Singularity

by Bill DeSmedt

  The new arrival was a tall man in his mid- to late thirties, wearing a checkered shirt and jeans. The grainy, available-light image wasn’t good enough to resolve more than a broad-brush abstraction of the face: a receding hairline, a fringe of beard, a heavy brow sheltering weak, tired-looking eyes. The tired look could be due the early hour: the timestamp said this scene had played out at half past six in the morning.

  “Anyone we know?” Jon asked, whispering as if they were spying on the man in real life.

  “I don’t think so. Watch, here’s where it gets interesting.”

  The man stood still for a moment, looking back the way he’d come. Another few seconds to make sure no one was about to push the curtain aside and come in from the bridge. Then, with a series of jerky movements, he was standing behind the antique chart table looking down, its dimly-lit surface illuminating his features from below.

  “The action’s a little stop-motionesque,” Marianna said. “Camera’s only transmitting five frames a second. Makes it hard to see exactly what he does here. But the result’s clear enough.”

  The man’s right hand fumbled around under the tabletop. Whatever he was looking for, he found it: the heavy wooden table slid forward three or four feet as if on skids. The man braced himself on the table’s edge, then disappeared down behind it. A few more seconds and the table eased back into its original position.

  Marianna halted the playback. “That’s it. After half an hour, the whole operation repeats in reverse: table moves back, guy comes up, slides it into place and leaves. Want to see that?”

  He shook his head. “This here’s enough to clinch it: we’ve just watched somebody visiting our hidden room.”

  Marianna nodded. “That’s what it looks like, all right. Still, I’d feel better if we’d caught the actual shaft entrance on camera.”

  “Be thankful we got as much as we did. Look at the camera angle—whoever set this up didn’t want the shaft, they wanted full-face on anybody going into it.”

  “Which should make it more interesting,” Marianna said, “when I try that myself.”

  “What?” Knox wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

  “Oh, not right away. We’ve got to rough out their duty schedule first. It’s that, or run the risk of bumping into a staffer or two when the time comes for me to pay a call to your secret lab.”

  “You had me worried there. We’re going to need lots more data capture before we even think about that. Figure on forty-eight hours worth at least, maybe seventy-two just to be on the safe side.” The way Knox saw it, a day without breaking and entering was a day without the threat of imminent death or dismemberment.

  Marianna was still putting her laptop back in auto-record mode when the doorbell chimed. She shot Knox a look that said: whoever it is, get rid of them. He walked to the door, hoping it wasn’t Yuri making a housecall.

  He relaxed when he heard the voice booming from the other side: “Dzhon, Marianna! Do you plan to stay in bed all Saturday?”

  “Hi, Sasha,” Knox opened the door to find his friend standing there in knit shirt and shorts, “You’re looking kind of casual this morning.”

  “Ancient Slavic custom: vik-ehnd,” Sasha deadpanned. “Perhaps you have heard of?”

  “You guys invented the weekend too, eh?” Knox grinned, but remained standing in the threshold, blocking entrance to the room. He turned his head and said “Honey, look who’s here!”

  “Good morning, Sasha!” Marianna waved from the desk.

  “Truly, a good morning, Marianna—too good to waste sitting indoors. I have come to say that, if you two will hurry, we can play some golf.”

  Knox turned to face him again. “Don’t tell me you’ve got eighteen holes squirreled away below decks.”

  Sasha grinned. “Even better, Dzhon. Rusalka has a driving range at the aft end of lab deck. Very popular with senior cadres, especially on Saturday morning. But I have succeeded to reserve a half hour slot for us, beginning in . . .” He consulted his watch, “. . . fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m up for it. But I think Marianna mentioned something about going for a swim. Didn’t you, honey?” The term of endearment still rang false in Knox’s ears, even on the second try. But maybe such awkwardness was in character for lawyers-in-love.

  “I did have my heart set on doing a few laps, especially after that dinner last night.” She patted her tummy. “Why don’t you boys go on without me? Just come by the pool and get me when it’s time for lunch, okay, dear?”

  Then she smiled as if to say she was too much the consummate professional to let all this “honey” business make her self-conscious.

  Marianna waited until Jon had hustled Sasha off before turning her attention to the laptop again. A few minutes more and she had it configured to continue recording while feigning sleep mode. She locked it down, got up and stretched. What next?

  She walked over to a porthole as big as a bay window and drew back the curtain. Jon was right: it was a beautiful day out there. And he’d more or less committed her to putting in an appearance at the pool. What the hell . . . relax and enjoy it.

  She stepped through the connecting door into her own stateroom to change. Briefly weighed wearing a one-piece consistent with her semi-staid cover story, but rejected it in favor of a medium-hot black bikini. Do her good to get out from under this “honey” persona for a bit.

  Marianna paused in front of the full-length mirror to check for overall effect. Not bad. The scanty bikini bottom accentuated her long legs and tight butt. And they, in turn, diverted attention from her less-than-generous endowment up top—legacy of a puberty sacrificed on the altar of gymnastics. She frowned, then stuck her tongue out at the image.

  Completing the ensemble with sandals, a wrap, and her carrybag, she pulled the door closed behind her and walked down the passageway to the outside. Let’s see, the pool was all the way aft on accommodations deck. She strolled along with her hand barely brushing the rail, basking in the warmth of the sun after being cooped up in the air-conditioned interior.

  Rusalka’s outdoor saltwater pool was twelve meters long, three-fifths the width of the deck. With most of the GEI staff off duty for the weekend, it was a popular spot. Especially with families, to judge by the little tow-headed kids splashing and squealing in the roped-off shallow end; Marianna hadn’t realized there were marrieds-with-children aboard. The deep end was grown-up territory, though: drink service, at ten A.M. no less, as well as a sauna cheek by jowl with a traditional Russian banya, and maybe twenty Solaris chrome-and-teak chaises longues in two concentric semicircles fanned out around the diving board.

  Most of the chaises were already occupied by sunbathers, but Marianna spotted an empty one and headed for it, past seeming acres of sallow, slowly broiling Slavic flesh. Regardless of age or girth, all the men were wearing those skimpy little bathing suits one saw on European beaches. Most of the women had on something less revealing, though a daring few had gone the other way entirely and followed the men in wearing only a thong-like bottom, sans top.

  Well, when in Rome . . . no, not really, but she did shrug out of her wrap; no sense in being overdressed. She leaned on the aft rail and looked down. There was the golfing area Sasha had been talking about. In fact, there were Jon and Sasha waiting their turn to tee off. A light breeze was tousling Jon’s brown hair. Taken together with the bit of tan he’d gotten on his face and arms yesterday, it gave him an uncharacteristically outdoorsy look.

  “Jon, hi!” she called and waved. She struck a slightly self-conscious pose, and was rewarded when his initial startlement segued into an appreciative once-over. Boobs aren’t everything.

  Her pleasure was short-lived. While she’d stopped to preen for Jon, someone else had scooted into the last available chaise. Served her right.

  She briefly considered just spreading a towel out on the deck, but the no-skid surfacing in the pool area was some sort of roughened, distinctly uninviting resin. When in doubt, run a standard reconnaiss
ance sweep: she strolled down the aisle between the pool’s rim and the inner arc of chaises, looking for an opening. Emphatically not looking at the occasional bare-breasted Earth Mother, supine and glistening with sunblock.

  She was working so hard to avoid staring with envy at the Frei-Korper fanatics she almost missed noticing that one of them was staring at her. A statuesque honey-blond wearing only wraparound mirror-shades and the obligatory thong. Now that she got closer, it looked like . . . “Galina?”

  “Good morning, Marianna.” Galina smiled and rose to a sitting position that only made her breasts more prominent. She shifted around to make a little room on her chaise. “Sit, please?” she invited, patting the empty spot beside her.

  “Thanks,” Marianna said, squeezing in, “I won’t crowd you long. I really just need a spot to stash my bag while I take a dip.”

  “Nichevo—Is nothing. Always difficult to find a place here on weekends. Pool is very popular.”

  “I’d noticed. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the scenery, would it?”

  Galina looked puzzled for a moment, then she got it. “This?” She arched her back demonstratively, and laughed. “No, no, is not like that. This is Siberian thing. We love sun, but get so little. Can never have too much. So, naturally, when there exists possibility . . .”

  “You kind of let it all hang out, hmm? But even if it’s just sun-worship, I’m surprised Sasha isn’t up here fending off the, uh, worshippers.”

  “Sasha? Sasha cares little for what I do.” Galina sighed.

  Marianna wasn’t prepared for the look of sadness that came over Galina’s face then. “What’s wrong, Galina? Is it about Sasha?”

  “Sasha? No, no, I think perhaps it is about me.” Another sigh. “I had hope, when Sasha first invited me aboard, that we begin again, make new start. But he must work so hard. Always so busy, always so tired. Too tired to . . .” Her voice trailed off, leaving an eloquent, if somewhat jiggly, shrug to complete the thought.

  “But you and Sasha look so happy together,” Marianna blurted out.

  “Look happy?” A single tear ran out from behind Galina’s mirror-shades and worked its way down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily. “Look, perhaps. But not feel.”

  She just sat there then looking down at the deck, shaking her head.

  “There, there,” Marianna patted her on the back, not knowing what else to do. This sort of situation arose so seldom in the normal course of counter-proliferation operations.

  “Is all right, Marianna.” Galina sniffled. She raised the shades to dab at her eye with a corner of her beach towel. “I have my work still. Important work. Is also possible to live for that, to believe in that.”

  Any other time, Marianna would have lunged at an opening like that: oh, really, Galya? And just what is this all-important work? Come on, you can tell me.

  Now she found she couldn’t. Instead, sitting there with her arm around the disconsolate woman, ignoring the curious stares of the other sunbathers, she found herself considering—for the first time, really—the possibility that she’d been wrong. Wrong about Galina, at least. Galya seemed so openhearted, so sympathetic, so . . . lost. She was either for real, or the most accomplished actress in the world.

  And somehow Marianna could tell she wasn’t acting. No one could fake that longing, that utter desolation at love’s ending. Marianna knew that for sure. Knew for sure what Galina was going through, where she was coming from. After all . . .

  Love dies.

  Knox continued staring up at the rail after Marianna left. Becoming infatuated with the client was definitely contraindicated, but—

  Sasha tapped him on the shoulder and broke the spell. “Dzhon? Our turn.” A couple of stocky GEI execs were just vacating the practice tee.

  Three sides of that tee were enclosed with lucite wind-baffles, the fourth was open to the sunlit, whitecapped ocean. The whole North Atlantic had become a driving range, an all but inexhaustible supply of Arkady Grishin’s Titleist EcoSure biodegradable golf balls sailing off Rusalka’s stern, roughly in the direction of Newfoundland. There were no range-markers, of course. Instead, a small, self-contained radar unit located beside the tee computed the distance for each shot.

  Sasha was tall for a Russian of his generation, as Knox was for an American. That meant Knox had a good two inches on his friend, a height differential that gave him a longer moment arm, and hence a more powerful swing—as long as he didn’t have to hit anything smaller than the Atlantic Ocean.

  “One hundred eighty-seven point six yards,” a synthesized voice announced in response to Knox’s last drive. The talking ball-tracker came with the golf balls, and the wags at Titleist had given its speech synthesizer a bit of a brogue. Grishin had yet to have it reengineered for Russian.

  Which reminded him: “How do you say ‘Fore!’ in Russian, Sasha?”

  “Chetyrye,” Sasha replied, head down, addressing the ball.

  “Not the number ‘four.’ I meant—” Knox stopped and grinned. Sasha was just yanking his chain.

  “Fore!” Sasha shouted, and shot. “Same word in Russian, Dzhon. As is well known, this expression is actually coming from old proto-Slavonic, meaning . . .”

  “One hundred sixty-six point three yards,” the Scottish radar unit barged in.

  “So, my friend,” Sasha said, switching topics apropos of nothing in particular, “do you still follow events in Russia as before?”

  Knox eyed his friend warily. Was that just idle chit-chat, or the prelude to one of the long, lugubrious heart-to-hearts Russians were so fond of? Knox wanted no part of any such soul-baring right now. It wasn’t just that he’d yet to sort out his own feelings toward this man who’d befriended him, and nearly destroyed him, two decades ago. There was all that latter-day CROM baggage added to the mix. Had Sasha betrayed him back then? Was Knox betraying him now? Better to steer the conversation in another direction altogether.

  “Follow events? Not really, Sasha, or I’d have known more about your meteoric rise. Come to think, you still haven’t told me how this whole Grishin thing got started.”

  “My association with Grishin Enterprises International, you mean? It began by purest chance: I was administering a small Bratsk research institute in the early 1990s. ‘Administer’ is perhaps not the right word. My role was more one of trying to keep the staff housed and fed.”

  Knox nodded. Things had been tough all over back then, and had gone from bad to worse since. But if anyone could finesse the bare essentials to keep an institute going, it was Sasha.

  “Anyway, Arkasha at that time was just beginning his ‘roll-up,’ as you call it, of materials sciences enterprises throughout Russia, under Yeltsin’s privatization policy.”

  “Materials sciences labs, I could see—that’s how GEI got its start, after all—but an astrophysics research outfit?”

  “Please, Dzhon, permit me to finish. Bratsk institute was specializing in degenerate matter studies. Sounds like any other kind of material, yes?” Sasha laughed. “In those days, all of Russia was like a land rush in your Wild West: take first, ask details later. By the time Arkasha discovered that we studied only stellar interiors, neutron stars, and so forth, it was too late.”

  “Meaning you were already on the inside, and making yourself as insidiously useful as ever.” Knox chuckled to himself. How could he have ever seriously doubted that Sasha would somehow finagle his way to the pinnacle of New Russian success? “You always did strike me as being as much a hustler as a researcher, Sasha, what with your . . .” He trailed off.

  Sasha grounded his club and looked up. “Sorry, Dzhon—With my what?”

  With your How to Win Friends and Influence People, Knox had been about to say, thinking of that bootlegged copy Sasha had shown him once. But that had been on their last night together in Moscow, and he definitely did not want to relive that episode here.

  He tapdanced instead: “I’ll bet Grishin never knew what hit him.”

  Sa
sha looked at him curiously but said nothing. Knox spent the rest of the match steering the conversation back onto safer ground. Even as they strolled up to the pool toward noon, he was still regaling Sasha with golfing stories. Metaphysical golfing stories. Tales of Michael Murphy and his mystical pilgrimages with Shivas Irons across the links of Burningbush Country Club. Meditations on how the inherent frustrations of golf made it a spiritual discipline par excellence. Working hard to keep things light and airy and inconsequential.

  They found Marianna, laps done, sunning herself poolside. She was lying flat on her stomach with the string of her black bikini top undone in the interests of a continuous tan.

  “Hi.” She raised her head. “How was golf?”

  “Good, good,” Sasha said. “Better for Dzhon: he won.”

  “If you’re looking for Galya,” Marianna said, “she’s gone up to the outdoor buffet to get us a table. We’re supposed to meet her there.”

  She fumbled with the loose ends of her bikini top. “Jon, could you help me with this?”

  Knox knelt to refasten her. Yielding to the moment and the smoothness of her sun-warmed skin, he pushed the lawyers-in-love envelope by leaning over and kissing the nape of her neck.

  Whoops! There went his own spiritual discipline. She smiled up at him. Didn’t necessarily mean anything, though. With Sasha watching, she might just be staying in character.

  Weird situation: another unadvertised peril of covert operations. Trying to become intimate with her, while pretending to be intimate with her, meant he could never be sure exactly where he stood. Though there was that impulsive kiss last night . . .

  Regrettably, the afternoon held no more such unguarded moments, full though it was with an assortment of other delights. The evening brought cocktails and dinner, followed by a private screening of some forgettable first-run film in the full-sized theater up on salon deck. Sasha, for one, seemed not to want the day to end, but even the second-in-command of the mighty Grishin Enterprises International was powerless to hold back the clock. By the time they’d trooped up to the skylounge for a nightcap, things were winding down.