then lifted one of the phones. “Colonel? The supply manager and the merchant you wanted are here.” He listened to the reply, put the phone down, and nodded toward the door. “Go on.”
Banich went through the door feeling warier than he had for a long while. Maybe he’d grown too used to manipulating puffed-up, greedy administrators like Sorokin. Something told him he was moving into a very different league right now. A much more dangerous league.
His first glimpse of the man waiting for them confirmed that. The pressures he’d used to bend Sorokin to his will wouldn’t mean spit to this grim-looking bastard.
“You are the Ukrainian commodities trader, Ushenko?” The colonel’s arrogant tone left little doubt that he expected an answer and expected it immediately. He stayed seated as they came to a halt in front of his desk.
“Yes, I am.” Banich made a split-second decision and kept his own tone light, almost airily unconcerned. He had to stay in character, and as Ushenko he’d never given a damn about rank or power. “And who the devil are you?”
He heard Sorokin draw a quick, nervous breath.
The army officer studied him for a moment with cold gray eyes that looked out from under pale, almost invisible eyebrows. He seemed almost amused. “My name is Colonel Valentin Soloviev, Mr. Ushenko.”
“And just what can I do for you, Colonel?” Banich glanced to either side, looking for a chair to sit down in. There weren’t any.
“You can start by explaining this.” Soloviev handed him a piece of paper.
Banich recognized the New Kiev Trading Company’s letterhead. It was his own politely worded notification that the company could not sell additional food supplies to the Ministry of Defense. He looked up. “I don’t see that there’s anything to explain. You can’t get milk from a dry cow, and I can’t obtain the goods you’re looking for. Certainly not in those quantities. And certainly not at those prices.”
Pavel Sorokin was sweating now. He mopped his brow and laughed weakly. “Nikolai! Surely you don’t mean that. You’ve always come through for us in the past and…”
Soloviev cut him off with a single irritated glance. Then he turned his attention back to Banich. “It would be most unwise to try bargaining with
“Look, Colonel, I’m not interested in haggling with you.” Banich shrugged. “But you’re asking for the impossible. There’s simply not that much food readily available. Not this winter.”
“I am acquainted with both the market conditions and the weather, Ushenko.” The Russian army officer frowned. “Let me make myself even clearer. We need these extra supplies. We need them delivered over the next several days. And I will obtain them by any means necessary.”
Banich didn’t try to conceal his confusion. “But why the big rush? Why the need for so much so soon? Why not wait for the spring? Supplies will be up and prices down by March or April, at the latest.”
“Because we don’t have until the spring!” The colonel’s eyes flashed angrily. He paused. When he spoke again, he sounded like he was rattling off a prepared statement — one that he wasn’t especially interested in. “The government has scheduled an emergency exercise to test its ability to keep order during the coming months. Our part of this readiness exercise involves the rapid rail movement of an additional division to the capital from one of the outlying districts. Once here, the troops will take part in maneuvers designed to evaluate their ability to reinforce the police should the need arise.”
Soloviev smiled wryly. “Given the current situation, I’m sure you can understand my reluctance to dump thousands of half-starved soldiers on the streets of Moscow. If nothing else, it would mean the end of a career I rather enjoy.”
Banich felt his brain moving into high gear. Readiness exercise, hell! Nobody, especially not the near-bankrupt Russian government, moved ten to fifteen thousand soldiers around on a whim or for some half-assed riot control practice. The military brass were up to something, all right. He wondered whether any of the republic’s political leaders knew what it was.
In the meantime, he’d better find a way to meet the army’s demands. Getting shut out now would mean losing a crucial inside track to information on military planning and personnel. He spread his hands in resignation. “Okay, Colonel, you’ve made your point. I’ll see what I can do.”
Beside him, Pavel Sorokin breathed a huge sigh of not-so-silent relief. It was short-lived.
“But the price per ton has to come up. I can’t swing the deal for what you’re offering.”
“No haggling, Ushenko. Remember? You’ll meet our needs and our price, or I’ll make sure you lose your licenses for doing business inside this republic. Clear enough?”
“Yes.” Banich grimaced. “And just how in God’s name am I supposed to explain this to my bosses? Doing business at a loss, I mean.”
“Simple.” Soloviev smiled again, looking more than ever like a tiger toying with its prey. “Tell them that you’re buying my continued goodwill.” He nodded toward the door in an abrupt dismissal.
In the first hour after sunrise, Russia’s capital city lay wrapped in a deep, deceptively peaceful silence.
Erin McKenna ran southward beside the gray-tinted Moskva River, long legs eating up distance with every easy stride. Her long auburn hair streamed out behind her, tied into a bobbing ponytail with a length of black ribbon. There weren’t any other people in sight. For the moment at least, she moved alone in splendid isolation.
She shook her head irritably as the watch on her wrist chimed suddenly in an unwelcome reminder. It was time to head back for the start of another working day. She turned left, circling deeper into Gorky Park.
Fallen leaves in rich autumn colors littered the park’s winding paths and lay heaped below bare-limbed trees. For the first time in weeks, the sky overhead was a deep cloudless blue, although temperatures still hovered near the freezing mark. Despite the pale sunshine, the tree-covered grounds were completely deserted. Few of Moscow’s hungry citizens had the time or physical energy for jogging during these hard times.
Erin hoped she would never find herself in the same state. Running recharged her mind. It helped her clear away the cobwebs accumulated by hours spent reading densely written reports or searching through packed computer data bases. It also gave her time to herself — time she’d always treasured. Time for her own thoughts, or time for her mind to go blank, absorbed by the comforting rhythm of her legs covering ground at high speed. She’d proven her ability and competitive edge by winning a string of long-distance medals in high school and college. Now she ran for pure pleasure.
Not that she’d had much pleasure lately.
So far her assignment to the CIA’s Moscow Station had been one big bust. Despite their best efforts, Banich’s field operatives were still only able to gather the information she needed in dribs and drabs — small nuggets of fact and fancy that were barely worth analyzing and not worth reporting back to Washington. Her own moves to make contacts in the city’s foreign business community were going somewhat better, but they were still painfully slow. She couldn’t push too hard without raising unnecessary suspicions among the businessmen and women who managed Western trade with Russia and the other Commonwealth republics.
And now both Alex Banich and Len Kutner were busy with some hush-hush project of their own. For the past two days, they’d been closeted together in one of the embassy’s secure sections — emerging only long enough to send coded reports to Washington or to grab a quick bite in the staff canteen. The field agents who’d been working with her were being sent away on other rushed assignments. Something big was happening. And they’d shut her out of whatever it was.
Just the thought of that made her angry. She was tired of being labeled an amateur, interfering busybody. Her security clearances were just as good as Banich’s, and it was past time that he and his people started treating her like a full partner. She frowned at her thoughts. Winning his respect wouldn’t be easy. Not when they could only seem to agree on two things. One was that Moscow
Erin pushed down the beginnings of a smile as she considered that last point of agreement. She’d developed her own cynical attitude toward Washington’s pontificating power brokers during a stint as an analyst for the Senate Commerce Committee. Too many senators who preached about their devotion to equal rights by day tried to grope their female staffers by night. Fending off their unwanted advances had been far more difficult than doing her assigned work. She suspected that Banich’s disdain for politicians had a very different origin.
She came out of the park and turned north onto a stretch of pavement paralleling a wide, multilane avenue. Once known as Lenin Prospekt, the street had long since reverted to its prerevolutionary name — Kaluga Road. It
