of electricity that surged from his heart straight to his groin.
“Care to join me?” she asked. “I do hate to drink alone.”
Her name was not Catherine, it was Astrid. At least that was the name she had whispered into his ear while running a fingernail lightly along the inside of his thigh. She was Dutch, which meant Heathcliff, who was posing as a Russian businessman, was able to address her in her native language. After several drinks together, she invited herself to Heathcliff’s room, where he felt safe. He woke the next morning with a profound hangover, which was unusual for him, and with no memory of engaging in the act of love. By then, Astrid was showered and wrapped in a toweling robe. In the light of day, her remarkable beauty was plain to see.
“Free tonight?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
He had no answer.
“You’ll take me on a proper date, though. A nice dinner. Maybe a disco afterward.”
“And then?”
She opened her robe, revealing a pair of beautifully formed breasts. Try as he might, Heathcliff could not recall caressing them.
They traded phone numbers, another forbidden act, and parted company. Heathcliff had two errands to run in Hamburg that day that required several hours of “dry cleaning” to make certain he was not under surveillance. As he was completing his second task—the routine emptying of a dead-letter box—he received a text message with the name of a trendy restaurant near the port. He arrived at the appointed hour to find a radiant Astrid already seated at their table, behind an open bottle of hideously expensive Montrachet. Heathcliff frowned; he would have to pay for the wine out of his own pocket. Moscow Center monitored his expenses carefully and berated him when he exceeded his allowance.
Astrid seemed to sense his unease. “Don’t worry, it’s my treat.”
“I thought I was supposed to take you out on a proper date.”
“Did I really say that?”
It was at that instant Heathcliff understood he had made a terrible mistake. His instincts told him to turn and run, but he knew it was no use; his bed was made. And so he stayed at the restaurant and dined with the woman who had betrayed him. Their conversation was stilted and strained—the stuff of a bad television drama—and when the check came it was Astrid who paid. In cash, of course.
Outside, a car was waiting. Heathcliff raised no objections when Astrid quietly instructed him to climb into the backseat. Nor did he protest when the car headed in the opposite direction from his hotel. The driver was quite obviously a professional; he spoke not a word while undertaking several textbook maneuvers designed to shake surveillance. Astrid passed the time sending and receiving text messages. To Heathcliff she said nothing at all.
“Did we ever—”
“Make love?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She stared out the window.
“Good,” he said. “It’s better that way.”
When they finally stopped, it was at a small cottage by the sea. Inside, a man was waiting. He addressed Heathcliff in German-accented English. Said his name was Marcus. Said he worked for a Western intelligence service. Didn’t specify which one. Then he displayed for Heathcliff several highly sensitive documents Astrid had copied from his locked attaché case the previous evening while he was incapacitated by the drugs she had given him. Heathcliff was going to continue to supply such documents, said Marcus, and much more. Otherwise, Marcus and his colleagues were going to use the material they had in their possession to deceive Moscow Center into believing Heathcliff was a spy.
Unlike his namesake, Heathcliff was neither bitter nor vengeful. He returned to Moscow a half million dollars richer and awaited his next assignment. The SVR delivered a beautiful young girl to his apartment in the Sparrow Hills. He nearly fainted with fear when she introduced herself as Ekaterina. He made her an omelet and sent her away untouched.
The life expectancy for a man in Heathcliff’s position was not long. The penalty for betrayal was death. But not a quick death, an unspeakable death. Like all those who worked for the SVR, Heathcliff had heard the stories. The stories of grown men begging for a bullet to end their suffering. Eventually, it would come, the Russian way, in the nape of the neck. The SVR referred to it as vysshaya mera: the highest measure of punishment. Heathcliff resolved never to allow himself to fall into their hands. From Marcus he obtained a suicide ampule. One bite was all it would take. Ten seconds, then it would be over.
Marcus also gave Heathcliff a covert communications device that allowed him to transmit reports via satellite with encrypted microbursts. Heathcliff used it rarely, preferring instead to brief Marcus in person during his trips abroad. Whenever possible, he allowed Marcus to photograph the contents of his attaché case, but mainly they talked. Heathcliff was a man of no importance, but he worked for important men, and transported their secrets. Moreover, he knew the locations of Russian dead drops around the world, which he carried around in his prodigious memory. Heathcliff was careful not to divulge too much, too quickly—for his own sake, and for the sake of his rapidly growing bank account. He doled out his secrets piecemeal, so as to increase their value. A half million became a million within a year. Then two. And then three.
Heathcliff’s conscience remained untroubled—he was a man without ideology or politics—but fear stalked him day and night. The fear that Moscow Center knew of his treachery and was watching his every move. The fear he had passed along one secret too many, or that one of the Center’s spies in the West would eventually betray him. On numerous occasions he pleaded with Marcus to bring him in from the cold. But Marcus, sometimes with a bit of soothing balm, sometimes with a crack of the whip, refused. Heathcliff was to continue his spying until such time as his life was truly in danger. Only then would he be allowed to defect. He was justifiably dubious about Marcus’s ability to judge the precise moment the sword was about to fall, but he had no choice but to continue. Marcus had blackmailed him into doing his bidding. And Marcus was going to wring every last secret out of him before releasing him from his bond.
But not all secrets are created equal. Some are mundane, workaday, and can be passed with little or no threat to the messenger. Others, however, are far too dangerous to betray. Heathcliff eventually found such a secret in a dead-letter box, in faraway Montreal. The letter box was actually an empty flat, used by a Russian illegal operating under deep cover in the United States. Hidden in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink was a memory stick. Heathcliff had been ordered to collect it and carry it back to Moscow Center, thus evading the mighty American National Security Agency. Before leaving the apartment, he inserted the flash drive into his laptop and found it unlocked and its contents unencrypted. Heathcliff read the documents freely. They were from several different American intelligence services, all with the highest possible level of classification.
Heathcliff didn’t dare copy the documents. Instead, he committed every detail to his flawless memory and returned to Moscow Center, where he handed over the flash drive to his control officer, along with a sternly worded rebuke of the illegal’s failure to secure it properly. The control officer, who was called Volkov, promised to address the matter. Then he offered Heathcliff a lowstress junket to friendly Budapest as recompense. “Consider it an all-expenses-paid holiday, courtesy of Moscow Center. Don’t take this the wrong way, Konstantin, but you look as though you could use some time off.”
That evening, Heathcliff
