Lia had the truck running already. Dean picked up the bike and put it into the back. As he turned, the dog appeared a few yards from the helicopter, barking at him. Dean whistled, then opened the tailgate and whistled again. Maybe it was a universal dog language — the animal bounded forward, jumped into the truck, and squirmed through the barrels to bark at his mistress’s head in the back. She turned and tapped the window, smiling as Dean got in.
“The fucking dog, too?” said Lia.
“Why didn’t you kill it?” said Dean, guessing that the sound had come from the A-2.
“Maybe I’m a rotten shot,” she said, stomping on the gas pedal.
* * *
None of them spoke for several hours. They drove north on the highway, stopping twice to refuel and once when Lia ran into a small store and bought food while Dean watched the girl. The temperature outside was dropping steadily by four o’clock; an hour or so later it felt so cold they turned the heater on.
“There’s snow on the ground,” said Dean, looking out the window.
“Just frost,” said Lia. “You forget how far north we are. Some nights it gets cold, even in the summer.”
“We gonna freeze to death?”
“Don’t be a sissy.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Lia scowled but didn’t answer.
“How far are we taking her?” Dean asked.
“Far enough that she can’t get back in a day,” said Lia. “If we didn’t take the bike and the dog, we could have let her go by now.”
“Pretty far to ride a bike from here.”
“You’d be surprised.” She looked at him. “You could ask, Charlie Dean. You don’t know everything.”
“I didn’t say I did.” He looked at her frown. She was pretty, but she had an attitude the size of Minnesota. “It’s my fault, huh?”
“You got that straight.”
Dean pushed his leg up against the dash. The truck’s seat was a bench and Lia had it all the way forward so she could reach the pedals. There was no way to stretch out his legs.
“Want to let me drive for a while?” he asked.
“What are you going to do when someone stops you?”
“Who’s going to stop me? We haven’t seen anybody for hours.”
Lia didn’t answer.
A while later, when she was sure the girl was sleeping, Lia explained that their cover story was an extension of the one they’d used in the town; they were trying to keep an appointment in an oil city near Nahym.
Not in Nahym, but near it.
“Did that kid really go to a hospital, or did Karr just tell me that?” said Dean.
“Tommy doesn’t lie,” said Lia.
“How do you know?”
“Jesus, Charlie Dean, you’re a pain in the ass.”
Dean took another shot at conversation. “So you were with the SEALs?”
“Do I look like a fuckin’ SEAL?”
“Special Forces.”
“Delta, asshole.”
“I thought Delta Force was part of Special Forces.”
“The problem with jarheads is that they try to think.”
Dean started to laugh. “Jarhead? What’s that from, a John Wayne movie?”
“The problem with Marines,” said Lia, “is that they think their shit doesn’t stink.”
“Mine does.”
“Tell me about it.”
Dean gave up trying to make conversation. Eyes heavy, he felt his head drooping off to the side. Finally he gave in to fatigue and fell asleep, his shoulder resting against the young girl’s.
There was a time in Dean’s life when he’d had vivid, angry dreams, dreams obviously inspired by some of the things he’d been through — sniper missions, an assassination, firefights, a hostage situation he’d become part of. It was as if his subconscious had to work some of the violence out, decipher the contradictions, and bridge the gap between what should have happened and what actually did. Dean hated the dreams when he had them; many nights he’d tried to stay up in a vain attempt to keep them away.
And then one morning he realized he didn’t have the dreams anymore. In fact, he didn’t dream anymore at all. Had he worked all that stuff out?
Truth was, Charlie Dean wasn’t the kind of guy who spent a lot of energy working things out. Not in a formal way. He liked to think of himself as a guy who went on instincts, who trained his body — and his mind — to do what had to be done without hesitation. It’s what had made him a decent, better than decent, sniper.
Maybe. Or maybe it was just that he was a pretty good shot no matter what the circumstances were. In any event, he didn’t believe in analyzing it.
So when the dreams stopped, he didn’t complain about it, nor did he celebrate. He didn’t dream now, either. But as his body jostled back and forth in the pickup, he did feel a vague sense of unease brushing around his face and hands.
When he woke, Lia and the girl were gone. It was dark out; his watch told him it was close to two in the morning. There were taillights and a large shadow just in front of them. He stared into the darkness and realized they were in the middle of a large parking area near a highway, a much different road from the one they’d been on.
Dean was freezing. He rubbed his arms and waited. Finally, Lia and the girl returned, lugging several plastic grocery bags.
“Ah, Sleeping Beauty is awake,” said Lia. She reached into one of the bags and took out a jar. “Coffee. Almost, anyway.”
The warm liquid did taste somewhat like coffee. The girl had a large loaf of bread and chewed at it ravenously, pausing every so often to smile at Dean. Lia sorted the bags, then produced a large revolver from one. It looked like a Smith & Wesson.44, though it had no markings on it. Three of the six cylinder chambers were filled; the bullets were Magnums, and the gun was indeed a very good clone of the S & W Model 29.
“Best we could do,” she said. “It has to be fifty years old, and I doubt it’s been fired in the last ten. Clean it. The bullets are in the bag.”
Dean took the gun and the bag, which contained some tools and small tubes of different types of oil, Vaseline, and graphite besides the bullets. There seemed to be a whole set of burglar’s picks as well.
“Package deal,” said Lia, shrugging.
There was a knock on Lia’s window. Dean pulled the bag up, hiding the gun behind it.
Dean could smell the vodka on the man’s breath as he exchanged words with Lia. She waved him away; he seemed reluctant to go and for a second Dean thought he’d have to show the gun.
“What was that all about?”
“Wants to buy Zenya.” Lia started the truck. “Time to go.”
Zenya, the girl, turned abruptly toward the back of the pickup. Lia told her in Russian that the animal was fine, then repeated the information for Dean’s benefit.
“They buy kids?” Dean asked as they got onto the highway.
“They buy anything. These guys got more money than we do. And we have a printing press.”
* * *
Zenya and Lia talked in Russian for the next hour or so. Dean figured it was the girl’s life story, but Lia didn’t share it. Among the items Lia had bought were a wool sweater and a parka; Dean put on the sweater, though it was a bit tight, and used the parka as a pillow, leaning against the door. His brain settled into a state of half-sleep, as if his consciousness were a crocodile with only its snout peering out of the water.
Eventually Lia turned off the highway onto another well-made but narrower road. Within a mile this had given way to well-packed gravel, twisting and turning through what seemed to be a swampy forest. Rectangles of dim yellow light broke the darkness on their right; the road curved gradually to reveal a fairly large city set on what seemed to be a pile of peat moss above the surrounding terrain. Lia and the girl exchanged a few words. As soon as they came into the city, Lia took her first right and parked in front of a low-slung building made of concrete blocks. Fluorescent light flowed from the
narrow casement windows at the building’s front, set about six feet high.
“Time to eat,” said Lia.
The glass door at the side of the building opened into a short hallway blocked off by a thick metal door. This led to a stairway; at the top of the six steps was another glass door. Inside was a rustic diner or restaurant, the sort that in the States used to be found near third-rate resort areas before the days of McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Ten of the twenty tables were already filled, even though it was only a few minutes past four; three-quarters of the counter stools were also occupied.
The crowd was exclusively male. Lia’s scowl did little to ward off the stares. Zenya blushed as they sat down.
Afraid that speaking English might cause trouble, Dean said nothing. His breakfast came quickly — a large order of pancakes and coffee, which was instant. There was no milk or creamer.
“They know you’re not Russian, don’t worry,” said Lia. “They’re used to foreigners. Or at least their money. That’s why they have pancakes.”
Both Lia and Zenya had ordered some sort of pastry with bits of meat in it, but whether it was ham, beef, or something more exotic, Dean couldn’t tell. The girl ate hers quickly, then, looking at Lia, asked her something. Lia nodded, and Zenya got up from the table, taking her things and going out the door.
“Bathrooms out there?” Dean asked.
“She’s hitting the road.”
“We’re far enough away?”
Lia shrugged. “She’ll probably go back to the truck stop. She was pretty impressed.”
“That’s OK with you?”
“We’re in Russia. Remember? And I’m not her mother.”
Dean got up and walked out, trying to hold himself back from running. When he got downstairs, Zenya was just getting on her bike. She’d smuggled some food out to the dog, who jumped up and snared it when she threw it to him.
“Hey!” yelled Dean, starting toward her.
Zenya looked at him, waved, then realized he wanted to stop her. She began pedaling away. The dog trotted behind, still chewing.
“Hey! Hey!” Dean took a few steps but saw it was hopeless, worse than hopeless — even the dog had trouble keeping up with her.
“Save the world yet?” asked Lia when he came back. She had her handheld computer out and was tapping on it.
“You just going to let her go back there? She’ll become a prostitute.”
“You think she’s not already?”
“She’s fifteen or sixteen.”
“You don’t know where we are,” said Lia. “It’s different out here. We’re not in Moscow, let alone the States. Think of it as the Wild West.”
“This isn’t hell,” said Dean.
“It’s close.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m glad you’re such an expert. How long have you been here now? It’s not a whole week, is it? Time just drags when we’re together.”
Dean sat back in the chair, curling his arms together in front of his chest.
26
His name was Laci Babinov, and his death clinched it for Rubens. He hated — loathed — admitting the CIA was right on anything, but Babinov’s presence on the airplane that was shot down was a smoking gun.
An obscure one, certainly, but good intelligence was often a matter of making the obscure obvious.
Babinov was the number two man in Moscow’s OMON, or Otryad Militsii Osobgo Naznacheniya, the riot police. He’d been appointed by Kurakin and would undoubtedly have been loyal in a coup.
Assume the Ilyushin had been targeted to get Babinov. Was the strike on the Wave Three plane then a mistake?
Rubens wanted badly to think it was. But he couldn’t let himself reach that conclusion, not yet anyway; he wanted it too badly and there was no supporting evidence. It might just be a coincidence — which happened just enough to keep conspiracy theorists in business.
As soon as he saw the manifest, the NSA deputy director picked up the phone and called Hadash. In the time it took for Hadash’s assistant to run him down, Rubens had retrieved Babinov’s dossier and copied the information Johnny Bib had given him onto a small device the size of a key fob. The flat plastic housing covered a chip of specially designed flash ROM; the chip would flush its memory clean in eight hours, leaving no trace of the information recorded on it.
“Hadash.”
“We need to talk about Russia,” said Rubens. “The CIA’s estimate may be correct.”
“All right,” said Hadash. “How quickly can you get here?”
“I can leave immediately.”
“Yes, wait—” Hadash held his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, checking with someone about a schedule. “Go directly to the White House. The president wants to talk to you as well.”
* * *
An hour and a half later, Rubens found himself on the back lawn of the White House trotting alongside one of the staff people as they hustled to board Marine One before the president emerged with the mandatory entourage of media people.
Like its Air Force equivalent, Marine One was simply the designation for the Marine Corps helicopters transporting the president. For years, Marine One was an ancient, spartan Sikorsky used essentially as a flying taxi to take various presidents (and sometimes their dogs) on short hops, often to catch Air Force One. The S-58 model was a superb aircraft in its day, but that day actually passed back in the 1950s. President Marcke had decided to upgrade, and out of the Marine Corps’ impressive stable of aircraft chose arguably the best — a CH-53D capable of taking him over two thousand miles on literally a moment’s notice. The interior was nearly as well equipped as that of Air Force One. And if the three-engined monster helicopter wasn’t quite as fast as the Osprey, its performance record was considerably better.
The interior of the helicopter was cordoned off into three different spaces. The first included the doorway and bench seat pretty close to the simple slings used on many military aircraft. The next, which was generally occupied by the Secret Service detail and whatever staff people were aboard, had cushioned vinyl seats that could have been pulled from a bus stop and spray-painted a tasteful gray.
The third compartment, the president’s, had a thick though admittedly synthetic Persian carpet and very real leather chairs. These were bolted to the floor and had special three-point seat belts (never used, in Rubens’ experience) and small pockets at the side with splash guards. Of considerably more interest to Rubens were the fold-up panels that flanked the seats; two seventeen-inch TFT screens were tied into a hard-wired LAN that could be connected with all of the government’s secure computer systems. The panels also had keyboard and assorted ports for plug-ins, including the memory device Rubens had loaded with the information he believed pointed to the coup plot.
The stations also included television feeds. Rubens turned his on, cycling among the cable news networks to see what they were reporting on. It was a mistake — all three featured live feeds from a press conference called by the House Judiciary Committee to announce that it was going to hold hearings into Congressman Greene’s death. The head of the committee, an ambitious Democrat from California named James Mason, smiled and stared portentously at the screen as he declared that any elected representative’s demise was a matter of primary concern for the public.
“So you believe it wasn’t an accident?” one of the reporters asked Mason.
The congressman bobbed and weaved, giving hints of his true political potential.
Yesterday morning, Rubens had called one of the FBI agents who had interviewed him to discuss what he called “speculative ideas.” Along the way he suggested how they might go about checking the guitar and the pool to make sure this was a freak thing. The agent not only thanked him but also asked if he happened to know anyone who could do the work.
Naturally, he demurred at first. But within a few minutes an assistant called back with information about a company in Virginia that might be able to help. Coincidentally, the company did not h
old a contract with the NSA. Not so coincidentally, its vice president had been one of the midlevel analysts who got a soft landing during the infamous wave of layoffs in the 1990s — a soft landing Rubens had helped arrange.
The findings were already en route to the Bureau: “Bare wires and a short in one of the pickups. Alterations to the amp the guitar was plugged into, causing it to supply an outrageous amount of electricity to the guitar. Alterations to the fuse circuitry. Fraying on the pool heating elements that seemed suspicious or at least out of the ordinary. All told, a bizarre, fatal combination.”
Purposeful? The lab didn’t say, though the implication was clear.
Rather than short-circuiting the investigation, Rubens had made things worse. The inconclusive report would encourage speculation once it was leaked — inevitable now that Congress was involved.
“Gilligan’s Island again?” said President Marcke, pushing into the compartment.
Rubens rose from his seat as Marcke, Hadash, Blanders, and James Lincoln, the secretary of state, came in.
Followed by Collins.
“Ms. Collins,” said Rubens.
“NSA finally realized we were right, huh?” she said, smirking as she sat. The helicopter whipped upward.
“We’re headed for Camp David,” said the president. “I’m going to guess you can’t stay, Billy.”
Rubens hadn’t planned to, but could he afford to let Collins and the CIA have the president’s ear?
God, he thought to himself, what if Marcke is banging her?
God.
“No, sir, I, uh, have a full agenda. Things are popping,” said Rubens.
“Next time,” said the president. He glanced at the television screen. “Mason announcing his inquiry, eh?”
Rubens nodded.
“You know, I think he’s related to the James Mason. Not the actor, the Virginia statesman.”
“Could be.”
“Mr. Rubens has data confirming the CIA assessment,” said Hadash.
“Go for it, Billy.”
“We’ve been studying intercepts relating to various troop movements, status states, that sort of thing. They’ve been building very slowly,” said Rubens. “And this lines up with the analysis by the CIA people. Which I’m sure the DDO could talk about if necessary.”
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