Dean looked up at the top of the truck. Several rounds had come through the walls.
“Some effect,” he said.
“The problem with dealing with the Russians is that you have to act like the Russians,” said Karr. “You have to be as totally obnoxious about things as they would be. Otherwise they get suspicious.”
The agent explained that they had made the operation look like a rival mafiya gang had hit the storehouse of another, blowing up most of their vehicles with a Russian version of C-4. Hitting the trucks on the way out was necessary, since a rival gang would not have missed such an easy opportunity.
“Plus we wanted to get rid of the part from our airplane,” added Karr.
“Was it your airplane?” Dean asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Now what do we do?”
“See, they found the wreckage and scavenged the engines,” Karr explained. “But they also brought along a little piece of the tail with some Russian serial numbers. The Art Room will check it out, but in the meantime we’re going to go to the place where they found it and see if anything else is left.”
“Why didn’t we go there in the first place?” Dean asked.
“Not my call,” said Karr. “But I assume they had it under surveillance, saw that these guys took something, and wanted to find out what it was. It was the motors, right, Lia? I mean, you do know the difference between motors and wings.”
“Oh, har-har.”
“If you hadn’t taken out the guards, we might have just snuck out,” Karr told Dean. “But that kind of committed us. Better to blow all the shit up anyway. Plus I can’t resist using the Russian bazooka. What’d you think of the pyro shit at the gas tanks? Wasn’t that cool?”
“If I hadn’t taken them out they would have killed you,” said Dean.
“Water over the dam now.”
“Wait a second. You’re criticizing me for bailing you out? I saved your butts.”
“I’m not criticizing you, Charlie,” said Karr. He sounded almost hurt.
“We almost got killed. Your high-tech gear isn’t worth shit,” said Dean. He began surveying his body to see if any of the various aches and pains he felt were serious wounds. “And your plan sucked.”
“Oh, please,” said Lia.
“Well, the support team didn’t cover itself with glory,” said Karr. “I’ll give you that. But we weren’t almost killed.”
“You got ambushed. If I wasn’t there, you’d be dead.”
“If you weren’t there, we would’ve done it differently.”
“I suppose the Marines have a better way,” said Lia.
“A Marine operation would have had more people.”
“And less dogs,” said Karr brightly.
“Yeah. Your high-tech gizmos were outsmarted by dogs,” said Dean. “Shit.”
“Nobody in the Art Room has pets. That’s the problem,” said Karr, stepping on the accelerator.
16
Alexsandr Kurakin nodded as his adviser continued, talking about how Kurakin might refine his image for the coming elections. American-style election consultants with their polls and slick advertising styles had been mandatory since the 1990s; Kurakin himself had first used the consultants to win election to the state parliament. But there was a great deal of witchcraft involved, and he trusted these men even less than he did the parliament.
“Your popularity in the countryside remains strong,” said the consultant, whom Kurakin privately referred to as Boris Americanski. The man gestured toward the chart he had projected on the wall, the gold of his pinkie ring catching a glint. He talked like an American consultant, but he dressed like a Russian gangster. Kurakin hated both, though necessity at times demanded they be used.
More and more he found himself a prisoner of necessity. Not since the breakup of the Soviet Union had Russia been so ungovernable, so at odds with itself. By any economic measure, by any social indicator, it was in chaos. The future promised by the democratic reformers had proven to be the stuff of a child’s fairy tale. No, crueler—a parent’s promise of a plentiful Christmas when foreclosure loomed instead.
Kurakin felt the bitterness more deeply than most of the people he governed. He himself had been one of the reformers; many of the now-empty promises had emanated from his own mouth.
He had been a true believer. He trusted in the people and the system to bring a better life to ordinary Russians—to his parents and brother still living in the east beyond the Urals and still, by any definition, ordinary Russians.
The president strode around the room as the consultant continued to speak. Some months ago Kurakin had moved his offices from the Senate to the Arsenal as a security measure. His quarters were cramped, altogether inadequate, but the move had been necessary. It was, to him, an important symbolic concession to reality, and to the course that he knew he must pursue.
Kurakin had lost faith, not in the people, not in the future, but in the system. Democracy did not work, at least not here. Special interests blocked true reform. Graft and corruption diverted energy and resources from where they were needed. Old hatreds—some even dating from Stalin’s day!— poisoned the legislature. Rivalries in the military drained morale. He saw and understood everything, and it was his responsibility as president to fix it.
He would do so, but with his own methods. In parliament, a bill suggesting that the sun rose in the morning would not make it to the floor for a vote if it was whispered that he supported it.
The rebels in the south were an even more enduring and obstinate irritation. But he could not deal with them forcefully, as Putin had dealt with Chechnya, because of the Americans.
Indeed, Kurakin felt checked at every point by the U.S. The American president professed to like him—Kurakin kept his own opinion of the man well hidden—yet blocked Russia from taking its proper place as partner in NATO or the Middle East. More critically, the Americans threatened to call in their loans and end a long list of programs if Russia punished China for aiding the southern rebels or dealt too severely with the rebels themselves. The Americans had recently taken to monitoring the Kazakhstan border. It was a particularly egregious slap, considering how Russia had assisted the U.S. in its war against the Islamic militants in Afghanistan.
“The good news is, no other likely opponent polls higher than fifteen percent,” said Boris, who’d been droning on, oblivious to the president’s disinterest.
“The bad news is, I poll fourteen,” said Kurakin dryly.
“It’s not quite that bad.”
“I still have my sense of humor,” the president told the consultant. His approval hovered between 35 and 43 percent and had since the election.
“Historically, it’s not bad. Look at Yeltsin. Russians love to hate their leaders.”
Yes, thought Kurakin, unless they give the people a reason to hate them. In that case they love them.
The phone on Kurakin’s desk buzzed. His appointments secretary was trying to keep him on schedule; his 7:15 A.M. appointment had already been waiting ten minutes.
“Our time is up,” Kurakin told Boris abruptly. “Your check will be sent.”
The consultant gave him an odd look.
“Yes, I’m terminating the contract,” Kurakin said. “I’ve decided to go in another direction.”
“You haven’t hired one of the German firms, have you?”
“I’m not going to work with a consultant,” said the president. “I’m going to handle things on my own.”
Boris clearly didn’t believe him, but there was little else for him to say. He shrugged and was still standing by the door when the president’s next appointment was ushered in.
17
Rubens folded his arms in front of his cashmere sweater, staring at the distant hills that undulated beyond the glass wall of his house. The dawn was just breaking, and from here the dappled hills looked like perfect little mounds of untouched greenery; if you discounted the odd pockmark or two, they presented an
image of untamed and untouched nature. But Rubens knew there were houses and roads all through those hills, and if the area wasn’t nearly as developed as the geography immediately to the south and east, it was anything but pristine.
That, unfortunately, was an excellent metaphor for Representative Johnson Greene’s death. From the distance—even from the ten or fifteen feet away that Rubens had been standing when it happened—it was a bizarre, ridiculous, and ultimately coincidental tragedy. Up close, it was something more complicated.
Rubens had been interviewed by two FBI investigators in the presence of an NSA attorney and a representative from the agency’s Office of Security yesterday afternoon. It was clear from their faces that he told them absolutely nothing that they had not known already. It was also clear that they were very disappointed—obviously, they wanted to prove that the death had not been accidental. They undoubtedly saw the investigation as a ticket to better things, assuming they could prove it was something more than an accident.
This, of course, presented an enormous danger. Ambition was forever the wild card in Washington. At no level, in no walk of life, could it be ignored. Channeled, yes, but never ignored.
And so, having been blindsided once, Rubens had taken steps to find out everything he could about the investigation, his cousin, the band, and the congressman. Of course, he did not use the agency’s resources, most especially the black computers at Crypto City. Anything he did there could be tracked and recorded. He had even eschewed his home phone and computers, even the gray one, which was equipped with a scrubber program. (Powerful, but not quite at agency-level standards.)
Instead, Rubens—William Madison Rubens—had gone to a public library to conduct most of his grunt research over the Internet. It was a good exercise, the sort of thing he would encourage a young operative to do to stay sharp. Deriving information without Desk Three’s resources was a tonic, even an end in and of itself.
Actually, Rubens had gone to two libraries and made use of phone booths in three different diners. Were it not for the dishwater coffee he’d been forced to drink as a cover, the whole experience might have been considered oddly thrilling.
The results were somewhat less so.
The kid with the guitar went by the name of Trash, a fairly accurate appraisal of his station in life. Before joining the band his hazy history extended only as far back to his days as a teenage street person in New York City. He’d been recruited into the band when some of the members heard him playing guitar at a shelter they were volunteering at. A regular Horatio Alger story had ensued, Trash turning out to be a guitar genius with a special appeal to nubile prepubescent girls. Of course, to get the high gloss you had to ignore certain calculated self-promotional behavior, as well as a serious drug habit that leaned toward Ecstasy and an odd, if original, mix of Quaaludes, “crank” speed, and double-olive martinis. Rubens believed the martinis probably hinted at the young guitarist’s actual pedigree, though he hadn’t bothered to pursue that, and the young man’s credit reports contained no hint of rich relatives bailing him out.
Prowling chat sites dedicated to the music scene, Rubens had picked up considerable gossip on the band. The guitarist’s death had made the group a very popular topic of discussion in the extremely small world of people interested in following such things. Rubens was able to find a former devotee who called herself EZ18 but was actually a thirty-five-year-old schoolteacher in Edison, N.J. In an IM conversation that lasted three hours, EZ18 helpfully pointed out that the band’s rise began when a middle-aged woman had befriended them while they were playing at a small but obscure club in New York City’s East Village. She had given them considerable money, recommended a manager, and in other various and sundry ways pushed their career.
The middle-aged woman was Greta Meandes.
Rubens turned from the windows and began to pace. He was not shocked that there was a connection between his cousin and the guitarist. She was the family’s token liberal and probably saw him as a reclamation project. There might even be some sex involved, though frankly, Rubens had never had that high an opinion of her.
Rubens paused at the corner of his room, staring at the massive Matisse that hung on the wall opposite the windows. It was an unknown and uncatalogued piece from the dancer series; six red figures (not the five in the better-known paintings) swirled around the green-and-blue field. The painting always looked somewhat off-balance to him, which was one of its attractions.
One of his phones buzzed. He let it ring.
What he had not determined, however, was who was behind spreading the rumors. They appeared sourceless, which naturally led him to suspect Collins. He had heard that she had had lunch with Freeman two days before. His informant suspected a tryst; Rubens concurred—pillow talk was very much her style.
If Collins was involved—he was admittedly not 100 per cent sure of his source, a CIA underling who wanted her job—well then, perhaps she was doing more than whispering. Perhaps she had arranged for the guitar or pool to be tampered with, then drugged and hypnotized the idiot band member, programmed him to take the leap.
Child’s play.
Unlikely, surely. Ah, but if he could prove that—if he could find the smoking guitar, so to speak, he might be through with her forever.
The idea was too delicious to avoid. A ridiculous long shot, yes—but it would bring such indescribable joy.
Now he realized why poor people played the lottery.
His next step was to find out if the guitar or the pool had been tampered with. Obviously the local police would attempt to do so as well; quite possibly they already knew the answer.
Or not. He doubted their inquiry would be expert.
There were pedestrian reasons for finding out, reasons that had nothing to do with Collins. If he had a report that declared everything in order, it could be leaked to the press. It would end their interest abruptly. The rumors would dry up; there would be no reason for anyone to find out that he was at the scene, et cetera, et cetera—problem quashed.
How could he examine the guitar and the pool without involving the NSA?
He might suggest the idea to the police, arrange the technical help, then get access to the findings. That could be done quietly if he recommended the company, one that did work for him.
But the FBI would then get access to the report. Freeman would see it.
Of course. The FBI should do the work in the first place. He would hold Mr. Freeman close—very close.
Not quite as close as Ms. Collins was, certainly.
But then he wouldn’t want the lab to be easily connected to him. Hadn’t there been a Division D project to electrocute a KGB agent in a backyard pool during the 1960s?
That was before Collins’ time, but still, she’d know about it. She always did.
The phone rang again. This time the programmed ring pattern told Rubens that it was his driver, waiting outside to take him to Crypto City. He’d arranged to use the driver—who doubled as a bodyguard—for the duration of the mission to make sure the Wave Three plane had been destroyed.
Rubens walked to the kitchen and bent to the refrigerator drawer in the cabinets. He took out one of his bottles of Belden bottled water, then went down to meet the driver.
An hour later, Rubens passed through the security gauntlet and entered the Art Room, where Telach updated him on the progress of the Wave Three team. At the bottom of her eyes were hanging bags so deep, she looked like she was growing a new face. But if he asked her if she was tired she would have insisted she wasn’t, and she would have fought—probably with her fists—any suggestion that she catch a nap in one of the nearby “comfort” rooms. She never wanted to leave the Art Room, much less go off-duty, once an operation was under way. It was a quality Rubens prized highly in selecting Art Room staff.
“The wreckage at Slveck is ours,” Telach told him.
“Svvlee-veck,” said Rubens, correcting her pronunciation.
“The team is en route. They�
��re meeting with Fashona and the Hind.”
“The Petro-UK Hind?”
“We don’t have another, do we? Besides, they needed an acceptable cover. The weapons are boxed and hidden in the hold.”
“What about the satellite images?”
“Inconclusive.” She made the face of a woman who had just tasted the world’s most sour grapefruit. “It absolutely burnt to a crisp, but the bastards at the CIA are sitting on the goddamn analysts and telling them not to sign off. That’s what the problem is.”
Rubens nodded. Petro-UK was one of the shell companies Desk Three had established for operations in Russia and the Middle East. It was thought by most intelligence agencies, including Russia’s, to be a front for the Chinese.
“I’d hate to lose the Hind,” said Rubens.
“Hopefully it won’t be compromised, but we seem to be star-crossed on this one.” Telach told him what had happened at the auto yard.
“They should have used a Bagel,” said Rubens, referring to a small UAV surveillance system.
“They didn’t have one with them,” she said.
Rubens said nothing, realizing it was counterproductive at this point to criticize or second-guess. The UAVs were cached in kits the ops referred to as S-1s and were rather bulky to transport; having one with them increased their security concerns, especially in a place like Siberia, where even a pickup truck stood out. Besides, the Space Platform/Vessel system had been designed exactly for that type of operation in a relatively remote area.
“How’s Mr. Dean doing?” Rubens asked.
Telach shrugged. “He hasn’t gotten in the way. Karr seems to like him.”
“Tommy likes everybody,” said Rubens. “What does Lia think?”
Telach gave a snort. “She hasn’t castrated him yet. That’s a plus.”
“Well, see that she doesn’t.”
“Karr wants to know if it’s OK to implant him.”
“Is that necessary?”
Telach shrugged. “We’re having some difficulties with communications out there anyway. It’d probably just be a waste of time.”
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