Reid had been purposely vague on details of the operation, and Nuri could tell as soon as he met Gleeb that he was annoyed. Station chiefs could be very territorial, and anyone running an operation within what they perceived to be their domain had to tread gently.
Treading gently wasn’t Nuri’s forte.
“We have an appointment with the interior minister at nine,” Gleeb told Nuri when he picked him up outside the capital’s fanciest business hotel. “He doesn’t know what’s up, but obviously he knows it’s important.”
“The appointment isn’t supposed to be until tomorrow night,” said Nuri. “We don’t want word to get out.”
“The minister is leaving on vacation in the morning,” said Gleeb. “Unless you want to go with him, this is the best we can do. His deputies are not dependable.”
Nuri, who didn’t want to deal with the Moldovans in the first place, folded his arms in front of his chest and said nothing.
“You didn’t check into the hotel, did you?” asked Gleeb.
“No. Why?”
“You have a room?”
“I just got here.”
“I thought so.”
Nuri tightened his arms. He felt as if he was being interrogated. This was
“I suspect you’d like a shower,” said Gleeb. “And a chance to straighten up your clothes. We have enough time. Just.”
“I’m a little hungry, actually.”
“We’ll eat after. If you need a sandwich or something, I’ll find you something at my flat.”
Nuri realized he looked a little rumpled and very possibly did need a shower — the water pressure had been a joke at the motel. Gleeb took him to his residence. The shower was tiny, but the hot water was strong. While he was showering, Gleeb found him a sport coat that came close to fitting.
“Space has been secured on a military base in the northeast, if it’s necessary,” Gleeb told Nuri after he dressed. “My contacts in the state police will cooperate, if there is authorization to do so. It’s up to the minister.”
“Uh-huh.” Nuri adjusted his shirt collar in the small mirror on the bathroom door.
“You don’t really want the Moldovans to help, do you?”
The comment took Nuri by surprise. “Why do you say that?”
“I’d be a very poor agent if I couldn’t tell how unenthusiastic about this you were,” said Gleeb.
“No, I don’t.”
“How long have you been with the Company?”
“Couple of years,” said Nuri.
“You’ll learn. Politics is everything. At every level. Shall we go?”
Nuri resented the I’m-an-old-hand-and-you’ll-learn tone, but there was no question that Gleeb was acting professionally otherwise. Nuri tried to restart the relationship in the car on the way to the minister’s, asking how long Gleeb had been with the CIA. It was a subtle nod toward the older man, without pretending to fawn, which Nuri couldn’t have stomached and Gleeb certainly would have scoffed at.
“I’ve worked with the Company longer than I can recall,” said Gleeb. “I’ve been just about everywhere in Europe. My first assignment was in Moscow. I never looked back.”
He’d become a field agent just before the end of the Cold War, when human intelligence assets — spies — were still the most valued commodity in the business. Gleeb regaled him with stories as they drove, telling of elaborate dinner parties where he and KGB agents vied over contacts and beautiful women.
Mostly the latter, Gleeb confessed.
Nuri had heard these sorts of stories before, but Gleeb’s had just enough of a self-depreciating spin for Nuri to be interested, or at least not bored by them. Gleeb abruptly brought the subject back to the present as they neared the minister’s residence.
“He will be suspicious, but that’s to be expected. I’ve told him you’re working with the UN. I doubt he actually believes that, but he won’t question it.”
“That’s a convenient attitude.”
“Very. Lay out what you need and ask for his cooperation. Let him think it’s up to him.”
The tone grated again. Gleeb was stating the obvious.
“It is up to him,” said Nuri.
Gleeb gave him the most fleeting of smiles.
Nuri guessed, belatedly, that the minister was on the Agency payroll. It would certainly be a subtle arrangement, money coming from some sort of grant to his department or maybe a pseudojob for a family member, but it would be leverage nonetheless.
The arrangement was a mixed blessing as far as Nuri was concerned. While it undoubtedly would make the minister somewhat more compliant, it also meant that he could be bought. Whether the U.S. was the only buyer was an open question.
The minister’s residence overlooked an old castle about a mile outside the capital limits. The castle looked like something out of Frankenstein, dark and ominous, high on a hill.
“That’s their old family estate,” said Gleeb. “They used to own just about everything you see here.”
“What happened?”
“Communists came in. Not that they would have necessarily kept it anyway. The family fortune was ebbing by the end of the nineteenth century anyway. They went through some harder times, until World War Two. His great-grandfather was a hero of the resistance, and apparently he personally saved some relative of Stalin. Or took the credit for doing so.”
Gleeb made a clicking sound with his mouth; he was wearing dentures, and not particularly well-fitting ones at that.
“That’s the minister’s house on the left,” said the CIA station chief as he took a turn just beyond the castle. “A little different, huh?”
The house was a set of modernistic boxes set into the hillside. Gleeb told him it had been built by a famous European architect for more than three million euros — an enormous sum in Moldova.
No wonder he’s taking money from the CIA, Nuri thought.
A maid met them at the door. A pair of bodyguards stood at the side of the foyer, watching them carefully as they came in. Nuri nodded in their direction without receiving a response.
“The minister is waiting for you in the library,” said the maid in English. “Please.”
The library was a small room to the right of the entry. Two more bodyguards, arms down at their sides, waited near the door. The minister was working at a small desk next to a large bookcase that filled one entire wall of the room. The bookcase, constructed of thick, worn wood, seemed out of place; Nuri wondered if it had been scavenged from the castle.
“Mr. Gleeb, very nice,” said the minister. “I will be with you presently.”
“The minister spent time in London as ambassador for the last government,” Gleeb told Nuri. “He speaks the King’s English. It’s certainly better than mine.”
“Ah, when my guests flatter me, it is time to find them a drink,” said the minister, putting down his pen.
He rose and wagged his finger at the guards, who promptly disappeared.
“Our sherry is passably pleasant,” said the minister, going over to a sideboard. Like the other furniture in the house, it was a sleek, modern affair, made of chrome and lightly colored wood.
“That is to put you off your guard for some of the finest sherry in Europe,” Gleeb told Nuri. “He likes to lower expectations.”
Nuri was not much of a judge of sherry. He raised his own glass as Gleeb and his host saluted each other, then took a small sip.
“So you are Mr. Lupo,” said the minister, turning to him. “An alias, I suppose?”
“Actually, it’s my real name,” said Nuri. “I don’t use an alias.”
