“When were you planning on telling me this?”
“I was getting to it before we were interrupted by our friend there,” Dwyer said, pointing to the surveillance monitor.
“Is this how Garin typically solves problems? By killing people?” Olivia’s exasperation increased as she spoke.
Dwyer paused as if seriously considering the question. “Pretty much,” he said, and shrugged.
“Dan,” Olivia admonished, “this isn’t funny. Your friend can’t go roaming the countryside killing people. That’s not a prescription for enhancing his credibility. Where are those brains of his you keep talking about? He’s in very deep—”
“Excrement,” Dwyer finished. “Yeah, I told him the same thing this afternoon. He’s a big boy. He knows exactly how this would look. Mike would kill them only if they were about to kill him. His brains aren’t very much use if he’s dead.”
Olivia softened a bit. “But he’s—”
“No buts, Olivia,” Dwyer interrupted. “Mike is our best bet at determining exactly what’s going on with the Iranians and Russians. And clearly, based on the events of the past few days, something serious is going on. Understand one thing, though.” Dwyer leaned forward in his chair and pointed a finger at Olivia. “Mike is going to kill more people before this is over. If he doesn’t, he’s dead. So be prepared.”
There was a buzz. A security monitor showed Matt and Carl standing outside the door to the vault. Dwyer pressed a button and the door opened.
“We’ve combed the grounds and the perimeter’s secure,” Matt said. “We’ve also alerted the police. They’ll do a standard drive-by. Would you like us to escort Ms. Perry home?”
“Ms. Perry will be joining us for dinner and will remain here tonight,” Dwyer said. Dwyer turned to Olivia. “I hope you don’t mind. I’m not that fond of the idea of you being in your apartment tonight. Unless you can wrangle an invitation to spend the night at the White House, this is the most secure residence you’ll find in the Washington metro area.”
“I guess this is where I’m supposed to politely decline and say I don’t need the protection, but after everything that’s happened, I’d be foolish not to accept the offer. The only problem is, I don’t have any toiletries or change of clothes. Something tells me, though, that’s not going to be an issue?”
“No. We should have everything you’ll need, and if we don’t, I think you can probably convince Matt to make a run to the closest store,” Dwyer assured her. He gestured ceremoniously toward Carl. “This gentleman makes the best gumbo outside Louisiana, and it tastes just as good in the kitchen as it does in the formal dining room. So if you don’t mind, why don’t you join us there in about an hour?”
“Sounds good,” Olivia said, looking forward to the chance to gather more information about Garin’s adventures in Iran. “Can you show me to my room?”
“Matt will be happy to. Since Carl will be doing the cooking, Ray will go along to keep an eye on Matt.” All four of the former special operators were grinning like schoolboys. Olivia smiled too.
“Oh,” Dwyer said as an afterthought. “And watch out for Max.”
“Who’s Max?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The best palliative, Chernin found, was to keep repeating to himself the phrase “Just a few days more.” He repeated it both in his mind and out loud. He repeated it when one of the Iranians would give him a hateful look for drinking vodka. He repeated it when the North Korean technicians asked the same infernal question for the hundredth time. He repeated it most often when his boss, Stetchkin, called.
There remained little substantive work for him to do. He had come in under budget and ahead of schedule. For that, Stetchkin had rewarded him with a series of threats and rebukes, reciting all of Chernin’s deficiencies. But Stetchkin had also made good on the bonuses, deposited timely in Chernin’s account and in the correct amounts. And a premium, of all things, was added to the last bonus.
The bonuses and premium would permit Chernin a comfortable retirement. He would be able to fulfill his plan to buy a small place in the warmest village he could find on the Black Sea. He would read, boat, and make leisurely excursions to scenic destinations throughout southern Europe. He would, in short, stop living like a character from a Chekhov play.
The anticipation of these pursuits should have lifted the spirits of a man in Chernin’s position. Instead, he became more depressed as his time on the project drew to a close.
Chernin was a pragmatist, a realist. And a pessimist. He lacked a capacity for self-delusion. As such, he understood clearly that the cause of his depression was the project’s imminent success. He had presided over an enterprise that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocents. The fact that he was being generously rewarded for his brilliant management of the project depressed him further still. The project was an abomination. Profiting from it was evil.
During the early stages of the endeavor, its potential consequences were too remote in time to give Chernin much pause. Then, as work proceeded, the scale of the damage the project would cause continued to make the effects too enormous to grasp.
But now the project was complete. And although Chernin had no capacity for self-delusion, he had a healthy capacity for avoidance. He tried to ignore the purposes of what he’d been working on for the last three years. But he could avoid them no longer.
Chernin wasn’t a man given to frequent introspection. He rarely gave much thought to whether he was a good man, a bad man, or something in between. He was more concerned with survival than self-evaluation.
Lately, however, he’d asked himself what kind of man gives his best efforts to an endeavor that would cause horrific suffering. For a while he had compared himself to those who had worked on the Manhattan Project. Those scientists had created a terrible instrument that had extinguished tens of thousands of lives indiscriminately and instantly.
But his inability to engage in self-delusion ensured that the comparison was short-lived. Those men had created a terrible weapon for the purpose of bringing a war to an end, to ultimately save the estimated millions of lives that would have perished with an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Chernin’s work had no such noble purpose, regardless of the deranged rationalizations of the mullahs in Tehran or the sterile explanations of the schemers in the Kremlin.
At another point, he thought a better comparison might be to the crew of the Enola Gay. After all, like them, he was simply carrying out the orders of his superiors with no real knowledge of the ramifications of such orders. But again, the crew members of the Enola Gay were on a mission to end a war, not start one. Chernin quickly resigned himself to the fact that the most apt comparison was to the engineers of the Final Solution, those efficient ciphers who asserted at Nuremberg that they were merely following orders. And that really depressed him.
He resorted to vodka more frequently. It helped temporarily, but afterward he would often be even more despondent. At such times he would occasionally stroll along the catwalks outside his office, silently cursing the circumstances that had placed him here with these insufferable wretches.
In the last few months he had found a rather unlikely companion with whom to commiserate. Although Chernin had mentioned a few irrelevancies about the project to Mansur, it was the North Korean technician, Dong Sung Park, in whom he most frequently confided.
Most of the North Koreans were a source of aggravation for Chernin. They seemed perpetually intent on demonstrating their competence in missile technology. They weren’t shy about giving unsolicited advice and recommending changes in protocols. Even by Russian standards, they were abrupt and undiplomatic.