Blindfold Game

“Call your bank,” Smith said.

Peter’s eyebrows shot up in less than genuine surprise. He produced a cell phone and dialed a number. A voice answered. He asked a question, waited for a reply, and disco

Smith told him.

Peter stroked his chin. “Hmm. Yes, I supposed it could be done. But-”

“It will be expensive,” Smith said. “I know. Will the amount cover it?”

“When?” Peter said.

Smith gave him the same answer he had given Fang. “I wish to be operational by January fifteenth.”

“Where please to ship?”

“ Petropavlovsk.”

Peter spread his hands. “I see no problems.”

“Then let us proceed,” Smith said.

“By your command,” said Peter again, rising to his feet and bowing. “It is, as always, a pleasure giving you the business, my old friend. Dmitri! Call the guests for our car.” He looked back at Smith. “Will you to stay the night?”

Smith shook his head. “Thank you, but no. We have another appointment elsewhere.”

Peter sighed, spread his hands in eloquent dismay, and said to Dmitri, “And take them to the airport.”

The door closed behind them and Peter’s smile vanished. He pulled out his phone again and dialed a number. A recorded message played, and he punched in a code. A voice said, “Yes?”

Without identifying himself he said, “I have had an unusual order.”

“Four o’clock.” The voice hung up.

Peter disco

Still. Better men than he had been tripped up by hanging on to the same cell phone for too long. Those Americans and their damned satellite technology. Their ingenuity was admirable but their nosiness was not. It was getting harder by the day to make an honest living.

He went to the window, opened it, and let the cell phone fall seven stories to the alley below where it shattered into a thousand pieces. “Masha, my little dove!” he said, raising his voice.

The door opened and the beautiful young brunette looked in. “Yes, Peter?”

“Get our coats. We are going out.”

AT FOUR O’CLOCK PETER was at the railway station, guidebook in hand, face raised to admire the dome and point out its highlights to the young brunette who hung on his arm and his every word.

“Truly magnificent,” a voice said at his elbow. It was the voice from the phone, only this time it was speaking a flawless and idiomatic Russian with the barest hint of Romanov in it. Peter turned to greet him, beaming.

“But yes, magnificent,” Peter said enthusiastically in the same language. “An architectural marvel, and yet a working building in the heart of our beautiful city!”

“The archways over the stairs have always reminded me of a Moorish castle.”

Peter beamed at his new friend. “But yes, how clever of you to notice!” There followed an exchange on the Islamic influence on that part of the world. Suleyman the Magnificent was mentioned, as were his mosques, his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, and his wife Roxelana, the latter with some eloquent eye rolling. At last Peter said, “But this is dry work. Masha, my sweet, could you find us some coffee?” He turned to the man. “And for you as well, sir?”

“I couldn’t possibly trespass on your hospitality, sir.”

“Nonsense! Coffee for three, Masha, my little dove.”

The girl moved off, clutching the wad of cash Peter had handed her- from which Peter would expect no change, a constant feature of the openhanded generosity which had so endeared him to successive companions-and the two men resumed their adoration of the architecture. They consulted the guidebook frequently, pointing from various passages on the pages to the relevant crown molding, and entered into what anyone listening would have heard as an enthusiastic debate on the relative merits of Doric columns versus Corinthian.

“I see what you mean,” the man said. “Oh, thank you, thank you very much, my dear. You are too kind.” He accepted the cup from Masha, contriving to capture her hand and press a clumsy kiss to the back of it.

Masha’s eyes fluttered, and if she didn’t actually blush she did manage an up-from-under look through her eyelashes that caused the other gentleman to spill coffee down the front of his coat. He drank what was left, exchanged a few more pleasantries with Peter, kissed Masha’s hand a second time with only slightly more panache, and took himself off.

“You are a vamp, my little Masha,” Peter said, laughing. “Your flirting frightened the gentleman.”

The girl opened her eyes very wide. “But no, Peter, I was not flirting with him! I was merely being polite!”

He hugged her and kissed her, and then kissed her again. “I adore you, my Masha! Shall we go home?”

Masha, who had been standing on a marble floor in four-inch heels for over an hour, agreed, even if it did mean another interminable evening with Apollo and Starbuck. At least in Peter’s apartment the vodka was Stoli, the caviar was beluga, and the bed, when Peter eventually let one sleep, was a Verio Heritage Limited, specially imported.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

HUGH’S TEMPER WAS HOT improved by the sight of his overflowing mailbox or by the stack of message slips held down on his desk by the soapstone bear paperweight. The bear had been a gift from Sara the last Christmas they were in high school together. He wanted to pick it up and heave it through the window.

He didn’t, of course, but sitting on the impulse just pissed him off more.

There had, in fact, been no moment during which he had not been thoroughly pissed off since he woke up alone in his Anchorage hotel room yesterday morning. His admin assistant had taken one look at his face as he came in the door this morning and speech had withered on her tongue. He took a deep breath and let it out, uncapped his vente quadruple shot americano, took a big swallow to get his heart started, and began wading through the mess.

There was the usual assortment of pleas for help from agents and in formers in the field, from Tokyo to Taiwan to Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai to Bangkok to Singapore to Calcutta. They wanted to pay off a source, they needed to verify intelligence, they had had to bribe a local official for a satellite uplink. The official had discovered who he was really dealing with and had doubled the already astronomical price. Hugh was in no mood to be generous with the hard-earned tax dollars of the American citizen this morning, and he rejected all but one request out of hand. A high-ranking Pakistani military officer had made an oblique approach to a junior officer of the American embassy at a cocktail party in Karachi, and the consul had handed the contact off to the case officer in Delhi, who had confirmed the identity of the officer in question and was recommending the agency make the officer an offer for his services. A walk-in snitch, Hugh’s favorite kind, and he e-mailed the case officer to proceed. There was too damn little in the way of human source intelligence available to the Directorate of Intelligence these days and he was willing to investigate every possible source no matter how unlikely, as these social first contacts too often proved to be. There were a dozen open cases that needed monitoring, some that needed orders issued for further action, and one that needed closing because the source had disappeared, which meant he had probably been discovered, which meant that he was either dead or in the wind. The intel the source had produced had bordered on hearsay and speculation, but he’d been on the payroll for six years, during which time he’d come up with maybe three really useful pieces of information, one concerning the sale of CBRN weapons components to North Korea, and the case officer in Shanghai had thought they ought to do something for the family. Hugh almost rejected this request, too, until he realized he was in no frame of mind to be making this kind of decision. He e-mailed the man in Shanghai and told him to do what he thought appropriate within budgetary constraints.