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CHAPTER 2

Ruth inhaled deeply before badging into the vault at CIA headquarters that ensconced her desk for the foreseeable future. One last breath of comparatively fresh air, she thought. Her badge beeped and the door lock unsealed. As she pulled it open, she looked down to adjust her canvas tote, which had slid off her shoulder, and nearly walked straight into a person exiting the vault at the same time. 

“Ooof..I’m so sorry,” She said putting her hands out to prevent bumping into the woman, chest to chest. 

“RU!,” the woman exclaimed as she reached out to block Ruth’s hands.  Ruth knew immediately who it was. There was only one person in the world who used that alias for her.  

“Oh my god, Holly!” Ruth was shocked to literally bump right into her dearest and oldest friend. “What are you doing here?” Ruth’s voice was filled with excitement as she continued to stumble into the vault. Holly stepped back inside, and within seconds the two were hugging and rocking back and forth, giddy with excitement. 

Holly finally answered while still in full hug, “Anish recruited me to be on the fourth man team,” she gasped. Ruth’s hug was so tight it seemed to be squeezing the air right out of Holly. 

Ruth pulled away, “Sorry! Didn’t meant to squeeze so hard, I’m just so overwhelmed to see you!” Ruth pulled Holly to the side so they would not be standing right in front of the exit. “And wait, what? Where is the Holly who told me as we were leaving the farm she would never be caught dead working in counterintelligence?” Ruth said with a sassy tone and her hand on her hip. 

“I know, I know,” Holly rolled her eyes. “I knew you would say that.” Ruth raised her eyebrows at her. “And I did feel that way, but Ruth, it was over ten years ago. I told you like six months ago that I was getting bored with the China target,” Holly tried to explain her change of heart. “When Anish called and asked if I might be interested in a tour here and told me that he was working on recruiting you to the team, I felt like it was the universe telling me to try something different.  And who better to do that with than my best friend?” Holly hugged Ruth again as she finished. 

“Didn’t we just talk to each other two weeks ago when I was moving back to Arlington?” Ruth asked. “You didn’t say anything, and you already knew?” Holly nodded her head and smiled as Ruth realized the timing. 

Holly put her hand up in defense, “I know. I played along because I wanted this to be a BIG surprise, and it was! Though I wasn’t expecting to actually crash into you!” They both laughed and without saying a word to each other, started their slow walk down the cubicle farm toward Anish’s office. Holly had a cubicle just on the other side of Ruth’s, which astonished Ruth. 

“How did I not see or hear you yesterday? And wait, did you hear me talking to myself all day and not say anything?” Ruth asked incredulously. 

Holly shook her head, “I wasn’t here yesterday. Had some appointments to deal with. I knew you were reporting in, and I’ve known you long enough, Ru to know you talk to yourself all the time!” Holly smiled. 

Ruth laughed quietly and thought fondly of the first time Holly used “Ru.” They were in training at the farm, and they were getting close to weapons testing week. So they were at the range getting in some extra practice time. They were both determined to be among the best in the class, particularly at shooting. Neither wanted to give any reason to doubt their abilities, given how few women were in their class. 

Holly had yelled out, “Way to go, Ru,” when Ruth shot a nearly perfect score. Ruth teased her for turning a one-syllable name into a one-syllable nickname. 

Holly plopped her things on her desk, and sat in her chair.  Her cubicle already looked lived in. She’d covered the bruise-colored fabric walls as much as possible with artwork from her two daughters. Holly had girls almost the exact same age as Ruth’s boys. Jamie was nine and Charlotte was six. They were both the crafty sort, but then so was Holly, and some of the things on Holly’s walls looked as if they had benefitted from some mom help. 

“So, you’re settled in,” Ruth observed. “How long have you been on the team?” 

“Three weeks,” Holly answered. “I’m really only about half-way through my first read of the case file I’m working,” Holly pointed to the large box of file folders that sat open on her desk. “Honestly, Ru, I don’t know what I’m doing. Reading and taking notes, but I keep thinking to myself…if the people before me couldn’t figure this out, how the heck am I going to?” Holly always underestimated herself. 

“Stop it. I’m not going to let you do that!” Ruth admonished. “You are smarter than all those other people, and we will help each other.” Ruth leaned back and put hung her arm over the cubicle wall as if to hold herself up. “This will be fun, Holly. We haven’t worked together EVER. Isn’t that crazy? We were trainees together, went through hell and back, been maid of honor at each other’s weddings, been best friends, but we’ve never actually worked together! This is gonna be so awesome!” Ruth sounded like a teenager. 

Holly laughed and replied with a big smile, “I know. It’s going to be amazing, and I’m so excited.” And then she looked over at her box, “Well, not as excited about the actual work as I am about working with you. You know what I mean.” 

Ruth smirked, “Yeah. I get it.” Just as she was finishing her thought, they both heard Anish’s voice coming closer. 

“Ladies,” he said as he approached. “I see you have found each other,” Anish smiled as he stopped just outside Holly’s cubicle waving his hand back and forth between the two. 

“Yeah, nice trick, Anish,” Ruth said sarcastically. “You know I would have been a lot easier to bring back to headquarters if you had told me you already roped Holly into this gig.” 

Anish brought his hand to his heart, “What? You mean you didn’t come back for me? I am heartbroken, Ruth.” 

Both women rolled their eyes in near unison. “Well, you are both here now,” Anish added. “And that’s what matters.”  The two women smiled at each other as Anish continued, “Staff meeting at 0900 in the tiny conference room on the other side of my office. You can’t miss … uh…no, actually you can miss it, it’s so small.” Anish was walking away as he left them with a bit of his predictable office humor.

“Okay, well I’m going to get settled,” Ruth said as she picked up her canvas tote from the floor of Holly’s cubicle where she dropped it. Holly gave a half-grimace, half-smile saying, “Yup. See you in thirty.” 

Holly started up her desktop computer as Ruth walked around the lane of four cubicles to get to the exact other side of Holly’s, where her own single folder waited for her. She dropped her bag again, sat in her chair, and didn’t bother turning on her computer. She put her hand on the folder as if to bring it to life, and said, “Hey Holl…” She waited for Holly, literally on the other side of their shared bruise-colored fabric wall to answer with a muffled, “Yeah?” 

“I made it safely, in case you were wondering,” Ruth teased her best friend. 

Holly answered, “Oh thank you for letting me know, Ru. You are such a good friend. I’ve been overcome with worry since you left me!” 

Both women grinned and got to work. Ruth wasn’t quite ready to open her folder. There really was no point, she thought, because it would be more annoying to start diving into it, only to have to stop in twenty-five minutes for a staff meeting. So instead, she started putting up a few photos and knickknacks from home that she brought in her bag to make her space more agreeable. 

It was a familiar ritual. Being an operations officer at the Agency meant moving around a lot. Ruth knew instinctually that she was setting up her eleventh desk space over her twelve years. That was an average of about two desks per six tours. Everything about this routine was indicative of the lifestyle. The fabric covered walls made it easy to use pushpins to put up your posters, kids’ artwork, concert tickets, flyers about some upcoming event. They came right down as fast as they went up, no worse for the wear. 

The cubicles were almost always arranged in the same manner. The corner desk configuration was consumed by a computer on one side with two monitors and an outdated, massive hard drive. The short side offered a very little space to spread out whatever documents you might be working on, with a hanging cabinet above for stuff you wanted to keep. The door front flipped up, making it inconvenient to use since it didn’t stay open. Ruth, like most others, would shove things that she knew she was never going to look at again in this cabinet, starting with the junk that was leftover from the previous occupant. There was always stuff leftover that you couldn’t throw away because it was classified, like vault security procedures, but that couldn’t be stored in a more condensed manner because they were in huge three-ring plastic binders. 

And then there were all the office supplies the person before you thought, “Oh, it will be nice to leave this for the next person,” but really they were just too lazy to either pack it up and take it with them or throw it away. 

Of course, the whole 30 square foot space needed dusting, too. Ruth sneezed as she cleared off the upper cabinet. 

“Bless you,” said Holly from the other side of their shared wall. 

“Thanks,” Ruth returned. It had been a very long time since she and Holly had been this close at work together. They both spent their first tour after training at headquarters, but while Ruth had gone to the counterintelligence center, Holly had joined the China desk. She had studied Chinese culture and history in college, and was determined to spend her career focused on uncovering the secrets of China’s strategic aims toward the United States. 

Holly had a big heart, and Ruth would sometimes wonder how Holly’s signature tendency to empathize with the so-called enemy would square with the demands of the job. But despite Ruth’s skepticism, Holly had done quite well and her empathetic qualities remained intact. Ruth always admired her for that. It was a trait Ruth thought likely came from Holly’s father. While Holly’s mother was a prestigious DC-based lawyer, her father was a clinical psychologist and social worker. He had spent the majority of his career working on behalf of various nonprofit organizations, seeking to understand how early childhood trauma presented itself in adulthood. He was a leading researcher in the topic, and had published several books, as well as guest-lectured at prominent universities in the region. 

Ruth had surmised long ago that Holly got her heart and ability to empathize with just about any pscyho on the street from her Dad, and her analytic skills from her mom. Holly’s mom was a fierce woman. You definitely did not want to face her in a legal battle. Ruth knew it was hard enough debating with her over what to serve at a wedding, let alone the letter of the law. But she was a fun-loving woman who doted on her daughter. The fact that she was always busy with work probably balanced out her tendency to hover. 

When she was being honest, Ruth envied Holly’s relationship with her mom. They were close, without falling into all the usual traps of co-dependence or animosity that mother-daughters seemed to experience. Their genuine fun together would make Ruth ache to see her own mother again. 

“Ready?” Holly asked Ruth through their wall.  “As ever,” Ruth answered. After walking past a few empty cubicles on their respective sides, they met each other in the cross path, and Ruth veered toward Holly as they headed toward Anish’s office. 

The small conference room on the other side of his office was actually through a connecting vault door. What Anish didn’t mention was that their vault connected to an entirely different office. It was their tiny meeting space Anish’s team would have to use for team meetings. 

“Whose space is this?” Ruth asked Anish as they entered the room and began sliding sideways between the space barely wide enough to get past the chairs tucked under the single conference table and the walls. Ruth knocked over a couple of dry erase markers as she slid by the wall entirely covered by a dry erase-magnetic board.

Anish answered, “Right, so the Director thought it would be best for us to work outside CIC so we could go as unnoticed as possible.” Ruth listened as he answered her question, “So we are in an S&T (science and technology) vault.” He sat at the head of the small table as he finished his explanation. 

While the small team of six people, including their chief, Anish, settled into their chairs and pulled out their papers and notebooks, Ruth thought about what Anish just told her. She understood that the whole fourth man theory was a lightening rod for unwanted attention outside, with the media, Congress, and even the public. But she didn’t understand why anyone in CIC would necessarily care, given that most folks believed it was a flawed theory, and/or just didn’t care given how long ago it all took place. 

Ruth observed out loud, “Do you think the nice techies could build some electronic notebooks for us so we can stop using paper and pen to take notes at meetings and then have to retype them back at our desk?” There was an audible groan and lots of eye rolling with nods in response. Despite how easily one could communicate in the real world and the number of phones, tablets, laptops and even digital ink notebooks Ruth’s family had, it felt like papyrus and inkwells inside the Agency. Nothing emitting was allowed in. 

Anish started the meeting with brief introductions since it was the first day the entire team was together. In addition to Holly, Anish, and herself, Victoria Tooey and Serena Hofbert were at the table, already in their full-sassy mode with each other. Those two were a pair! They almost never said anything to each other that was true or real because they were constantly teasing each other. Ruth remembers when she first met them at headquarters ten years ago initially thinking they absolutely hated each other. She thought she had found herself in a real-life, career “Mean Girls” situation one morning when Victoria asked an approaching Serena whether she’d had her breakfast yet. When Serena replied that she had not, Victoria stood up and gestured vigorously for Serena to turn around and exit her bullpen. “Go…go eat before you come in here,” she said harshly. Shocked at first, Ruth eventually learned that it was all a ruse for genuine respect and affection, and that was Victoria’s way of telling Serena to go practice self-care.

Anish also introduced a fifth member of the team, Cassidy Dell. Ruth had never met him, but knew his reputation as a super-genius analyst who supposedly had serious forecasting skills. He stood to introduce himself and shake Ruth’s hand, saying how excited he was to meet her with his thick, Carolinian accent. 

Once introductions were completed, Anish set the stage with explaining how the team came to be, and what their objectives were. He also noted that the timeframe was tight due to the pressure of the impending movie deal and the desire of the seventh floor to have responses to the inevitable media and Congressional inquiries. 

He then explained how he had structured the investigations. Serena and Holly would work on running to ground Baer’s accusations that Paul Redmond, former chief of the counterintelligence center, had been the fourth man working with the former KGB along with Howard, Ames, and Hanssen. And Victoria and Cassidy were to lead a renewed investigation into former FBI counterespionage special agent who worked at the CIA on detail at the time, Ed Curran. In addition, Cassidy would take point as a liaison with the analytic side of the center, where senior analyst Dr. Richard Rita had researched Baer’s theory and already published one analytic report about the dubiousness of its assumptions and unreliability of its source material. 

What Ruth couldn’t quite understand was why so much man-power was being dedicated to debunking an already discredited theory. Not only had the Agency been down this path internally, as with Dr. Rita’s report, but three well-respected, former chiefs of the Counterintelligence Center had authored an impassioned and meticulously researched argument for why the fourth man theory was a sham in The Cipher Brief in 2023. They’d even go as far as staking their reputations on calling Redmond a hero and questioning the ethics of someone who would inappropriately allege invalid theories tarnishing the reputation of a fellow public servant. Wasn’t that enough to mitigate any media frenzy the movie might stir up? 

“That leaves Ruth to fill in any gaps,” Anish said, not at all hinting at the file he had actually given Ruth the day before. Ruth was caught off guard, but played it off by saying, “You know me, when there’s a leak…I’m you’re plumber.” The others laughed at her mixed metaphoric attempt at humor. 

Anish seemed satisfied that Ruth knew to play along. And then he slammed his hand down on the desk and said, “Let’s get to it!” 

As the team physically jockeyed to extricate themselves from the tiny conference room one at a time, Anish gave a head nod gesture to Ruth indicating he wanted speak to her separately. She nodded in return.

“So, you always get the shit jobs, don’t you?” Holly observed to Ruth. 

“Pretty much. But I’m choosing to think of this as an opportunity to mentor you!” Ruth tried to find a silver lining. “And who knows, maybe spend a little more time with Jack and Connor,” she said with more serious reflection. 

“Yeah, I get that for sure. I’m dealing with the opposite problem I think,” Holly said as she squeezed past the chair at the opposite end of the table from where Anish had sat.  “A new job means longer hours for me, but the girls keep busy and Renzo has been working from home since the pandemic,” Holly explained. 

Ruth walked with Holly for the few steps it took to get back through the door that separated the two vaults, thinking fondly of Holly and Renzo’s wedding. She had been the maid of honor and couldn’t imagine a better match for Holly. Renzo was as sweet and empathetic as she was, and his creative side as a graphics artist inevitably helped create two of the most prolific artists in the Washington, DC area. Deep in her reflection, Ruth almost passed by Anish’s office but stopped in time.

“Hey, I’m gonna duck in and bug Anish,” Ruth said pointing toward Anish’s office. 

“Ha…better hope he doesn’t have some other side work for you while you’re waiting around for the rest of us to find those gaps you have to fill!” Holly meant it as sarcasm, but it was ironic to Ruth. As she watched Holly walking away, for a second Ruth wondered if Holly knew of her real task. She shook it off and knocked on Anish’s doorframe, peering in his open office. 

“Come in, come in,” Anish said not even looking away from his computer. He eventually motioned for Ruth to sit. 

“So, I’m filling in gaps. Thanks for the heads up,” Ruth said with a tiny bit of real frustration in her voice. 

Anish stood up and slid around his desk to the door to close it before sitting down in his usual chair. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. It was a detail I’d not thought of until the last minute. I was initially planning to designate you as sort of my deputy, but that would have made it hard for you to explain all the research you’re going to have to,” Anish finished. 

“Right,” Ruth added. “Because a ‘sort of’ deputy would be taking all the inane meetings that you don’t want to attend!” She mocked. 

“I’m sorry…geesh,” Anish was anxious to get onto the real reason he wanted to talk. “You looked over the file? What are you thinking?” He sat back in his chair and crossed his right leg over his left to get comfortable. 

“Right. Let me tell you what I think I understand, what I don’t understand, and what I want to know from you,” Ruth said with formality. “And in that order.” 

Ruth was pulling out her notebook as she spoke. Ruth was always rather obsessive about how she organized her notebooks. She had this practice of always starting a new notebook in the middle. This is where should would jot down notes from meetings, research in chronological order of when they occurred. She would include her own questions or observations within the context of the notes she took, but always wrote her thoughts in brackets so she would not confuse them with data. 

The front of her notebook was for structuring the notes. The first several pages were dedicated to what she thought, which she would always date because her understanding of things changed as you acquired new information. As with the notes section, she included not only her own assessment as she went along, but the questions that plagued her. Again, those were in brackets so she could keep them separate. Ruth considered it a success when she could go back and put a line through a bracketed question. Even answers to little questions were important milestones for advancing the story. 

Ruth reserved the end of the front of her notebook for questions she needed to ask of someone else. So far, her list of queries was mainly for Anish. 

Anish half-smiled and half-grimaced as Ruth opened her notebook. He knew her organizational habits, and realized quickly that Ruth’s fastidious approach to research and documentation meant he would have to experience the investigation with her. 

Just as she promised, Ruth began with her preliminary conclusions. She confided to Anish that she had very few initial observations that could make sense of what appeared to be five unrelated incidents involving a loss of a foreign asset at very different times. For now, she could not see a connection to anything related to Ames, Howard, Hanssen or the fourth man theory since all of the cases post-dated the Cold War. Plus, each involved a different country. As far as she could see the only solid linkage was that all five were unresolved. 

“I guess that’s a connection, though,” Ruth said in a tone of disappointment for not coming up with something less obvious. “Still, I have only spent a few hours with this file. I have a lot more to uncover,” she said encouraging herself. 

Ruth then mentioned some of the information and notes that caught her eye to start with, including the fact that she was not the first person to go through this loose threads file, given the handwriting in blue ink all over the notes in one of the subfolders. 

“From that, I can deduce that someone before us had reason to go back through this folder and look for something. A connection, maybe not, but something,” Ruth observed. Anish nodded at the thought but said nothing, so Ruth continued sharing her initial thoughts. 

“The only thing the timeline tells me of these cases, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2021 is that they all post-dated  by quite a lot, the end of the Soviet Union,” she added. “Making it even less likely they have anything to do with the fourth man theory.” 

Ruth recalled some of the details to Anish of the five asset losses, noting especially the countries involved, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and the Wagner Group. “I’ll count the Wagner Group as Russia for now,” Ruth said as an aside. She also mentioned the early suspects but lack of solid leads explaining how the identity and activities of the different assets were leaked. 

“There’s really no obvious way the information was likely to have been passed. Without knowing the method for the leakage, it’s hard to narrow down on a suspect,” Ruth concluded. “Some of the assets were potentially significant, but most of them were still in the early stages of recruitment. Their identities would not have been compartmented yet or limited to a very small number, which means there are a lot of possible suspects if their losses were inside jobs,” she noted. 

Ruth admitted that she was not far enough along in developing the timelines to determine whether the case officers, managers, analysts, or others had turned over multiple times, which would mean the assets’ identities would have been exposed to even more people. 

Anish interrupted, “Surely there were timelines done already by the originator of the loose threads file, or the person who has been back through it that you mentioned.” 

Ruth looked up from her notebook with impatience at the question, “Well yeah, there are timelines. But I have to do my own. I’m not going to just presume the work done before me was accurate or that whoever was involved didn’t miss something,” Ruth was annoyed at Anish’s suggestion that she speed up her research by cutting corners. 

“Which brings me to what I don’t understand and what you might be able to tell me,” Ruth took the opportunity to raise the rest of her questions.  Anish shifted in his chair, revealing a bit of discomfort that he would now be on the spot. 

“First,” Ruth put a check mark in her notebook as she said it. “What I don’t understand is why four members of this team are chasing down what we all know to be a debunked theory. Because the whole movie coming out in a year or so doesn’t cut it for me. There’s no way the Director is that worried about a movie that’s probably only going to be news for a half-day anyway,” Ruth added. She then sat still looking at Anish, hoping he would provide some insight. 

“What’s second,” Anish asked rather than giving anything away. 

Ruth was disappointed, but added, “Okay, second. Why would you give me this loose threads file, about five seemingly unrelated, unresolved asset losses in the midst of a hunt for a mole no one believes ever existed?” 

“And what’s with the timelines being nearly 20 years off? The first case in my file is from 2008 and the last 2021. That’s sixteen to nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War,” Ruth continued her questions. 

“And finally, for now, why aren’t you telling the others what I’m really doing? Why make me the plumber?” She asked thinking, he has to answer this. How else would she keep up the ruse if he doesn’t give her some help with her cover story. 

Anish leaned forward in his chair, showing signs of fatigue. He took a few deep breaths before speaking, which made Ruth question whether he was psyching himself up to lie to her or tell her an uncomfortable truth. 

“Ruth, I know this is going to upset you, but please try to understand, I do not, repeat, do not have the final say here. I’m a pawn in this game, too,” Anish sounded sincere. “There are some details that I can’t share,” Anish saw Ruth’s obvious anger with that statement and he continued, “At least not yet,” Anish gestured with his hands as if to push back Ruth’s initial anger. “I’m working on it, I swear I am” he continued emphatically. “I am trying my damnedest  to get the Director to let you in on all of the compartments,” Anish was insistent. 

“Fine,” Ruth said while giving him the hand. “If that’s the way he’s going to play it, then there’s only so much I can do. I hope he understands that,” she finished with a pointing toward what presumably was the seventh floor.

Anish nodded, “I know, I know. That’s one of the cards I’m playing to get him to change his mind and share it all. But for now, I have to do my job, too, which includes obeying the boss.” Anish sat back in his chair.

“So what can you share with me that I don’t already know?” Ruth asked, leaning back on the sofa prepared to be disappointed. She didn’t even have her notebook open anymore. 

Anish noticed. “I can share more than I think you give me credit for,” he said. Ruth shrugged, so Anish continued. “Despite what you think, the Director is actually concerned that the timing of the fourth man theory movie could be troublesome. You’re right, he’s not worried that the theory is true or that there is some old former Soviet spy still lurking in the halls of the CIA,” he added. “But we have a new program that is set to launch around the same time as the movie, and approvals with Oversight have been, shall I say, dicey,” Anish nearly whispered the last few words as if someone might be at the door listening. Ruth thought it was a bit melodramatic for Anish. 

“What, so we have a spying program that Congress doesn’t like, and that’s the reason for all this fuss over nothing?” Ruth asked incredulously. “I’m still not buying it, Anish. Congress hates everything we do. Since when has that stopped us?” She threw her hands up in protest. 

“Ruth, come on, please work with me here,” Anish said a little exasperated. Ruth felt bad. She did believe him when he said that he was trying to get approval to share more with her. Ruth knew Anish was a good guy that way. He would never misdirect her or lie straight to her face. At least, she didn’t believe he would. 

Ruth softened her tone and body language, “Okay, so let’s say I believe you that the Director has some super-secret-squirrel program that he’s probably trying to downplay in his description to Oversight. He doesn’t want bad media coverage of the CIA from some phony historical case to give the committees any reason to dig into whatever this new program is,” Ruth summed it up. “Then why am I on something different from the rest of the team, and why aren’t you telling them that?” Ruth asked. 

Anish closed his eyes, taking another breath before answering, “Because the Director is concerned that scrutiny of the new program, combined with lingering doubts about the fourth man, will inevitably lead to questions about other cases of asset losses that have not been solved. He’s concerned that if Congress thinks we have a trail of unresolved mole hunts, they will not approve the new program. It’s that sensitive,” Anish finished the explanation with conviction in his voice. Ruth took notice of that. 

Anish continued, “And it made sense to me to put you on those cases since you are so damned good at investigative research,” Anish flourished his hand back at Ruth as he gave her a compliment that sounded more like an admonishment.” He then stood up out of the blue. 

“Anish…you’re not getting out of this that easily,” Ruth sat further back in the sofa showing him that she was not leaving even if he stood to indicate that it was time for her to go. “That doesn’t explain why Holly, Victoria, Serena and Cassidy can’t know what I’m doing,” Ruth said emphatically. 

Anish turned to face his desk, almost appearing as if he wanted to slip away to the other side of it to put distance between himself and Ruth.  He turned back around, and responded, “I know, it’s weird, but it’s just precautionary.”.

Ruth looked visibly annoyed, “Seriously. Precautionary? That’s what you’re going with? You may as well tell me that you don’t trust the rest of the team with whatever it is you think I’m going to find in this box.” 

Ruth was fishing, but she couldn’t think of any other logical reason for not letting the rest of the team know that, despite what Anish had said about her being available to help them fill information gaps, she was really going to be absorbed by an entirely different set of tasks. She almost startled herself when she said it out loud. 

“Ruth, I’m not playing games with you. I’m telling you it’s just precautionary for now, and there is no harm in everyone keeping their heads down and digging into their own research for now,” Anish responded calmly. “Please try to put yourself in my position. I brought you on this team because I respect your work and I respect you, Ruth, I’m not trying to make this a headache. It already is one.” Anish pleaded with Ruth. He was still standing in front of his desk while talking to her. Ruth could tell that he really wanted her to agree to play along, and more than anything, he wanted her to leave his office so he could be done with what was an unpleasant conversation. 

Ruth closed her eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay, okay. Look, I don’t like the way it’s being handled, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, even with or for you, Anish.” Anish nodded. “But, I will go along with it for now. And you better believe that I am going to ask you on a weekly basis, if not more frequently, what the Director said when you asked him again to read me in on the rest of what I need to know to actually accomplish the task he seems so desperate to have me do!” Ruth huffed as she stood up to relieve Anish. 

“I would expect nothing else, Ruth,” Anish answered with a modicum of gratitude and genuine respect. 

Ruth stood, but added before opening the door, “Did it ever occur to you when you asked Holly to be on the team how hard this was going to be for me to lie to my best friend?” Ruth asked. She waited until there was no more than a body’s width between the two of them to ask the question. She hoped it made him feel guilty enough to press the Director even harder on her behalf. 

But his response didn’t reveal much of a sense of guilt, “It did occur to me, Ruth. Believe me, again, I would not be asking if there were any other possible way. For now, this is how it has to be,” Anish said matter-of-factly. 

Ruth thought, either Anish wasn’t the empathetic man he used to be or, whatever it was he was withholding from Ruth was a lot more complicated than she had realized. 

She opened the door and without turning to acknowledge Anish, walked out. When she slipped back into her cubicle, she did not hear Holly on the other side. Ruth assumed Holly and Serena were holed up somewhere plowing through the boxes on Redmond since that was their assignment. She pulled out her folder to continue indexing its contents. She’d only made through the fourth of the seven subfolders. She untied the elastic loop and counted to the fifth opening to pull out its contents carefully so they would not fall out of their current order. 

The contents gave Ruth an important clue. Whoever had been through this file last did so just two years ago at most, Ruth concluded based on a handful of intelligence reports from as late as June 2023. There were about five reports from two different sources discussing the attempted “coup” by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin of the Wagner Group in Russia. Nothing not already known, just claims that Wagner didn’t intend to overthrow Putin but was playing out a hero fantasy and wanted his men treated better. 

“Nothing new with that,” Ruth thought. While one of the five lost assets in the fourth subfolder was a developmental in the Wagner Group, there wasn’t any other immediate connection that Ruth could see. But Ruth made a note to research more about the developmental and what kind of software he was working on when he was presumably killed by Russian security services for being a spy. 

“Or maybe Prigozhin and the Wagner security killed him,” Ruth jotted that thought down, too. 

There were a few old intelligence reports in the folder, as well, including one that dated to the discovery of a listening device in a conference room at the Department of State in 1999 that was being used by the Russian SVR. Ruth had never heard of the incident, but apparently an inert bug similar to The Thing had been discovered at the State Department’s headquarters building.  

Ruth had heard the story of The Thing. Everyone in counterintelligence had to learn about the incident. In 1945, as WWII was ending, the Soviet Union presented a gift to the incoming US ambassador. It was an intricately carved wooden Great Seal of the United States, which Ambassador Harriman hung behind his desk in his office at the Embassy. It listened to his conversations for six years.

The design of the listening device was ingeniously simple. It was tiny, had no power supply or active electronic components, and did not radiate any signal unless it was being activated remotely. With no need for power, it had a potentially unlimited lifespan. It worked only when someone outside the building was beaming a high-powered microwave to activate its ability to relay the sound waves of speech in the room. So The Thing was undetectable during routine security sweeps of the Ambassador’s office because those were searching for an unusual power source, signal, or other emission. 

As long as the Soviets were reasonably able to guess that a security sweep would not take place while the Ambassador was in his office working, they were quite safe from detection. The only real danger of discovery was that an external actor would intercept the microwave activating The Thing while it was occurring. An improbable event, but is exactly what happened. A British radio operator overheard the Ambassador’s conversation and the discovery was shared with the Americans in 1951. 

“What is this all about?” Ruth muttered to herself as she took more notes. The only connection she could discern between the 1999 device and the subfolder’s contents about the Wagner coup was a slim possibility that former KGB who were aware of The Thing became part of The Wagner Group. The timing didn’t really work in Ruth’s mind, though, because former KGB were absorbed into the Russian SVR well before The Wagner Group was established in 2014. 

“That’s fifteen years later,” she muttered out loud again thinking about the time lag between the discovery of the listening device at the State Department and the formation of The Wagner Group. 

“What’s fifteen years later?” Holly startled Ruth. She must have quietly slipped back to her desk while Ruth was deep in thought. 

“My promotion,” Ruth said quickly trying to deflect that she couldn’t share exactly what she was looking into with some office humor. 

“Oh stop, Ru! You’re gonna get your promotion after this rotation,” she said with confidence. “You’ll see.” 

Holly was always a cheerleader. Ruth wondered if she ever got tired of it, because she never seemed to. And she was the same way with every colleague Ruth had ever seen her work with. Always building them up, and never tearing them done. She was pretty much the perfect co-worker. 

Ruth knocked a couple of times on her taupe-colored MDF desk, to mimic knocking on wood in response to Holly’s encouragement, and then turned her attention back to the loose threads file. 

She made a note to research any more recent activities by The Wagner Group that could possibly indicate a role in espionage for themselves or for the Russian government. They were mainly still known for their brutal security and warfare tactics, though now almost entirely under the control of the Russian military.

Ruth decided to press on and opened the next subfolder. “Number six,” she almost said aloud, but then realized she needed to stay quiet so as not to invite more questions from Holly that she was unable to answer.  The subfolder contained a handful of walk-in reports much like the first subfolder. Only these were more recent, and they were actually write-ins via email rather than the old-fashioned, walk-ins to an embassy. Ruth turned the page in her notebook to start a new section of notes. 

There were seven reports. The first two appeared to be related to the same sender. The rest were individual email addresses. Ruth knew that while it was less likely, they could still all be coming from the same author, so she was careful not to draw any conclusions too soon.

The first two were from a write-in whose email name was simply ‘Tmondo,’ and who sent his messages to the Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, in July and August, 1993.  He was using a US-based ISP, but even that meant very little these days. Ruth thought the contents of his two emails were interesting, but didn’t immediately see a reason for their inclusion in the loose threads file. Tmondo wrote to inform the Americans of documents he claimed to have that included plans by the ‘Kremlin’ to divvy up control over the former Soviet territories with nuclear sites. He said the documents detailed where missiles were stored and the locations of manufacturing parts of delivering systems. He wanted $10,000 US dollars in cash. He received a response from the Embassy, asking him to present himself in person and to bring his evidence. 

His second email doubled the price because he would have to pay for protection to get to the Embassy. He didn’t share any details as to why that was the case and where he would be traveling from, but Ruth was familiar with this excuse. It was a common bargaining tactic for sources. The only tantalizing piece of new information he gave to justify the increased price tag for his knowledge was the name of the person claimed to be in charge of the plan: Boris Berezovsky.

That was the second time Berezovsky name showed up in the loose threads file. It was among the notes in the second subfolder. Ruth still couldn’t make much sense of it, and wondered whether the additional mention of the Russian was important or to be expected given the loose threads file was once part of the investigation into KGB moles working for the CIA. 

Ruth turned to the other five write-in reports. Unlike everything else in the folders so far, these were in chronological order. The oldest message was a write-in from an author who called herself, Maze. Maze sent an email to the US Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, in April, 1999. Ruth remembered that this was around the time that Baku was a major hub for support from al-Qa`ida in Afghanistan going to jihadist fighting in Chechnya and Dagestan.

Maze claimed to have met and developed a relationship with a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army who was deployed to fight against the Chechen rebels, but who spent all his time in Baku. She believed he was really working for Russian intelligence and was not actually a soldier. Maze offered, for a price, to provide the Americans with information she was able to gather from her, presumably, lover. His name was Dmitry Utkin. 

“Now that name I do know,” Ruth thought to herself. Dmitry Utkin was in fact a Russian military intelligence officer who fought in both of Russia’s wars against Chechen rebels from 1994-2000. He also became the co-founder of the Wagner Group in 2014. 

Unfortunately, the CIA officer who reviewed Maze’s email did not deem it as credible and responded with a perfunctory notice of “Thanks, but no thanks.” 

Turns out the next message was similar. Again, a presumed lover of Dmitry Utkin offered to provide information for a price, this time to the Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in 2001. For an intelligence officer, Utkin was pretty careless, Ruth thought. This time the CIA offered to meet with the write-in in a place she felt safe, but the author never responded to the offer. 

Expecting to find more of Utkin’s paramours, Ruth pulled out the next write-in report. This one was not as salacious, but much more interesting. A software developer in Moscow wrote into the Embassy there asking about a job. On the surface, it seemed like an email that was misfiled as a ‘write-in,’ but Ruth guessed that the CIA officer who received the message concluded that it was a ploy on the part of the author to set up a meeting with the CIA station. It seemed to have worked because there were a few pages of notes and one cable paper-clipped to the email that went into more detail. 

The cable was brief and transactional, basically providing the date, time, identity details of the individual according to their Russian passport asking headquarters to run a name trace. Lev Makarov was a 31-year old software engineer who graduated from Moscow State University in 1991, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He claims to have been friends with Dmitry Peskov, who was two years older but in many of the same classes. At the time Makarov visited the US Embassy in Moscow, Peskov was serving as President Vladmir Putin’s press secretary. 

Ruth underlined in her notebook that Peskov had been serving in that position until early 2025, when he ‘retired’ from public office never to be heard from or seen again. 

Makarov wanted to speak to the American Ambassador because Peskov had recently ‘bumped’ into him and he, Makarov, felt that the circumstances were suspicious. In other words, he felt that their meeting had been calculated.   Peskov asked Makarov if he would be willing to help him install some software on his wife’s laptop because she was having trouble with it. Makarov thought the request very odd given Leskov’s position, he would clearly have many minions who could assist his wife with her computer challenges. But Makarov did not want to appear suspicious to Peskov, so he eagerly agreed to help and passed on his contact information. 

“Wait a minute. The Russian press secretary needs the help of an old college mate to install his wife’s software? Something is definitely wrong with that picture. Good on you, Lev, for picking up on that,” Ruth muttered to herself as softly as possible. She could overhear Serena’s unmistakeable voice at Holly’s desk, so figured she was completely safe for the moment. 

The cable concluded with the plan to meet Makarov again, pending approval after the name trace was completed. But then, there were no other cables in the subfolder. Ruth made a note to check the system, just in case printed copies of any additional cables were not placed in the file but did actually exist. 

Ruth rifled through the handwritten notes that must have been from her colleague’s meeting with Makarov. And it seemed as if it probably was the one and only meeting to take place. 

Most of what Ruth could decipher from the scribbled notes were details included in the cable itself, but there were a few questions, presumably those of the CIA officer at the time and not questions posed by Makarov. One of them was circled, “seems nervous, telling the truth and scared? Or lying and scared?” 

The other questions were, “What does he want? What does he have to gain? What does he have to lose?”

There were no answers. “Figures,” Ruth thought. It was tantalizing, at least. The fact that there didn’t seem to be any follow-up was foreboding. Still, Ruth had to research before coming to any conclusions. 

Ruth then turned to the last two write-ins, one of which was from 2001, just after the al-Qa`ida attacks on the United States. The author called himself Kobayashi, which Ruth thought could be a reference to The Usual Suspects character that Verbal Kint made up. And if so, there was probably a hidden message in the choice. 

Apart from the potential theatrics of the name choice, the author had very little to offer. He claimed to have proof that the Russians knew al-Qa`ida was planning the 9/11 attacks. He said that Russian Special Communications Service (Russian Intelligence’s equivalent to the US National  Security Agency, NSA) had intercepted radio conversations among unnamed al-Qa`ida members who were talking about the plot a year earlier.

Ruth couldn’t find any other follow-up to the report. Her initial reaction was to conclude that either the report was determined to have no merit at the time, and for some reason at a later point in time, the person putting the loose threads file together decided it did have merit. 

Or, the other explanation was that it was followed-up and shifted over to policy action. If it were true that the Russians had foreknowledge and did not share that with the United States, that would have gone to the National Security Council and the Department of State to decide what, if anything, to do about it and whether to confront Putin. 

Either way, the report seemed out of place. The only connective tissue Ruth could see was that Russia was the bad guy once again. 

The final case was possibly the most interesting, though least plausible. A woman calling herself simply, Anna, sent a letter to the US Embassy in Ukraine in early 2014, claiming that her sister had been arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s internal intelligence organization. Anna believed her sister was kidnapped and was being held falsely because she had tried to provide information to the Americans in Azerbaijan fifteen years earlier about a man with whom she was having an affair at that time, Dmitry Utkin. Anna wanted to provide the journal that her sister had kept about her affair and the things Utkin told her in exchange for American assistance in finding out about her sister.

“Anna was Maze’s sister?” Ruth asked herself. What was Utkin up to that would be worth imprisoning his girlfriend fifteen years later, Ruth thought.  

“Pssst.  Pssst.” Ruth heard Holly signaling to her through their cubicle wall. “Coffee?” She asked through the cubicle wall. 

“Coffee? I haven’t even eaten lunch. What time is it?” Ruth looked up from her files and at her computer for the time. 

“All the more reason to take a break,” Holly answered. Ruth relented, and the two met at the end of their bank of cubicles. Walking through the wide hallway between the new and original headquarters buildings, the one place where windows were plentiful, Holly and Ruth could see that the weather had turned from the sunny morning it had been when they arrived at work into a steady rain. Neither of them made any note of it, as their caffeine radar had them on autopilot. 

Such is the life when you are stuck at Headquarters. Very few employees worked in something other than a sealed vault of endless, dreary cubicles. No windows. Nothing remotely like natural light. Fluorescent tubes and dankness. It really was an unhealthy, cold, and oppressive environment to spend your waking hours. Forget trying to grow a live plant. Ruth recalled one of her doctor’s telling her years ago that she was Vitamin D deficient by an amount she found quite alarming. Ruth figured everyone was Vitamin D deficient at headquarters. Most of the time, like today, you had no idea what the weather was doing. You didn’t know whether it was day or night, either. It was perpetually 10:00 in the morning in the cubicle farms.

As Ruth and Holly mindlessly raced toward the coffee stand, Ruth took note of the usual scenes around her. Colleagues talking here and there in low voices, constantly looking around for who might be nearby so as not to be overheard. Young employees clustered in small groups, some animated in their venting, probably about their shared manager, and others laughing. Either way, they were trying to fit in and not feel self-conscious among the seasoned hall-walkers who had stories that could turn your hair gray but would never share them. 

Everyone wanted to be part of a secret history. To be known for being “the one” who did this or did that, but also to have no one asking you any questions. The silent secret-keepers. It was a type of martyr complex that Ruth thought unique to the business. No where else had she ever found so many people hell bent on achieving a greatness that they could never share with another soul. 

“Hold this for me?” Holly asked Ruth to hang on to her coffee so she could dig through her bag to find some cash. Ruth grabbed it before Holly had even finished asking. She knew Holly’s bag was hopelessly disorganized. 

“Got it, thanks,” she said and took her coffee out of Ruth’s hands while paying for it. The two walked past the cashier and instinctively headed over to a tall counter with stools to sit for a moment and watch the rain. It felt a little more human than being at their desks talking through an ugly wall. 

“So, what are you doing to keep busy?” Holly asked Ruth. 

Ruth expected the question and had already come up with a bland enough, but believable, story. “Since Anish has you four teamed up to run to ground the two named suspects for the bogus fourth man, I am going back through old loose threads files just to be sure there isn’t someone else who was suspected at some point. It’s a precaution…Anish doesn’t want anyone from Oversight or the media throwing out a new name we haven’t also run to ground,” Ruth felt it was a plausible explanation. 

Given this was Holly’s first foray into counterintelligence, Ruth hoped Holly would find it plausible, too. 

“Huh, that makes total sense to me,” she did. Find anything yet?” 

“Not really. I mean, not a named individual. There are a handful of loose threads about suspected moles, but so far, it’s all speculation and conjecture,” Ruth said, but then thought better of making it seem like her task would be quick because she knew her real task was going to take a lot more time.

“But, I have to admit, there are a few unsolved ‘possible’ cases of leaks that I want to look more closely at. I don’t think they have anything to do with a Russian mole, but while I’m ruling that out, I am enjoying the investigative work,” she added. 

“Do you ever get tired of it, Ruth? I mean is it the same process each time, or always different based on the case?” Holly asked much like a student would ask. This was safer territory for discussion, so Ruth was happy to elaborate. 

“Good question, Hol.’ I’d have to think more about it, but off the top of my head, I’d say I usually start the same way, with a long, long list of questions.” Ruth sipped her coffee, decided it had cooled enough to put the lid back on it.  “I read whatever we have on hand, and then I write out every question, no matter how mundane.”  

Holly looked out at the rain and responded, “You don’t trust that you’ve been given the whole story, do you?” 

“Never,” Ruth said. 

Holly shook her head, “This is why I can already tell I’m not going to love this work. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad to do this rotation, and I’m thrilled to be working with my best friend! There’s so much to learn and it’s fun to learn something new again. But, Ruth, I can’t think like this. I don’t want to always distrust everything and everyone around me as my default.” Holly made a concerned face. Ruth knew her best friend was worried about her. Was this line of work changing who Ruth was deep inside, Ruth could almost hear Holly asking. And then Ruth could hear herself asking the same question.  
Caffeinated and back at her desk, Ruth shoved the esoteric question out of her head so she could focus on  uncovering the contents of the last subfolder in her loose threads file. As with the previous six, the meaning of the content was elusive. The folder was filled with magazine articles, news clippings, a few of them printed from online rather than cut out of a newspaper or periodical. 

There were no classified documents at all. And the media sources were an eclectic mix of timeframes and topics, though most were related to science and technology. There are were two articles that covered conspiracy theories surrounding the CIA’s various mind control programs in the 60s and 70s, including Mockingbird, Stargate, and MKULTRA. Ruth found them fascinating to read, but they seemed to have little to do with the credible and scholarly articles that formed the bulk of the collection.

For the remainder of her afternoon, Ruth read through the articles, trying to sort out why they were included in the loose threads file. She couldn’t find a lot to indicate a connection. But she took plenty of notes. The one thing that caught her eye was that each article had something to do with wave technology, from early days to futuristic scenarios with nefarious governments beaming waves to control the minds of their populaces. It was the only consistent theme across the topics and genres. 

Ruth thought chasing down the fourth man theory was not as crazy as it had once seemed in comparison. What on earth did Anish have her looking for? A mind-controlling, wave device? It all seemed silly. Yet, there were five unsolved cases of assets losing their lives under suspicious circumstances that suggested a CIA officer was involved in betraying them.  Even if it seemed insane, at least one officer before herself had put these specific cables, reports, notes, photos, pocket litter, and articles all together for a reason. If there was a single narrative, Ruth would find it. She’d let others decide whether it made any sense. 

Going back through the index she had made in her notebook, Ruth scanned for clues:  similarities or connections that she didn’t notice the first time. This would give her a place to start her search beyond the loose threads file into old cables, notes, and cases that she’d would find elsewhere in the archives. For every file like the one she had, there were probably dozens of paper trails stored everywhere from boxes and folders to hard drives in boxes in safes. 

This is going to take a very long time if I can’t find any structured way of narrowing it down, Ruth thought to herself. As she scanned back through her index, she realized it made the most sense to pay closer attention to the most recent additions to the file. Whoever added things in 2023 would have most likely gone through the whole file to have decided to add things to it, rather than somewhere else. So whoever that was, he or she must have seen a connection or suspected one.

There were a couple of reports from CIA assets in June 2023 who talked about the Prigozhin sort-of-coup in Moscow; a February 2023 Cipher Brief article defending Redmond and Curran and disputing the fourth man theory; and a September 2023 article in a science magazine that featured a well-respected academic who posited that not only was extrasensory perception (ESP) real, but that generative artificial intelligence could be trained to create precognition, also known as being able to predict the future, which is generally considered a form of ESP. 

“That would be cool. Especially if they call it Crystal Ball,” Ruth thought. Ruth had met a few analysts at the Agency who were so good at reading trends and forecasting events that she would swear they’d been issued crystal balls when they entered on duty. 

But what did the Prigozhin reports, the fourth man theory and ESP have anything in common or was it just complete coincidence that someone put them in the file? Ruth realized, too, that even if someone put them in the file because they saw a connection, they may have been completely wrong. So should she even bother going down this rabbit hole? 

Ruth was thinking herself in circles when she remembered that the next most recent item added to the file was a report about the loss of the software developer who worked for Wagner. He disappeared in 2021, but Ruth wasn’t sure whether he was presumably found out and killed. Nor did she know anything about the suspicion that his betrayal had been an inside job. 

“I’m going to take that as a potential indicator of a possible thread,” she muttered. “Does it get any iffier than that?” She thought to herself. Still, the Wagner coincidence was intriguing and Ruth realized that she knew very little about the origins of the group. She began wondering if Wagner’s leadership weren’t all former KGB who longed for their glory days of doling out brutality and repression. 

“I may end up in archives after all,” Ruth thought. But she decided to start with finding out what happened to Anton Kupava, the promising young software engineer from Belarus who took a job with the wrong employer. As Ruth turned to her computer to begin her research, she noticed the time. The afternoon was racing and Ruth could not make it another late night. She had promised to be home before the boys went to bed. 

A-N-T-O-N K-U-P-A-V-A, she typed in her search. “What happened to you?” She asked her computer. Her search needed some refinement to narrow down the results to the actual Anton Kupava she was looking for, but even then, there were quite a few cables to digest. And before she knew it, the afternoon had already turned into evening. 

“Oh, crap!” Ruth said to herself realizing the time as she flailed around for her notebook. She jotted a few thoughts and started packing up. Traffic was going to be a nightmare. “Hey, Holly. You there?” She asked her cubicle wall. 

“Hey…you taking off?” Ruth was started by Holly standing right behind her with Serena. The two had walked up right on Ruth right as she was Holly whether she was there. 

“What a weird coincidence with the ESP,” Ruth said. 

Serena made a “what the heck is she talking about” face and Holly just laughed. “Ruth, you say the strangest things sometimes, but I know it’s because there were at least two paragraphs going through your mind before the sentence you say aloud. I’m doomed to always be behind in the conversation.” 

Ruth laughed at that. “Yeah. That’s me. I carry on whole conversations with myself on a constant basis. I swear most of what I tell myself makes sense inside my head, even if it seems like total nonsense when it comes out!” She smiled and her friends laughed with her. At least now she wouldn’t have to explain why ESP was on her mind. 

“Sorry…I have to run,” Ruth said hurriedly as she stood while throwing her tote over her shoulder. “Ryan is going to kill me if he has to put the boys to bed listening to them whine about my not being there.” Ruth defended her need to leave abruptly. 

“Go, go!” Holly said. “Don’t stand around telling us what we already know.” Holly shook her head with concern for her dear friend. She knew all too well the pain a mother feels when she does nothing but disappoint everyone around her, no matter how hard she is trying to do otherwise.  

“Please just tell me now, is this going to be how it is? Don’t placate me, it’s better for my planning purposes to know what to expect, not what you wish to happen, Ruth.” Ryan almost never called Ruth by her name so she knew right away he was in a serious mood. And that meant that he had been annoyed, really annoyed, that she was late getting home. Ruth could only imagine that the boys had whined about her not being there, and that the evening had been exhausting for Ryan after a full day of his own work at the firm. 

Ruth tightened her lips and took a big breath in, before turning to her husband with as much of a gentleness to her face as she could muster. She was tired, too. 

“Ry, you are right. You absolutely deserve…you and the boys deserve…to be able to plan one way or the other what to expect from me during this rotation,” Ruth started and sat down on the edge of their bed as she spoke. Ryan didn’t join her just yet. 

“I don’t want to be late like always. I really, really don’t want to fall into this same cycle of working late all the time and going in on weekends and having you and the boys think that work is the only thing that is important to me,” she said with her eyes cast down as she traced her fingers along the wave pattern of their ocean blue duvet cover. 

Ryan gave a big sigh at this point, looked more softly at this wife, and sat down next to her, saying, “But…”

“I can’t make promises. All I can do is try, but you need to know that I am trying. I need you to believe me that I do try to resist getting sucked into it all. I really do try, Ry…” Ruth’s voice trailed off and Ryan could hear the emotion in her voice. It was rare for Ruth to cry or lose her composure at all. When he heard the weakness of her voice, he knew she realized how important this was to him, to the boys, and to her. For the first time in a while, he felt reassured that she did miss them and want to be with them rather than work. In that moment, he realized that he’d not been aware of how much of a toll Ruth’s tendency to become obsessive about whatever case she was working affected him. He was always focused on how it was hard on the boys to spend so little time with their mother. Now, he felt a pang of relief that her fierce dedication to her work was not a reflection of her lack of interest in him and their relationship. 

He stroked the back of her head and squeezed her neck gently before leaning in for a small kiss on her head. Ryan whispered, “I believe you, babe.” 

Ruth took a deep breath and buried her whole face into his chest. Hearing him call her “babe,” meant everything. They both breathed slowly for a minute holding on to each other. It was like an alarm that had alerted them to impending danger was just subsiding into quiet. Ruth thought how good it felt to relax and breathe with her husband, and realized that what she had just said to him was true. They weren’t words she’d conjured to make him feel better or to make herself seem less unfeeling. She meant it. 

Ryan was the first to unlock from their embrace. He stood to finish putting away laundry, but not without gently stroking her head again. 

Ruth gathered herself and stood as well. “I’m going to kiss them goodnight,” she said softly. Ryan was heading toward the linen closet in their bathroom to put away their clean towels as she shuffled out of their room toward the boys’ bedroom down the hall of their second floor. She looked over the balcony and caught the shadow of the street lights casting an eerie image on the foyer floor. For whatever reason, it made her think about Halloween. And that made her think about how quickly the boys would be talking about a dozen different things they would want to dress up as. And that made her realize how fast time sped by, since they had only just begun a new school year. 

She paused for a moment to let the feeling wash over her, and thought to herself that she really was going to do it this time. “I’m going to put my family first. It can’t all be on me at work,” she whispered to herself. Her teams and bosses were always saying that to her when she overworked…that it wasn’t all on her and that she needed to take breaks, but they were usually empty words. Inevitably, she would be expected to grind it out, stay late, go wherever she was asked to go, and drop everything else in her life - which was her family - whenever her brain was needed. 

“I have to make my family first, no matter how much pressure they put on me to be there,” she thought to herself.  With renewed conviction and sense of hope in being a “better mom,” she slipped into the boys’ bedroom to give them a covert kiss on their sweaty little heads. 

As Ruth left their room, she had to fight the instinct to head downstairs, where she would typically go to spend some time in her office clearing her head of the complex tangle of thoughts and snippets of data currently swirling around in her grey matter. Talking to her Dad through his clock and being comforted by her curios neatly resting on their little shelf was the only way Ruth knew how to quiet her brain. But she resisted tonight. She wanted to snuggle in bed with her husband and let him know how much she appreciated everything about him. 

A few hours later, Ruth awoke with her neck stiff from being tucked into Ryan’s shoulder. But she didn’t mind. It was nice to fall asleep in his arms, and it had been a long time since she felt the safety and comfort of being wrapped up in his lanky limbs. As she carefully slipped out of his embrace, she sat to stretch her neck and back. The ache in her neck felt a little better, but now she was more fully awake. 

The clock read 03:14. Ruth slung her legs over the side of the bed and continued stretching gently, trying not to stir Ryan.  She sat for a minute debating whether to lie back down or get out of bed. Predictably, the latter idea won the argument.

Ruth couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept through the night. Long before Jack came along, she routinely woke up around 0300. Sometimes she would wake up in a startle, but be unable to recall any specific image or incident that woke her out of her slumber. Most of the time, she would wake up with her brain already thinking about work, as if it was done resting and ready to go, despite her body still needing sleep. And most of those times, Ruth would acquiesce to her brain and sit with her little curio shelf so she could talk out whatever she was thinking. She’d realized many years before that fighting the racing thoughts in her mind only invited more anxiety about not being asleep. Since falling back to sleep while anxious was an impossibility, she found it best to let her brain finished its zoomies. 

Ruth wondered sometimes whether her habit of talking to her Mom’s statues and her Dad’s clock in the middle of the night was her way of still feeling connected to them. Like a little girl waking up from a bad dream and hopping in her parents’ bed for reassurance. Whatever it was, it almost always helped her get back to sleep. 

Ruth grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and meandered into the office after putting a few of the sofa pillows back up on the sofa. The boys clearly had been using them as lava rocks or some other obstacle for their playtime that evening because they were strewn in a pattern across the floor spanning two sides of the U-shaped sofa. 

Once inside her office, she slid the pocket door closed and sat in her chair. She downed a big gulp of her water and began her conversation.

“Well, Dad, it was a day.” That was something her Dad would always say when her mom or she asked him how his day at work was. He would always say, “It was a day.” It drove Ruth crazy because it was such a lazy, non-answer and because she felt slighted that he did not want to share his day with them. Now as she was older and had her own children and marriage to navigate, she understood. Sometimes, you really want to leave it at the office, and it can be annoying to have your loved one at home dredge it up. 

Ruth adjusted herself in the chair, sitting back to get more comfortable and continued. “I have a lead, Dad,” she said softly. “Or I think it could be one, but it’s still not clear.” Ruth took a deep breath before sharing her research on Anton Kupava.

It took her some time, but Ruth did uncover details about Kupava’s recruitment and disappearance, and gathered a few insights about some of the other loose threads in her file. Anton Kupava was a brilliant student at Moscow State University with extraordinary interdisciplinary knowledge and skills. His wizardry at coding was matched by his general mathematical and musical genius. In fact, he was dubbed “Theremin, Jr,” because of his ability to blend computer, math, and musical sciences into one like the infamous Leon Theremin. 

Kupava graduated in 2018 and claimed to have been recruited by Dmitry Utkin, the man who co-founded The Wagner Group, according to the case officer who met with Kupava initially. Kupava’s family was interesting. He was the son of an electrical engineer from Belarus and a Russian mother who had been a concert pianist. It was their strangely complementary interests that led Anton to explore both math and music. His interest and talent in math led to coding and computers, and his passion for music led to creative compositions for the keyboard, which would inevitably bring him back to mathematical patterns. He described being able to see the loops in time and space from before he was even in grade school. 

Kupava shared his initial meeting with Utkin with the case officer because he felt there was something off about it. He said it left him feeling vulnerable. Kupava said he knew he would be pitched by some unsavory people. His quantum computing professor had already warned him that the SVR’s cryptological service was asking about him. Kupava assumed he would be pressed into serving the SVR or some other secretive part of the government. So he wasn’t wholly unprepared for a person like Utkin to approach him. Still, when he pressed Utkin about why he had chosen him to recruit above all the other candidates at the University,  Utkin’s answer is what alarmed him.

 Utkin told Kupava that the Russian military establishment would no doubt pressure him to work ‘like a slave’ for them, “They work you like a dog, and you get paid nothing. That is no way to build a life for yourself. Such a promising young man, and I’m sure you want to find a wife,” Utkin said. He then continued, “Makarov urged me to talk to you in person. He believes you are a genius, and Lev would know. Wagner will appreciate your skills with a much better salary and more freedom for you and your family,” Utkin said.

After recounting this tidbit from the file, Ruth said, “You see, Dad, Kupava told his case officer he was spooked because Utkin mentioned Lev Makarov.” Ruth leaned forward in her chair to finish, “There were separate documents about Makarov in the file. Makarov was also a software engineer, like Kupava, and he was 31 when he met with a case officer in Moscow in 2001. He said he had been approached by Dmitry Peskov in an unpleasant kind of way. He feared he was being lured into some nefarious business on behalf of Putin.”  As far as Ruth could find, Lev Makarov was never heard from again after his one meeting with CIA.

“So how would Utkin have spoken with Makarov seventeen years after he disappeared?” Ruth asked out loud. “And why would Makarov be recommending students to recruit for Wagner if he had been dragooned into working for Putin?” These were enigmatic questions spinning around in Ruth’s head, and the reason she found it so hard to stay asleep. The loose threads file was filled with mysteries. Most of them seemed random, so wholly unconnected to a mole hunt. Ruth was beginning to feel she had been assigned a wild goose chase for the sole purpose of testing her sanity. Maybe it was merely a test to determine her promotability.

Just then, Ruth looked up at her Púca figurine, and for a brief second, Ruth swore it winked at her. She rubbed her eyes and stared at the figurine again. Nothing. 

“No….you are not going to do that to me,” she said to her little statue. Ruth shook her head as if to clear it, and it sent a shiver down the rest of her spine. She knew she was obsessing and overtired, and also still feeling guilty about getting home late after promising to be on time. She tried to force back the emerging idea that the imagined wink from Púca was the guilt she felt about rationalizing that her sons were fine without her, they had their wonderful Dad. But Ruth knew that wasn’t true, just as she knew how much she herself missed her own mother so many years later. 

She decided to turn the guilt into resolve. She had told Ryan that she would try, and now she needed to deliver. 

“That’s all for tonight, Dad,” she whispered as she switched the light off in the office and shuffled back through the family room, nearly tripping over a ‘hot-lava’ pillow on the floor that she had missed earlier.  With a heavy sigh, she tossed it on the sofa and headed back to bed. The mystery of how and why Makarov was advising Utkin on students to recruit for the Wagner Group, and whether Peskov was involved in Makarov’s disappearance, and how on earth poor Anton Kupava got caught up in it all  would have to wait another few hours. Wherever they were, Ruth thought, “They’re not going anywhere.” 

Barging into Anish’s office first thing the next morning without even stopping at her desk, Ruth asked, “What do you know about ‘The Thing’?” 

Anish was sitting on his couch poring over an assortment of documents and photos on his coffee table. His door had not been completely closed, but its position certainly indicated that he expected a knock first. He barely lifted his head but he raised his eyes, and one strong eyebrow, up at Ruth. She would have sworn he was expecting the question. 

“I know what most people know, and maybe a little more. Why do you ask?” Anish gently slid the papers laid out before him into a small stack and placed the file folder they’d come from on top to shield the contents from Ruth’s gaze. 

Ruth read his movement as an invitation to sit down, which she did, in Anish’s usual chair across from the sofa. 

“I’ll get to the point so you can get back to this,” she waved her hand over the coffee table, “whatever it is that you don’t want me to see.” Anish did not take the bait and simply leaned back to make himself more comfortable. 

“Look, Anish, I have been plowing through this loose threads file for a couple of weeks now, and I’m starting to see a possible connection across what otherwise looks like a lot of disparate incidents. And that connection goes back to Leon Theremin,” Ruth paused hoping Anish would add something, but he nodded slightly and remained tight-lipped. 

“Okay, well, I was not familiar with the 1999 case of ‘The Thing’ being discovered in a chair rail of a conference room at the State Department. Frankly, I thought after the device was revealed back in 1960, the KGB had given it up. I certainly didn’t think they’d still be using it years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” Ruth added with a flourish of her hand and then sat back expecting Anish to respond.

Anish folded his arms. Ruth read his body language and knew that he was not prepared for this conversation or was stalling to figure out how much he could and couldn’t say. She was irritated by this game of having the information she needed to solve the case she’d been given dripped to her in little bits as if she wasn’t trusted. 

Anish could sense her frustration. “You are not alone in thinking that the 1999 case was odd. That investigation was the first one I managed. In fact, it was one of my officers who added that material to the loose thread file you have,” Anish took a deep breath as if recalling the memory was painful in some way. 
“Most of the team supported the written assessment that the device was leftover from earlier KGB days. That, in fact, while the KGB did not use “The Thing” much after the 1960 revelation, they did continue to produce a few and deployed them in some of the Non-Aligned countries,” Anish continued. “But this one officer dissented.” 

“On what grounds?” Ruth asked as she leaned forward hovering over the coffee table.

“He believed that it wasn’t the KGB who planted the device at State Department. Not that he had much to go on  because the man caught listening outside the grounds of the State Department was assigned at the time to the Russian Embassy in DC, so it would seem he was under Russian government cover,” Anish’s hands gestured in a way suggesting that there was little doubt of the man’s being a Russian government spy. 

Then Anish leaned in toward Ruth and added, “But when we dove more deeply into his background, there was some conflicting information.” Anish paused, and Ruth sensed a flicker of doubt in his face, and then sat back in the sofa. 

“Anish, no. You are not stopping there. You know more, and you’re not telling me something. How am I going to solve this case if you aren’t going to give me all the information that I need?” Ruth was agitated and almost yelling at this point. She abruptly stood up to calm herself down, but it was also a power move. Anish took notice. 

“Sit down, Ruth,” Anish said calmly. And then her reached up and grabbed her wrist saying more softly, “please.” Ruth complied, hopeful for more information. 

“This is more than I am supposed to say, so I’m asking you, Ruth, as a friend and a colleague, please don’t make me regret telling you this,” Anish’s face was serious, and even a little shaken. 

Ruth took a deep breath, “Anish, I would never betray your confidence, and I will do anything to protect what you need me to protect, but I have to know what you know if you want to solve this. It’s already obvious to me that you believe this connection is important. I’m wondering why you didn’t suggest I look there in the first place, but I’ll bottle that source of frustration if you tell me now, all that I need to know.” Ruth gave Anish an indignant look but softened it with her voice. 

Anish sighed heavily, and then he put his hands together as he spoke, “Fair enough, but you remember when you first came to see me that I told you I wanted you to review the file and all the contents first. I have worked this case in the past, and I honestly did not trust my instincts. If I had pointed this out to you, it might have narrowed you down too soon, or prevented you from seeing a connection that my officer and I did not see years ago. I needed you to be objective, and in order to be objective, I needed you to be ignorant of the history I knew,” Anish defended his position more than adequately and Ruth immediately felt ashamed for having berated him. But, she didn’t say anything so as not to interrupt his flow. 

Anish continued, “Stanislav Borisovich Gusev was about to retire when he was coerced into being the listening post for The Thing planted at the State Department.” 

Ruth had a confused look on her face, “Coerced? How did you determine that?” 

“We interviewed him. He was cooperative, which made us suspicious. He claimed that he had been deployed to the Embassy in Washington, DC, to provide technical support. He was an electronics engineer and communications officer,” Anish explained. 

“He passed a poly…” Anish said, but Ruth gave him a sideways look, so he explained further, “I know, I know. But it was more than that. He was genuinely agitated when we brought up his retirement plans,” Anish continued. 

“Stan claimed that he and his wife and their two unmarried but adult sons were planning to move to Greece  immediately after his retirement. They had already purchased a house, and this I was able to confirm,” Anish went on and Ruth dared not interrupt with anymore facial expressions. 

“So, he’s about two months from retiring from the Russian Federal Security Service - remember, this is not the KGB anymore, they were supposedly a more professional, kinder Intelligence organization,” Anish smirked as he said it, but continued nonetheless. 

“Stan said that he was visited by a Russian army officer how was in Moscow on leave from the war in Chechnya,” Anish paused for a second, “No, he said he was bumped. That’s right. Stan was at a market with one of his sons when this army officer bumps into him, pretending to know him. Of course Stan was immediately suspicious, but then he remembered he wasn’t living in the Soviet Union anymore, so he decided to buy the guy a vodka for his service in Chechnya.”

Ruth was on the edge of her seat by now, waiting for the name of this mysterious “army officer.” She had a suspicion already forming in her mind. 

Anish went on, “You know who it was, don’t you?” 

Ruth shrugged, “I’d like to hear you share the name.”

“Fair enough,” Anish responded. “It was Dimity Utkin.” Ruth nodded, confirming that Utkin was who she suspected. Neither said anything for a heavy moment. Ruth’s mind was spinning in multiple directions, flashing back to all the fragments in the loose threat folder that related to Utkin. 

There was Maze, the lover in Baku who was willing to provide information about Utkin to the Americans in 1999, and who likely was secretly arrested for her attempts, according to her sister, Anna.  Anna had written to the US Embassy in Ukraine in 2014 about Maze’s disappearance, believing it had to do with information Maze had kept about Utkin in her diary, which Anna had been willing to share. 

Then there was Utkin’s recruitment pitch to Anton Kupava in 2018 to work for the Wagner Group, at the urging of Lev Makarov - a man who had supposedly disappeared years earlier. Kupava took the job, and when in Athens sought out the CIA to share his secrets. But what were they? And is what he shared the reason he disappeared? Is he dead, or like Makarov, somewhere hidden? Ruth knew she would have to research the case file on Kupava to determine what information he was giving to his CIA handler. “There must have been something very sensitive for him to disappear over it,” Ruth thought to herself

“My brain is racing, Anish. I have so many questions,” Ruth finally said quietly. 

“I fear I have few answers,” Anish answered. “What are you thinking?” 

“Utkin figures several times in the loose thread file,” Ruth sliced the air as if she were trying to count the number of folders in which Utkin was mentioned. “His lover in Baku approached the CIA to provide information about him in 1999. According to his sister, she was imprisoned and never heard from again,” Ruth explained. 

“We know in 2014 he starts up the Wagner Group with Yevgeny Prigozhin. But then, in 2018 he recruits Anton Kupava, presumably for Wagner, but at the urging of Lev Makarov, a man who had disappeared years earlier. And who, by the way, was himself likely coerced into working for Putin’s press secretary,  Dmitry Peskov,” Ruth sits back in her chair to finish what she thinks she knows. 

“I can’t keep the logic straight - is Putin on the same side as The Wagner Group or are they a threat to each other? There seems like competition, but there also seems like cooperation. Both seem deadly to a lot of people,” Ruth added with frustration in her voice. She usually can see the logic behind her adversary’s behavior rather quickly. 

Anish interrupts, “I have asked that question myself, and my only answer so far is that I don’t think this is an either or scenario. “

Ruth stared blankly at Anish. It wasn’t a helpful thing to say, but Ruth’s mind was still racing and she mostly brushed off the banality of Anish’s point. She continued speaking as if Anish had not said a word, “I forgot,” she snapped her fingers as she said it. “There was another would-be asset in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, who wanted to sell to the CIA information she had on Utkin in 2001 - I don’t remember the month,” Ruth rubbed her temples with her pointer fingers, massaging them gently as if to squeeze out the information she stored from her perusal of the loose threads file. 

“But, there was another write-in case that was in the same file as the Utkin lovers,” Ruth realized as she said it that Anish may not know the background, but didn’t stop to explain. “One of them called himself ‘Kobayashi,’ you know, from ‘The Usual Suspects’,’ Ruth heard Anish whisper the movie title in unison with her. 

“I didn’t think much of his name choice. It doesn’t inspire taking him seriously, but now I wonder,” Ruth paused. 
“What?” Anish asked. “You’re doing that thing you do again, Ruth.” 

Ruth knew he meant that she has the habit of asking questions she means for herself aloud. It’s a habit she picked up from talking to her Dad, and then to her Dad’s clock. 

“Sorry,” she said and shook it off. “I meant this Kobyashi character wrote in after the al-Qa`ida attacks in 2001 and claimed that the Russian Special Communications Service had intercepted conversations between al-Qa`ida members talking about the plot a year earlier.” Ruth adjusted herself in Anish’s chair and sat up straighter. 

“What if the Russians had more devices like the version of The Thing used at the State Department? That one was even more sophisticated and harder to detect than the one in the Great Seal from the 1950s, wasn’t it?” Ruth asked. 

“Yeah, that was the conclusion anyway. I don’t remember the technical details, but there were years of back-and-forth discussions with the FSB over that. I don’t know if they kept the program going,” Anish said this as a question rather than a statement. 

“What if they did? It would make more sense that some of these otherwise seemingly unconnected cases have been compiled meticulously over the years in one folder.” Ruth sat back in the chair, and continued, “Maybe Utkin was trying to recruit Kupava out of school to work with Makarov on continuing to improve the original Theremin.” 

“It’s all speculation, Ruth, you don’t have much to go on here.” And with that, Anish stood. He lifted his folder off the coffee table with the contents behind it all in one swoop and ambled slowly to his desk chair. This was a signal to Ruth that their conversation was ending. 

“Well, I don’t have much to go on, period,” she snapped back in annoyance. “If Utkin pressed Stan Borisovich Gusev into planting the device at State Department posing as a former Russian army veteran of the Chechen war, which of course he was, maybe when he was involved in that war, he managed to get a similar device planted somewhere in Afghanistan that landed in an al-Qaida camp. On purpose or on accident. The FSB knew the Chechen rebels were getting trained terrorists from Bin Laden’s camps,” Ruth finished her justification for her speculation, but still hadn’t stood. She turned in her seat toward Anish behind his desk.

“Anish, this is so annoying, but what if there is a fourth man?” She asked. Anish’s looked to the ceiling and closed his eyes taking a big breath in and out. 

“Oh God, no,” he said.  

Hours later, Ruth started packing up her things to get home in time for Jack’s baseball game. She had spent the entire day studying Utkin and reading as much as she could about the Theremin. Her mind was racing still, but she had to get home to take Jack to the game because Ryan needed to take Connor to a new friend’s birthday party. She was in hot water as it was at home with all three of the boys in her life. 

“Get it together, Ruth. Focus,” she mumbled to herself as she tried to move faster, but the papers on her desk were not cooperating and kept slipping out of her fingers.

“Ru, slow down!” Holly walked up behind Ruth to find her friend in a flurry of activity. Ruth turned and gave her a face. 

“Look, I know you’re under pressure from both sides. But take a breath, woman. Remember what they said in training?” Holly tried to soften Ruth’s edge. 

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast,” Ruth and Holly both said the mantra at the same time, mimicking the monotone delivery of their offensive driving instructor. 

Ruth smiled and gave Holly a hug, “What did I do to deserve you?” 

“You don’t deserve me, but I love you anyway,” Holly quipped. Ruth gave her a smirk and picked up her tote bag. 

“Be careful, Ru. Get there safely,” Holly watched as Ruth sped down the cubicle farm passageway and turned to exit the vault. 

Ruth was nearly running at this point, realizing that despite her remembering that she had to leave and rushing to do so, she was already cutting it very close. Even the slightest bit of traffic was going to result in Jack being late. His coach hated when the kids were late, but instead of blaming the parents, as he should since the kids were all ten years old and couldn’t drive if they wanted to be on time, he would yell at the players. The more Ruth thought about Jack being chastised for being late because of her, the faster she sped to her car. 

In the end, it didn’t even matter. 

“Jack’s game was postponed,” Ryan said as Ruth nearly tripped up the steps of her portico trying to get inside as quickly as possible. Ruth looked up at him, she was out of breath, sweating despite the cool evening, and had a look of total chaos. 

“What?” She asked and yelled at the same time. 

“The game was postponed. I left a message for you so you wouldn’t have to race home and be, well, this,” he made a sweeping gesture with his right hand referring to her disheveled appearance from head to toe. 

“Gee thanks,” she said with irritation. “I was in another vault all day and didn’t stop to listen to voicemail when I got back to my desk because I was trying to get home on time!” Ruth’s voice was shrill by this point. 

Ryan put his hand out to remove the bag from her shoulder and said, “Ruth, slow down. It’s just a postponed baseball game and you have all day to do whatever work it was you would have preferred staying there for.” Ryan was annoyed now, too. “Jack would still like some help with his homework, though, if you wouldn't mind,” Ryan said emphatically. 

“I’m tired of being told how to behave,” Ruth said in a low voice, which meant she was really angry. First Holly, now Ryan. Ryan had taken her tote bag, but she dropped her keys, her sweater, and her wallet on the floor next to the entry table where she normally would have placed them. She was angry and wanted Ryan to know it. 

What good was trying hard to put her family first if everyone was going to criticize how she went about doing it? Was it so hard to understand that she was measured by two negative yardsticks:  what she didn’t do or wasn’t there for at work and at home. And now, even when she did pull through, she was criticized for the manner in which she succeeded! It was enough to make her want to give up. 

The only problem was Ruth wasn’t sure what she would give up on. 

• Update #2 - Finished the final chapter & name a character winner announcement! Oct. 2, 2024

  Hello friends! 

  I put the pen down! At least for now!  Finished the last chapter and epilogue and now all I'm waiting for is the name, …

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• Update #1 - Name a character in my last chapter! Aug. 25, 2024

  Hi everyone! Thanks so much for subscribing and pre-ordering my book. But mostly, thinks for your support! 

  I am running a new bonus, which already …

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