He had trained them well, none of them asked superfluous questions, merely acknowledged the order with curt replies. Then they rang off in order to commence the preparations Arkadin had blueprinted for them months ago. Each captain had his specific role to play, each was activating his piece of a plan that literally stretched across the globe. Maslov wanted war, that’s precisely what he was going to get, and not merely on a single front.
Arkadin shook his head and barked a laugh. This moment was always in the wind, as inevitable as their next breath. Now that it was upon him there was a palpable sense of relief. No more grinning through gritted teeth, no more pretending a friendship where only bitter enmity existed.
You’re a dead man, Dimitri Ilyinovich,Arkadin thought. You just don’t know it yet.
A touch of watery pink had tinged the sky, and he was almost at Chaaya’s. Time to make the difficult call. He punched in an eleven-digit number. A male drone at the other end said “Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency” in Russian. The now infamous FSB-2 that, under its leader, a man named Viktor Cherkesov, had become the most powerful and feared agency within the Russian government, surpassing even the FSB, the KGB’s successor.
“Colonel Karpov, if you please,” Arkadin said.
“It’s four AM. Colonel Karpov is unavailable,” the drone said in a voice not unlike one of the undead from a George Romero film.
“So am I,” Arkadin said, honing his sardonic edge, “but I’m making the time to talk to him.”
“And who might you be?” the emotionless voice said in his ear.
“My name is Arkadin, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin. Go find your boss.”
There was a quick catch of the drone’s breath, then, “Hold the line.”
“Sixty seconds,” Arkadin said, looking at his watch and starting the countdown, “no more.”
Fifty-eight seconds later a series of clicks was followed by a deep, gruff voice that said, “This is Colonel Karpov.”
“Boris Illyich, we’ve almost met so many times over the years.”
“Would that I could cross out the almost.How do I know I’m speaking to Leonid Danilovich Arkadin?”
“Dimitri Maslov is still giving you fits, isn’t he?”
When Karpov gave no response, Arkadin continued. “Colonel, who else could give you the Kazanskaya on a silver platter?”
Karpov laughed harshly. “The real Arkadin would never turn on his mentor. Whoever you are, you’re wasting my time. Good-bye.”
Arkadin gave him an address hidden in the industrial outskirts of Moscow.
Karpov was silent for a moment, but Arkadin, listening carefully, could hear the harsh soughing of his breathing. Everything depended on this conversation, on Karpov believing that he was, in fact, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and that he was telling the truth.
“What am I to make of this address?” the colonel said after a time.
“It’s a warehouse. From the outside it looks exactly like the hundred or so on either side of it. Inside, as well.”
“You’re boring me, gospadinWhoever-You-Are.”
“The third door on the left near the back will take you into the men’s room. Go past the urinal trough to the last stall on the right, which has no toilet, only a door in the rear wall.”
There was only a moment’s hesitation before Karpov said, “And then?”
“Go in heavy,” Arkadin said. “Armed to the teeth.”
“You’re saying that I should take a squad with-”
“No! You go alone. Furthermore, you don’t sign out, you don’t tell a soul where you’re going. Tell them you’re going to the dentist or for an afternoon fuck, whatever your comrades will believe.”
Another pause, this one dark with menace. “Who’s the mole inside my office?”
“Ah, now, Boris Illyich, don’t be so ungrateful. You don’t want to spoil my fun, not after the gift I’ve just given you.” Arkadin took a breath. Having witnessed the colonel take the bait, he judged the moment right to sink the hook all the way in. “But were I you, I wouldn’t use the singular- molesis more like it.”
“What-? Now, listen to me-!”
“You’d best get rolling, Colonel, or your targets will have packed up for the day.” He chuckled. “Here’s my number, I know it didn’t come up on your phones. Call me when you return and we’ll talk names and, quite possibly, much, much more.”
He cut the connection before Karpov could say another word.
Near the end of the workday Delia Trane was sitting at her desk looking over a three-dimensionally rendered computer model of a diabolically clever explosive device, trying to find a way to disarm it before the timer went off. A buzzer deep inside the bomb would sound the instant she failed-if she cut the wrong wire with her virtual cutter or moved it inordinately. She herself had created the software program that had rendered the virtual bomb, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t having the devil’s own time figuring out a way to disarm it.
Delia was a plain-looking woman in her midthirties with pale eyes, short-cropped hair, and skin deeply burnished by the genes from her Colombian mother. Despite her relative youth and her often ferocious temper, she was one of the ATF’s most coveted explosives experts. She was also Soraya Moore’s best friend, and when one of the guards from reception called to say Soraya was in the lobby she asked him to send her right up.
The two women had met through work, had sparked off each other’s feistiness and independence, recognizing and appreciating kindred spirits, so difficult to find in the hermetically sealed public sector inside the Beltway. Because they had met on one of Soraya’s clandestine assignments they had no need to conceal from each other their life’s work and what it meant to them, the number one relationship killer in DC. Further, both of them realized that, for better or for worse, their entire lives were bound up in their respective services, that they were unsuited for anything but work they couldn’t talk about with civilians, which in a way validated their existence, their independence as women, and their importance irrespective of the gender bias that existed here as virtually everywhere else in Washington. Together they daily took on the DC establishment like a pair of Amazons.
Delia returned to the contemplation of her model, which to her was like an entire world in miniature. Within seconds she was completely immersed in her problem, so she didn’t give a second thought to what her friend was doing here at this time of day. When a shadow fell over her work she looked up into Soraya’s face and knew something was terribly wrong.
“For God’s sake, sit down,” she said, pulling over a spare chair, “before you fall down. What the hell happened, did someone die?”
“Only my job.”
Delia looked at her quizzically. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been canned, fired, sent to the showers,” Soraya said. “Terminated without extreme prejudice-but certainly with prejudice,” she added with grim humor.
“What the hell happened?”
“I’m Egyptian, Muslim, a woman. Our new DCI doesn’t need any other reasons.”
“Not to worry, I know a good lawyer who-”
“Forget it.”
Delia frowned. “You’re not going to let them get away with this. I mean, it’s discrimination, Raya.”
Soraya waved a hand. “I’m not spending the next two years of my life going up against CI and Secretary Halliday.”
Delia leaned back. “It goes that high up, huh?”
“How could they do this to me?” Soraya said.
Delia rose and went around her desk to hug her friend. “I know, it’s like being jilted by a lover, someone you thought you knew but who turned out to be using you and, worse, was betraying you all the while.”
“Now I know how Jason felt,” Soraya said morosely. “All the times he’s pulled CI’s hand out of the fire and what did he get for it? He was hunted down like a dog.”