No Way Back (23 page)

I completely expect her to crash then. But I underestimate her. She’s level, she’s cool, she’s behaving like a pro.

“You clear on what went down out there?” I say.

She nods. “Of course.”

“What’s your take, Nadya? Planned, or fucked-luck random?”

“I doubt very much it was the generals’ doing,” she says. Takes a deep breath, one only. Then goes on. “It’s completely counterintuitive. They want this deal done smoothly and quietly. I’m quite unknown to them, I’m sure. You’re only one of Kim’s bodyguards. No, it had to be gangsters. The only question is, were they working for somebody who wants to hurt the generals? Surely not. A bodyguard—if they even know of you—with his hooker? Quite low value. Utter waste of time and effort, wouldn’t you say? It must have been your expensive clothes that drew them, darling.”

“Yeah, well, pretty fuckin’ sophisticated for ordinary thugs. Street muggers don’t usually have a tail car where I come from.”

“They do here, sometimes,” she says. “Never seen it done, but I have heard of it before. Works rather well even on a street full of people, in broad daylight. A quick snatch, they’re into the car and away. No one will call the police. No one will note the license number. People just get out of the way, stay out of the way until it’s over. You saw! Then they go on about their business. Like the monkeys.”

“What fuckin’ monkeys?”

“See no evil, hear no evil, et cetera, et cetera,” Nadya says.

“Solid citizens. They deserve to be preyed on.”

“They’re frightened, Terry. What can they do? The police are useless.”

I’m a little juked, I’m pacing. With any luck, Nadya’ll write it off to nervous reaction. I don’t want her to know I feel good. Real good, that I can still make moves like that.

“What’s our status now?” I ask.

“Status? Oh, do you mean will there be any repercussions? Any police nosing around? Of course not.”

“How sure are you?”

“Very.” She pauses. “I was born here. My grandmother still lives here. Vlad is Vlad.”

Vlad is Vlad. Can’t help myself. I start to laugh.

I know Nadya’s looking at me like I’m insane. “Are you okay, Terry? Your brain a bit rattled?”

“I’m fine. I’ll get a headache later. But now, just decompressing,” I say.

“You’re rather old-fashioned, you know. Using a head butt! I’ve not seen that since a brawl between two ancient geezers in a London pub, years and years ago.”

“Ya, ya, ya.” I am feeling kind of embarrassed, not so much by the fight, but by my feelings after. “The situation was too perfect to pass up an admittedly crude but effective technique.”

“I suppose I’ll have to fetch you aspirin. Perhaps an ice bag? Oh, you’ve blood on your shirt, by the way.”

“I’ll throw it away. In fact, right now I’m going to toss all my clothes, take a nice hot shower.”

Nadya places a hand on her hip, tilts her head, regards me for a while, a smile playing about her lips. “Would you mind awfully if Irena joined you?” she says at last.

My heart rises in the rarest way as she moves closer, closer, and into a deep, sweet kiss.

After, as we’re getting dressed, Nadya says, “Are you going to tell Sonny or Mister Kim?”

I laugh. “Oh yeah. Both. Kim especially would love hearing every delicious detail.”

“Yob! I meant our little encounter on the street.”

“No, don’t think so. Might spook them unnecessarily.”

“Indeed,” Nadya says. “I’m afraid, though, I really ought to signal Allison. She’ll want to know what happened, draw her own conclusions.”

She sits on the bed, begins to pull up her fishnets. “Oh, damn! A run. Have to get new ones. And the rhinestone numbers are quite difficult to find.”

“A run? In fishnets?”

“Oh, forgot you’re a pantyhose expert. Well, a small tear, actually.” She laughs. But there seems to be a small hollow pocket in the sound.

Too soon, she leaves, but the sense of her remains deep within me. She’s going to her room, going to contact Allison, I suppose. Or maybe not.

TOMMY THE WIZARD’S FACE IS GLOWING WITH PLASMA
light from the screen of his laptop, and deep geek love. His fingers are itching to glide over the keyboard, like it’s a synthesizer, he’s a rock star, and he’s going to dazzle us all with his chops.

But first he’s got to angle the disk toward the light. “Yeah, engraved with the Siemens code pattern, but that’s easily faked,” he says. “I’ll scan, do a virus check, make sure it’s not a botched bootleg.”

Tommy slips the disk into the waiting slot of his computer, lets his fingers do the talking for a while.

Nobody’s been listening to him, anyway. Everyone in this spare, clean room that takes up most of the fourth, and top, floor of the PrimorEx building has been concentrating on the quiet riot in his own head. Except maybe Westley, who incited it all.

We’d come from the Hyundai in the two Ladas—Sonny and I with Kim in the first, Tommy and Yoon in the second—and pulled up in front of PrimorEx exactly at five-thirty. One of those turn-of-the-century build
ings, newly stuccoed a pale green, decorative stone around the windows and entrance freshly white, new reproductions of the original curly black wrought-iron bars over the windows. Which are, I’m sure, bullet-and blast-resistant glass. No pretense about the entrance door, though. Thick stainless-steel rods fronting that glass, a hardened steel plate with bank-type locks. And a guard inside, armed and wearing the winter camo shirt and pants all the private security at all the currency-exchange offices and hotel entrances seem to favor. Not military, just local fashion, I suppose.

The heavy’s turned two knobs and swung the door inward before we even reach it. Small lobby, two doors on the left with no knobs or handles, just locks. I spot two cameras high in corners. He ushers us into the elevator, presses the button for four, steps aside to resume his post as the doors glide shut. Kind of cramped, what with Sonny toting the black hard-sider, Tommy clutching his computer case, me holding my attaché. Only Kim and Yoon carry nothing.

Then the doors glide open and hold. We’re facing that one big room, lit by halogens recessed in the ceiling, but dimmed. Walls look like brushed aluminum. No windows, one door in the far rear with a numbered electronic lock pad. I sense Sonny shift his grip on the hard-sider, angle his body slightly sideways. He doesn’t like rooms with such limited egress any more than I do.

Dominant feature’s an aluminum table, maybe two meters wide and three long, dead center. There’s half a dozen leather task chairs around it, two big, flat LCD screens and keyboards at either end, tower processors in carts just underneath each. A flush black strip runs the center of the table, has what looks like lots of power plugs, USB ports, firewire connections, a couple of modems wired in. “Pretty cool,” Tommy mutters, break
ing etiquette and brushing past Mister Kim toward that table.

Bolgakov and Tchitcherine, standing before the table with arms wide and big smiles, just like at the Versailles, ignore him. Sonny steps out of the elevator and moves to the left side, back to the wall, Kim and Yoon walk toward the generals. I slide out, keeping tight to the wall on the right. The elevator door closes.

Big Russian hugs from the generals. Kim stiffens visibly. Can’t see his face, but I figure he’s pasted a smile on it and will keep it there despite his distaste. I bend at the knees, scanning, set my attaché on the floor beside my right foot, withdraw the cell from my suitcoat pocket with my left hand, keep it close to my leg, out of sight. Keep my eyes on the same two Russians who dined with Sonny and me. They’re standing at ease on the far side of the table. One’s watching Sonny. The other’s supposed to be watching me, but Tommy moving about the table, checking out the center strip, opening up his case and revealing his computer, distracts him.

Watching him watching Tommy distracts me, too, goddammit. So I’m juked when I hear that familiar hollow voice: “Very pleased to see you, Mister Kim. I believe you’ll find the arrangements excellent in every particular.”

Eyes follow ears. And there, partly screened by the generals, the computer table, the two Ivans, are Westley and JoeBoy, no merchant seaman now but suited up like the rest of us. He winks at me. Fuck!

“Mister Westley, a pleasant surprise,” Kim says. It has to be costing him to keep an edge off his voice. “I don’t seem to recall that we’d planned for you to be here.”

“Oh, a last-minute decision, Mister Kim. I thought I should be here, as a sort of facilitator. The generals wel
comed my proposal. Unfortunately there was no timely, secure way to consult you. Actually, you see, I’m not in Vladivostok. To anyone’s knowledge, at least.”

Yeah, the fuckin’ Man Who Isn’t There. Westley all over. Does that “anyone” include Allison? I’m wondering. Or Nadya?

Kim’s maintaining. His pilot’s filed a flight plan for tonight. Our baggage has already been taken out to the Gulfstream. We’re cleared to take off at nine-thirty. He likes to stick to plan. He’s used to control. I’m sure he’s never considered himself Westley’s man in this entire deal. I doubt he knew we referred to him as a “package.” I suspect he’s never understood he’s considered an asset as well, that being an asset means you cede a lot of control. Westley’s been super-slick in his manipulations. Kim probably never felt the strings Westley attached to him, one by one. Maybe he does now. But Kim’s smart and fast. He goes with what he’s faced with.

“In any case, I’m pleased, Mister Westley,” he says. “Now, if our friends the generals will kindly produce the merchandise, we can get on with the tests.”

Yoon repeats that in Russian. Tchitch smiles, reaches back across the table, palm up. The skinhead Ivan takes a matte metal square from his pocket, lays it on Tchitch’s palm. Tchitch hands it to Mister Kim. It looks like a CD jewel box, thicker than normal, and made of titanium, not plastic.

“Exactly what we promised, Mister Kim. As your man”—he nods at Tommy, who’s practically panting like a dog at the sight of the box—“will soon confirm, I’m certain.”

That’s when Tommy opens the case, angles the disk, mentions the Siemens code, boots up the disk, starts key
boarding. That’s when I go from condition one to red hot, my fingers the only safety.

“Virus-free, okay, you little beauty. Now show me what you got.” Tommy’s talking to himself. Not murmuring. Talking loud. “Wow! Look at the codes here. Run ’em, run ’em, run ’em. C’mon, get to the good stuff. Okay! Entry made. Holy shit! Beautiful fail-safes, amazing reroutes.”

I see Westley smiling at Mister Kim, who’s moved closer to Tommy and is gazing, rapt, at intricate columns of scrolling numbers and schematics studded with electrical design symbols, though he can’t possibly understand what Tommy sees there. He can feel the enthusiasm, though. Tommy’s broadcasting that clear enough.

And suddenly I know absolutely we’re safe. Whatever this shit is, Westley badly wants Kim to deliver it to Pyongyang. He needs Kim to get it there. That’s his sole goal in this entire op, even if motive remains opaque to me. He’s only here to make sure it happens, make sure potential loose cannons like the generals’ heavies, me and Sonny, don’t go off over some phantom threat. There is no threat. But Westley knows our type, knows the potential for ADs. He’s there to keep it chill, see Kim safely away with that software in his pocket.

I’m not sure Sonny’s with this. No way for me to clue him. I’ll bet the generals’ boys, crude as they are, have been briefed to death—shit, probably threatened with death if they make so much as a provocative face.

Nobody here really knows what Tommy’s doing, but everybody seems to be drawing closer, wanting a look at his screen.

“Man, this is art,” Tommy says. “Put it in the mainframe, all you got to do is plug in the coordinates. Perfect.”

Coordinates. Don’t like that. Sounds too much like a fire-control system. I move, very slow, very easy, until I’m closer to Kim and Tchitch, only two quick steps from getting between Westley and JoeBoy. It’s unconscious. There’s no reason. My body just does it.

“You’re certain this is fully functional?” Kim asks.

“As sure as I can be with this,” Tommy gestures toward his computer. “Let me just put it through our mainframe in Busan for a super-check.”

He takes a neon-blue box out of a pocket in his computer case, rewires so the laptop’s connected to the box, not the table strip. “Encryption,” he mutters. “DSL…DSL…Ah, there you are.” He wires the box to the strip. Removes the disk, lays it tenderly in the jewel case, then sweeps over the keyboard until numbers are scrolling down the screen in a dozen or more columns. Every couple of seconds, a column freezes, one number highlighted. “We’re connected. All secure,” Tommy says when the last column stops. He slips the disk back into his computer. “Okay, Busan Big Boy. Read this.”

Can’t look at that screen anymore. The flickers are jolting my brain. Glance at Westley. He’s grinning big, for him. Check Sonny. No expression, no Buddha smile, just watching, tight and hard. But he’s put his case on the floor, unbuttoned his suit jacket. He’s hot as I was. The generals are alternately beaming at each other, at Westley, at Kim, and back again. Nobody notices. Their boys are staring at featureless wall, avoiding eye contact with everybody. JoeBoy’s eyes are half-shut. Don’t like that. That’s his condition-one look. But I remind myself Westley will do anything to get Kim and the package out of here and on to Pyongyang.

“Why are there more disks in the case?” Kim suddenly asks.

“Spares. Originals, just like the one being tested,”
Westley says. “Best to have original backups. Copies can be faulty. An original can be damaged. So, backups.”

“Ohh, ohh, this is looking radically good,” Tommy says. “Architecture’s perfect, Mister Kim. One sector of the grid approaches blow-out, the program shuts it down. Plus, here’s the neat part, the two adjoining sectors as well. Sort of a firewall. Prevents a failure in one sector from cascading down the entire grid until you have total failure in every sector. Which has been a big problem up North. Total grid failure. No electricity in the entire country. Zero. Zilch. Their system’s so monolithic and outdated it’s amazing they ever have any power.”

“Is this a plug-in fix?” Kim asks.

“Almost. If you can get me free access to Pyongyang’s system mainframe for a month, I can reconfigure the system into smaller sectors, one by one, and then overlay this control program,” the Wizard says. “The whole North’ll have a system then as good as any in the world, at its heart. Of course they’re going to have to modernize, replace almost all substations and other infrastructure. But we all knew they’d have to do that anyway, in stages. And they’d still have the cascade problem, without this control system.”

“Good, very good,” Kim says. “Generals, I believe you have delivered what you promised. I’ll buy this product on the agreed terms.”

Yoon translates this. Tchitch can hardly contain himself. He’s beaming like a lighthouse. Don’t think he’s even aware he’s rubbing his palms together like a little boy on Christmas morning.

“Mister Park, the case please,” Kim says, and Sonny brings the hard-sider over to the table, gently lays it down. He’s snapping open the latches, lifting up the top, the generals are crowding close, even Westley’s craning his neck for a look.

The cell in my palm vibrates.

“Lovely,” Tchitch is crooning, stroking the bundled euros with one hand. I hear “Bright Westley. Bright JoeBoy.” Fuck. It’s Allison’s voice. Has to be Allison. But I won’t go on that. Not on JoeBoy. What if the voice is digital?

“Shall we?” Tchitch is saying, waving a banded bundle of hundreds like a fan as Bolgakov puts a bill counter next to the case.

“Say again,” I whisper to my palm. “Reverse!”

“JoeBoy bright, Westley bright.” It is Allison. Live transmission. “Go now!”

Reflex, muscle memory, moves. A practiced hand can pull and fire in less than a second. Take a step forward, drawing the Wilson with my right, the XD with my left, swinging the pistols in a short swift arc until my arms cross with the muzzle of the Wilson almost touching JoeBoy’s temple, the XD muzzle millimeters from Westley’s. Slap triggers simultaneously. It sounds like one shot.

Spin, back to the wall, Wilson pointed at Sonny and the generals, XD at the two Ivans. Peripheral catches JoeBoy and Westley toppling fast, spray of blood and brains hitting the Wizard, the hard-sider, the cash.

“Don’t flinch, cocksuckers,” I scream in Russian. In English, “A burn, Sonny! Sonny, Westley burning Kim! Get Kim out of here. Go now! Go! Go!”

Kim’s rigid. There’s a dangerous second, Sonny fixing me with those glittery black obsidian slits. Oh fuck, Sonny. No! But he slams the case shut, puts an arm around Kim’s shoulders, spins him, pushes him toward the elevator, hits the call button. I hear it whir.

God, God, hurry the fuck up. “Tommy! Yoon! Follow Sonny. Now, goddammit! Move now!

The elevator door glides open, Sonny pushes Kim so hard he falls in a corner. The Wizard and Yoon scramble
in. The steel panels are almost closed when Sonny turns his head, smiling that Buddha smile, takes one last look at me.

Exactly then the rear-wall door blows into the room with a crack and a blast-wave that lifts me off my feet, shoves violently, drops me flat on the floor.