Chapter Text
Our second away game of the season was against the New Jersey Devils. You could still see the plume of smoke rising from lower Manhattan as our plane descended into Newark. Nekrasov, one of the Russians on the team, looked out the window and then looked to me.
“You think they invade Afghanistan?”
“They probably have already, special forces and all that. Somebody from the State Department showed up at Mischa’s work wanting to know if he still remembered any Pashto.”
“Mischa was in Afghanistan?”
“Yeah. He was a paratrooper.”
“No way! When I was a kid, paratroopers were the biggest heroes in the world to us.”
“I remember my social studies teacher telling us how brave the mujahideen were. Standing up for their religion against the godless commies.”
“Crazy world.”
“Yeah.”
The airport itself was bizarrely subdued. Flights were still arriving as scheduled, but they seemed half empty and the few passengers exiting the gangway looked around nervously. The part that stood out to me was that there were no kids. Usually, I get asked for autographs in airports, but this time no one came up to me until we were in the hotel lobby, and this time it was an adult man.
“You want an autograph?” I asked, figuring he had a grandkid who was a fan.
“Henry, you don’t remember me?”
I tried to recall the man’s face, and then it hit me. “Wait, I know. Larry Crawford, right?” Larry had been the chair of Athletes for Bush, and we’d gotten to know each other over a seemingly endless series of off-season fundraisers over the previous two years. “What are you doing here? I thought they made you ambassador to somewhere?”
“Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. My job was supposed to be focused on the Olympics, but we’ve all had a change in priorities over the last month.”
“Jesus, you must be swamped.”
“You have no idea. You want to get a drink.”
“Oh, I never drink the night before a game.”
“Please, I insist.”
“Just let me drop my luggage off first.”
I dropped my bags off in my room and met Larry in the hotel bar, where he ordered a gin and tonic and I had a seltzer.
“You still seeing that volleyball player I set you up with?”
“We broke up about six months ago.”
“She couldn’t handle you being on the road?”
“She said I have trust issues, but you’re probably too busy to worry about my love life.”
“Actually, I came here to ask a favor from you.”
“Larry, don’t you think it’s a little early to be thinking about the next campaign?”
“It’s not about the election. It’s about your parents.”
“What about my parents?”
“The Joint Chiefs are telling us they need all the help we can get from Russia – access to their airspace, overland transport, and intelligence sharing. As a confidence-building measure, the President is planning to issue pardons for all the Cold War era spies – Oleg Burov, Irina Semenova, Natalya Artemyeva, and your parents.”
“You know, I’ve kind of come to enjoy them not being allowed in the United States.”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“Nagano. Paige's church has some sort of missionary thing going in Moscow, so she sees them pretty frequently, and Mischa and Olga take the kids to see her parents for Christmas. I don’t talk to them more than I have to, but from what I can tell they’re doing just fine without a pardon. Dad’s tour company has a blurb in Rick Steves’ Moscow.”
“We want to fly them out for the Olympics and get a photo-op with you, possibly including Presidents Bush and Putin.”
“Jesus, Larry.”
“You don’t have to let them move in with you, it’s just for one night.”
“Larry, I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to prove to the world that I’m not like my parents.”
“And you’re not. You’re a patriot who puts the needs of your country ahead of your individual discomfort.”
“That’s not how it’s going to play. They’re going to say I took advantage of my relationship with the President to get my parents special treatment. If the Democrats take back Congress next year there could be hearings.”
“We’ve briefed the Congressional leadership and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees. They understand what’s going on.”
“Larry, my parents are bad people.”
“I know this is hard for you but we need this. It’s not just about the diplomatic level. To be perfectly honest, the FSB has better sources than we do in a lot of the Muslim world, and we need them to be willing to actually share information, not just give it lip service. Your country needs you, Henry.”
I looked past Larry at the TV over the bar. The sound was off but the picture was a little girl holding up a picture of a man’s face over a name and phone number. The man in the picture was obviously never coming home, but no one had told the girl yet. They were going to let her keep believing the lie just a little bit longer because it was easier than confronting it.
“Okay, but I have three conditions. One, no meeting or public events until after the final game. The pressure will throw me off. Two, you put out a statement that says the State Department asked me to do this. Three, you add Martha Hanson to the pardon list.”
“Who’s Martha Hanson?”
“One of my father’s sources. He told her he was an investigator for the House Intelligence Committee, then seduced her. He made her think he loved her. She thought she was working for us the whole time until he bundled her onto a plane for Moscow.”
“I’ll look into it. And, um, there’s going to be a series of diplomatic receptions during the games. You might want to start looking for a date now.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“One of the legal interns in the office, Kellie Price, has a clerkship lined up in San Francisco.”
“She from California?”
“North Carolina. I think you’re playing them in a couple of weeks. I can talk to Dick about giving her a couple of days off to visit her parents, maybe see a hockey game and get drinks after.”