8
PRESS GANG
This was not the moment Marianna would have chosen for the final recruitment drive. The Archon resource was perched on the edge of the government-issue visitor’s chair, voice tight, jaw muscles clenched. None of this seemed to’ve registered on her boss, though: Pete was plowing ahead regardless.
“Lighten up, Knox, this is no big deal.” Pete was trying his best to sound persuasive, give him that much. Too bad his vocal apparatus wasn’t built for it. “Hey, you eat some caviar, drink some vodka, talk old times, the government picks up your per diem. Piece of cake.”
“Why don’t I believe that?”
“You’re right, Jon,” she put in, before Pete could make things worse, “there’s more to it than that. With any luck, Sasha will let something slip that’ll point us to Galina.”
Those gray eyes probed her a moment. “Look, I’m only saying this one more time: There’s no way on earth the Galya I knew would’ve sold out to your so-called shadow KGB. But, okay, say she did. Say she’s in it up to her earlobes. That’d have to mean Sasha is too, right? So, why would he just go and rat her out?”
“It’s a long shot,” she admitted, “But you do have a personal relationship with both subjects; it would only be natural for you to ask about her. Plus, your dossier’s pretty bulletproof. There’s nothing to connect you to CROM, and we’re the only ones they’re worried about. No one else even knows Galina’s missing.”
Too complicated by half; it sounded like she’d made it up on the spot. It didn’t help that she had.
Marianna turned the warmth of her smile up another notch and tried again: “And, there’s always the chance your friends don’t really know what they’ve gotten themselves into. Not the whole of it, anyway. I’d like to think not: Sasha seemed like a nice enough guy from his e- — I mean, I think he still has good memories of the old days, back in Moscow.”
That struck a chord. The resource — no, get used to calling him Jon — was thinking about it at least. Now if her boss would only cool his jets.
No such luck.
“I’ll level with you, Knox,” Pete said, “There’s no way we can move in on GEI with what we’ve got. The trail’s gone cold on Galina, and other than that Grishin’s squeaky-clean. No links to the oligarchs, no Mafiya ties — nothing.”
“I didn’t think anybody made it to the top in Russia these days without the one or the other.”
“Tell me about it. Fact remains, except for maybe these low-level proles —” he waved at the bullet list of Russian names still displayed on the screen behind him “— we haven’t got squat on Arkady. And he’s too high up the food chain to go in on spec. If we come up empty, his friends on the Appropriations Subcommittee’ll skin me alive. Marianna too.”
“We don’t know that you’ll turn up all that much, Jon,” Marianna tried to get things back on track, “but anything beats sitting around on our hands.”
“But I’m a systems analyst, I’ve never worked undercover in my life. You’ve got to have better options you can put in place.”
“Not by tonight,” Pete said, “And Rusalka sails tomorrow. Tonight’s our last shot at inserting an operative.”
“‘Inserting an operative.’ That sounds ominous.”
“Just craft-speak for a pleasant evening’s conversation,” Marianna said quickly. “All we need you to do is get some feel for whether or not our magneto-troika are still Grishin’s guests. We’ll take it from there.”
“If that’s all, why not just ‘insert an operative’ when Rusalka docks in France, or wherever?”
“Too long a lead-time,” Pete said, “Lots could happen between now and then.”
“Between now and when? What does a vessel like Rusalka do — twenty knots? She’ll be in Europe the end of next week.”
“She’s rated for twenty-eight knots, tops,” Marianna corrected, “But that’s irrelevant. Rusalka’s not a passenger liner. She’s got no schedule to keep. Over the past eleven years, the summer voyages have averaged a month and a half in length, with a max of three in 1997.”
Pete tapped a few keys and the datawall backed up these statistics with overlaid charts of Rusalka’s North Atlantic peregrinations as far back as 1993.
“That puts us into mid-September, earliest,” he said, “If Grishin’s planning something, we need to know now.”
“But what does Rusalka do out there?”
Pete shrugged. “World’s biggest floating tax dodge. She’s GEI corporate headquarters, so the longer she stays at sea, the harder it is for the IRS-types to keep tabs on Grishin Enterprises.”
“She’s also part oceanographic research vessel,” Marianna added. “Arkady Grigoriyevich fancies himself something of a patron of the arts and sciences.” That elicited a snort from Pete.
“Actually,” she went on, “they’ve done some pretty decent science. Published a detailed seismographic survey of the entire Newfoundland Basin four or five years ago. What she’s been doing out there since is anybody’s guess. Sometimes she steams in slow circles. Sometimes she just sits on station. And summer isn’t the only cruise she makes. Altogether Rusalka spends eight or nine months out of every year sailing the North Atlantic.”
“Off topic,” Pete cut in again. “Look, Knox, we’re getting wind of something big going down. It’s looking like September’ll be too late. If we’re going to move against GEI, now’s the time.”
“It’s really not much we’re asking, Jon,” Marianna said. “You talk to people for a living. That’s all we want you to do here.”
“This is certifiable no-risk.” Pete and his two cents again. “Hey, when’s the last time somebody got whacked in the Kennedy Center?”
“It’s for your country, Jon,” Marianna said, “And for Galya, too. It’s not too late to save her.”
“Who knows?” Pete leaned forward, “Work with us on this and we might even cut Sasha a break, if he’s not in too deep.”
Jon was silent for a bit.
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said finally: “You want me to sell out an old friend on the off chance that, if I do get him to betray himself, you might go easy on him? Why should I believe that? Based on what? So far, you’ve purloined my email, press-ganged me personally, put Galina under surveillance, Lord knows what else. I just don’t see any basis for trust here, folks, much less a working relationship. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do your own dirty work — you seem perfectly capable of it.”
He’d been looking at her as he spoke, but now he shifted his gaze to Pete. “As for my participation, the answer is no.”
Pete’s face was set hard, unmoving. Only his eyes still gave signs of life, as if glaring out from behind a mask. Marianna knew that look only too well.
“Pete,” she began, “Maybe if we just —”
“Marianna, would you excuse us please?”
“Pete, are you sure —” Don’t do this.
“Leave us. Now.”
Was it Knox’s imagination, or did Aristos grow in size as he put on a textbook intimidating stare and leaned across the desktop?
“I don’t think you appreciate the situation here,” he said.
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me in your own good time, Pete. Mind if I check my voicemail first?” He already had his handheld out and was punching in the speed-dial code Mycroft had given him last night.
“Won’t work in here.” Aristos waved an arm. “— The whole building’s shielded. Why’d you think we didn’t just confiscate that gizmo at the door?”
“Score one for CROM, then.” Knox shrugged and repocketed the little device. “So, okay, go ahead — I’m listening.”
Aristos settled back in his seat. “What you’ve got to realize is, your Russian friends winding up in detention isn’t necessarily what you’d call your worst-case scenario.”
“Sounds pretty bad-case to me.” Especially when those terrorism-related detentions had acquired a nasty habit of stretching on indefinitely. “Why, Pete? How were you planning on making it worse?”
“They could wind up dead.” Aristos’s eyes didn’t move from Knox’s face. “Sasha, right away. Galina, soon as we reacquire her. — Look, Knox, it’s not the way I like to do business, but one phone call and Bondarenko goes home from the Kennedy Center in a body bag.”
Could he mean that? Lord knows, the government had grown more than usually cavalier about due process ever since the World Trade Center attack.
Aristos was still looking into Knox’s eyes. “Now, you tell me: doesn’t playing ball with us on this work out better all around? Better for your friends. Better for you, too, if it comes to that.”
Knox repressed an urge to swallow — no telling what biometric scanners this room came equipped with. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you,” he said, “There’s a whole office full of witnesses back in New York that saw your little gopher drag me off to DC.”
Aristos grinned unpleasantly. “Oh, there’s lots of stuff can happen short of Interdiction. There’s tax audits and investigation of actions in restraint of trade and indefinite detention as a material witness and such.”
He splayed his hands on the desk and levered himself to a standing position, eyeing Knox like a water buffalo about to charge. “Goddammit, Knox! All we’re asking is, you go talk to the man!”
“Okay, that should be about enough.” Knox rose then, and addressed the empty air. “Mycroft? — You getting all this?”
“Five-by-five, Jonathan,” a voice issued from the desktop speaker.
Aristos jumped as if bitten by a snake. A window popped open on the wall-filling display behind him to reveal a thrice-lifesized image of Mycroft’s smiling face.
Mycroft had let his image-enhancing software dress him for the occasion: he was resplendent in black tie and gold-lamé tuxedo jacket against a background of green baize tables and crystal chandeliers; a game of baccarat was in full swing behind him. Very Casino Royale.
“I’m forgetting my manners,” Knox said, reseating himself and putting his feet up on a convenient, ottoman-sized stack of printouts, “Euripedes Aristos, meet my associate Finley Laurence — Mycroft to his friends. “
Aristos stared at his datawall in disbelief. “How the fuck —” He began, then stopped when Knox withdrew his handheld from his jacket pocket again.
“I told you that can’t work here,” he sputtered. “No fucking way you could’ve called out!”
“I didn’t call out, you did — or rather your console here. Among my handheld’s undocumented features, it can broadcast infrared, using the same protocols as most standard detached keyboards. I had Mycroft preload it last night with a keystroke sequence that instructed your own systems to set up an outside link. We’ve been on-line, logged into a NetMeeting session on Archon’s server, ever since you and I started this heart-to-heart.”
Aristos’s face darkened. He looked as if he were trying to choose from among a repertoire of possible retorts. The one that finally came out was: “Shit!”
“Yeah, it’s a bitch,” Knox commiserated. “Oh, just so we know where we stand: I’m going to forget all about this conversation if you will. It’s that, or read the transcript on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post.”
He got to his feet. “Time to be going — no, don’t bother getting up, I can see myself out.” He looked Aristos in the eye. “I trust there won’t be any unpleasantness if I just leave the way I came in?”
Aristos shook his head sullenly and spoke the permissions into his headset mike.
Knox paused at the door and smiled tightly, “Pete — It’s been real.”
He closed the door quietly behind him and was gone.
“Okay,” Pete said into his headset, then broke the contact. He scowled at Marianna. “That was the front gate. Elvis has left the building.”
“I figured as much,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what went down in here, or do I have to guess? And why’d you let him walk, for Christ’s sake? We’ve only got till tonight.”
Pete wasn’t meeting her eyes. He mumbled something inaudible, cleared his throat and tried again. “You were right,” he said.
It was like pulling teeth, but Marianna finally pried the whole story out of him. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She’d had a gut feeling that strong-arm tactics were going to backfire with her Archon resource. This surpassed all expectations.
Left to her own devices, she could’ve talked Jon around, she knew she could, what with the looks he’d been giving her. But, no, Pete had to go get into a testosterone tourney.
She sighed and stood up, “Well, okay then, I’ll just have to go round him up again.”
“Goddammit, Marianna, sit down! You’re not going anywhere.”
“But, Pete, don’t you see? We need him back, now more than ever. He’s just proved he’s the right guy for the job.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Admit it: it took brains and balls, the way he skonked you.” She tried hard to keep a straight face as she said that, she really did.
“Skonked us, Marianna. You’re the one that waltzed that walking security risk in here.”
“All I’m saying is, I’m more convinced than ever: this whole thing could work. I’ve just got to talk to him again.”
“Talk to him? The way he left here, we’ve seen the last of him. And that’s my best-case outcome.”
“You put a tail on him, didn’t you? Tell me you did that much, Pete.”
“Yeah, we’re tracking. He phoned for a limo on that damned —” a disgusted look flashed across Pete’s face. “He headed into the city,” he said finally.
“Where? To do what?”
“Smithsonian. That’s where he got out, anyhow.” Pete shrugged. “Maybe he’s just taking in the sights. — Where are you going? I told you to stay put.”
“Where do you think?” She was already halfway out the door. “Dulles is just five miles up the road. He could have gone straight there and caught the next flight back to New York. He didn’t. So, maybe he’s still thinking about it. Still thinking things over. I’m going to find him and see if I can talk him back in.”
“Won’t happen. Not when you’ve only got —” Pete glanced at the timestamp in the upper left corner of the datawall. “— nine hours left on the clock.”
“I’ve got to try. There’s still time to reacquire him, time to fix this.” That sounded good — calm, confident, competent: the sort of image she always tried to project to CROM’s male-dominated hierarchy. Privately, though ...
There’s still time, she repeated to herself, but Pete was right: it was running out fast. She couldn’t help thinking that her boss had just dumped her whole investigation into the shitter. And any chance of stopping Grishin with it.