Elizabeth
Tuesday, 4th December, 2018
12:06 AM
"They're here." The voice crackled through the radio of the agent who sat on the spindle-back chair tucked into the corner of the room, out of sight from the window set into the door.
The agent, a fellow blonde with a similar build to Elizabeth, had been drafted in during the shift change and had been waiting with Elizabeth for the past half hour or so. Amongst the things she had brought with her were a spare pair of shoelaces, just one of Matt's conditions if they were to go ahead with the plan, and it was these that Elizabeth tied up now as she stooped forward a little stiffly where she perched at the edge of the mattress. They were wiry, black laces—the kind that belonged to dress shoes—rather than the broad, white laces that suited Elizabeth's sneakers, but they'd do. Better than having her shoes slip off with every step, even if it looked the equivalent to belting up her jeans with a power cord.
"Hallways clear. Bluebird's good to go."
The buzz of the voice over the radio hummed through Elizabeth and it lit in her a thrill that fizzled along her nerves with the same static edge; it was enough to silence the niggle of doubt to no more than a whisper swirling at the pit of her stomach. She had always accused Will of being an adrenaline junky—which, of course, he was—but she couldn't deny there was nothing quite like the hit of a covert op, and it was perhaps the most alive she'd felt since that day at the restaurant, or perhaps even since the moment she'd learnt they'd been taken off Code Night Watch. Life was about risks—calculated risks—and the more she'd thought about it over the past few hours, the more she'd convinced herself that this one would pay off.
"You ready, ma'am?" The agent rose from the chair. In the darkness of the room, with the dim fluorescence from the hall floating in through the window slats, she'd pass for Elizabeth easy enough, especially at a cursory glance.
Elizabeth tugged the double bow tight, and then eased to her feet. "Ready."
Win over Avdonin. Prevent escalating tension between the Kremlin and the White House. Capture Kostov. Simple. Or at least, nothing that the old Elizabeth couldn't pull off.
***
A sheet of drizzle hung in the air, not enough to wet Elizabeth and her agents as they walked, but enough to prickle against Elizabeth's face and fluff her hair and leave beads of moisture clinging to the wool of her coat. The scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of their footsteps through the gravel lifted into the night, along with the fog of each breath, and the sound drifted through the trunks of the paper birches that lined the track.
At the end, a black SUV had pulled up inside the grey stone pillars of the gate. When the group neared, the car doors opened and an asynchronous clunk echoed up. Minister Avdonin and his own security detail—four men, all in black suits, just like her own agents—climbed out. They waited in the pool of light that flowed down from the beacons atop the pillars, a patch of hazy yellow with the darkness pressing in around. How well they could see Elizabeth and her agents as they stared out into the valley of black between the birches, Elizabeth didn't know, but it looked as though they were sizing them up, like a showdown in one of those old westerns that Henry liked to watch.
"Ma'am..." Matt began, and his voice dragged. "I feel I ought to remind you that this is strictly against protocol."
"I'm aware." Elizabeth hugged her coat around her and tucked her hands beneath her elbows to keep the cold from biting into her fingertips. "But we're doing this, Matt."
"When the White House find out..."
"I take full responsibility."
"I'd still prefer it if you'd turn back."
"I know you would." She pivoted towards him, and as a lilting breeze swept over them and swished through the branches of the birch trees, she curled her fists even tighter. "But we've gone through this, like, a thousand times. Even if someone does tip off Kostov, it's not like he's going to show up tonight. And you've got guys on the gate, and God knows how many contingency plans."
Matt still looked far from convinced, and if it were possible, his frown had deepened.
"I'll be fine." Her voice evaporated into the night along with the fog of her breath.
"With all due respect, ma'am—" Matt cast her a sideways glance. "—I'll be glad when I can hand your protection over to the Secret Service."
A smile sprang to her lips. "Come on. I can't be that bad."
Matt shot her a look, one that told her that no matter how bad she thought herself to be, it couldn't come close to his assessment.
"Well, at least I'm not dull."
"My job is to keep you alive, ma'am. Dull is good." Matt strode away from her until he was in line with the agent at the front, whilst the other two agents settled back, so that she was held secure at the centre of their cage with none of them ever more than three long paces away.
That was Matt's job: to worry about every possible outcome so that she didn't have to. And that way, she could focus on her job: putting a stop to Kostov so that when she did finally leave the clinic, she wouldn't have to spend every minute of every hour of every day wondering if DS would be able to keep her family safe.
With Avdonin and his men only six strides away, she stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and her thumb instinctively found the patch of skin left exposed without her wedding ring. She nudged the ghost of the ring around and around, whilst the prickle at the pit of her stomach—as sharp as the pinpricks of drizzle in the air—reminded her that Henry probably wouldn't have been too keen on this plan either.
But that wouldn't have stopped the old Elizabeth, and tonight that's who she needed to be. Old Elizabeth. Who she was before this whole nightmare began.
"Madam Secretary." Minister Avdonin stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his black overcoat.
"Minister Avdonin, thank you for agreeing to meet with me." Elizabeth came to a stop a stride away, and her DS agents fell away to the sides.
"So, this is where you've been hiding." He nodded towards the clinic grounds, though his gaze remained locked on her own for a moment. But then it drifted down to her sneakers, and he stared at them as the seconds frittered away like dandelion seeds lost on the breeze. The crease in his brow deepened. When he looked up at her again, his eyes were wide. "They've taken away your laces."
A cringe shivered through Elizabeth, but she fought to keep it from her expression. Instead, it surfaced as a somewhat awkward smile. "They have."
"That bad?"
She shrugged. "House rules."
He continued to stare at her. The whites of his eyes gleamed all that much brighter with the darkness that hung in the air, and with the look that he gave her, it felt as though he were weighing her words against what he knew of her and against the truth.
The flinch of his lips said that she lost.
"We all have our problems." He nodded towards the path behind her. "Shall we?"
Elizabeth and Avdonin strolled side by side along the track. The gravel rasped beneath their soles, whilst above them, the branches of the birch trees lurched with each breath of the breeze—the branches did nothing to fend off the chill, though, merely churn it up before they spewed it towards the ground. Elizabeth's DS agents loosened their cage to five paces away, and Avdonin's men slotted in around them, giving her and Avdonin the air of privacy, though in that blackened hush, every word travelled twice as far.
"So—" Avdonin alternated each of his footsteps with a sideways glance towards Elizabeth. "What's this about?"
"I need your help." Elizabeth turned her face towards him, and she examined his expression as she spoke. "I believe President Dalton reached out to President Salnikov earlier today asking for assistance in capturing a man going by the name of 'Andrei Kostov'." A bitter gust whipped along the tunnel of trees and carried with it a sting of raindrops. Elizabeth hunched her shoulders and tucked her neck into the upturned collar of her coat. "We believe he's a Russian national, part of a group calling themselves 'Protectors of Mother Russia', and that he and the group might be receiving unsanctioned support from the GRU."
The line of Avdonin's jaw hardened. "That's quite a story you've got there, Madam Secretary. But as I'm sure President Salnikov has already told you, Kostov is Bulgarian." He shot her a glare as cold as the breeze. "Nothing to do with Russia."
Elizabeth's hair ruffled against her cheeks as she shook her head. "We both know that just because he's travelling on a Bulgarian passport doesn't mean he's actually Bulgarian. Hell, I've been Canadian, British and at least half a dozen types of European in my career."
"Good for you. That doesn't change the fact that we know of no such group and that nothing the GRU does is unsanctioned. Just because your agencies have problems with loyalty, doesn't mean that everyone else's do too."
Elizabeth stopped, and a couple of paces later, Avdonin halted as well and turned back to face her, whilst the agents surrounding them froze. With her shoulders still raised towards her ears and her eyes watering with the bitter air, she fought to hold his gaze. "Look, what goes on in your country is your business, and how you handle that is up to you—"
"Then stop interfering."
"—but Kostov acted on US soil, using a passport provided by the GRU—"
"So you allege."
"—and if you don't assist us with this investigation, you know the White House'll believe that your government are at the very least complicit, and we will have to retaliate."
His eyes darkened until they held the same soulless depth as the expanse of night that groped through the trees and turned the slender white trunks to ghosts. "You have no proof."
"We have photographic evidence of a GRU officer providing material support to the group Kostov is part of." Elizabeth's voice cut through air. "I'd say that's pretty damning proof."
Avdonin's nostrils flared whilst the clench in his jaw grew tighter still.
So, he didn't know about that, which meant either the Kremlin hadn't deigned to read in their foreign minister on the GRU's actions, or the Kremlin weren't aware either.
Elizabeth's voice softened as she eased half a step closer. "Konstantin, if the GRU are acting outside of President Salnikov's control, you need to say something now, otherwise my government will have no choice but to hold your government responsible for Kostov's actions."
Avdonin's lips pursed with a twist of displeasure whilst he continued to stare at her. It looked as though he were searching every possible route for a way out of the situation, but each path that he traced turned out to be another dead end.
He broke their gaze, and began walking again—an idling pace that crept towards the red brick building that smouldered against the blue-black sky in the distance. "And in this hypothetical situation that you talk of, what if we were to somehow come across some information that led to the capture of this Bulgarian—Kostov?"
"All we're asking for is your cooperation with the investigation." Elizabeth gave a small shrug, her gaze fixed on the gravel ahead as she matched him step for step. "As I said, how you handle your internal affairs is up to you."
For a moment or two, the sound of their footsteps—and those of the agents around them—took over, like sandpaper grating against the air. The fact that Avdonin had agreed to meet with her and the way he had reacted so far strengthened her belief that she was right—that the Kremlin weren't behind the attempt, and that the GRU had gone rogue—but a niggle remained, one that reminded her that if Salnikov had ordered the hit, the best play would be for them to act as though nothing had happened, and in the face of the evidence against them, do all they could to shift blame to the group as perhaps they had originally planned. Just as Avdonin was doing now.
"President Salnikov might be willing to assist in this matter..."
Elizabeth shot him a sideways glance. "Why do I sense a 'but'?"
He met her gaze. "First you need to agree to the new terms of the deal over the BSR."
She halted. "What?"
He turned to face her, and dashed one hand through the air. "Remove all those oppressive environmental clauses your people keep insisting upon."
She reeled back a step, whilst her mind scrambled to catch up. "Firstly, all those clauses were negotiated for and we'd agreed upon them, in theory at least. Secondly, I couldn't sign off on that deal even if I wanted to." She motioned to her sneakers. "No laces, remember. Thirdly, what the hell has this deal got anything to do with Kostov?"
"You want Kostov, we want something in return. You say you can't agree to it now, then we're happy to wait until they give you back your laces."
Elizabeth's eyes widened. Why didn't he get it? "The something in return is that the US won't retaliate for your government supporting a wanted criminal and the organisation that he works for."
"Allegedly."
She pivoted away from him and raked her fingers through her hair until they lodged in the drizzle-dampened roots, whilst her other hand clutched her hip beneath the open fronts of her coat. "You don't have a clue what's going on, do you?"
His expression twisted, as though he were fighting back a snarl. "So, enlighten me, Madam Secretary. Tell me how your government plan to punish my government because someone you claim to be Russian misbehaved on US soil." He gave a jerk of the head that said—Pfft. "We both know that whatever you do won't be more than a slap on the wrist."
The drizzle in the air thickened until it hung like a hazy wall between them. Either the Russians were so entrenched in their own denial that they'd actually succeeded in deluding themselves, or neither side saw the other clearly—just as the conspirators would want.
"Just why do you think we're so interested in Kostov?"
Avdonin gave a nonchalant shrug. "He tried to kill a couple of your citizens. Allegedly."
At Avdonin's expression, and the subsequent realisation that crept over Elizabeth, something inside her sank. It felt as though every last assumption she had made were a pebble, and only now that she acknowledged that they were just that—assumptions—did they pour down and gather as a weight in her chest. "I thought... See, this is why they should never block me out of NSC meetings..."
"What are you talking about?" Avdonin looked at her as though he were becoming more and more convinced by the second that she really did belong at the clinic.
"Conrad didn't tell you."
"Tell us what?"
She thrust a hand into the haze that stretched between them, her fingers splayed. "Kostov didn't just try to kill a couple of regular US citizens—though that in itself would be inexcusable..." She shook aside the thought, and then locked her gaze on his. "Konstantin...he poisoned me and my brother."
Avdonin's expression fell. "O Gospodi."
"Yeah." Elizabeth let out a huff, her eyebrows arched. "I'd offer you a drink, but they don't let you have alcohol here either."
"I need to speak with President Salnikov." Avdonin's gaze whistled past her, towards the car parked at the gates, but he made no move. The grim look that descended on his face suggested that he was already playing out just how that conversation might go, and perhaps that was the reason for his hesitation.
"I'd say so." Elizabeth tucked her hands into her pockets. "And when you do, you need to make it clear to him that anything other than total cooperation will be taken as a sign that your government support this group and their actions, and when the US retaliate, it won't just be a slap on the wrist." The fronts of her coat wavered as she shook her head and rounded her shoulders forward in a noncommittal shrug. "How you deal with the GRU is your business; what we care about is capturing Kostov and putting an end to this group's plans as quickly as possible."
"I'll let President Salnikov know." He brushed past her and marched along the path.
"Good." She pivoted after him. "And, Konstantin..."
He stopped and turned to face her with a look that said—What now?
"Seeing as how you brought it up... I'd like for you to sign off on the BSR deal, the original terms that we agreed upon before one of your citizens tried to kill me."
Perhaps it was pushing her luck, but she was feeling a little cocky, and given how the night had unfolded, she figured she had the upper hand. Plus, the old Elizabeth wouldn't have hesitated to ask—she would jump at the opportunity to land a deal they'd fought so hard for—and maybe getting him to agree to this was no different to her stepping out through the front doors of the clinic, or eating the pasta, or sitting inside the car. Just another step on the path back to normal.
Avdonin scowled. "President Salnikov will never agree to it."
"By the time you've finished talking with him, it'll sound like a deal he can't refuse."
"It's not good for profit." He laboured each word, as though now she were the one who didn't have a clue.
"There won't be any profit once the ecosystem's been destroyed, not to mention the impact that'll have on the people who live in the region and who are dependent upon it." She stepped towards him, narrowing the gap between them, whilst the drizzle turned into rain and sent slick rivulets coursing down her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. "Can't you see that we have an opportunity here to stand up to the people who would see our two countries move further apart? In attempting to kill me, they've not only tried to subvert US foreign policy, but they're undermining the authority of your government too. Standing with us on this issue sends a message."
"Or you could stand with us, Madam Secretary." The line of his jaw tightened. "Get rid of the clauses and sign the deal how we want it, and no one need know where this meeting took place."
She stopped. Her breath escaped in a huff whilst her lips twisted into a bitter smile. Blackmail. Nice. Though not unexpected; she knew that inviting him there was like handing him readymade kompromat. Fortunately, whilst Matt had been obsessing over her safety, it had given her time to come up with a few contingencies of her own.
She gave a slow shake of the head. Her eyes narrowed on him, her gaze sharp. "Kostov poisoned me and my brother. He put us both in a coma, only I woke up and Will didn't, and I spent God knows how long believing I'd lost the boy I've been trying to protect ever since I was fifteen years old, so yes, I ended up here." She flung a gesture towards the clinic behind her, whilst the words drifted up like shadows into the night. "Now, if you really want to use that against me just to get me to change the deal to suit your agenda, then go ahead, but know that it makes you no better than Kostov or the others who conspired to kill me in the first place."
The rain trickled down from her hairline and prickled in her lashes, but she forced herself to hold his gaze and she suppressed the urge to wipe the streaks from her brow. The thread of a feeling tugged at the pit of her stomach whilst the edges of her vision sank inwards, dragging with them the image of the black SUV, its backdoor open with Will convulsing on the backseat.
Not now. Please, not now.
She drew in a breath as deep as she could given the tightness that bound her chest; the scent of the sodden earth filled her nose and the burn of cold air scorched down into her lungs. The scrolls of bark that peeled from the birch trees ruffled in the breeze, and the rain turned to daggers of ice against her skin. She focused on that, and replayed the mantra—Will's safe. It's over. You're safe. It's over.—until the images retreated to lurk in the darkness just beyond the tree trunks.
"And if that doesn't convince you, then perhaps we ought to reexamine the facts." With her gaze still fixed on Avdonin, she called out to Matt, who stood four paces away from her, diagonal, front and right. "Matt...where are we right now?"
"We're at an FBI safe house, ma'am," Matt called back, whilst he continued to scour the surroundings as though Kostov might be skulking behind the trees along with the images his actions had left stained in her mind.
"Right. See, that's what I thought." She eased a step closer to Avdonin. "I also think that US and Russian agencies, including the GRU who are unwaveringly loyal to President Salnikov, are working together to bring the people responsible for my attempted murder to justice. But, if you're telling me that I've got part of that story wrong. Well...then the rest might just unravel with it."
"You're threatening to make these allegations about the GRU?"
"They're not just allegations, unless you seriously want to tell me the Kremlin are culpable. Remember, we've already proven the link between the group and the GRU, and if we were to tell the international community what we know, well...a slap on the wrist will be the least of your concerns." She turned her head from side to side, her expression utterly indifferent. "Expulsion of diplomats, freezing of assets, economic sanctions... And that's just for starters."
Avdonin's lips pursed so tight that he couldn't have answered if he wanted to.
She eased another step closer, until no more than a stride separated them. Her lips flinched into half shrug, half smile. "As you said, Konstantin, we all have our problems, and personally, I see no need for us to air them in public."
He continued to stare back at her, his eyes as black and bottomless as the abyss of her dream. A bead of rain crawled down from his forehead and over his temple to tumble from the clenched line of his jaw. "I'll speak to President Salnikov about Kostov, but the BSR's too much."
"I know that President Salnikov's as keen to secure the BSR as we are, otherwise you would've walked away from the talks months ago and you wouldn't have brought it up again tonight. Laces or not, I'm standing by the original deal, the deal that both sides have already negotiated for." She gestured towards him, and the dribbles of rain coursed numb streaks from her fingertips along to her palm. "You say that it's too much, but I'd argue it's just enough to show that we can put this incident behind us and work together like we did with the de-alerting. We make powerful allies, and now's the time to send that message to the people who'd do anything to drive a wedge between us."
He quirked an eyebrow. "One might argue that de-alerting is what got you into this situation."
"I'm sure that's part of it. But what's happened's happened. I'm more interested in how we move forward from here." She held up one hand and her fingertips pressed a star towards his chest. "You'll help us catch Kostov and stop this group, because neither of us can afford for you not to. As for the deal over the BSR?" She shrugged and tossed her hand up as though flinging the star into the night, and then let her hand fall back to her side. "Well, that's just the right thing to do."
He considered her for a moment, his expression as stony as ever. "I'll take your proposal to President Salnikov." And when the hint of a smile tinged Elizabeth's lips, he pointed one finger at her, his gaze hard beneath the ridge of his brow. "But no promises."
Her smile blossomed. Anything less than an outright 'no' was a win as far as she was concerned. "I wouldn't expect anything else."
"Good." He gave her a curt nod. "Madam Secretary."
"Minister Avdonin."
He turned towards the arrow-tipped gates at the end of the track and the black SUV, which was soaked in the yellow glow of the beacons that topped the pillars, and his security detail took their cue to part from her own agents and move to follow him.
But two strides in, he stopped and twisted back to face her. "Your brother? How is he?"
Her shoulders rose, and then fell with her breath. "Doing well, last I heard."
His gaze nudged towards the clinic. "And you?"
A soft smile. "Finding a way forward."
He studied her for a moment, as though he were once again weighing her words against what he knew of her and against the truth. This time, the way that the corner of his lips turned downwards in a kind of shrug told her that she had won. He gave her another nod. "Elizabeth."
"Konstantin."
He turned, and as he walked away, his security closed in around him, two walking ahead, one to the side, whilst the last lingered behind for a moment as he knelt down to tie his laces, his fingers fumbling over the loose knots. The scrunch of their footsteps had softened now as each step slipped into the rain-sodden gravel, and the beads of water that had gathered on their coats swayed down from the woollen hems and splashed to the ground.
The two DS agents at the rear of Elizabeth's detail, Matt and Jimmy, strode towards her. Their steps seemed designed to usher her back along the path towards the clinic, though their gazes kept darting out into the blackness that drifted between the trees. Elizabeth stuffed her hands into her coat pockets as she ambled towards the red brick building that, with its haze of lights simmering out, burned like a bonfire against the backdrop of the night. The first time she had seen the clinic building, it had lit in her a shiver, and perhaps it was just the rain pouring down or the glow inside her from having been right and having pulled off the plan even if it breached all kinds of protocol, but now the building welcomed her almost as warmly as the hearth at home. It was true: there really was nothing quite like the hit of a covert op. But this time the hit came from the feeling that, for a little while at least, she was herself again, and from knowing that what she had said to Sarah the morning after the panic attack—"I can leave, but I can't go home."—no longer rang true. One step at a time, she was heading back to being herself. One step at a time, she was heading home.
"And, Elizabeth," Avdonin's voice called out, "once you've found your laces, you can buy me that drink you mentioned."
With a smile lighting her lips, one that spoke of the glow inside, she turned around and paced backwards, her hands still buried in the pockets of her coat. "I would, but I wouldn't want it to look like I was bribing you."
Or at least, that's what she would have said.
Instead her smile dropped and every last muscle froze.
The first thing that hit her was that she wasn't wearing her wedding ring. Then that she should have called Henry when she'd had the chance. Then that she couldn't remember what she'd last said to the kids. Then that she couldn't remember what they'd last said to her, just her own fateful words to her mother to 'Shut the door'. Then that she should have listened to Russell. Then that she shouldn't have involved her staff. Then that she had made a slip in her calculation. Then that some mistakes couldn't be undone. Then that she shouldn't have dismissed Matt's concerns as going over the top. Then the look on Avdonin's face as the crack rang out. Then the relief that, no matter what, at least he hadn't known. Then how the spray arced with the kickback. Then how the casing tumbled to the ground. Then how the sound ricocheted off the tree trunks and rippled into the night. Then how the crows flew up from beneath the pillars of the gate, and the way that their wings fanned in jagged silhouettes against the yellow light.
Then how much it hurt.
No more than a second could have passed from the moment she had turned to see that the last of Avdonin's men had risen from the pretence of tying his laces and had drawn his Glock to the moment that the first bullet slammed into her chest.
Then another.
Then one more.
And as she looked back over the course of the night, she realised that in some ways she had been wrong and in some ways she had been right, but none of it really mattered, not right now, because what had happened had happened, and as the pain bled through her chest and drained her of her breath, the last thing that hit her was that perhaps it would be best if she were to let herself fall.