The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller

by Karen Robards

  The back of her neck prickled as she considered the possibility of a sniper in a nearby building.

  When she reached her car, she purposefully dropped her purse. As she knelt to retrieve it, she examined the Acura’s undercarriage for bombs.

  Just in case.

  When she was in her car, she kept a careful eye out for following vehicles, checked cross streets, took extra care through intersections.

  Because, as she well knew, T-boning happens.

  By the time she pulled into her space in the underground parking garage at her condo, she was so tightly wound that she felt like one of those spring snakes stuffed as a joke into a nut can, ready to explode the moment the lid’s unscrewed.

  The sight of a woman hurrying toward her as she exited her car made Bianca instantly wary. The woman was carrying something in both hands, something weighty, substantial—a pot of some kind; maybe a pressure cooker bomb? Bianca shifted her weight to the balls of her feet in preparation.

  She was short, plump, wearing a bright red, button-up-the-front coat over black pants. Flat shoes. Long black hair with a few gray strands done up in a bun.

  An unlikely looking assassin, but—really, what assassin looked likely?

  Bianca kept the car between them and curled her fingers around her throwing star.

  “Hola,” the woman called as she drew near. “Hello.”

  Bianca’s brows drew together. Okay, assassins didn’t usually say hello. Plus, this woman reminded her of someone—

  “You are the one they call the guardian, sí?” the woman asked as she reached the Acura. Already beginning to see the light, Bianca let her hand drop away from her throwing star and walked forward to meet her. “I am Lila Nunez, Francisca’s mother. My daughter told me what you did for her, last night. This is for you, to say thank you. Muchas gracias.”

  She held the covered casserole dish she was carrying out to Bianca.

  “Da nada.” Bianca took the dish by the handles. It was heavy. Whatever was inside was hot and smelled spicy. She smiled at Senora Nunez, who looked exactly as she imagined Francisca would in about thirty years. “It was nothing. I was glad to be able to help.”

  “That is pozole. For your dinner. It also freezes very well. I was going to drop it off for that maton Sage—who is no longer permitted to see Francisca, por cierto—to take to you, but then I saw you pull in.”

  “It smells wonderful. Thank you.”

  Senora Nunez nodded. “My girl is precious to me. I will not forget what you did, ever.”

  “It was nothing,” Bianca said again. She inclined her head at the pot she held. “Thank you for this. Actually, you’d be doing me a great favor if you would forget what I did, and that last night ever happened, and that I was involved. The gangs, you know...”

  She let her voice trail off, hoping to imply that she was afraid of retaliation from the Bloods for what she had done.

  Senora Nunez nodded vigorously. “I understand. No one will talk of this, ever. Prometo.”

  “Gracias.”

  Another car drove in. Bianca looked toward it with instinctive suspicion. Then she recognized it and relaxed. A neighbor.

  Senora Nunez said, “I must go. Thank you again.”

  She patted Bianca’s arm, Bianca nodded and smiled, and Senora Nunez walked away. Hoping like hell that the woman was right and no one would talk of last night ever, Bianca headed for her apartment.

  Just as she had the night before, she took the stairs.

  Only this time she was armed with a piping-hot casserole.

  Assassins of the world, look out.

  * * *

  Bianca was back in Doc’s office within the hour, but by then it was full dark outside. Except for a single security guard in the lobby and those who, for whatever reason, were still inside their offices, the building was deserted. The square across the street was lit up and bustling with activity as tourists and locals alike explored the offerings in the various tents. Music and laughter from the square could be heard even through the walls.

  Bianca had arrived a moment before, and had ascertained that Doc had the eBay account ready to go even as she closed the curtains over his pair of tall windows. She didn’t think there was a sniper around, but no need to make things easy for one if she happened to be wrong.

  “Put this on there,” Bianca said. She handed Doc her phone, because she wasn’t sure how to make certain that anything she emailed or texted him wasn’t traceable, and she knew that he could render what she was giving him virtually invisible until it reached where he wanted it to go.

  Showing on her phone’s small screen was the photo she’d gone home to take: it was of a 1904 first edition of a small, red-bound book called The Little Secrets, by Frank Bonville. The book detailed the methods of a well-known cardsharp of the day, and was one of only two copies known to be still in existence.

  She owned the book. She kept it in her bedroom. It had been given to her by Mason on her twelfth birthday with the admonition, read this and learn everything in it. She did, and she had.

  And she’d kept it with her ever since, because it was one of the few personal-seeming gifts he’d ever given her, and she (had) treasured it. How she felt about it now that she knew he was not her father, that the complicated emotions she’d always felt for him were based on a false premise and the underlying love wasn’t reciprocated, she hadn’t figured out yet.

  Not that it mattered right at the moment.

  Now she was hoping to use the book to contact him.

  He collected rare first editions on the subjects of cardsharping, sleight of hand, pickpocketry and other esoteric criminal arts. He’d found a number of them on eBay. When an auction featuring an author he knew, such as Bonville, appeared on eBay, he always received an alert.

  Or at least, he’d always received an alert in the past. She couldn’t be sure whether he still did. In his current circumstances, Bianca could not conceive of him buying a book from an online auction. A purchase might provide a link, a trail, something that possibly could be traced and used to find him.

  But his interest in the topic would not have disappeared.

  If he was still receiving alerts, he would recognize the book as soon as he saw it as the one he had given her all those years ago. He would realize that she had placed the post. He would look at it, read the listing.

  That was how this should in theory work.

  “You really gonna sell this?” Doc asked as whatever he had done to upload it succeeded and the photo of the book appeared on the screen.

  Bianca took her phone back. “No. I’m using it to send a message.” She thumbed over to the notes tab on her phone. “Put this in as the description. Exactly as I have it written here.”

  She handed her phone back to him. The words on the screen read: Mint edition exceptional text: master cardsharp explains secrets behind his skills. 1904 rare first printing. $18,000.00.

  “You gonna tell me what the message is? ’Cause I’m not seeing it.”

  “No.” Need to know, and Doc didn’t. “And you’re not supposed to.”

  “Fair enough.” He was typing as he spoke.

  The first four words represented a simple code that she and Mason had used since she was a little girl: first letter of every word until stopped by a colon, which represented the end of the message.

  In this case, m-e-e-t: she was asking for a meeting.

  If all worked as she hoped, he would get the message and reply. Communicating via eBay was not something they’d done before, but she had faith that he would figure out that he needed to use the “ask seller a question” link to give her a date, time and place.

  Please God.

  “I’m expecting the person I’m trying to contact to reply. Can you set up some kind of alert so we’ll know if that happens?”

  Doc nodded.


  “This is actually, like, pure genius,” Doc said as he finished typing in her message. “What kind of hit man’s going to be monitoring eBay?”

  “Exactly.” Bianca watched as he submitted the item to the site, clicked “sell” and was done. “All right, get your Colonel Sanders outfit on. I’ll wait out in the reception area.”

  “My what?” He swiveled away from his computer.

  On her way to the door, Bianca nodded at the costume hanging from the file cabinet. “That. And hurry up. I have to go home again and change. I would have done it while I was there, but I didn’t want to take the time, and besides, I have to go back to pick up Evie. Anyway, you’re coming with me, so shake a leg. I’ll change, we’ll collect Evie and head out from there.”

  “We’re still going to that historic thing? When you’ve got no telling how many contract killers after you?” Doc sounded aghast.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s just—wrong.”

  “Well, we could spend the night pacing the floor worrying instead, but I don’t think that’s going to do much good. And Evie’s counting on us.”

  11

  “Really, darling, don’t you think it’s time to put an end to your little sleepover with dear Bianca?” Rosalie, who was talking to Evie, sent a blinding smile Bianca’s way; Bianca wasn’t fooled. She’d never been Evie’s mother’s favorite person. Rosalie had always considered her, first, an arriviste, and, second and more important, a bad influence. Bianca had no doubt that Rosalie blamed her for what she considered Evie’s current rebellion. “You need to go home and start decorating your nursery. I was thinking dark blue walls with white trim. So classic! Unless it’s a girl. But still, if it is, you don’t want to do anything as clichéd as pink, and dark blue could work for either. When will you find out what the sex is?”

  Evie said, “I haven’t scheduled an ultrasound yet, Mother.”

  Rosalie was just about the only person who could make Evie talk through her teeth, which was what Evie was doing now. Tall and as thin as a knife blade, with a long nose, square jaw, and dark brown eyes and hair, Rosalie was elegant rather than beautiful. She was also a perfect example of what could be accomplished by the best plastic surgeons: except for a couple of telltale creases on her neck, she looked ageless, although she would turn sixty a week before Christmas. In the shoulder-baring, flounced and beribboned lavender antebellum dress she was wearing, she could have passed for Evie’s older sister.

  Rosalie tut-tutted sympathetically. “Oh, I know. You’ve been so busy working that you haven’t had time.” She smiled at Bianca again. “It’s so kind of you to give her a job. It must be quite an interesting office. Evangeline has no experience with paid employment, and you—well, dear, a security company? Although you do have that handsome police officer to run things for you. He should know what he’s doing. He’s accustomed to that type of work.”

  Bianca could feel Evie bristling beside her. It was ten minutes after eleven, supper was over and five hundred guests crowded the magnificent three-story mansion where the gala was in full swing. She and Evie were currently in the third-floor ballroom. The temperature had dropped into the low forties outside, the radiators that heated the pre–Civil War era house sighed and groaned as they cranked up, and to Bianca, in a long-sleeved, high-collared, snug-as-a-glove-to-the-waist taffeta dress, the room felt too warm. The exquisite long-leaf pine paneling that covered most of the walls in the house had, on this floor, been painted white at some much-lamented date before the Preservation Society had gotten involved. The ceiling was high and white, with a quartet of large and lovely crystal chandeliers that sparkled like diamonds hanging from it. Tiered displays of paperwhites and calla lilies and tall white candles were everywhere, in keeping with the all-white decor: their scent was the constant beneath whiffs of expensive perfume as women in their vintage gowns drifted by. White drapes were drawn across the tall, leaded glass windows, alleviating any concern Bianca might have harbored about a potential sniper. The floor was dark, polished wood, which, along with the black widow’s weeds that she was wearing and the dark coats on some of the men, made a nice counterpoint to the butterfly garden effect of the rest of the ladies’ dresses amid all that white.

  That handsome police officer—Hay, looking, all right, handsome in a black cutaway coat and gray trousers—danced with Grace Cappy, a petite redhead in an apple green gown, some thirty feet away. There were maybe twenty other couples in the center of the room swaying to the lushly romantic strains of “I Only Have Eyes for You,” which was being performed by a live band on a platform in the back of the room. Tables displaying some of the items up for auction lined the walls; more items were dispersed throughout the house. Dozens of partygoers browsed the offerings. Doc was among them, moving from table to table, tablet in hand as he tallied the bids: Colonel Sanders with a curly black man-bun and an iPad.

  “Evie’s doing a brilliant job for Guardian Consulting. And Hay is, too.” Bianca’s tone was mild. She’d been dealing with Rosalie’s barbs for about fourteen years now, and she had long since mastered the fine art of not letting Evie’s mother get to her. When she’d first started visiting Evie as a young teen, Rosalie’s unstated but obvious conviction that her daughter had brought home a nobody opportunist had stung, especially because Bianca had been keenly aware of what her not-father actually did for a living, and that she herself was a part of it. As her high school years passed and the feeling didn’t go away, she’d diagnosed herself as suffering from impostor syndrome because she secretly didn’t feel like she belonged among the elite megarich kids who filled Le Rosey’s halls. Then she’d realized that she suffered from impostor syndrome because she was, in fact, an impostor, which didn’t make handling Rosalie’s attitude toward her any easier. But she had persevered, and now she was able to deal with Rosalie with perfect equanimity. On more than one occasion, Evie had grimly pointed out that this was easy for Bianca as she didn’t have any skin in the game.

  “Hay’s a great guy,” Evie said to her mother. “And a good friend.”

  Evie was beginning to glower, which was never an attractive look for her and especially not tonight, when with her natural curls twisted into a headful of ringlets and her cheeks flushed and her red-lipsticked mouth pursed with annoyance she looked like a Kewpie doll. An angry, pregnant Kewpie doll. In a lemon yellow dress that fell straight from the twist of white ribbons that cinched it around the smallest part of her body—right under her breasts—to a flounce at her ankles. The look was more English Regency than Southern Antebellum, but as Evie had pointed out when she was trying on costumes, she would be wider than she was tall if she opted for a gown with a hoop skirt in her current condition.

  Mary and Paul Bretton and Glenda Tandy joined them. All were Rosalie’s contemporaries. Paul was the president of Georgia Sun Bank, and Mary and Glenda were partners in a decorating business. Mary and Paul had opted to age naturally. Both were a little plump, a little gray. Blond Glenda was as underfed and ageless looking as Rosalie. The mandatory hugs and air-kisses were rendered more awkward than usual because of the clashing hoops beneath the women’s billowing skirts.

  Mary said, “Evie, honey, you’ve done a simply wonderful job here tonight! People are bidding out the wazoo on some of those silent auction items.” As Evie nodded her thanks, Mary looked at Rosalie. “Your little girl’s doing you proud.”

  Rosalie smiled. “I know she is. She is the most accomplished thing! Did you know she’s working for dear Bianca now? She did all this while she’s actually holding down a job.”

  “That’s amazing.” Mary smiled at Bianca, while Glenda leaned in to ask Evie, in a confidential whisper, “How are you doing?”

  Glenda was referring to the divorce rather than the pregnancy, as both her tone and her commiserating expression made clear.

  “Just fine,” Evie answered with a brittle smile.

  Mary looke
d at Bianca. “I hear good things about that business of yours. You’re really starting to make your mark in our little town.”

  Bianca responded with a polite murmur. The thing about Savannah was, if you weren’t born there you were never really 100 percent one of them. But still, she loved the small city, and she was willing to work at being a part of it. It was the closest thing to home she’d ever known.

  Paul said to her, “Les Harper’s been singing your praises. Says you’ve got a guy who really knows his way around computer system security. Keep this strictly confidential, but our bank’s been having some problems with that. Why don’t you give me a call next week, and we can set up an appointment for you to talk to us about it?”

  “I’ll do that, Paul,” Bianca replied with a smile.

  “Did you see that condo in Aspen they’re offering for Christmas week? I think it was Item Number 62,” Mary said to Rosalie, pointing to a picture in the open catalog she was holding so Rosalie could check it out. “Glenda and I were thinking that we could get a few friends together and spend the holidays there this year.”

  “What a good idea.” Rosalie looked up from the catalog. “Let’s go see where the bidding is. Excuse us, darling.” This she addressed to Evie.

  Evie said, “Of course. You all have fun.”

  With murmured goodbyes, the quartet headed off.

  “Thank goodness,” Evie said, then nudged Bianca. “Sun Bank—see there? Networking pays off. And I’m still holding out for that bonus.”

  “You just keep on—” holding, was how Bianca was going to finish her reply, but Evie interrupted.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered. Her expression changed dramatically, going from teasing laughter to frozen rigidity in the space of about a second. She grabbed hold of Bianca’s arm above the elbow. “Here comes Fourth.”

  Bianca looked in the direction that Evie was now carefully not looking.

  Fourth was a hair short of six feet tall, with a runner’s lean physique and a long, lantern-jawed face. His hair was dark gold, longish, brushed back. He was clean-shaven, with a long nose, long mouth and pale blue eyes. If Bianca hadn’t known him so well, she might have thought he was handsome. But she did, and she didn’t.