by Bill DeSmedt
“Not a problem. As far as Grishin and company know, the agent in question is out of the picture. Permanently.”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me what that means when we get a moment alone together.” Knox gave her an inquiring look. When that didn’t work, he added, “Come to think, we’ve got one now.”
She got quiet. He hated when she did that; it meant she was metering how much truth to dispense this time around.
Finally she said, “Okay, I was there when ‘Galina’ got extracted. Not the in-charge, but I’d called it, so I got to observe. And it damn near got me killed. Did get me killed, as far as the opposition knows. Thrown down an elevator shaft.” She shivered. “Look, could we talk about something else?”
“I don’t know that I’ve got anything to match that,” he said. “I mean, client relations can get strained at times, but it’s always stopped short of defenestration. Until now, that is.”
Talking usually soothed Knox’s nerves. This conversation was having the opposite effect. Which served to remind him . . .
“Incidentally,” he said, “speaking of potential bodily harm, did you—?
“All taken care of. I talked to Pete, and you’re off the hook with the FSB.” She patted his hand. “Now, why don’t you just relax? Four or five more hours and it’ll all be over but the debrief. Think past it—think about your next assignment. London, isn’t it? Tell me about that.”
“Well, there’s this bank . . .” He launched into a disquisition that, with Marianna’s promptings, continued until the floodlit marble facade of the Kennedy Center hove into view off the limousine’s starboard bow.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts illuminated the humid Washington dusk like a king-size bug-zapper, the oranges and blues of its floods luring in all manner of lepidopterous nightlife, resplendent in chitinous tuxes and diaphanous evening gowns. Knox and Marianna followed the shimmering throngs into the Hall of Nations, along its sixty-foot high, flag-draped length past the limpid blues of Maro’s Transfiguration, down to the Grand Foyer.
Performances at the Center’s six theaters had been canceled for the evening at Arkady Grishin’s behest, so that the Mir i Druzhba gala might be held in the cavernous, red-carpeted Grand Foyer—a single continuous space as long as the Washington Monument was high, presided over by Robert Berks’ monumental bust of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Directly across from JFK, a string quartet was entertaining on the raised landing out in front of the Opera House, the musicians reflected in the eight floor-to-ceiling panels of Belgian mirror flanking the entrance. One entire glass-fronted wall of the Foyer gave out on the softly-lit gardens of the River Terrace, and the Potomac swirling in the darkness beyond.
“That’s him—Grishin,” Marianna nodded her head toward a grayhaired, distinguished-looking gentleman in his mid- to late fifties standing at the center of a small knot of gala-goers.
They’d said the man was an avid sailor, and he certainly looked like an outdoorsman of some stripe, with those rugged good looks and ruddy complexion. But he also looked completely at ease in this drawing-room milieu. Tall, slim, and immaculately tailored, sporting a dazzling smile, Grishin was holding forth to an audience that included, far as Knox could tell, at least two United States senators and a Cabinet officer. Rising on its pedestal behind Grishin, the eight-foot-tall, rough-textured bronze head of JFK looked on in mild bemusement at the spectacle of a Russian magnate captivating the cream of Beltway society.
Knox was surprised that the man of the hour hadn’t drawn more of a crowd. Then he saw the wall of muscle—a ring of swarthy, dour-looking bodyguards—cordoning off the elect from the uncommon herd.
Knox had to strain to catch what Grishin, through his interpreter, was saying: “But in order to be a true friend and partner in the war against terrorism, Russia must first and foremost be herself again. What kind of honest dialogue can exist between our two great nations, when one side is only parroting back what the other wants to hear? No, my dear friends, Russia must find her own true voice once more.” Yadda, yadda. Rumor had it the GEI chief was weighing a run for the Russian presidency next time around. If so, he’d come a long way to stump for it.
None of Knox’s concern; he was here to find Sasha. He scanned the faces in Grishin’s immediate vicinity. Where Arkady Grigoriyevich went, could his right-hand man be far behind?
With Marianna in tow, Knox homed in on a familiar frizz of straw-blond hair protruding above the artfully coiffed and coutured hubbub.
Sure enough, Sasha it was, standing beneath one of the Orrefors crystal chandeliers, his back to the crowd.
Sasha seemed oblivious to the glitter all around him. Totally lost to the world, in fact. Gesticulating wildly and uttering a stream of rapid-fire Russian in what seemed a manic conversation with himself. Terrific! He’s gone and snapped under the strain.
Then Knox spotted the headset tucked behind his old friend’s ear, and the hair-thin wire trailing down the side of his neck. Connecting, no doubt, to a cellphone base unit tucked in a shielded jacket pocket, where its microwave radiation would be less likely to fry his brain. The Sasha that Knox had known in Moscow hadn’t even had a phone line to call his own. This paragon of pervasive teleconnectivity was going to take some getting used to.
Knox reached out to tap Sasha on the shoulder, and found his arm arrested in mid-arc by a hard, hairy hand. The hand belonged to a short, squat, Transcaucasian-looking individual. More hired muscle. The man released Knox’s wrist, wagged an index finger at him, then pressed that same finger against his own lips.
“Shhh,” quoth the torpedo. Evidently Mr. Bondarenko was not to be interrupted while engaged in his phone conversation.
The small disturbance had, however, registered on Sasha’s peripheral vision. He broke off talking to the air and turned to see what was going on. A smile spread across his face as he sighted Knox. He spoke two words of dismissal into his lapel mike, one to his bodyguard, and stood there arms outstretched.
“Dzhon!” He crushed Knox in a bear hug and pounded him on the back. “I am so happy you could come. It is so good to see you after all the years.”
“It’s great to see you, too, Sasha,” Knox said as soon as he could breathe again. He stepped back a pace. It was like stepping back twenty years in time. It was still Sasha. Still the same improbable mix of candor and cunning, open-heartedness with an eye to the main chance. Still his friend.
“You don’t look a day older,” was all Knox could think to say.
“Nor you, my friend, nor you.” Sasha gave him a playful punch on the arm. He seemed altogether energized by the reunion.
“I’m forgetting my manners.” Knox put his arm around Marianna’s waist. Surprisingly, she snuggled against him for a moment.
“Marianna,” he said, “this is Aleksandr Andreyevich Bondarenko, the old friend I told you about. Sasha, I’d like to have you meet—” What was that cover name again?
“Ms. Marianna Peterson,” Sasha finished for him. He took Marianna’s hand in both of his. Thought better of it and gave her a hug, then kissed her on either cheek for good measure. “I feel I know you already. Dzhon has told me so much about you.”
Hmm. At that afternoon’s briefing, Marianna had filled Knox in on some, by no means all, of the email correspondence conducted in his name over the past few days. If it had included any glowing references to herself, she’d neglected to mention them.
Sasha was still talking to Marianna. “Really, though, my dear, you must speak to Dzhon. He entirely forgot to tell how beautiful you are.”
“You’re too kind, Mr. Bondarenko.” Marianna colored prettily. What sort of paramilitary training enabled that fine-tuned a control over the facial bloodflow? “Both with your compliments and with your wonderful invitation.”
“Call me Sasha, please. We will be spending enough time together to become old friends, too.”
Something about that last exchange didn’t quite track. Knox was about to ask about it when S
asha turned back to him.
“So, Dzhon, a consultant? I had expected to find you a Harvard professor by now. Did you never complete your thesis?”
“Wouldn’t advertise it if I did. In the consulting game, a doctorate’s superfluous at best, downright suspect at worst.”
“You never told how you got into this work. It seems a great distance from Sovietologia.”
“Not so great as you might think. It’s a long story, but the crux is, it all comes down to language. Moving from Russian to UML just means swapping one set of formalisms for another. But how about you, Sasha? Deputy director of Russia’s third biggest conglomerate sounds like a far cry from cosmology, too. What’s that all about?”
“As with you, it is a long story. The details are perhaps not so very interesting, and there will, in any case, be time to discuss later. For now: well, you claim it is only a short step from Sovietology to systems analysis. Permit me to say the same of the transition from astrophysics to high finance. Except magnitudes become even more astronomical.” He winked.
“But I fear we have ignored your lovely companion too long.” He turned to Marianna. “Forgive us please, my dear. There are years of catching up to do.”
“Don’t stop on my account, uh, Sasha. Jon and I are still so new to each other, every old friend is a chance to learn a little bit more about him. This mysterious Soviet past of his is only the latest puzzle piece.” As she spoke, Marianna casually slipped back into Knox’s embrace. It felt like she belonged there, warm and soft, cuddly when she wanted to be.
The scent of her was intoxicating. The distraction made it harder to focus on broaching the subject of Galina. And doubly hard to fathom what Sasha said next.
“We can wait until we are aboard to give such matters the attention they deserve, dear Marianna. We shall have all the time in the world then to bare the secrets of this poor man’s soul.”
Then he turned to Knox and said something even less comprehensible: “I trust you are all packed? I must apologize for the early departure, but Rusalka’sails with the morning tide.”
“Um,” Knox said.
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world, Sasha,” Marianna took up the slack. “It’s so kind of you to offer to sail us to Jon’s next assignment.”
“Nonsense, Marianna! When Dzhon emailed me that he must start work in London next month, how could I do otherwise? True, our big boat is much slower than a transatlantic jet, but I think you will find her far more comfortable. And, besides, there is someone aboard who cannot wait to see you, Dzhon! No less so than I.” Sasha punched his arm again.
So that was what she hadn’t been telling him. He was being shanghaied! Still, there was a way out of this. If he could just get Sasha to admit . . .
“Someone waiting to see me?” he began, “Is it—”
Is it Galina? he’d been about to ask. He couldn’t. His mouth was suddenly otherwise engaged. The kiss Marianna gave him was long and luxuriant, exactly the way he’d been imagining it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on those exquisite lips. And none the less enjoyable for being totally contrived. Talk about una cosa di biznes.
“Oh, Jon,” she breathed in his ear, “won’t this be romantic?”
“Next time you’re thinking of pulling something like that,” Knox said once they were alone in the limo again, “Some sort of advance warning would be nice.”
“Oh, you mean the . . . call it a qualifying exam, Jon. I needed to see how you react to unpleasant surprises.”
“I’m a systems analyst, remember? Unpleasant surprises are my stock-in-trade.”
“Anyway, it worked, that’s what counts. And it’s not like you weren’t going to London anyway. Thanks for the backup, incidentally.”
“You’re welcome. How’d I score?”
“Mmm . . . B plus. But it’d have dropped to a C if Sasha had caught that look on your face.”
“You’re referring to my justly famous ‘Oh, Lord, the client’s just gone ofF the high board and the pool’s been drained’ expression?”
“That’s the one—do it for me again.”
“Maybe later.” Knox was a little too apprehensive about recent and possible future developments to keep up his end of the repartee. This was turning out to be radically different from any assignment he’d ever undertaken before. Turning out to be personal in the extreme, for one thing. There’d be no maintaining his carefully constructed façade of professional objectivity on this one. Would that impair—had it already impaired—his judgment?
Then, too, Marianna’s assurances to the contrary, there was a strong undercurrent of physical danger here, an irreducible element of risk in setting foot on some strange vessel bound for God knows where. And none of it strictly necessary, if all CROM was trying to do was ascertain Galina’s whereabouts.
That reminded him: “Why did you sidetrack me back there just when I was getting Sasha to open up about Galya?”
“I got the impression you kinda liked it,” she said. “But, since you ask: there’s no hurry on that any more.”
She leaned in closer. Knox could feel the warmth of her again, could smell the way it was sublimating her perfume, the mingled aromas of Chanel and Marianna wafting from her décolletage. Close enough to kiss, not kissing—no encores for that part of the performance tonight, evidently. Still, her proximity alone was enough to cloud his higher faculties.
“Thanks to you,” she purred, “there’s no hurry at all. We’ll have two operatives inserted by tomorrow morning.”
Arkady Grigoriyevich Grishin looked about him at the polished wood and brass appointments of his palatial headquarters suite and smiled. It was good to be back aboard Rusalka, good to be sailing with the morning. Over the past decade, he had come to feel more at home on the sea than the land.
He shook his head. Strange sentiments for a Russian. Like Antaeus, Russia had always drawn her strength from Mother Earth, from vast land armies, from peasant stock stolid and enduring as the eternal land itself. Hemmed in by her lack of warm water ports, denied ready access to the open ocean, for most of her history Russia had turned her back on the sea. Even Peter the Great had striven against that geographical destiny in vain, his dreams of a fleet come to naught. Only the Soviets, by dint of Herculean effort, had succeeded in making Russia a naval power—and that only in the past half-century. It did not come natural, even yet. Mastery of the seas was still too new and too alien to strike a responsive chord in the national psyche.
Grishin chuckled at the irony. For fate had decreed it would be on the high seas, from this magnificent vessel, that Russia would change the course of history.
The maritime clock on the mantel chimed five times. Five bells, two-thirty in the morning. It didn’t seem that late. Grishin rose from behind his ornate leather-topped desk and poured himself a splash of Stolichnaya XX from the bottle on the sideboard. He stood there running his hand over the gleaming mahogany, imbibing its warmth and luster through manicured fingertips.
Changing the course of history . . . How many obstacles had he already overcome in pursuit of that goal? Even this evening’s fete had its small part to play in the plan. All his pet Senators had come out for the GEI gala, as why would they not? Their fawning attendance was, after all, merely the outward and visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace conferred by soft-money contributions. The cash, funneled in through various fronts to choke the coffers and campaign war-chests of his unwitting allies in the American Congress, had had the desired effect: the federal watchdog agencies investigating GEI’s affairs were being kept on a very tight leash, and would be for at least the next two or three months. Ample time to bring the Antipode Project to fruition. And then CROM and the rest would simply not matter, not matter at all.
Grishin frowned then, recalling how close a thing the CROM business had been. But who could have known, back when Komarov and Dinershtein first took up permanent residence onboard Rusalka, that anyone—anyone at all—would take notice? It was not as if th
ese were biochemical or nuclear specialists. From a counter-proliferation perspective, tracking magnetohydrodynamicists made as little sense as shadowing veterinarians.
Still, that one slip-up had nearly brought the whole soaring edifice of the Project crashing down in ruins. Two weeks ago Security had confirmed that CROM was sniffing out this slenderest of leads, their inquiry spearheaded by one particularly tenacious analyst.
But the diversionary disappearance had come off brilliantly. Now CROM had what it was looking for: an overt extraction to investigate. To investigate, but never to resolve. For days, weeks—for all the time left to them—they would be haring down that false trail, seeking a woman whose very blood and bones had been reduced to their component atoms.
A false trail that led far from Rusalka, where all the while the real Galina was safely sequestered, free to complete her vital work, never suspecting she, or her alter ego, was the object of a nationwide manhunt.
And, best of all, the ruse had drawn their over-inquisitive CROM analyst out into the open, into the ambush. Two flies with one slap, as Yuri put it.
Yuri—that one bore watching. No principles, no convictions, no allegiances to any cause higher than money. A common mercenary. Or, give the devil his due, a most uncommon one. Principles aside, no one could dispute his effectiveness. Already, this afternoon, he had reported back that the Tunguska operation had gone off without a hitch.
That the last possible leak had been plugged.
Worth drinking to. Grishin drained his glass and poured himself another.
It would have been so much simpler in the old days. The very notion of American scientists tramping unhindered around the remote Siberian wastes would have been unthinkable to begin with. Now, his compatriots fell all over themselves making the Americans and their dollars welcome, like so many piglets pushing and shoving to suckle at the teat of the New World Order. How had it all gone so wrong?
That, at least, he could answer. He spoke a command and resumed his seat to watch the leather desktop retract, revealing the holotank beneath. Within its depths, sparkling like some improbable dendritic crystal, a computer-generated chronogram rotated slowly. A schematic encapsulating years of work by the Temporal Research group, depicting all of twentieth-century Russian history. And more.