Having followed Latham’s career since he was a brick agent in Robbery, Randall knew his boss’s CV backward and forward. He’d been involved in most of the big ones — Kocher, Pollard, Walker, and just six months ago, the capture of former-KGB illegal and fugitive Yuri Vorsalov. But what impressed Randall most when he finally got his long-awaited transfer was that Latham was a regular guy — a “stand-up guy” in FBI parlance.
Quiet, unassuming, and quick to share credit, Latham was not the Hollywood image of a spy hunter: medium height, wiry, and bald save a monkish fringe of salt-and-pepper hair. Latham was an “everyman.” You could pass him on the street and never give him a second glance, which is exactly what so many of his targets had done.
This morning Latham was preoccupied. Randall knew he’d been called out the night before by Harry Owens, that it involved a homicide, but that was all — almost all, that is. “We’re gonna get a hot one, Paul,” Latham had said upon walking into his office. “Clear your plate.”
If the “hot one” was in fact this homicide, there had to be a connection to his boss’s past. But what? Randall wondered. What would draw them into the grisly murder-suicide of an entire family?
Latham was sipping his second cup of coffee when the phone rang. “Charlie Latham.”
“Charlie, it’s Harry. Come on down, will ya?”
“On my way.”
“Owens?” asked Randall. Latham nodded. “You planning to fill me in anytime soon?”
Latham looked at his partner; the eagerness was plain in his eyes. “Yeah. Later.”
Latham walked to the elevator and took it up one floor. As he stepped off, a pair of men stepped aboard. Latham recognized both of them: the DCPD police commissioner and the Park Police district commander. Each man gave him a solemn nod.
Sympathy or anger? Latham wondered. Or a little bit of both?
They’d just come from Owens’s office and knowing Harry, the turf fight over the Baker murders had likely been short and bloodless. Though each cop probably loathed having his territory invaded, each was probably breathing a sigh of relief as well. If they only knew, Charlie thought.
He stepped past them into Owens’s office. Owens, a jowly man with bloodhound eyes, was on the phone; he pointed Latham to a chair and kept talking. “Yes, sir, I just met with them. We’ll have their full cooperation. Yes, sir.”
Owens hung up. “The director,” he explained.
“Wow, Harry, two ‘yes sirs’ in one conversation.”
“You only caught the tail end; I was already into the double digits. Wanna trade jobs?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t admin my way out of a paper bag.”
“And I couldn’t spot a spy if he were in my bathtub. The Baker case is ours. DCPD and the Park Police signed off.”
“How much do they know?”
“Not much. Truth is, I don’t think they want to know.”
“Any word from the medical examiner?”
“Tomorrow, probably. Crime scene should have things wrapped up by tonight.”
“They won’t find much.”
“I know. Baker’s home computer is already at the lab.”
“I’m going over to Commerce, talk to Baker’s boss. I want to know what he was working on. Can you put in a call—”
“Already did. They’re expecting you.”
“Expecting me, but not happy about it?”
“They probably thought they’d have a little more time to get their ducks in a row.”
“I don’t want their ducks in a row.”
Either way it went, the murders were going to shine badly on Commerce. If Baker was simply a homicidal nut, the media would be asking why Commerce’s screening missed it; if he turned out to be dirty and it had gotten him and his family killed, Commerce would be swarmed by investigators.
“If they start talking to the press,” Latham said, “it could foul up our case.”
“Then you’ll have to put the fear of God into them.”
“Yep. After Commerce I thought I’d drive up to Dannemora and see Cho.”
Owens frowned. “He’s a tough son-of-a-bitch, Charlie. You think he’ll tell you anything?”
Latham shrugged. “I’ll plant the seed and see where it takes us.”
“National destiny must not be decided by the few!” Vladimir Bulganin shouted, his amplified voice echoing through the square. “The purpose of an election is to make manifest the will of the people! Your will! And I tell you this, my friends: The bond between a public servant and his people is….” Bulganin paused. “To break that bond—that trust! — is nothing short of betrayal!”
The crowd of ten thousand roared its approval, the cheers drowning out the sounds of the city around them. Spread throughout the crowd were dozens of Bulganin’s security men—“The Guardians” of the Russian Pride Party — all wearing navy peacoats and crimson armbands. On nearby streets, traffic had ground to a halt and drivers stood beside their cars. At the edge of the square, local reporters filmed the event, and beyond them a line of Moscow Militia officers stood at parade rest.
Very good, thought Ivan Nochenko. He hit it right this time. Timing was as important as content — perhaps more so.
If not a perfect pupil, Bulganin had a natural feel for collective emotion. Unfortunately, the man often let passion override craft. Perception was everything; perception always conquered truth. Most people’s decisions were guided by the heart, not by the mind. Win the heart and you can convince any public — especially an impassioned Russian public — to vote a chimp into office.
Nochenko knew his business. He’d spent twenty of his thirty years in the KGB weaving fiction into propaganda and truth into fiction. The art of propaganda was, after all, nothing more than the blue-collar cousin of public relations.
Nochenko had seen much in his time: Mine collapses in the Urals, nuclear submarine sinkings in the Chukchi, mini-Chemobyls in the wastes of Siberia, rocket explosions in Yavlosk … Thousands of lives and hundreds of near disasters about which the world had never learned.
Nochenko had loved his work and occasionally, in moments of private self-indulgence, he understood why: influence. Kings rule countries, but the king who relies on truth is a king soon dethroned. Information is the true power and those who control information are the true kings. Nochenko’s mentor, Sergei Simov, had said it best: “Truth is a lie, a tale told by men frightened by the vagaries of life. Get enough people to believe a lie and it becomes truth.”
Days gone by, Nochenko thought, watching Bulganin conclude his speech. The days before we started believing the tale told by NATO … Truth was, the Soviet died long before the wall came down; her death rattle began the day the Politburo started believing they were losing the great game.
He ached for those heady days, and for years after leaving the KGB he’d thought they were gone forever. Then he’d found Vladimir Bulganin. Bulganin would be his final triumph. Cover up the deaths of a hundred coal miners? Child’s play. Erase from history a nuclear submarine lost to the icy waters of the Atlantic? Masturbation. But take a raw, unknown peasant — a goddamned shoe factory foreman! — from Omsk to the grandest seat of power in all of Russia … That was a feat.
Bulganin was wrapping up: “And so my countrymen, we stand at a precipice. Your votes will decide whether the Motherland plummets over the edge, or she takes wing and soars. I know what I choose. I know what I’m prepared to do for the Motherland, but only you can decide on whom to bestow your faith. I promise you this, my friends: If that person is to be me, I will never tire of the burden, and I will never betray your faith!”