He would have felt clever if he wasn’t so pissed off and humiliated. Chapel couldn’t do his research from home or the office. If Korda was watching him at work, every blink and breath he had at home would also be catalogued and parsed for subversive signals. What he was looking for shouldn’t send up those kinds of red flags, but it might make Korda wonder. He didn’t want Korda wondering. He hit the library instead. He surfed the net in anonymity. He searched for Global Response, references to and posts by, in the days and weeks surrounding the World Economic Forum in Davos. The group’s website had been shut down in the aftermath of the Davos bombings. He and Sherbina had scapegoated them well. There was a wealth of material condemning and praising the group. Jonathan Alloway, blown to mist by his own explosive, came up over and over again, canonized and demonized as a cross between Che Guevara and Mohammed Atta. Chapel knew about him. He could also remember the names of the patsies who had been rounded up, held in the American Mission under the Agency’s auspices, and whacked by Sherbina’s plants before being shipped to Guantanamo. He looked for another name. He knew he was digging in the right place. The prisoners, before they had died, had babbled about a woman who had stayed with them in Winnipeg, a woman they had wound up fearing almost as much as the authorities. So Nemesis had been there. And she had a friend. The link wasn’t steel, but it would do.
It took him five minutes to hit bingo with a blog excerpt. It was one of the minor anti-globalization websites, one that didn’t coordinate the protests, but posted the author’s heroic diaries and souvenir pictures of the marches instead. One of the rants was dated a week before the WEF. Joe Birkenstock was lamenting his inability to make it to Switzerland. He blamed the security clampdowns. Chapel doubted the joker would have made it through customs, but suspected a lack of job and money had more to do with his problem. None of the protests he had attended were beyond a two-hundred-mile radius of his house. As proof of the extinction of the right to raise hell, he quoted from a description of what protestors would be up against. The author of the worried sketch was Kelly Grimson of Global Response. Chapel popped her name into Google. Plenty of hits. She’d been one of the movers of GR, but hadn’t been caught in the dragnet after the destruction of Davos. He tried to find a picture of her. No luck.
He drummed his fingers against the monitor, then left the library. At a 7-11, he bought a prepaid long-distance card. Two minutes at the payphone with directory assistance told him that there were only two Grimsons listed in Winnipeg. He cross-referenced with Alloway, and eliminated the phone number in common. No point calling Global Response’s home base of Greenham Common. The co-housing project had been torched by Sherbina’s proxies to goad the volatile Alloway into doing something stupid and violent. The best kind of scapegoat actually does the thing he’s going to be blamed for. Alloway did take a bomb to Davos. He didn’t know it was dirty, and he didn’t know it was detonated by remote control and not by the bogus timer he played with, but he still carried a bomb to the protest.
One Grimson left. Chapel called. The woman who answered sounded like a senior. Chapel did his best to sound friendly and innocent. “I was hoping to speak with Kelly Grimson,” he said.
“She’s…” Hesitation. “She’s not here.”
“Oh dear, that is too bad. I was going to be in town only for a few hours and wanted to catch up. She is back from Switzerland, isn’t she?”
“No.” A tiny, beaten voice. “No, she’s not. She’s been missing for months.” The voice collapsed in sobs.
Gotcha, Chapel thought, and hung up.
Quintero was expecting to meet Joe Chapel at Dulles. Chapel wasn’t there, but an agent hustled them through Customs and into a minivan that drove them all to Langley. Even better, Quintero, thought. Straight to business. Now we’ll get some things done. His antennae prickled, though, when they arrived and the agent had Maldonado and the others wait in the parking lot. “They’re my men,” Quintero protested.
“They’ll be fine,” the agent answered, as though that weren’t completely beside the point.
They went inside. Quintero had been here before, back in the glory days of the School of the Americas. He’d come to know the Directorate of Operations well, and he’d been known, too. He hadn’t needed an escort through the corridors. People had known him on sight. They had known to respect him on sight. Nobody knew him now. He walked the corridors as a supplicant, led as a child. The people he passed glanced at him with disinterest when they looked at all. He was wearing a cheap suit he’d been given on the boat. It had been wrinkled to start with, and he’d been in it over twenty-four hours. He wanted a shower, a shave, and a uniform. His uniform. He hadn’t minded his appearance during the boat and plane travel. Here, he felt stripped of dignity, authority, and power.
Worse feelings, bad antennae pricklings, when he realized they weren’t in Operations. The agent took him to the seventh floor and parked him in the waiting room outside the director’s office suite. “Director Korda will be with you shortly,” the man said, and left.
Quintero sat, worried, and fumed. No Chapel. Korda instead. Something had gone wrong. He knew a few things about quid pro quo. Chapel hadn’t sprung him out of sheer idealism. There was something Quintero could do that would help Chapel, and since Korda had been mentioned in the phone conversations, then Chapel wanted him hobbled. So what was Quintero doing here? Not good.
He wasn’t surprised that Korda kept him waiting forty-five minutes. That move was so old hat, he was surprised the director even bothered. Quintero wasn’t fooled, and he wasn’t impressed. Korda could play his social power games if he wanted. All they did was make him a little man. When he was finally summoned, Quintero marched into the office like the man he was: a general.
Korda was leaning back in his chair, swivelling it back and forth with his legs. He had a pen in his right hand, and was twiddling it over and around each finger. He was grinning. “Well,” he said, “look what the cat dragged in. Hard times, eh, Jorge?”
“What do you want?” He would not banter with this man.
“Have a seat, have a seat.”
“I will stand.”
“Okey-dokey.” The pen went round and round, in and out, back and forth. It was hypnotic. “So here you are. And here I am. Is this the conversation you were expecting to have? Let me guess: no. Where’s Joe, you’re wondering. Here’s the thing. Joe’s having a few problems. He really is going to have to sort them out before he’ll be any good to anybody. Ever again. With me? Good. You always were a smart boy.”
Quintero felt the insult. He didn’t flinch. He promised himself extreme violence on Korda’s person. “Get on with it,” he said.
“Easy does it, boy. All in good time. I want to make a point, first. You want direct? How’s this for direct: I wasn’t supposed to know you were in the country. I wasn’t supposed to know about the whole goddamn operation to free you. But I bet you knew that, being a smart boy and all. Good thing departments leak, wouldn’t you say? Good thing I have loyal employees.” He smirked. “Or at least employees who know how to cover and/or save their asses.” He leaned his head back and gazed at the ceiling, making a show of thinking. “What do I want, you asked. Hmm. Yes. What do I want?” He looked back at Quintero and smiled again, Mona Lisa toad. “Let’s try this. What do you want?”
Quintero hesitated. He saw the trap, knew he was going to lose at least a limb, probably his head, and couldn’t see how to evade. He played for time, even as he resented having to do so. “Excuse me?”
Korda sat still. He stopped playing with the pen. His smile vanished. His face was cold cement. “‘Excuse me,’ fuck you. Don’t play stupid. Answer the question. You want something. What is it? The next time I ask, you’ll be back in leg irons.”
All right, then. He had come here to be direct, so he would be. Especially with Korda. He was not going to let that gameplayer be the honest man of the two. “I want the best thing for my country.”
“Which means you at the top,” Korda put in.
Quintero ignored him. “When I had dealings with you in the past, you made promises of support. I want you to keep them now.”
Korda began to laugh. “You want a coup, you cheeky monkey. What do you think this is, the 1980s?”
Quintero glared. “Yes,” he said. “It is. Do you look south at all? Do you know what happens down there? Do you know the governments who are in power?”
Korda nodded. “Yeah, yeah, the bad old days are back again. Dominoes falling all over the place, leftists running the show—”
“Communists.”
“Whatever. We have other things to worry about these days. Or maybe you didn’t notice.”
“You should worry about this.”
“Is that a threat?”
Quintero didn’t answer. Silence would give his bluff weight.
“I guess it isn’t.” Korda beamed contempt. “I mean, how could it be? You were just offering your best advice. Let me put your mind at ease, General.” The title was libellous in its sarcasm. “If Venezuela or any other of your backwater, pissant countries gets too uppity, it will be slapped down. That’s how things work. In the meantime, your countries are free to play in their sandbox. I guess you can relax now, right?”
“You made promises. I expect satisfaction.”
Korda roared. “Jesus, you’re priceless. ‘I expect satisfaction.’” He laughed some more. “Do you really say things like that when you’re speaking Portuguese?”
Spanish, Quintero thought, but didn’t correct him. He wasn’t going to rise to the insult.
“Did you misunderstand me? I said fuck you. Is that too vague?”
Quintero stared straight ahead, at a point on the wall above Korda’s head. “I think we understand each other,” he said. He turned to go.
“Where you off to?”
He stopped. He thought about killing Korda here and now. The thought was a good one, the impulse difficult to control. “There is nothing more to say.”
“Sure there is. What, you think we say bye now, and I watch Chapel’s latest bitch waltz off into the sunset? You that stupid? How the hell did you make it past private? Aren’t you interested in your future?”
Quintero sighed. “What do you have planned for me and my men?”
“Listen to that esprit de corps. Leave no man behind. You know what I love about you army types? You’re the last of the unreconstructed sentimentalists.” He paused, waiting for a riposte, or pausing before the execution. “The United States of America believes in the rule of law,” he went on with a straight face. “It also believes in being hospitable towards its guests. You will be comfortably housed pending your extradition back to Venezuela.”
“I will speak with the president,” Quintero thundered. He had known Sam Reed back during the golden years, too. Reed had been on the SOA’s board of directors.
“I’m speaking for the president,” Korda said. His smile was quick, thin and smug. “He doesn’t want your pain in his ass any more than I do.”
Quintero hoped Korda could see the hatred on his face. The man should learn to fear it. “You are traitors. Both of you. Men of no principle.”
Korda shook his head, completely unruffled. “We’re just good at what we do.”
Felix Jurado didn’t get mad much these days. To be angry, you had to care, and there was just no percentage in caring. There was a time, far enough back that the memory was hazy now, when he had cared. That had done nothing but set him up for loss. After losing enough times, he had begun to see the black humour that ruled the universe. He hadn’t thought much about principles in a long time. Chapel had stirred some embers for him. There were people he wouldn’t mind seeing screwed, some things in America that needed a good blowtorch. Chapel was a good man to do the torching. He was taking his hits now, and Jurado had no intention of being caught by the splash damage of any explosion. But there were still one or two vestigial buttons that, when they were mashed, pissed him off. Stomping all over a man’s turf was one. Leaks in his department was another.
He heard about Korda’s intercept of Quintero from Sue Berg. She called him from the safe house, asking if he still wanted the place active, or could she shut it down, since the clients weren’t coming. What did she mean, they weren’t coming? Hadn’t there been a change of plan? she asked. She thought Quintero was meeting with Korda. Jurado held his temper, asked her how she knew this. Matt Collins had called her from Dulles, told her he was taking it from there. Collins entered Jurado’s shit list, never to leave. Korda cemented his position, bought himself the e-ticket to Painworld. Swearing, Jurado hauled ass down to the parkade and blew out of Langley. He drove into Washington, stopped at the first payphone he saw, called Chapel’s, hung up, called back twice more and hung up again. The signal for them to meet. Stupid goddamn ball-busting tactics. This was what they were reduced to these days. Retirement, Korda’s ass on a platter and Reed’s head on a pike couldn’t come soon enough.
They hooked up at the Lincoln Memorial. “You followed?” he asked Chapel.
“Probably. You’re stretching your neck out.”
Jurado shook his head. “Too stupid. What happens when I’m pissed.” He looked around, disgusted by the clandestine clichés he’d fallen into. “This is pathetic.” He was a grown man, after all. He glowered at the monument.
“Yeah, but it works.” They were moving up and down the steps, cat’s-cradling their way through the tourists, using the crowd and noise as cover. “What’s up?”
Jurado told him. “If your op is screwed, you tell me now,” he added.
“Going to jump ship if I’m sinking?”
“Got that right.”
“Fair enough.” Chapel was quiet for a moment. “No,” he said. “The op is still good.”
“You’re sure.”
“Watch them burn, Felix. Bring the marshmallows.”
“So what do you want?”
“I’ll set up a new safe house.” His eyes twinkled, amused. “I think I can kill two turds with one stone.”
“How long will that take?”
“I need a bit of time. Not too much. There’s an ass that needs kicking, and after that, a couple of weeks, maybe. Do you think Korda will have shipped our boys off by then?”
“Bet he’d love to.”
“Can you run interference?”
Really stretch that neck out. But he was pissed. “See what I can do.”
“We’ll need a good place to stash them. Surround them with friendlies so Korda can’t do the grab again.”
The idea popped in, bright and perfect. Jurado’s mood went sunny and high. “How about a homecoming?”
Chapel caught on, laughed loud enough to make the nearby tourists stare.
New York and its vibe welcomed her back. Blaylock felt her batteries recharge from the ambient energy, and her mood lifted as the city juiced her up, made her ready for war again. She would find the strategy she needed. She’d kept up the rents on the SROs she used for caches, and had plenty of places to stay. Better: she had people to see. She called Flanagan at work midday. “Hey there,” she said. That greeting meant she was at the Clinton location.
“How was your meeting?” Flanagan asked.
“Could have been better.” They slipped into business-speak as innocuous as it was vague. As they talked, Blaylock heard her voice shake once or twice. They were going to see each other again. She was honest-to-God giddy. Little Jenny on the first date. Horny, too.
She was pacing by the time the evening rolled in. There was plenty of space for that. Her room held a mildewed mattress on a rusted and squeaking frame, and, stacked against the wall, weapon cases. Romance was in the air. War was an irrelevant distraction. She was going to hold and be held. She heard footsteps outside her door, and she threw it open. She was grinning, hungry and feral, as she grabbed Flanagan by the shirt collar. She dragged him inside, was already eating his face before she realized he wasn’t alone. She released Flanagan and stepped back, nonplussed.
“I hope it’s okay,” Flanagan said. “You two really need to talk.”
Not about a threesome, though, Blaylock thought, as she recognized Viktor Luzhkov.
Chapel in Pratella’s office, putting the scare into the man, keeping him honest.
“I wish you wouldn’t come here,” the Speaker said. “You’re bad to be around these days.”
“Do what we talked about and I’ll be gold before you know it.”
Pratella’s face was sour. “I don’t have time. Why can’t you go?”
“Because right now, I need my friends to act in my favour.”
“A friend in need is a downturned nose,” Pratella muttered.
“If that’s what makes you happy,” Chapel answered. He leaned forward into the older man’s space. “Pack if you need to. I want you in New York by morning.” He was slipping Pratella onto the hook and sending him out as bait. Bring her to me, he thought. Be that juicy worm.
Still horny, but war was hot, too.
When she first saw Luzhkov, Flanagan’s security breach had infuriated her. What was he thinking? Who gave him permission to take such a foolish initiative? She was going to have to abandon this location. Flanagan must have seen the flare in her eyes. His eyebrows peaked in anxiety. He looked as if he were about to flinch away from a blow. His reaction burned away her anger. Her own insecurities spiked. Did he actually fear her? Still? Did he think she would hurt him? Really?
The question was too big. She recoiled from it, turned her attention to Luzhkov. The security breach wasn’t terminal. He already knew her. He was another loose end she’d left dangling in Geneva, the one Kornukopia merc she hadn’t killed. If she’d made a mistake, she could correct it now. But he had impressed her before, which was why he was still alive. She would give him the benefit of the doubt. And honey, maybe, just maybe, you should trust Mike’s judgment. How would that be for a relationship’s building block?
She locked the door behind them, gestured at the bed. “All there is to sit on,” she said. She sat cross-legged on the floor.
Luzhkov seemed faster with certain realities than Flanagan was. “I could come back later,” he said. Flanagan blushed.
Blaylock laughed. “That’s okay. Mike looks like he’d think you were peering over his shoulder the whole time.”
“I,” said Flanagan, “am going to kill you both. ” The embarrassment of the moment slunk off.
“Anyway,” Blaylock went on, “I’m betting Mike is about to tell me why I should get into bed with you.” She turned to Flanagan. “That about right?” She smiled, so he would know that she was not angry, and that she was receptive. The smile he returned made the evening a very good one.
“I think you should listen to the man,” he said.
So she did. She was interested before Luzhkov began to speak. She was excited while he spoke. She was on fire when he finished. War, she thought. Better than chocolate.
“So?” Flanagan asked. “What do you think?”
She wanted this to be true. Her gut urged a leap of faith. Luzhkov had been wounded in Geneva, fighting against Sherbina, fighting for the right cause, and he hadn’t even known her. She weighed the risk. The opportunity Luzhkov represented would be criminal to pass up. She asked him, “How many men are we talking about?”
“That depends. How important is trust?”
“Give me a sliding scale.”
Luzhkov lowered his eyes for a moment. Blaylock could see him tapping through a mental PDA. He looked up again and said, “Six or seven I trust with my life. You can rely on them as you would on me.”
Blaylock grinned. “Thanks for giving me something solid to measure by.”
Luzhkov said, “I am offended,” to show that he wasn’t. He worked his way down his list. “A few dozen, I think more, who would act out of…” He hesitated.
“Conviction?” Flanagan suggested.
“Yes. Many more for the action.”
“And for money?” Blaylock asked.
“Lots. But the action, I believe, will be the most important.”
Sounding good. Sounding hot. The other big question: not if she could trust them, but if they would trust her. “What has Mike told you about the current op?”
“Nothing.”
“We talked general principles,” Flanagan said. “Not specific campaigns.” Blaylock noted his use of the plural.
“How far would they be willing to go?”
After a moment, Luzhkov asked, “What happened in Geneva, is that typical?”
While Flanagan laughed, Blaylock said, “Remember when the G8 leaders were torched?”
Luzhkov’s eyes widened. “That was you, too?”
“Indirectly. I wasn’t targeting them.” She shrugged. “Shit happens.”
Luzhkov nodded slowly, visualizing consequences. “And now?”
Moment of decision. If she was going to trust the man, she was going to trust him. She had already revealed a lot, but the Rubicon was now. The Russian knew her past. Opening the door to her future was a big risk. For Luzhkov, too. “You know what you’re asking?”
“I have an idea.”
“People around me have a low life expectancy. I had some forces with me at Ember Lake. The casualty rate was one hundred percent.”
Luzhkov nodded Flanagan’s way. “With an exception.”
“Proving the rule.” She was nervous, suddenly, at the prospect of responsibility and future loss. At Ember Lake, she had been prepared for the wipeout of her militia. She’d recruited people whose views and attitudes she’d despised, because she’d known she was leading them to slaughter. She had done her best to brainwash herself in the belief that she had set up one evil to fight another, that there had been a collateral elimination of a sample of the most dangerous strain of American subculture. Only she had lived with them, had grown to like them. And they hadn’t been dangerous before she trained them. The guilt poisoned her nightmares. With what Luzhkov was proposing, she was opening herself up to something much worse. She was attracting goddamn followers. Comrades. How many losses could she face going through? How filthy would she demand they become? “I hope you’re not planning to wash away past sins,” she said. She gave Luzhkov a hard look. She thought he squirmed a bit.
“I have my shames,” he said.
“Are you ready for more? I’m about retribution, not redemption.” Her damnation had been complete and irreversible for a long time now. There was a certain liberation in that awareness.
“I’m ready.”
“You’ll love it,” Flanagan said. To Blaylock he said, “You worry too much. We can take responsibility for our own psyches.”
He was right, and still her heart sank when he spoke. The enjoyment she heard in his tone, and the excitement, were too familiar. They belonged in her, as part of her filth. In Flanagan, they sounded unalloyed.
(But you’re not alone. How great is that?)
Too fucking great for words.
“I don’t think you eat little babies,” Luzhkov said.
“I did just try to assassinate the president of the United States.” The confession was out before she realized she’d come to a decision.
Luzhkov whistled. “That was you?” He clucked his tongue in admiration. “When do we try again?”
The plural pronoun. Here we go, Blaylock thought, and really, truly, honest and for sure, war was so hot it was better than anything. Her mind began to snap and fizz with excitement and tactics. The really big idea took shape.