Puppet Master

by Dale Brown

  Forgiveness was impossible. Tolevi naturally resented this and found it impossible not to berate her for the venomous stares she threw his way when they were together.

  Still, he felt the obligation, and he left pictures of her grandchild, along with several hundred dollars’ worth of Russian rubles, in an envelope just inside the door. He spent the night in the ramshackle barn behind the old woman’s tiny house and left in the morning, traveling to Yalta at first light. There he returned the old man’s car and spent the day in taverns and bars, picking up gossip; at night he rented a car and drove back to Simferopol, near the airport. He would have liked to check the northern border areas, just to get a firsthand look at what was going on there, but that would have been asking for trouble, or at least complications. He had one more job to do.

  Despite the fact that he was helping the Ukrainian side, Tolevi was, in his mind at least, neutral on the matter of the civil war. He recognized the injustice of the Russian interference, despite their lies, but he also knew the rebels who had broken away had real grievances against Kiev and its government. Kiev’s corruption and greed could not be easily dismissed—even if he himself benefited from such proclivities. The irony did not make it just, especially as he himself sought no justification.

  He spent the day before his evening flight wandering the city, once more listening and gathering light gossip. Immediately after the Russian invasion, a plebiscite had been held in Crimea; over ninety percent of the voters were in favor of their new “status” as a sham independent state under Russian “protection.” The results, of course, were phony, but Tolevi had no doubt the result was in line with what the majority felt, if not quite so strongly or unanimously as the announced results suggested.

  Russia had a strong pull, historically, culturally. And business, always business. He himself was a businessman.

  He got to the airport two hours before his flight. Security had been increased since the Syrian incident, and he stood in line to have his briefcase hand-examined. It was more thorough than the checks at American and European airports, where an X-ray sufficed; here each item was removed and inspected. But it was easier as well; if there was any trouble, Tolevi had no doubt he could buy his way out of it.

  The newspapers he’d purchased just before coming to the airport were of no interest to the inspectors, and as they were the only thing in his briefcase, he was passed through without comment. On his way to the gate, he stopped for a coffee; he bought it and sat at a table, stirring it slowly, waiting for his contact and the final task of his trip. He fussed with his briefcase—he’d checked his overnight bag to his final destination in the States—making sure the lock was set properly before leaning it against his leg on the floor.

  It was then that he spotted the man watching him several tables away. He was young, no more than twenty-five, wearing jeans and dress shoes. But it was the bad haircut and quick glances away that were easy tip-offs.

  Tolevi played with his coffee. If one man was watching him, there were surely others—where the Americans used tech gimmicks, the Russian spy services obsessed with human resources; it was not unusual for the SVR to use upward of a hundred agents when tracking a subject of interest.

  There could not be nearly that number here; the terminal halls were fairly empty, and he would surely have spotted someone earlier. But he was sure he had attracted the man’s attention.

  He’s a baby, Tolevi thought, fresh out of training.

  Tolevi felt a little insulted—surely he was worthy of being tracked by someone with more experience.

  Even if the surveillance team amounted to only one—unlikely—it would be difficult to lose the man in the airport; it simply wasn’t that big a place, and in any event he had to eventually go to a gate. The SVR had access to the passenger lists and would know where he was headed. A last-minute change could be easily detected.

  Am I being paranoid? Surely if they wanted me, they would just pick me up; they’ve done it before. I am, after all, on their payroll.

  But if they were following him here—Tolevi started to have some doubts, seeing how inept the young man was with his glances—then they might be waiting for him to make his pickup. This way they would have the incriminating evidence they wanted, as well as his contact.

  Tolevi got up and walked in the man’s direction. He stared at him, daring him to meet his glare. But the man feigned interest in a woman a few seats away, never turning in Tolevi’s direction even as he passed directly in front of him.

  Tolevi went into a souvenir shop, then continued down the hall to a small restaurant. He studied the menu, then went in, taking a seat at a table in the back. When the server came over, he ordered in Russian.

  The young man did not follow. Tolevi’s seat could not be seen from the hall; he scanned the small room, looking for others on the surveillance team, but there were no likely candidates.

  The safest thing to do—the smart thing—would have been to call off the pickup. He could go directly to the gate, board his plane when it was ready, and leave. The SVR might not let him leave, but when they searched him, there would be nothing incriminating.

  Not that the Russians ever needed evidence.

  Tolevi eyed the kitchen, fantasizing a dramatic escape. It would work for James Bond, but not for him, unless he lucked into an Aston Martin on the apron.

  The young man with the bad haircut was nowhere to be seen when Tolevi exited the restaurant, but that only stoked Tolevi’s paranoia. Now everyone he passed could be an agent.

  Anyone or no one. You’re letting your imagination run wild.

  Tolevi found the bookshop and went in. Casually lingering near the magazine rack, he checked his watch. Forty-five minutes to boarding, which was when the exchange was supposed to take place.

  He bought two magazines. A man, obviously Russian, watched him as he paid. The man was well built, in his thirties—the profile of an SVR supervisor, Tolevi thought.

  No. Most supervisors are older, with potbellies and poor grooming.

  Still . . .

  Magazines in one hand, briefcase in another, Tolevi made his way down the terminal hallway to a gate where a plane was just boarding for Moscow. Glancing over the crowd, he picked out a middle-aged man who did look, in fact, like an SVR supervisor—a dark jacket over black jeans, with a badly wrinkled white shirt. Tolevi slipped through the line, then brushed against him.

  The magazines fell from his hand.

  “Excuse me,” said Tolevi loudly. He handed him the magazines. “I’m sorry.”

  “These are not mine,” protested the man.

  Tolevi was already walking briskly away. The man said something else, but Tolevi couldn’t hear. He saw a woman darting toward the gate.

  An agent? Or someone who had just heard the call to board?

  Tolevi’s heart was pounding. He crossed to the men’s room, found the urinal at the far end, and put down his briefcase as he unzipped his pants. There were three other people in the restroom, all at the urinals.

  Four—an Asian-looking gentleman dressed in a business suit came in, pulling a wheeled carry-on and a briefcase identical to Tolevi’s. He chose the urinal next to his.

  Tolevi fixed his pants, then left, quickly grabbing the briefcase from the floor.

  The other man’s.

  Outside, his plane was being called. Tolevi walked to the gate.

  The man with the bad haircut was near the gate, waiting. Tolevi took out his ticket.

  He smiled at the man. The man frowned.

  Safe. I was just paranoid.

  He held the ticket for the gate attendant, who checked off his name on her clipboard, then waved him up the jetway.

  Tolevi glanced at his ticket to check where his seat was.

  His hand was shaking.

  Relax. We’re done here.

  “Gabor Tolevi!”

  His name boomed in the tunnel. Tolevi turned. The woman he had seen earlier was behind him, leading two tall, much younger me
n.

  SVR, all of them.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Let me see your briefcase.” The woman’s voice was just like a man’s.

  Tolevi hesitated. “Why?”

  “Open it.”

  “Here,” he told her, handing the briefcase over.

  She grabbed it and clicked open the clasp. The two men stopped behind her, stationing themselves to block off escape.

  Stuck here. Better to talk yourself out of it. Call Keisha, the Hound, get him to help.

  The handler would never take his call. He was on his own.

  The woman pulled out a newspaper, then passed her hand all around the interior of the briefcase. Except for the paper, it was empty.

  “You may go,” she said, handing it back. “A mistake.”

  “No need to apologize,” said Tolevi. “Have a good day.”

  20

  Cambridge—nearing 9:00 p.m.

  The false alarm dampened everyone’s spirits but not their appetites.

  “I could smell that pizza two blocks away,” said Jenkins as they returned to the van.

  “I figured you’d all be hungry,” said Flores, who’d brought two pies. “Mushrooms and plain.”

  Chelsea shook off the offer.

  “You gotta be hungry,” said Jenkins. “Come on.”

  “Not for pizza,” she told them.

  “Perfectly balanced food,” said Robinson. “Fat, carbs, protein, tomato sauce. Doesn’t get any better than this.”

  She rolled her eyes. Jenkins was right—she really should eat—but not pizza.

  She looked at the video console, which showed the ATM they had under surveillance. It was all on the FBI now.

  “Nothing going on,” said Flores. “Only two people have used it all night.”

  “We’ll keep surveillance on all night,” said Jenkins, “but it doesn’t look good.”

  At precisely five minutes to six, Jenkins’s second in command knocked on the door of the van, ready to begin the day shift. With him were two other FBI agents and a young Smart Metal employee, Jason Chi, who worked in the UAV division but had a strong background in AI. It took less than three minutes to brief them; Jenkins checked in with the surveillance teams, who were also being replaced, then walked Chelsea out to her pickup truck.

  “See you tomorrow night?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Riding back to the task force headquarters, he checked his messages. His brother’s wife had called twice during the night; both times she’d tried to say something but couldn’t get it out. Too tired to call her back, he told himself she’d probably be sleeping. He checked his official e-mail quickly, then left for home.

  Two hours after he arrived, Dryfus woke him with a phone call.

  “They struck overnight,” said the tech supervisor. “I just got a call from Bank of America.”

  “Son of a bitch. Was it the machine we were watching?”

  “No. And none of the ones we staked out,” said Dryfus. “But . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was in the next batch on the list. We just missed it.”

  Jenkins collapsed back on the pillow, completely defeated.

  21

  Boston—later that day

  “So as we know, the graph of a hyperbola gets nearly flat as you move from its center. This part is called the asymptote of the hyperbola. And we use these equations to graph . . .”

  Borya watched the teacher slash his chalk across the blackboard, dust flying. She liked that—all of the other teachers used smart boards; Mr. Grayson was old school.

  She saw the graph before he drew it, two slight curves across the x axis, one kissing the y axis, the other, a mirror image, off to the right.

  You could flip it:

  Mr. Grayson continued spewing chalk, almost frenetic as he explained the math behind the graphs and calculations. There was something about calculus that made even boring people, like Mr. Grayson, excited.

  Borya loved math—it was the only class she felt any emotion for, good or bad—but she had other things on her mind today. Like collecting the money from last night’s haul: the primary reason she’d come to school.

  The bell rang. Borya glanced at the board, quickly memorizing the homework assignment, then began filing out.

  “Borya, please,” said Mr. Grayson, calling her just as she reached the door.

  She turned and walked back to the desk. Grayson was a tall, middle-aged man. He had a slight stoop and perpetually smelled of peppermint, which some students thought came from schnapps but Borya knew came from the candies he chain-sucked between classes. Though not handsome like her father, he was not an ugly man, if one disregarded his overgrown nose hair.

  “Mint?” asked the teacher, reaching into his drawer for a bag of the candies.

  “No, thank you.”

  “So—asymptotes. Interesting equations, no?”

  “Uh-huh.” Borya wondered why he had called her back.

  “You know, you didn’t show your work on your last quiz,” he told her, still smiling.

  She shrugged. “It was too easy.”

  He frowned. They’d had this discussion several times. To Mr. Grayson, the steps were always more important than the actual result. Inevitably, he explained, you will reach a point where there will be a mistake, and solving it requires a precise review of steps, and your memory, no matter how good it may be, will fail.

  She didn’t disagree; there certainly were situations where reviewing steps was absolutely necessary. That just didn’t include the questions on most of his quizzes. Or even the tests, for that matter.

  “I’ll try to remember,” she said, taking a step to leave.

  “There was something else.” Grayson had a habit of bunching his lips together when he explained a difficult concept in class. He did that now. “Some of the teachers and the principal—it’s been noted that you’re not doing that well in some of your classes. English, for example.”

  “ELA? We read stupid stuff.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Catcher in the Rye.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I really don’t give a shit about Holden. He’s kind of a jerk. You know what I mean?”

  Grayson frowned, but clearly he did know. She could tell.

  “Well, be that as it may,” he admitted. “But still, you have not been in that class.”

  “I have this autoimmune issue,” she said. “Sometimes it kicks up.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen. Well . . . is there something else, something up at home? I only ask because the principal, Sister Josephine, is concerned.”

  Sister Josephine was always “concerned” about something. Unfortunately, her concern generally expressed itself in the form of detention.

  “We’re good,” said Borya.

  “I know your mother isn’t, isn’t with us anymore,” said Grayson quickly. “Very unfortunate.”

  Borya smiled, nodded, then quickly left, knowing from experience that Grayson would have nothing else to say. Men especially were sweet when they thought about her being dead and all.

  A few minutes later, Borya entered study hall, where she got a pass to go to the library. After a few minutes pretending to work on a paper about the odious Catcher in the Rye, she opened another window in Microsoft Explorer, tapped a few keys to get past the school’s rather pathetic nanny program, then entered the URL of a site that allowed her to roam the so-called black Internet without being traced. Within moments she was looking at a bank account in the Czech Republic.

  Eighteen thousand dollars, exactly. Not bad for a night’s haul.

  The zeroes intrigued her. Theoretically, there was nothing special in the fact that the digits aligned so perfectly, but they appealed to her sense of beauty nonetheless.

  She heard the footsteps just in time, completing a small transfer to the account she used for withdrawals before closing the screen.

  “Not copying, I hope,” said the librari
an, peering over her shoulder.

  “I don’t see why we have to read a book fifty years old,” complained Borya, not even bothering to counter the implicit accusation of plagiarism. “Do you?”

  “Cite your sources,” said the woman, her voice not entirely pleasant.

  “I know that.”

  “J. D. Salinger is a classic,” said the librarian as she moved on. “And it’s seventy years old. Nearly. Check your sources carefully.”

  School over, Borya walked down the steps and turned the corner slowly, careful not to betray any sense of urgency to the teachers she knew would be monitoring her from inside. Three blocks later, she continued to resist the urge to break into a trot, walking deliberately in the direction of her home. Mr. Grayson’s talk was fresh in her mind; she knew the nuns were “worried” about her, which inevitably meant they would be talking to her father when he got back, even if he didn’t call himself.

  That could mean many things, including a possible grounding; she’d have to prepare for the worst.

  Three hundred dollars in cash, rather than the usual two. The machine dispensed the money gladly. She smiled for the camera as the money came out.

  Her dad was due back for the weekend. Maybe one more sweep, tomorrow night. Then lay low for a while. She was getting bored of ATMs anyway.

  22

  Otopeni, Romania (near Bucharest)—same day

  By the time he reached Henri Coandă International Airport in Romania, Tolevi was exhausted. The adventure at the Crimea airport was the least of it.

  The flight to Armenia had been late, and his connection missed. That left him to fly on TAROM airlines, whose idea of first-class luxury was a worn leather seat in a forty-year-old Ilyushin II-18D. The four-engine Russian airliner was powered by noisy turboprops, and even though he sat toward the front of the aircraft, their drone bulldozed past his Bose noise-canceling headphones until his head felt like splitting apart. Released from the plane, he went straight to the restroom, where he soaked his face in the sink.