The Good Liar. Laura Caldwell

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      He looked on the verge of tears. He blinked, and the expression disappeared, but Liza had seen it. “What will happen?” she said again.

      “I am a writer.” He named a well-known newspaper in Moscow.

      “You’re an international journalist?”

      “Yes.”

      It was easy enough for Liza to guess the rest, for this was an old story. “They recruited you to provide intelligence while you traveled for your writing.”

      “Yes.”

      “And you did it because you needed the money.”

      “No!” His green eyes slitted into anger.

      “Why then?”

      He looked away. “I said I would not be a part of it. I would never compromise my career. And I thought they went away.”

      “Who? Who approached you?”

      He exhaled loudly. “I do not know. I believed it was the F.S.B., although I couldn’t be sure. I only know that two weeks later I was visited by a man I did know. You see, I had covered this man for a story on the Russian Mafiya.”

      Liza raised her eyebrows and sat back. The F.S.B., the successor to the K.G.B., could be nasty. But the Russian Mafiya was even worse. She nodded at him to continue.

      “I believe this man had been asked to help the F.S.B. convince me. And this man had also been waiting for the right time to punish me for the article I’d written.”

      He had a scar on his cheekbone, the only mark on his pale skin, and he rubbed at it with his forefinger.

      “Did they do that to you?” Liza pointed at the scar.

      He laughed. “No. My brother did this to me when I was six.” Then the laughter in his face died away, replaced by anguish. “My brother is a priest. My sisters are married. One has five kids, another four. My mother is…how do you say?…handicapped. My father takes care of her.”

      “Ah,” Liza said, understanding now. “They threatened your family.”

      “Yes.”

      “They said they would kill them all unless you provided intelligence.”

      “Yes.”

      Liza reached out and touched his knee. He almost pulled away from her, she saw that. But then he simply met her gaze. “You’re terrible at it,” she said.

      He laughed again, this time for a long time. A cleansing, relief-filled laugh. “I know! I told them I would be terrible. I have no mind for secrecy.”

      “What happens if I don’t give you the rock? What happens if you don’t return it to them with photos?”

      He stopped short. “Please don’t let me find out.”

      “What is your name?”

      He paused, then shrugged. “Aleksei Ivanov.”

      Liza took the rock out of her jeans. She handed it to him. “I can help you, you know.”

      “How? Who are you?”

      She thought of the words she’d heard many times from the person who’d pulled her into this world. Her father. “I’m an American who loves my country,” she replied. It was a rather cheesy thing to say, but it was the truth. One of the only truths in her life.

      “I cannot be seen with you,” he said. “I may have already risked my safety and my family’s by being here.”

      “That’s not a problem,” Liza said. “I know how to keep a secret.”

       12

       Manhattan, New York

       R oger Leiland stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his loft office on Fifteenth Street. In his hand was his secure phone, ready for the call he’d been waiting for all afternoon. The windows in front of him had been professionally coated with a darkening solution to prevent anyone from seeing inside his office, day or night, whether he had the lights on or not. And so he stood, legs apart, knowing he was invisible and dreaming of invincibility.

      This was not the only unit Roger owned in the building. His home was an even bigger condo one floor down, filled with the trappings that would make most New Yorkers happy—incredible space, hardwood floors, exposed brick. When the upstairs unit had come up for sale seven years ago, Roger had purchased it. He was proud that he could afford it. He loved that, as a member of the Trust whose stock was rising, he no longer had to go into the New York office every day.

      But desires, once met, tend to evolve and grow. And Roger had begun to believe that he wasn’t destined to be just a cog in the wheel of the Trust, but rather a driving force. He began to crave—in a hungry, insatiable, almost voracious way—wealth and greatness. His own personal brand of greatness.

      As Roger watched the traffic stream by on Fifteenth Street, he wondered where those desires had come from. Raised in a suburb of Pittsburgh, with a teacher mother and a veterinarian father, his family was comfortable but not exactly ambitious. He went to Penn for undergrad, where he got a joint major in biology and Spanish. And when he was recruited for the Trust two years out of Penn medical school, he was thrilled. His surgical residency had made him question whether he really wanted to practice medicine. The malpractice premiums were going up and fellowships tougher to land than ever. There was too much gore and not enough upside.

      In his early years with the Trust, it had never occurred to him that someday he might want to take over the organization, that someday he might want to take the group in a very different direction. He was in Brazil then, and he had Marta. But then Marta died. And that gave him an incredible toughness. The Trust had also given him confidence. Really, the Trust required confidence from its operatives in order to do their jobs. To compensate for the loss of Marta, he worked harder and harder. Eventually, over the years, which had taken him from Brazil to Chicago and then New York, his confidence grew to a point where he sensed he might assert his own vision, rather than that of his superiors.

      And now, his loft office and his loft apartment no longer satisfied him. The view of the inelegant Fifteenth Street frustrated him. He wanted a palace with a rooftop garden and twenty-four-hour staff and mural-painted ceilings. He wanted a driver outside, always at the ready. He wanted two other homes—one mountainside in Aspen, one ocean-side in St. Barts. He wanted a private jet to take him to these homes, and he wanted to own that jet.

      But the Trust, at least the way it had always been, was not going to bring him those things. And so Roger had been biding his time while his stock slowly rose. He’d helped spearhead the Juliet Project in Chicago, becoming an integral part of the process, and finally he’d become an integral part of the Trust. He cultivated relationships with members and contacts around the world, even when he didn’t need to do so for a particular mission. Now that he was a ranking board member, now that purist members like Michael were stepping down, and others had been helped in that direction, he was going to take the Trust toward his vision and his desires. The Juliet Project was just the beginning.

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