Critical Space (47 page)

As I came through the doors she caught up with me, pressing the newspaper into my free hand and saying, "Sir? You dropped this."

"Thank you," I said.

She nodded and murmured, "It was nothing," and then she turned and went back out to the street. When I stepped out a minute later, there was no sign of her.

In the fold of the newspaper was an envelope, and in the envelope was a slip of paper and a plastic credit card. The paper had the name of a bank and a four-digit number, presumably the PIN code for the card. I dumped the newspaper in the trash, put the card in my wallet, told the first cabdriver I found that I wanted to go to the bank named on the slip of paper.

The beauty of a
Sparbuck
account, as Alena had explained it, was this: While Switzerland allowed for anonymous banking, it was a relatively simple task to force someone to access an account -- just as I had forced Junot to do. This account was far more secure, because while it remained anonymous, it required three separate checks before funds could be accessed. Not only did the account have to be identified and the proper PIN code provided, but the right card had to be used -- and the card was virtually impossible to forge. Created by Motorola, the card contained a transmitter that, when in range of the bank, would broadcast and receive a specific, encrypted clearance code. One could have the account number and the PIN, but if one didn't have the
right
card, the bank's computers would shut down the transaction instantly.

In essence, the card became the money in the account. Without the card, the money was untouchable.

After I deposited the draft, I withdrew another check, this for half a million dollars. If nothing else, Oxford could finance my little operation against him.

Then I caught another cab to the airport.

Twenty-nine hours later, Scott Fowler and I went to meet two men from the CIA in a hotel room at the Holiday Inn overlooking Times Square.

I'd reached Mahwah just past two that morning, exhausted physically and emotionally, the strain of the last several days finally catching up with me. One of the Russians who let me through the gate used a radio to contact the guards inside the house, and by the time I reached the front door, Natalie was there, clearly having just woken up. She gave me a hug once I'd gotten inside, and before I could even ask, she told me.

"No signs of him. Dan says that someone's been asking a lot of questions in Brooklyn, especially in Brighton Beach, and everyone is assuming it's Oxford. But no one has seen him, and there's been no contact, to anyone's knowledge."

"If he's working Brighton Beach, he's not far from finding us here."

"Not the way Dan talks," Natalie said. "The way he talks, his people will kill or die to keep their secrets secret."

"Dan talks big."

Her mouth curved in a wry smile. "Well, he's a big guy."

I blinked at her, and maybe it was the fatigue that let me see it, but it hit me and I practically choked. "You've got a crush on a Russian mafia hood?"

Natalie looked at me, indignant. "Hello, pot."

"Hello, kettle. At least I was abducted and brainwashed. What's your excuse?"

"And you don't think being locked up here for five days is a kind of Stockholm Syndrome?"

"You best be careful, young lady. Otherwise you'll find yourself being bought out by your partners."

"Unlike some people, I can keep a secret. You look flick-awful, Atticus. Didn't you sleep on the plane?"

"Some."

"You need some more."

"Soon. How's Alena?"

"She is fine, thank you." From the top of the stairs, Alena cleared her throat.

She had abandoned the crutches at some point, and now, in her left hand, was a metal cane like the ones I'd seen often in hospitals, with a black rubber grip for her hand, and a small platform with four feet at its base. The brace was on the outside of her sweat pants, a different one than she'd worn when I left.

From my wallet I produced the
Sparbuch
card and held it for her to see.

"Victory," I told her.

Alena nodded and perhaps contemplated smiling. She turned from the railing and rested her weight on the metal cane, looking down at me, and I understood that she wanted me to come up the stairs to her. I turned my attention back to Natalie, who was watching me, rather than her.

"We should plan to move tomorrow," I said. "A new location, I don't really care where, just outside of Manhattan. If we can arrange it without going through Dan, so much the better."

"I've got a place in Allendale lined up," Natalie said. "Smaller than this one."

"Does it have stairs?" Alena asked.

"I'm afraid so." Natalie turned back to me. "We can be ready to move by mid-afternoon."

"I'm still in the master bedroom?" I asked, gesturing upstairs.

"You are still the master, yes. I put some stuff away for you up there. There's a gun in the bureau drawer. Couldn't get a P7 for you, though, sorry about that."

"You should have talked to Dan," I said.

"You need to go away now," Natalie told me.

I nodded and headed up the stairs, and when I reached the landing, Alena pivoted on her good foot, letting me pass. I went into the master bedroom, saw that the bed was made, as Natalie had said it would be, and tossed the bag onto it. Alena followed me in and perched on the corner by the footboard, resting the cane between her feet, and I handed her the
Sparbuch
card, then went to the bureau and opened the top drawer. There was an unopened package of Munsingwear undershorts, and another unopened package of tube socks, and between them was a box of 9mm ammunition and a SIG P225. The drawer had been lined with contact paper, and the paper was blue with white and red roses on it. I took out the ammunition and the gun, and figured the gun must have come from Dan because there was no sign of a serial number anywhere on it. I checked the magazine, saw it was empty, and started loading the gun.

"How did it go?" Alena asked.

"Successfully. I took nearly thirty million dollars from him."

"A lifetime's work."

"Think it'll get his attention?"

"It would get mine."

"I don't think it was everything. There must have been investments, too."

"It would have taken too long to liquidate all of his assets. Thirty million... that is enough."

I finished loading the clip and put the magazine in the SIG, but I didn't chamber the first round. I put the gun on the bureau and the box of ammunition back in the drawer, then turned my attention entirely to Alena. She had shifted on the bed, the
Sparbuch
card still beside her, and was watching me closely.

"Did you exercise?" she asked, finally.

"I tried."

"It's hard to keep it up when you're working."

"It is."

"And the diet?"

"I forgot the supplements, but other than that I stuck to it best I could."

She considered that, nodding slightly. "You're shifting your weight, it is climbing into your back again. You need to practice your ballet."

"There wasn't anyplace that I could. I managed yoga in the hotel rooms."

"When I was traveling, ballet was always the first to go." She looked at the card beside her, then back to me. "You will see Agent Fowler in the morning?"

"Maybe. Ideally we'll arrange to meet Gracey and Bowles at the same time Natalie is moving you to Allendale. Oxford can't be in two places at once."

"It's a good tactic. It is more likely that they will notify Oxford where you will be meeting, and he will attempt to back-tail you from that location to me."

"Only if Gracey and Bowles know that I'm coming. They won't. Scott will arrange to meet them alone."

She pushed hair off of her cheek, nodding again, the same slight movement of her head. "Are you going to tell me what you did?"

"There's not much to tell."

"I would like to hear it."

"I'd rather not talk about it, actually, Alena. I'd rather get some sleep."

She understood what I meant, shifting her weight to the cane and using it to rise. Her walk was quicker than it had been before I'd left, but I suspected that the pain was as bad, maybe worse. She made her way to the open door, then stopped and turned back to face me.

"And how are you sleeping?"

"Not very well. Any suggestions?"

She just shook her head.

We did yoga together the next morning, and after breakfast I took one of the cars and drove into Mahwah, using a different pay phone on the Franklin Turnpike to call Scott. I told him we were on and that I'd call him back in an hour, and he told me that was fine and I hung up. There was a comic book shop on the street nearby, and I went inside and looked at the glossy covers and remembered I'd bought the pen for Erika, wondered when I'd be able to give it to her. Hopefully soon.

It occurred to me then that I wasn't going home again, no matter what happened. Even if everything worked, if Oxford could be bought -- or, more precisely -- blackmailed off, I could no longer imagine a way to fit into my old life. Too much had happened to me, to the people around me, I wasn't going to just slip back in as if I'd never been gone.

I wondered where I'd go, and I didn't see anything that gave me an answer.

I left the shop without making any purchases and got back into the car, driving another few miles along Franklin until I found another pay phone. I checked my watch and killed another fifteen minutes in the car, watching the traffic and my mirrors. When the hour was up I used the phone.

"They can't make a meeting until tomorrow morning," Scott told me. "Seven A.M., the Holiday Inn on Times Square. I told them I'd found a connection between Havel and Drama. They seemed eager."

"But not eager enough to make it today."

"No. Could be trying to buy Oxford more time."

"They suggest the place or you?"

"They suggested an out-of-the-office meeting. I suggested the Holiday Inn. This'll work for you?"

"It'll do," I said. "You've taken care of everything else?"

"The SAIC has my report, and it'll go to Washington today. I fudged some of the details, but most of what Alena told me checked, and it didn't take much digging to find corroborating facts. I took some flak for not registering my CI, but the stuff I've turned up is enough to keep that a minor concern for the time being. As long as what she told us can be independently verified, I think I can keep her out of it."

"You don't have a choice. She won't play ball."

"I've explained that to my supervisor. He doesn't accept it. But, like I said, it's not an issue right now."

"Just see that it doesn't become one."

He got testy. "Stop badgering me, Atticus. I'm on top of this. You know I've got your back, I always have."

"You always have," I agreed. "See you seven A.M. tomorrow."

Natalie and I moved Alena to Allendale that afternoon, another two-story house, off Crescent Avenue. It was a relatively new neighborhood, and the house itself had gone up perhaps twenty years ago, in what had once-upon-a-time been a celery field.

"It's a rental property," Natalie said. "We've got it for the winter."

"Florida?" I asked.

"Bermuda," she said.

The alarm system was much the same as on the Mahwah house, but without motion detectors. The backyard spilled down a slope to a fence that abutted a still-intact wetland, and neither Natalie nor I liked the exposure, but once again we had to work with what we were given. There was a covered swimming pool in the yard, and Miata ran out onto the cover, then raced back to the deck when water began creeping around his paws. Either it brought back bad memories for him or, like us, he knew it was too cold to swim.

We spent the rest of the day getting the guards into position, and it took a while before Natalie and I could agree on how to protect the front. Here, there was no clear border to the street, no fence, just a short strip of grass that met with the asphalt, the driveway coming up on the left side of the house as one faced it. In the end we put one of the guards in the front room, behind the curtains, with orders to watch the street and nothing else, and, to cover the back, another in one of the bedrooms on the second floor, with a similar directive. I took the master bedroom again, Alena the one beside it, and Natalie the one across the hall.

At eight that night Dan arrived with replacements for the boys who'd been on post during the day, and they each entered the house with a rucksack over their shoulder and a pizza box in their hands. After we ate, the old guards departed, the new guards dug in, and I took Alena back upstairs. She did not ask me to time her.

I checked her room and found it as secure as the last time I'd looked, then checked on the guard on the floor, and found him sitting in a straight-backed chair, in the dark, watching the yard through a pair of infrared goggles. I left him alone and went downstairs, where Dan and Natalie were talking in the kitchen over cups of coffee.

"Dan," I said. "The I.R. goggles. Nice touch."

"Thank you," he said, and honest to God he looked pleased.

I told them I was going to bed, went back upstairs and looked in on Alena once more.

Either Gracey or Bowles had ordered up a pot of room-service coffee, and there was a tray with three cups and a pitcher of half-and-half, and a bowl stuffed with packets of sugar and artificial sweeteners on the coffee table by the couch. Bowles, at the desk with the laptop in front of him, squinted at me as if trying to place my face, and the expression hid any surprise he might have been feeling. Gracey recovered by indicating the coffee service with a sweep of his empty hand.

"We only have three cups," he said.

"It's all right," I told him. "We're not staying long. You guys taping this?"

Bowles frowned. Gracey just shook his head. "We didn't think we'd need to. You've been getting around, Atticus. We heard you were in Europe."

"Not me. I haven't been to Europe in years."

" Someone who looks like you, then." Gracey poured himself a cup of coffee, added cream, then two packets of sugar. He used one of the spoons to stir, then licked it clean before setting it down again on the tray. It took him almost a minute to get everything the way he wanted it, and I knew the wheels were spinning, but he was doing a fine job of keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself. Bowles turned back to the laptop and began typing lightly on the keyboard.