“What in the hell have you done?! Are you insane?”
“Relax, Herb,” said Bennings, almost casually.
“Relax?! What are you doing here? Who’s she? Who’s the stiff? Five years of deep-cover penetration and you’ve just blown everything!”
“You’ve been blown for some time now,” said Bennings, as if Sinclair were insignificant.
“Bennings. The word is out. You’ve gone rogue. You are in such deep trouble. And coming here, like this?” He shook his head. “Whatever your problem is, I won’t help. Take it outside right now. You walk out that door and I’ll give you three hours before I call it in. And I’ll do that only because you saved my life once.”
“Sit down, do it slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.” The tone in Kit’s voice had sharpened. He flashed Sinclair a look that indicated he wasn’t joking.
Sinclair took a big step forward. “Sit down, my ass! You—”
Kit fired a round into an armoire behind Sinclair, shattering wood. Sinclair stopped in his tracks.
“The next one goes into your shin or your knee. Now sit down, slowly, hands where I can see them.”
Sinclair sat down. Bennings took a long pull on a bottle of Dos Equis that he’d liberated from the fridge in the kitchen. He stared for a long time, knowing it made Sinclair even more unnerved.
“Where can I find Viktor Popov?”
“Popov?” Sinclair looked incredulous. “How do I know where he is? You’re the one who was meeting with him every week.”
Kit fired again, putting the bullet into the leg of the wooden chair Sinclair sat on.
“You are so dead, Bennings.”
“You’re the one who’s dead, Herb, if you don’t come clean.”
“Come clean? You shoot me and there is no rock on planet Earth the Special Activities Division will not look under to skin you alive.”
“But I’ve already poisoned you, so if I shoot you, it’ll only be in the shin or knee to get your attention.”
The blood drained from Sinclair’s face, and his jaw dropped slightly. Bennings held up a vial, and Sinclair’s eyes riveted on it.
“You poisoned me?”
Kit nodded. “This is the antidote for the greasy stuff that was on the doorknob when you came in. Pretty exotic toxin, absorbs through the skin. Your body will start to ache, you’ll break out in a cold sweat, vision will start to blur… but you have some time yet.”
Sinclair’s visage had been a mask of righteous anger, but Kit saw an unmistakable crack of uncertainty now spread across his face like a windshield that was slowly shattering.
Kit gestured to Yulana, and she pulled the sheet from the body on the floor. Sergei Lopatin, the handsome guy who had been romancing embassy employee Julie Rufo, lay still on the floor.
“Remember Romeo here?” asked Kit.
“Is he dead?”
“Put it this way: he’s finally eligible for that management position he always wanted.”
Sinclair’s eyes darted around the room, but they looked unfocused, like he was trying to concoct a plan but couldn’t think straight.
“Sergei was a bad guy, who you set up to be a patsy. You kept selling me on the idea that the communications specialist at the embassy, Julie Rufo, was our third mole, giving up the store to handsome here.
“Sergei talked quite a bit. He was FSB but secretly worked for Popov. He told me where to find Viktor. He even told me Rufo was no mole, that his job was to romance her so as to throw suspicion on her. You were going to generate dummy evidence against her. But then, I’m boring you with stuff you already know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t know that asshole, except from having surveilled him with you.”
“I know otherwise.”
“Screw you, dead man.”
“Check the time, because are you really going to commit suicide?”
Sinclair didn’t look so good. He was obviously feeling something inside, and he apparently didn’t like what he felt. A sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead, and he gritted his teeth as if from some inner pain.
“I didn’t come to Moscow for you,” said Kit. “You’re not important to me. Go over to the Russians—I don’t give a damn anymore. The agency has already tried to whack me, so screw Washington. I want Popov. Give me what I want and you can walk out that door.”
“You said Sergei gave you the information you need.”
“I want confirmation from you.”
Kit could see Sinclair was wavering. The veteran CIA officer slowly removed his glasses, ran a hand across his eyes, and blinked.
“The symptoms are becoming more pronounced, aren’t they?”
Sinclair looked very ill. “My mouth is dry. I need a drink.”
“Later. Right now, you need to talk to me.”
“Yes, I have information on Popov. And a thousand other Russians in this town. That’s no secret, it’s my job to know things.”
“When did you start working for him?”
“I don’t”—Sinclair almost doubled over from sudden, stabbing pain—“work for him.”
The poison was clearly working, but Sinclair had yet to incriminate himself. Kit knew there wasn’t much time, but he couldn’t appear rushed. “So what’s the arrangement, then? Did he approach you? Did you approach him? Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and Christians in Action dumped you here. They expect you to survive on scraps, don’t they? Five years undercover on, what? A GS-12 pay grade? Sure, sure, there are bonuses and other perks and expenses they cover, but damn, those five-hundred-dollar-an-hour hookers you see a couple of times a week, I mean, that starts to get expensive. The girls are part of a pool that services Popov’s hackers—Sergei here told me about that. Anyway, hell, just going out for dinner and drinks costs—”
“What did you dose me with, asshole?!”
“Relax, I have the antidote right here. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I remember how you complained that those Langley suits have been making their careers on your back. For five years they’ve kept squeezing and wringing every last drop from you, wanting you to do more and more with people you didn’t even know, risking your cover, because what were you to them? Just a cipher. A file number.
“And so you decided to start selling some of what you knew. Or did Popov roll you up and give you no real choice but to sell out?”
“Give me that antidote!”
“Why? Decided you want to live, after all?”
“Give it to me!”
Kit just looked at him. Sinclair was one tough bastard. Even in death. “Where is Popov’s HQ?”
“Nikolskaya Ulitsa, number nine, right off Red Square.”
“Is Yulana Petkova’s daughter there? The three-year-old they kidnapped to blackmail her mom?”
“Yes, that’s what I heard.”
He’s speaking faster now, thought Kit. He’s weakening, he knows he’s out of options. I’ve almost got him. “What’s the real target in Las Vegas?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar!”
“It’s about information. Some massive database he will exploit… sell access to. He’s already raking in money from it. He’ll make billions. Megabillions.”
Sinclair winced and held his stomach. Sweat dripped from his chin as he blinked his eyes.
Kit lifted a travel bag from the end table next to him and heaved it toward Sinclair.
“We found thirty million rubles in your mattress. Where’s the rest? Numbered account in Dubai? Vanuatu?”
Sinclair squeezed his eyes shut from the pain. And maybe from the questions.
“How much did you sell out for? How much?!”