by Greg Rucka
“All that time, you never got anything more?” Wallford asks.
Heath shoots a look that would be complete only with the addition of death beams, but Nessuno either misses it or doesn’t care.
“I asked him three separate times,” Nessuno says. “Once point-blank, just flat out asked, ‘Who do we work for? Is this a government or something else?’ He got angry. He told me not even he knew that, that he didn’t want to know that, and that I shouldn’t want to know that, either. ‘We work for the devil,’ he said. ‘We work for God. We work for money.’ He told me to never ask him again.”
Something in the way she says it tells Bell it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation, but aside from her frown there’s been nothing in her face and nothing in her voice that he can read.
“Did you know about the WilsonVille plot?” Bell asks. “The thing in California?”
Nessuno glances to Heath before answering. The other woman has lowered the binder, still open, and she moves her head just enough that Nessuno, if not Bell himself, sees her nod.
“I knew enough to send up the balloon about a strike on American soil, and that it’d be a theme park or similar,” Nessuno says. “I knew about an operation in Iran to acquire the plutonium. That was bought, not stolen. Tohir arranged the buy, got it from one of the scientists working at the facility in Chalus. This was last November; we had a meet in Paris at La Trémoille to arrange it.”
“Wait—you were there?” Bell asks.
“My value to Tohir was primarily as a translator. Tohir didn’t like that, by the way; he thought the plutonium overcomplicated things. He said it would’ve been easier and more effective to use cesium or strontium, which is what made me think they planned to use the material in a dirty bomb. I tried following up on that, but the best I got was that it was ‘what the customer ordered.’”
Bell looks at Wallford, and Wallford gives him the in-joke grin. “I know, right? Confirms what we already know, that the attack was supposed to look like the work of Iran or an Iran proxy.”
“Who bought it?” Nessuno asks.
“We’ve got some ideas,” says Wallford. “Captain?”
“What?” Heath snaps the word off like she’s trying to break its back.
“Anything you want to add?”
“I’m still going through the transcript. Wish to God you’d waited until we were here to get started.”
“First couple interviews were only background; this one’s the sell.” Wallford produces an earbud, offers it to Bell. “We’re going to put the chief in your ear. You’ll be her mouth.”
Bell fits the earbud while Wallford moves to the monitor table, uses a radio there to order Tohir moved for interrogation. The flat screens on the wall come to life with a flicker, three angles on a single room with a bare table and a couple of chairs set around it. He sees Nessuno’s attention shift from the binder to the screens, then Heath’s, and then they’re all watching in a silence that’s broken only by the whir of electronics and the measured voices of the men on the monitors.
Then the light in the room on the screens shifts, brightens for a moment before dropping to its previous level, and one of the undercovers that Bell met in the kitchen is there, helping Tohir to a seat. He looks tired, stubble growth on his cheeks, and once in the chair he winces and shifts, trying to accommodate his wounded hip. His clothes are clean.
“Time to meet the mastermind,” Wallford says.
They’re taking the stairs down to the cellar when Bell asks, “You going to put her in the room?”
“Which one?” Wallford asks.
“You know which one.”
“Might. Tohir sees the chief sitting opposite him, no telling what that’ll shake loose.”
“I think she’s seen enough of him,” Bell says.
“She’s seen all of him, from what I understand.”
Bell stops short, and Wallford, ahead of him, stops, too. They’re at the foot of the stairs, and the other two undercovers from the kitchen are standing dead ahead of them, flanking a new door in a new wall, the construction so recent Bell can smell it. A snarl of cables runs from a bundle along one of the support beams overhead, feeding into the newly constructed interrogation room.
“That was a joke, Master Sergeant,” Wallford says.
“I know what it was. You do what she did, then you talk.”
Wallford frowns at him. He’s carrying a black leather portfolio, which he now switches from beneath his arm into his hands. “You’re sweet on her, is that it?”
“What I am is sympathetic to sacrifice. Don’t diminish it.”
“We’re a united front when we get inside.”
“Are we inside?”
“Point taken. We good?”
Bell reaches around to his right hip, draws his .45 from the pancake holster riding there, ignoring Wallford’s rapidly rising eyebrows. Bell drops the magazine, pops the ready round, then offers the whole package to the undercover standing on the hinge side of the door. The man takes it without a word.
“Good to go,” says Bell.
“So how’s the hip?” Wallford asks.
Vosil Tohir sits on the other side of a dull gray metal table, a rectangle of industrial design affixed to the floor of the newly built interrogation room by hasps, which are in turn locked down by bolts bored into the concrete. The table, Bell observes, goes with the room. White acoustic tile on the walls and the ceiling, recessed lighting, and two cameras that he can see. The lights all cant away from the entrance, directed at the subject on the other side of the table, and if Tohir weren’t wearing glasses, it would be effective intimidation. As it is, the glare off his lenses does an effective job of concealing his eyes, and the result is a zero-sum game.
“No better than the last time you asked,” Tohir says. His chin moves, indicates Bell. “Who is this?”
Wallford drops his leather portfolio on the table, pulls one of the two chairs on this side out, metal scraping on the concrete floor. Bell takes the other seat.
“Just another one of your fans, Vosil,” Wallford says. He doesn’t look at the man, instead concentrates on drawing out his preparations, runs the zipper around the portfolio slowly. He slides a ballpoint from where it’s held in a loop along the spine, twists it slowly to deploy its point. Flips a page on the pad, begins scribbling.
Bell waits, hands in his lap, watching Tohir, and Tohir sighs, settles his gaze on Bell, returning it. He looks different from the way he did on the plane, in the hangar in Tashkent, the disparity between his face in repose and now not. A handsome face, more European than Asian, but worn with fatigue and, Bell suspects, some pain. If Chain had shattered his hip, there’s no way Vosil Tohir would be sitting anywhere anytime soon, let alone here and now. Bell thinks Tohir got lucky.
There’s a click-click in Bell’s ear, and then Nessuno’s voice, the signal so clear that he suffers the momentary disorientation of believing she is at his shoulder, whispering to him. “Move your right hand to indicate five by five.”
Bell sets his right palm on the table, shifts it a few centimeters.
“Confirm reading me five by,” Nessuno says.
“A fan,” Tohir says. He’s still looking at Bell. “Do you want an autograph?”
Bell doesn’t answer, doesn’t smile, doesn’t respond. He figures he’s in the room to play the heavy. With all that in mind, though, Bell doesn’t think he much likes Vosil Tohir. There’s an arrogance to him, remarkable given the circumstances. Or maybe it’s that Nessuno is in his ear, and he’s been thinking about her more than he thinks he should be doing.
“I’m going to cut to the chase here, Vosil,” Wallford says, finally looking up from his open portfolio. He’s wearing his grin. We’re all friends here, except, of course, we’re not.
“Oh, please do.”
“We want who you work for.”
Tohir adjusts his glasses. “Without dinner and a movie first? You think you can just ask me to bend over and I’ll do it, jus
t like that? Speaking of which, where’s Elisabet?”
“Who’s Elisabet?”
Even with the light kicking off Tohir’s glasses, Bell sees him roll his eyes. “You know the answer to that better than I. Who’s Elisabet? She’s the woman I loved. She’s the woman I trusted. She’s the woman who was with me when I was taken and who did not, I note, get shot because she knew the right word to say to your people. Which means she is one of your people. Which means she’s a liar. Which means she’s a whore.”
The voice in Bell’s ear is silent.
“She’s in custody,” Wallford says.
“Is that true? I don’t think that’s true, Jerry.” Tohir spreads his hands, palms up, on the table, looks from Wallford to Bell. “That would not make a lot of sense. She’s here, isn’t she? She would be here, that makes more sense. Watching us? Just to observe this interrogation?”
“You’re maybe a little paranoid,” Wallford says.
Tohir shakes his head, then lifts his chin to face one of the obvious cameras. The movement makes him wince. He raises a hand in greeting, then drops it, and this time puts his attention on Bell.
“She would be here, that makes sense. To verify what I say. To confirm. But can you trust her? Really? I mean, she is an excellent liar. She fooled me, and—not to commend myself or seem arrogant—that’s not an easy thing to do. She fooled me for a long time. She did everything required to fool me. She killed two men, did you know that? One of them, he had to have been an American agent. Did you know that? Never mind that she gave me her body whenever and wherever I wanted it. She’s a woman, after all; it’s what they do. But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How can you trust a woman like that?”
Bell doesn’t answer, and neither does Nessuno.
“We’re not here to talk about this Elisabet person, Vosil,” Wallford says.
“No, you’re not.” Tohir glares at Wallford. “But I have something I want to say to her. Just in case she’s listening. Just in case she reads the transcript or watches the video. A message.” He turns back to the same camera as before. “Elisabet, I know what you did to me. You better hope he kills me, because if I live, I will find you, and I will kill you. It will be like it was in Prague, but slower. A thousand times slower.”
“What happened in Prague?” Bell asks.
“Ask her,” Tohir says.
“Are you finished?” Wallford leans forward. “Really, are you finished now, Vosil? Or should I ask one of the guys to get you a ruler so you can see if your dick is still as short as it was when we started?”
“No,” Bell says. “I want to hear about Prague.”
“You don’t,” Nessuno says. “It’s not relevant.”
Tohir looks hard at Bell, as if trying to determine who he is and why he’s here. “She was tested in Prague. She had to prove herself to me. She passed.”
Wallford taps the table with his pen. “Who do you work for, Vosil?”
Tohir just shakes his head. “I’ve lost track of time. How long has it been since you took me from Tashkent? Since you broke down my door and murdered my men?”
“Call it seventy-two hours, give or take.”
“And this safe house, this place where we are right now, it’s in the United States? That’s too fucking long, Jerry. He knows I’m gone by now, he knows what happened, and he almost certainly knows it was you who took me. Which means he’s looking to find me.”
“What do you mean, he knows who it was who took you?” Bell asks.
“Your government. He has to know. You are military? Were you one of the shooters?”
Bell shakes his head.
Tohir frowns, then it smooths, and he sighs. “It does make things easier, now, doesn’t it?”
“Easier how?”
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, as you might imagine. When I’ve been conscious, I should say. There are things I require. Things I want. You give me those things, you promise me those things, and we can deal.”
“You’re coming to the table empty,” Wallford says. “Give us something we can use, a name, something, then we can work a deal.”
“He doesn’t know the name,” Nessuno says. There’s frustration in her voice, and Bell wonders at its source. Every interrogation is a give-and-take, and if there’s impatience on her part, he imagines it as out of character. He suffers no confusion; Elisabet is Nessuno. Until this moment, he’s taken everything Tohir has said about her with enough salt to kill a snail; it’s what he’s expected of the man, to sow confusion and to raise doubt. She had to know it was coming as well as he. “If he knew the name, I would’ve gotten it. You’re wasting time.”
“Not yet,” Tohir tells Wallford. “I have what you want; you have to give me what I want first. It’s very simple.”
“He doesn’t know,” Nessuno hisses, but Bell is already speaking even as she says it.
“But you can’t, can you?” Bell says. “You can’t give us what you don’t have, and you don’t know his name.”
Tohir slowly draws his gaze back to Bell. “She told you that?”
Bell gets up. “This is bullshit, you know it, I know it. He’s scared and he’s caught and he’s got dick. He’ll sell his mother, his children, to get out of this room. He’s got nothing.”
“He’s scared,” Nessuno murmurs. “He always tried to hide it, but Echo terrified him.”
“Let’s go,” Bell tells Wallford.
Wallford sighs, leans back in his chair to make it scrape again on the concrete floor. He rotates his pen, moves to replace it in the portfolio.
“Wait,” Tohir says.
“For what? To listen to you puff yourself up? To listen to a deal when you’ve got nothing to deal with?” He ignores Tohir, adds to Wallford, “He’s wasting our fucking time.”
“Is that true, Vosil? Is this just you playing make-believe?”
Tohir grimaces, and Bell could believe it’s the man’s hip giving him pain but for the fact that he hasn’t moved. “You are right, I cannot give you what you really want. I cannot give you his name. I cannot tell you where to find him. But I am willing to offer other things. I am willing to offer you what I have, but I cannot do it for free. I cannot—it means my life, do you understand? It means my life, and I wish to keep it. But I can give you other things, important things.”
Wallford waits, then looks to Bell, and Bell takes his seat again.
“Then get fucking started,” he says.
“You must promise me things first,” Tohir says. “You must promise me that I will be moved, that I will be safe. You must do this at once. There isn’t much time, not for any of us.”
“He can reach you here?”
“You have no idea his reach. You have no idea what he is capable of, who he controls, who he has made his own either through deception or coercion or reward.” There is, for a moment, a new note in Vosil Tohir’s voice, and Bell hears it, hears the truth in what Nessuno has said. The man is not simply scared. His fear is mortal, and complete.
“We can protect you,” Wallford says.
“Sincerely, Jerry, really, fuck you. Fuck you in the face. Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“We can—”
“How many people know I am here?” Tohir, agitated, slams his hand on the table. “How many? Do you even know, Jerry? This guy—you, new guy, yours is a new face. How many new faces are in this house right now, at this very moment? How many people know I am here, people in Langley and Bethesda and D.C.? How many, Jerry?”
Wallford hesitates.
“You don’t know, do you? You don’t even fucking know. You’ve already lost count. That is why you cannot protect me.”
“We know how to keep a secret,” Wallford says.
Tohir laughs, bitterly amused. “No, you don’t. Your head of CIA couldn’t keep it secret that he was fucking his biographer. You have contractors hiding in Russian airports, selling their secrets to China. You don’t know how to keep a secret, not one of you does. Elisabe
t, she knew how to keep a secret. Ask her how to do it, you stupid fuck. Listen to me, you must move me, you must do it now.”
“He scares you that much?” Bell asks. “This guy, this name you don’t even know?”
“He fucking terrifies me, new guy. He should terrify you, too, but you’re too stupid, too blind, to understand. You’d shit yourself now, right here, if you knew what I knew.”
“There are no secrets,” Nessuno murmurs.
“There are no secrets,” Bell says.
“Yes! Yes, this, exactly this!” Tohir nods, points, leans forward, wincing yet again. “The man you want, the man who controlled me, I met him only once face-to-face, it was years ago, years ago. Do you understand now what I am telling you? Are you getting this?”
“I understand.”
“He could’ve changed his face, he could’ve fucking changed his gender for all I know. He could be in this house, he could be you.”
“Not me.”
“Which is what he would say, is it not? The only reason I dare believe you is that I know how he works, that he will not dirty his hands if he can at all help it. That is why he needed me. What he does better than anyone else, better than you snakes at CIA, is make others dirty their hands for him.”
“How?” Wallford asks.
“The same fucking way you do; don’t be naive. Christ. He has two powers, Jerry. He has reach, and he has information, and with those two things he can make almost anyone do almost anything. It is no different from what you do, what your government does, what everyone around the world strives to do. He buys what he can, and if it is not for sale, he takes it, either through extortion or force or both.”
“If he has an agent, a sleeper, someone who knows where you are, and you can tell us—”
“I would have already! Jesus Christ, don’t you hear me, Jerry? I don’t know who he has, I only know that he does, and I know it as surely as I know you fuckers shot me, as surely as I know Elisabet lied to me. You must move me, you must move me at once. Someplace secure, someplace hidden. Put me in chains, drug me, whatever you require, but you must limit the people who know. You must learn to keep a secret. Only the people you can trust most, and even then, you must be certain.”