The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  “Ah, I see! Ducks in a row…I must remember that one.” She could almost hear mental machinery clicking as Belenko filed away another cliché for his collection. “It’s hard to say if he will want to return too soon to Moscow. We will have a major trade deal on the table at the Pacific Rim conference.”

  “I suppose a high-profile meeting right now could do him good back home, especially if the trade package goes through.”

  “Well,” Belenko said, watching his boss, “Minister Zakharov is certainly determined to be seen as the solution to our country’s problems.”

  To be seen as the solution? That was an odd choice of words, Mariah thought, especially from a man who prided himself on his skills as a wordsmith. Did Belenko doubt the minister really was the solution? Where did his loyalties lie, if push came to shove?

  Or was she reading too much into this? He was Zakharov’s executive assistant, after all. If he played his cards well, Belenko could end up at the right hand of a new Russian leader—one who, she reminded herself, had also risen out of the ranks of the old KGB. Since the days of the earliest czars, control of the secret police had been an essential requirement for attaining and holding power in Russia. Zakharov and Belenko would both know that anyone planning to occupy the top of that shaky political apex needed a loyal and efficient dark arts specialist close at hand.

  She, too, watched the minister’s entourage. Young Nolan had the floor now. Good for him, Mariah thought. If he was forceful enough to get Valery Zhakarov to shut up and listen for a change, the boy obviously had a future.

  “Yuri? I didn’t realize Arlen Hunter’s grandson was involved in the Nova Krimsky project,” she said.

  Mariah’s colleagues had taken to calling Nova Krimsky the “Las Vegas in the Crimea.” The resort area around Yalta was being redeveloped into a massive casino and entertainment center that some thought would rival Monte Carlo for the business of the European gambling set.

  Belenko waved a hand around him. “As a matter of fact, it was Arlen Hunter who first proposed it, many years ago. A very grand scheme, but ahead of its time, then. Too much capitalist decadence for the old regime, you see.”

  “And now that it’s going to fly, Arlen’s daughter and grandson are involved?”

  “Among others. A joint venture that large will draw many international partners. Anyway,” Belenko said, taking her arm and drawing her away, “enough business and politics, dear Mariah. Eat, drink and be merry—isn’t that our new golden rule?”

  “Right,” she agreed.

  “Good. And since it does not look like they are going to leave anything for us at that table, and it’s much too crowded in here, anyway, why don’t you join me for dinner?”

  “What—somewhere else, you mean?”

  “Can you get away from your Secretary Kidd for a few hours?”

  “I suppose,” she said, “but won’t your minister be needing you?”

  “Not for much longer. He is running on Moscow time. He likes to retire early when he travels.”

  “What about you? You must be feeling the effects of jet lag, too.”

  “Not really. In fact,” he said, taking her hand to his lips once more, “I am curiously revived. So, what do you say? Do you dare have dinner with a big bad Russian?” The brown eyes reflected amusement, like a challenge laid down. Or, who knew? Maybe it was an attempt at seduction. For someone who’d been dangled as a lure here, Mariah thought, she was proving to be no great shakes at reading the signs. Years of happily married status had dulled that part of her radar.

  Then she remembered Paul. She glanced across the room, looking for him, suddenly recalling, too, that his bag was back in her room at the Beverly Wilshire. Lord, but life was complicated! Should she find a way to talk to him first? No, she decided. It had been his choice to follow her out to L.A. He knew she was here on business. He had no need to know that contacting Yuri Belenko was the business she’d been sent to take care of. In any case, whatever her relationship with Paul was, it wasn’t proprietary. She didn’t want that, and he’d never pressed for it.

  And, anyway, she told herself, this was just dinner.

  “Yuri,” she said, “you’re on.”

  Wednesday, July 3

  Chapter Ten

  It was 1:00 a.m. by the time Mariah finally called it a night—4:00 a.m. in Virginia, she thought, exhausted.

  Yuri Belenko had dropped her back at her hotel a little before midnight. Dodging his bid by the front door to keep the evening going over drinks in her room, she’d waited out of sight in the lobby until his car had pulled away. When she was sure he was gone, she’d walked out once more and flagged a cab. If the doorman was intrigued by her revolving entrances and exits, he was too well trained to show it. Paul Chaney was right—they were a discreet bunch at the Beverly Wilshire.

  Paul. He was probably upstairs waiting. A potent mixture of irritation, anticipation and guilt accompanied the thought. Why hadn’t she come right out and told him how annoyed she was by his conniving with his hotel manager buddy to move into her room?

  Because, she answered her own question, even if his behavior was presumptuous, he’d made the effort to come out of concern for her, and she hadn’t wanted to offend him by appearing ungrateful.

  And therein, of course, lay the real crux of the problem in their relationship—her reluctance to go forward, her hesitation to go back. Was it simple fear of being alone that made her so irresolute? How pathetic was that?

  Whatever the case, she couldn’t do anything about it right then. Paul—and the whole issue of Paul—would have to wait.

  She had the cab drive her to the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard, a few blocks west of the hotel. Under a full moon, the rooftop of the high-rise tower bristled with a vast array of antennae. In its underground comcenter, a massive bank of highly encrypted computers hummed, providing a secure twenty-four-hour link to the entire federal government, including the CIA’s vast communications net.

  The duty officer seemed a little nonplussed to find a woman in a blue silk cocktail number flashing a CIA identity card on the other side of the bullet-proof glass, but Mariah was determined to get her contact report into the system as soon as possible, before she lost her nerve.

  She and Belenko had slipped away from the reception at the Arlen Hunter Museum as soon as their respective ministers had left. The Russian foreign minister, as Belenko had predicted, wanted only his bed. The two of them had then made their way to a downtown seafood restaurant. With no reservations, they’d been obliged to hang out in the bar of the Water Grill for nearly an hour until a table came open.

  But as unwelcome assignments went, Mariah thought, this one had been a romp. Belenko was a terrible gossip, and his wicked mimicry of colleagues and public figures was dead-on. It had been a long time since she’d laughed so freely. The man was a tonic.

  Which only made this business of courting treachery all the more bizarre. It was hardly a simple matter of raising a glass and saying, “Cheers, Yuri! And by the way, could I interest you in betraying your country and becoming a double agent so we can keep tabs on that lunatic you work for?”

  All Geist had asked her to do was feel Belenko out. “Note I said ‘out,’ not ‘up,’ Mariah—har-har-har!” See where his sympathies lay, then leave the rest to Operations.

  Fair enough. She’d taken him at his word. Between Belenko’s comic banter and constant flirtation, she’d managed to probe his serious side just enough to have something to file in her report. As for the Russian, if he’d had an agenda of his own, it hadn’t been obvious. Even the after-dinner seduction bid had been typical of the man—playful and low-key. As if he knew it was expected, but knew, too, that it was a long shot. When she’d demurred, he’d conceded the round with good humor.

  And now, her contact report was in the system, for better or worse.

  Subject is both sophisticated and pragmatic. Has a remarkably clear-eyed appreciation of strengths and failings of Minister Zakharov
. Notes minister’s continuing hard-line association with rump Communist party seeking to regain control of Russian government at national and local levels. Expresses doubt that “old, collectivist solutions” will work any better now than in past. Also expresses dismay over virulent xenophobia (esp. anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism) of minister’s nationalist associates—and minister himself, subject confesses. At same time, subject sees need for strong, centralized authority to counter growing power and influence of Russian mafia and resulting corruption and violence becoming endemic throughout country. Notes that economic reforms demanded by Washington as condition of economic aid will be difficult to realize in current state of internal political turmoil.

  The bottom line, Mariah added, was that Yuri Belenko was a Russian patriot, but also pragmatic and personally ambitious—the kind of man who enjoyed occupying a position near the apex of power and managed to arrange his ideals so that they dovetailed nicely with his self-interest. She could think of more than a few fellow Americans with the same talent.

  Her report would be on Geist’s desk first thing in the morning. As far as she was concerned, her work here was done. If Operations wanted to initiate follow-up action, the ball was in their court. She only hoped the deputy would see it that way.

  When she stepped out of the cab under the brightly lit canopy of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the second time that night, the doorman was there to hold open the car door and extend a hand to her. The same doorman.

  “Good evening again, madam,” he said, smiling.

  “Hi there,” she said. Smoothing her dress, she tried not to think what conclusions he must be drawing about her nocturnal comings and goings.

  He rushed ahead to open the big brass and glass doors, but at the threshold, Mariah paused.

  “Are we staying this time?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said vaguely. “I just thought…”

  Spine tingling, she turned back to the street. The semi-circular driveway in front of the hotel was empty. Traffic on the Wilshire-Rodeo corner was light, but at the curb near the bottom of the drive, a black sedan stood half in, half out of the no-parking zone. It had tinted side windows, but under the yellow glow of sodium vapor streetlights, she could just make out the dim figure of a man through the windshield, sitting at the wheel.

  Surveillance, for sure. But whose? The car’s license plate was hidden in shadow, but it didn’t look dark enough in color to be diplomatic or federal. Still, who said watchers from either side wouldn’t drive an unmarked vehicle?

  She gave the doorman a weak smile and passed into the lobby, recalling Geist’s report on how Belenko had followed her back to her hotel in Paris that past spring. Had Yuri or one of his apparatchiks spotted her leaving again after he’d dropped her off earlier? If so, he would know she’d gone to the Federal Building, and it wouldn’t take much for him to figure out why. And so? What of it? It would come as no great surprise to a veteran like Belenko. For all she knew, he was at the Russian consulate this very moment, filing his own contact report on her.

  On the other hand, she thought, crossing to the elevator banks, the watcher outside could just as easily be one of Geist’s people. And at the restaurant? She tried to remember if anyone there had been paying particularly close attention to her and the Russian. The place had been crowded. Anyone could have been observing them. For that matter, by the time their table had been readied for them, who knew what extra equipment could have been laid on with the cutlery and salt shakers? If Ops could bug Yuri’s dinner with his brother in Moscow, how much easier would it be for them to do the same in Los Angeles?

  The elevator dinged softly and the doors slid open. Was that how Geist’s people would approach Yuri? she wondered as she stepped on and pressed the button for her floor. Show him tapes and photos of himself in obviously friendly contact with a known American intelligence official? She pictured all the possibilities: their heads bent close as Yuri whispered a particularly juicy bit of gossip. His hand casually on hers. A light embrace and a harmless kiss on saying good-night. Of course, it was all as innocent or incriminating as a viewer was prepared to believe—even without getting into the possibilities offered by photographic doctoring or the creative use of body doubles.

  So what did that make her? she asked herself. A practitioner of the world’s second-oldest profession, spying, dabbling in the oldest?

  Hunting in her purse for her key card, she cocked an ear at the door of her room, listening for sounds of movement inside. No light escaped the crack at the bottom. Her hand found the key, but still, she wavered. Suddenly, she was Garbo. She wanted to be alone.

  Her life, however, seemed determined to transform itself into a fishbowl. There was the very public Paul Chaney. Geist and his murky operatives. Belenko and his. Media interest in her father’s newly discovered papers.

  And then, she remembered grimly, there was Renata Hunter Carr. The woman had said she’d been keeping tabs on her. How? A private investigator? How else would she know about David and Lindsay? More to the point, why did she care? And what did she want?

  Mariah’s gaze passed down the crenellated wall, each door set into a deep alcove where a person could easily conceal himself while he waited and watched. Baffled walls and thick carpeting muted all sound except the low, rhythmic hum of the air-control system and an insistent TV laugh track seeping from under one door a little way beyond her own. At the end of the hall, elevators droned softly, rising and falling, always seeming to bypass her floor. Still, her nerve endings fairly bristled.

  This is paranoia, girl. Get over it.

  She slipped her key card into the slot, determined to resist the generalized anxiety that was coming down on her like a bad drug reaction. As she stepped into the suite, the door swung shut on its pneumatic hinge. One small lamp was on in the outer room, but the bedroom was dark, except for the dim glow of a night-light in the bathroom. Through the open bathroom door, she saw her flowered makeup bag sitting on the edge of the sink. Next to it stood a battered leather shaving kit.

  She closed her eyes briefly, then turned to the walk-in closet, sliding the door open as softly as possible. She stepped in and put her purse on the high shelf, then slipped her feet out of her heels, burying her toes gratefully into the carpet’s deep pile.

  As she backed again, drawing the door closed, a pair of arms circled her from behind. Paul’s voice sounded low in her ear, sending a reactive tremor right down through her very center. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  “You idiot,” she said, trying to hold on to a little pride. “You scared me to death. Why are you skulking around in the dark?”

  “Sorry. I stretched out to wait, and next thing I knew, you were coming through the door.” He kissed her neck. “God, you smell good! I wanted to ravish you at the museum.”

  “Thank goodness for the Secret Service,” she said dryly. Her mind cried at having him there when all she really wanted was to soak in a hot tub and then sleep. But as his lips moved unerringly to the spot beneath her ear that he knew was a hot button, her body, which had been running on little more than nervous energy all day, started to betray her.

  She sighed and settled against him. “How was the rest of the reception?”

  “All right,” he murmured. Slipping the top buttons of her dress open, he spread the mandarin collar wide. His mouth moved down her neck to the soft concave where it joined her shoulder. “My mind wasn’t on it.”

  “What was it on?”

  “Diplomacy.”

  “How so?”

  His fingers descended the front of her dress, and small, black pearl buttons surrendered, one by one. Opening the dress, he pulled her even closer, his hands cupping her breasts. “I was trying to think of a diplomatic way to warn that Russian hotshot to keep his hands and eyes off my girl. Or is there something I should know?”

  “Like what?” Mariah asked, her mind registering the possessiveness of his words, puzzling over it. Wanting to protest, but letting
it go.

  “How about a line on the hanky-panky going on inside the American and Russian delegations between that slippery Russian and a certain lady from Langley who shall go nameless?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she answered in her best woman-of-mystery voice.

  “Yes. I would, as a matter of fact. Where did you two get to?”

  She frowned, turning to face him. “We went for dinner. Paul, I’m sorry, but I told you I’d be working tonight.”

  “Going off alone with that oily guy is work?”

  “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” she said lightly. He didn’t seem to be amused. “Yuri’s all right. In fact, you’d probably like him. Don’t be mad. It was just work.”

  He sighed. “I’m not. And I did speak with him for a few minutes, actually, just before you guys disappeared. He’s okay, I suppose. I asked him about an interview with his boss, Wacky Zacky, the mad Russian.”

  “Aha, so this is a business trip, after all.”

  “No, I came to be here with you, like I said, only you dumped me for another guy. Wait’ll I see him again,” he added, his irritation gone as suddenly as it had appeared. “I may have to challenge him to a duel.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’d probably lose.”

  “Is that so? So what are you telling me? That this Belenko’s a KGB thug like his boss?”

  “It’s FSB now, and let’s just say you shouldn’t say anything around Yuri that you wouldn’t want ending up in a file in Dzerzhinsky Square.”

  “I see. So, you guys go for dinner—a couple of old spooks trading secrets, is that it? Meanwhile I sit here all alone, pining away.”

  “You? Pining away? Why am I finding this difficult to picture?”

  “Because you have a naturally suspicious mind?”

  The shadow of a grin outlined his perfect mouth. The curtains were open, only diaphanous sheers covering the arched windows on the far wall, running floor to ceiling. Below them, Rodeo Drive and the Santa Monica hills beyond sparkled like a piece of the celestial firmament that had accidentally fallen to earth. In its pale light, Paul’s blue eyes seemed luminescent.