Page 9 of Edge of Honor

“Does the director know?”

“Nope.”

Fields smiled again, even broader this time. “Look at you. Big, bad Joe Carolan breaking the rules.”

“A, this wasn’t my idea. And B, don’t think for a second that I like it. In fact, it turns my stomach.”

“Then whose idea was it?”

“Gallo’s.”

Alan Gallo was head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, under which the Russia Operations Section, known in Bureau shorthand as CROS, was housed.

The mandate of CROS was to hunt down and disrupt all Russiancyber and intelligence activities that threatened the United States. It was the department that Carolan and Fields called home.

Back in November, the pair had torpedoed a sophisticated Russian influence operation and in the process had rolled up a valuable, deep-cover Russian intelligence officer. The man had wisely been willing to negotiate a new, free life in the West rather than go to prison. He turned out to be a treasure trove of information, and both Carolan and Fields had received commendations for their work. Then came the inauguration.

At forty-four years old, James Alexander Mitchell was the youngest U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. The youthful, charismatic candidate had won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College and his margin of victory had been unassailable. The campaign, however, had been brutal, especially near the end.

As a Russian studies major, Mitchell had spent his junior year of college abroad, living and studying in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Though his political opponents had tried to use it against him, his fearless embrace of his time overseas had only endeared him further to voters. But one particular smear had come close to toppling his campaign and had angered him beyond measure.

While studying in Russia, he had fallen in love with a beautiful young Russian woman. He wasn’t the first American to fall in love while living abroad and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. This woman, however, was noteworthy.

She was from a prominent Russian military family. Her father had close ties to the Kremlin and Russian military intelligence. She herself would go on to work for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, also known as the SVR.

It didn’t matter that the affair had happened over two decades ago, nor that Mitchell had ended up marrying his high school sweetheart and that they had two wonderful young children. His opponents had tried to paint him as a ticking Russian time bomb; a deep-cover “Manchurian candidate” who couldn’t be trusted to place America’s interests above Russia’s.

President Mitchell had never told anyone about Anna. Social media hadn’t even become a thing yet back when they were together. The onlypictures of them were those they, themselves, had taken. Or so they had believed.

Right before the election, photos of the pair, in various romantic scenarios, had broken around the world. It was the kind of “October surprise” every political candidate feared.

Mitchell’s campaign had been blindsided. His top people thought for sure it would sink them, but the public had responded with a different reaction. They loved the photos and couldn’t get enough.

The college version of Jim Mitchell showed him to be every bit the heartthrob he was now—tall and devilishly handsome, as well as something the public hadn’t seen before, surprisingly bohemian.

No matter what you thought of him as a political candidate, there was no denying that his younger self could rock jeans, T-shirts, and a pair of work boots better than any sports or Hollywood superstar.

Nevertheless, hostile members of the opposing press tried to denigrate him and use the “Affaire Russe,” as it became known, against him.

They had a field day with all sorts of tabloid-style headlines like “Sleepless in St. Petersburg,” “The Bridges of Moscow County,” and the lamest and most obvious of all, “From Russia with Love.”

When interest in the love story only grew, they switched to attacking the lovers personally. They called him “Comrade Crush” and Anna the “Kremlin Cutie.”

Eventually, as the attempts to tar him with scandal failed and Mitchell kept surging in the polls, bitter partisan journalists resorted to calling him the “Populist Pinup.” It was all they had. He was running away with the election and everyone knew he was going to win.

The revelation of his relationship with Anna, however, had struck a nerve with him. Mitchell was an unknown in his college days. There was only one explanation for him and Anna to have been followed by someone with a long lens camera back then. It had to have been an intelligence organization. But whose?

It seemed pretty obvious to Mitchell and his team. The Russians had nothing to gain by embarrassing him. He was a post–Cold War candidate who hadn’t grown up with duck-and-cover drills and the specter of Soviet communism. By his own admission, he was the forward-lookingcandidate, eager to turn the page and move on from the “outdated” and “unnecessary” antagonisms of the previous century.

That left only one intelligence organization that would have wanted to use his time in Russia and his relationship with Anna and her family to hurt his candidacy—the CIA. And where the Central Intelligence Agency was involved, the FBI was always close at hand.

As a candidate who had stirred up so much popular passion and support by promising to reform government and make it answerable to the people, Mitchell was well aware of the threat he posed to the entrenched bureaucracies of Washington, D.C. And while he couldn’t do away with America’s preeminent intelligence agencies, he could place people in charge who would be answerable and completely loyal to him, which was what he had done. He wanted the CIA and the FBI on a short leash, especially when it came to anything having to do with Russia. He didn’t trust either organization further than he could throw them.

That was why Agents Carolan and Fields had been given a new assignment and were now setting up shop in the basement of the FBI.

“Okay,” said Fields, taking the lid off her own coffee and leaning back in her chair. “So this was Gallo’s idea. My next two questions should be pretty obvious. What’s our assignment and why are we hiding it from the White House?”

“Remember when you called me last night and we were wondering who might be behind the attack on the protest outside the Vice President’s Residence?”

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