Puppet Master

by Dale Brown

  Without the documents permitting him to bring the drugs in, there was no sense contacting the men he’d planned to deal with. He’d only be putting them in danger, and at best he’d be cutting off the possibility of future deals. So that part of his trip was over.

  SVR would not be happy. But they could take that up with the bearded Spetsnaz general.

  More likely a colonel. Tolevi decided he would think of him as a colonel, though the man had not made his rank clear.

  Were the Russians following him? The two men who’d dropped him off seemed not to care very much about him, but that could easily be a ruse.

  Maybe they knew everything.

  It was easy to get too paranoid, to let fear freeze you.

  On the other hand, he had narrowly escaped death. The Russian operation against the loyalists had saved him.

  But was that an accident? Or was that even part of a plan?

  Too much thinking. Stop.

  The coffee was terrible. Tolevi rose and dumped it on the concrete. He walked through the lobby and back out to the street, where he checked his watch.

  Five past five.

  Too early to see Fodor.

  He decided he would get something to eat, then collect his luggage and ask the old man for a ride to the border. Surely he knew a way across.

  Get home and regroup. He’d come up with something else for Medved.

  It was a decent walk to the Donbass Hotel, a bit over twenty minutes. The air was still damp, but the predawn sky showed the clouds were breaking up; Tolevi guessed it would be a decent spring day once the sun came up. He imagined himself showing Borya Ukraine—not this Ukraine but the Ukraine of his youth.

  An improbable dream now, but these idiots couldn’t stay at war forever; remove Putin and the conflict would likely evaporate. And Putin wasn’t as secure as the West believed.

  Yes, but he would die before giving up power willingly? What Russian would?

  Tolevi was lost in his thoughts as he neared the hotel. It was the fatigue and the calmness that came with having a plan. In a place like Donetsk—in any place really, given his profession—it was very dangerous, and he realized it as soon as he entered the lobby and saw Dan rising from a couch to confront him.

  “You’re up,” said Tolevi in Russian, as matter-of-factly as he could muster. “I thought we weren’t meeting for another hour and a half.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Just a walk,” said Tolevi. “Have you had breakfast?”

  The other man glared at him. He had the look of someone who thought he’d been cheated, or about to be cheated.

  “Come on,” added Tolevi. “Let’s get coffee and food.”

  “Where?” demanded Dan.

  “There’s a good place across the street,” said Tolevi. “Come.”

  The café where he’d stopped the afternoon before was not yet open, but another shop farther along the block was. The owner was clearly a morning person; he greeted the two men warmly and struck up a conversation with Tolevi about how difficult it was to find good coffee anymore.

  As the man went on with his complaints, Tolevi slyly eyed Dan. The driver’s anger had started to dissipate, but his body language said he didn’t trust Tolevi. That wasn’t particularly surprising, and in a way it was reassuring—he wasn’t trying to hide his feelings, which told Tolevi that he wasn’t working for the Russians at least, or probably anyone else.

  But it didn’t mean Tolevi could trust him either.

  He wouldn’t turn on him as long as he was expecting to be paid, Tolevi decided. After that, though . . .

  Another customer came into the shop, and the owner ended the conversation.

  “He talks a lot,” said Dan.

  “Everyone has a story.”

  “For all his complaints, you would think his coffee would be better.”

  “It’s about what I had in Russia.”

  “No. Russian coffee is better.”

  Tolevi stirred his cup. The coffee wasn’t particularly good.

  An opportunity?

  “You know, driving a few suitcases of coffee over the border might be a good idea for you,” he suggested to the Russian. “You might be able to pick up some extra money.”

  “Too risky.”

  “No riskier than driving me across. Less.”

  Dan shrugged.

  “What if you had a permit?” asked Tolevi.

  “Where would I get that?”

  “Do you go across the borders a lot?”

  “Enough.”

  “Do you go west?”

  “Into Ukraine? Of course.”

  Just then a pair of twenty-something women entered the shop and came toward their table. Tolevi changed the subject, commenting on how pretty they looked. Dan glanced at them, then said they were nothing special.

  “Maybe you’re right.” Tolevi pretended to agree. “I’m just deprived.”

  “The beautiful women are in Crimea,” said Dan. “That’s the place to see them.”

  “I agree with that.”

  “You’ve been to Crimea recently?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  Their breakfast came: rolls with mystery meat. It had a strong taste that hinted of sour anchovies; Tolevi ate anyway. He’d missed dinner and was operating on no sleep, something that always made him hungry. He hoped he wouldn’t pay for it later.

  If the taste bothered Dan, it wasn’t obvious. He cleaned his plate in two gulps.

  “I can get you to Crimea if you want,” offered the driver.

  “It’s a long way,” said Tolevi.

  “We can go directly. A few hours.”

  Before the war, driving from Donetsk to the isthmus would have taken at least six hours. Now, assuming one could get across the two borders and make it through the potentially dangerous area in between, Tolevi reckoned it would be at least ten.

  “How?” he asked Dan.

  “I have a friend with a boat.”

  “Where?”

  “If you are serious, then we’ll talk about it,” said Dan. “You don’t need details. And you will have to pay.”

  “No, I don’t need details. You’re right.”

  “You want to leave today?”

  Tolevi took a final sip of his coffee, working the small grinds that had been at the bottom of the cup around his tongue. Was the driver’s offer a trap?

  “I have some things to do,” he told Dan, pulling out some rubles to pay. “Let’s see how the day goes before we decide.”

  64

  Boston

  The police were professional.

  That was the best and the worst Massina could say. They went through the building with him, checking for any overt sign of his captors; naturally there was none. They didn’t bother checking for fingerprints, let alone DNA.

  “That’s CSI stuff,” said the lieutenant in charge. “It looks great on TV, and everyone thinks it’s a miracle drug, like aspirin, fixes everything, solves every crime. But look at this place.”

  He swept his hand around the empty room. It was the top floor of a five-story office building that had not been occupied in more than a year. Its previous owners had leased it to a video game company that had gone bankrupt; since that time, it had been vacant, used mostly by vagrants and homeless drifters, except for a two-week stint a month before, when a film company rented out the floor.

  “We wouldn’t know where to begin with DNA,” said the lieutenant apologetically. “There’s so much potential for things being around, for contamination—”

  “Can’t you tell what’s fresh?” asked Massina.

  The lieutenant’s sigh was the sort an exasperated parent might make when explaining to a three-year-old that the world was round for the five hundredth time.

  Just because, kid. Don’t you get it?

  They weren’t completely without leads: Massina’s Cadillac could be swept, though even there the police thought they’d find little. And they would look for video survei
llance cameras at the club and on the route to the building. They had Massina sit with an artist, who tried to get a composite sketch of the man who’d spoken to him. But since he hadn’t seen the man’s actual face, they ended up with only the most generic description: roughly six foot, average build, foreign accent.

  “I narrowed it down to maybe a tenth of Boston’s population,” said Massina sardonically when they were done.

  “It’s a start,” said the artist.

  I oughta nominate you for optimist of the year, Massina thought as he left.

  Bozzone, Smart Metal’s head of security, was more sympathetic than the police, but he, too, offered little hope when he picked Massina up at the police station.

  “The theory is, they made a mistake. They found out who you were and backed off,” said Bozzone after ushering his boss into one of the company cars, a GMC Jimmy. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Who were they looking for?” asked Massina.

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. There are plenty of possibilities. There are a bunch of people who have cars like yours.”

  “Could this be related to the ATM scam?”

  “They’re looking into that,” said Bozzone. “You might mention it to Jenkins. But from what they said to you, it doesn’t quite match. And Chelsea said that was a kid, right?”

  “True.”

  Bozzone walked through Massina’s house with him, carefully checking for signs of an intrusion even though the security system indicated there had been none.

  “Put a hold on all your credit cards,” suggested Beefy after they were done. “And get new ones.”

  “What a pain.” Massina walked to the kitchen.

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’d like to get back to sleep, if it’s all right.”

  “Go on.”

  The security director hesitated.

  “What?” asked Massina.

  “About that business with the ATMs.”

  “You think it’s connected?”

  “No. But I think you went over the line.”

  Massina opened the cupboard and retrieved a box of green tea. He wasn’t particularly concerned about caffeine content; it was only a few hours to dawn, and he’d already decided he wasn’t going to get any meaningful sleep.

  “I’m not trying to lecture you,” added Bozzone. “But once you start going down this road, you open yourself up to all sorts of things.”

  “Noted. Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Why don’t you go home, then?” Massina suggested. “I’m sure Tricia’s wondering what’s keeping you.”

  “She could sleep through a hurricane,” said Beefy. “Thanks. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Two hours later, having showered and done some yoga to loosen up, Massina headed in to his office. He loved coming to work, and Saturdays were his favorite days to be there; while the place was far from empty, his calendar was generally free, allowing him to roam at will. He liked to plant himself at the back of a lab and watch what was going on; he loved listening to conversations among engineers and scientists as they puzzled over problems. True, his presence often made such exchanges stilted, or cut them off prematurely, but he relished even the snippets of true creative endeavor and the conflict it sometimes brought. The words fail forward were more than a slogan to him. Wandering around his building kept him close to the hidden energy of the place.

  Smart Metal’s vast array of projects was both an asset and a detriment from a business point of view—an asset because it continually presented fresh areas of commercialization, and a detriment because it divided the attention not just of Massina but his staff as well. If the company had been publically traded, it would have had to stop and focus on one area or another—probably robotics, as that was not only its most profitable area but also the one with the best growth potential. But that was one of the reasons Massina kept the business private: he wanted Smart Metal to do what he wanted it to do, which was varied and full of possibilities.

  Massina went down to what they called “Underground Arena One,” a very large workspace under the back of the building. It had been excavated during World War II for some reason no longer remembered, then covered by a two-story addition to the building. During his renovation, Massina had had the floors above the basement gutted so that the space was just under fifty feet high, and completely open; some municipal convention centers were smaller.

  Peter—RBT PJT 23.A to Massina—was undergoing new tests this morning on “his” intuition system, the AI component that was supposed to let the robot spontaneously make decisions. The tests were open ended, as the engineers did not know exactly what the machine would do—more or less the point, after all, of the whole spontaneity concept. Massina came in when the robot was surveying a row of cages occupied by puppies. The dogs, curious about the roving mechanical creature, barked wildly as it approached. Massina went over and stood by Chelsea, who was in charge of the AI section and had designed the test.

  “What’s going to happen?” Massina asked as the robot paused in front of a rather rambunctious Dalmatian.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What are you going to do if it decides to kill them because they’re so loud?”

  Chelsea held up the unit’s remote. There was only one command showing on the touch screen: stop.

  Massina smirked.

  Peter peered in the cage, taking a series of measurements. Then it moved on to the next. Massina went to one of the monitoring units and saw that the bot was primarily interested in the dogs’ heartbeats and body temperatures. It worked its way down the row, then came back to the Dalmatian.

  The bot reached one of its arms toward the cage. The Dalmatian, which had been barking loudly, quieted, then moved back. Haunches up, it prepared to spring. Massina heard a distinct warning growl above the yip and yap of the other dogs.

  Peter withdrew its hand, snapped the lock on the cage, and pulled the door open. Then it backed out.

  The bot had decided to free the dogs.

  Confused, the Dalmatian hesitated before bolting from its pen. The robot, meanwhile, freed the shepherd mix next to it.

  “You better turn it off,” Massina told Chelsea, suppressing a laugh. “We’ll never round them all up.”

  Peter managed to free two more dogs before Chelsea pressed the Stop button. The animals took a victory lap around the caged area, then went over and sniffed their savior, perhaps wondering if there was a way they could return the favor. The support team went to work trying to corral them, moving in with treats and leashes.

  “I’ll bet it thought they were in distress,” said Chelsea.

  “A good theory,” said Massina. “I want to talk to you about something. Maybe upstairs, where things are a little quieter.”

  “Tell me where we are with the ATM project,” said Massina as he pulled out his desk chair to sit.

  “I have to pull together a proposal,” said Chelsea. “I didn’t get to it—I needed to make sure Peter was ready for the test so we stay on track.”

  “You have a reasonable idea of what happened with the ATMs, though?”

  “Reasonable, yes.”

  “And it involved the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was wrong.” Massina put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “I should have told you not to look at the accounts.”

  “I didn’t go into the accounts or the banking system,” said Chelsea. “I looked at the video.”

  “You didn’t hack into the systems?”

  “No, Lou. Not at all.”

  “Good. Good on you.” He sat back in the chair. “I got carried away about working with the FBI. I should have been more thoughtful.”

  “OK.”

  There was a faraway look in his eyes, as if he’d already started thinking about something else.

  “
The girl,” said Chelsea.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s worth saving.”

  “I’m sure the FBI—”

  “They’ll throw her in jail,” interrupted Chelsea.

  “That’s not where she belongs?”

  “Hell no. And I’m not completely sure it was her,” added Chelsea. “Without hacking into the account—”

  “Which you’re not going to do.”

  “Check. So I don’t know with one hundred percent certainty that it was her.”

  “But you strongly suspect her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have to tell Jenkins that.”

  “I agree. But I’d like to do it my way. And yes, I think she can be saved. She’s not evil. She’s just . . . a girl.”

  65

  Boston, an hour later

  Borya answered her cell phone as soon as it started to ring.

  “Daddy?”

  “Borya? This is Chelsea Goodman, from Smart Metal.”

  “Oh. . . . Hello.”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to continue your tour today.”

  “Of your labs? Sure.” Borya glanced at Mary Martyak, who was sitting across from her at the kitchen table, finishing her lunch.

  Always eating, the fat slob.

  “Great,” said Chelsea. “I’m just driving up your block.”

  “You are?”

  “Can you come now?”

  “Um . . .” Borya searched her mind for an excuse to give Martyak. “Wait a minute.”

  “What’s going on?” asked the babysitter.

  “A friend, um . . .”

  Martyak looked at her. Borya couldn’t find the right words for a plausible lie.

  Tell her the truth. Why not?

  “A friend of mine wants to give me a tour of this cool lab where they make robots.” The words gushed from Borya’s mouth.

  “Oh?”

  “Want to come?” Borya asked.

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s here in Boston.”