by Leigh Barker
“See,” Loco said, nodding now. “Sergeant Winter knows everything.”
For the first time in years, Andie felt like hitting somebody.
Hofmann wondered if the woman riding up in the elevator with his PA would have been more comfortable meeting on a park bench in the rain. More…how could he put it? More at home. Yaroslava Smirnov.
He got up from his couch and moved to his desk between the two huge windows overlooking the city.
Smirnov? Wasn’t that the name of a drink? Probably vodka, bearing in mind its origin. Yaroslava Smirnov. He flexed his jaw. It was a mouthful. Probably some hatchet-faced thin woman. Right, with blades in the toes of her shoes no doubt.
He looked at the folder on his desk and closed it. Russians were particularly adept at reading upside down—the documents upside down, not the reader. With that clarified, he pushed the file to one side and took a long breath. He really should try not to judge people by their country or, indeed, by movie references. Yes, he should try, but wouldn’t. One of the privileges of power was that he didn’t have to do anything he couldn’t be bothered with.
He heard the lift door swish open in the reception room and the hushed voice of his receptionist, Parker…Parkes, or something like that. These young women looked the same, dressed the same, spoke the same in their strange tech-speak language. Education in this country needed a shake-up; it was going to the dogs. It had all started to come unraveled when the do-gooders had made corporal punishment a crime. Tree huggers who’d never had to maintain discipline in their whole cosseted lives. Now there was no way to get the little shits to do as they were told. Lay a hand on one of them and they scream child abuse. No wonder the country was turning into a lentil-eating, om-chanting, navel-gazing—
His receptionist stepped into the archway separating his office from the world. Palmer. Her name was Palmer. Probably. He remembered it brought to mind the problems the orangutans were having with oil farming destroying their natural habitat. He liked the Old Man of the Jungle. They were orange. His favorite color. He would make an effort to remember his receptionist’s na—he forgot about her the moment he saw the Russian.
A tall, stunningly attractive blonde, who would’ve made a perfect stand-in for Michelle Pfeiffer. When she was young. Michelle Pfeiffer, not the Russian, she was young. He’d met the actress once at a Hollywood red-carpet thing. He recalled he’d thought she looked thinner than her movie self. And shorter. A little disappointing. But not this reincarnation. He stood up without any conscious decision. It seemed like the right thing to do.
“Please take a seat.” He wished he hadn’t said that. What was she going to do? Stand in the corner?
“Thank you, you are most kind.”
Her voice was soft and dark, the sort of voice he’d like to hear from an adjacent pillow.
He tried not to look her over like a prize heifer, whatever one of those was, and came out from behind his power desk to show her to the long couches facing each other across the ornate glass table. Perhaps he would see a little more of those long beautiful legs. Fatal Attraction. He put the image aside. It was not how he would have this go, too…sordid. This tall, elegant woman with emerald eyes deserved better. Something more in keeping with her flawless beauty.
“Would you care for a drink?” He caught himself before he suggested vodka. That was just too much of a cliché.
“Do you have vodka?” That dark voice again, drifting in from the dead of night. She smiled, and her eyes flashed with mischief.
“It’s eleven in the morning here in sunny DC,” Hofmann said, “but it’s evening someplace in this world, I guess.” He took off his jacket, tossed it onto the couch, and pulled open the doors to a liquor cabinet that would’ve put most town bars to shame. “What’s your brand?” He raised a finger. “Smirnov, right?”
She smiled again. “It’s Smirnoff, but I see what you did there.”
He poured her a half glass of clear spirit and matched it with a whiskey. He’d never cared for foreign drinks, and vodka least of all. It tasted of nothing and carried a headache that could fell a linebacker.
She put the glass on the empty glass table without touching it. She hated vodka too, but it didn’t hurt to perpetuate the man’s misconception. She waited for him to sit and take the head off his drink. Good, drunks and fools were the easiest to deal with.
“Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,” she said, and tilted her head in a bow.
“The pleasure is all mine, my dear.”
At any other time she would’ve punched him in the face for that, but this wasn’t any other time.
“What can I do for Russia?” He smiled. It wasn’t pretty. “Or at least for Russia’s prettiest citizen.”
Did that ever work? She felt the need to wash her hands.
“My employer has a contract he would like fulfilled.”
Hofmann put down his scotch and leaned back into the leather couch and said nothing. Silence gives space for people to speak and say too much.
She met his gaze with sparkling green eyes that held his as a headlight holds a moth.
“And your…employer thinks we are able to fulfil this contract?” He had to speak, to break the moment before she took his will and left him a jabbering fool. There was something about her. He’d seen it only once before. Audrey Hepburn. A look that drifted into a man’s soul to enthrall him like a siren’s song. But with that thought, he’d broken free of her spell and now saw her for the manipulator she surely was. It angered him, but he maintained a smooth, if unsettling smile.
“We are in no doubt that you and your organization are uniquely qualified to deliver this particular…contract.”
He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward a little. Show her she had his attention. “And the we in this case is?”
She tilted her head in mild surprise and watched him for several seconds. “Do you expect me to believe you do not know? I am rather sure you had me thoroughly investigated as soon as I put down the phone.”
He waved a hand to dismiss it. “Corporate policy, my dear. Nothing more.”
“Yet you are the corporation, are you not?” She got no response, but none was needed. “Then it is your policy.” She smiled. “One that I heartily support, of course.”
“Yes, I can see how you would. Coming from Moscow.”
Her smiled slipped, but she recovered it. “Oh, you really shouldn’t believe all you read in your papers or see on Fox News.”
He laughed once. “TV news is twenty-four seven. They are parched for fresh content. They snatch whatever is given to them. I know, I give it to them.”
“Yes, I am sure you do.” Now she sat upright. “And this brings us nicely to the crux of my offer.”
“Offer?” He raised his eyebrows. A practiced move. “I haven’t heard an offer. Yet.”
“Then let me make it.” She looked around as if seeking something specific.
“No cameras. No mics. This isn’t Nixon’s Oval Office.” He laughed, he couldn’t help it.
“Were you involved in that one too?”
His face returned to its usual sour expression. “That was forty-five years ago, my dear. How old do you think I am?”
Easily old enough to have been there. “Perhaps your father, then.”
“My father was dead by then. Sucked his army Colt when the going got a bit tough. Left mother and me to claw our way out of the gutter.”
She looked around. “You climbed a long way above that.”
He shrugged, pain and anger in his eyes.
“Are you finished climbing?”
“That’s a question.” He looked around. “I have more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes, and all of them at the tables in Vegas. Why would I want more?”
“Are we talking about money?”
Shrewd and breathtakingly beautiful. If he was ten years younger…maybe twenty. And if he had a hope in hell of getting more than a manipulative smile.
“Money is ju
st a way of keeping score. A man like you has no real hunger for money.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. But okay, I’ll play. What is it I’m hungry for?” He could’ve answered that, but she deserved better than being treated like the others. This one was special.
“Power.” She gave him a moment. “You said yourself you came from the gutter. You still have a lot to prove to yourself.”
“Don’t you think I’ve proved all I need to?”
“Oh yes, and more. But do you?”
It would never be enough. If he ruled the world and the great and the good bent their knee to him, he would still look up at the stars and know he was insignificant.
“And your proposal will address my…shortfall?”
“Not entirely, but I believe it will ease your thirst. At least for a while.”
He moved his glass around on the table as he searched her face for a hint of…what? Betrayal? There was nothing to betray. Yet. Deceit, then? Of course, everybody was scheming, trying to get something from him, or trip him up, or curry favor to line their pockets.
“Then let us discuss this thirst-quenching proposal of…yours.”
“Your president. Do you support him?”
He sniffed. “Of course not. I don’t support politicians, I own them.”
Her expression flickered for the briefest moment. And he knew.
“You want me to interfere with the democratic process of this fine country?”
She shrugged but said nothing. Watergate may have been forty-five years ago, but all that had changed since was the size of the microphones.
“I thought the Kremlin already managed the US elections. What can I do that your geeks can’t do through social media and plain psych ops?”
“Please don’t sell yourself short.” She picked up her vodka and ran a perfectly manicured finger around its lip. “Yours is an organization with influence at every level of every power of worth.”
“That’s an Oscar nomination for which I have to admit I am unworthy.”
She opened her slim silver purse, put her fingers in for a moment and returned them to her lap.
Hofmann met her eyes again, this time without the electric kick. “That really isn’t necessary. I told you there is no monitoring in my office. Do you doubt me?”
“I don’t doubt that you think that is the case. I doubt that it is correct. If I am wrong, then I offend you. If I am right, then it saves us from embarrassment. It costs nothing to mitigate the greater risk.”
“I like you, Miss Smirnoff.”
“It’s Smirnov. And whether you like me or not is of little consequence. What matters is, are you interested in running this country as you do this organization?”
“Are you suggesting that I become president of the United States?”
She didn’t answer.
“I can tell you right here, right now, my dear, that being president of this country, or any other country, is as far from my bucket list as it’s possible to get and still see the light from our sun.”
She nodded slowly. “This is as we understood. Good. Had you political ambitions, then you would not be the man for this endeavor.”
“So now that we have established that I am the most powerful man on the planet and that I hate politicians, perhaps we can just cut to the chase.”
“Yes, let us do that.” She took a breath that lifted her breasts tight against her silk blouse.
Hofmann barely noticed, even if he was supposed to. Which he wasn’t.
“The president will shortly be up for re-election.”
It was a fact and needed no response.
“He will fall,” Hofmann said, and shrugged. “A man who shakes things up will be admired and hated with equal fervor, but inevitably he will fail to deliver what the radicals want and will galvanize the conservatives. He will fall between the two opposing camps.”
“We want him to win.” She said it without any emphasis. Just as it was.
“Then make it happen. Like last time.”
She shook her head. “It is not that simple.”
“No, not any more. The light came on and is shining your way.”
“As you say. But the fact remains that it is in our interests that he remains in the White House.”
“Why?”
“You need to ask?”
“No, not really, I just like to hear you say it.”
“Very well. There are only our ears. He is the man we can work with.” She raised her fingers. “No, he is not a traitor. Such a man would have no value to us. It is simply that his agenda and ours…coincide.”
“And you would like me to help the coincidence to continue.”
“We would, but only if you are sure you can do so. We would not wish to embark on a journey that led only to disappointment and ramifications.”
Hofmann closed his eyes for a moment as if suddenly tired. “My dear, I am an old man and not easily impressed by threats. Even threats from the mighty Russian nation.”
“It is not a threat.”
He sighed. “If you are about to tell me it’s a promise, then I shall introduce you to someone who may shortly be falling from his office window.”
She frowned deeply, and he shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Are you suggesting that I might fall from a window.”
“No, no. It is simply a turn of phrase. I shall forget that you threatened me, and you forget about the window.”
“Forgotten. And, Mr. Hofmann, I did not threaten you. I simply meant that if this venture falls short of total success, we will all be…how do you American say? Standing with our asses in our hands when the theater lights come on.”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“Then let us discuss what success looks like.”
He picked up his drink and studied its amber glow in the morning sunlight falling exhausted after its struggle through the darkened windows.
“Your man will be in the White House for another term, and your shirtless, horse-riding leader will have the reins of this country in his teeth.”
“Oh no, nothing like that. We have no desire…Mr. Putin has no desire to run this country. God knows he has enough to do to run ours.”
“Then what? Why do you want your man to win?”
“As I have said, he is not our man, he is your man, but he shares many of our ambitions for the future of this world.”
“And what do you believe this future looks like? The future shared by the biggest capitalist country and the biggest centrally planned economy in the world.”
“Russia’s economy is no longer centrally planned.”
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Come now, we are being honest here. Russia’s economy maybe isn’t managed by a bloc of grey old men, but it is controlled by a bloc of anonymous oligarchs. Same thing, different agenda.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but her eyes gave her away, and she nodded once. “At the moment, perhaps what you say is true. But this will change.”
“When we make this future you’re talking about?”
“Yes, that is one of the goals.”
“And the others?”
“As Russia and America grow closer, we will become the most powerful economic and military alliance the world has ever seen. Anything will be possible.”
“The Chinese and the Europeans might have something to say about that.”
She shook her head. “They will not.”
He raised an eyebrow. “True, the Europeans will climb over each other to win our favor,” he said, and looked away for a moment, then back again quickly. “And China won’t make a fuss. Because it—”
“Will no longer exist as a coherent nation.”
“Yes, nuclear weapons dropping on their cities would do that.”
“Yes, it would.”
He watched a dust mote drift across the marble floor. “I guess your techies have estimated how many nukes you could drop before it becomes embarrassing.”
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She was silent for a moment as if thinking it through. “Enough.”
He liked brevity in a woman.
Hofmann watched the dust mote again while the implications and reality of what they were discussing formed into a mushroom cloud in his mind. Then he smiled. “Never did like the Chinese. They just look after their own. Obstructive.”
“Then you will take the contract?” She was already starting to stand.
“I shall have my people look over the details. Do their due diligence thing. But yes, it intrigues me.”
“Somewhere higher to climb?”
He pointed at her glass. “Yes, somewhere higher to climb.”
“There will be resistance from people in high places.”
“It is my experience that little people have big titles. I am used to resistance.”
“These little people are directors of the most powerful agencies in the country.”
He shrugged. “Big titles.”
She lifted her glass. “To little people.” And emptied it in a single gulp.
Loco climbed down from the rock he’d been using to check out their back trail. “Not a sign of them.” He brushed off his combat cammies and took his sniper case from Smokey. “I’d say we lost them.”
As one they turned to glare at him, but nobody said it; no need. The Taliban would be along at any minute.
“We’re not going to be able to outrun them,” Gunny said, looking along the few yards of trail before it disappeared into the mountainside.
“No,” Ethan said, “Khalua’s maybe another three klicks. We’re not going to get there even at a dead run before they’re all over us like flies on a dead dog.”
“It’s their country,” Gunny said. “We have to stick to this highway. They’ll just cut across.”
Ethan looked down at the narrow goat trail littered with fallen rocks. “Right, the highway.” He unslung his M16 and checked it over. He was going to need it real soon.
Loco was looking from one to the other, then turned to Smokey. “What they talking about? I just said there’s no sign of the Taliban.”
Smokey sighed long and slow and shook his head. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you?”
Loco pulled a face and glanced at Winter, who fixed him with a hard steady glare. “Look,” Loco said, “it’s just superstition. Saying there’s no bogeys about don’t make one suddenly appear.” He looked back at Smokey. “It’s a superstition, right? Makes no sense, does it? Right?”
