Recall Zero

“In response to the leak, the press secretary issued this statement, and I quote: ‘Both presidents have been under a veritable microscope these past two days, due largely to the indiscretions of their predecessors. President Harris and his guest simply wanted a brief reprieve from the limelight. The meeting in question was less than ten minutes in length, and the subject of this meeting was for each leader to become better acquainted with the other without the pressure of media presence or scrutiny. I can assure each and every person here and tuning in that there was no clandestine agenda. This was simply a closed-door conversation, and nothing more,’ end quote. When questioned further about the specifics of this meeting, the press secretary joked, ‘I wasn’t privy to details, but I believe the meeting was largely about their mutual love of scotch and dachshunds.’

“Though the true nature of the meeting remains shrouded in secrecy, we have confirmed through our anonymous source that there was only one other person present in the room with the two leaders—an interpreter. Though her identity has not been released, we have confirmed that she is female, and a native to Russia. Now the world wants to know: were the two leaders discussing drinks and dogs? Or does this unidentified female interpreter hold the answer to a question that many Americans have on their—”

The television suddenly flickered out, the screen turning black. Karina looked down sharply to see that the Latino bartender had grabbed the remote and turned it off.

She was about to call him an asshole in plain English but stopped herself. There was no point picking fights; she was supposed to be incognito. Instead she mulled over the report. The White House had not released her identity, at least not yet. They wanted to find her and silence her before she could tell anyone what she had heard. What the two presidents were planning. What Kozlovsky had asked of the American leader.

But Karina had an ace in the hole—two of them, in fact. She again absentmindedly caressed the pearl studs in her ears. Two years earlier, she had been translating for a German diplomat who had accused her of misinterpreting his words. She hadn’t, but it had almost landed her in some real trouble. So with some help from her sister and her contacts in FIS, Karina had the earrings made. Each of them contained a tiny unidirectional microphone that recorded a speaker on either side of her; together, the two earrings combined would capture any conversation that Karina interpreted. It was, of course, highly illegal, but also very handy, and since she had begun using them she hadn’t found any reason to need the recordings and subsequently deleted them.

Until now. Every word that had been spoken between her, Harris, and Kozlovsky was contained in those two studs. Getting them into the right hands was all that mattered now.

She slid silently off the stool and stole toward the rear of the bar, making a beeline for the bathroom, but then kept on going down a dingy corridor and pushed out through a metal security door and into a rear alley.

Out on the street, Karina tried to look as cool and casual as possible, but inside she was terrified. It was bad enough that the Secret Service was looking for her—and no doubt had the police involved, possibly even the FBI—but when Kozlovsky found out, he would send his own people to find her, if he hadn’t already.

And worse, any John Doe citizen who heard the news might look twice at her and wonder. Americans were not the most open-minded when it came to foreigners. Luckily she could do a decently passable American accent. At least she hoped it was passable; she’d never had to use it in any serious situation before. So far she had gotten by just fine pretending to be Russian.

I need a phone. She couldn’t risk a pay phone. She couldn’t steal a cell phone; the victim would report it and the Secret Service could easily run down the device’s location and last-called number, which would put Veronika at risk as well.

Think, Karina. She pushed the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and looked around—a-ha. The answer was right there in front of her, half a block away and across the street. She glanced both ways and trotted over to the cellular store.

The shop was tiny, smelled of disinfectant, and harshly lit by too many fluorescent tube lights. The young black man behind the counter couldn’t have been more than twenty, poking idly at a phone in front of him with his chin in his hand. There was no one else in the store.

Karina stood there for a long moment before he looked up at her, his gaze flat.

“Yeah?”

“Do you jailbreak phones here?” she asked.

He looked her up and down. “We’re not allowed to sell that service.”

Karina smiled. “That’s not what I was asking.” She hoped her American accent wasn’t betraying her. It sounded rough to her ears, tinged with a Ukrainian lilt. “I’m not a cop, and I don’t have a phone. I want to use one. I need to make a call on an off-network device via Wi-Fi. Preferably through a third-party app. Something that can’t be traced.”

The kid blinked at her. “What do you mean, you gotta make a call?”

She sighed curtly, trying not to grow irritated. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.” She leaned over the counter and lowered her voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the store. “I’m in some trouble, okay? I need five minutes with the type of phone I just described. I can pay. Can you help me or not?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What kind of trouble you in? Like with the police?”

“Worse,” she said. “Look, if it was the kind of thing I could tell you, do you think I’d be here at all?”

The kid nodded slowly. “All right. I got what you need. And you can use it. Five minutes… fifty bucks.”

Karina scoffed aloud. “Fifty dollars for a five-minute call?”

The clerk shrugged. “Or you can try someplace else.”

“Fine.” She pulled the wad of cash she’d stolen from the tourist, counted out fifty, and slid it across to him. “There. The phone?”

The kid rummaged around under the counter and came out with an iPhone. It was a few years old, one corner of the screen cracked, but it powered on just fine. “This one here is off-network, and has a Chinese calling app on it,” he told her. “It reroutes through a randomized out-of-service number.” He slid it over to her. “Five minutes.”

“Great. Thank you. You have a back office here?” To his frown she added, “Obviously this is a private call.”

The kid hesitated, but then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” She headed into a tiny back office with wood-paneled walls and a melamine table as a desk, covered in invoices and assorted other paperwork. She opened the calling app on the phone, dialed the number she knew by heart, and waited as it rerouted. It took several seconds, and for a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that the call wouldn’t go through, but at last it rang.

Someone answered. But they did not speak.

“It’s me,” she said in Ukrainian.

“Karina?” The woman on the other end of the line sounded confused. “What are you doing calling this number?”

“I need help, V.”

“What’s wrong?” Veronika asked urgently.

Karina did not know where to begin. “There was a meeting,” she said. “Between Kozlovsky and Harris…”

“I saw the news.” Veronika sucked in a breath as she realized. “You? You were the interpreter in that meeting?”

“Yes.” Karina quickly recounted what had happened, from her time with the two presidents to fleeing from the Secret Service agent. She tried to keep her voice steady as she concluded, “If they find me, they will kill me, V.”

“My god,” Veronika said breathily. “Karina, you need to tell someone what you know!”

“I’m telling you. Don’t you see? I cannot take this to the media. They will stifle it. They will deny it. You are the only one I can trust with this information. I need to get the earrings to you.”

“You have them?” Veronika asked. “You recorded the meeting?”

“Yes. Every word.”

Her sister thought for a long moment. “FIS has a liaison in Richmond. Can you get there?”

Veronika, Karina’s older sister by two years, was a top agent of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Ukraine’s version of the CIA. It was no secret to Karina that FIS had several sleepers in the United States. The thought of being under their protection was an attractive one, but she realized she could not risk it.

“No,” she said at last. “They will expect me to flee. I’m certain they’ll be watching the airports and highways carefully.”

“Then I will tell him to come to you—”

“You are not understanding, Veronika. If they find me, they will kill me. And anyone who is with me. I will not be responsible for that.” Her voice caught in her throat. Standing there in the dim back office of a shady cellular store, the events of the past few hours finally caught up with her. But she would not let her emotions get the best of her. “I’m scared, V. I need help. I need a way out.”

“I will not let anything happen to you,” her sister promised. “I have an idea. I will have our liaison make an anonymous tip to DC Metro that the meeting was recorded—”

“What? Are you insane?” Karina snapped.

“And I will have him tell the media as well.”

“Christ, V, you have lost your mind!”