Andrej, who was his counter, exhaled deliberately, as though performing an actor’s trick he had long practiced. After a pause he sighed and said, “I miss smoking.”
Philip nodded.
“Did you ever smoke?” Andrej asked him idly.
Philip remained expressionless, hesitated, then said, “At school, for effect.”
Andrej laughed.
But rather than join in, Philip froze.
“You cannot be serious,” Andrej replied, notes of fear and pleading in his gruff voice. “It was an innocuous question. That’s all.”
“Be that as it may,” Philip said.
“The man said no questions, and he meant no questions,” Andrej muttered, not quite under his breath.
“I am glad we understand each other.”
“Oh, we do indeed,” Andrej answered. “After all, you are my retirement, my very comfortable, very early retirement. That, as I am sure you realize, is what this whole thing means to me. The South of France, or maybe Majorca! Only a fool would question a prospect so sweet.”
“Where are we, then, Andrej? Beyond the point of no return?”
“For this stage the answer is yes.”
“Excellent.”
“You have a way with words.”
“Not at all,” Philip told him. “So twenty-one minus three still equals twenty-one?”
Andrej smiled. “And with numbers, too,” he said.
“And three times thirty equals . . . what?”
“That, one supposes, would depend on the currency.”
Philip smiled. “What those figures do add up to is a lot to move. Of course, one is only speaking hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, it should be well nigh impossible.”
“But not impossible,” Philip pressed.
“Timing is everything.”
“Do you know what astonishes me?” Philip asked.
“I could guess, but no, I don’t.”
“In that case, Andrej, I’ll tell you: The world’s simply not paying attention. It’s asleep.”
“It does that from time to time. It all comes down to the economy, if you want my opinion. When things are going along pretty well, people don’t want to worry. When things are going poorly, they’re caught up in their own difficulties. They’re not inclined to look about for more.”
“Still, it’s more luck than we deserve. We have to be careful not to take it for granted.”
In the distance one squad of a larger team was in motion. As he turned to remind himself of its presence, what Philip saw were no more than stick figures, determined but undifferentiated, hard at work for their generous hazardous-duty pay, aware of what they were doing on only the most obvious of levels, like most of humanity if unlike him or Andrej and the few others Andrej had had no difficulty compromising. Lacking the instinct to connect the dots of life’s affairs, they went about their business in workmanlike fashion, focusing only as much concentration as was required upon their jobs and reserving all the rest for the mix of joy and disappointment, anxiety and satisfaction they called their personal lives. For this, Philip was grateful. It made his task easier.
The few buildings nearby were low, roofed with shallow inverted saucers painted in splotches of green, brown and yellow in the traditional pattern of overland camouflage. Only the largest, a depot through which a graded roadbed dipped then rose, stood a single story high. And even it appeared less a structure entire unto itself than the partial eruption of an underground complex.
Across this barren landscape, the wind gusted, combing back the indolent grass, strewing twigs from distant forests. It was desolate, yet it was this very desolation, Philip knew, that would have given away the place’s purpose to a practiced eye. Early in the Cold War, just after the Americans had deployed Polaris across their fleet of nuclear submarines, these silos had been buried underground, withdrawn from sight if not from readiness. Designed to house only intermediate-range missiles aimed at neutralizing their American opposite numbers in Turkey and the Shah’s imposing military in Iran, they had been considered too close to the nation’s natural border to be a fit site for intercontinental missiles. Such sites, like the weapons labs that produced the warheads, were typically far inland, such as Arzamas in the Nizhny Novgorod region and Snezhinsk in the Urals. Yet in the years of frenzy and jockeying that had preceded the old order’s demise, and especially in the aftermath of that convulsion when Ukraine had broken away, the installation they were now decertifying had unexpectedly come to house warheads meant to sit atop intercontinental missiles, weapons that contained as many as thirty independently targeted reentry vehicles each. Many of these had been withdrawn from the Ukraine before its independence; fewer had arrived in port from nuclear attack subs in the Black Sea Fleet. Those had been days of escalating tension and little clarity in the evolving relationship between Russia and Ukraine. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea, home to the fleet’s principal ports, had quickly become the target of pro-Russian separatists, many of them seamen. Ukraine’s new government had rushed to establish its own nonnuclear navy from remnants of the old fleet. Across the region, flux had prevailed. Weapons and decoys were moved as if props in a shell game, under diminished scrutiny and sometimes haphazardly, a turn of events that had captured Ian Santal’s interest.
As they proceeded toward their work, Andrej said, “I take nothing for granted. With our past we’d be fools to do so.”
“Agreed,” Philip said.
“When I was a boy, certain things seemed immutable. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was one of them. Now look what’s happened. Probably there are soldiers on this base who were born after Russia and our near abroad went their separate ways. Czechs and Poles and Hungarians are Westerners today, practically, but where you feel it is when you’re this close to Ukraine, because they are not only Slavs, they are our brothers and sisters. That is why we trusted them with so many of our weapons, not just because of their fortunate geographical position.”
“There are no differences so profound as those between very similar peoples,” Philip said. “Who is more like an Englishman than an Irishman or more like a Jew than an Arab?”
Andrej laughed, but only for an instant.
Ten minutes later, in the tiled depot, Philip kept careful watch as Andrej, witnessed by two others—one young and gaunt, high-cheeked, an officer in the Russian army, the other less erect, approaching middle age in an at-ease slouch that suggested bureaucratic rather than military training—certified the conveyance of each warhead as it rose from the cool, cavernous, stainless-steel armory one level below. Attuned to the moment he had been planning for, Philip remained silent, his emotions both hyper and subdued as the Russian and American representatives from the Nunn-Lugar task force and Nuclear Threat Initiative proceeded with their work.
Andrej stood next to him, his high Slavic forehead spotlighted by the soft blue-white glow of his laptop’s screen. The computer was brand-new, ultrathin, as close to futureproof as any he’d ever held. He caressed it with protective pride even as it rested on the drop-down easel of his workstation. The protocol now under way was meant to be double-blind. As each crate was conveyed to him, he would check its details with the attentiveness of a librarian to its original label, then to the yellowing loose-leaf pages on which the same information had long ago been recorded by hand in fine strokes of blue-black ink. The holes of the narrowly ruled pages had been reinforced and each warhead indexed with a brightly colored transparent tab so that the inventory resembled a schoolchild’s notebook. Only once these records had been matched and rematched did he scan in the bar codes affixed to the seals applied during the recent digitization of such information. Of these there were three: for the cross-barred pinewood crate that could have contained a grand piano but was in this case merely an attention-deflecting outer shell; for the le
ad liner just within; and, most crucially, for the warhead that had been inserted inside the liner. Having completed this task without error (and he knew that even a single misplaced character would start the process over from the beginning), Andrej would enter the codes’ corresponding numbers by hand into his secure computer, following which, if the entries matched the computer’s database, he would be presented with yet another series of figures, an eleven-digit composite of numerals, letters and symbols, one for each independently targeted reentry vehicle. Highlighting each of these in turn, he would enter first the installation code for their point of departure, second the code for the convoy in which they were to be transported, and finally the code for the destination facility at which the weapons were to be deactivated, disassembled and destroyed.
Twenty meters down the line, the exact process was repeated by his Russian army counterpart under the gaze of the American disarmament expert. After this each case was loaded aboard one of two trucks that—following a three-quarter-hour drive with land, air and sea escorts—would arrive at an otherwise disused rail station. There the transfer would be swift and, even as a wintry daylight lingered, floodlit. The final leg of the journey, entirely covert, would be across limitless fields still tended with scythes.
In all, twenty-one warheads were to be transported. And when the loading and recording had been completed at every stage, twenty-one crates of exactly similar weight and dimensions shone on every copy of the manifest. Therein was the elegance of Ian’s conceit. In the confusion, madcap turmoil and despair that had attended the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ian, by then trafficking far more profitably in contraband than in shares, currencies, or ideas, had approached his sometime client, sometime purveyor Colonel Zhugov, a man of humble appearance and expensive tastes, with a proposition. The good soldier had only to falsify certain records in certain places, had only to secrete and maintain within his impregnable base three warheads until the day came when either he would have to suddenly “rediscover” them to save his skin or, as Ian thought much more likely, it would become feasible to remove them. In the maelstrom of revolution, Ian believed, millions of accounts of all sorts would be fudged rather than justified. That was a lesson of history, he had told Philip. Recalling this, Philip wished he himself possessed more of his mentor’s patience and trust, more of Ian’s confidence that no matter how far off, a path to the main chance would sooner or later reveal itself.
Back in the utilitarian office of the installation’s present commanding officer, Andrej said, “It’s a good thing a place can’t think, can’t know what’s become of it, can’t feel regret.”
“Your sentimental nature never ceases to surprise me,” Philip told him. “It’s at odds with your uniform.”
“All I meant is that one minute you are—what is the word?—the cynosure of the world’s attention . . . well, at least that of other armed forces, your possible and probable enemies.”
“‘Cynosure,’” Philip repeated. “What dictionary have you been reading this time?”
“The Oxford English, of course,” Andrej replied. “The word means ‘center of attraction or admiration.’ But from now on, no one will give a damn about this place.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I wasn’t thinking of tourists.”
“You’ll be surprised how many will come.”
“No. They come already. The new ones will just be of a different type, a better class, the sort who would now fly off to Antalya. Anapa is just down the road. It has always had its share of tourists, more than ever since the old Soviet Union collapsed and taking one’s holiday in Sevastopol and the like meant crossing the border into Crimea. I suppose what the builders have in mind is more on the order of Sochi’s resorts.”
“The artist’s renderings,” Philip said, “would suggest something more bucolic than grand. But you are correct; it’s to be Russian in character.”
“Of necessity,” Andrej replied. “No one else can get there without the most enormous hassle.”
Philip allowed himself a smile.
Andrej said, “I am sure it will be lovely, first class in every way, but even so, to be admired for one’s natural beauty is not the same as to be respected for one’s power.”
“No, it isn’t, nor is that an argument I was making.”
“Real admiration is based in fear,” Andrej declared coolly.
“What about attraction?”
“At the beginning not always, but eventually fear plays its part. No one will fear this place ever again, which is good, but sad, too, in its way. That’s all I was trying to explain, Mr. Frost.”
“What remains?” Philip asked.
“To sign off that the weapons are gone,” Andrej told him. “That’s it.”
“All four principals must sign and witness that decertification order, if I remember correctly. Once that’s done—”
“The guards can go home and the soldiers can go elsewhere. There’ll be nothing left to secure. Then just you watch: The construction crews won’t waste a day before they move in. I’m telling you, we’ll hardly recognize this place in a month.”
“Well, it’s the new Russia.” Philip sighed. “What can I say?”
“And where there’s money at stake . . .” Andrej’s voice trailed off. “Where is the seal, by the way? Do you have it?”
Philip shrugged off Andrej’s impertinence. “Of course I have it. It’s in my left coat pocket. I’ve been fidgeting with it all afternoon.”
“Let’s wrap things up, then. It’s already dark, and I’d like to get back to my room, run a hot bath, change my clothes and pour myself a drink.”
“You’re entitled to do that,” Philip said. “You’ve worked hard, done a fine job, too. But tell me, what will you do tomorrow, and the day after?”
Andrej hesitated, then shot Philip a sly smile. “Forget,” he said with all the reassurance he could summon. “And you?”
“I’ll anticipate,” Philip told him. “That’s the business I’m in.”
Chapter Five
Gripping the lime green two-by-four rail that ran, hip-high, along the precipice, Ty Hunter stared south across the Mediterranean. It was late morning and the May sun was almost overhead. The sky was absent of clouds. Was it any wonder that this place had been named the Côte d’Azur?
“Like a shot rubber band,” he explained into the mouthpiece of his phone’s headset. “That’s how I feel, to tell you the truth.”
“Is it any wonder?” Greg Logan, on the other end of the connection, agreed.
“Not really,” Ty said, “after four pictures in three years, two of them, as you know, very long shoots.” To his right lay the Golfe-Juan, and beyond the far promontory that defined it, sat Cannes. It was the Film Festival he had come for—not because he had another blockbuster in competition or about to open, but because of the cameo role he’d taken, for scale, in Something to Look Forward To, which promised to be Greg Logan’s comeback picture. It was Greg who had discovered him in the rehab center at Walter Reed seven years before. Newly photogenic after the sequence of surgeries that had followed the fiery crash of the armored personnel carrier in which, as the intelligence officer of a tactical infantry unit of the Third Army, he’d been traveling on maneuvers, Ty was then only weeks away from discharge from the hospital. Greg, who was still doing commercial films, had trained his camera on Ty’s smile and, even before the half-hour promotional piece had wrapped, given the young soldier his card.
Now, as Ty watched motor yachts exit and enter the harbors on either side of the lush Hôtel du Cap, he thought that he could hardly have wished for better luck. With no specific job to go to once he left the army, he had decided to take a flier, called Greg, then bought the cheapest flight he could find to Los Angeles. He’d given himself three months to find his footing, but it hadn’t taken that long, an
d he’d still had a reasonable portion of his savings in the bank when his first paycheck arrived. In a manner of speaking, he’d caught a wave, he realized, having appeared in Hollywood just as Greg had begun casting his first feature, a road movie called The Boy Who Understood Women. Although Ty had no idea from what reservoir of experience or imagination he’d summoned his portrayal of a young drifter who trades his life for his lover’s, he had won an Oscar nomination for it, then, quickly in its aftermath, the roles that had made him the number-one box-office star in the world. Greg’s own fortunes had fared less well over the same period, his projects becoming smaller, more personal and subtle in a marketplace that craved just the opposite. Everyone, however, had agreed that the script for Something to Look Forward To was brilliant and, if only there were stars attached, exactly right for a director of Greg Logan’s sensibility. So Ty had repaid his mentor’s faith, taken on the cameo role of a playboy Robin Hood, and, drawn by his presence, other stars had followed.
“Have you seen the trades?” Greg inquired.
“I haven’t been awake that long,” Ty replied.
“What time did she leave?”
“It must have been early.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
“Not true. I spent the night alone, as I often do lately. Don’t tell anyone?”
“If that’s true, it was by choice,” Greg said.
“You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.”
“There were a lot of beautiful women at the Vanity Fair party. And the waters parted when you arrived. Need I say more?”
“Maybe I’m looking for something that’s harder to find,” Ty said.
“People do that,” Greg told him. “It’s usually a mistake.”
“When I’m ready to give up, I’ll give up. I’m not ready yet.”
“Yeah, well, never mind. The buzz on the picture’s fantastic. Variety loved it; so did the Reporter. They loved you. They loved everyone. I can’t explain it. Sometimes people get it. Anyway, this time the ball landed on the right number. You know what you are, Ty? You’re charmed.”
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