The Last Agent Read online

  He zipped his stained and well-worn Carhartt jacket against the winter chill and pulled his fur-lined work gloves and black skullcap from the pockets, slapping them against his coveralls to kill or displace spiders. Then he sat on the bench he’d made from a felled pine tree and slipped on his mud-caked boots. Max returned.

  “Did you let those horses know you’re still the boss?” Jenkins rubbed her face and scratched her head before he stepped down from the porch. The frozen grass crunched beneath his boots, and his breath marked the chilled air as he crossed the pasture to put his vegetable garden to bed. Alex, his wife, had spent a few hours earlier that month pulling weeds, which would ease his job this morning.

  He retrieved what supplies he needed from his metal shed and rolled out black felt paper, staking the corners, then covered the felt with cardboard, which smothered the weeds but also released a sugar that would attract earthworms as it deteriorated.

  As Jenkins turned on the water spigot to soak the cardboard, Max barked, though not at the horses. Jenkins didn’t have neighbors, at least not nearby, and his friends rarely stopped by unannounced. Alex had taken Lizzie to day care and would work the morning teaching math in their son, CJ’s, classroom.

  Jenkins raised a hand to deflect the glare of sunlight streaming through the trees, and he watched a young man turn the corner of the house and start across the yard toward him. In a dark suit and a long black coat, with short blond hair, he looked like a Mormon missionary. His gait indicated he was eager and determined to change the world for the better.

  “Easy, girl. Sit,” Jenkins whispered when Max growled. “Let’s be neighborly. Unless given reason not to be.” Mormon missionaries traveled in pairs, and usually in neighborhoods where they could more widely spread their message. And while the Mormons were determined, this young man looked too cocksure, too composed to have come on religious business. He also looked too old for a mission. Jenkins hoped the man wasn’t carrying a subpoena—or something more deadly. At present, all he had in hand was the gardening hose.

  Max dutifully sat at Jenkins’s side. The young man stopped when he stepped onto the soggy lawn and looked down at his polished black dress shoes. His determined expression became hesitant.

  He looked up. “Are you Charles Jenkins?”

  “What’s this about?” Jenkins eyed the ground for a weapon.

  “I’m hoping to speak with Charles Jenkins.” The young man’s voice rose in question. “Is he home?”

  “I asked what this was about.”

  Max emitted a low growl, drawing the man’s attention. “Russia,” he said, redirecting his gaze to Jenkins. “It’s about Russia.”

  2

  Jenkins tilted his head, having difficulty hearing over the sound of a low-flying jet heading south to SeaTac Airport or Boeing Field. “Say that again?”

  The young man stepped forward and raised his voice. “I said, ‘It’s about Russia.’ The time you spent there.”

  “You don’t have to yell, son. I’m not that old.” Jenkins eyed the man’s clothing and said, “You’re dressed too nice to be a reporter, so I’m assuming you’re not here to write a story. And I can’t see a publisher sending an editor without calling first.”

  “I work for the agency,” he said. “My name is Matt Lemore.”

  “You work for the CIA?” Jenkins asked. Maybe he was hard of hearing.

  Lemore held up credentials. “You can verify my employment with the deputy director of Clandestine Services.”

  Jenkins had never heard of the department, though he understood the agency had recently undergone some restructuring. “What division?”

  “Covert Action. Russia primarily.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I can understand—”

  “No. You can’t.” Jenkins chuckled at the agency’s audacity. Then said, “Do you see the deputy director regularly?”

  “Not regularly, but . . .”

  “But you can deliver a message to him?”

  “Her, actually. The deputy director of Clandestine Services is a woman. Regina Baity.”

  “You can deliver a message to Ms. Baity?”

  “I can.”

  “Tell her to go—” Jenkins bit his tongue, for his deceased mother’s sake. She’d always told him, The f-word is a sign of a lack of intelligence. “Tell her we don’t have anything to talk about.” He started up the lawn toward his house.

  Lemore slid his identification inside his jacket and followed. “I understand why you’d be reluctant to speak to me.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I read your file. And I followed the trial.”

  “I lived it.”

  “You have to understand—”

  Jenkins stopped. A good five inches taller and probably thirty-five pounds heavier than Lemore, he leaned into the young officer’s personal space. He kept his voice low. “Have to? Son, after I go to the post office and mail a check to a final creditor for a bill I incurred because of your employer, I don’t have to do anything except die and pay taxes. Now turn your ass around and get off what still remains my property.”

  Jenkins started again for the back porch but sensed Lemore had not heeded his warning.

  “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Mr. Jenkins.”

  Jenkins shook his head, chuckling at the officer’s understatement. He kept walking. “You think? Let me tell you something. There aren’t enough feet in the entire agency to cover the wrongs that have been committed.”

  Lemore kept talking. “I’m authorized to pay all of your bills—”

  “Little late for that.” Jenkins reached the porch steps.

  “Then I can reimburse you.”

  “Don’t want it.” Jenkins stepped across the porch to the back door.

  Frustration entered Lemore’s voice. “Then maybe I could just buy you a cup of coffee and apologize on the agency’s behalf. It won’t take long.”

  “It won’t take any time at all, because the only coffee I’m going to drink I make, and that cup comes with no strings attached. Now, I’d suggest you head back to your car, drive to the airport, and fly on back to Langley.”

  Ordinarily Jenkins would have sat on the bench to remove his boots and his jacket so he wouldn’t drag dirt into the house, but he was afraid of what he might do to Lemore if he stayed outside and listened to the agent’s hubris much longer.

  “Mr. Jenkins, you have a duty to at least hear me out . . .”

  That was it. Jenkins lunged down the steps.

  Lemore backpedaled, hands raised, alternately eyeing Max and Jenkins. “If you would just hear me out—”

  “We’re done talking.” Jenkins grabbed Lemore by the lapels, intending to kick his butt back to his car.

  Lemore drove his hands up through the gap between Jenkins’s arms, stepped into him, and used his right forearm to push Jenkins backward while he swept his right leg. Jenkins landed hard on his back. The wet lawn squished upon impact. Lemore kept a lock on Jenkins’s hand, bending it at the wrist, an angle intended to inflict just enough pain to keep Jenkins immobile.

  Max barked and circled, but she did not charge.

  “I’m sorry,” Lemore said. “I didn’t want to have to do that. If you would just—”

  Jenkins wrapped his leg around Lemore’s feet and bent the hand and arm that held his wrist. He thrust his free leg into Lemore’s chest, flipping the young man off his feet and onto his back, then jumped to his feet, still holding Lemore’s wrist. “And I didn’t intend to do that either.”

  Lemore lay on the ground, face a beet red. “Okay. Okay,” he managed. “I’ll leave. I’ll go.”

  Jenkins let go of the wrist and stepped away, his heavy breathing marking the cool air. He could feel water dampening his long johns beneath the coveralls, and his adrenaline pulsed in his veins.

  Lemore slowly stood and brushed himself off, then backed away with his hands raised. “I apologize,” he said. “I was just trying to do my j
ob.”

  Jenkins stepped onto the porch and grabbed the doorknob.

  “For what it’s worth, we all know you got screwed,” Lemore called out. “And we were all rooting for you. All the officers.”

  Jenkins stepped inside, slamming the door behind him. His anger spiked; he couldn’t believe the agency that had allowed him to be tried for espionage now had the audacity to seek his help. To add injury to insult, he’d been physically embarrassed by a kid who couldn’t weigh 170 pounds dripping wet.

  As Jenkins paced, Lemore’s final words rang in his ears. We all know you got screwed.

  We. The agency’s officers.

  Jenkins shook his head, wondering what short straw Lemore had drawn to have landed the unenviable assignment of trying to talk to Jenkins.

  I was just trying to do my job.

  Jenkins stopped pacing. “Shit.”

  He moved quickly to the front door, leaving bits of dried mud and wet bootprints on the hardwood floor. Outside, a car engine revved. Jenkins pulled open the door and stepped onto the front porch as Lemore spit gravel down the driveway, the car disappearing behind the trees.

  3

  Showered and shaved, Jenkins drove to nearby Stanwood, slipping on sunglasses to combat the brilliant winter sunshine. He made his way to the post office and mailed the final payment, then, since he was close to Stanwood Middle School, he called to see if Alex had finished tutoring.

  “I hoped to convince a pretty lady to have a late breakfast or early lunch at the Island Café.”

  “Which pretty lady did you have in mind?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d give me a few introductions?”

  “Fat chance, lover boy.” Alex sounded like she was walking. “I’d love to join you, but I have to pick up Lizzie from day care and take her to see Dr. Joe.”

  Lizzie, now a year old, had been fussy and waking up in the middle of the night. “How is she?”

  “I assume it’s another earache.” He heard Alex’s car chirp, and the door open and shut. “How are you enjoying your day off?” she asked.

  “Working.” He stared at the sunlight glistening on the muddy waters of the Stillaguamish River separating Stanwood from Camano Island. “I finally put the garden to bed.” He contemplated bringing up Matt Lemore but decided to wait before discussing that subject. Alex sounded like she was in a rush.

  “Well, at least get out and enjoy some of this sunshine.”

  “I hope to,” he said. “I’ll pick up CJ.”

  “How long are you planning on being at the diner?” Sarcasm leaked into her voice.

  “Long enough to save you the trip,” he said.

  Jenkins drove the short distance to the café. Back in New Jersey, where he’d grown up, they would have called the establishment in the one-story stucco building a diner. The red tile floor was well-worn, as were the Formica tables, banquet chairs, and green vinyl booths. The café never changed—not the décor, not the menu, not the owner, who was also the cook, and not the waitress or the patrons, though a few regulars had died. Even after his very public trial, this was one place where no one gave Jenkins a second look.

  The morning crowd had departed. Jenkins greeted a few stragglers sitting on bar stools at the counter sipping coffee from porcelain mugs, then he grabbed a copy of the Seattle Times from an empty table and made his way to a booth beneath red-and-white-checked bunting adorning a window. He sat, and the waitress, Maureen Harlan, filled his mug with coffee.

  “What are you having?” She gazed out the window.

  “Two eggs, sunny-side up. Fruit instead of hash browns. Hold the bacon and the toast.”

  “The Countryman, extra bacon. Hash browns, extra crispy. Wheat toast?”

  Jenkins smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

  “And a doggie bag?”

  “Max would be most appreciative.”

  “Picked up some of your lip balm the other day. Stuff really works.”

  “I’d never cheat the person responsible for serving my meals.”

  “Smart man,” she said, departing.

  Jenkins flipped open the newspaper. A headline caught his attention. An American citizen claiming to have traveled to Moscow for a wedding had been detained by the Kremlin and charged with spying. After weeks of saber rattling, the man had been released from Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo Prison.

  About to turn the page, Jenkins sensed someone hovering over his table. Maureen was fast when the restaurant was hopping, but not this fast. He lowered the paper. Matt Lemore wore a sheepish grin, his hands raised. “I promised to buy you a cup of coffee,” he said.

  Jenkins folded the paper and nodded to the other side of the vinyl booth. Lemore sat and picked up one of the laminated menus from a rack on the table. “What’s good around here?” he asked.

  “Coffee,” Jenkins said, and he sipped from the mug.

  Maureen returned with a pot and topped off Jenkins’s mug. “I’ll have . . .” Lemore began, flipping the laminated menu, but Maureen turned and walked from the table as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “She doesn’t know you,” Jenkins said.

  “She only serves people she knows?” Lemore smiled through his nervousness.

  “Or likes.” Jenkins sipped his coffee.

  Lemore slid the menu back into the rack.

  Jenkins set down his mug. “That move you made at the farm, what was it?”

  “The wrist takedown? Sorry about that.”

  “What was it?”

  “Judo mostly, a technique called osoto-gari, with some Krav Maga,” Lemore said. The latter term referred to the tactical training techniques of the Israel Defense Forces. Jenkins had employed Krav Maga on the countermove to take down Lemore, though in his day it had been called Tang Soo Do.

  Lemore was not a desk jockey.

  “Paramilitary training. Where? Harvey Point?” Jenkins asked, meaning North Carolina.

  “Camp Peary,” Lemore said, referring to a covert CIA facility known as “the Farm.”

  “Where were you assigned?”

  “Mostly Russia and Eastern Europe. More recently I’ve been sitting at a desk in Langley. I’m newly married. My wife is expecting our first child. We thought it best if I stayed closer to home.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So your spy days are at an end?”

  Lemore nodded. “For now. As are my wife’s.”

  Many officers married other CIA officers—Jenkins included. Officers understood why their spouses could not come home and share the details of their day, and why they could leave on a moment’s notice and return without a word as to where they had been.

  “And how did you get this plum assignment?”

  Lemore tapped on the newspaper. “I was running him.”

  Jenkins reconsidered the article on the inside page. “You were his case officer?”

  “Well, yes, though we use different terminology now.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Forty-two.” Lemore looked like a college kid.

  “How many years do you have in?”

  “Sixteen. I entered after college and four years in the marines.”

  “You served?”

  “I wanted to fight for my country.”

  “Did you?”

  “Two tours in Iraq.”

  “How’d you get to the agency? Let me guess. You wanted to serve your country again.”

  “No. I needed a job.”

  Jenkins chuckled. “Why Russia and the Eastern Bloc countries?”

  “That was my area of study in college. The Bolshevik revolution, the rise of communism and the Soviet Union, and the economic collapse and ultimate breakup.”

  “Not if Mr. Putin gets his way.”

  “Russia today is a lot like the Soviet Union used to be,” Lemore said, not sounding impressed.

  “You’re telling me?”

  “Sorry. I just meant there’s a lot of bluster
they’re not always capable of backing up.”

  “Are you Russian?”

  “My mother’s family is Russian. Lemore is French.”

  “A ty govorish’ po russki?”

  “Da.”

  “The country interested you?”

  Lemore smiled. “That and I couldn’t do math worth a shit, so accounting was out . . .”

  Maureen returned with Jenkins’s meal. Lemore kept his eyes down and his hands folded. He looked like a penitent in a catechism class.

  “Hey,” Maureen said. Lemore looked up. “You going to eat?”

  “Ah, yeah. I’ll—”

  “Have what he’s having?” Maureen said.

  Lemore’s eyes shifted to the platter of food. “Sure. What’s he having?”

  She flipped over and filled Lemore’s coffee mug before departing.

  “She must like you,” Jenkins said. “That’s as much hospitality as you’re going to get.” He picked up one of his bacon slices and took a bite. “How’d your guy get caught?” Jenkins tapped the newspaper article.

  “He was supposed to get caught.”

  Interesting. “Why?”

  “You recall Olga Ivashutin?”

  “The Russian attorney accused of playing a part in the meeting with Donald Trump’s election staff during the 2016 campaign.”

  “We couldn’t hold her, and we’d gotten everything out of her that we were going to get. We wanted the Russians to think they had us over a barrel and that we’d release her only because they had one of ours.”

  “You wanted them to believe they had the upper hand and forced yours. You did study Russian culture.”

  Lemore smiled. Then he said, “There was another reason for him to get caught. It’s why I’m here.”

  Jenkins set down his mug. “I’m all ears.”

  “We’ve been seeking to confirm a months-long rumor about Lefortovo Prison. I figured the easiest way to do so was to get someone in who we knew we could get out again.”

  “What’s the rumor?”

  “Could I ask you a few questions?”

  Jenkins cut into his eggs and took a forkful mixed with the hash browns. “You can ask.”

  “When you were in Russia, how did you get out?”