“I can’t do an Australian accent,” said Dean.
“I doubt they can, either.”
Lia parked the car in a muddy lot, then hopped from the truck. They locked it; Dean adjusted his pistol under his sweater and followed her inside.
Accountants held a more important position in Russian businesses than in most Western companies. One token of this was the fact that they were the ones who tended to be arrested when the required permits or bribes weren’t paid. So it wasn’t surprising that when Lia mentioned Dean’s cover to the man they met in the front room, he bowed deeply, put up his hands, and practically ran to the back to get the big boss. Lia’s story was that they needed a helicopter. The boss protested that they were not in the business of selling aircraft—but then he proceeded to add that they did, as a matter of fact, have several available. He led Lia and Dean outside to a small jeeplike truck and drove them out through a yard filled with rusting tractor blades to a packed gravel yard filled with large pumps, pipes, and vehicles at least twenty years old. At the center of the field sat a thick cross of asphalt that obviously functioned as a helipad. Large plastic barrels sat at the far side, half-buried in the ground—obviously a fuel farm of some kind.
Lia pushed out her story, complaining that they needed a heavier helicopter than the Alouette the manager showed her. That led to two identical rather tired-looking machines parked at the farthest end of the large yard. They were squat, with two sets of rotors, one atop the other, and a double-fin tail. Dean could guess from looking at the machines that neither was what they were looking for, but Lia played through, checking the craft and even asking if one could be started up. The manager didn’t know how and the pilot wasn’t available. Perhaps they’d come back, Lia said.
As they were walking back to the truck, she stopped to tie her shoe. The manager began talking to Dean in English about the difficulties of doing business here. Dean simply shrugged. He worried that he might have to eventually say something about Australia and decided he would divert the manager with a story about being educated in America—he could bullshit plausibly about that, he thought. But Lia caught back up with them and it wasn’t necessary to say anything else.
“We have more stops,” she said, taking the manager’s card. “We will be in touch.”
“Those were Helixes we looked at?” Dean asked as they got back in their truck.
“Kamov KA-27s,” she said. “Match the pictures the Art Room gave me.”
“How do you know the Art Room’s right about what kind of chopper it was?”
“You really are a Luddite, aren’t you?”
“No. I just don’t trust everything I’m told.”
“They’re the right kind of helicopters.”
“So civilians have military helicopters?”
“Well, civilians do have military type helicopters, even in the West,” said Lia. “But here there’s a bit more flow back and forth. You have to trust us on this one, Charlie Dean.”
“If they don’t sell helicopters,” said Dean, though he knew he was being stubborn, “why do they have so many?”
“Oh, they always say that,” said Lia. “See, if they sold helicopters, they would need certain licenses. We might be from Moscow instead of spies.”
She laughed and started the engine.
By the time they reached their next site, the morning had turned almost balmy, which brought the bugs out in full force. A swarm seemed to attach itself to them as they drove into a small town. Several rows of fairly large houses sat in a staggered semicircle next to the main road; beyond them were oil fields. The town gave way to a tall fence, which at first seemed to contain empty land. Nearly a half-mile from the start of the fence it veered toward the road. A hundred feet farther down it crossed at a gated cul-de-sac. A large building sat at what would have been the middle of the road had it continued. There were other buildings behind it; the complex seemed to stretch a fair distance. A guard stood in the middle of the road; there were others beyond him. All had AK-74s, and there was at least one machine-gun post inside the gate.
“I think it’s time to turn around,” said Dean.
“Yup,” said Lia, who nonetheless drove right up to the guard and started talking to him. He didn’t buy whatever she tried to sell. He gestured sharply for them to turn around and finally showed his anger by raising his gun. Still chattering, Lia put the truck in reverse and backed down the road.
“Not much for chitchat,” she said after they had gone back through the town to the main highway.
“What’d you say to him?”
“I asked if he knew someone who wanted to get laid.”
“What’d you really say to him?”
She laughed. “Why don’t you think that’s what I said?”
“What’d you really say to him?”
“I told him I was looking for my brother. Didn’t even break the ice.”
“This has got to be the place.”
“You think, Charlie? But what if the Art Room agrees? Then what? They can’t be right.”
They refilled the truck’s gas tanks. Lia consulted the map on her handheld, then got back on the highway, heading to another town about five miles farther south. As they drove, Dean took the binoculars and looked back at the area, trying to see something beyond the forest of oil pumps and fences.
“It’s some sort of school,” said Lia. “They used to send KGB officers there for what we’d call SWAT training. That was fifteen years ago.”
“Now what do they do there?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Lia. “We’ll ask when we check in. In the meantime let’s go see what’s behind door number three.”
29
Foreigners throwing around wads of cash attracted several different types of attention in Russia. The most dangerous was the fawning, sell-my-brother-for-a-ruble attention; Karr realized that anyone being overly nice to his face was more than likely calling a mafiya connection to tip them off to a potential kidnapping candidate. The Russian gangs were considerably more difficult to deal with than the security police simply because they were unpredictable. Not even the NSA had the resources to track the myriad groups that operated throughout the country. A few were aligned with fairly well-known political or business figures, and a couple were essentially military units moonlighting in the open season for graft. But the vast majority of Russian gangsters were smalltime hoodlums with very small operations, many of which either were quasi-legal or would be entirely legal if the proper permits were obtained.
The corruption pained Karr, even as he took advantage of it to do his job. The price for the jet fuel and the two large drums to transport it was so low that the fuel was either watered down or stolen.
Fashona swore it wasn’t watered down, and since they pumped it themselves, they got reasonably close to the amount they had paid for. They rolled the barrels up the single wooden plank into the back of the ancient Zil they’d hired, and moved out of the airfield. Karr fingered his pistol as they passed the guards, but he could tell from the men’s faces they were too depressed to even bother stopping them to ask their business.
His mother had come from Russia as a young girl, the daughter of a refusenik. Though she loved America, she still talked fondly of Russia and often spoke of going back to visit now that the country was a democracy.
He wanted to tell her about the country, but security concerns absolutely forbade him to. It probably wouldn’t have done much good; she wouldn’t believe what he’d tell her. At best, she would blame the woes on the Communists.
Karr wouldn’t completely dismiss that. But it seemed to him that the problem had more to do with greed—a disease imported from the West. As Russia tried to catch up to America, it had lost something of its nobility.
Most people had a depth and warmth that hardship only enhanced. But others were deeply infected with greed and cynicism. It was if it were one of the mosquito-borne viruses plaguing the new oil fields.
Heading back towar
d Sitjla, the driver of the truck became somewhat talkative. In his early thirties, he owned the truck with his brother, who was riding in the back and carried a small pistol concealed—or at least intended to be concealed—on his calf.
“I can tell my children I helped the CIA,” said the driver, whose name was Varnya.
“If I was with the CIA, I wouldn’t have run out of petrol,” laughed Karr. “And I would have paid you twice as much.”
The man laughed, though he insisted he knew that the two men were both American and members of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Varnya, the CIA ran Russia, but this was an improvement from the days when the KGB had. Varnya’s grandfather—it may have been his great-grandfather, as Karr couldn’t quite stay on top of the accented and slightly drunken Russian—had been a political prisoner in one of the camps. After twelve years, he had been released with the understanding that he would stay out of western Russia. A similar story could have been told by half of the local inhabitants, if not more.
Varnya began to speak of things that his grandfather had told him—bodies in the river, a forest of skulls. His anger started to build. He offered to share his vodka. Karr agreed, knowing that to refuse would be a serious insult. He blocked the mouth of the bottle with his tongue every time he tipped the bottle back. The sting of the liquor helped keep him awake on the long ride.
It was dark when they got back to the helicopter. Varnya and his brother volunteered to help roll the barrels toward it. Then, as Karr knew they would, the two men pulled out weapons and tried to rob them.
“What would your grandfather think?” said Karr, shaking his head.
Varnya’s chest inflated, alcohol-fueled anger rising within him. He looked at Karr as if he were the KGB man who’d locked his grandfather in exile and tormented the family for three generations. He raised his pistol to fire, pushing his arm toward the American.
Fashona’s first bullet caught him in the side of the head. He didn’t bother firing another. By the time Varnya dropped, Karr had shot the brother twice in the forehead with a Glock 26.
“Motherfuckers,” said Fashona. “I told you they’d wait to see if we really had the chopper.”
“Yeah,” said Karr. He slid the Glock 26 back into its hiding place up his sleeve. “Kinda pains me that they didn’t believe us. Nobody trusts anybody these days.”
30
The third site Dean and Lia checked was a civilian airport. Several new Fokkers sat amid a smattering of older Russian types in neat rows beyond the terminal building. When they found the Helix they saw it had been plumbed for crop dusting. Lia took several photos of it with a digital camera about the size of a cigarette lighter. Back in the truck, using her handheld computer she compared it to pictures of the Helix that had inspected the crash site. They didn’t seem to be a match, though the program she used on the handheld would only say the results were inconclusive.
By now it was early evening. A Western-style motel sat near the airport. They went there and took two rooms, then had dinner in what amounted to a cafeteria on the basement level. Lia had to go outside to get the phone to work. Dean sat at the table sipping a vodka, the first alcohol he’d had since getting the assignment. He rolled the liquor around his tongue, letting the sting loosen his sinuses.
The mission Hadash had sent him to do was over. The plane was obviously destroyed, and sooner or later the material they’d loaded into the Hind would be returned to the States for analysis to prove it.
That was all he was here for. Hadash had said something along the lines of “you’ll just be a tourist.”
Or a baby-sitter. They needed one.
Not really. Lia was a bit much, and Tommy Karr had rubbed him the wrong way, a little too easygoing for his own good, Dean thought—but they were competent in their own way, comfortable with technology in a way Dean would never be.
Not that he was a Luddite, for christsakes. What the hell was a stinking Luddite anyway? Some sort of nineteenth-century English revolutionary worried about losing his job to a machine. Which Dean definitely wasn’t.
Dean watched as two young men came into the room with overloaded trays of food. They were loud, obviously drunk; he couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was obvious they were pretty full of themselves. Both wore track pants and Nike basketball shoes; their shirts were opened several buttons down and they had rows of gold chains around their necks.
“Credit card thieves,” Lia said, sliding in across from him. “They broker numbers.”
“How do you know?”
“You figure things out after a while. Karr’ll meet us in the hotel. Let’s go get some sleep.”
Upstairs, he had started to go to the room across the hall when she opened her door. She grabbed the sleeve of his sweater.
“Where are you going?”
“Get some z’s.”
“We stay together. Don’t look at me like that—one of us sleeps, the other stands guard. We sweep the room first.” She took her handheld out and slid a small silver bar into an expansion slot at the top. “Talk,” she told him.
“About what?”
“Your sex life. Just talk.”
Dean began reciting the alphabet. Lia held her computer in two hands and swept up and down the walls, looking a little like a supplicant worshipping the god of hideous wallpaper. Dean followed as she worked her way around to the bathroom.
“No bugs,” she said finally. She started the shower. “Which doesn’t mean we can’t be bugged.”
“How?”
“Walls are thin and there’s plenty of glass. Picking up the vibrations off them is child’s play.”
“So what do we do?”
“Don’t say anything and we won’t have a problem.”
“How about sneezing?” The bathroom smelled like week-old mold and was getting to his nose.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll keep watch,” Lia added. “But first I want to take a shower.”
She pulled off the heavy black sweater and undershirt she’d been wearing, leaving only a thick gray sports bra between Dean and her breasts. They weren’t large but stood out well against her flat belly. “Excuse me, can I have a little privacy?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Dean, squeezing out the door and into the other room. He picked up the A-2, deciding it would be more useful than the pistol if they were attacked. There were two locks on the door—a fairly useless chain and a better dead bolt—though anyone who really wanted to get in would have the door down in about five seconds. Dean pushed the room’s chair against it but couldn’t find a way to wedge it home. Finally he moved the chair against the wall so that it would keep the door from opening more than halfway.
“What are you doing?” Lia asked, emerging from the shower.
She was completely dressed—somewhat to Dean’s disappointment, he realized.
“Making it harder for anyone to get in.”
“Yeah, that’ll slow ’em down.” Shaking her head, she reached back into the bathroom and took a towel to wrap her wet hair in. Then, palming a pistol so small it looked like a preschooler’s toy, she went out into the hallway. Ninety seconds later, she was back.
Dean watched silently as she took her handheld and hit a quick set of keys. A blurry window opened up on the screen, then split in half. Dean realized it was a video feed from two cameras in the hall.
“They’re the size of nickels,” she said. “I mounted them under that hideous light fixture. It’ll do until morning.” She put the small computer down on the bureau top, then finished toweling her damp hair. “You gonna take a shower?” she asked.
“Nah,” said Dean.
“Suit yourself.” She pulled over the chair so she could sit, positioning it near the bureau and holding the A-2 in her lap.
“What was the gun?” Dean asked.
“Which?”
“The little gun.”
Lia reached to her sweater and pulled a small pistol out like a magician
making a bouquet of flowers magically appear. “It’s a Kahr,” she said, holding it out in her palm. “Custom-made. Here.”
The silver steel gun looked like a K9 with its stock and clip sawed off. The trigger and guard were a little too small for Dean’s fingers.
“Nine-millimeter?” he asked.
“Nine-millimeter.”
“This small it must be hard to aim.”
“If I have to use it, I’m not going to miss,” she said, taking the gun back. “I’m going to be right on top of whoever I’m shooting.”
“So you get the high-tech weapon and I get the rusty old six-gun.”
“First of all, that’s a .44 Magnum,” said Lia. “Second of all, you’re the one who’s always putting down high-tech gear.”
She returned the weapon to its hide, a pocket in the sleeve of her sweater where it could nestle undetected.
“Better get some sleep,” she told him. “Karr’ll be here in a few hours, and he always wants to party.”
31
Malachi Reese slid his headset off, put both hands at the center of his scalp, and began to scratch. His fingers cut a symmetrical pattern across the top of his head, ending finally behind his ears.
He’d read somewhere that this increased the blood circulation to the brain. It was probably complete pseudoscientific bull, but Malachi liked the tingle it left. He bent his head back, then down, zoning for a moment on the tiny red light of his MP3 player. Then he pulled the headphones back and looked at the status screen.
“Decision time,” he told the Art Room, studying the computer’s proposed trajectory from Platform 2. “You have sixty seconds left in this launch window, and the next is three hours away.”
“We need listening devices on Site B,” said Telach finally. “That’s it.”
Malachi turned to the screens on the left, paging up a computer-rendered diagram of Site B, the facility in north-central Russia that the NSA ground ops had been turned away from. This was obviously a military base, not the best application for the Vessel-launched listening devices—they were small and looked like rocks but could be detected by a trained counterintelligence officer.
Deep Black Page 17