“I can tell my children I helped the CIA,” said the driver, whose name was Varnya.
“If I was with the CIA, I wouldn’t have run out of petrol,” laughed Karr. “And I would have paid you twice as much.”
The man laughed, though he insisted he knew that the two men were both American and members of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Varnya, the CIA ran Russia, but this was an improvement from the days when the KGB had. Varnya’s grandfather — it may have been his great-grandfather, as Karr couldn’t quite stay on top of the accented and slightly drunken Russian — had been a political prisoner in one of the camps. After twelve years, he had been released with the understanding that he would stay out of western Russia. A similar story could have been told by half of the local inhabitants, if not more.
Varnya began to speak of things that his grandfather had told him — bodies in the river, a forest of skulls. His anger started to build. He offered to share his vodka. Karr agreed, knowing that to refuse would be a serious insult. He blocked the mouth of the bottle with his tongue every time he tipped the bottle back. The sting of the liquor helped keep him awake on the long ride.
It was dark when they got back to the helicopter. Varnya and his brother volunteered to help roll the barrels toward it. Then, as Karr knew they would, the two men pulled out weapons and tried to rob them.
“What would your grandfather think?” said Karr, shaking his head.
Varnya’s chest inflated, alcohol-fueled anger rising within him. He looked at Karr as if he were the KGB man who’d locked his grandfather in exile and tormented the family for three generations. He raised his pistol to fire, pushing his arm toward the American.
Fashona’s first bullet caught him in the side of the head. He didn’t bother firing another. By the time Varnya dropped, Karr had shot the brother twice in the forehead with a Glock 26.
“Motherfuckers,” said Fashona. “I told you they’d wait to see if we really had the chopper.”
“Yeah,” said Karr. He slid the Glock 26 back into its hiding place up his sleeve. “Kinda pains me that they didn’t believe us. Nobody trusts anybody these days.”
30
The third site Dean and Lia checked was a civilian airport. Several new Fokkers sat amid a smattering of older Russian types in neat rows beyond the terminal building. When they found the Helix they saw it had been plumbed for crop dusting. Lia took several photos of it with a digital camera about the size of a cigarette lighter. Back in the truck, using her handheld computer she compared it to pictures of the Helix that had inspected the crash site. They didn’t seem to be a match, though the program she used on the handheld would only say the results were inconclusive.
By now it was early evening. A Western-style motel sat near the airport. They went there and took two rooms, then had dinner in what amounted to a cafeteria on the basement level. Lia had to go outside to get the phone to work. Dean sat at the table sipping a vodka, the first alcohol he’d had since getting the assignment. He rolled the liquor around his tongue, letting the sting loosen his sinuses.
The mission Hadash had sent him to do was over. The plane was obviously destroyed, and sooner or later the material they’d loaded into the Hind would be returned to the States for analysis to prove it.
That was all he was here for. Hadash had said something along the lines of “you’ll just be a tourist.”
Or a baby-sitter. They needed one.
Not really. Lia was a bit much, and Tommy Karr had rubbed him the wrong way, a little too easygoing for his own good, Dean thought — but they were competent in their own way, comfortable with technology in a way Dean would never be.
Not that he was a Luddite, for christsakes. What the hell was a stinking Luddite anyway? Some sort of nineteenth-century English revolutionary worried about losing his job to a machine. Which Dean definitely wasn’t.
Dean watched as two young men came into the room with overloaded trays of food. They were loud, obviously drunk; he couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was obvious they were pretty full of themselves. Both wore track pants and Nike basketball shoes; their shirts were opened several buttons down and they had rows of gold chains around their necks.
“Credit card thieves,” Lia said, sliding in across from him. “They broker numbers.”
“How do you know?”
“You figure things out after a while. Karr’ll meet us in the hotel. Let’s go get some sleep.”
Upstairs, he had started to go to the room across the hall when she opened her door. She grabbed the sleeve of his sweater.
“Where are you going?”
“Get some z’s.”
“We stay together. Don’t look at me like that — one of us sleeps, the other stands guard. We sweep the room first.” She took her handheld out and slid a small silver bar into an expansion slot at the top. “Talk,” she told him.
“About what?”
“Your sex life. Just talk.”
Dean began reciting the alphabet. Lia held her computer in two hands and swept up and down the walls, looking a little like a supplicant worshipping the god of hideous wallpaper. Dean followed as she worked her way around to the bathroom.
“No bugs,” she said finally. She started the shower. “Which doesn’t mean we can’t be bugged.”
“How?”
“Walls are thin and there’s plenty of glass. Picking up the vibrations off them is child’s play.”
“So what do we do?”
“Don’t say anything and we won’t have a problem.”
“How about sneezing?” The bathroom smelled like week-old mold and was getting to his nose.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll keep watch,” Lia added. “But first I want to take a shower.”
She pulled off the heavy black sweater and undershirt she’d been wearing, leaving only a thick gray sports bra between Dean and her breasts. They weren’t large but stood out well against her flat belly. “Excuse me, can I have a little privacy?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Dean, squeezing out the door and into the other room. He picked up the A-2, deciding it would be more useful than the pistol if they were attacked. There were two locks on the door — a fairly useless chain and a better dead bolt — though anyone who really wanted to get in would have the door down in about five seconds. Dean pushed the room’s chair against it but couldn’t find a way to wedge it home. Finally he moved the chair against the wall so that it would keep the door from opening more than halfway.
“What are you doing?” Lia asked, emerging from the shower.
She was completely dressed — somewhat to Dean’s disappointment, he realized.
“Making it harder for anyone to get in.”
“Yeah, that’ll slow ’em down.” Shaking her head, she reached back into the bathroom and took a towel to wrap her wet hair in. Then, palming a pistol so small it looked like a preschooler’s toy, she went out into the hallway. Ninety seconds later, she was back.
Dean watched silently as she took her handheld and hit a quick set of keys. A blurry window opened up on the screen, then split in half. Dean realized it was a video feed from two cameras in the hall.
“They’re the size of nickels,” she said. “I mounted them under that hideous light fixture. It’ll do until morning.” She put the small computer down on the bureau top, then finished toweling her damp hair. “You gonna take a shower?” she asked.
“Nah,” said Dean.
“Suit yourself.” She pulled over the chair so she could sit, positioning it near the bureau and holding the A-2 in her lap.
“What was the gun?” Dean asked.
“Which?”
