they know about Cobalt, too.
Matson felt an itchiness, like there was a gun barrel pointed at that edgy little spot between his eyes. He finally understood Hackett’s phrase, “a slam-dunk case.”
He dropped into a blue cloth-covered chair, hands clammy, as if watching the dentist’s drill approaching before the Novocain kicked in.
Zink sat down behind the desk, then withdrew a white legal pad from a drawer.
Matson studied Zink’s face, sickened by his willful failure to suppress his self-satisfaction, his pride of ownership.
Matson couldn’t say Granger hadn’t warned him. “If you cooperate, they’ll own you. You’ll think you’re gonna get over on ’em, but you won’t. Nobody does.”
And Matson had promised him, “I’m not makin’ no deal. No way. Fuck ’em. I’m not sayin’ shit.”
But that was before Hackett told Matson how much time he could do and before he decided that there was no fucking way he was going to do it-not if he was going to have a life after SatTek.
Hackett had also told him something else, maybe the most important thing. As long as he kept setting up other targets, the prosecutor would stop aiming at him, and that would give him time to feather his nest for a soft landing. And Matson knew that unless he did a little more feathering, he’d crash real hard.
“Let’s start with Fitzhugh,” Zink said, his pen poised. “How much did he know?”
“I flew to London and checked into the Park Lane Hilton by Hyde Park. At 6 P. M., I went down to the lobby bar to meet him. He looked up soon as I hit the door and caught my eye. I’m jet-lagged as hell, so I order some coffee before I sit down. I don’t want to miss a word of what he has to say.
“Helluva name. Morely Alden Fitzhugh IV. But it fit with him being an accountant. Thin, pale face. Conservative black suit. The only thing that didn’t match the profile were his Bono-type eyeglasses and a gold Patek Philippe chronograph. I later saw a watch just like it at Tiffany’s. It cost about thirty grand.
“We talked a little bit, and once he felt comfortable with me, he went into his spiel.
“‘Mr. Granger told me that SatTek is on the verge of greatness, and that you’re the right man at the right time.’ Then he leaned over the table and lowered his voice. ‘I know you trust Mr. Granger and Mr. Granger trusts me. And you know the offshore world is about trust. We’re not gangsters and there aren’t any courts with real substance that can deal with even minor disputes. So it’s up to the parties to work together, fairly. Everything aboveboard.’
“That shook me up a little. There was no reason to bring up gangsters. We were just doing business. But I wasn’t there to argue, so I let it go.
“Fitzhugh paused for a few moments, then he adopted a sort of effeminate pose and said, ‘Mr. Granger has, as I understand it, assumed the role of, shall we say, adviser. What’s it called at the Vatican? Consigliere.’ Then he punches the air with his forefinger, like in punctuation. ‘That’s it, consigliere.’
“I’m not the pope, and I told him that.
“‘But every enterprise needs a principal. That’s you. My function is solely as a fiduciary, someone to advise you on financial matters and to whom you may issue instructions in complete confidence that they will be faithfully executed.’
“There was only one problem with that: Granger told me that I was supposed to be following his orders; not him following mine.”
Matson watched Zink finish writing down the last sentence on his legal pad, then said he needed to use the bathroom.
Zink escorted him down the hallway and pointed to the men’s room door. Matson entered and stepped into a stall, but just stood there. He didn’t need to pee, he needed to think. Something else had happened in the Park Lane Hilton lounge that evening, and Zink had no right to pry into it.
As the waitress approached with his coffee, he had noticed a woman sitting alone at the bar behind her, twenty-five feet across the room. The contrasts among her black chemise dress, pale skin, Asiatic eyes, and Slavic cheekbones had unnerved him. She seemed foreign in a more profound way than any woman he’d ever seen.
His eyes followed hers as they swept along the row of bottled whiskeys doubled by the bar mirror behind them. Their eyes met in reflection. He looked away, but was drawn back. And as he gazed into the dark pupils looking back, he felt a depth and solidity in himself that he hadn’t experienced before, and realized that somehow, in a way he didn’t yet understand, the world that Granger had invited him into was making him into a new man.
“Did you meet anyone else in London?” Zink asked Matson as they walked from the bathroom into the FBI’s kitchen to fetch coffee.
Matson hesitated for a moment, then answered, “No. Not really. Granger told me to keep a low profile. Just slip in and slip out. So that’s what I did.”
Matson leaned back against the counter, hands crimped over the edge.
“There’s a whole world out there I didn’t know even existed,” Matson said. “All these people doing international business. It’s hard to explain. Everybody’s in their own heads.”
Zink filled a cup and handed it to Matson.
“People meet. All they have in common is the deal, whatever the deal is. Always on the move, like they’re never really anyplace. They just take the deal from one airport to another, one hotel to another.”
Zink smiled to himself as he walked Matson back to the SatTek room. Matson wasn’t an idiot. He had avoided answering the question. Zink knew he’d answer it eventually, once he realized that the government wouldn’t let him keep any secrets. Matson would be dotting i’s and crossing t’s until he developed carpal tunnel of the brain. He just didn’t know it yet.
Zink knew how to work informants, and decided that it was too soon to push Matson. He made an excuse to go back to his own office to give Matson time to adjust to the idea that eventually he’d have to give it all up.
He left Matson sitting, arms folded, staring up at the ceiling.
Matson had returned to the hotel after dining with Fitzhugh. He had glanced into the lounge on his way toward the elevator and spotted the woman still sitting at the bar. He stopped in the doorway. A man stood to the left of her, his hand gripping her elbow. She jerked her arm away and rotated her stool away from him.
Matson found himself walking toward them. He heard the man say in a slurred American accent, “Just one drink, honey. Come on, just one drink.”
Before the woman could answer, Matson stepped up next to him and said, “Let it go.”
The man turned toward him. Red-faced. Fists clenched. “Mind your own business.”
Matson held up his hands. “Take it easy.” He made a show of scanning the others drinking in the lounge. “Whose side do you think these folks will take?”
The scraping of chair legs on tile broke the silence. The man glanced back over his shoulder at two men who were now standing and glaring at him. He swayed as he turned back toward Matson, then shrugged and walked away.
She turned toward him. “Thank you.” She spoke in what Matson took to be a Russian accent.
“He just had too much to drink,” Matson said, then noticed that her hands were shaking. “Would you like me to sit with you?”
“Very much.”
Matson climbed onto the bar stool next to her. “Can I get you something?”
“Please. Whatever you are having.”
Matson looked down the bar and spotted tall glasses of Guinness before a young couple sitting at the end, and ordered two pints.
“I’m Alla,” she said. “I saw you here earlier.”
Matson blushed, then glanced away as if checking the bartender’s progress on their order. “I’m Stuart, and I saw you, too.”
“I was so relieved when you walked up.” She smiled. “I thought you were about to tackle that man.”
“Tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure what I would do. We have an expression in the States. It’s called playing it-”
“-by ear.”
He drew back and looked over at her. “You know that one?”
“I love language, especially American expressions. Out in left field. The wrong side of the tracks. Between a
