“And miss the climax to the flick?” Grolin said. “I plan on repeating it in its prurient entirety.”
Noriko looked at him with sharp irritation.
“Jeff, trust me,” she said. “You’ll have a much better time watching it alone.”
Roger Gordian sat alone, with his cell phone in his hand. With all the chaos at work, with all the emergencies he had to react to, plan for, juggle, and worry about, his home situation was threatening to overwhelm him.
He loved his wife.
His wife had left him.
It had been nearly three weeks, and she hadn’t come home, and she hadn’t called.
Sometimes he felt like marriage was a game in which women made the rules and the poor slobs who married them had to figure those rules out blindfolded.
He still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong.
The things he felt for the woman he married had never faltered from the moment he saw her. They’d changed, but only to become richer and deeper.
The better he came to know her, the more he loved her.
And the more he realized he would never solve the mystery of her.
In all the years since they’d been together, he’d never once felt more than a fleeting tug of attraction to the beautiful women who moved through the corridors of power. Like any man, he’d see a pretty woman and his basic reaction was immediate. But acting on those feelings was out of the question. No matter how beautiful they were, they weren’t Ashley.
She was as beautiful to him for who she was as for what she looked like.
He’d had more than enough sex, especially during his fighter jock days, to learn the difference between that momentary tug of attraction and the real thing.
Love. Commitment. Marriage.
He’d been scared to death of all of them, terrified he’d miss out on the fabulous smorgasbord of women in the world, until the day he met Ashley.
He learned the difference the first time they touched.
What he couldn’t understand was that she didn’t believe that he loved her still. Even more than he had when they first married. Why didn’t she understand that?
That wasn’t fair. Deep down, he knew what the problem was.
Time.
He’d had it to spend with her back when they were first starting out. The business was smaller then, the problems manageable.
Nowadays, it felt like the fate of the free world was impacted every time he made a decision. It was kind of hard to justify chucking it all and going home at the end of a business day when kids in Russia wouldn’t eat if he left things undone.
But had he ever taken the time to explain that to her?
It was time that he did.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed Ashley’s sister in San Francisco.
Even before her sister Ann handed her the telephone, Ashley Gordian knew by the look on her face that it was Roger. Nobody but her husband could bring that tight look of disapproval to her sister’s face with a simple greeting.
It had been like that ever since the beginning. Back then, Roger had been young, driven, and—by Ann’s standards—poor as a church mouse. Not nearly good enough for her baby sister. She’d been opposed to the marriage before she’d even met the man. All the respect, the acclaim, the financial success Roger had accumulated had never changed Ann’s mind. In her posh world, it was all too new to count.
But Ashley had taken one look at the burning intensity in Roger’s eyes and known she’d found her soulmate. And she’d been right. She’d married the man, not the pedigree, and she’d never regretted it. She loved Roger. In every way that a woman could love a man. And for the past twenty years she’d built her life around him. It wasn’t a sacrifice, despite what her sister said. He was such a good man, so caring about the world, and so fiercely determined to make it a better place. But that world had been stealing him from her, bit by bit, moment by moment.
In the last few years, she’d seen less of Roger than she’d seen of her hairdresser. And, unlike many of the society women she knew, she didn’t spend that much time with her hairdresser. Though she’d given up her own career to more easily accommodate her schedule to that of her husband, she had a life, a good mind. But when Roger was free, she didn’t want her own activities to fill that precious time and keep them apart. She wanted to be able to be with him, talk to him, enjoy his presence. She wanted to be able to drop everything and accompany him on his frequent business trips, if he wanted her along.
But lately, he’d been so busy that, no matter how flexible she was, she still rarely saw him. She’d tried to fill her time with volunteer activities and subsist on the moments they spent together, but those moments were now often in the middle of the night, as she watched him sleep after he’d come in so exhausted he could barely manage to say hello before he crashed. Her life was hollow, empty, lacking in purpose.
Roger had his work.
She had nothing, not even Roger.
It was too much. She’d used this time at her sister’s house to do some hard thinking. For her own survival, she had to change things. One of them had to give. Roger had to make more time for her, for them, or she’d have to make a life on her own.
As she took the phone from her sister, she took a deep breath. “Roger?”
“How are you, Ashley? I’ve missed you.”
Trite words, perhaps, but Ashley could tell he meant them. As she rejoiced in the sound of his voice, she wondered how long it had been since he’d spoken to her like this, since he had really listened to her. Too long. It hurt to think about exactly how long. “I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone,” she said.
“Believe me, I noticed,” he said. “You’re not at the breakfast table. 1 start every day missing you, and it gets worse from there.” Roger sounded so tired.
“Since when do you eat breakfast at home?” Ashley asked quietly. “Usually, you’re out of the house before seven, grabbing something on the way to the office.”
There was a silence on the other end of the line as Roger digested that. Knowing him, he’d want to deny it; then, because he was a fair man, he’d start counting back in his head. Roger’s memory was legendary, photographic. At this moment, he’d probably gotten to the hundredth muffin he’d consumed at his desk, and he was now starting to count back through fruit plates and toasted bagels. The silence stretched on, a little strained.
“You’re right.” The admission undoubtedly hurt him like fire.
“I know I am.”
“It was never because I didn’t love you.” Roger swallowed. The sound carried clearly over the line. “No matter what I’m doing, I’d always rather be spending time with you.”
“Then why don’t you? How many meals have we shared in the past six months?”
Again, silence. Finally, the answer. “Thirty-eight?”
“Subtract banquets, political functions, work-related functions, and parties.” Ashley knew this wasn’t fair, but she was fighting for time and life with the man she loved. “By my reckoning, the answer comes to eighteen—three meals a month.”
“I know it’s hard for you, but it’s been tough for me, too.” Roger stopped for a moment, clearly picking his words with care. “I don’t always have the freedom to make my own choices.”
“Why not? You own the company.”
“Lately, with the ground stations going in, I’ve been so embroiled with politics worldwide that my time isn’t my own. Once this stage is over, things should get better.”
“And how many times have you told yourself—and me—that before? Will they really get better, or will you just launch into the next big project once you get some breathing room?” Ashley wanted to cry, could hear in her voice the sound of tears too close to the surface. She could only hope that Roger was too preoccupied with his own pain to notice.
“I know I’ve said it before, but this time I mean it.”
“Roger,” Ashley said, “you mean it every time. I probably don’t tell
you this enough, but I am so proud of you—of who you are and what you’ve done. I know that everything you’ve accomplished out in the world makes a huge difference to people everywhere. I know that it’s your calling, something you have to do. What I don’t know is if I’m strong enough to wait until you’re done.”
“Ashley, all the success in the world doesn’t matter to me if you’re not by my side to share it.”
“Do you mean that?” Ashley felt that faint, terrible thread of hope. Maybe, just maybe, they could work this out. “Can you come up here, spend some time with me, maybe go to a therapist with me until we find some common ground?”
There was a long pause. Again she could hear Roger swallow, take a deep breath. “Honey, work is in a real uproar right now. There are global consequences if I leave at this exact moment ... maybe in a week or two?”
“And in a week or two some new hot spot will erupt, and you’ll be called in to deal with it—because you’re the best.” The tears she’d kept at bay through the whole conversation finally overflowed. “You’re the best,” she sobbed, “and I don’t know what I can do about it. I love you. Good-bye.” Before she could change her mind, she pushed the Disconnect button on the phone. Then she put her head in her hands and sobbed as though there were no tomorrow. Because for her and Roger, that might just be the case.
THIRTY-ONE
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 26, 2000
ANTON ZACHARY WAS A SOLID BELIEVER IN ROUTINE. In structure and regimentation. Without it, he felt, the minutes and hours of the day turned to sludge, the significance of actions paled, diligence turned to sloth, nothing meant anything, and everything fell apart. For him, life without margins was a valueless blur of inconsequential events.
He hadn’t always held this outlook; it had grown and developed over many years, and more or less in tandem with his professional responsibilities. Zachary was a busy man, a man Nick Roma frequently called upon to perform impossible tasks within unimaginable deadlines. This was not done out of disrespect, not really, but, as with most overlords, Roma’s mind lacked the fine appreciation, so to speak, that would allow him to understand the hard work, the painstaking discipline and attention to detail, that went into the creation of a convincing fake, a successful lie, a counterfeit passport, visa, marriage license, or birth certificate that would deceive even the most careful and discerning eye. To Roma, Zachary was little more than a forger of papers, a duplicator of documents, a living stamp pad, a photocopy machine that happened to be made of flesh and blood, a tinkerer who did what anyone else could do if only he had the spare time. By Roma, craftsmanship was appreciated only insofar as it translated into instant results; fail to meet his demands just once and you were labeled incompetent, inept, a fool who could not perform a task that could have been assigned to any dilettante, perhaps even some drunk who had been dragged out of the gutter by his collar.
Zachary knew and accepted this as the lot of the artist. What incomprehensible pressures must Michelangelo have faced under the demands of his patrons? Or Shakespeare? Paint that ceiling now! Finish that play by tonight and give us some damn good lines! Make us laugh, cry, gasp with awe and excitement, and hurry, hurry, hurry! Ah, how they must have despaired. Yet where would they have been without those financial supporters? What would they have done for a livelihood? The tension between art and commerce was a vital if maddening constant. The fuel of productivity. The yin and yang—yes, yes!—the yin and yang of the creative process.
If only it didn’t result in insomnia, heart palpitations, ulcers, and premature hair loss.
Now, as he walked across the boardwalk on Brighton Twelfth Street, the weathered wooden planks under his feet bare of snow due to some vagary of the ocean gusts, gulls wheeling and scissoring above his head, the roiling gray sea to his left, Brighton Beach Avenue to his right, his apartment building behind him, the newsstand where he bought his Russian-language newspaper two blocks ahead, the bakery where he would pick up his breakfast rolls two blocks farther on, his travel agency a block beyond that across from the elevated D train tracks ... as he walked to work this morning along the route he took every morning at six o’clock on the dot, never a second shaved—never, never a second—Zachary told himself it was time to push these useless, egocentric musings, these petulant blips of dissatisfaction, out of his mind and get down to thinking about the important business of the day.
Roma had placed an order for a half dozen student entry visas that were to go to some women a local pimp and strip club manager was bringing over from Moscow. For whatever reason, Roma needed to have these forgeries completed and delivered to the flesh peddler by one o’clock in the afternoon. Roma had placed the order late the previous night and had been in no mood to be negotiated with. In fact, Roma had been unusually excitable for weeks now, and he’d gotten worse in the past several days. Rumor had it that he’d been badly affected by something that had happened at his club some nights ago, though none of his closest men would say what the event was, or even confirm that it was.
Well, Zachary told himself as he stepped off the boardwalk, Roma had his worries and responsibilities, and he had his own. He did not pretend to be interested in the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of Roma’s operation, had no time to be interested, no time to think, no time to do anything but what was required of him. Six entry visas, six hours to complete the order. That was all he—
“Excuse me.”
Zachary stopped short on the pavement, looking at the man who had stepped in front of him, actually bumped into him seemingly out of nowhere. Where had he come from?
“Yes?” he said, startled. The man was thin, sinewy, with hair cut almost to the scalp. He wore a long trench coat and had his right hand in its pocket.
“I want to talk to you, Mr. Zachary,” the man said. And dipped his head slightly to his left. “In there.”
Zachary glanced over in that direction, saw a car sitting at the curb with its rear door ajar. There was someone huddled behind the wheel.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Shifting his gaze back to the man. To the bulge made by his right hand pressing against the inner lining of his pocket. Could he be holding a gun?
“What do you want from—”
“Get in the car,” the man said. He noticed where Zachary’s eyes had landed and jabbed whatever was in his pocket against his stomach. It felt hard. “This won’t take long. And nobody’s going to hurt you if you cooperate and answer some questions.”
“But I have a schedule—”
“In the car, now!” the man snapped, shoving the hard object against his belly again. “You go first.”
Suddenly trembling all over, Zachary nodded and turned toward the partly open rear door of the vehicle, the trench-coated man falling in behind him, the thing in the man’s hand jabbing against his back.
Climbing in the backseat after him, Nimec nodded for Noriko to drive off.
He kept his hand on the roll of Certs in his pocket, kept pressing it against Zachary, wondering if he’d just given new definition to the term “non-lethal weapon.”
Sadov had made them as law enforcement agents moments after passing through the security check. FBI, he suspected, though it was just as easily possible they belonged to one of the other covert organizations. He was accustomed to keeping a wary eye out for stalkers and had recognized their colors and markings immediately.
What first alerted him was the way they had positioned themselves. One by the magazine stand in the corridor, another beside the entry to the waiting area, a third near the gate. It was where they stood and how they stood: the lift of their chins, their straight postures, their discreetly observant eyes, taking everything in without seeming to move. It was their dark suits and overcoats, their pastel ties, the slight catches in the fabric of their pants several inches above the hemline, giveaway signs of ankle holsters. It was their scrubbed, clipped, efficient appearance.
He lowered himself into a contoured plastic chair and gla
nced up at the bank of monitors displaying estimated arrival and departure schedules. His flight to Stockholm was to take off in half an hour, and he expected to hear the boarding announcement very shortly.
Normally the surveillance wouldn’t have ruffled his calm. He had spent many years masking his trail across scores of countries, and was wise to the ways of eluding pursuit. And while the cast of the net was wider now than in the past, the spaces one could slip through remained as large as ever. Larger, in fact, than it had been in some previous instances. The national origin of the bombing suspects was unknown. What was more, their sponsor had not been identified, and even the connection to Russia remained uncertain. He should have felt secure in being a faceless, invisible presence, camouflaged like the mantis. And would have, had it not been for the photograph.
It had appeared in the New York Daily News the very day after the explosion, and then had been splashed all over the media, a grainy image taken off an amateur videotape, made by someone who’d been high above the square on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street. A circle had been drawn around the man that the headline declared was responsible for having left behind one of the secondary charges. In the picture, he was setting a nylon athletic bag on the sidewalk near an unmanned police barricade. While it was clear he had dark hair and wore a leather jacket, his features were shadowed and indistinct. Still, Sadov had recognized himself. He had feared the people who were looking for him would be able to sharpen the image with computer enhancements, and hesitated to enter a busy airport at a time when his photograph was being exhibited on every newsstand. It had meant staying in New York nearly a full week longer than Gilea and the others, laying low in Roma’s safehouses. During that week he had lightened and cut his hair, obtained a pair of stage eyeglasses, and traded his clothing for an expensive business suit. The disguise was satisfying, and he was confident he could make it through the airport despite the heightened state of alert. Nevertheless, he would be glad once he was up and walking through the jetway.
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