by Tim Tigner
She’d proven to be quite an athlete in the sack, but not the actual daughter. Sobyanin, his new security chief, had verified her identity with a little sleight of hand. But then somehow her law school classmates had all shown up in his bed, wearing plaid skirts like private school girls. He wasn’t sure how that had happened, but he didn’t fight it. Quite the opposite. Did fleas buzz? He thought that was flies. With a flash of insight that made the school girls vanish, he realized this was neither fleas nor flies. It was the damn phone, vibrating on his nightstand.
He’d been dreaming.
He opened his eyes.
The law student, his forty-one-hundred-dollar auction prize, was there, but without her friends. Grigori studied her while his brain came on line. Sleeping on her back with her blonde hair tousled, he noted that her breasts were still young enough to resemble the building they were in. Looking up, he saw that the glass panes at the pyramid’s pinnacle were beginning to clear with the rising sun, placing the time shortly shy of five a.m. On a Sunday. Who would dare to be calling?
He hit answer, and brought the phone to his ear. “Yes?”
“Sir, it’s Sobyanin. I’ve got important news.”
Pyotr’s replacement chose to go by his last name, which along with his first matched the mayor of Moscow. While they looked nothing alike, they sounded similar, and that could come in handy on the phone. Otherwise, the jury was still out on whether Sobyanin was a good hire or not. Among other things, he didn’t have Pyotr’s sense of discretion. “Go ahead.”
“We’ve got Achilles and the mathematician. They’re in our limo as we speak, heading to the California party.”
Grigori propped himself up on a thick white bolster. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know all the details. I just know the facial recognition program nailed them. They’re disguised to resemble legitimate guests, but our software is the best in the world, and they’ve been within a meter of a hidden camera for the better part of an hour, feeding it data. How would you like this handled?”
Grigori was about to say something about bullets and brains when a painful memory gave him pause. A memory that still shamed him, and made his nose twitch.
He and Vladimir were in Brussels, back in 1986. Fresh KGB academy grads, number one and number two in their class, with a coveted posting and the world at their feet. Their job was classic human intelligence gathering, and toward that end they had befriended the daughter of the personal secretary to one of NATO’s division commanders.
Alice was homely and rebellious and thrilled to be receiving attention from the two Austrian brothers. Especially the younger, handsome one, named Vlad. He had enough charisma to become a movie star, or a president.
They smoked grass, complained about their parents, and mused about what they wanted to do after high school. Alice wanted to go to the Sorbonne and study literature. Greg and Vlad wanted to be diplomats, like their father. A routine soon developed, where Greg would play Super Mario on Alice’s coveted Nintendo, while she and Vlad snuck off to kiss.
Once Vlad had Alice locked away in her bedroom, Grigori would shift the Nintendo into autoplay mode with the assistance of some special equipment from the KGB’s Operations and Technology Directorate. Then he’d go about the Motherland’s business while the lovers kissed and the game prattled away.
His catch was usually modest — unclassified interoffice memos or routine correspondence. But before the director’s biweekly staff meetings, they usually scored valuable handwritten notes on agenda drafts.
In addition to photographing papers, Grigori and Vladimir also bugged the bedroom phone, a pushbutton model on the nightstand between the queen-size bed and the secretarial desk where Alice’s mother did her off-hours work.
Grigori was in the midst of swapping out tapes when Alice caught him red-handed. She’d gone to fetch baby oil from the bathroom but Vlad had stayed behind because his pants were around his ankles. Her face made it clear she understood everything in a snap. Homely correlated with lonely, but not stupid.
Grigori had panicked and hit her upside the head with her mother’s glass paperweight. It was just a single, panicked blow to the temple, but enough to render her dead.
Alice dropped to the floor with staring eyes and a nasty round dent to the left of her brow. The glass-encased rose dropped right beside her. Vladimir heard the double thunk and came running.
He too read the situation in a split second.
He too lashed out — with a fist to a nose, rather than a paperweight to a temple. “Idiot!” he’d yelled. “I could have turned her. I could have recruited her to work for us.”
Grigori heard the echo of those words as he looked back and forth between the phone and the girl now in his bed. He asked Sobyanin, “Who knows about this?”
“Nobody, yet. Not even the driver. I’m the first to be notified when facial recognition gets a hit. In this case, I thought you’d want to be the second. I hope that was the right call?”
It was, but Grigori wasn’t one for mollycoddling, so he left the question hanging. “I’ll take it from here. You’re to take no action. Tell nobody. Their cover remains intact. No one should suspect that anything is amiss.”
Sobyanin agreed, and Grigori had no doubt that he would comply rigorously. The new security chief was well aware of his predecessor’s fate, and appropriately acrophobic.
Chapter 82
Angels & Flames
THE CANDLELIT TUNNEL was really a tent, a canvass corridor, something the Secret Service would use to protect the president. The white candles that illuminated it were the size of paint cans. They flickered within glass fishbowls, bringing the corridor alive and beckoning guests down an enchanted path.
The limo’s door closed automatically behind us as we stepped from the car onto cool flagstones, sealing our fate. Rule Three. I saw nothing but darkness behind and a big black door some thirty feet ahead. I expected the limo to pull away immediately, but it sat there blocking our retreat, waiting for us to move ahead while the music played, and the candles flickered, and our adrenaline surged.
Katya took my arm. “This feels like the modern reenactment of a fairy tale I read as a girl.”
“I was thinking the same thing, except when my grandmother read it she skipped the part about Hansel and Gretel wearing skimpy black silk pajamas.” Katya elbowed my kidney as we followed the path, descending below ground level toward a door set deep within a stone wall. It appeared to have neither handle nor knocker. I was about to say, “Open sesame,” when it slid to the left.
We entered a dim vestibule sized about twelve feet square, with a second sliding door centered on the opposite wall. To the left and right, gold-framed dressing mirrors begged for our self-appraising gaze. Beside them, combs, sprays, and bubbling flutes of champagne rested atop Doric pedestals. As the door swished shut, a soprano voice greeted us from behind. “Welcome, two-oh-four, and two-oh-five.”
We whipped around to see an angel emerging from an alcove beside the entry door. Our heavenly guide was an early-twenties model with long blonde locks and augmented breasts. She sauntered between us on strappy silver heels of dangerous height, an appraising index finger before her pouty lips.
The angel’s outfit consisted of a white babydoll even shorter than Katya’s slip, and nothing to mask her bright blue eyes. A long white cape of sheer material, crafted to resemble wings, trailed behind while she walked, as if blown by a breeze. “You’ll use your numbers when checking in for your procedure, and when you’re ready to depart. All in support of Rule Two, you understand. Just type your numbers into the pad.” She gestured to a panel beside the door. “When they’re ready for you, your number will appear on a screen over the door.”
She began to circle us, slowly, with an appraising eye. “Meanwhile, feel free to ask an angel if there’s anything at all that you need.” After trailing a finger across my shoulders, she moved on to Katya. She pulled a pick comb and some spray from the nearest pedes
tal and began toying with Katya’s hair, assuming the familiarity of a big sister, and demonstrating the skill employed in top salons. “There you go. Perfect.”
She put her arms around Katya as though to embrace, but then pulled Katya’s hood up into place. As I followed suit, the angel used a willowy arm to motion toward the pedestals and then the door. “Please help yourself to a flute of Cristal, and enjoy the party.”
The door opened automatically to reveal a warm and fragrant space even dimmer than the vestibule, with no ceiling in sight. Smooth energetic rhythms issued from unseen speakers all around, enveloping us in a blanket of sound that gave me the urge to dance, relax, and release. Quite an accomplishment, all things considered.
Our eyes flew to a swirling tower of flame in the center of the room, and our feet followed. I knew I should be studying the room, but to do anything other than walk wide-eyed toward the flame would have appeared suspicious, so I went with it.
Surrounded by a cylinder of glass that rose majestically out of the stone floor, the centerpiece combined fans with revolving gas jets to bring personality to a duet of dancing flames. Katya took my hand and spoke into my ear. “Looks like a tango of sorts. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s practically alive.”
It was the coolest sculpture that I had ever seen. But this wasn’t the first time that I’d seen it.
Chapter 83
Unencumbered
I LOOKED UP to where the flames disappeared through the black ceiling far overhead. Given the contrast with the dark room, the glare blinded like the sun.
Katya reached out hesitantly to touch the glass. When she found it tolerable, I saw the same realization cross her face. I nodded back as her eyes went wide.
We couldn’t risk discussing the revelation here. At least not until we had the lay of the land.
Turning our backs to the swirling flames, we found that the room was also alive. Our adjusting eyes picked up people all around. Most still wore their silky hooded robes, but a few were setting what was no doubt the coming trend, having shed their robes, or more. The fire gave a healthy glow to their exposed skin, and the shadows made their fit bodies appear even more toned and lithe. They were clustered in pairs and groups, some standing, some sitting, some in repose. They were talking and touching and drinking and watching — all confidently poised, but only about one in three striking me as entirely relaxed.
After thirty seconds of observation, I felt myself beginning to react. Made me suspect that they’d laced the perfume-scented air with pheromones. “Time to wander. It’s only natural to explore.”
Katya took my arm. “Judging by the body language, I’d say we’re not the only ones here for the first time.”
“I’m guess that within an hour everyone will feel loose as linguini. Al dente that is, warm but firm.”
A labyrinth of interconnected rooms surrounded the central chamber. Some were larger, others quite small. Some relatively bare, others filled with furniture or toys. All had beds or chaise lounges or thick fur rugs on the floor, and each was lit by nothing but candles. Most were occupied by attractive people engaged verbally or otherwise in various forms of congress, some all boys and others all girls, most mixes favoring one or the other.
Meandering, we discovered that the angels really were at our service. So far, I hadn’t detected their male counterparts, although the guest list appeared to be evenly split between the genders. Perhaps that was for the best.
I mapped the floor plan out in my head as we walked, avoiding eye contact and pretending to sip champagne. We were looking for one man in particular, while trying to identify anyone who might be in management. Plenty of individuals were wandering around like us, but the hooded bathrobes made it difficult to discreetly judge their age in the dim light. Those without robes all appeared to be in their thirties or forties. All were suitable for fitness magazine covers. The only point of interest so far was a second large sliding door, located directly opposite the one through which we’d initially entered. “What do you think’s on the other side?” Katya asked.
“A few hundred lounge chairs paired with IV bags. I suspect it will open when the time is right.”
There wasn’t a staircase, back room, kitchen, or exit to be found. However, there were plenty of bars and small buffets scattered throughout the rooms, all with top-shelf drinks and exquisite finger foods. French pastries, ripe fruits, petit fours, and an endless assortment of sumptuous hors d'oeuvres. All were serviced by silent angels who seemed to appear and disappear as needed. “Let’s see if we can find out where they’re coming from,” I whispered in Katya’s ear. “Maybe they’ll lead us behind the curtain.”
Katya jumped on that idea. “Let’s wait here for one to follow. The black caviar on those blinis is calling my assumed name.”
I handed her a small porcelain plate. While Katya covered it with caviar canapés, I forked a few oysters onto my own, and discreetly emptied my drink into the mountain of ice supporting the mollusks. Between bites, she said, “I wonder if they’re watching surveillance cameras, looking for glasses that need refilling and plates that need carting away?”
“Good question. Let’s find out.” I cleaned my plate and set it down on the marble-topped pub table beside my empty glass.
Katya followed suit.
I took her hand and guided her to the darkest corner of the room, stopping directly beneath the position I’d choose to hide a camera. I turned to face Katya and grasped her hands. From this vantage point, I could see both of the room’s archways, and the buffet. I also had a view of Katya’s upturned face, her scintillating eyes, and plump red lips.
Katya met my gaze, and stepped a little closer.
I only had hours if not minutes to get a look behind the curtain, find the wizard, and somehow either wring out a confession or gather the evidence I’d need to bring him to justice. This was potentially the last chance I’d ever have to avenge the death of my family. But all I wanted to do was lock Katya in a long embrace. I’d never been affected by a woman this way before. I felt drawn to her at the molecular level, and proximity made the attraction stronger.
Mother Nature was compelling me to sweep her up in my arms, carry her across the room to a velvety red couch, and make a memory that could get me through the next fifty years without regret, if it came to that. Or maybe it was just the confluence of stress and circumstance. In any case, the battle between the Archangel Gabriel and Mephistopheles was raging inside my head.
The pheromones weren’t helping.
Katya released my hands and reached up with both of hers to push back my hood. Once it fell, she slipped her hands inside my robe and slid them out to the ends of my shoulders. Her touch was warm and tender and seemed to send voltage across my skin.
As our eyes locked and my throat dried, my racing mind managed to ease off the gas. Months of tension evaporated beneath her fingertips. My muscles relaxed, my blood pressure dropped, and the puzzle pieces swirling around my mind finally fell into place.
Katya must have seen it in my eyes, as her own face crinkled. “What?”
Chapter 84
Last Piece
I LOOKED DOWN into Katya’s beautiful amber eyes, simultaneously relieved and distraught by the break in sexual tension. “I figured it out.”
“What did you figure out?” Katya switched from one form of excitement to another just as quickly as I had, but left her hands on my shoulders.
“All of it.”
“Everything?” Her voice brimmed with the unbridled excitement of a little girl with a new doll.
“All the broad strokes. Vitalis’s closure. The murder of my family. The assassination attempts. The sun bears. And this party.”
Katya grew a contemplative look that I was beginning to consider her trademark. Pretty fitting for a mathematics professor. “I’m sure the sun bears are the key. But I can’t figure out how to turn it, so to speak.”
“That’s right. Ask yourself what would make you invent th
at kind of grand deception?”
“Invent?”
“Yes, Invent. Remember that Max discovered Brillyanc is synthetic. Why fabricate a story that’s not just esoteric, but potentially damaging to your business? What purpose does it serve?”
“I don’t know. Marketing isn’t my thing. Maybe to drive up the price by reducing supply? Or give it cachet by making it rare or elitist?”
I shook my head. “There are simpler means of accomplishing those things. These are clever people. And completely unscrupulous.”
“What purpose do the sun bears serve … ” She was getting frustrated, but she was also getting close. I could feel it.
“You’re almost there. Bring it home. How did this all start?”
“With Colin’s murder.”
“Before that. Why was he killed?”
I saw the light go on. “He discovered something.”
“Exactly. Now connect the dots.”
“He was killed to conceal his discovery.” She was doing the thing with her nails again. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
“How does the sun bear story fit in?”
“It serves the same purpose. Concealment. It’s camouflage. Everything has been about concealing something.”
“Exactly. This is all about a secret worth killing for.”
“But what secret?”
Katya had hit on the billion-dollar question, but an angel had appeared over her shoulder as she spoke, quiet as a cloud. The angel gathered up our used plates and glasses.
Katya saw the white form reflected in my eyes and lowered her hands. “Should we follow?” she whispered.