model, Ireland was more surely doomed by the possible success of the IRA than it was by its economic marriage to Britain. At least Cuba had the tropical sun to keep it warm. To survive, with no natural resources to speak of, Ireland needed a close economic tie to someone, and the closest was the U.K. But that was off the dinner topic.
'So, you expect him to try a hit-and-run,' Bill asked.
Dmitriy nodded. 'Nothing else makes tactical sense. He hopes to live long enough to utilize the money we've offered him. Assuming you will approve the increase he requires.'
'What's another million or so?' Henriksen asked, with a suppressed grin.
So both of them regarded such a large sum as trivial. Popov saw, and again he was struck in the face with the fact that they were planning something monstrous-but what?
'How do they want it? Cash?' Brightling asked.
'No, I told them it would be deposited in a numbered Swiss account. I can arrange that.'
'I have enough already laundered,' Bill told his employer. 'We could set that up tomorrow if you want.'
'And that means I fly to Switzerland again,' Dmitriy observed sourly.
'Getting tired of flying?'
'I have traveled a great deal, Dr. Brightling.' Popov sighed openly. He was jet-lagged, and it showed for once.
'John.'
'John.' Popov nodded, seeing some actual affection in his boss for the first time, somewhat to his surprise.
'I understand, Dmitriy,' Henriksen said. 'The Australia trip was a pain in the ass for me.'
'What was it like to grow up in Russia?' Brightling asked.
'Harder than America. There was more violence in the schools. No serious crime,' Popov explained. 'But lots of tights between the boys, for example. Dominance fights, as boys will. The authorities usually looked the other way.'
'Where did you grow up?'
'Moscow. My father was also an officer in State Security. I was educated in Moscow State University.'
'What major?'
'Language and economics.' The former had proven very useful. The latter had been totally valueless, since the Marxist idea of economics had not exactly proven to be an effective one.
'Ever get out of the city? You know, like Boy Scouts do here, that sort of stuff?'
Popov smiled, wondering where this was going, and why they were asking it. But he played along. 'One of my happiest memories of childhood. I was in the Young Pioneers. We traveled out to a state farm and worked there for a month, helping with the harvest, living with nature, as you Americans say.' And then, at age fourteen, he'd met his first love, Yelena Ivanovna. He wondered where she was now. He succumbed to a brief attack of nostalgia. as he remembered her feel in the darkness, his first conquest…
Brightling noted the distant smile and took it for what he wanted it to be. 'You liked that, eh?'
Clearly they didn't want to hear that story. 'Oh, yes. I have often wondered what it was like to live out there in a place like that, the sun on your back all the time, working in the soil. My father and I used to walk into the woods, hunting for mushrooms that was a common pastime for Soviet citizens in the sixties, walking in the woods.' Unlike most Russians, they'd driven there in his father's official car, but as a boy he'd liked the woods as a place of adventure and romanticism, as all boys do, and enjoyed the time with his father as well.
'Any game in the woods there?' Bill Henriksen asked.
'One would see birds, of course, many kinds, and occasionally elk-you call them moose here, I think-but rarely. State hunters were always killing them. Wolves are their main target. They hunt them from helicopters. We Russians do not like wolves as you do here in America. Too many folk tales of rabid ones killing people, you see. Mostly lies, I expect.'
Brightling nodded. 'Same thing here. Wolves are just big wild dogs, you can train them as pets if you want. Some people do that.'
'Wolves are cool,' Bill added. He'd often thought about making one a pet, but you needed a lot of land for that. Maybe when the Project was fulfilled.
What the hell was this all about? Dmitriy wondered, still playing along. 'I always wanted to see a bear, but there are none of them left in the Moscow area. I saw them only at the zoo. I loved bears,' he added, lying. They'd always frightened the hell out of him. You heard scores of bear stories as a child in Russia, few of them friendly, though not as anti nature as the wolf stories. Large dogs? Wolves killed people in the steppes. The farmer's and peasants hated the damned things and welcomed lie state hunters with their helicopters and machine guns, the better to hunt them down and slaughter them.
'Well, John and I are Nature Lovers,' Bill explained, waving to the waiter for another bottle of wine. 'Always have been. All the way back to Boy Scouts - like your Young Pioneers, I suppose.'
'The state was not kind to nature in the Soviet Union. Much worse than the problems you've had here in America. Americans have come to Russia to survey the damage and suggest ways to fix the problems of pollution and such.' Especially in the Caspian Sea, where pollution had killed off most of the sturgeon, and with it the fish eggs known as caviar, which had for so long been a prime means of earning foreign currency for the USSR.
'Yes, that was criminal,' Brightling agreed soberly. 'But it's a global problem. People don't respect nature the way they should,' Brightling went on for several minutes, delivering what had to be a brief canned lecture, to which Dmitriy listened politely.
'That is a great political movement in America, is it not?'
'Not as powerful as many would like,' Bill observed. 'But it's important to some of us.'
'Such a movement would be useful in Russia. It is a pity that so much has been destroyed for no purpose,' Popov responded, meaning some of it. The state should conserve resources for proper exploitation, not simply destroy them because the local political hacks didn't know how to use them properly. But then the USSR had been so horridly inefficient in everything it did-well, except espionage, Popov corrected himself. America had done well. he thought. The cities were far cleaner than their Russian counterparts, even here in New York, and you only needed to drive an hour from any city to see green grass and tidy productive farms. But the greater question was: why had a conversation that had begun with the discussion of a terrorist incident drifted into this? Had he done anything to invite it? No, his employer had abruptly steered it in this direction. It had not been an accident. That meant they were sounding him out - but on what?
This nature drivel? He sipped at his wine and stared at his dinner companions. 'You know, I've never really had a chance to see America. I would like very much to see the national parks. What is the one with the geysers? Gold stone? Something like that?'
'Yellowstone, it's in Wyoming. Maybe the prettiest place in America,' Henriksen told the Russian.
'Nope, Yosemite,' Brightling countered. 'In California. That's the prettiest valley in the whole world. Overrun with goddamned tourists now, of course, but that'll change.'
'Same story at Yellowstone, John, and, yeah, that'll change, too. Someday,' Bill Henriksen concluded.
They seemed pretty positive about the things that would change. But the American state parks were run by the federal government for all citizens, weren't they? They had to be, because they were tax-supported. No limited access for the elite here. Equality for all-something he'd been taught in Soviet schools, except here they actually lived it. One more reason, Dmitriy thought, why one country had fallen, and the other had grown stronger. 'What do you mean `that'll change'?' Popov asked.
'Oh, the idea is to lessen the impact of people on the areas. It's a good idea, but some other things have to happen first,' Brightling replied.
'Yeah, John, just one or two,' Henriksen agreed, with a chuckle. Then he decided that this feeling-out process had gone far enough. 'Anyway, Dmitriy, how will we know when Grady wants to go forward?'
'I will call him. He left me a mobile-phone number which I can use at certain times of the day.'
'Trustful soul.'
'For me, yes. We have been friends since the 1980s, back when he was in the Bekaa Valley. And besides, the phone is mobile, probably bought with a false credit card by someone else entirely. These things are very useful to intelligence officers. They are difficult to track unless you have very sophisticated equipment. America has them, and so does England, but other nations, no, not very many of them.'
