The kids all gathered around.
“You, too,” Ginie said, motioning for several teenage mothers holding infants. Ginie waited until everyone was standing together before saying, “Okay, everybody, I want all of you to congratulate Alex here on a good game.” When she began clapping, everyone joined her.
“What did you win, Coach?” asked one of the kids once the applause had died down.
“Alex will be cooking us dinner,” Ginie announced. “And that’s all of us. Everyone here.”
“All of us?” asked several kids.
“That’s right.”
The kids exploded in an eruption of cheering.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Talanov, waving down the noise. “How did dinner for two in a restaurant become me cooking dinner for a gym full of kids?”
“Dinner for two in a restaurant is expensive,” Ginie replied, “and since you lost, double or nothing, that means double what you were going to spend, which means I’m actually saving you money by having you cook, which is cheaper.” To the kids: “Tomorrow at noon, everyone. It’s Saturday. No school. Free food.” To Talanov: “By the way, these kids do not get many gourmet, home-cooked meals and will naturally want seconds, so be sure and factor that in.”
Talanov laughed and shook his head.
“Okay, basketball team, start warming up!” Ginie shouted, clapping her hands to pump up the players. “Dance team, up on stage!”
Kids began running in various directions.
“Thank you for being such a good sport,” Ginie said quietly. “You seriously made their day. And before you say it, yes, I did sucker you into that showdown, and, yes, I did sucker you with that last shot. Well, kind of, but not entirely, because it was a fair shot, which means I still own bragging rights, while you, my friend, get to cook dinner. No junk food, either. These kids get enough of that. I want a home-cooked, well-balanced meal.”
“Does anyone ever say no to you?”
“A few people have tried,” a grinning Ginie replied before dashing away.
Talanov watched Ginie vault up onto the stage, where Su Yin and several other girls were practicing in front of large mirrors.
“Alex, look!” shouted Su Yin.
Talanov watched her perform a double cartwheel and gave her a double thumbs-up.
A basketball bounced toward him and Talanov kicked it up into his hand.
“Throw it to me!” several boys shouted, their hands up while dodging and scrambling around in zigzag patterns, trying to get open for a pass.
“Who’s coming tomorrow for lunch?” asked Talanov.
The boys stopped running and raised their hands.
“Spaghetti sound good?” asked Talanov.
The boys all cheered.
“Vegetables sound good?” asked Talanov.
The boys all looked at one another but no one raised a hand.
“Okay, then, how about this?” asked Talanov, dribbling to center court. “If I make this shot, you eat whatever I cook. If I miss, I fix whatever you want.”
“You mean, like, chocolate cake and ice cream? Or potato chips and pizza?”
“Whatever you want.”
“What if you win but we don’t like what you fix?”
“A deal is a deal,” said Talanov.
“You won’t make any weirdo stuff, will you? You know, like eyeballs or guts?”
“I’m a spaghetti kind of guy, so no eyeballs or guts. And that’s a promise, and I keep my word. But, yes, there will be salad, which I expect you to eat.”
“If you win,” laughed one of the boys.
“If I win,” agreed Talanov.
“And you’re shooting from center court, right?”
“Right, no sneaky tricks, like the evil Coach Ginie pulled,” said Talanov, glancing at Ginie, who was watching. “Center court. One shot.”
The boys exchanged glances and finally nodded.
“I want a show of hands,” said Talanov. “Nobody wimping out later.”
The boys all raised their hands.
“Okay, let’s do this,” said Talanov, dribbling the basketball over to the tipoff ring, where he lifted the ball in one smooth motion and let it fly with a jump shot toward the hoop at the far end of the court. The auditorium fell silent while everyone watched the ball sail in a perfect arc through the hoop without touching the rim. “Vegetables it is,” he said. “So I will see you boys tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 14
Evening had settled over Washington, DC, when Amber opened the office door and said, “Do you need me to get you anything before I leave?”
Gustaves looked up from a thick document. Behind her was a counter that ran the length of her paneled office. Bookshelves above, cabinets beneath, with a computer workstation built into the counter so that Gustaves could spin around and send emails whenever she wished. Not that she ever sent many emails because Amber was the one who handled her correspondence.
“I’m good, Amber, thanks,” said Gustaves.
“By the way, I searched every database we’re linked to but couldn’t locate an address or phone number for the Quiet Waters Community Center. Either Colonel Talanov told you the wrong name by mistake or it’s registered as something else.”
Gustaves leaned back in her chair and frowned. “Did you check TRIP, IDENT, OPS-004 and the others?”
“All of them, using your secure access, but nothing came up for Zakhar Babikov or the Quiet Waters Community Center. So without additional information, I can’t find out whether or not the property is listed as something else – like a corporation – or in someone else’s name. I even called Mr. Wilcox to verify the spelling of Babikov’s name. Incidentally, he said he was taking your advice about going on vacation.”
“It wasn’t really advice,” Gustaves said with a smile. “It was quite a bit stronger than that.”
Amber smiled.
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“Disneyland, Magic Mountain, and the San Diego Zoo. He mentioned being a ten-year-old kid for the next two weeks. Except when it came to the wine.”
Gustaves laughed.
Amber stepped over and handed Gustaves a pink sticky note. “Everything I’ve told you is in your sensitive compartmentalized information folder. Your new password, updated per your request, is on that sticky note.”
“Thank you, Amber.”
“Good night, ma’am. Anything else?”
“That does it. Have a great weekend.”
“You, too, ma’am.”
Outside, the traffic was heavy along Independence Avenue, which was normal for a Friday night. Across the street, the Capitol was bathed in brilliant white light. With the sky clear and the temperature so pleasant, Amber opted to walk to the L’Enfant Metro station instead of hailing a cab. She was in no particular hurry – Friday was her Netflix night – so she relaxed her pace and strolled along the sidewalk with cars racing past in both directions.
Her search for the Quiet Waters Community Center had produced more questions than answers. That’s because she could find no mention of it anywhere. Nothing in any public records, newspaper articles, or tagged photos, not that such a total absence was a serious concern, because business properties were often listed in the names of corporations or parent organizations. Still, there should have been some kind of a mention, especially if it was legitimately serving the community.
But there had been nothing. Nor was there anything on Babikov. But with what she had learned about Talanov and the KGB, that came as no surprise. Diane had already filled her in on Talanov’s history as a spy for America during the Cold War, as well as his continuing service to the Intelligence Community. Still, Talanov seemed to regularly be in trouble with someone, so if Babikov had wanted to avoid similar trouble, he would have placed everything in someone else’s name. At least that is what Mr. Wilcox had suggested when she had phoned to ask if he had any ideas where Babikov might be.
Walking along the sidewalk in the swirling eddies of a
utomobile exhaust, Amber replayed her conversation with Mr. Wilcox, or Bill, as he insisted on her calling him. Amber smiled at how talkative he had become on the subject of Talanov, no doubt because he was about to leave on vacation and had started his partying early. After a lengthy, mostly comical, rant about Talanov’s cavalier way of doing things, Bill confessed how much he admired those traits and Talanov’s willingness to put his life on the line for other people.
To illustrate, Bill recalled the winter of nineteen eighty-five. By that time, Talanov, who was known to him only as November Echo, had been feeding the CIA a steady stream of intelligence on Soviet industrial and military operations, as well as KGB surveillance and sabotage activities in various countries, including the United States. In addition, he had also been furnishing the CIA with information on religious leaders and political dissidents who had been targeted for imprisonment or assassination. Hundreds had already been exiled to the gulags and coal mines. Others had simply disappeared. Entire families vanishing without a trace.
And Talanov was reporting it all.
It was indeed a dangerous tightrope Talanov was walking, because embedded sources in Washington had let Moscow know they had a leak, although no one knew who it was. The only names anyone knew were the leak’s codename, November Echo, and the name of November Echo’s contact, CIA station chief, Bill Wilcox.
Bill recounted how enormous the pressure became to reveal the name of his informant. The excuse: so that the information he was receiving could be authenticated. Bill said the accuracy of that information spoke for itself, and that the identity of the informant did not matter. Threats about the future of his career were made, but Bill did not back down. Others tried a more conciliatory approach, saying they did not wish to
offend their Soviet counterparts. Bill did not back down to them, either, saying America should be more concerned about stopping Soviet atrocities than offending the perpetrators.
In fact, I’m the one who’s offended, Bill recalled shouting at his boss. At the human rights abuses of those bastards. At the raping and pillaging of entire nations, which they’ve imprisoned behind an Iron Curtain and continue to bleed in order to support their failing socialist economy. And you’re worried about offending them? Whose side are you on? If you want to fire me, go ahead, but I am not telling you the identity of the one man who’s actually doing something to end their barbaric madness.
Amber remembered asking if anyone ever found out who November Echo was.
“Nope,” Wilcox had answered, “but that’s not to say they didn’t try every dirty trick in the book. And I do mean dirty. It was the first time I realized how dirty – and deadly – Washington politics can be.” He then continued his story about the winter of nineteen eighty-five.
The occasion was a European summit being held in a castle outside of Vienna. The setting was picture-book beautiful, with snow-covered Austrian peaks and a fairytale fortress jutting high above a thick forest. Wilcox described how he was attending the summit as the American Embassy’s Third Viticultural Attaché, “which,” he added, “was my cover as station chief for the CIA in London, which allowed me to pontificate about wine while discreetly courting the favor of potentially useful contacts.”
“I’ve heard that’s right up your alley . . . the pontificating part.”
“Contrary to what you may have heard, young lady, I am not just a pretty face.”
They both laughed.
“The castle was full of diplomats and dukes and countesses dripping with diamonds,” Wilcox continued, “plus the usual collection of strutting cocks in uniforms festooned with medals. All very highbrow, including a harp being strummed by a woman in a magnificent translucent gown.”
“What was the purpose of the summit?”
“To decide if and how to support pro-democracy efforts occurring behind the Iron Curtain. There was a lot of deliberation going on, with most West European nations wanting more discussion, and most East Europeans pleading for assistance. When you’re starving and freezing, the last thing you need is more talk, so I was there to quietly goad our allies into action with offers of support. During the course of the evening, I somehow found myself cornered near a marble statue by a wine critic wanting to lecture me about the ‘lolly water’ we Americans called wine. He droned on and on until I was finally rescued by an elegant blonde. She begged the critic’s forgiveness, saying an urgent matter with her ambassador required my attention. Feigning regret, I departed with the blonde, and once we were out of earshot, I quietly thanked her.”
“Let me get this right. A gorgeous blonde asks you to follow her to an unspecified location in a castle for a meeting with an unnamed ambassador?”
“I know,” confessed Wilcox, “and like a hog with a ring in its snout, I blindly followed.”
“What happened next?”
“Linking her arm in mine, she led me into the kitchen, where a waiter was just filling a tray full of glasses with wine. The blonde asked for a glass and the waiter handed her one, which she handed to me before introducing me as an important expert on wine. Naturally, they waited expectantly for me to sample the wine, which I did – with great flair and technique, I might add – whereupon I nodded my approval, after which I was led out a servant’s door into a hallway, which took us to another hallway, which brought us to a descending flight of steps. By this time, I was feeling dizzy, which the blonde credited to the thin mountain air. She then helped me down the stairs, and when we reached the bottom, this gorilla of a man stepped out of a doorway and grabbed me. My valiant fight to break free lasted all of three or four seconds before I passed out from whatever was in the wine, whereupon I was carried out the service door and tossed into the back of a van. I was then driven to an old warehouse in Vienna, which was a huge, dirty, empty place, with rows of high windows and rusty I-beams, where I awakened to see Talanov kneeling over me with a pistol in his hand. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ I remember him saying with that stupid grin of his. He used his pistol to point to five dead bodies on the floor. He then pointed to the gorilla, also dead from a single bullet hole in his head. ‘What happened?’ I remembered asking. ‘Soviet agents,’ Talanov replied, ‘who were about to do some very nasty things to you, my friend.’ And after helping me to my feet, he nodded to a stainless steel roller cart containing a wide variety of scalpels, forceps, hammers, pliers, and other torture tools and syringes.”
“They were going to make you talk, weren’t they?” Amber recalled asking. “To make you give up Talanov’s identity.”
“Whatever it took, and to this day we’re still not certain who was behind it.”
“Didn’t Alex said they were Soviet agents?”
“He did, and they were, but the CIA has a dark side, and that dark side doesn’t like anyone holding out on them. And I was.”
“Why do you keep working for people like that?”
“Because the CIA has a good side, and the good that we do, makes the sacrifices worthwhile.”
“They were going to kill you.”
“All part of the job,” Wilcox replied almost flippantly.
All part of the job, Amber thought with a snort while passing the cell-blockish Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building. She had heard about the split personality of the CIA. Bill, however, was one of the good guys. If only there were more like him.
After crossing with the light at Fourth Street, Amber turned left, then angled southwest along Maryland Avenue, toward the L’Enfant Metro station at the corner of Seventh. She could always tell when she was getting close to the metro station by the line of food trucks parked out front. She knew a few of the vendors, especially the guy selling gyros wrapped in soft, homemade pita bread. Tonight, she would get hers with an extra squirt of garlicky tzatziki sauce and a double helping of onions. Hashtag, oh yeah.
After receiving her order, Amber slipped the takeaway container into her handbag and took the escalator down to the underground platform, where she boarded the Green Line train to its terminus in Ma
ryland.
Fifteen minutes later, she was unlocking the door to her apartment.
Ten seconds after that, she was pinned helplessly on the floor with Xin Li’s arm wrapped around her throat.
CHAPTER 15
Most local residents knew the Hilltop Community Center as the Quiet Waters Community Center because of a faded Bible verse painted above the double front doors. The verse was from Psalm 23:2: He leads me beside quiet waters. Officially, however, the building was registered at City Hall as the Hilltop Community Center, having been built in 1910 and so named because it sat on top of a hill.
The hallmark of the center was its two bright blue front doors. No one could remember how many coats of thick enamel paint those heavy wooden doors had received over the years, but it was a lot. Some credited the hippie influence of Haight-Ashbury for the electric blue color. But photos predating the sixties showed the doors to have been bright blue as far back as the forties. Whatever the reason, the doors had made the community center a local landmark.
To one side of the imposing old brick building was a skatepark. A recent addition, it was used by neighborhood kids for skateboards, bicycles, and roller blades. The two-story eastern wall of the community center, which overlooked the skatepark, had been turned into a massive canvas for urban artists, who competed each year for cash prizes offered by sponsors. Tour buses had even begun stopping at the center so that visitors could take photos of the art.
A group of four boys raced up the street on their bicycles. It was lunchtime and they weren’t about to miss out on the free food being offered today. After zipping around a police car parked in front of the center, they shoved their bikes into the rack, pulled open the bright blue doors, and almost plowed into Arcus Hill, a six-foot-four police officer, who was inside the door talking with Zak and his wife, Emily, a striking Chinese-American woman of forty-six. Emily’s salt-and-pepper hair was tied up in a loose knot on top of her head, and she was pacing back and forth angrily. In avoiding a collision with Hill, the boys ran into one another and stumbled to one side, where they saw Su Yin’s older brother, Kai, in the custody of Hill. Dressed in baggy jeans and a faded black hoodie, Kai had sinewy arms and a mop of shaggy black hair.
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