On Enemy Ground (The Spy Who Vanished) by Alma Katsu

Author:Alma Katsu [Katsu, Alma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2024-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

DAY TWENTY-ONE

The three weeks since his defection have passed by in a blur. CIA is rushing. It could be that they’ve sensed something is wrong and so they are frantically trying to figure him out, or it could be that things are going unexpectedly well, and they don’t want to break momentum.

Or maybe he’s fooling himself.

He is with Dan, who’s questioned him several times before, when Yuri is blindsided. Dan flips to a new page in his notebook, takes a second to read, then asks, “Do you know the name Maryam Babak?”

Of course he does; that name is cemented in his memory, though he has tried hard to forget it. Even though he is jolted to his core, he manages to keep it together in front of Dan. Instead of reeling in this assault by his past, he pretends to calmly search his memory. “Babak . . . That’s Persian, isn’t it?”

Dan nods. “Yes. She was a scientist in Iran’s nuclear program. We suspected she was a Russian asset, and we’re looking for confirmation.”

CIA is correct. Maryam Babak was an asset for Russia who had decided to stop working for them. Displeased, Moscow said she was a loose end who needed to be eliminated. Yuri didn’t understand why. She posed no threat: she would hardly tell her superiors what she had done, and, as far as Moscow knew, she had not been discovered by the Iranian intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, or MOIS. There might have been a reason they wanted her dead, but it hadn’t been shared with him, no more than the master would explain to a dog why it was being sent alone into the dark woods.

He slipped into Tehran and went to her house under cover of darkness. They argued as Yuri tried to convince her to once again spy for Russia. She refused, saying that she suspected the MOIS was onto her. If they found out what she had done, not only would she be as good as dead but so would her entire family. What he asked was impossible. She told him to leave, that he wouldn’t get what he’d come there for, and so he shot her in the head.

She had just fallen to the ground when Yuri saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A young woman was hiding behind a screen. She had overheard everything and had somehow managed not to scream when he pulled the trigger. She had to be related to the scientist: they had the same face. Mother and daughter, most likely. She looked at him with huge eyes, terrified. She didn’t know what Yuri was going to do, but he knew he had no choice. Moscow would expect him to take care of any witnesses. Lubyanka couldn’t care less that this girl was innocent and that there was no reason she should have to pay this price. She’d merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yuri has never had a problem with shooting bad people, those who deserve to die.

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