Bryson shrugged. “Your Kalashnikovs—they’re genuine Russian?”
“Forget Russian. That stuff’s crap. I’ve got boxes of Bulgarian Kalashnikovs.”
“Ah, nothing but the best for you.”
Calacanis smiled in appreciation. “Quite so. The Kalashnikovs made by Arsenal, in Bulgaria, are still the finest ones around. Dr. Kalashnikov himself prefers the Bulgarian make. How do you know Hans-Friedrich again?”
“I helped him broker a number of big sales of Thyssen A. G. Fuchs tanks to Saudi Arabia. I introduced him to some oil-soaked friends in the Gulf. Anyway, as for the Kalashnikovs, I’ll certainly defer to your expertise,” Bryson said graciously. “And assault rifles—”
“For those you simply can’t do better than the South African Vektor 5.56mm CR21. Terribly sleek. Once they’ve tried it, they’ll never use anything else. Its integral Vektor reflex optical sight can enhance the probability of a first-time hit by sixty percent. Even if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”
“Depleted uranium shells?”
Calacanis arched an eyebrow. “I may be able to dig some up for you. Interesting choice. Twice as heavy as lead, the best antitank weapon you can find. Slices through tanks like a hot knife through butter. And radioactive besides. You say your clients are from Rwanda and Congo?”
“I don’t believe I said.” The back-and-forth was stretching Bryson’s nerves to the breaking point. It was not a negotiation, it was a gavotte, a highly orchestrated dance, each partner watching the other closely, waiting for a misstep. There was something about Calacanis’s manner that seemed to indicate he knew more than he was letting on. Did the wily arms merchant accept John T. Coleridge at face value? What if his web of contacts extended deeply, too deeply, into the intelligence world? What if somehow, in the years since Bryson had left the Directorate, the Coleridge legend had been rolled up, exposed as fiction by a hypercautious—or vengeful—Ted Waller?
A tiny cellular phone on the table next to Calacanis’s dinner plate suddenly rang. Calacanis picked it up and said harshly, “What is it?… Yes, Chicky, but he has no credit line with us, I’m afraid.” He disconnected the call and placed the phone back on the table.
“My clients are interested in Stinger missiles as well.”
“Ah, yes, these are very much in demand. Every terrorist and guerrilla group seems to want a crate of them these days. Thanks to the U.S. government, there’s quite a decent inventory of them floating around. The Americans used to pass them out to their friends like candy. Then in the late 1980s some of them found their way onto Iranian gunboats and shot down U.S. Navy helicopters in the Gulf, and suddenly the U.S. was in the embarrassing position of having to buy them back. Washington’s offering a hundred thousand dollars for the return of each Stinger, which is four times their original cost. Of course, I pay better.” Calacanis fell silent, and Bryson realized that the blond stewardess was standing to the Greek’s right, bearing a covered serving tray. When Calacanis nodded, she began to serve him a breathtakingly elaborate timbale of salmon tartare with pearly black caviar.
“I take it Washington’s a good customer of yours as well,” Bryson suggested quietly.
“They have, how do you say, deep pockets,” Calacanis murmured vaguely.
“But in certain circles one hears that the pattern of buying is being stepped up recently,” he went on in a low tone of voice. “That certain organizations in Washington, certain covert agencies that have the latitude to operate without oversight, have been acquiring rather … heavily from you.” Bryson tried to affect a casual tone, but Calacanis saw right through it and gave Bryson a sidelong glance. “Are you interested in my wares, or in my clients?” the arms dealer said coldly.
Bryson felt himself go numb, realizing how badly he’d miscalculated.
Calacanis started to get up. “Will you excuse me, please? I believe I’m neglecting my other … guests.”
Quickly, in a low, confiding voice, Bryson said, “I ask for a reason. A business reason.”
Calacanis turned to him warily. “What sort of business can you possibly have with government agencies?”
“I have something to offer,” Bryson said. “Something that might be of interest to a major player not officially connected with a government but who has, as you put it, deep pockets.”
“You have something to offer me? I’m afraid I don’t understand. If you wish to transact your own business, you certainly don’t need me.”
“In this case,” Bryson said, lowering his voice yet further, “there’s no other acceptable conduit.”
“Conduit?” Calacanis seemed exasperated. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Bryson was almost whispering now. Calacanis bent his head to listen. “Plans,” Bryson muttered. “Blueprints, specifications that may be worth a great deal of money to certain parties with, shall we say, unlimited budgets. But in no way can my fingerprints be on this. I can’t be connected in any way. Your services as conduit, as middleman, for want of a better word, will be remunerated quite handsomely.”
“You intrigue me,” Calacanis said. “I think we should continue this discussion in private.”
* * *
Calacanis’s library was furnished in delicate French antiques that were invisibly bolted to the floor. Roman blinds and curtains covered two glass walls; the other walls were decorated with framed antique nautical charts and maps. In the middle of one wall was a paneled oak door; where it led, Bryson had no idea.
That the Greek had been so quick to leave his own dinner party was testament to the allure of the blueprints and specification sheets Calacanis now held in his hand. They had been prepared by the graphic artists of the Agency’s technical services division, designed to pass close inspection by an arms dealer with long experience in reading such plans.
Calacanis made no attempt to hide his excitement. He looked up from the blueprint, his dark eyes gleaming with avarice. “This is a new generation of the JAVELIN antitank weapon system,” he said in hushed awe. “Where the hell did you get this?”
Bryson smiled modestly. “You don’t divulge trade secrets, and neither do I.”
“Lightweight, man-portable, fire-and-forget. The round’s the same—the 127-millimeter-diameter missile, of course—but the command launch unit appears to have gotten far more sophisticated, highly resistant to countermeasures. If I’m reading this right, the hit rate’s now almost one hundred percent!”
Bryson nodded. “So I’m given to understand.”
“Do you have the source codes?”
Bryson knew he meant the software that would allow the weapon to be reverse-engineered. “Indeed.”
“There will be no shortage of interested parties; the only question will be who has the resources. This will fetch quite a price.”
“I take it you have a customer in mind.”
“He’s on board the ship at this very moment.”
“At dinner?”
“He very politely turned down my invitation. He prefers not to mingle. At the moment he’s inspecting the goods.” Calacanis picked up his cellular phone and punched out a number. As he waited for it to ring, he remarked, “This gentleman’s organization has been on quite the buying spree of late. Massive quantities of mobile armaments. A weapon such as this will interest him, I have no doubt of it, and money seems to be no object for his employers.” He paused and said into the phone, “Can you ask Mr. Jenrette to stop by the library, please?”
* * *
The interested party, as Calacanis had identified him, appeared at the door of the library barely five minutes later, escorted by the balding redheaded man named Ian who had first greeted Bryson at the helicopter.
His name was Jenrette, but Bryson knew at once that “Jenrette” was only the latest in a series of cover identities. As the middle-aged, tired-looking man with the scraggly gray hair crossed the study to Calacanis’s desk, his eyes met Bryson’s.
Kowloon.
The ro
oftop bar at the Miramar Hotel.
Jenrette was a Directorate operative he knew as Vance Gifford.
“This gentleman’s organization has been on quite the buying spree of late. Massive quantities of mobile armaments. A weapon such as this will interest him, I have no doubt of it, and money seems to be no object for his employers.”
Money no object … this gentleman’s organization … quite the buying spree.
Vance Gifford was still attached to the Directorate, which meant that Harry Dunne was right: the Directorate still lived.
“Mr. Jenrette,” said Calacanis, “I’d like you to meet a gentleman who has an interesting new toy I think you and your friends might like to purchase.” Ian the bodyguard and aide-de-camp stood with his back erect against the doorjamb, watching in silence.
Vance Gifford stared in shock for the briefest instant before his expression softened, and he gave a smile that Bryson immediately recognized as false. “Mr.—Mr. Coleridge, is it?”
“Please call me John,” Bryson said casually. His body was paralyzed; his mind raced.
“Why do I have a feeling we’ve met somewhere before?” said the Directorate man, feigning joviality.
Bryson chuckled, causing his body to relax. But it was a feint, a ruse, for he was studying the man’s eyes, the minute changes in facial musculature that signaled the truth beneath the lie. Vance Gifford is an active, present Directorate operative. Bryson was sure of it.
He was active when they met eight or nine years ago in East Sector, a strictly scheduled rendezvous in the Miramar bar in Kowloon. We barely knew each other, spent maybe an hour talking business, covert funding and dead drops and the like. Given the compartmentalization, neither one of us had any idea what the other really did in the organization.
And Gifford had to be active still, otherwise Calacanis wouldn’t have summoned him here to inspect the prototype—the lure.
“Was it Hong Kong?” Bryson asked. “Taipei? You look familiar as well.” Bryson acted blasé, even amused by the unspecified, unexplained mix-up in identities. But his heart was racing. He felt perspiration break out on his brow. His field instincts were still there, still finely honed; but his psychology, his emotions, were no longer in the proper, hardened condition. Gifford’s playing it straight, Bryson realized. He knows who I am, but he doesn’t know why I’m here. Like a seasoned field man, he’s rolling with it, thank God. “Anyway, wherever and whenever it was, it’s good to see you again.”
“I’m always in the market for a new toy,” the Directorate man said offhandedly. Gifford/Jenrette’s eyes were keen; they regarded Bryson furtively. Surely he knows I’m out. When a Directorate agent was burned, the word was circulated at lightning speed, to prevent infiltration attempts on the part of the disenfranchised one. But how much does he know of the circumstances of my termination? Does he regard me as a hostile? Or as a neutral? Will he assume that I’ve gone private, like so many covert operatives did after the end of the Cold War, gone into military procurement? Yet Gifford’s smart: he knows he’s being offered stolen top-secret technology, and he knows that’s hardly an ordinary business deal, even in this strange world of black-market arms dealing.
One of several things can happen now. He may assume he’s being set up, offered bait with a hook in it. If he does, then he’ll conclude I’ve gone over—to another government agency, even another side! Baited hooks were a classic recruitment technique employed by the main foreign intelligence services. Bryson’s mind whirled. Maybe he’ll assume I’m part of some interagency, internecine bureaucratic battle, a sting of some sort.
Or worse—what if Gifford suspects me of being an impostor, of running an operation against Calacanis, maybe even against Calacanis’s clients?
This was madness! There was no way to anticipate Gifford’s response, no way to be sure. The only thing was to be prepared for anything.
Calacanis’s face betrayed nothing. The Greek beckoned the Directorate man to his desk, across which he had spread out the blueprints and specs and source codes for the sophisticated weapon design. Gifford walked over and bent down to inspect the plans with great intensity.
Gifford’s lips barely moved while he whispered something to the arms merchant without looking at him.
Calacanis nodded, looked up, and said blandly, “Will you please excuse us, Mr. Coleridge? Mr. Jenrette and I should like to confer privately.”
Calacanis rose and opened the oak paneled door, which Bryson now saw led to a private study. Jenrette followed, and the door closed behind them. Bryson sat on one of Calacanis’s antique French side chairs, frozen like an insect trapped in amber. Outwardly he was waiting patiently, a middleman greedily contemplating great riches from a deal about to be consummated. Inwardly his mind was spinning, desperately trying to anticipate the next move. It all came down to how Jenrette decided to play it. What had the man whispered? How could Jenrette reveal how he knew Bryson without telling Calacanis about his work with the Directorate? Was Jenrette prepared to do that? How much could be divulged? How deep was Jenrette’s cover? These were unknowable things, fundamentally. Too, the man who called himself Jenrette had no idea what Bryson was doing here. For all he knew, Bryson had indeed gone private and was selling weapons designs; how could Jenrette/Gifford know otherwise?
The study door opened, and Bryson looked up. It was the blond stewardess, holding aloft a tray of empty glasses and a bottle of what looked like port. Obviously she had been summoned by the Greek and had entered Calacanis’s private study by means of another passage. She seemed not to notice Bryson as she retrieved used champagne flutes and wineglasses from the desk Calacanis had been using, then approached Bryson. Briefly stooping to pick up a large glass ashtray, laden with the remains of Cuban cigars, from the small end table next to Bryson, she suddenly spoke, her words low and almost inaudible.
“You’re a popular man, Mr. Coleridge,” she murmured without even giving him so much as a glance. She placed the ashtray on her serving platter. “Four friends of yours await you in the next room.” Bryson looked up at her, saw her eyes dart to the oak paneled door on the other side of the library. “Try not to bleed on the Heriz runner. It’s quite rare, and one of Mr. Calacanis’s favorites.” Then she was gone.
Bryson stiffened, his body surging with adrenaline. Yet he knew enough to keep still, betray nothing.
What did this mean?
Was an ambush being set up in the adjacent study? Was she part of the setup? If not—why had she just warned him?
The door to Calacanis’s study suddenly opened again. It was Calacanis himself, with Ian, his bodyguard, looming just behind him in the doorway. Gifford/Jenrette stood farther in the background.
“Mr. Coleridge,” Calacanis called out, “won’t you join us, please?”
For a split-second Bryson stared, trying to assess the Greek’s intentions. “Certainly,” he replied, “in a moment. I think I left something important in the bar.”
“Mr. Coleridge, I’m afraid we really have no time to waste,” Calacanis said in a loud, harsh voice.
“This won’t take a minute,” Bryson said, turning toward the exit door that led to the dining room. It was blocked, he now saw, by another armed guard. But instead of staying put, Bryson continued his stride toward the exit as if nothing were wrong. Now he was but a few feet away from the stocky bodyguard who had just arrived.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Coleridge, we really must have a word, you and I,” Calacanis said with a slight nod that was clearly a signal to the guard at the door. Bryson’s body surged with adrenaline as the stocky bodyguard turned to secure the door.
Now!
He lunged forward, slamming the bodyguard against the hard wooden doorframe of the open door, the sudden movement catching the bodyguard unprepared. The guard struggled, reaching for his weapon, but Bryson hammered his right foot into the man’s abdomen.
An alarm suddenly went off, ear-piercingly loud, clearly triggered by Calacanis, who was shouting. As the bodyg
uard momentarily lost his balance, Bryson took advantage of the brief moment of vulnerability to sink his right knee into the man’s midsection, at the same time gripping the face with his right hand and forcing him to the floor.
“Stop right there!” thundered Calacanis.
Bryson turned quickly and saw that Ian, the other bodyguard, had assumed a marksman’s stance, leveling a gun, a .38 caliber pistol, with both hands.
In that instant, the stocky bodyguard beneath him managed to rear up, screaming, exerting all of his strength, but Bryson leveraged that motion against his adversary, pushing the man up and over, his right hand clawing the bodyguard’s eyes, so that the man’s head was a shield of sorts, right in front of his own face. Ian would never fire with such a high probability of striking another guard.
Suddenly there was an explosion, and Bryson felt the spray of blood. A dark red hole appeared in the middle of the bodyguard’s forehead; the man slumped, dead weight. Ian had, surely by accident, killed his own colleague.
Now Bryson pivoted, arced his body suddenly to one side, just missing the explosion of another bullet, and spun through the open door and into the hallway. Bullets exploded behind him, splintering wood and pock-marking the metal bulkheads. With alarms shrieking all around him at deafening volume, he broke into a run down the corridor.
Washington, D.C.
“Let’s face it. You’re not going to be deterred whatever I say, isn’t that right?” Roger Fry looked at Senator James Cassidy expectantly. In the four years that Fry had been his chief of staff, he had helped draft policy statements for the Hill and speeches for the hustings. The Senator had turned to him whenever a thorny issue arose. Fry, a slight, red-haired man in his early forties, was someone he could always depend upon for an instant electoral read. Price supports for dairy farmers? City advocates could cry bloody murder if you took one position, while the agribusiness lobby would come after you if you took the other. Often enough, Fry would say, “Jim, it’s a wash—vote your conscience,” knowing that Cassidy had made a career of doing so anyway.
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