Something bubbled in Sam’s throat.
“But that is neither here nor there. Why is McKenzie’s daughter an issue?”
“She’s not. But the Mossad is. They’re in communication with him.”
“Then I would advise you to silence them. The more isolated Charles is, the better are my odds of success. The more he has no one to rely upon but himself, the easier my job will be.”
The pain was getting stronger, creeping up the bridge of Sam’s nose and burrowing into the bones above his eyes. “What do you want me to do, blow up their embassy?”
“If you prefer. Although I should think, as you have done in the past, declaring certain embassy workers persona non grata would suffice. Expel a few and they’ll leave Charles to his own resources.”
“Not likely. Back when the Israelis were planning the Jericho casino, he went over to negotiate intelligence access. While he was there, a bigwig Mossad officer walked into a trap up in Syria and was bundled off to the Tadmor prison. You know what the Syrians are like, electric needles through your dick, saw-toothed whip handles up your —”
“The old ways are best.”
Sam did his best to ignore the implication. “So Charlie disappears — totally unauthorized, by the way. Two days later he shows up with a smirk on his face and the bigwig in the back of a stolen Syrian Jeep. Ever since, the Israelis would walk through fire for him.”
“Regrettable. Well, at least try to find out what information they’re feeding him. It would be helpful if I knew.”
“Never happen. Charlie’s got too many hacker friends. They’ve given him codes that even the NSA can’t break. Plus the sonofabitch has got a secret vault out on the Internet that he’s using to…uh…that…well, forget about that. Forget I even mentioned it.”
Schmidt inhaled sharply. After a moment’s silence, the South African spoke — and, unless Sam misread his distant voice, there was a certain hunger in his tone. “Do I sense a problem here, Samuel, a little something you’ve neglected to tell me?”
Sam narrowed his eyes. Should he confess the truth about Charlie’s hidden data repository? Could Schmidt neutralize it? Neutralize Charlie too, if that’s the proper word.
“Samuel, Samuel, you know you can trust me.”
If there was any power on earth who could take Charlie down, Schmidt was it. And if the mercenary could crack Charlie’s data vault into the bargain…
“We’ve known each other a long time, Samuel. There should be no secrets between us.”
True. Schmidt really was the only man in the world whom Sam could trust. Which was, when you thought about it, a fairly damning self-indictment.
“Come, Samuel, anything you tell me about Charles is to our mutual advantage. Moreover, if you have some — shall we say — secondary issue with him, perhaps I can offer my assistance. You know I would be pleased to be of service where he is involved. Why, good gracious, old friend, I might even waive my standard fee.”
“I doubt that.”
“As well you should. However, a discount is not out of the question. Now, Samuel, please do tell me what’s troubling you.”
And Sam did.
Acid in Irina’s every word: “So now you have a pretty Russian girl in your hotel room. I suppose you think this means you can screw her.”
Ignoring her, McKenzie raised the television’s volume. She understood his ploy: the human voice makes glass vibrate; a microwave signal bounced off a window can eavesdrop on those vibrations; however, a television’s blare — he’d tuned it to MTV — neutralizes the technique.
“This is surely what is on your mind. I am in your power. Your wife is far away —”
“My wife is dead,” he said, not rebuking, merely explaining. “Leukemia. It lasted a year and a half. Three remissions to give us hope, four declines to teach us despair. She weighed seventy pounds at the end. It was a death I’d wish on no one.”
Irina wrapped her arms around her waist. She knew what he was doing — trying to win her sympathy. Sympathy is the first signpost on the road to surrender.
His eyes seemed duller than they had been, a little life siphoned from his lively glance. “At the end, just near the end, I made a vow. I didn’t make it to God. He and I weren’t on speaking terms at the time. I made it to my wife. I’d been faithful to her every day of our marriage; I swore I’d stay faithful after she’d gone. Mary didn’t hear me speak the words. She was in the hospital. I was…somewhere else. That wasn’t important. Only the promise was important.”
Bad liars do not prosper in the espionage trade. Only the gifted survive. McKenzie surely was a brilliant liar. Why then did she believe him?
She looked away, taking a moment to compose herself. The death of a wife, deeply loved or not, was irrelevant. The vital point, the only point, was that she’d been captured by a man whom she’d underestimated — worse, by a man old enough, arrogant enough, to be her father. Now she must discover his weaknesses, turn them against him, use them to escape. “How did you find me?”
Turning his back, McKenzie sluffed off his sweat-soaked shirt. Had he been perspiring in fear when he confronted those men? If so, she could not fault him.
Next, he peeled off his equally wet undershirt. Bone-white scars rippled across his shoulders, brutally ugly, jagged lightning bolts, and there were many. She wished she could avert her eyes, although she could not.
He muttered, “This is what happens to cocksure pigheads. The lucky ones, I mean. They should have taught you that at the Institute.”
Speechless, aghast, she did not want to think about how much pain this man must have endured.
“The long ones running left to right, that’s what you get in a Burmese jail. They have a martial arts master on the payroll. He soaks his rattan canes in brine before he flogs you. My sentence was twenty-five strokes. I thought I’d die. But the truth is, I got off easy. I was using a Canadian passport, they didn’t know I was American, they didn’t think I was a spy.”
Less flesh than leather, the hide of an ancient animal who’d survived a lifetime of battles for survival.
He pulled fresh clothing from an overnight bag. “Down there on the left, you can see what a combat knife will do to you. Guy was trying for my kidneys, and if he’d been better at his job, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. As it was, the blade skittered off my ribs. Took a lot of meat with it. Medic had to stitch Kevlar webbing under there to keep my innards from falling out.”
She swallowed hard. He was doing this — must be doing this — to gain her pity. Pity an enemy? Never!
He shook open a T-shirt and began pulling it over his head. “See that gouge on the right. Tonight you met the man who gave it to me. Yeah, Johan Schmidt. He doesn’t know about it, though. He was shooting blind in the dark, and there was no way in hell I was going to let him know he hit me. Instead I forced myself to laugh, then cracked a dirty joke about his mother. That makes a real tough hombre, right? Sure it does.”
The expression on his face as he turned toward her had nothing to do with toughness. It was only sorrow, sorrow and self-mockery.
“Honorable wounds, Irina. That’s what they call ’em. But I’ve got news for you. There’s no such thing. The only kind of wound there is, bleeds and hurts and screams that you’re not Superman and bullets don’t bounce off your chest; you’re only an ordinary Joe, and you’ve been overconfident again. And conceited, self-righteous idiot that you are, you’ve made another damn dumb mistake, and one of these days you’ll make another, and it will be your last. Or worse, somebody else’s. Welcome to my world, Irina Kolodenkova, if you had any sense, you’d move to a different planet.”
His intent was transparent. She would not be beguiled by so flimsy and feeble a ploy. This man wished to win her over. Let him wish in vain. Narrowing her eyes, she demanded, “You did not answer my question. How did you find me?”
She knew the smile he returned was meant to irk her. “I told you I was good. Now you know how good.�
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“You put a tracer on my truck.”
“Nonsense. You’re smart enough to check for bugs.”
True. And there’d been no tracking equipment on the dashboard of his ridiculously luxurious SUV. Which meant…“You have an assistant. He followed me.”
McKenzie jacked his Macintosh PowerBook into the hotel phone. “Nope,” he grinned, “If I’d had backup, you would have seen him when I was needling Schmidt and his punks. I wouldn’t have faced down those hyenas by myself unless I had no alternative.” The PowerBook chimed. McKenzie was connected to the Internet.
“Then it was luck. You found me because you were lucky.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t believe that if I were you.” His fingers raced across the keyboard. He cocked an eyebrow at the screen, nodding satisfaction at the results.
His smugness abraded. Worn and exhausted, she grunted, “What are you doing with that computer?”
“Take a look.”
She stepped behind him. Meaningless rows of numbers scrolled down the screen. He was downloading an encrypted file. “Pardon me,” he said, “for doing this now, but Schmidt’s people will slap a tap on every phone on this hotel. I wanted to get this stuff before they have a chance.”
“You are a fool. They will check the hotel’s phone records.” She regretted the jibe. He’d have an answer — his kind always did.
“Sure. And eventually they’ll pinpoint the Web site I visited. Not that it will do them any good. You see…” The download ended. McKenzie clicked his cursor and the screen changed, “…this is a public bulletin board — one of the ones where encryption freaks hang out. Everybody posts coded messages, and everybody tries to crack each other’s code. It’s all a game for them. For me too, I suppose. My daughter and I play code games. It’s fun. We’ve been trading messages here for, oh, nearly twenty years now. Nobody has cracked our cipher yet. Although, God knows they’ve tried.”
Irina’s voice turned brittle. “Your daughter has followed you into the CIA?”
“Nah.” Disconnecting from the Internet, McKenzie leaned back and knitted his fingers behind his head. “She’s got a master’s in music. None of my children have anything to do with the government. For which I am duly thankful.”
“Your children? How many?”
“Two sons and a daughter.”
Cold crept up her spine. Two boys. One girl. A domineering father. She knew the life such families led.
McKenzie leaned back, a mellow smile on his face. “When I was young, I wanted to be a journalist. Took my degree at Columbia. I still hang out with reporters. They’re good people. All they want to do is learn the truth. Everybody lies to them when they try. I can relate to that.”
He would have been a tyrant to his children, molding them like putty, turning them into mirror images of himself. No man of his temperament would do otherwise.
“But my dad twisted my arm until I joined the Agency. I liked it well enough — or at least I did for a while. By the time I stopped liking it, I’d become what I’d become, and there’s never any changing that. Howsomever, somewhere along the line I made myself a promise: my kids could be whatever they wanted to be — follow their own star, not mine. Now my oldest boy, Scott — he’s named for my father-in-law — is a doctor. He’s spent the past six years helping some pretty needy folks. The youngest, Mike, is an anthropologist. He’s started making a name for himself. Not that fame matters to him; he loves his work, and that’s all that counts. I’m proud of ’em. I suppose I shouldn’t be because I didn’t have anything to do with their choices. But you know, when you’re a father, it’s hard not to take pride in your kids.”
No! She would not believe it. He was lying smiling lies, trying to put a good light on what was — what had to be — a story of subtle brutality and secret intimidation.
He pulled out his wallet, displaying a photo in a plasticine window — two handsome men, one the very spit and image of his father, side by side with a woman whose delicate features were spoiled by a frown. “That’s Scott and Mike on the right. My daughter Carly’s on the left. She’s the only one of the three who’s messed up. The last thing Mary and I wanted was for her to become another damned Washington wife. But wouldn’t you know it, no sooner than she finished her master’s degree than she fell in love with the wrong man, married the skunk, and walked straight into cocktail party hell.” He sighed. “Well, it’s over now. She’s got two great kids…here, wait a second, let me pull this other picture out…Jason and Molly, cute little devils, aren’t they? I’d say they’re a pretty good consolation prize for a rotten marriage and an even worse divorce.” He slipped the photo back in its holder and slid the wallet into his pants. “Anyway, now I’m hoping the rest of Carly’s life will be better than the past two years have been. If she needs it, I’ll give her all the help I can. But Carly’s as ornery as me. She’ll never ask.”
Liar! You are a liar and you are trying to dupe me into believing you are a loving father, a doting grandfather. It is mere acting, a cheap masquerade. I will not believe this sham! “She sends you coded messages. You taught her spycraft as a child.” This in frigid tones of anger.
“Nope. What happened was — oh, she was about nine years old at the time — she was trying to read a quote-secret message-unquote in one of those kids’ magazines. I offered her a hand. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we cooked up a private code — you know, just for us, our secret. Because I used to be out of the country a lot, I’d send her postcards with coded messages. That drove the Agency nuts because they couldn’t read what I’d written. Ha! They still can’t.”
False. False again. She was certain of it. “Impossible. There is no unbreakable code.”
“Disposable onetime pad. Invented in 1919, and no one’s broken the original inventor’s secret message yet. Carly and I use a computerized variation on the theme. Nobody can bust it.” He smiled, damn him, he smiled gently. “Look, if you don’t believe me, I’ll give you the URL for my little cryptographer’s playground. You can log on and try to crack my code. I’ll post a message to you on that Web site. My screen name is Gryphon. We’ll make you Red Queen —”
She shouted, “I am not a Party member.” But my father is. A steadfast believer in scientific socialism who will hail the day when the red flag flies again from his vessel’s stern.
“Whoops, sorry. I’ll call you White Queen instead.” He laughed.
“We are wasting time!” Although she knew she shouldn’t, she still was shouting. “You are wasting time! Letters from your daughter! Are there not more important —”
The swiftness with which his voice changed caught her off guard. Suddenly he was all iron, face and intonation alike. “Nothing is more important to any father. But that’s not what I downloaded. Some…shall we say ‘friends’ have sent me DefCon Enterprises’ full public record. The Dun and Bradstreet reports, the S&P file, articles of incorporation, biographies of the management, and all the newspaper stories they found on the Web.”
He studied the screen, eyes narrow while he cursored through pages of now decoded information. “California company. Incorporated back in the Clinton years. Privately held. Venture-capital funding. Three hundred and twenty employees — mostly an R&D shop. Chief exec, Maximilian Henkes, age fifty-two. MIT grad, MBA from the Sloan School. Worked for Lockheed before starting DefCon. The chief financial officer is a Lockheed alumnus too. Vice president of operations comes from Martin Marietta, and the controller from General Dynamics. They all have defense contractor backgrounds. Everybody does except the chief scientist — Sangin Wing, a Chinese defector with a doctorate in materials science. Says here he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on superconductors. Now that’s interesting….”
He leaned back again, this time shutting his eyes. His lips moved soundlessly. Suddenly he showed his teeth, a hungry fox. His eyes popped open — bright, electric, frighteningly intelligent. What, she asked herself, did he see in these minuscule fragments of information? How could any
man make sense of so few irrelevant facts?
McKenzie abruptly flipped the PowerBook’s screen down, shutting the computer off. “There’s a ton of material here. We can look at it tomorrow.”
“We?” She was on fury’s edge. His self-composure, his nonchalant friendliness — she knew they were meant to both charm and seduce her. That he thought she could be so easily bewitched was maddening.
“I hope so. On the other hand, if you want to make a run for it again, that’s your privilege. I won’t stop you.”
She could kill him. He hadn’t taken her pistol. He was so gallingly self-assured that he did not bother to disarm her. She’d never killed a man, but this man…
“In fact, I’ll even give you your gun back.”
What?
“Once your temper has cooled off, I mean.”
She patted her waistband frantically. The Tokarev was no longer there.
Her shoulders slumped. No, she was not defeated. She’d never be defeated. But she was on the defensive — a painfully unfamiliar position.
The problem…the problem was that she was drained of her last reserve. This day had exhausted her like no other. She’d seen death, and known fear. It had left her vulnerable and bereft of the strength she needed for the parry and thrust of conversation with this infuriatingly cunning opponent.
“Look, Irina, I am not your enemy.”
“No?” she spat. “Then what are you?”
“Just a guy who wants to protect you.”
She wiped spittle from her lips. “I need no…no…guardian angel!”
“Like it or not, you’ve got one. Call me Saint Charles.” There was that dullness in his eyes again. She still could not interpret it. “Nah, on second thought don’t call me Saint Charles.” His face softened and his voice came from far away. “Plain old Charlie is better.”
Was a weakness hinted at, some vulnerability she could turn to her advantage? She pressed him. “Why not Saint Charles?”
He smiled faintly, distracted, a man mulling over a pleasant memory. “It’s the name of a place, a little town, a village really. Not Saint Charles, but the Spanish for it: San Carlos — San Carlos do Cabo. Saint Charles of the Cape. Down on the California coast, south of Big Sur. Mary and I…my wife and I…we had happy times there, some of our happiest. You know, we were going to retire there, that’s how much in love with it we were….” His voice sank, and the light faded from his eyes.
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