The Insider (21 page)

“If I go with you, how do I know that you won't just kill me as soon as we're off the street?”

Nikolai spread his hands in a placating gesture. “Nobody's getting killed. We want you to do something for us. If we need you, we can't kill you, right? If it makes you feel better, we can do this in a public place. How about Starbucks?”

“Good idea,” Yuri said, scratching his head and trying to tame a devil's horn of unruly hair. “I could use some coffee.”

Will's mind raced through a series of impractical escape stratagems. They might have worked, too—if he possessed the physical prowess of Jet Li.

Nikolai added, in an almost kindly tone, “Don't make us hurt you, Will. This time, we would really have to fuck you up.”

“There's a Starbucks around the corner. We could talk there,” Will said.

“Of course there is Starbucks,” Nikolai said. “This is fucking San Francisco. In Moscow. . . .”

“Please, Nikolai, it's too early for that shit,” Yuri said. “The cafés in Moscow serve swill. Starbucks is much better.”

“You are such a fucking American,” Nikolai said.

Yuri looked at Will with a roll of the eyes that seemed to say,
We both know I'm right
, and abandoned the topic.

At Starbucks, they sat down at a small table by the window, as far away from the morning newspaper readers as possible. Yuri took the coffee orders.

The market-tested, earth-toned interior of Starbucks seemed incompatible with the abject terror Will had felt a few minutes ago, although he knew that he was not in any less danger. Nikolai didn't say anything to Will while Yuri ordered the coffees. They both looked out the window at the people walking purposefully to their jobs in the gray morning light.

Across the street from Starbucks was a savings and loan with an oddly shaped, oblong sign. A year ago, a tech company called Blue Gorilla had occupied the building. He could even still see the outline of the company's logo on the savings and loan's signage: a cartoon of a blue gorilla wearing a business suit. He had often studied the expression of smug whimsy on the gorilla's face, wondering what the company actually did.

When Yuri returned, Nikolai said, “I cannot tell you how badly you have fucked up.
Bozhe moi.
”

“I never told you to invest,” Will protested.

“Who the fuck cares? We are responsible to our bosses. You are responsible to us.”

“There's nothing I can do.”

Yuri, who was growing visibly annoyed at Will's assumption that this was a dialogue, interrupted. “You had better hope that's not true. If you don't give us something that we can use, asshole, you are going to die. Badly. And so will that cute little blonde, Claire.”

Will was speechless and sick—it was like hearing that a cancer that you thought was isolated had metastasized and spread throughout your body. Finally, he managed, “I'm warning you—leave her out of this.”

“Did you hear that, Nikolai? He's warning us!” Yuri said with a chuckle.

“Have you done anything to her?”

“No, not really. We paid Claire a visit at her apartment, just to get acquainted.”

“I'm going to ask you again—have you laid a hand on Claire?”

“Do what we say and she will be safe,” Nikolai said.

“What do you want from me?”

“We want a copy of the encryption keys for the Clipper Chip,” Nikolai said.

Will couldn't have been more stunned if Nikolai had reached across the table with a right jab. How could he know about the Clipper Chip? “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Do you really want to play it like that?” Yuri asked. “We talked to Claire, remember? We know that you're lying.”

“Okay, I know about the Clipper Chip. But I don't know how to get at the encryption keys, and that's the truth.”

“You are their attorney,” Nikolai said. “Figure it out.”

“And you better do it fast,” Yuri added.

“But while you're working out how to get us encryption keys, we need something else for our bosses,” Nikolai said.

“Something we can use,” Yuri said. “Information about a public company.”

“Maybe something on rich businessman that we could use for . . .” Nikolai searched in vain for the word, then looked to Yuri impatiently.

“Extortion,” Yuri offered.

“Yes, extortion,” Nikolai said, rolling the word around on his tongue, savoring its illicit flavor. “But it must be valuable.”

Yuri licked foam from his stubbled upper lip. “So, Will, are you going to help us or what?”

“Let him think about his answer,” Nikolai said. “This is a very important decision for him.”

Will took a sip of his coffee and tried to look thoughtful. Even if he had been willing to talk, he couldn't think of anything to offer them. As far as he knew, Reynolds was not currently involved in any other public-company deals. He rarely spoke to the firm's white-collar criminal defense attorneys, who might be privy to damaging personal information about corporate executives.

What seemed like about five minutes passed in silence, as Nikolai and Yuri glared at him like a pet that was too slow to perform a trick.

“Yes, I'll help you. What choice do I have? But I don't know anything that I can tell you right now.” The looks that Nikolai and Yuri were training on him told him that he needed to say something more if he wanted to live through the morning, so he added, “But I can get something.”

“Are you sure that nothing comes to mind? We could take you out in the alley and put a bullet through your knee, see if that helps,” Yuri offered, once more fingering the bulge in his jacket pocket.

“Will that be necessary, Will?” Nikolai asked.

“You have to believe me. I really don't have anything. I've been spending most of my time on the Jupiter deal. I haven't been paying much attention to what else is going on at the firm.”

“What do you think, Yuri? Should we give him one more chance?”

“I think we should burn him, but it's your call. I am just so fucking disappointed in this guy.”

“I see Yuri's point, Will. I really do. But I have not lost faith in you. Not yet.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

“But you should know that if we have to kill you, we're going to kill Claire first. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“And I hope you know that we have been gentle with you so far. I know you don't think so, but we have. We are not going to waste our time on that again.”

Sensing that the conversation was drawing to a close, Yuri slurped the last of his latte and licked the foam from his lips.

“We're going to let you go, but you are going to meet us here at this time tomorrow,” Nikolai said, gnawing on the last fragment of a biscotti. “You will have the encryption keys. If you don't have the keys, you will tell us your plan for getting them, and you will bring something else that we can use. If you're five minutes late, Claire is dead.”

Will checked his watch. Eight fifteen. “So we're meeting here at eight fifteen tomorrow.”

“Make it eight,” Nikolai said as he and Yuri rose to leave, both more alert than when they had arrived, invigorated by either the infusion of caffeine or the delivery of their first threat of the day.

“What do you plan to do with the encryption keys?”

“You don't need to know that,” Nikolai said.

Although he knew it was unwise, Will asked, “Do the encryption keys have something to do with the attack on BART?”

Nikolai's face paled, then reddened, then reddened some more, before he spewed a stream of Russian invective at Yuri. As his anger cooled, Nikolai returned to English. “How could you be so stupid?”

“I asked him. He rides BART!” Yuri stammered. “We don't want him to get himself killed. We can still use him.”

“But you didn't have to tell him that! We could have just grabbed him when the time came and kept him off the trains.”

“So the encryption keys are going to help in the attack?” Will asked. “What is your friend Aashif going to do? Use them to shut down the power to the trains? Then the riders will be trapped inside with the gas.”

Nikolai and Yuri stopped arguing and just stared at him. Will took that as a
yes
.

Finally, Nikolai said, quietly, “I don't think you know how close you are to dying right now.” His face had returned to its normal pallor. “It was Yuri's mistake to tell you that about the trains. I will be discussing that with Yuri later. But nothing has changed here. You must shut up, and you must do exactly what we say. If you don't, you are going to watch everyone that you care about in your life die, and then you will join them.”

“Everyone,” Yuri added, apparently not chastened by Nikolai's abuse.

Rising from his seat, Nikolai said, “You are a good son. Yuri tells me the place where your mother lives is very nice.”

As the Russians walked out of the coffee shop, Yuri turned back, grinning like he was about to tell a funny joke he had been saving up. “But you should really visit your mother more often, Will. She worries.”

Lullwater Commons was a two-story stucco building in the Richmond District that branched around a central court-yard, resembling an elementary school from the outside. As Will entered the assisted-living facility, the regulars who occupied the couches in the lobby were being herded by the caregivers into the cafeteria for lunch, the clicking of their walkers silenced by tennis balls placed over the front struts.

The lobby was decorated in chintz and flower prints, with a large vase of paper flowers on a table in the center of the room. An ornate, Victorian ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. The lobby was presided over by Barb, a matronly attendant with a gauzy mass of hair that settled around her head like the inhospitable atmosphere of a small, lifeless planet. Barb, who appeared to be only a few years removed from taking up residence at Lullwater herself, surveyed the lobby like a field general. Will had to give credit to the designers of the facility, who had succeeded in creating an environment that was both homey and authoritarian.

Will hurried into the dining room and scanned the tables for his mother. He found Anne sitting alone at a table in the corner of the dining room, a small woman arranging her silverware before her on a paper placemat. Will was relieved to see that she had not been harmed and appeared the same as ever. Her face was still striking, with sharp cheekbones and a long, determined jaw. She might even have been imposing, except that her eyes had lost the intense watchfulness perfected through years in classrooms as a high school history teacher. Now her gaze was soft and unfocused, like she'd lost her glasses.

Anne's light brown hair was combed straight back, but it wasn't enough to cover the large spot on the back of her head where her hair was thinning. Her hair had been a darker brown when he was a child, but the hairstylist at Lullwater used a lighter-colored rinse. She was wearing a flowered sweater and the gray pants with the elastic waistband that he had bought her for Christmas. Once she had dressed him; now he dressed her.

“Oh, sweetie, it's good to see you.” She never called him by name anymore, which made it difficult for him to tell if she really remembered who he was.

“Hi, Mom. How're you doin'?” He leaned down to plant a kiss on her pallid forehead. In the bright sunlight, her skin appeared almost translucent, revealing tiny purple veins in her temples and hands.

“Oh, I'm fine, I guess. Sort of a mess.”

“Well, I think you look nice. Looks like you had your nails done.”

“They only have one color,” she said, holding out her hand and examining the reddish-brown nail polish. “I'm not sure I like it.”

“I think it looks good on you.”

“I'm cold. Does it seem cold in here to you?”

“Well, maybe a little.” He was actually quite warm in the sunlit corner. “Would you like another sweater?”

“No, I guess not. How are you, sweetheart?”

“I'm fine, but I need to know if you've had any visitors lately.”

“Visitors? No, I don't think so.” Will wasn't confident that she would remember even if Yuri had paid her a visit.

“A man with a Russian accent?”

“Oh, I get so many visitors it's hard to keep track of them all.”

Will realized that he wasn't going to learn anything by asking Anne questions, so he decided to just chat. “Mom,” he said, “I've got some good news. I made partner in my law firm.”

“Oh, that's wonderful, sweetie. Did you know that my father was a lawyer?”

“No, I didn't know that.”

“Oh, yes.”

Anne's father had been the owner of a hardware store, not a lawyer. He wondered if Anne was now confusing him with her father. A few years ago, Anne would have thrown a party to celebrate the occasion.

“You always used to tell me that I should become a lawyer, and if I worked real hard, that I'd be a partner in a big firm some day.”

“I said that?”

“All the time.”

“Are you glad you did it?” Her voice had lost the lilt of small talk, and her eyes were focused on him. Will felt as if the mists had parted for a moment to reveal the old Anne, peering out at him, never one to leave anything unfinished.

“Yeah, Mom. I'm glad I did it.”

“Good.” Then, with an added note of finality, “Good.” And with that, the old Anne seemed to vanish again, if she had ever been there at all. “Now, do you want something to eat? I'm going to have some hot tea.”