command of Midwestern American. Her group of six women were the wives of husbands busy elsewhere with high-level government and business manipulations. It was a you-pick-em as to which woman she was apparently after, but I didn’t care; I was keyed on her.
We met at the departure reception.
“Hello, (She made a point of looking at my name tag.) Ted.”
“Hi, Robin. Tickled to meet you…” I let the words trail off so she could fill in the “again.”
We were far enough apart from everyone else that she allowed herself a half smile. “You are presumably after me, and I am purportedly after someone on board. Or am I after you? Interesting game we’re about to play.”
“Particularly if it doesn’t have to be zero-sum.”
She shifted, putting her mouth a little closer to my ear. “We should probably cut through the suspense and have sex tonight.”
“That would be much more than nice.”
“My cabin, 11 pm. I know you will not be late.”
“Never.” Then, more loudly. “Nice to meet you, Robin. If your schedule permits, I’d love to get together for lunch. Tomorrow?”
“That would also be nice. Noon at the outdoor Fantail Café?”
We parted and drifted up to others on the cruise. One stolid-looking man in his forties held Robin always in his line of sight. I wanted to go up and gushingly introduce myself, but kept to the rules of the game.
The next morning was painful. The Fabergé Egg vodka that went down so smoothly had congealed into a hangover, compounding unaccustomed muscle aches and lack of sleep. The devil was taking his due, but I almost didn’t mind.
Natalyia, however, was glowing at lunchtime. She smiled archly. “You appear to have only partially recovered. That was an interesting thing you did with the backs of your fingernails.”
“Taught to me in a lamasery by a nubile acolyte.”
“Those were also interesting discussions we had after coitus and before the vodka. The specifics are hopefully still clear to you?”
“Of course, dorogaya.” We’d talked under the covers, whispering to foil listening devices. Natalyia was as articulate and adamant as ever, and that first night ended in amiable disagreement.
I briefed my on-board contact after lunch, refraining from telling her several specifics. As hopefully had Natalyia with Ivanovitch, the sullen watchdog I’d noticed.
For two weeks we steamed up the Rhine, admiring the architecture, nibbling on paintings at the museums, and indulging in daily wantonness. Our ideas slowly coalesced.
We continued to feed reports to our on-board handlers, full of the angst of trying to develop emotional ties and convert opinions. Near the end of week two, I whispered, “I think it’s time for your ‘Come to Jesus’ moment.”
She pinched me, “I do not think you have shown me a good enough time.”
So, I did. Throatily I repeated, “Ready to come into the light?”
“Capitalists always hide behind religion. Oh, very well.”
Once disembarked in Basel, I kissed Natalyia goodbye and watched her depart to the airport with her alter ego. Then I took another car to the same airport and left for Washington, D.C., and met Nataliya there four days later.
The Debrief
She was in an interrogation room sipping a cola when I walked in and asked, “How’d your kidnapping go?”
“Poor Ivanovitch was roughed up, but otherwise smoothly. I do not imagine that we will be able to have another excursion for a considerable time.”
I laughed. “Not even if we paid for it. Your embassy is already filing protests over your ‘abduction.’”
Her pursed smile was endearing. “Of course. You appreciate that we will be arresting or abducting one of yours.”
“Naturally. If you tell me who to contact, I’ll pass along names and addresses of people I’d like to see abused.” I sat down next to rather than across from her. We were being recorded, which cramped my style a bit. “Have my friends started pumping you yet?”
“Yes, but very politely so far. I expect to encounter the drugs and polygraph soon.”
“Both painless.” I paused. “Eventually, once you’re pumped dry and the intel verified, they’ll try and have you recruit a few of your former associates, and use you as a de-bullshitter for incoming intel.”
“Of course, dorogoy. Where will you be?”
“A phone call away. Maybe closer.”
She smiled.
“My associates know who was cruising with me. You could well be the tat for tit.”
A laugh burst out of me. For both her malapropism and the risks I shared with her. “I’ll leave you to your interrogators.”
What I didn’t say was that I’d already been approached, threatened, and cajoled. I gradually succumbed to their wiles and began to report, mostly on former associates who were still active.
The Denouement
Eventually, of course, both services learned that they had been played. Natalyia was feeding us misinformation the Russians wanted us to hear, and vice versa from my side. But by then our operational knowledge had grown stale, and we were of much less use. Threats were made, but we pointed out that we provided a secure unofficial channel for the two sides to communicate in complete deniability. We were shipped out to pasture and put on retainers.
Our house in Tennessee is like everything else about us, inconspicuous. We’ve been living there for five years. Natalyia, of course, never converted to the god of Mammon. Nor I to working-class Nirvana.
“How’s Ivanovitch doing?”
“He is saying he is bored. I think he is most annoyed at being my case officer in perpetuity.”
“I don’t blame him. Who would want to be stuck with you?”
She punched my arm. A little too hard, I thought.
About the Author
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 700 stories and poems published so far, and fifteen books. He works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he’s a review board editor and at Scribes Micro, where he’s the idle figurehead.
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