Drummond stared at him a moment, as if shocked by the suggestion. “This guy came to us. I’m not going to have John fit those electrodes to his tits just to hear him scream.” He sniffed. “Really, what was the department like before I came along?”
“You don’t want to know,” Milo said, then took a box from his pocket and dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine.
8
Despite a broad stomach and thinning black hair, Marko Dzubenko was a young-looking forty-six. He wore a faux-silk shirt with rolled-up sleeves, the collar open to expose an Orthodox cross buried in chest hair, watching the German edition of Big Brother as he chain-smoked. The only sign of age lay in the gray stubble that ran along his jaw-line.
Milo stuck out a hand as he approached. “Good evening. I’m here to ask some questions.”
His handshake was hot and dry. Instead of returning the greeting, Dzubenko shook a smoldering Marlboro at the television. “Great show, no?”
The television camera was angled high in a corner of a kitchen, and two pretty twentysomethings were arguing. “Never got around to watching it.”
“Great show,” he repeated. “I am for the Melly. I would easily do her.”
“Marko?”
“Yeah?” he said to the television.
Milo picked up the remote and turned it off. Dzubenko rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Motherfucker. I am already answer you fuckers’ questions, okay? Twenty fucking times!”
Suppressing the urge to strike him, Milo switched to Russian. “And you’ll continue to answer the questions, or we’ll beat you, sodomize you, then dump you naked in the bad part of Mogadishu.”
Marko’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped; then he smiled and put out his cigarette. “Finally. Someone who speaks Russian with balls. Want a cigarette?” He lifted the pack.
Milo preferred his Davidoffs but knew how sharing cigarettes created an instant bond between Slavs. He produced his lighter and lit Marko’s first, then his own.
He settled on a chair that he recognized from old trips with Tina through IKEA. Then he recognized the sofa Dzubenko sat on. In fact, the whole lower floor of this two-story farmhouse outside Frauenfeld, not far from the highway, had been fitted with that Swedish company’s functional furniture. Around the house lay acres of cold, flat field, empty save for four Company guards with infrared binoculars. Upstairs, in a room the size of a closet, Drummond was watching them through video monitors. By morning, he would have a transcription of the whole conversation, with English translation.
“So, Marko. I hear you’ve got a story about the Chinese for us.”
The Ukrainian stared at the black television and shrugged. “They tell you about all the hot Kiev information? Man, you can worry about the Chinese all you want, but it’s the Kievskaya Rus’ you should really worry about.”
“Trust me, we are worried. But I’m here about the Chinese. You want to tell me how a man like you learns of a secret Chinese plot?”
Dzubenko glared at him, as if his word couldn’t be doubted, but said, “Biggest intelligence organization on the planet, so what do you think? Guoanbu. The motherfuckers are all over Kiev now. It’s getting like Chinatown. They know how important we are, how we’re positioned. Russian fuckers on one side, European Union on the other-it all rubs.”
“Friction.”
“Exactly,” he said, using his cigarette to point at Milo. “I’ve got respect for them-don’t get me wrong. They spend money on their people, place them all over the world. They’re smart. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they take over my hometown and my hard-ass bosses start treating them like princesses they’ve got boners for. Know what I mean?”
Milo didn’t, not exactly-he hadn’t been in the Ukraine since the nineties, and the Guoanbu hadn’t gained a foothold there yet-but he could imagine. “Look, I’m just surprised the Chinese shared their secrets with a Ukrainian second lieutenant.”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Dzubenko. “It was at a party. On Grushevskogo Street.”
“The Chinese embassy.”
“Of course.”
“What for?”
“What?”
“Why was there a party?”
“Oh! Chinese New Year. They’ve got their own, you know.”
“So do Ukrainians. What date?”
“Beginning of the month. February 7.”
“And they invited an SSU second lieutenant?”
Dzubenko frowned at his cigarette and chewed the inside of his mouth. “You’re trying to get a rise out of me, but it’s not going to work. I’m sure of the rightness of my position.”
“I’m just trying to understand, Marko.”
“It was my boss. Lutsenko. Bogdan Lutsenko. He’s a colonel-you can check on that in your files. He was invited, and he asked if I wanted to come along. I said, Why not? But I didn’t know, did I?”
“Didn’t know what?”
“How it would make me sick to my stomach, being there. And that Xin Zhu would be there soaking up all the attention.”
“Xin Zhu?”
“Guoanbu,” Dzubenko told him. “Don’t know his rank, but it must be high up. He’s a fat fucker. Big as a cow. Carries himself like some fucking sheik. Half his entourage were slant-eyes, the other half were my bosses, laughing at all his jokes.”
“What kinds of jokes?”
“Russian jokes. China’s full of those jokes, I guess. It didn’t hurt that he told them in excellent Russian. Plays on words, that sort of thing. Had them in stitches. You know what it looked like to me?”
“What?”
“Like the defeated fawning over their new masters. That’s what it looked like to me. So I went out on the terrace and started smoking, waiting to go home. I got through two cigarettes before he came out to join me.”
“He?”
“Xin Fucking Zhu.”
Milo allowed an expression of surprise to slip into his features. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I am not. He brings his fat ass outside. It’s cold, you know, but he’s still sweating. Glowing from all the attention. That’s why he came out-inside, he’d melt. He lights up and we get talking. And the guy is funny, I have to admit. Even drunk-and the guy is really drunk. We talk about Kiev, and he tells me some of the places he likes. Not tourist shit-no. Some of the best clubs, the ones you have to look hard to find.”
“He goes out dancing?” Milo asked doubtfully.
“Ha!” Dzubenko spat, imagining that. “Please. He goes out looking for hot chicks, what else? We share war stories about girlfriends. Very funny, that guy. He convinces me to come back in, and I end up staying until after midnight. Fun time.”
Milo stared at him, waiting, but Dzubenko didn’t seem to want to go on. “Well?”
“I’m not saying another word until we get some vodka in here.”
“Sure,” Milo said, then switched to English. “You hear that? Get us some vodka!”
It took about two minutes. They heard trotting on the stairs, then the door opened just wide enough for Drummond to place a bottle of Finlandia and two shot glasses on the floor. The door shut. Milo poured shots and handed one over. “Budmo.”
“Hey,” Dzubenko answered, then added in English, “Mud inside your eye.”
