Blindfold Game

by Dana Stabenow

  In a department store large enough to provide anonymity they purchased a small suitcase for each of them with cash, and filled the suitcases with a few garments from a different store and toiletries from a drugstore two blocks away, because people traveling with no luggage aroused suspicion in this untrusting age. They checked in, correctly for an international flight, three hours before departure, attired in neat suits and ties and shoes polished to a high gleam, and suffered through the minor indignities inflicted upon them by the security and customs personnel. They were passed through without incident.

  The plane departed the gate precisely on schedule. As they lifted off the end of the runway, Jones turned to Smith and said, “Why?”

  “Because we were there,” Smith said. “And because we could.”

  HEATHROW

  OCTOBER 6,

  SMITH AND JONES ARRIVED in London at 6:30 a.m. Greenwich time, ten minutes ahead of schedule and seven hours before their next flight, time enough for a proper breakfast and to read the accounts of the bombing in the London newspapers. One of the stories had the Tamil separatist movement claiming responsibility, but general editorial feeling was that this was mere braggadocio. The Times deplored the exportation of terror to tourist communities, beginning with the attack on the Achille Lauro, continuing with the bombing of the bar in Bali, and now this outrage. They were careful to call the target a nightclub and not a whorehouse. The Guardian had discovered a minor Welsh poet among the dead and had devoted quite half of their obituary page to him, paying graceful homage to a body of work they had not deigned to recognize during the author’s lifetime. On its front page the Mirror had a photograph of the head of a bar girl lying six feet from its body. Her lipstick wasn’t even smudged.

  They boarded a plane for Moscow at thirty-five minutes past one, which was where the plump blond woman from the cafe in Pattaya Beach lost them. They arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport at half past eight in the evening. They checked into a hotel for the night, slept soundly, and boarded yet another airplane the following morning for Odessa. The taxi driver, a thin adolescent with a chin that was trying hard for the unshaven look and blond hair that looked as if it had been shorn, shredded, and glued back, heard the address he was given with a professionally bored look and delivered Smith and Jones to a nondescript office building near the top of the Potemkin Steps. They took a very slow elevator to the seventh floor, where they were met by a young, beautiful, and exquisitely dressed brunette who escorted them into a small but luxuriously appointed meeting room with windows giving a sweeping view of the port of Odessa and the Black Sea. The docks were crowded with oil tankers, bulk carriers, containerships, and tramp freighters of every make and tonnage, flying flags from all nations, although it was sometimes difficult to see those flags through the forest of cranes working to load and unload cargo.

  They were asked what they wished for in the way of refreshment. Tea, please, they said. Smith went to the window while it was being fetched. Jones joined him. They stood, contemplating the vista spread out before them.

  “For the first time, I think perhaps it might be done,” Jones said.

  “It will be done,” Smith said.

  The door opened and a tall, big-bellied man with a baby face and pale, thinning hair cut so close to the scalp he looked fashionably bald came into the room. His gray wool suit was exquisitely tailored. Beneath it he was lavishly scented. A watch and rings shone from wrist and fingers, discreetly, it must be said, but with the gleam of true gold and the flash of real diamonds nonetheless.

  He walked forward with a bouncy step and clasped Smith’s hand between both of his. “My friend, my friend, it has been so long since we has met. Come, sit, eat, drink.” He waved forward another man carrying a tray, dismissed him, and proceeded to fill the cups himself. “A little sugar, eh? Ah, you see, I remembers! Peter his friends forget never!” He handed out cups.

  They were made of fine, thin china decorated with delicate sprays of pink flowers. Smith and Jones held them awkwardly while the Russian emptied his with noisy enjoyment. “There!” he said, banging his cup down in its saucer with a movement that should have shattered it. “You may has your coffee, pah, a harsh drink accurate for peasants and Americans. For gentlemen only the tea is.” He bent a shrewd gaze on Smith. “The last shipment is pleasant?”

  Peter was fearless in his use of the English language, if not quite as fluent as he thought he was, but Smith knew what he meant. “Perfectly,” Smith said.

  “Again and yet here are you. This time what for you I do, my friend, my very old friend? What has the inventory of Peter which can excite a customer so nice in his testes?”

  Smith told him.

  Peter shrugged. “Easily available. I have associations in Russia, in Libya, in Afghanistan -”

  “I would prefer North Korea.”

  Peter made a face. “That will be the more tricky, yes?”

  “And the more expensive?” Smith said. “It does not matter.”

  However odd Peter thought this request, he didn’t earn his fees by letting it show on his face. He made an odd little bow and spoke in a hollow, echoing lisp. “By your command.” Peter, unfortunately, was a devotee of Battlestar Galactica. He had all the episodes on a set of bootleg VHS tapes, with which he had bored a series of nubile companions who were intelligent enough to pretend an interest in Cylon tyranny for as long as they enjoyed Peter’s support.

  Peter laughed heartily at his own joke until he saw that Smith and Jones did not share in his amusement. “Ah well,” he said philosophically, and with a flourish worthy of a professional magician produced a gold-monogrammed handkerchief to mop a sweaty brow. “A telephone call, minutely. I know a general-ah, ah!” He wagged a mischievous finger back and forth. “I must not to reveal my sources, even to such an old friend as you, or there will be no need for Peter’s services!” He laughed again.

  He stopped laughing when Smith told him what else he wanted. “My friend, my old friend,” Peter said, looking very grave and shaking his head. He even paused to get his grammar in order. “This thing will be very difficult and very dangerous to aspire, and even more bad to transport. Such things are guards by incomplete companies of soldiers. A nations of them, almost.” He cocked his head. “And even for me, Peter the Wolf, it will be expansive. Very, very expansive indeed.”

  “Call your bank,” Smith said.

  Peter’s eyebrows shot up in less than genuine surprise. He produced a cell phone and dialed a number. A voice answered. He asked a question, waited for a reply, and disconnected. He looked across at Jones and said, “Do you know who besides you sits, young man? A sorcerer! He makes numbers in my account doubles overnight!” He turned again to Smith. “Where?”

  Smith told him.

  Peter stroked his chin. “Hmm. Yes, I supposed it could be done. But-”

  “It will be expensive,” Smith said. “I know. Will the amount cover it?”

  “When?” Peter said.

  Smith gave him the same answer he had given Fang. “I wish to be operational by January fifteenth.”

  “Where please to ship?”

  “ Petropavlovsk.”

  Peter spread his hands. “I see no problems.”

  “Then let us proceed,” Smith said.

  “By your command,” said Peter again, rising to his feet and bowing. “It is, as always, a pleasure giving you the business, my old friend. Dmitri! Call the guests for our car.” He looked back at Smith. “Will you to stay the night?”

  Smith shook his head. “Thank you, but no. We have another appointment elsewhere.”

  Peter sighed, spread his hands in eloquent dismay, and said to Dmitri, “And take them to the airport.”

  The door closed behind them and Peter’s smile vanished. He pulled out his phone again and dialed a number. A recorded message played, and he punched in a code. A voice said, “Yes?”

  Without identifying himself he said, “I have had an unusual order.”

  “Four o�
��clock.” The voice hung up.

  Peter disconnected, and regarded the phone thoughtfully. Even if the call had been traced, the conversation had been so brief and so cryptic that nothing could be made of it.

  Still. Better men than he had been tripped up by hanging on to the same cell phone for too long. Those Americans and their damned satellite technology. Their ingenuity was admirable but their nosiness was not. It was getting harder by the day to make an honest living.

  He went to the window, opened it, and let the cell phone fall seven stories to the alley below where it shattered into a thousand pieces. “Masha, my little dove!” he said, raising his voice.

  The door opened and the beautiful young brunette looked in. “Yes, Peter?”

  “Get our coats. We are going out.”

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK PETER was at the railway station, guidebook in hand, face raised to admire the dome and point out its highlights to the young brunette who hung on his arm and his every word.

  “Truly magnificent,” a voice said at his elbow. It was the voice from the phone, only this time it was speaking a flawless and idiomatic Russian with the barest hint of Romanov in it. Peter turned to greet him, beaming.

  “But yes, magnificent,” Peter said enthusiastically in the same language. “An architectural marvel, and yet a working building in the heart of our beautiful city!”

  “The archways over the stairs have always reminded me of a Moorish castle.”

  Peter beamed at his new friend. “But yes, how clever of you to notice!” There followed an exchange on the Islamic influence on that part of the world. Suleyman the Magnificent was mentioned, as were his mosques, his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, and his wife Roxelana, the latter with some eloquent eye rolling. At last Peter said, “But this is dry work. Masha, my sweet, could you find us some coffee?” He turned to the man. “And for you as well, sir?”

  “I couldn’t possibly trespass on your hospitality, sir.”

  “Nonsense! Coffee for three, Masha, my little dove.”

  The girl moved off, clutching the wad of cash Peter had handed her- from which Peter would expect no change, a constant feature of the openhanded generosity which had so endeared him to successive companions-and the two men resumed their adoration of the architecture. They consulted the guidebook frequently, pointing from various passages on the pages to the relevant crown molding, and entered into what anyone listening would have heard as an enthusiastic debate on the relative merits of Doric columns versus Corinthian.

  “I see what you mean,” the man said. “Oh, thank you, thank you very much, my dear. You are too kind.” He accepted the cup from Masha, contriving to capture her hand and press a clumsy kiss to the back of it.

  Masha’s eyes fluttered, and if she didn’t actually blush she did manage an up-from-under look through her eyelashes that caused the other gentleman to spill coffee down the front of his coat. He drank what was left, exchanged a few more pleasantries with Peter, kissed Masha’s hand a second time with only slightly more panache, and took himself off.

  “You are a vamp, my little Masha,” Peter said, laughing. “Your flirting frightened the gentleman.”

  The girl opened her eyes very wide. “But no, Peter, I was not flirting with him! I was merely being polite!”

  He hugged her and kissed her, and then kissed her again. “I adore you, my Masha! Shall we go home?”

  Masha, who had been standing on a marble floor in four-inch heels for over an hour, agreed, even if it did mean another interminable evening with Apollo and Starbuck. At least in Peter’s apartment the vodka was Stoli, the caviar was beluga, and the bed, when Peter eventually let one sleep, was a Verio Heritage Limited, specially imported.

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  OCTOBER 19,

  HUGH’S TEMPER WAS HOT improved by the sight of his overflowing mailbox or by the stack of message slips held down on his desk by the soapstone bear paperweight. The bear had been a gift from Sara the last Christmas they were in high school together. He wanted to pick it up and heave it through the window.

  He didn’t, of course, but sitting on the impulse just pissed him off more.

  There had, in fact, been no moment during which he had not been thoroughly pissed off since he woke up alone in his Anchorage hotel room yesterday morning. His admin assistant had taken one look at his face as he came in the door this morning and speech had withered on her tongue. He took a deep breath and let it out, uncapped his vente quadruple shot americano, took a big swallow to get his heart started, and began wading through the mess.

  There was the usual assortment of pleas for help from agents and in formers in the field, from Tokyo to Taiwan to Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai to Bangkok to Singapore to Calcutta. They wanted to pay off a source, they needed to verify intelligence, they had had to bribe a local official for a satellite uplink. The official had discovered who he was really dealing with and had doubled the already astronomical price. Hugh was in no mood to be generous with the hard-earned tax dollars of the American citizen this morning, and he rejected all but one request out of hand. A high-ranking Pakistani military officer had made an oblique approach to a junior officer of the American embassy at a cocktail party in Karachi, and the consul had handed the contact off to the case officer in Delhi, who had confirmed the identity of the officer in question and was recommending the agency make the officer an offer for his services. A walk-in snitch, Hugh’s favorite kind, and he e-mailed the case officer to proceed. There was too damn little in the way of human source intelligence available to the Directorate of Intelligence these days and he was willing to investigate every possible source no matter how unlikely, as these social first contacts too often proved to be. There were a dozen open cases that needed monitoring, some that needed orders issued for further action, and one that needed closing because the source had disappeared, which meant he had probably been discovered, which meant that he was either dead or in the wind. The intel the source had produced had bordered on hearsay and speculation, but he’d been on the payroll for six years, during which time he’d come up with maybe three really useful pieces of information, one concerning the sale of CBRN weapons components to North Korea, and the case officer in Shanghai had thought they ought to do something for the family. Hugh almost rejected this request, too, until he realized he was in no frame of mind to be making this kind of decision. He e-mailed the man in Shanghai and told him to do what he thought appropriate within budgetary constraints.

  The phone rang. He snatched it up. “What?”

  The voice on the other end said, “Sadly, that does not sound like the voice of someone who just got laid.”

  Hugh’s grip tightened on the receiver. “I’m busy, Kyle. What do you want?”

  There was a brief silence. “Okay, let’s start over. This is Kyle Chase, your oldest, bestest friend from when you were in diapers. Lilah and the kids are fine, thanks.”

  No way was Hugh going to let Kyle lay any guilt on him. “I know that, I played horse with Eli and crazy eights with Gloria this weekend, not to mention ate large of Lilah’s pot roast.”

  “It was my pot roast, actually. Lilah can’t cook worth a damn. Only bad thing I can say about her.”

  Hugh didn’t say anything.

  Kyle sighed. “So, did you miss her? I didn’t think her trial had finished up when I sent you over there.”

  “It hadn’t. She was finishing up her testimony when I walked in.”

  Kyle’s voice brightened. “So you did see her?”

  Hugh hesitated.

  “I knew it, I knew all you had to do was see each other and you’d both be toast. So tell me all about it and, please, don’t omit one shocking or salacious detail. I’m here for you, buddy. Go ahead. Share.”

  Some of the tension went out of Hugh’s shoulders at Kyle’s determinedly sophomoric banter, and he swiveled to put his feet up on the desk and stare out the window at the aspens crowding the edge of the perfectly manicured lawn. “She had a room. We went back the
re. I spent the night. Next morning when I woke up, she was deja vu.” The sheets hadn’t even been warm next to him.

  A long silence, and then a respectful whistle. “Man. I gotta hand it to her, that’s really cold.”

  Hugh half smiled. “You don’t have to sound so admiring.”

  “Yeah, but it’s got style, you know? Can’t fault our Sara for not making an impact.”

  “Tell me about it.” Hugh paused. “She was happy to see me. She was at first, anyway. I don’t know what she was feeling when she woke up.”

  It sounded like Kyle was rubbing his hand over his face. “How long you been married now, buddy?”

  “Ten years. Like you weren’t there.”

  “And how many of those years have you and Sara spent in the same town?”

  “Cumulatively? About a year, total.”

  “How many times you actually answered the same phone when you were home?”

  This was cutting to the heart of things with a vengeance. “Twice.”

  “And that probably includes that sleezy little motel down the road from the academy. Or do I mean that skanky town house in Alexandria when you were going for your doctorate and she was at Georgetown going for her master’s? The one where the roaches were bigger than the rats?”

  Hugh was counting on his fingers. “No, wait, there was that apartment in D.C. Three times.”

  A pause, then a sigh. “What I’m saying. You want things to change, start there.”

  “What about my job?” Hugh said.

  “What about hers?” Kyle said. “She always wanted the Coast Guard, ever since we were kids. Hell, she bucked both parents to get into the academy, and you followed right along, even got into Harvard so you’d be in driving distance while you were both in school. Time was you admired her guts and her determination.”