Pipeline

  “Hi, it’s me,” Hardaway said as soon as Blaise answered the phone, still in its On position from Blaise’s search for Anna’s number a few hours earlier.

  “I said I would call you. I’d prefer to use a landline.”

  “Too late. I’ve got Ruiz on the phone. Our thought was to conference you in. But fasten your seat belt. You won’t believe it. He’s in Moscow.”

  In a quick minute, Anna Hardaway summarized their conversation so far. She ended with a warning.

  “You’re going to have to make a decision here. It’s your call. This guy is in Moscow negotiating a gas deal. If you decide to trust him, do it with your eyes open. I don’t know him well enough to put my hands in the fire. He lives in Washington. They double-cross people for breakfast in that city.”

  Blaise remembered President Harry Truman’s old adage: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

  “What would you do, Anna? What do your instincts tell you?”

  “I would trust him. For two reasons. First, because he hasn’t been in Washington long enough to have been completely corrupted. Second, because I pulled his bio this morning. I had forgotten that Ruiz used to be a cop. A Chelan County sheriff’s deputy.”

  “Okay, put me on,” Blaise declared with finality. That last bit of information was hugely positive.

  Two clicks later and the two coasts of the United States were connected with the coming dusk of Moscow’s evening.

  “Tony, you there? Okay. I want to introduce you to Blaise Ryan.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard your name before, haven’t I?” The phone was silent for a moment as Tony reflected on her name. “Oh yeah, I remember now. You’re the environmentalist who was beating the crap out of us on Anna’s show.”

  Blaise Ryan felt a chill go through her body. This was not a good way to start.

  “By the way,” Ruiz chuckled, “two comments about that. First, you do a good interview. Second, I agreed with almost everything you said. That is between you and me, though.”

  Blaise sighed in relief.

  “Look, Blaise. Anna has told me a lot. But I need to understand some details. How did you get into this?”

  “It was a fluke. I was trying to help a friend and I tripped over this information. I know a lot about Peruvian gas because I was the leading environmental voice opposing gas extraction in the Amazon. My friend is married—badly married—to a Russian who has been involved in hiding Volga Gaz’s connection to Humboldt. I know it sounds crazy, but we went from marital advice to discovering a Russian fraud—and possibly a murder—in less than a month.”

  “What exactly is the role of your friend’s husband in perpetrating this fraud?”

  “I can’t answer that exactly. He has been traveling to Bolivia. He has met with the German company that is posing in Peru as an independent entity. He talked to his wife about taking the Americans down a notch or two. In the past months, he has become extremely paranoid. And rabidly anti-Western. I heard it myself about six weeks ago.”

  “What is this man’s name?”

  “Daniel Uggin.”

  “Oh my God.” Tony Ruiz groaned. He couldn’t hold back the surprise.

  Anna Hardaway heard the moan, but had no way of knowing that this name belonged to the son of a bitch who had set Tony up the previous evening. She couldn’t see the band of cold sweat that had begun to form on his spine. Or the shudders of his fingers.

  If Anna Hardaway or Blaise Ryan had known what had happened to Tony in Moscow over the past twenty-four hours, they would have understood his anger. Uggin had not only miserably conned Tony in order to get his support in the Moscow negotiations. Now it turned out that he was also a zealot. A crusading anti-American.

  It was indeed impossible for either woman to fathom Tony Ruiz’s growing fury as the pieces began falling into place in his mind over a twelve-thousand-mile phone connection. The blackmail perpetrated against him had been much bigger than just the Bering Strait deal. The Russians had a much larger purpose; they were coming at America from two sides.

  But Tony Ruiz was now a man stuck in the mud. He had been caught in an act of massive stupidity. There was nothing he could do with this newfound knowledge. Absolutely nothing. Packard now had him by the balls. It was impossible to wriggle himself out of his promised support for the coming announcement of a Bering Strait–generated great new era in Russo-American relations.

  “Tony, you there?” Anna whispered into the phone.

  “I’m here.”

  “So? What do you think?”

  “Blaise, are you sure about Matta’s death? How do you know he was killed?”

  “Matta was my sworn enemy. I have been his biggest opponent for years. But the guy was not corrupt or on the take. I saw him three days ago with his press secretary—there was nothing between them. The idea that these two were involved is bull.”

  “How did you get in to see Matta?” Tony asked. “You said you were his big opponent; his mortal enemy.”

  “I asked.” Blaise smiled, thinking back to her blunt statement about enemies banding together against even greater evils. “I demanded to talk to him in the most persuasive way possible. I found a way to formulate the question so that he couldn’t say no.”

  Blaise and Anna waited for him to say something. Though the young White House official revealed nothing over the phone, something about the texture of his silence was qualitatively different. It was not the hush of hostile rejection, but rather the quiet of somebody mulling over an idea. Anna Hardaway suspected that something about what Blaise had just said had made Tony Ruiz think about his options.

  “Okay. I need a couple of days to think about this. I get on a plane to come back home in forty-eight hours. I’ll try to have some clear thoughts by the time I get to Washington. Blaise, can you come and see me then?”

  Blaise wondered if she would go crazy sitting around Culpeper for another three days. But what choice did she have? Though noncommittal, he seemed interested in helping. There was nothing more she could ask him to do. The guy was halfway around the world. She would have to trust Tony Ruiz.

  “Sure,” Blaise answered.

  RUSSIA

  MOSCOW

  SEPTEMBER 4, 8:00 P.M.

  IN VIKTOR ZHIRONOVSKY’S SEDAN

  Viktor Zhironovsky was walking out of Volga Gaz’s headquarters at the exact moment Tony Ruiz was searching for a tie in the Metropol’s closet after hanging up on his three-way, transatlantic conversation. Stopping in front of the open door of his waiting Mercedes sedan to connect his gold-plated Ronson lighter with the dark Romeo y Julieta maduro in his mouth, the chairman of Volga Gaz gazed at his longtime chauffeur.

  “Sir?” asked the driver, waiting for destination instructions. He could tell his boss was in decent spirits. It was not hard to assess Viktor Zhironovsky’s frames of mind. When there was a cigar, the mood was okay.

  “I’ve invited the Americans to the CDL.” Zhironovsky’s implication was clear. The elegant Pushkin Room was always his for the asking, but the chairman only took guests he enjoyed or needed to his coveted second-floor hideout at the Central House of Writers. Tonight his American visitors clearly fit both requirements.

  As he reclined in the backseat’s dark blue leather, Zhironovsky drew a long mouthful of smoke from the cigar. Yes, the Americans deserved a long, boozy dinner at the CDL. The meetings were going well. The two nations’ negotiating teams had taken big steps today and, as a result, his fury with events in Peru had subsided.

  A few hours earlier, the chairman had completed his second private, end-of-the-afternoon meeting with the attractive Martha Packard. Today, Zhironovsky had noticed a newfound enthusiasm in her voice. He couldn’t pin it down—but something about her demeanor was easier than during the previous day’s meeting. She seemed released. Freer to decide.

  The first day’s meeting had ended positively enough, but Packard had been cautious. Her responses to the Russian proposals had been full of qualifying sta
tements: “Perhaps.” “It could be a good idea.” “This might work.” Her lack of decisiveness had clearly frustrated her hosts.

  But things had been very different this afternoon, her language devoid of indecipherable grays. The meeting had been punctuated by clear decision making.

  They had made progress. The tunnel would be a Russo-American joint venture—following the example of the international space station’s successful cooperation—financed by each government’s agreement to float an initial $6 billion in bonds on international financial markets. They had further agreed that a panel of three renowned international scientists culled from the Russian Academy of Scientists, the U.S. Federation of Scientists, and Europe’s International College of Engineers would adjudicate, by unanimous vote, the contract to an experienced engineering company.

  He had lost on his request to have the joint-venture company headed by a Russian. Packard had insisted that an American be the president of the enterprise. Zhironovsky smiled as he thought back to his feigned fury. He had barked and shouted. Cajoled and argued. But she had held firm.

  The reality was that it didn’t matter to him at all who would head the company. It was irrelevant. There was one and only one thing that was important: The two sides of the Bering Strait were going to be linked. His dream to convert the Americans into a begging dependency on Russia for their energy and electricity was becoming a reality.

  Tomorrow they would face difficult economic questions. Pricing for the natural gas. Commitments of quantities. Royalty payments. Environmental questions. All tough issues. Zhironovsky knew these technical matters would be mostly handled by Stuart Altman, Packard’s deputy. But, he thought with satisfaction, if the CIA chief’s mood tomorrow was similar to today’s, they could well be signing an historic memorandum of understanding by the time the Americans left the day after tomorrow.

  The vibration of his mobile phone in his coat jacket pulled Zhironovsky out of his thoughts. Shit. Cellular phones were a horrid invention. The little machines were facilitators of disorder, allowing the irrelevant minutiae of life to cascade and interrupt without advance warning.

  He glanced at the phone screen with the full intention of screening out only the most important of callers. Viktor Zhironovsky grunted with misery when he saw “No Caller ID” on the display. The phone vibrated again. He decided that this was not the time to ignore a call.

  “Zhironovsky,” the chairman barked into the phone.

  “Good evening,” growled the low-toned voice. “It’s Mikhail. From the United States.”

  Zhironovsky’s round body tensed momentarily. Mikhail was one of those operators Volga Gaz routinely contracted around the world. These men belonged to the Russian mafia. They were unpleasant, but their job was to resolve difficulties. They fixed problems nobody wanted to deal with, repaired issues nobody enjoyed discussing. The Mikhails of the world telephoned either with very good or very bad news.

  “Tell me,” Zhironovsky ordered.

  “We found your woman. She is in a little town outside Washington. She got a long call on her mobile phone and it was enough time to electronically triangulate her whereabouts. Your instructions?”

  “Did you listen to the call?”

  “No. That is impossible to do without major equipment that would be noticed. All we were able to do is fix her approximate location through reporting cellular phone towers.”

  Viktor Zhironovsky wondered if what the man said was true. It was a pity that they were unable to know anything about the call’s contents. Knowing what she was up to would have facilitated a decision. But the mere fact that the environmentalist woman was in the Washington area was disconcerting enough. She was far from her native California.

  To Viktor Zhironovsky, this call was proof—once again—that if you wanted something important done, you had to do it yourself. Rudzhin had wanted to wait until the Americans left to decide what to do about Blaise Ryan. Now, instead of being at home in San Francisco, she was waltzing around Washington. Free to talk to anybody she desired. Thank God he hadn’t listened to Rudzhin.

  Young people, Zhironovsky thought to himself. They were worthless. At sixty-eight years of age, he still had to resolve everything on his own. He knew what had to be done.

  “Can you find her?” Zhironovsky grumbled into the phone.

  “Hypothetically, yes. We were able to pinpoint her general area. But once we’re there, we’ll have to ask questions. That will draw some attention. We’ll be discreet. But it’s your call.”

  Zhironovsky paused a moment to give the dilemma some thought.

  “Find her,” he sentenced. “But don’t do anything there. I don’t want any loose ends lying around in the United States. I have enough of those right here.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll send a plane over tonight. It will be there by your daytime tomorrow. Get her on the airplane. Quietly and cleanly. I’ll have her dealt with here.”

  “No problem. Have your pilot file a flight plan with the general aviation terminal at Dulles International Airport. It’s only an hour away from where she is now. Give him my cell phone number and tell him to call when he lands. We’ll deliver her.”

  Both men hung up without saying good-bye. Conversations like these did not require the usual niceties.

  Zhironovsky leaned back in the Mercedes’s rear seat. He took a moment to relight his cigar before calling his secretary to arrange for the airplane. All in all, it was a good day, he thought. The phone call from Mikhail was like his meeting today with Packard. Not conclusive, but heading in the right direction.

  Yes, a good day, he thought again. With that positive notion lodged in his brain, he let out a large, blue stream of smoke.

  MOSCOW

  SEPTEMBER 4, 8:10 P.M.

  THE METROPOL HOTEL

  Anthony Ruiz was standing in front of the mirror of his hotel room. In the last ten minutes, he had tied, untied, and redone his fish motif yellow tie four times. It was not the tie that bothered him. What disturbed him was the wishy-washiness of indecision.

  Anthony Ruiz was a success story, a symbol of what could still happen in the United States when things went right. Steeled by his poverty-stricken parents’ dogged determination to pass on a better life to their son, Tony had grown up understanding that hard work, loyalty, and moral clarity were the clear keys to victory. It wasn’t that his parents had ever objected to a little fun. They were Mexicans. Latinos. Life was supposed to include laughter.

  The easy charm and tough determination that had taken him a long way from the protection of his dad’s calloused hands were gone now. He wished he could talk to his father. But Mario Ruiz would never have been able to understand what had happened last night. His father’s world revolved around certitudes. Mario Ruiz didn’t make stupid mistakes. He didn’t fall into traps. He didn’t allow himself to become blinded.

  No, for once, Tony Ruiz wasn’t smiling. He could feel a lump in his throat. How had he fallen for such a primitive trap? He was a former cop, damnit. He should have known better. Knowing that Nina had been beautiful and smart, beguiling him with her antigovernment banter and self-assured laughter, didn’t lessen the blow. He should have seen it coming.

  And the fact that he had been smart enough to undo the evil knot Nina had tied around his neck was certainly no consolation. Sure, it was better to owe Packard than to be in debt to the Russians. But the bottom line was—and would always be—that the Tony Ruiz of infinite potential was gone forever. Tony knew the moral scars he now carried would drag him downward for the rest of his life.

  Yet, as strange as it might sound, the question Tony Ruiz was struggling with was whether he should call Nina. He shouldn’t; he knew that. It would be dangerous. Don’t compound your mistakes; let it go, he told himself.

  In a fit of anguish, Tony Ruiz tugged hard on his necktie, feeling its thin end softly whip his neck as it spun around his collar. He crumpled it in his hands and threw it on the floor. Dejected and staring down at
the crumpled yellow tie, he realized that the silken heap was a metaphor for his own life.

  Oddly, that silly symbol was just the push Tony needed to finally spur a decision. He smiled, realizing the choice had been the obvious one. There was no other way. He was going to see her again. One last time.

  Leaving the wrinkled mound in its place as a caution against any doubts, he walked over to the phone. He needed to make two phone calls.

  The first was to Martha Packard. She was, thankfully, still in her room.

  “General,” Tony declared upon hearing her voice, “I’m not coming tonight. I don’t feel well. Do you think they’ll be offended?”

  She hesitated for a long moment. Tony presumed she would be wondering whether the excuse was true. He imagined she would probably surmise that he was headed for another round of weakness with Nina. He shrugged; it didn’t matter what Packard thought.

  Next, he reached for the phone number in his jacket pocket.

  “Nina, it’s Tony Ruiz.”

  He could nearly touch her surprise. He resisted a chuckle. This woman could never have expected that an ensnared animal would return to its trap.

  She was cautious.

  “Tony, how are you? Did you have a good day?”

  “Excellent. We made a lot of progress. Nina, can we talk?”

  “Of course, Tony.”

  “Look, I know what happened last night. I get it. I understand that whatever doubts I may have had about the tunnel needed to be silenced. You did your job effectively.”

  Nina must have been blown away by his blunt honesty because she remained silent.

  “I’m guessing that somebody told you my story. I’m from a poor Hispanic family,” Tony said, his voice plaintive. He presumed she knew it all. Why not use it to his advantage?

  “And you are the most exciting, wonderful woman I’ve ever met. Sure, I wish that what happened last night had ended differently. But I still want to see you again. I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you. Not for one minute. I need to see you again.”