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“I’ll be there in thirty minutes, Admiral.”
Kenin’s luxury apartment was only a ten-minute drive from the gym where he regularly trained. The palatial flat had its own exercise room equipped with the latest gear, but he preferred to work out in the dank gymnasium surrounded by other men whose single dedication to the pugilist arts was an inspiration.
He could never have afforded the ten-thousand-square-foot floor of the high-rise building overlooking the river. His was but an admiral’s salary, after all. No, the apartment had been a gift of one of his many benefactors, an oligarch who had made his fortune in the Wild West days following the collapse of the Soviet Union and now backed several political and military up-and-comers in order to preserve it.
In the building’s lobby, he slotted his key into the elevator controls, telling it to take him to his private floor. There, the doors opened to the apartment’s entry foyer, a marble-and-gilt affair that looked like it had been stripped out of the palace at Versailles. Kenin ignored the opulence. He was a man interested in only one trapping of wealth and that was power. The material side of the equation meant nothing to him.
A moment later, he was in his office, staring at a flat-panel monitor mounted on a wall to the left of his desk. Most of the screen was black, though one corner showed an image of himself taken from a camera placed to make him appear massive behind his desk. He hit a button on his desktop computer when he was satisfied with how he looked on the monitor.
The screen came to life. In the foreground sat a man behind his own desk. Behind him was a casement window, looking out over the ocean. The weather appeared cloudy where the man was; the sky leaden, and the ocean churned as it raced for shore. Kenin had spoken to this man enough over the years that his physical form was something he no longer noticed.
No one knew the origin of the fire that had robbed the man of so much. Some claimed it was an assassination attempt, others said his mother deliberately set him on fire when he was a child. Still others said it was an accident from the days when he made bombs for Turkish separatists on Cyprus. His left hand was nothing more than a pair of lobster-like pincers, though the right had been spared. He had no hair. The scar tissue that covered his skull had the tight sheen of a Halloween mask pulled too tight. Both ears were burned away, as was his nose. The skin on his neck looked like the scaly hide of a desert lizard. One eye was covered with a simple black patch, though the other glittered with intellect.
“Admiral Kenin, so delighted you wished to call me this fine morning,” the man known in intelligence circles as L’Enfant said.
Kenin was certain that Yuri Borodin and his bootlick, Mikhail Kasporov, hadn’t used a Russian team to break him out of prison. Kenin knew all the groups capable of such a sophisticated operation and all of them eventually reported to him. That meant Kasporov had gone to foreign operators for the extraction. There were few such groups, and each of them guarded their identity well. These weren’t the big security contractors that had gained notoriety during America’s forays into Iraq and Afghanistan. No, these were smaller elite forces that operated far beneath the radar. But there was one constant in the shadow world and that was if anyone needed discreet information, they would eventually have to deal with L’Enfant.
“How are you, my old friend?” They were not friends, and the levity Kenin put into his voice was for appearances only. L’Enfant was as happy to take this call as he was to discuss his own funeral arrangements with the undertaker.
“I can complain, dear Admiral, but would you really like to listen?” The fire and smoke had damaged L’Enfant’s lungs so he spoke in a graveled rasp. An oxygen cannula ran under the ruin of his nose, held in place by surgical tape, and every few minutes he took a hit off a separate clear-plastic mask. The damage also garbled any accent the man might have spoken with. Details of his national origin were as elusive as the cause of the disfiguring fire.
Kenin gave him a disingenuous smile. “Your well-being is always in my interest.”
L’Enfant inclined his misshapen head. “Strange thing,” he croaked. “Your name came up just the other day.”
“Really.” The information broker had spies all over the globe who siphoned up more intelligence than the CIA. Kenin had no idea in what context his name would have come up to interest L’Enfant other than Borodin’s escape, and it was too early in the conversation for either man to mention the true purpose of the call.
“Indeed. It seems some Colombian gentlemen reportedly purchased a decommissioned submarine, and its crew has missed two scheduled reports on their return voyage.”
Kenin’s expression didn’t change. He was too good for that, but inside he was seething at the fact this little toad knew about that operation. The leak had to have come from the Colombians, but the fact that it was out there was a severe blow.
“I hadn’t heard Colombia wanted to purchase a sub for their Navy,” he said evenly.
“Oh, you misunderstood me, Admiral. It wasn’t their Navy at all. Just some businessmen who’d formed a . . . let’s call it a syndicate. I believe they had some unusual cargo to transport and thought the submarine would make their job a little easier. I only mention this because one member of the syndicate who was responsible for procuring the sub was killed by his partners over its loss, and upon his death he said the queerest thing. He said he got the boat from you.”
Kenin smiled. “There you go. How can you trust anything said under duress? He must have heard of me when I helped broker the deal for the Chinese to buy a few of our old Kilo-class subs and, most recently, the aircraft carrier Varyag.”
“I bet that’s it,” L’Enfant agreed readily. “I do recall your prominence in that transaction, and I bet this poor fellow blurted out your name by mistake.”
Both men nodded at the lies given and accepted. This was just L’Enfant’s way of showing off his knowledge and reminding Kenin that he knew where every body was buried and in which closet every skeleton had been hidden.
“Shall we get down to business,” L’Enfant invited.
“Very well.” The fake bonhomie vanished from Kenin’s e
xpression, and his voice hardened.
“Before you say anything, let me assure you I had nothing to do with Yuri Borodin’s escape.”
“So you know of it?” Kenin asked.
L’Enfant didn’t deign to answer.
“I believe that you didn’t broker his rescue, but I wager you still know who pulled it off.” When L’Enfant didn’t protest, Kenin continued. “As a sign of our long-standing dealings, I would please ask that you tell me.”
This was a line one never crossed. L’Enfant had been so successful for so many years because he kept confidences with the vigor of a Swiss banker. To even ask to divulge something like this was a mark of disrespect, and both men fully understood that their relationship was over from this moment on.
L’Enfant sucked off his oxygen mask, his chest heaving to fill his damaged lungs. “An unusual but not unexpected request. How do you wish me to respond?”
