Gage now understood what Maks had been doing while Yasha helped Ninchenko to the car.
“What about the woman upstairs?” Gage asked.
“They claim she was raped.”
“That couldn’t be.”
“But it’s the kind of thing the government wants people to think OUN terrorists would do.” Alla pointed ahead toward Kiev. “That way they’ll believe that the president is all that stands between Ukraine and chaos if Bread and Freedom succeeds.”
“Will Gravilov really believe that’s what happened?”
“Maybe for a few days…nobody believes anything in Ukraine for longer than that.”
CHAPTER 75
M r. Green? This is Mr. Black.”
Gage swung his legs down from his bed at the Carlton Tower in London as he answered his cell phone, wincing from the pain from the twisting stitches in his back.
“Hey, Professor. What’s up?”
“Merry Christmas.”
Gage blinked. The words restarted the clock that seemed to have stopped on the day he flew into Kiev. “Likewise.”
“Your friend Mr. Matson called. Very upset. Whimpering like a puppy.”
“I can only imagine.”
“His banker told him the KTMG Limited account has been frozen and he can’t find out whether the Swiss did it or the…what do you call people in Nauru? Nauruites? Nauruans? Nauruians?”
“I don’t know. It’s never come up before.”
“Okay, Nauruians…or even why it was frozen.”
“A shame.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him I’m out of the country but I’ll call him in a couple of days.”
“Anything else?”
Gage paused, imagining Matson flailing around as he drifted out to sea.
“I don’t want him doing something stupid. Tell him my client wants to close the deal on the technology right away, and in cash, just like we first agreed.”
“Okay. But one more thing, just for my edification. How’d his money get frozen?”
“It isn’t.”
“It isn’t?”
“It isn’t.” Gage looked at his watch, smiling to himself, enjoying the professor’s puzzlement. “Got to go. I’ll call you when I get back to the States.”
Gage knocked on the door to Alla’s adjoining room.
“Time to get up and get your hand stamped.”
Gage and Alla arrived just on time for their meeting with the U.S. consul general in London. Gage had learned from his friend in the Justice Department that John Clyde was a careerist near the end of his service who’d topped out just one step short of his goal of becoming an ambassador. The story was that he’d even have taken a posting in Sudan just to wear the title.
An aging Ivy Leaguer with indoor skin and puffy jowls, Clyde met them at the visa section, then escorted them to his office. He sat down behind a large desk framed by U.S. and State Department flags and directed them to sit across from him.
“You must have some kind of pull in Washington,” Clyde said, opening a folder and withdrawing Alla’s Panamanian passport. “I received a call from the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.” He thumbed through the passport until he found the pasted-in visa. “And the ambassador instructed me not to notify the legal attache or the FBI that I issued this.”
Clyde made a show of examining the page. “S visas are quite rare, you know,” he said, inviting an explanation from Gage.
“This is a special occasion,” Gage said, his voice flat.
“Does it concern London?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Clyde fixed on Gage’s impenetrable face for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t.”
Alla leaned forward in anticipation of receiving the passport, but Clyde remained immobile. She sat back, reddening, as if she had tried to shake his hand and he’d refused.
Clyde flipped to the identification and photo page and grinned. “Somehow the name Alla Petrovna Tarasova doesn’t sound Panamanian.”
“Look,” Gage said. “If you’ve got a problem, spill it. If not, let us have the passport.”
“I don’t have a problem, it’s just unusual.” Clyde closed the passport, tapped its edge against his blotter, then looked over at Alla. “I need to advise you of certain conditions: You must arrive at a U.S. port of entry within ten days. You may stay in the U.S. for no longer than forty-five days. If you fail to leave within that period, you’ll be subject to arrest.”
He waited until Alla nodded her understanding, then retrieved a sealed envelope from the folder. “You will present this letter to the immigration and customs agent at passport control at your point of entry.” Clyde handed Alla the envelope, then retrieved a second one, unsealed. “This is your copy of the same letter.”
Clyde slid the second envelope into the passport, then stood and passed it to her. He stepped around his desk and walked toward the office door, as if expecting Gage and Alla to follow like imprinted ducklings. Alla stuck her tongue out at his back, then smiled at Gage as she rose to her feet. She glanced toward Clyde, then snagged a State Department paperweight off his desk and slipped it into her coat pocket.
They followed Clyde back to the visa section, where he opened the door and waved them through to the lobby without another word. As the door swung closed, Alla stopped to place the letters and passport into her purse.
Gage overheard a well-dressed, elderly American woman complain to the clerk behind the bulletproof glass that she’d already waited fifteen minutes past her scheduled appointment time with Clyde. Gage reached into Alla’s pocket and pulled out the paperweight, then walked up to the woman.
“The consul general asked me to give this to you to apologize for the wait.” Gage handed it to her. “Be sure to mention it to him.”
Alla covered her mouth as they left the consulate, stifling her laugh until they reached the sidewalk.
“What was wrong with that man?” Alla said, giggling, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him.
Gage then noticed the loveliness that other men saw in her, then felt a sadness born of the fear that she’d never grow old with the kind of man she deserved because she’d always be looking past him toward the Matsons of the world.
“Maybe Clyde was offended that we went around him to Washington,” Gage said, holding out his hand to hail a cab, “or maybe it’s that he knows something.”
Gage made flight reservations for the following afternoon as the taxi drove them toward Mickey’s house in the suburbs. They stopped in long enough for Gage to assure himself that Mickey was recovering and so that Mickey could gloat about having been right about Alla from the beginning-though for the wrong reasons-and could get a closer look at the woman who’d made his old heart flutter.
From there, it was on to Matson’s flat in Kensington.
“Let’s make this quick,” Gage said as they entered the lobby.
The diminutive doorman greeted Alla by name. “I hope you had a wonderful trip,” he said, “this is the longest you’ve been gone.”
“Actually, I cut the trip a little short.”
“A shame. Mr. Matson seemed quite worried when he left a few days ago. I hope everything has returned to
