by D. F. Bailey
“What conditions?”
“You and me. We talk for an hour.” His hand waved back and forth between them. “An interview. On the record. Before we exchange the key and the software.”
“And the other?”
“You confirm who holds the second key.”
Malinin wiped a hand over his face to cover his look of amazement. He shook his head, unsure how to reply. “Okay. You want to talk, we’ll talk. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I used to do the same thing when I worked at the Soviet embassy in Washington.” He grinned, his mood had shifted again, back to the social niceties appropriate to the chairman of the board. “I always did my interviews over a meal. We’ll meet at six for dinner at the Shorebird. Then at ten tomorrow morning Sochi and Marat do the exchange in Maunakea Marketplace in Chinatown. In the courtyard where everything is in the open. After that, we are done. As to who has the second key, I will tell you this evening.”
※ — ELEVEN — ※
MALININ SAT AT a window seat overlooking Waikiki Beach. When he saw Finch approach, he set aside the newspaper he was reading and waved a hand at the empty chair. “Mr. Finch. Please. Join me.”
Finch studied him a moment then sat in the slatted deck chair and gazed at the ocean views. In the distance Diamond Head towered over the grassy slopes and palm trees. Past the open window the breeze tugged at the line of beach umbrellas next to the tide line. A tropical paradise. No wonder Eve wanted to live here.
“I hope you don’t mind buffet dining, yes?” Malinin said. “I thought it best; no interruptions from nosy waiters.”
“Good idea.” He took his phone from his pocket and set it on the table. “You mind if I record this?”
“For your paper?”
He nodded. “Except we don’t use actual paper anymore.”
“Fine.” Malinin shrugged. “First, let’s get some food, shall we? I’m very hungry.”
Finch decided to eat light so that he could focus on the interview. He took a chicken kabob and some Caesar salad. The Russian settled in for a full meal: mahimahi, baked potato, mushrooms and onions, garlic bread, a glass of chablis.
“You seem to know your way around here,” Finch began.
“My favorite American city.” Malinin slipped some fish into his mouth and contemplated the flavor for a moment. “There’s no place this warm anywhere in Russia. And Hawaii has fewer Americans than Florida or California.”
“That’s a positive?”
He ignored the question. “It may surprise you to know there’s a real Russian community here. Over two thousand ex-pats.”
“And Russian mafia, too.”
“Mafia.” He scoffed and tested the baked potato with a fork. “You Americans like to use words like mafia, gang, and syndicate whenever someone tries to pull himself out of the ditch. When was the last time you had to kill an animal to feed your family?”
Finch shook his head.
“I, myself have done this.” He ate some potato and washed it down with the chablis. “When your national economy dissolves, your expression ‘dog eat dog’ gains literal meaning, yes?” He pointed his fork at Finch and continued. “The moral man does his best to live in harmony with others, but there are times….” He let the thought hang and turned his attention to his meal.
“Where were you when the Soviet Union collapsed?”
“Where? In Moscow. And when times required it, I moved to my family dacha four hours’ drive from the city. When I needed to, I could hunt. I’m good at it. My grandfather called me Lone Hunter. When you know how to live on the land, there’s always something out there to keep you alive.”
“Lone Hunter.” Finch jotted the words into his spiral notepad. “How did you make the jump to international banking?”
Malinin let out a short laugh and set his knife and fork on the table. “I had friends. Connections who needed someone to create good publicity.”
“Former KGB friends? Or have they all moved over to the FSB now that Russia is a democracy?”
Malinin studied the distant clouds over the ocean. The sun had slipped behind a rising storm and the effect sent a cool breeze along the beachfront. “I could either lie to you, Mr. Finch, or say nothing. Since I don’t want to lie to you, let’s leave it at that.”
“One of them was Senator Franklin Whitelaw.”
“I see you’ve researched this. Good. I met the senator in a Washington hospital in 1987. We became friends. After the Soviet collapse, he called me. I became his liaison for corporations looking for a way to expand into Russia and Asia generally.”
“And that led to GIGcoin?”
“Indirectly.” He finished the last piece of mahimahi. “Before that I had to do a lot of what you call bootstrapping.”
“So you consider yourself a self-made man.”
“Don’t you?” He tore a piece of bread and dragged it across his plate to swab up the sauce from his dinner. “You were once part of military intelligence, discharged from the army, studied journalism at Berkeley, had a wife, Cecily, and a son. Buddy, yes? Both of them only to die, I’m sorry to say. Yet here you are now. You’ve re-made yourself, have you not?”
Finch blinked and looked away. Occasionally people tried to turn an interview inside-out. Make him the subject of probing questions. But no one had ever dug this deep, never probed his pain so skillfully.
“I’m sorry.” He popped the sopping bread into his mouth. “Are you all right?”
“What do you want, Malinin?”
He shrugged again, a habit that Finch recognized for a cultivated indifference. The gesture struck him as more Gallic than Russian, but Finch now realized he wasn’t dealing in stereotypes. Malinin possessed a carefully disguised, but pin-prick sharp, masochistic streak.
“I suppose I want the same thing as you Americans. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness.” A glib smile fixed on his lips and he pushed his plate away. “You haven’t touched your food. Is everything okay?”
“I mean from GIGcoin. What do you want from GIGcoin?”
“Ah, finally a real question.” He leaned closer and pointed to the cell phone. “If you want an answer, turn off the recorder. The interview part of the evening is over. Let’s get down to business.”
Finch paused the recording app and turned his phone face down on the table.
“You know, when you make a deal with the devil,” Malinin said, “always be sure to check the fine print.”
“And what does the fine print say?”
Malinin brushed a finger under his nose and began to speak in a low voice. “That our contract, this contract” — he pointed to the table with his index finger — “is guaranteed by MAD.”
Finch’s head ticked to one side. “MAD?”
“Mutual Assured Destruction.” He inched closer still. “At the height of the cold war, what kept everyone completely sober about the threat of nuclear war was the certainty that if the Americans launched a missile, the Soviets would retaliate with annihilating force. And vice-versa.”
Finch searched Malinin’s face for an explanation. “And this applies to us?”
He lifted a hand, palm up, as if it contained a precious coin. “Everyone on the GIGcoin board understands that if one partner is betrayed, the remaining players will extract immediate … compensation.”
“Why the drama, Alexei? What’s the deal about GIGcoin that drives everyone to extremes?”
“Have you not been paying attention? Do you have any idea what it will mean when the USA defaults on the seventeen trillion dollars of monopoly money it printed to create this illusion of prosperity?” His hand swept across the room pointing to the linen table cloths, the crystal glassware, the inlaid floors. “And the Europeans, the British, the Japanese — and now the Chinese of all people — have all done the same thing. None of you — none — has experienced the hunger that forces you to comb through your neighbor’s garbage for a scrap of bread! GIGcoin, Mr. Finch, GIGcoin provides an alternative to all this. The a
lgorithms are incorruptible.”
Finch shook his head. Malinin’s vision revealed a paranoid megalomania. Despite his doubts about the Russian’s sanity, he knew he had to press on. “Maybe the algorithms are incorruptible,” he conceded, “but not the men who run it.”
Malinin turned his head to one side and narrowed his eyes with a grimace of contempt.
Finch moved on. “And all this applies to Senator Whitelaw?”
“You’re trying to be too clever.” Now a refreshing smile returned to his face. The man was a psychological chameleon, able to shift his mood and demeanor from moment to moment. As a result, everything about him was forged, distorted, a lie. “You want to ensnare the senator to boost the circulation in your paper. But all his assets are in a blind trust. He has very little to do with all this.”
“No? You’re telling me that as Chairman of the United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs he won’t play his assigned role to assure GIGcoin is accepted as a viable currency to backstop the world economy?”
Malinin scoffed at this and for a moment the two men sat in silence. When Finch realized that Malinin refused to implicate the senator in any way, he decided to press for more information about his step-brother.
“And what did the board decide when Dean Whitelaw was murdered?”
Malinin shrugged yet again. “That was unfortunate. No one anticipated his death.”
“Or the disappearance of the GIGcoin software?”
“No. But thanks to you, we’re about to recover it tomorrow morning.” He smiled with a false look of compassion. Despite his deception, the grin provided a modicum of comfort.
“And what’s become of the second key? Does the senator have it?”
A pause. A nod of the head. “Yes. I understand it came into his possession following his brother’s death.”
Finch felt his pulse quicken. He was closing in on all three goals he’d set out. Identify the owner of the first key: Malinin. Interview him: job done. Identify the owner of the second key: Franklin Whitelaw. But now a new challenge arose: how to arrange a final interview with the Senator?
“Let’s return to fundamentals, Mr. Finch. When we make our exchange you and Eve and Sochi enter the same covenant that binds us all. Any betrayal will be dealt with immediately. Possibly within minutes. Do you understand?”
Finch tried to weigh the risks. “There will be no betrayals.”
“Good.” He glanced around the room. The restaurant was full and a line of ten or twelve customers waited at the entrance. It was almost eight o’clock. In a little over fourteen hours the deal would be completed. “As long as we all understand one another, yes?”
Finch tucked his phone and notepad into his courier bag, slipped the strap over his shoulder and stood. Despite his hunger, he hadn’t touched his food. A matter of taste, he decided. There was something so repulsive about Malinin that he’d turned everything near him to shit. Including the food.
※
After Eve finished her half-hour run along the waterfront and around the perimeter of Kapiolani Park she returned to her room in the Moana Surfrider Hotel, showered, dried her hair and prepared to polish her nails. Just as she set out the polish, Sochi knocked at her door. She tied her bathrobe across her waist and let him in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He pressed a finger to his lips and whispered, “Ssshh. Can you step outside?”
She blinked. Had he missed the obvious? “I just had a shower.”
“Grab your keycard.”
“What?”
He took her room pass from the dresser and drew her into the hallway by her elbow. “Listen. We’ve got problems.”
“What problems?” She gathered the collar of her bathrobe together at her throat and glanced along the hall.
He opened his fist. In his hand sat a black micro video recorder. “A surveillance bug. And it’s no toy.” His voice dropped a tone. “God-damned Russians.”
The look of anger in his face caught her by surprise. She felt a creeping sense of distrust. “Where did you find it?”
“In the smoke detector. I swept my whole room. This is the only one I could find.”
“Do you think there’s one in our room, too?”
“I can check.”
She paused to think a moment. “All right. Let me get dressed and grab a few things. Then sweep the room. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
After she dressed, she made her way down to the lobby and sat on the sofa opposite the piano. While she waited she tried to recall all that she’d said to Finch in the room since they’d checked into the hotel. If their suite was bugged, someone would get an earful. Ten minutes later Sochi entered the lounge. She could read the news on his face as he approached.
“Us, too?”
He nodded. “I think we should discuss this outside.”
Crowds of tourists swept along the sidewalks beside Kalakaua Avenue but eventually they found a vacant park bench facing the surf. Across the lawn a trio played traditional hula songs on ukuleles. The evening air felt warm and humid. In the distance she could see heavy cumulonimbus clouds rising above the ocean.
Sochi showed her the device he’d extracted from her room. “It’s the same bug. Also in the smoke detector.”
“You think the Russians did this?”
“Who else could it be?”
As Eve examined it, a new thought struck her. “Is this audio only, or does it have a camera, too?”
“Both.”
“Unbelievable.” She let out a false laugh. “Will’s going to be pleased.”
“Yeah?” Sochi seemed unable to decode her meaning.
“Never mind. Look, I’m going to text him. When he’s finished his interview with Malinin, let’s meet in the beach bar of the hotel. In the meantime, try to identify this thing. We need to know who makes it, what it can do, and most important — who planted it.”
※
Eve arrived at the Beach Cafe twenty minutes before Sochi. When he appeared at the top of the staircase leading down to the patio he looked jet-lagged, as if he hadn’t adapted to the time-zone shift. He wore a pair of surfer shorts, a long-sleeve tie-dyed hippie shirt and a hand-stitched leather vest. Everything about him looked mismatched: his clothes, his hair and beard, the look of ambivalence on his face. All of it suggested confusion. The man is a study in contrasts, Eve told herself as she waved him over to her table.
“What did you find out?”
“Everything.” Sochi ducked under the patio umbrella, sat beside Eve and set his laptop on the table. They faced the stage where two musicians had just finished a set and were preparing to take a break. “Before I get into that, I want to establish the protocols for transferring the GIGcoin software key once I get it from the Russian.”
“I thought we already discussed all that.”
Sochi frowned. “We did. But given what we know now, I want a faster hand-off.”
“All right. So what does that mean?”
“I need a dormant email address.” He tugged at the tip of his beard and when Eve didn’t respond, he added, “One you never use and that no one associates with you.”
Eve raised her hands and glanced around the cafe with a look of despondency. So much of Sochi’s world involved game-play. Was this more of the same? “Why do you need this now?”
“As soon as I validate the software key tomorrow I want to email it to an address that no one else can access.”
“Well … I can’t think of one right now.” She saw Finch approaching from the hotel lobby and signaled him as he reached the staircase. Despite the bad news she had to reveal about the surveillance bug, she felt relieved to see him. Maybe he could figure out how to deal with this mess.
“How’re we doing?” He made an effort to smile and sat beside Eve.
“Not good. You want the bad news first — or the pressing news?”
“Roll the dice.” He shrugged. “Guess I’ll take the pressing news f
irst.”
Eve pointed to Sochi. “Over to you, comrade.”
“We need an email address that neither of you has ever used and that no one else can access.”
Finch cast his eyes to the underside of the umbrella. A light rain began to pit against the nylon shell. “How about Gianna?” He looked at Eve. “Is her email still working?”
Eve’s face lit up. “Yeah. I think it is.”
“Type it in here.” Sochi passed his computer to her. “I’ll set up an automated routine for the hand-off later tonight.”
“Why?” Finch looked from Eve to Sochi and back.
“I’ll tell you later.” She typed Gianna’s email address into Sochi’s computer and passed it back to him. “Now for the bad news. Sochi, show him the bug.”
Sochi closed the cover of his computer and set it aside. Then he dug two identical spy cameras from his vest pockets. With a measure of discretion he opened his palms to reveal them, one in each hand. “These are covert DVR video cameras that I extracted from the smoke detectors in our rooms.”
“What?” Finch felt his stomach sink as he considered the implications. “Okay. So give me the details.”
“The Russians installed one in each of our rooms. Simply put, they can record seventy-two hours of hi-def, full-audio movies of everything we’ve said and done since we checked in.” Sochi tucked them back into his pockets. “Up until an hour ago Malinin and company have seen and heard everything we’ve done since we checked into our rooms.”
“How do you know Malinin is involved?”
A look of astonishment crossed Sochi’s face. “Who else could it be?”
Finch glanced at Eve. She shook her head with a bewildered look. What had Malinin said about betrayal? That it would be dealt with immediately. Within minutes. He took a moment to absorb the implications. “I guess this means we’re … completely screwed.”
“Will, please.” Eve closed her eyes in an effort to banish the image. “Those are the exact two words I am trying not to visualize.”
※
Five minutes later Eve made her way to the bathroom to find some relief from the implications of Sochi’s discovery. She sat on the toilet and dropped her face in her hands. She tried to imagine the images of her and Will making love through the night. Had she switched off the lights? No, of course not. After a few moments of self-loathing, she flushed the toilet and opened the stall door. She stood at the sink and stared at her weary eyes in the mirror. Convinced that she could do nothing to retrieve the video, she carefully dampened her cheeks with a moist paper towel and then applied a clear gloss to her lips.