The Double

“Never,” he said at last. “There is no enough.”

Then he bent down and kissed me. I grabbed onto his shoulders and clung on, wanting to extend the moment. But at last, he pulled away. “I’m sorry, I have to work,” he told me, and walked inside.

I was left standing there with my coffee, the rising wind tugging at my coat. He was trying. He’d shown me a side of him that he’d never shown to anyone else. But he was still Konstantin.

I loved him. But I had to stop him.

I took my coffee up to our bedroom. As I sipped it, I was starting to feel something bumping up against the inside of the lid, blocking the flow. I pulled off the lid and fished the thing out, washing it off and then ripping off the protective plastic bag. I sat down cross-legged on the floor by the window to examine it.

It was a thin, pen-like thing made of white plastic, a bit longer than my finger. It had some sort of sensor at the “nib” end and a little LCD display about halfway along. It had a faintly medical feel, like a thermometer or...there was some other gadget it reminded me of, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I have it,” I told Calahan. “What is it?”

“It’ll get you into his safe,” said Calahan.

It felt like my heart clenched tight in my chest and refused to pump. I snapped my head around to check the bedroom door was still shut and dropped my voice to a whisper, even though Konstantin was down on the second floor. “I can’t go in his safe!”

The fear sluiced through me like ice water, numbing my limbs until they refused to move. I remembered the look in his eyes, when he’d caught me outside his office. If he caught me trying to get into his safe….

And his anger, and what he might do to me, wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was knowing I’d destroy everything between us.

Carrie came on the line. “We don’t have a choice. Whatever he’s involved in, whatever he paid that guy a quarter of a million dollars to do, it’s happening the day after tomorrow. We have to find out what it is.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said miserably. I tried to tell myself that our happiness was only an illusion. It was all based on a lie. So why did risking it scare me so much?

Konstantin stayed in his office all day while I paced and worried. He even ate lunch in there. Finally, just as the sun was going down, he walked off downstairs. I rushed to the door...and then stood there on the threshold, gripping the door handle. “I can’t do this,” I said.

“Yes you can,” said Calahan calmly. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I have a guy watching Konstantin through binoculars. He’s downstairs talking to Grigory. If he so much as moves in your direction, I’ll let you know and you’ll have plenty of time to get out of there. Okay?”

I took a deep breath. “Okay.” And I slipped into the study and closed the door behind me.

Everything about being in the room felt wrong. His huge, imposing desk and chair, the scent of his cologne in the air. This was his place, his private sanctum, the one place he’d made me promise never to go….

I hurried over to the safe. The quicker I did this, the better. “What do I do?” I asked, falling to my knees in front of it.

Calahan must have been scared too, but his voice was calm and comforting, exactly what I needed. “You know those movies where the guy opens the safe using a stethoscope, listening for the tumblers? Well, that’s what this thing does. Just put the tip against the safe and start turning the dial. When a bar lights up on the screen, you’ve hit a number right.”

I did as he said and started twisting the dial. I could feel the sweat forming between my shoulder blades. “Nothing yet…” A bar lit up. “Got it!”

“Now back the other way until you hit the next number.”

I twisted the dial the other way. I kept glancing towards the door. Another bar lit up and I reversed direction again. “Where’s Konstantin?” I asked, my voice tight.

“Still downstairs. Don’t worry.” But I could hear the tension creeping into his voice. It hit me that this was just like the hotel in Boston, except now he was the one helplessly observing and I was the one in danger. How did everything get so backwards?

The sweat was trickling down my spine in icy beads. A third bar lit up. I changed direction, my hand shaking. Come on, come on! A fourth bar—

There was a metal clunk. I looked up at the safe in disbelief, then tried the handle. The door swung open. Piles of cash, documents, passports—