out a bead of sweat on Mr. Lo’s face and the dull sheen of the guard’s bayonet. Mr. Lo shook his finger at her. “We will put snakes in you. Do you wish this? Yes?”
She told herself there were no snakes in Harbin — the idiot man. It was too cold, but unconsciously she pressed her thighs together. It was a mistake. Lo now knew the long nose was more afraid than she made out. He whispered to the guard, who nodded, quickly tied her hands behind her, and left the room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Apart from the few guests from the Plaza who had dared brave the cold, briskly crossing from the luxurious comfort of the hotel to the chestnut barrow by the southeast entrance to the park, a jogger was the vendor’s only customer.
“What can I tell ya!” complained the vendor. “I had ‘em poifect, then bam, bam, bam. Everyone comes for lunch— all in a bunch — so now ya gotta wait.”
“They look done enough,” said the jogger, a tall, gangly man clad head to toe in a gray tracksuit, his goatee beard crusted with snow, his hood laced tightly. In front and back of the gray jacket, in Day-Glo tape, there was a sign announcing to the world: I DON’T CARRY CASH, CREDIT CARDS, OR WRISTWATCHES!
He kept jogging in place.
“You want them?” said the vendor, stirring the chestnuts perfunctorily with his scoop. “You can have ‘em. But they ain’t cooked. Please yourself. ‘S only five minutes they’ll be done. What’s your hurry?”
The gray man slid a hand inside the tracksuit’s midriff pocket, peeking at a stopwatch attached to the pocket with a safety pin. “Got an appointment in five minutes.”
The vendor pointed the scoop at the man’s midriff. “Thought you had no valuables?”
The gray man shrugged. “Worth a try.”
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” yelled the vendor, a limo passing fast by the curb, throwing up an icy wave of slush. “You sonofabitch!” Sticking his head under the barrow’s meager awning, he turned to the gray man. “Big shot! Jay La Roche. Thinks he owns this fuckin’ town.”
“Probably does,” said the tall man, still jogging on the spot.
“How you gonna pay me if you don’t have no cash?”
The jogger bent down and extracted a five from his right sneaker. “Emergency funds.” He winked.
“Yeah. Right,” said the vendor, his grin thin with cynicism. “Some of those boys cut you up good, you hold out on ‘em.” He scooped up the chestnuts into one of the white bags and handed it to the man. “Four bucks.”
The runner kept jogging in place while the vendor’s hands did a number in his apron, frowning and mumbling something about not having change.
The jogger kept marking time until the vendor grunted and gave him four quarters before throwing on another fistful of chestnuts.
It was a dead drop — a note in the bottom of the paper bag with instructions for the next meet. Daytime meets were normally eschewed, but with the First Directorate under pressure from Yesov, Kirov had decreed that Operation Ballet should go ahead as fast as possible. The splash by Jay La Roche, or whoever it was in the limo, had nothing to do with it, but the vendor’s reaction made it more convincing if the FBI or CIA had been watching, which the jogger doubted. The Americans hadn’t yet broken a single three-man cell in the poisoned water crisis — PCBs dumped in New York’s water supply earlier in the war. True, a member of one cell in Queens who had kicked off the sabotage at the Con Ed’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant had reported to the jogger, his control, that he suspected he was being followed, but Control told him to relax — everybody in the plant who’d been on the shift and had clocked off twenty minutes before the bomb had exploded in the monitor room was being followed. Routine. Hell, since the water crisis, thousands of people were being followed.
Besides, Con Ed was turning out to be the cells’ best friend, their PR busy talking down the sabotage as a “nut case,” scared shitless that any sign of vulnerability at the Indian Point plant would start off fears of a meltdown, not only at Con Ed, but every friggin’ nuclear plant in the country. The FBI, CIA, and White House were going along with the “nut case” story, too. The water supply poisoning had been cleaned up — many of the toxins leached out, water quality measurements taken constantly instead of once a day — and so now everyone was reassured on that score. But if radiation got loose, that’d be another story. The Americans were on the verge of panic — security was now so tight at nuclear plants, hell, they wouldn’t let the president in without thumbprint ID for fear it might be a double.
The jogger kept moving, cracking the chestnuts on the run as he made his way along Central Park South, turning left on the Fifth Avenue dogleg, entering the park proper on the east side.
Down by the fountain a small man in a dark navy tracksuit doing stretching exercises started running a few seconds after the man in the gray had passed him, catching up to him by the dairy. They were both on the circuit pathway and headed down the mall before cutting across the Sheep Meadow to the snow-covered Strawberry Fields, where they slowed and drew level, blue and gray. “See you got your chestnuts okay,” said the man in the blue.
“Yes,” said the other man, temporarily out of breath. They hadn’t stopped but were walking fast in a strong, long-distance gait. “I thought the price was quite reasonable.”
“Four dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Well-cooked?”
“Best I’ve ever had.”
“All right,” said the smaller man, “I’ve got everyone set. Where’s the main event going down?”
“No idea. All I was told was to get everyone in place.”
“We’ve had everyone in place for ten fucking years,” said the shorter man.
“You’re impatient. Doesn’t do to get in a hurry.”
“We can’t luck out much longer.”
The gray man cracked one of the nuts, dropping the shells on the pathway as they passed under a copse of snow-drooping sugar maples. “If something’s gone wrong,” he told the shorter man, “you’d better tell me right now.”
“Nothing’s gone wrong. Everybody’s a bit edgy, that’s all.”
“Why? What’s the rush — after ten years? A day here or there doesn’t matter.”
“I dunno. Guess I’m stressed myself. I mean I don’t really know how it works. Yeah — okay, so I organize the team, match the talent for the job. But I don’t know how it’s actually going to be done.”
“You’ve no need to know,” responded the man in gray, his breath visible in short puffs of mist. “Organizers aren’t supposed to know. We can’t all do one another’s job.”
“Huh,” said the shorter man, grabbing several chestnuts from the packet. “That’s what the CIA says is worst about our methods. We don’t have cross expertise. So someone else can step in.”
“That right?” said the man in gray. “So who did in their water supply? And knocked Con Ed out? We’re doing all right. They’re in a panic. All we have to remember is everybody does one thing and does it properly. It’s worked so far — that’s the only thing that matters.”
“I’d still like to understand the guts of it.”
“It’s not classified,” said the man in gray. “You can figure it out from any public library.” He knew it was a barren response. One of the things you didn’t do as a sleeper was to take out a lot of technical manuals from American libraries. It was a sure invitation to surveillance.
“What if something goes wrong?” said the shorter man. “Then I’d have to do it. Shit, this job’s the most important thing any of us’ll ever do. Right?”
“You could do it.”
“That’s like telling me I could be a — I dunno, Mario Andretti, ‘cause I can drive. I mean, if something fizzes out — halfway through? If one of our guys is made and’s taken out?”
“All right,” said the taller man, “but let’s keep up the pace. Joggers don’t stroll.” They increased the speed and he explained it — not only how they would simply sow further panic, but how they’d bring the country to its
