Free Crooked by Austin Grossman

sat down. “Are you—you’re not Russian?”
    “Only when I want to be.” Her black hair was tied back neatly, and her lipstick was immaculate, but she smelled intensely of stale foreign tobacco.
    “So what happens now?”
    “What do you want to happen?” She looked at me for a long nervous unblinking moment.
    “I want…” I found I had forgotten to take a breath. I made myself say it out loud. “Well, you know who I am, I guess. Arkady must have told you. We met under, well, odd circumstances. But I was led to—well, it seemed like you’d talk to me about Alger Hiss.”
    “If Mr. Hiss were in our employ, why would we give him to you, of all people? Richard Nixon, the anti-Communist crusader? The man who hates us? You do, don’t you?”
    “I don’t know. It’s not so simple. We’re in opposition, yes. It’s my job to protect my country.” I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t sure you cared about Hiss.”
    “Even if Alger Hiss is innocent, he’ll be watched the rest of his life. He’d be awfully hard to make use of.”
    “Well, yes. I’d thought ahead that far.”
    “You want to convict Hiss, but that’s not all you want, is it?” She paused to let me speak, but I had nothing to say. She went on with something like a hypnotist’s odd cadence. “Richard Nixon, I represent a nation of a hundred million people. We are a new civilization on this earth. Forget about Alger Hiss for now. We’re doing extraordinary things, things you can’t imagine. We’re not evil; we’re not even your enemies. We can transform your life. Now, tell me: What can I do for you? What do you want?”
    She leaned toward me as she spoke. She had an odd, charming, sloppy, lopsided smile and a way of giving you her whole attention that was hard to resist. It was, I later learned, the spy’s craft to know there are people who go through life feeling that those closest to them can’t hear them no matter how loud they shout, people just waiting to be asked to spill the whole damned list. Or was it only training? In the end I told her everything. I told her I wanted a Senate seat. That I wanted Pat to respect me and be happy. I wanted everything I’d been shut out of because of where I went to school, because I didn’t talk right, because my parents were poor. I told her what happened at the Wexford building. I told her I wanted to be president of the United States and that I wanted to know why there was a tiny part of me that didn’t care what happened to anyone as long as I got what I wanted.
    And I thought of all the smug people who had laughed at me for playing it straight, for being the hardworking student sweating through the nights to keep up with his classmates, the navy man, the small-town lawyer grinding through divorce cases to make ends meet. I’d worked hard for what people like Kennedy got for nothing. And I decided: No more. I was tired of being a schmuck. I’d get what I had coming and I wouldn’t play fair. By hook or by crook.
    Was this how they’d gotten Hiss? Somehow, I thought not. Whatever had happened, he’d probably put up more of a fight. It was ten minutes’ work for them to turn Richard Nixon.
    “Why would we give Hiss to you?” she asked again.
    “I thought…” I said. There was a long breathless pause, because this was the moment I’d never really admitted to myself would come. When I spoke again it was with a stranger’s voice. “Maybe I could do something for you as well.”
    “You are in luck, Mr. Nixon,” she said brightly, a smiling nurse jollying a needle-shy patient through an injection. “We often deal in cases like yours. Mr. Alger Hiss is an exceedingly bright man who had a few too many ideas. We would be happy to see his credibility undermined. You seem like a man who could make that happen.” For a moment I had the impression I was speaking to someone else entirely, a person of great age, impossibly regal. A flash of some other room, gold and dark wood, and then it