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“Liss’s partners were, but he severed all ties to Black River months before the shit you and Bourne threw hit the fan. No one could find a trace of his participation in the illegal activity.”
“He knew?”
Peter shrugged. “Possibly he was simply lucky.”
She gave him a penetrating look. “I don’t believe that and neither do you.”
Marks nodded.
“You’re damn right I don’t like it. What does that say about Willard’s sense of ethics?”
Marks took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Halliday plays as dirty as anyone I’ve ever known. Whatever it takes to defeat him, bring it on, I say.”
“Even making a deal with the devil.”
“Perhaps it takes one devil to destroy another devil.”
“Whatever the truth of what you say, this is a treacherous slope, Peter.”
Marks grinned. “Why d’you think I want you on board? At some point I’m going to need someone to pull me out of the shit before it closes over my head. And I can’t think of a better person to do that than you.”
Moira Trevor, Lady Hawk pistol strapped into her thigh holster, stood looking at the empty offices of her new but compromised company, Heartland Risk Management, LLC. The space had so quickly become toxic that she wasn’t sad to leave it, only dismayed because she had been in business for less than a year. There was nothing here now but dust, not even memories she could take with her.
She turned to leave and saw a man filling the open doorway to the outside hall. He was dressed in an expensively cut three-piece suit, spit-shined English brogues, and despite the clear weather he carried a neatly rolled umbrella with a hardwood handle.
“Ms. Trevor, I presume?”
She stared hard at him. He had hair like steel bristles, black eyes, and an accent she couldn’t quite place. He was holding a plain brown paper bag, which she eyed with suspicion. “And you are?”
“Binns.” He offered his hand. “Lionel Binns.”
“Lionel? You must be joking, no one’s named Lionel these days.”
He looked at her unblinkingly. “May I come in, Ms. Trevor?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I’m here to make you an offer.”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He crossed the threshold without seeming to have moved.
Peering around, he said, “Oh, dear. What have we here?”
“Desolation Row.”
Binns gave her a quick smile. “I’m an early Dylan fan myself.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Binns?”
She tensed as he lifted the brown paper bag and opened it.
Taking out two paper cups, he said, “I brought us some cardamom tea.”
The first clue. “How nice,” Moira said, accepting the tea. She took off the plastic top to peer inside. It was pale with milk. She took a sip. And very sweet. “Thank you.”
“Ms. Trevor, I am an attorney. My client would like to hire you.”
“Lovely.” She looked around Desolation Row. “I could use some work.”
“My client wants you to find a notebook computer that was stolen from him.”
Moira paused with the cup halfway to her lips. Her coffee-colored eyes watched Binns with uncommon scrutiny. She had a strong face with a personality to match.
“You must have me confused with a private detective. There’s no shortage of those in the district, any one of them—”
“My client wants you, Ms. Trevor. Only you.”
She shrugged. “He’s barking up the wrong tree. Sorry. Not my line of work.”
“Oh, but it is.” There was nothing sinister or even discomforting in Binns’s face. “Let me see if I have this right. You were a highly successful field operative for Black River. Eight months ago you left and started Heartland by poaching the best and the brightest from your former employer. You didn’t back down when Black River tried to intimidate you, in fact you fought back and were instrumental in bringing to light the company’s criminal dealings. Now, for his trouble, your old boss Noah Perlis is dead, Black River has been disbanded, and two of its founding principals are under indictment. Stop me if I’ve gotten anything wrong so far.”
Moira, astonished, said nothing.
“From where my client sits,” he continued, “you’re the perfect candidate to find and retrieve his stolen laptop.”
“And where, exactly, does your client sit?”
Binns grinned at her. “Interested? There’s quite a handsome remuneration for you.”
“I’m not interested in money.”
“Despite needing the work?” Binns cocked his head. “But never mind, I wasn’t speaking of money, though your entire usual fee will be paid in advance. No, Ms. Trevor, I’m talking about something more valuable to you.” He looked around the empty room. “I’m talking about the reason you’ve moved out of here.”
Moira froze, her heartbeat accelerating. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have a traitor in your organization,” Binns said without inflection. “Someone on the NSA’s payroll.”
Moira frowned. “Just who is your client, Mr. Binns?”
“I’m not authorized to reveal his identity.”
“And I suppose you’re also not authorized to tell me how he knows so much about me?”
Binns spread his hands.
She nodded. “Fine. I’ll find my goddamn traitor myself.”
Oddly, this response brought a cat-like smile to Binns’s face. “My client said that would be your answer. I didn’t believe him, so now I’m out a thousand dollars.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up in fees.”
“Once you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m not that sort of man.”
“You’re being overly optimistic,” Moira said.
He nodded. “Possibly.” Retreating to the doorway, he lifted a hand. “If you’ll accompany me…” When she made no move to follow him, he added, “Just this once, I beg you to indulge me. It will only take fifteen minutes of your time, what do you have to lose?”
Moira couldn’t think of a damn thing, so she allowed him to usher her out.
Chaaya lived in the penthouse of one of Bangalore’s glittering high-rise mini-cities, a gated residential community guarded day and night against the city’s multitude of ravages. But whether the precautions kept the city out or imprisoned the denizens in its citadel, Arkadin thought, was only a matter of perspective.
Chaaya opened the door to his knock, as she always did no matter what time he appeared. She had no choice, really. She came from a wealthy family and lived in the lap of luxury, but all of that would evaporate if they knew her secret. She was Hindu and the man she was in love with was Muslim, a mortal sin in the eyes of her father and three brothers should they become aware of her transgression. Though Arkadin had never met her lover, he had arranged that her secret be kept safe; Chaaya owed him everything, and acted accordingly.
Lush-figured, dusky-hued, in a gauzy dressing gown, her eyes still heavy with sleep, she moved through her skylit apartment with the sensual grace of a Bollywood actress. She was not particularly tall, but her bearing gave that illusion; when she walked into a room heads turned, both male and female. Whether she liked Arkadin, what she thought of him altogether, was of absolutely no interest to him. She feared him, which was all that was required.
It was brighter up here above the rooftops, giving the false impression that the day had already started. But then this apartment, mirroring both their lives, was full of fake impressions.
She saw his bloody leg at once and took him into her spacious bathroom, all mirrors and pink-and-gold veined marble. While he stripped off his trousers, she ran hot water. She had a deft touch with the sutures, and he asked her if she’d done this before.
“Once, long ago,” she said enigmatically.
That was why he had come here now, at this moment, when trust was at a premium. He and Chaaya recognized
something in each other, something of themselves, dark and broken. They were both outsiders, uncomfortable in the world most people inhabited, they’d rather skim along the margins, half hidden by the flickering shadows that terrified everyone else. They were apart, strangers perhaps even to themselves, but companionable with each other because of that very fact.
While she washed him and worked on closing his wound, he considered his next move. He needed to get out of India, of that there was no doubt. Where would that shithead Oserov guess he might go? Campione d’Italia in Switzerland, where the Eastern Brotherhood maintained a villa, or perhaps its headquarters in Munich. By necessity Oserov’s list of options would be short; even Maslov had his limits as far as sending hit squads around the world on what might be a wild goose chase. He’d never been one to squander manpower or resources, which was why he still headed the single most powerful grupperovka family in an era when the Kremlin was aggressively dismantling the mob.
Arkadin knew he had to remove himself to a location that was absolutely secure. He had to choose a place neither Oserov nor Maslov would ever consider. And he would tell no one in his organization—at least, not until he could figure out how Oserov had been tipped to his temporary HQ here in Bangalore.
So he had to arrange for travel out of the city, and the country. But first he had to retrieve Gustavo Moreno’s laptop from its hiding place.
When Chaaya was finished and they had moved into the living room, he said, “Please fetch the present I gave you.”
Chaaya cocked her head, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth. “Are you saying that I can finally open it? I’ve been dying of curiosity.”
“Bring it here.”
She rushed out of the room and a moment later returned with a rather large silver-colored box tied with a purple ribbon. She sat across from him, tense and expectant, the box lying across her thighs. “Can I open it now?”
Arkadin was eyeing the package. “You’ve already opened it.”
A look of fear crossed her face as swiftly as a gull scuds across a dock. Then she forced a smile onto her beautiful face. “Oh, Leonid, I couldn’t help myself, and it’s such a beautiful robe, I’ve never felt silk like it, it must have cost you a fortune.”
Arkadin held out his hands. “The box.”
“Leonid…” But she did as he bade. “I never took it out, I just touched it.”
He untied the ribbon, which he saw she’d retied with great care, then set the top aside.
“I love it so, I’d have killed anyone who came near it.”
Actually, he’d counted on that. When he’d given it to her with the instructions not to open it he’d seen the covetousness in her eyes and knew then that she’d never have the fortitude to comply. But he also knew that she’d guard it with her life. That was Chaaya through and through.
The robe, which was in fact exceptionally expensive, was folded meticulously into thirds. He removed the laptop, which he’d carefully hidden within its luxurious folds, then handed her the robe.
Busy unscrewing the underside of the laptop so he could insert the hard drive into its original home, he hardly heard her squeals of delight or the thank-yous she showered on him.
DCI M. Errol Danziger most often ate lunch at his desk while poring over intelligence reports from his directorate chiefs, comparing them with their counterparts he had sent over daily from the NSA. However, twice a week he ate his midday meal outside CI headquarters. He always went to the same restaurant—the Occidental on Pennsylvania Avenue—and dined with the same person, Secretary of Defense Bud Halliday. Danziger—all too aware of how his predecessor had been killed—traveled the sixteen blocks to these meetings in an armored GMC Yukon Denali accompanied by Lieutenant R. Simmons Reade, two bodyguards, and a secretary. He was never alone; it disturbed him to be alone, a condition he had brought with him from a childhood filled with the shadows of parental strife and abandonment.
Soraya Moore was waiting for his arrival. She had obtained the DCI’s schedule from her former director of ops, who was running Typhon on a temporary basis. Seated at a table at the Willard Hotel’s Café du Parc, which abutted the Occidental’s outdoor section, she noted the arrival of the Denali on the dot of 1 PM. As the rear door opened, she rose, and by the time the entourage was grouped on the sidewalk she was as close to the DCI as the bodyguards would allow. In fact, one of them, with a chest as broad as the table where she’d been seated, had already stepped in front of her, facing her down.
“Director Danziger,” she said loudly over his shoulder, “my name is Soraya Moore.”
The second bodyguard had a hand on his firearm when Danziger ordered them both to stand down. He was a short, square man with sloping shoulders. He’d made it his business to study Islamic culture, which only increased his unwavering antipathy for a religion—more, a way of life—he found backward, even medieval in its conventions and customs. It was his firm belief that Islamics, as he privately called them, could never reconcile their religious beliefs with the pace and progress of the modern world, no matter what they claimed. Behind his back, but not without some admiration, he was known as the Arab because of his avowed desire to rid the world of Islamic terrorists and any other Islamics foolish enough to get in his way.
Stepping between his bodyguards, Danziger said, “You’re the Egyptian who felt it necessary to stay in Cairo despite being recalled.”
“I had a job to do, on the ground, in the field, where the bullets and bombs are real, not computer-generated simulations,” Soraya said. “And for the record I’m American, same as you.”
“You’re nothing like me, Ms. Moore. I give orders. Those who refuse to take them can’t be trusted. They don’t work for me.”
“You never even debriefed me. If you knew—”
“Get it through your head, Ms. Moore, you no longer work for CI.” Danziger, leaning forward, had taken on the pugnacious stance of a boxer in the ring. “I have no interest in debriefing you. An Egyptian? God alone knows where your loyalty lies.” He leered. “Well, maybe I do. With Amun Chalthoum, perhaps?”
Amun Chalthoum was the head of al Mokhabarat, the Egyptian secret service in Cairo, with whom Soraya had recently worked and with whom she had stayed in Cairo when Danziger had summarily ordered her home prematurely, in contradiction of CI’s mission guidelines. In the performance of her mission, she and Amun had fallen in love. She was shocked, or perhaps stunned was a better word for it, that Danziger was in possession of such personal information. How in the hell had he found out about her and Amun?
“Birds of a feather,” he said. “Far from the professional behavior I expect from my people, fraternizing—is that the right word for it?—with the enemy.”
“Amun Chalthoum isn’t the enemy.”
“Clearly he isn’t your enemy.” He stepped back, a clear sign for his bodyguards to close ranks, blocking whatever limited access she’d had to him. “Good luck getting another government position, Ms. Moore.”
R. Simmons Reade smirked in the background before turning away, following in the DCI’s wake as, surrounded by his entourage, Danziger strode into the Occidental. The bystanders closest to them were staring at her. Putting a hand to her face, she discovered that her cheeks were burning. She had wanted her day in court; however, this was his court and she had seriously misjudged both his intelligence and the scope of his knowledge. She had mistakenly assumed that Secretary Halliday had inveigled the president to install nothing more than a cat’s-paw, a dimwit whom Halliday would have no trouble controlling. More fool her.
As she walked slowly away from the scene of the disaster, she vowed she’d never make that mistake again.
The man on the phone, whoever he was, was right about one thing: The warehouse on the outskirts of Moscow was indistinguishable from those around it, marching away in neat rows. Boris Karpov, hidden in the shadows across from the front door, checked the address he had written down during his phone conversation with the man who calle
d himself Leonid Arkadin. Yes, he had the right location. Turning, he signaled to his men, all of whom were heavily armed, armored in bulletproof vests and riot helmets. Karpov had a nose for traps and this one stank of it. There was no way he would have come alone, no matter how well armed, no way he was going to stick his neck into a noose devised for him by Dimitri Maslov.
Why was he here then? he asked himself for the hundredth time since the call. Because if there was a chance the man actually was Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and he was telling the truth, then it would be a criminal mistake not to follow up on the lead. The FSB-2 and Karpov in particular had been after Maslov, after the Kazanskaya as a whole, for years now, with little success.
He had been given a mandate—to bring Dimitri Maslov and the Kazanskaya to justice—by his immediate superior, Melor Bukin, the man who had lured him away from FSB with a promotion to full colonel and a command of his own. Karpov had watched the meteoric rise of Viktor Cherkesov and was determined to get on board. Cherkesov morphed the FSB-2 from an anti-drug directorate into a national security force that rivaled the vaunted FSB itself. Bukin was a childhood friend of Cherkesov’s—which more often than not was how these things worked in Russia—and now he had Cherkesov’s ear. Bukin, being Karpov’s mentor, had brought Karpov that much closer to the top of FSB-2’s pyramid of power and influence.
Bukin was on the phone when Karpov had told him where he was going and why. He’d listened briefly, then waved a cursory benediction.
Now, having silently deployed his squad in a close perimeter around the target, Karpov led his men in a frontal assault on the warehouse. He directed one of his men to shoot out the lock on the front door, then he took them inside. He signaled to his men to take each aisle between the stacked crates. It was hours after the end of the normal workday, so they didn’t expect workers, and they weren’t disappointed.
When all of his men inside had appeared and checked in, Karpov led them through the door into the bathroom, which was where the voice had said it would be. The urinal trough was on the left, while opposite was the line of stalls. His men banged open the doors as they proceeded down the line, but all were empty.
