Once a Spy (32 page)

“He contracted Cadaret?”

“The St. Bart’s guy, yeah, I think so. And a bunch of other heavy-duty guys.”

So Fielding was a spook who played the role of villain with too much vérité. Which happened: When the CIA let the kids play without supervision, things had a way of going
Lord of the Flies
. Fortunately there were other organizations providing checks and balances, the NSA in this case. Fielding would be brought to justice. Case closed.

Except for the immediate matter of Señor Clark’s continued existence.

“Is Clark still in Brooklyn?” she asked.

“Who knows? His kid’s got the hit teams running all over the map.”

“Charlie?”
Alice liked Charlie—she genuinely had been looking forward to drinks with him. She had assumed, however, that he lacked the capacity to care for his father in the best of circumstances.

“He’s giving them fits, that dude.”

Alice intended to marvel at this later. Now, she had a phone call to make. “Hector, I need to go now,” she said, patting the lid. “If you just let yourself relax, it can be quite tranquil in there.”

Hurrying into the bedroom, she heard his screamed protests. Wonderfully muted. He could shout his lungs out, and no one outside the bedroom would hear him.

She rushed back into her dress and crept into the hall as far as an empty guest room. Once inside, she grabbed the plastic liner from the
trash can and wrapped it around Hector’s gun and phone so they would stay dry. She loosed two thick cords from the curtains, knotted them together, and tied one end to the frame of the elephantine mahogany bed; then, gripping the free end, she lowered herself out the window, down three stories of the villa’s shadowy exterior, and into the warm, starlit Caribbean.

The throaty gurgle of a motorboat froze her.

So much for her plan of swimming to the dock and borrowing Fielding’s vintage Chris-Craft.

Taking a deep breath, she let herself sink underwater. The Chris-Craft passed overhead, propellers on each side of the stern churning ropes of bubbles. In seconds, the launch was far enough past that she felt confident in resurfacing.

She made out Alberto standing at the helm and Cranch perched on a bench in the stern, clutching an overnight bag. This was more good luck. When Cranch had said he expected to be getting on a private jet to debrief Drummond, she’d focused only on the security lull that might result. Now she might be able to tail him.

Treading water, she unwrapped and flipped open Hector’s cell phone. She dialed the office of a supposed Potomac, Maryland, insurance agency, ringing a phone on a yacht docked in Martinique’s Pointe du Bout. Her chief answered with a chipper, “Good evening,” the optimal greeting.

“It’s Desdemona with a bow on top,” Alice said. “I need you to get the quick maneuvers gang to wrangle the fastest jet possible at Aimé Césaire Airport in Martinique and have it ready in twenty minutes tops for a game of follow that plane.”

3

Charlie’s plan
of attack called for experienced soldiers. To recruit them, he descended from the rickety elevated subway station in Brooklyn’s Little Odessa. Had he not been to Little Odessa before, he might have believed he’d arrived at the neighborhood’s namesake in Russia. Cabbage, onions, and potatoes boiled in pots at sidewalk kiosks. Caviar vendors were as prevalent as Starbucks were in other parts of town. The street signs, the restaurant names and menus, and even the listings on the theater marquees were in Cyrillic. The impassioned chatter on the sidewalks was in Russian. There were bearded old men in Cossack hats and wrinkled women in babushkas out of the pages of Tolstoy.

To blend in, Charlie bought a fake fur Cossack hat from a street vendor. Then he waited in a dark doorway down the block from Pozharsky, the celebrated blintz joint named after a seventeenth-century Rurikid prince—the place was so old and run-down, though, the joke was the prince had been named after it. Pozharsky’s kitchen ran at full steam until four in the morning, catering to two distinct groups, Kingsborough Community College students requiring second dinners and Russian gangsters kicking back after a night’s work.

Charlie’s vigil was rewarded when a red Cadillac Eldorado bombed into a handicapped parking space in front of Pozharsky and six men poured out. Leading the way was the menacing Karpenko, Grudzev’s muscle. The way things had been the past two days, Charlie now thought of Karpenko’s as a friendly face.

Behind Karpenko, Grudzev and four other Russians bobbed into the
eatery. Sticking to shadows and lagging far enough behind to avoid notice, Charlie followed.

The thugs converged on a big, wooden corner table covered with decades worth of knife and fork carvings. The eight undergrads seated there had just been served steaming blintzes and pierogi. At the sight of the new arrivals, they grabbed their plates and vacated, going to the end of the line to wait for another table.

Paying the students no notice, Grudzev and his cronies heaved themselves onto the chairs. Grudzev corralled a plate left behind by a panicked coed and took up a gooey cheese blintz as if it were a candy bar. To the waitress, something of a Ukrainian Dolly Parton, he said, “Tatiana, I want your melons.”

“The restaurant have no fruit, Leo,” she replied in earnest.

Karpenko laughed, pounding the tabletop with such force that a water glass flew off and shattered against the faded harlequin floor tiles. He didn’t stop laughing until Charlie slid into the vacant seat beside him.

The Russians all glared at Charlie. Activity and conversation at surrounding tables lulled. Charlie saw a young couple drop a twenty on their table and hurry off, their egg creams not even half finished.

“You here to pay up or you fucking suicidal?” Karpenko asked. His English was slightly better and less accented than Grudzev’s.

“Yes to the first part, maybe to the second part,” Charlie said.

Karpenko’s hand dipped under the table, to a gun tucked into his shiny tracksuit pants no doubt. Two days ago, fear would have frozen Charlie. He still felt fear, but it was relegated to the background by his sense of mission.

Looking past Karpenko, he said to Grudzev, “I have your money. I also have a business proposition for you.”

4

Holding his
breath against the wake of musky cologne and garlic, Charlie followed Grudzev up a narrow flight of stairs to an empty private functions room. Charlie smarted in nine or ten places from the “pat down” Karpenko had administered in search of a wire, resulting in the temporary confiscation of his new cell phone.

They sat at a table and Grudzev opened the shopping bag from Yuri’s, the convenience store up the block, where Charlie had bought the prepaid cell phone. The Russian dumped out the stack of hundreds and flicked through it with the practiced dexterity of a bank teller. An hour ago the money had been in a Chinese take-out container. He grunted his approval.

“And now, how about a way to make that seem like chump change?” Charlie asked.

“This better no be a fucking horse.”

“I’m totally over that action.” Charlie paused to look around the room, as if wary of snoops himself. “Here’s the story: My father, who has Alzheimer’s, gets out of bed at four yesterday morning. He forgets he’s on sick leave and goes to the office. Perriman Appliances.”

“Cheap crap.”

“I know. That’s why they’re way the hell up in Morningside Heights. So, anyway, nobody’s in yet when Dad shows up. He’s sort of in a daze, and he goes down the stairs to the basement and opens a closet that’s supposed to be locked. It leads to another flight of stairs, then into a tunnel and, next thing he knows, he’s in the old Manhattan Project complex. I don’t know if you know, but during World War Two—”

“Yeah, yeah, I saw thing on History Channel.” Grudzev slid his chair closer to the table. “I thought that place was sealed off.”

“It’s supposed to be. But some Columbia scientist types have gotten in. Evidently they’re planning to moonlight as arms dealers. My dad’s an old physicist. He could tell that they’d put together a ten-kiloton atomic demolition munition. You know what an atomic demolition munition is?”

“Of course, ADM.” Grudzev’s flat nose twisted as if he smelled a rat. “Why you telling me this?”

“You deal weapons. You could retire on this, right?”

“Or get killed before I can spend
this
.” Grudzev patted the sweatpants pocket that contained his new stack of hundreds. “What’s in it for you?”

“Dad wandered out and went home a little while later, before anyone saw him. But they snatched him back tonight—to sweat him would be my bet. When he talks, he’ll be in real trouble. And so will I.”

“So why you come to me instead of cops?”

“I didn’t think the cops would give me a twenty percent finder’s fee.”

Grudzev flicked a dismissive hand. “Craziness,” he said, as if announcing a verdict.

Charlie had anticipated the Russian would be drooling by now. What had gone wrong? Poor acting? Was the tale just too preposterous? Despite Karpenko’s frisk, did Grudzev suspect a sting? Perspiration sprung from Charlie’s scalp.

Grudzev said, “
Ten
points, maybe.”

“Twenty is fair,” said Charlie, hiding his delight at being back in the game. “You’d never figure out how to get into the place without me. Also, I could take the deal to Bernie Solntsevskaya.”

Grudzev was impassive at the mention of his rival. “Thing is, if I am these Columbia guys, I worry you out blabbing now, so I close up shop, like, now.”

Charlie placed his chin between thumb and forefinger, striving for the appearance of the pupil contemplating the wisdom of the master.

“If I can get men and guns—
if,”
Grudzev said, “I give eleven points.”

For reality’s sake, Charlie argued for fifteen and caved on twelve.

5

Things were
going too smoothly, Alice thought.

Within ten minutes of her call, the backup unit had fished her out of the Caribbean. On the yacht ride to Martinique, she used a Birdbook encrypted communication system to cable HQ the lowdown on Fielding, then she took a hot shower, ate a sandwich, and changed into a fresh linen suit. An NSA agent, meanwhile, having paid off a Martinican air traffic controller, learned Cranch’s flight plan—Newark, New Jersey. And one of the Caribbean desk jockeys at HQ tapped into the FAA radar system in case of deviation.

Just ahead of her now stood a Cessna Citation X, its navigation lights giving the medium-sized jet the appearance of a constellation on the dark airport tarmac. The aircraft could cruise at Mach 0.92, reach an altitude of 50,000 feet, and cover 3,500 miles. Equally nice, Alice thought, was the chardonnay in the onboard bar.

She ascended the fold-out stairs and entered the twenty-five-foot cabin, which consisted of six leather seats—each dwarfing most recliners—a kitchen, a bar, and a bathroom complete with a shower. Setting her briefcase on the floor by the foremost of the six seats, she caught sight of Alberto outside, hurrying from the runway where Cranch’s plane had just lifted off. Ordinarily Fielding’s man stood every inch of his six four. The way he hunched now, eyes locked on the tarmac, suggested he’d seen her and was pretending he hadn’t. This wasn’t so much bad luck, she thought, as proof of Murphy’s Law.

She jumped down the stairs and ran after him. “Alberto, wait!”

Accelerating, he shoved a hand into a pocket. Probably not for a gun:

He’d be afraid to use one in sight of the many airport workers, passengers, and crew members. When she caught up to him, he had drawn something far worse: a cell phone, presumably to speed-dial Fielding and blow the game.

“Don’t do it!” she said to his back. “I can give you fifty thousand dollars in cash. I have it on my plane.”

He turned around. He shared Hector’s dark, chiseled features. But while Hector’s assembly had gone awry, Alberto had been put together to perfection and, more pertinently, hardened through hours in the dojo with Fielding. She wouldn’t dare engage him without a weapon.

“Fifty K no do me no good,” he said. “Señor Fielding would keelhaul me—you know that.”

“Fly with me, so I can be certain you won’t contact him. When we land, once I get out, the pilot can take you wherever you want.”

“I want the cash you got, plus another two hundred K wired into my account before we leave here.”

“That I can take care of with the iPhone I have onboard in, like, a minute.”

“Fine.”

With a satisfied smile, she returned to the jet. He followed at three paces. Two problems remained. First, her briefcase contained just $5,000. Second, even with all the money in the world, she couldn’t trust Alberto.

The cabin door of the empty aircraft opened onto the small kitchen and the bar, which was copper plated, like those in most luxurious ship’s galleys. Passing the bar, she opened the briefcase on the first seat. No fool, Alberto stayed in the doorway, from which he easily could retreat at any sign of chicanery. He drew his gun and propped it on the bar.

She thought about making a grab for the SIG in her briefcase. The better choice, she decided, was the powerful stun gun concealed by an iPhone casing. She plucked it from her briefcase and powered it on.

“Hector’s got one of those,” he said.

“An iPhone?” She turned to face him.

He had dropped behind the console, out of sight save his sturdy brown hands and the big barrel aimed at her. “No, a Taser disguised as one. Drop it.”

With a groan, she let her fake iPhone fall to the floor. Staring into his barrel, she raised her hands tremulously into the air. She also pressed the big key on the face of the iPhone with the toe of her shoe. The copper-plated bar conducted a current of approximately one million volts. Alberto crumpled to the carpet, his gun falling away from him. Muscles quivering, he lay across the doorway, preventing the pilot and copilot from boarding.

“I have some baggage,” she told them.

6

In an
out-of-the-way corner of Little Odessa, Charlie found a peeling four-story building whose hand-painted sign read
HOTEL.
According to the same sign, the establishment rated five stars.