Russian Next Door Read online

  Amanda

  Vasily has wisely left the gun in my place as his strong grip and body nudge me out the door. If he has the gun he’s got kidnapping and an armed weapons charge. This way he might even be able to say I left with him, depending on our lawyers. The man knows the law it seems, and I want to know what’s coming next.

  My eyes scan the sidewalks looking for a van, an unmarked car, or anything. Nothing. It’s clear no one’s coming for me.

  Vasily maneuvers me through his front door and then shoves me into the couch.

  I let out a whimper as my body falls into it, but in all honesty it’s not abusive at all. It feels more like rough foreplay, or at least my inexperienced vision of what it would be.

  “So you’re not wired. We got that out of the way. And apparently no one’s got your back either, or else they wouldn’t have let me manhandle you in your own front yard like that…or should I say The Bureau’s front yard.”

  I say nothing, realizing he already knows a lot. How much? I don’t know. But I’m not going to lie and contradict facts he may already have.

  “Yeah, that’s right. It took me some digging to track down the LLC’s and everything, and those were all airtight. I wasn’t getting information there. But see when you do the job you have to do it right, and The Bureau just couldn’t do everything they needed to do to keep you safe, now could they?

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “The electric bill is in the first and last name of the accounts payable contact at The Bureau, and the address is your Miramar station. How lazy can they be?”

  Great. I purse my lips at the careless oversight.

  “The cable modem too. And next time, if there is a next time, tell them to use a password that’s not a sports team and the last year they won the championship. MiamiHeat2013…really? I ran a brute force attack on the system and had it in under three minutes.”

  This whole situation is unraveling fast. But why is he telling me this? What does he really want?

  “It took me all day to figure this out. Why does the F.B.I. pull an attractive, yet low-level, recruit out of training to pursue me? If they know I know computers, accounting, and other skills then why do they intentionally put someone who hasn’t received the training yet to try and keep up with me? Why?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “My exact conclusion,” he says moving closer to me. I instinctively pull back into the couch wishing he’d at least turn a light on or something, but of course he has no plans to do anything of the sort.

  “Then I got to thinking about it. That, and researching more and more and more until I finally figured it out.”

  “So you figured it out, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. See the problem is they set you up to fail from the start. You were never supposed to take me down. That’s the…how do you say it in this country…rub?”

  “If you’re so smart why don’t you tell me then?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know about your grandparents?”

  “What do my grandparents have to do with anything?” Has this guy lost his marbles? My grandparents?

  “Everything.”

  He just stands there as if he’s waiting for me to give myself away. Maybe some small body movement or facial expression will give him the “tell,” as they say in poker, that lets him know that I know exactly what he’s talking about. But I’m truly clueless and after arduous twenty or thirty seconds he finally comes to the correct conclusion.

  “You really don’t know,” he says. It’s not a question.

  “Know what?” I say, growing tired of this.

  “Your grandparents were German immigrants trying to flee the mob in Moscow. Your grandfather was an East German double-agent working for America undercover.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It makes no sense to you because you just heard it. I went through old KGB files all afternoon making the connection.”

  “So what? You think you’re some…Ancestry.com service now? Congratulations, but you’re wrong. My grandparents would never work as double agents, or an agent, or whatever you just said.”

  “And that, my dear, is exactly why they were so successful. See you barely knew your grandparents and they never gave off any indication that they were anything other than a loving, calm, slightly boring older couple. That’s exactly what they wanted everyone to think. Why arouse suspicion and potentially alert Kremlin officials to their whereabouts. We know Russians love revenge and I’m sure they’d have been more than happy to take out a man and woman who double crossed them just after the end of the second world war.” He pauses. “That’s why they never so much as got a speeding ticket, or even had cars. They just walked everywhere. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  My grandfather always said he couldn’t get a driver’s license because of his vision, but come to think about it…his vision seemed pretty good. And my grandmother never tried to get hers either, to the best of my limited knowledge. She played the “good housewife” role, although she did have a tough streak that seemed to contradict her sweetness. That tough streak came out more than a time or two, when it did she had an accent…an accent I never quite put a finger on until right now.

  “I can see your brain working a mile a minute to put this all together. That’s what I like about you, or at least one of the many things. You wouldn’t make stupid mistakes like the electricity bill. You’re sharp, even though you’re just realizing now that my words are true. But you were just a kid then and your grandparents died when you were very young. You didn’t get much time with them and why would you ever suspect them of anything odd? They were your grandparents after all. They were just a nice old couple who liked to spoil you with cookies before dinner, but then again I bet they didn’t because they were tough. See over forty percent of Americans have some sort of German ancestry. It’s a wonder this country speaks English and not German, but that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to show you is that things are not always so black and white…recruit. Life has a lot of gray areas. It’s these gray areas that allow someone like me to survive…and you too. You’re more like me than you know, or probably want to admit.”

  “I don’t know you anymore! Plus my moral compass doesn’t waver, unlike…whatever the hell you call your morals.”

  “Oh I do have a moral compass, but things aren’t so black and white in Russia either. My moral compass is strong, and that’s why I’m here now. Just because I believe one thing doesn’t mean I’m going to die for it before my life even starts. I knew what right and wrong was since I was a child, as do many people. But I had to bite my tongue to stay alive until now.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe this. Your grandparents immigrated to the States where they had your parents. Your parents were shot and killed by a Russian. As a child you witnessed this horrific event. But what you didn’t witness were the government profilers behind closed doors profiling you. The same ones who made sure you wound up in an orphanage and not a proper home. See you fit the perfect profile. You’re family has a history of spying and working for the government, something even your parents didn’t know, and more importantly you’re angry. You’re pissed about everything that’s happened in your life…and rightfully so. And that’s why the government knows you’re an easy recruit to be one of their pawns. How do you think they targeted people after 9/11? They look for people who are angry, people who are internally motivated by revenge. Hell, Vince Flynn made an entire bestselling book series around this whole notion. Mitch Rapp, All-American lacrosse player and hero whose girlfriend was aboard Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988…the Lockerbie bombing. The government did the same with you, just in a different way. They put you in that orphanage to “put you on ice” until they were ready for you. And the best part is you think it’s your own decision. Did you ever wonder why your counselor was a retired Marine who spewed patriotism to your little group of friends across the street? You thi
nk that was by accident? You think he was actually retired? Yeah, he was retired from active duty, but he was still on the payroll, just one of a NGO so nothing could be tied back. They spent a lot of money grooming you. You just didn’t know it.”

  “Bullshit!” I say, but damn his argument adds up.

  “Wait until I’m finished and you’ll come to your own conclusion, just like you came to your own conclusion to join The Bureau.”

  Is this fucker mocking me? I want to get up off this couch right now and punch him in the face.

  But damn, I want to hear what else he has to say even more, not to mention I don’t think I could take him in hand-to-hand combat.

  “See, I’m just like you. We’re two of a kind. I also grew up in an orphanage, just thousands of miles away in Moscow. And just like your case, in mine the Kremlin sent recruiters into our orphanage to work with the kids. And just like you we had a lot of politicians that came through for photo ops and things like that…things that I despised. And I knew I was being used by these powerful men, and I knew they had a plan for all of us. I never related to their bullshit stories like the other kids. I never accepted their fucking toys or pats on the back. Fuck them!”

  He pauses and I can see he’s lost in the rage of recollection and damn is it ever intense. His arms are literally shaking, the corded muscles of his forearms look like steel rope intertwined so tight they’re ready to pop.

  “And that’s when I made the decision not to be a part of this bullshit, but I was too young to carry out my plan then. It was a long-term plan…very long term. See through Kremlin contacts I got a job across the street to work at the orphanage. They figured since I was recruited out of an orphanage that I would be the perfect person to now do the same, but this time move from the recruited to the recruiter. The idea sounds perfect right? Now in addition to the Russians recruiting on their own soil they can recruit on American soil. You thought Facebook tampering from thousands of miles away during the election was something? That was just the beginning…as least that’s what the Kremlin thinks. The thing they never took the time to see was that I was never recruited, or at least not for them. I was repulsed by what they were doing, and although I know every country does this, I also know I can have a better life here in the States. That’s why I lobbied my superiors for this assignment. I didn’t come here to spy on American children…I came here to become an American myself.”

  My jaw literally drops at his words. My entire body goes numb, but my limited training quickly kicks in. He could be full of crap. This could all be a game. This could be good cop bad cop. He just gave me bad cop back at my place and now he’s giving me good cop. “How do I know this isn’t all a lie and you’re just trying to recruit me?”

  “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “Yes! You’re not some social worker across the street. You’re a freaking Russian operative on American soil!”

  “I’ve done nothing with those children and their files…accept yours.”

  “Oh great!” I say throwing my hands up. “So you’re only spying on me then. That makes it all right, huh? What an asshole you are.”

  “Listen,” he says moving closer and grabbing the arms of my coat shaking me. “Calm down. I had to know if I could trust you. You think I was just going to walk into F.B.I. headquarters and defect? You think it works that way? And then when I find out there’s an F.B.I. agent right next door…come on, how convenient is that? How sloppy and obvious does that look?”

  “So all of this was just a game to you? I’m just a game, or a pawn as you said?” I want to cry and I still want to punch him too.

  “You were never a game. What we have is real and I know we still have it. I didn’t know you were F.B.I. when I saw you in that window…after that moment I knew I had to have you…after I spent time with you I knew you were the one for me.”

  “Stop it! You’re lying!”

  “Listen to me, woman.” My eyes, which have turned away in disgust, slowly rise back to meet his. “You were right there in my world from the minute I got here, and once I learned things about you I fell for you, but then I realized maybe that was someone else’s plan. Are you a KGB undercover trying to trick me? The Kremlin called me and asked me if I knew I was talking to an F.B.I. agent. That’s when I found out. When the whole purpose of my time here finally made sense. Don’t you see?”

  I rack my brain trying to come to the conclusion he’s referring to, but I can’t. I feel like I’m reading a John le Carré novel and I can’t keep up.

  “How would the Kremlin know I was talking to you and that you were with The Bureau?” he asked.

  “Cameras? Research? Plenty of ways I’m sure. You figured it out, right?” I don’t know what I hate more…admitting to him I’m F.B.I., although only technically a trainee, or that he’s right.

  “They found out because there’s a mole in your organization.”

  “A mole?”

  “How else could they have found out so quickly?”

  “I don’t…”

  “Listen, I have to tell you something else that’s going to be very upsetting to you, and me just to speak these words and see the pain it’s going to dig up, but I need to tell you. I need you to trust me and I need you to see we’re on the same page here. Okay?”

  “How can I agree if I don’t know what it is?”

  His lips purse and a softness comes over his face. For the first time I see genuine empathy. He doesn’t want to hurt me and that hurts my heart even more. I can sense what he feels about me is real, and my thoughts about him that made me angry may have been shortsighted…but I’m not giving in yet. I want to hear what he has to say first.

  “Do you know the name of the boy who killed your family?”

  “No, the case is sealed because he’s a juvenile. He has some sort of ties to Russia. That’s all I know.”

  “His name was…” Vasily begins, but can’t seem to finish his sentence. “His name was Vasily Vasiliev.”

  My mind races. “You?”

  “No! Listen to me,” he interjects before I can strike out, even though he’s still holding my coat tight.

  “It was the name of my twin, but my twin did not kill your parents. My brother died at a very young age back in Moscow. He died of pneumonia. I was there. I was holding him when he passed. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  I look at Vasily’s eyes, even in the low light, and see the pain…real pain.

  “The Mafia, or Kremlin, or whatever you want to call them gave all of us orphans the same name so we could be interchangeable. They simply referred to us by number. Hey, one. Get over here, two. Eat all your borsch, three. Things like that. But on paper we were all Vasily Vasiliev, including me. We all carried the name of a dead child. My fucking twin brother!”

  He pauses and pulls himself back together with practiced efficiency.

  “But as I said, I wasn’t going to get caught up in this ‘I’m a poor orphan’ mindset, thinking the state was helping me out. They were only using me, and the bloodthirsty young boys that surrounded me. I hated those other boys because they couldn’t think for themselves. They allowed themselves to be brainwashed. I tried to show them but I had to give up before they turned me in, before they told our handlers that I was acting against their teachings…that I was a traitor. I got in line and played the part, but no way could or would I ever harm an innocent person. This should have meant death for me as I couldn’t join their ranks by committing crimes and executions, but luckily for me I had a gift. I was good with numbers and learned accounting at a very early age. They let me work with some of their accountants where I quickly picked up the idea of money laundering from illicit activities in real estate and things like this. If I hadn't been useful I probably would have been shot by one of the other boys when it came time for one of them to prove he was tough, and would follow the Bratva blindly…to show that he would never question an order. My skills with numbers and money routing also allowed me to help them with a system
to route all of these orphans, the ones with the same name, to different countries. The name is a common one in Russia. It’s not quite like Michael Smith in your country, but it’s close enough for their purposes. With a Vasily Vasiliev in so many different countries it creates confusion for organizations like Interpol. It almost creates a Keyser Söze type persona like your American movie The Usual Suspects did. It creates a larger than life presence of some super criminal, but how can he be in so many places at once. He can’t and therefore charges against him don’t stick, amongst other reasons.”

  I try and take it all in, but my mind is really spinning right now. I would say I’m not sure if that’s the point of all of this, but I can’t. There is only so much you can fake. This is even taught in the academy and I’ve taken some of these classes already. Eventually a human will give themselves away. Vasily hasn’t come close to that. His body language and mannerisms are congruent with his words. I believe him, and as crazy as it may sound…I trust him. But one huge incongruence jumps out at me.