“A meeting starting in ten minutes with Chairman Petrov, Deputy Director Lebedev, and General Pasternak.” Kulikova held up the manila file folder Sokalov had given her the prior evening for safekeeping, but which alcohol had wiped from his memory. She had read and memorized it thoroughly, though it seemed incomplete. “The file was locked in the safe in my office, as you requested.”
Sokalov reached for it like a parched man accepting a glass of cool water. He used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead, despite his air-conditioned office. “Where would I be without you, Maria?”
She arched her eyebrows. “Abusing my staff, no doubt.”
“This meeting has me anxious. Chairman Petrov has been particularly obtuse about its purpose. Does the file contain all of our recent operations and assets?”
“As you requested. Why are you so worried, Dmitry? You’ll have Chairman Petrov’s position soon enough.” Petrov had announced his retirement as of the year’s end.
“Lebedev is pushing hard for the position.”
“Lebedev is only a stone on which you will step on your path to the Kremlin.”
Sokalov smiled at the praise. His desire was to get out of Lubyanka and sit at a table at the Kremlin, and Maria had a vested interest in his reaching this pinnacle. He would insist that she come with him, giving her unprecedented access to the president, his inner circle, and their most classified secrets.
If Operation Herod did not disclose her true purpose first.
“With your help, no doubt.” Sokalov stepped into her personal space so he could peer down her blouse and inhale her perfume. “Oh, if I could bottle and sell your fragrance, I would never have to work another day in my life.”
“Yes. Yes. A wonderful fantasy, but now you must prepare for your meeting.”
“I was hoping we could meet after work.”
He kept an apartment just a few blocks from Lubyanka on Varsonof’yevskiy Pereulok where he and Kulikova could rendezvous whenever Sokalov had a good enough excuse to not immediately go home. The contents of that apartment would sicken most, a testament to Sokalov’s perversions and fetishes.
Kulikova smiled thinly and lightly licked her lips. “Don’t you have your father-in-law’s birthday celebration this evening?”
“Bosh!” He grabbed the file and moved behind his opulent desk, sitting with a “hmpff.” His leather chair groaned from the punishment. “The man has a birthday and Olga makes the world come to an end. It is worse than having another child.”
“Yes, but you do not want to upset the general by upsetting his Tsvetochek.” Little Flower.
“I wish for you to sit in on this meeting,” he said. “I will tell the others you are taking shorthand. There is to be no recording.”
No recording. Interesting. “Of course, Director. Whatever you desire,” she said breathlessly.
Sokalov groaned.
2
The Island Café
Stanwood, Washington State
Jenkins stepped inside the Island Café in Stanwood determined to convince Matt Lemore there was just one six o’clock per day and it was not a.m. He surveyed the booths, surprised to find most already full and the café in express mode—both waitresses hurriedly delivering food and busing tables, cooks calling out orders over the cacophony of customer voices, the cash register ringing, and the clatter of forks and knives on porcelain plates.
Didn’t anyone in this town sleep in?
“Coming through,” Maureen shouted. The café’s longtime waitress stepped around Jenkins carrying multiple plates of steaming hot food, which was what made getting up this early almost worth it. His stomach growled at the aroma of bacon, sausage, and the Island Café omelets. “You waiting for an invitation, Stretch? You don’t seat yourself, you’ll eat standing.”
Charming as always, and Jenkins had been a regular for almost forty years. Maybe Maureen wasn’t a morning person either. On the way to his booth, Jenkins gave a slight head nod to Jalen Davis, a sign of recognition between the two. He didn’t know Davis well, but only a handful of African American men lived on the island.
Jenkins slid onto the cracked green vinyl of an empty booth and peeked out curtained windows at an awakening sky, orange and red draped behind gray storm clouds. It had rained something fierce the prior evening, a summer storm that no doubt had turned his horse pastures to slop. In the distance, jagged remnants of a wooden pier poked above the Stillaguamish River’s muddy waters that separated Stanwood from Camano Island. The setting was picturesque, calm, and peaceful, in contrast to the bustle inside the café.