Puppet Master

by Dale Brown

  “Well I have it,” said Martyak. She went back inside and got her cell phone.

  “Here, I’ll call,” said Borya, picking up her own.

  “Are you calling his overseas phone, or his domestic?” asked Martyak.

  Domestic is such a weird word.

  “Whichever one he answers,” said Borya.

  “I’m calling his sat phone.” Martyak already had it dialed in.

  Go ahead, thought Borya. Her father never answered that line; his regular phone nearly always worked in whatever country he was in.

  Borya called the cell. But it went to voice mail after four rings.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she said. “The babysitter is getting nervous because you haven’t called. I told her everything is fine. But, you know how girls are. I love you.”

  She hung up.

  “It says leave a message.” Martyak held up the phone, as if to show her.

  “So? Leave one.”

  “Mr. Tolevi, we were just checking in,” said Martyak. “Everything is fine here. We’re working on an essay on King Lear.”

  Borya rolled her eyes.

  “Hope to talk to you soon,” said Martyak, hanging up.

  Borya and her father had a code—if she called on the sat phone, he would realize she really needed to talk to him, and he would call her right back from his cell. She figured the code would hold up even if it was the babysitter who called. She went over to the refrigerator, phone in hand, and got out some soda.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” said Martyak.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Still working on Lear?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Want help?”

  “Nope.”

  “Goneril is my favorite character.”

  She would be, thought Borya, staring at the computer screen.

  Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. A half hour.

  Really, Dad, what are you doing that’s more important than me?

  60

  Boston—about the same time

  “I hear you turned Johnny Givens down for a job,” said Chelsea, greeting Louis Massina when he walked into her office. “How come?”

  “I didn’t turn him down. I told him there’d be a job for him when he got better. He still has a long way to go.”

  “He didn’t hear that part,” said Chelsea. “The only part he heard was no.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “You know, Lou, you can be kind of, well, deaf sometimes. To other people’s emotions.”

  Massina frowned. “Best to be direct in the long run,” he told her. “People appreciate you being honest.”

  “Honest and blunt are different.”

  “I wasn’t blunt.” Massina brushed his hand, tired of the argument. “What’s new with our ATM project?”

  “It was an application layer attack on the local machines,” said Chelsea. “The solution isn’t difficult—it’s just fixing old code. But that’ll still be patchwork. I have a better system. I just need to test it.”

  “Marketable?”

  “Absolutely. The whole ATM system is ridiculous,” continued Chelsea. “It’s 1970s tech. I mean like, forget it.”

  “Put together a task line and get ready to hand it off. I want you back on Peter. Las Vegas is coming up, and we need him ready.”

  “You’re going to demonstrate him at a consumer show?”

  “Why not?”

  “You want to go into mass production?”

  “Eventually.” Massina’s real goal was to kick a little sand into the eyes of a competitor who had just pulled out of the show. The bot was at least a year from any sort of regular production and even then it would be far too expensive for anyone but the most deep-pocketed company or the government to buy. But some wows from the media would look good in the marketing material.

  “I talked to Flores, at the FBI, last night,” Chelsea added as he was about to leave. “He was trying to pump me for information on the girl.”

  “Last night?”

  “He made it look like a date.”

  There was a wistful note in her voice.

  Hmmmm, thought Massina. “What did he ask?”

  “Nothing specific. But they’re definitely still working on the case, no matter what they told you.”

  “If they want to cooperate, they should just come out and say that,” Massina told her. “You see? It’s best to be direct.”

  “Should I tell Agent Jenkins that?”

  “No. Let them come to us. Or me. You’re sure this girl is responsible?”

  “No. But she’s smart enough. Maybe we should hire her.”

  “You’re going to be running my HR department soon.”

  Chelsea watched her boss leave. She wasn’t kidding about getting Borya Tolevi to work there. Not as a full-fledged employee: she needed to go to college and get more formal training. But the girl needed something to push her in the right direction. She was a smart kid, interested and intrigued—there was huge potential there if she just got the right chance.

  She needed someone like Chelsea’s dad to push her. She didn’t have that.

  That was the difference between them.

  Maybe. Borya was far more rebellious. Chelsea would never have broken into an ATM network.

  Not that she couldn’t have.

  No, Borya was already a thief and a black hat hacker. If anything, she should be locked up in jail—and she would be if Chelsea told Jenkins what she knew.

  Give her a job here? Ha!

  Maybe it would steer her in the right direction. And Johnny Givens?

  He was cute.

  And incredibly strong. Mentally. It was impossible that he was out walking around. His face was still covered with scabs, his arms red with flash burns—and yet there he was, walking on artificial limbs Massina had invented.

  Other people, too, but Massina mostly. The prosthetics were an obsession.

  Chelsea rose from her workstation. Borya did remind her of herself, or a self she could have been under different circumstances.

  How am I going to save her?

  Massina headed home to change, then drove to the Antiquarian Club, where he had promised to put in an appearance at a fund-raiser. He didn’t particularly like playing VIP, but it was a favor to a member of his board of directors.

  It meant putting on a tie as well as a suit. He fiddled with it in his bathroom, trying to get the knot centered perfectly. It wasn’t easy, and he was too distracted, thinking about a million things: ramping up production on a new bot line, repurposing an older generation of chips for handheld devices, the possibility of revamping ATM networks, Chelsea’s dalliance—or not—with the FBI agent.

  And that little girl hacker.

  Give the girl a job? Throw her in jail first. What’s wrong with parents today?

  Thirty minutes later, tie still slightly askew, Massina walked into the lounge at the Antiquarian Club. The club’s name was not meant ironically—it was devoted to preserving the past, raising funds for the city’s museums and historical sites. He shook hands with the VIP host, then nodded his way to the bar, where he had just obtained a four-finger bourbon when a familiar voice scolded him.

  “Now Louis, remember you have to give a speech,” said Sister Rose.

  “Sister Rose Marie. Night off?”

  “They cut the ball and chain for special events,” said the nun.

  “I don’t have to say more than five words. That’s in my contract. What are you drinking?”

  “Seltzer, please.”

  “Not white wine?”

  “Too early. I might tell some of the politicians what I think of them, and things would be awkward for the rest of the evening.”

  “Sister, I don’t think you’ve ever offended anyone in your life. Even your insults are a blessing.”

  “Don’t butter the bun on both sides, Louis. It’s likely to fall.”

  Massina got her the drink.

  “Your young man made remarkab
le progress,” she told him, sipping the seltzer daintily. “The drug regime is very, very good. And, of course, God was with him.”

  “He came by and asked me for a job today.”

  “Really?”

  “I told him he has months to go. But he has the right attitude.”

  “You can’t let him go back to work yet. He needs time.”

  “I don’t intend to. Down the road, maybe.”

  “Make it a long road, Louis. This is very fast.”

  “If you’re thinking of poaching him, Sister, you’re welcome to take first shot. Half the people on my payroll work for you as it is. Or they think they do.”

  “I’m worried about the effects as the drugs taper off.”

  The mayor’s wife greeted Sister Rose, interrupting the conversation. Massina excused himself; spotting his board member, he went over and said hello. He soon found himself talking to a Harvard history professor who was an expert on the Revolutionary War and was working with an archaeologist planning to excavate a site near the harbor. The site was not that far from his laboratories.

  Dinner passed quickly. Massina gave his very brief speech commending the organization with a slogan his PR director had suggested—The future needs the past to get ahead—and made his getaway as the session broke up.

  Out front, he gave his car’s ticket to the valet and waited for the vehicle to arrive. Different projects flicked through his mind, problems, solutions.

  Will Peter be ready to demonstrate?

  How much of a test should it be given?

  His car pulled up. He reached for his wallet to get a tip for the attendant.

  At that same moment, someone behind him shoved a cloth bag over his head. Before he could react, something slammed into the back of his head. A curse died on his lips as he fell, unconscious.

  61

  Near Donetsk—about two hours later

  Tolevi’s wife watched him run through the deserted streets. Somehow she kept up with him, even though she wasn’t moving. Dark clouds passed overhead. He looked up and saw they were airplanes, jet bombers. As he stared, they fell to earth, landing on legs that sprouted from their wings.

  Robots.

  He was surrounded. Their black metal smelled like coal dust and iron, pulverized grit.

  He began to choke. He glanced up and his wife was looking at him, concerned.

  “How are you here?” he asked her.

  “You are dreaming,” she said. “You fell asleep.”

  Tolevi woke with a hard shudder, disoriented. It took a moment to remember where he was: on the bench in the house near Donetsk.

  People were moving around upstairs and inside. He seemed to have been forgotten.

  Maybe I should just leave.

  He got up, a little unsteady.

  “So you’re back with us?” asked a bearded man at the end of the hallway.

  Tolevi wasn’t sure he was speaking to him. “Me?”

  “Come in here.”

  Tolevi got up and walked down the hall, flexing the stiff muscles in his legs. He rubbed his shoulders; the house felt cold.

  The bearded man sat behind a desk. The room looked like a den. There were stuffed animals on the shelves, and large animal heads on the wall: a lynx, an elk, a moose. The rug was striped; it took a moment for Tolevi to realize it was a leopard’s skin. Various small birds lined the shelves, the taxidermist having posed them in perfect gestures suggesting flight.

  “Gabor Tolevi,” said the man. “Tell me why you shouldn’t be executed as a spy.”

  “A spy?”

  “And a smuggler.”

  “I’m just a businessman.”

  “Moscow likes you,” said the man behind the desk. He was speaking Russian, though his accent indicated he might be Ukrainian. More likely he was a Russian native but had spent considerable time in the republic before the war. “Yes, Moscow likes you, but I’m not sure.”

  The man leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, revealing a tattoo on his right biceps. Most of it was obscured, but the bottom looked like a set of crossed swords at the base of a skull. “Your papers give you the right to import medicine,” he told Tolevi.

  “Yes. It’s much needed.”

  The man opened his desk drawer and took out a lighter. Picking up the papers on the desktop before him, he flicked, igniting the flame.

  Tolevi debated whether to say anything. It didn’t seem worthwhile—what could he say to make the man stop?

  Your people in Moscow asked me to do this?

  That clearly had no weight.

  The paper flared. The bearded man held on to it as the flames engulfed his hand, then he dropped the black curl to the desk.

  “You’ll go back to America,” said the man. “You’re not needed here. I don’t care what Moscow says. We have plenty of black marketeers. All of them more honest than you and your masters in Moscow.”

  “OK.”

  The man laughed. “No argument?”

  Tolevi shrugged. “What can I say?”

  “Why did you go into that end of town?”

  “I was looking for a place to store the goods.”

  “Why would you need a storehouse?”

  “If things went well, I wouldn’t. But in this sort of business—anything can happen.”

  “Yes. You might lose your papers. You might go home empty-handed. And be lucky to get there.”

  “I agree.”

  The bearded man pushed his hand across the desk, removing the ashes that had fallen.

  “One of my men will drive you to the city. Wait outside.”

  Tolevi started to leave.

  “I would not stay in Donetsk for very much longer,” added the bearded man. “It is not a safe place. Too many recidivists and anti-democrats marching around. You never know what may happen.”

  62

  Boston—around the same time

  Massina regained consciousness in a grungy room with a view of the Charles River. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were chained to the leg of the couch he’d been deposited on. He knew it had to be past midnight, though his watch had been taken, along with his wallet and phone.

  While he was well off, Massina had never considered himself a prime target for kidnapping or even robbery. The company’s security forces were focused on the plant and IP, not his own person. So he looked at the situation the way he looked at everything unexpected: with great intellectual curiosity. What did these thugs think they were going to get, and why? How were they going about it? What were their assumptions and their motivations?

  Money would be a good guess as to the latter.

  Standing, he found he could move a few feet from the couch before being held back by the chain. He stretched as best he could, then tried to figure out where exactly he was by staring out the window at the darkened river.

  Lights were scattered along the far shore. He thought he could see the outline of the bridge to his right, but the window wasn’t clean enough for him to get a good view of what was outside.

  West maybe of Arsenal Street or Route 20.

  He strained to see if there was traffic on the bridge—a lot of traffic would make it the highway, but he couldn’t tell from where he was standing.

  “Awake, good!”

  Massina jerked around. A man leaned up against the corner of the room. Massina hadn’t even realized he was there.

  “You’re pretty rich, huh?” said the man.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Just to make sure you were OK. I apologize for the rough handling. It was a mistake. The people responsible have been punished.”

  His face was obscured by the shadows, but Massina guessed that he was in his thirties. He spoke English with a heavy accent, Russian or German.

  “Is this a kidnapping?”

  “A kidnapping, no? Not even a robbery. Your wallet and phone are in the outside room.” The man stepped forward. His face was covered by a ski mask. Massina tried to
guess his size—over six feet, but by how much?

  “Here’s the key,” said the man, turning as he reached the door. He threw a small ball of tape at Massina, hitting him in the chest. The ball dropped to the floor near the couch. “You may go when you free yourself.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Friends. You may do well to take on investors,” added the man. “As insurance in the future.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Massina, but the man left the room without answering.

  63

  Donetsk, early morning

  Two burly men in civilian clothes drove Tolevi back to the city. They were quiet the whole way, but it didn’t take much to guess that they were Russians. The fact that they weren’t hiding their faces was a good sign, he thought: it meant they felt he had been sufficiently cowed not to be of further trouble.

  It might also mean that they were going to kill him. He tried not to think about that possibility.

  Whatever they were thinking, the less they knew about him, the better. The hotel key card was generic enough that it might not have been recognized; even if it had, a little misdirection might be useful. So he told the men to take him to the Ramada, which was on Shevchenka Boulevard near the reservoir. They dropped him there and took off quickly, not even bothering to wait until he entered the building.

  Aside from the fact that the hotel was in eastern Ukraine—or the Donetsk People’s Republic—it was similar to every other Ramada on the planet. Tolevi went inside, nodded at the sleepy desk clerk, then walked over to the large coffeepot set up at the far end of the lobby. He filled a cup, then went out to the patio near the pool to sit, as if he were waiting for someone. He was surprised to find that his jaw, although painful as hell, was working. Maybe it wasn’t broken after all.

  What he was really doing was sorting himself out. He’d lost his prepaid phone; he’d need a new one. Using either the sat phone or his regular cell, which were both back at the hotel, was now out of the question while he was in the city. The Russians used scanning technology just like the Americans; they might not be quite as sophisticated, but even they could figure out how to snag his number, location, and even conversations.