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Sofia heard Talanov chuckle. It was now Sunday night – two days later – and she glanced quizzically across the console of the darkened Ferrari. In the glow of the dashboard lights, she could see him sitting there, grinning, nestled comfortably in his seat, relaxed and amused, hands folded in his lap.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked, downshifting into third before making a squealing right turn onto Avenida de Torreblanca, a modest four-lane street bounded on both sides by blocks of highrise apartments.
“Torrevieja,” he replied. “I still don’t believe what happened.”
They each thought about the strange hop the ball had taken once it settled onto the frets, where it kicked across the wheel before hitting another fret, which knocked it high in the air, spinning and hovering until it came back down and the motion of the wheel kicked it to the right, where it skipped like an Irish river dancer before settling on Talanov’s thirty-thousand-dollar winning color.
“Why do you do it?” Sofia asked, her sangoire party dress glittering in the light of a passing streetlamp. “Why risk everything on a single bet?”
“I guess I could tell you that it mirrors life,” he replied over the muscular purr of the V-8 positioned transversely behind the seat. “That sometimes everything boils down to a single decision. Is this the right moment? The right job? The right person?”
“But?”
“It’s personality, simple as that. There are a lot of two-dollar personalities. They go to the races and that’s what they bet because they’re afraid to bet more. I’m not one of those.”
“Easy to say when you’re betting with other people’s money,” Sofia replied, merging the Ferrari onto the busy Mediterranean Highway heading west toward Marbella.
“This isn’t about money,” he said.
“What’s it about, then?” she asked.
“Who you are.”
“Having a thirty-thousand-dollar personality can get you into a lot of trouble.”
Talanov smiled. “Indeed it can.”
“And you love it, too. Beautiful women. Fast cars.”
“Never met one I couldn’t handle.”
Sofia glanced sharply at Talanov.
“Car. Never met a car I couldn’t handle.”
“You are insufferable. And definitely not the kind of man who sits for hours slipping coins into a machine. That much I know.”
“What else do you know?” he asked.
“Plenty,” she replied.
“Such as?”
She thought for a moment. “I know you are called the Ice Man because of your cold, impersonal nature, not that whoever gave you that name had his or her feet massaged in the same way you did mine.”
Talanov laughed.
“I know you were orphaned at seven,” Sofia continued, “then reared by the State, and that you hold a black belt in Combat Sambo, which you first learned as a boy at the monastery of Lóngshù, in the foothills near Khan Tengri, in northern China.”
“You read my file.”
“Of course. I wasn’t about to go to Spain with just any cocksure, insufferable KGB colonel.”
Talanov laughed again.
“I also know you are the youngest KGB colonel in history,” she said, “and that you are an idealist with a strong sense of right and wrong, which – I might add – I was able to tempt wickedly on several occasions.”
“That you did,” Talanov admitted, recalling their afternoon together yesterday in a cliff-side resort in Nerja Capistrano where, after a lunch of local mango, oysters and Champagne at an outdoor bar by the pool, Sofia lured him back to their room and attacked him like a cat, scratching and biting and squeezing him with her legs until her sexual demands were met and she fell back on the bed, satisfied and content.
“So, what have you learned about me?” she asked.
“That you have no file.”
“I prefer to be . . . discovered.”
“A woman reveals a lot about herself in the bedroom.”
“Even more by the way she handles a car.”
“And even more by the way she handles a fork.”
“Rubbish.”
“Not at all. Take you and those oysters on the half-shell.”
“I did not use a fork.”
“Exactly. Res ipsa loquitur.”
“And how exactly does that speak for itself?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ve never seen a woman demonstrate such effortless skill shucking an oyster with a steak knife, only to turn around and brazenly eat off that knife in a flirtatious attempt to seduce me.”
“But you would not be seduced. Why not?”
“Because you were toying with me.”
“I was not.”
“And you’re manipulative – seeing if you could make me jealous – as evidenced by the way you treated the waiter, who was quite taken with you and you with him, which was obvious by the way you looked him over before dismissing him without a second thought.”
“How was that manipulative?”
“You returned the mignonette sauce how many times?”
“It lacked pepper!”
Talanov smiled but did not reply.
“All right, so I toyed with him,” she snapped. “And perhaps I was trying to make you jealous, to see if I mean more to you than a week in Spain. What harm was there in that?”
“Res ipsa loquitur.”
“Quit saying that.”
“I also learned,” he continued, “that you are more interested in proving yourself than enjoying yourself. That is not to say you don’t enjoy yourself, which your driving demonstrates, but your clear priority is not enjoyment. It is proving yourself to be more than a garnish.”
“Garnish?”
“Do not take offense. A woman’s looks can be an effective weapon. Your stunning height . . . your Chinese heritage, with those exotic eyes and flawless skin – inherited through your mother, I might add, since your Father’s surname, Dubinina, is Russian – only adds to your mystique. But you want to be more than your looks.”
“Is that why you think I am here? To make you look good?”
“Every plate needs a garnish.”
“What makes you think it is not the reverse? That you are along to make me look good?”
Talanov rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Got you, didn’t I?” she said.
“You did,” he replied. “But now that you mention it, I do make you look good. Next exit, then a right. You may want to lower your landing gear before attempting the corner.”
With a reluctant chuckle, Sofia accelerated into the right lane, passed a car, then slipped back into the left lane to pass three more cars before cutting across both lanes and down the exit ramp to the angry protests of several horns, where she applied the brakes, downshifted into third and hit the accelerator at the corner to make a squealing turn. She then hit the gas again, shot through a busy intersection, past two cars, around a corner and into a gravel parking lot, where she jammed on the brakes and spun the wheel to do a sliding one-hundred-and-eighty-degree stop.
With gravel dust drifting through the beams of the Ferrari’s headlights, Sofia rotated in her seat and folded her arms.
“Okay, Sasha, talk,” she said. “For three days we have been throwing money around as if the Soviet Union’s entire national budget was at your disposal. At first I had my objections, fearing the Deputy Chairman would replace us, but as I came to understand what you were doing, I began to consent and cooperate.”
“Consent and cooperate?”
“Okay, I began to enjoy it. My point is, I have been waiting for you to tell me how we plan to apprehend Gorev, which you have steadfastly refused to divulge. Perhaps you think this is need-to-know. Well, I need to know, because here we are – on the night of his arrival – going to yet another casino.”
“The Gran Casino del Sol is not just another casino.”
“Stop it. Sasha. You know what I am talking about.”
Talanov smiled sympathetically. Sofia was right. It was time to read her into his plan. No, he did not entirely trust her, not that he specifically mistrusted her, either. It was simply the way he preferred to handle things with people he did not know. But her character arc over the last few days seemed natural and expected, so unless she was a brilliant actress who had completely conned him, he felt comfortable revealing his plan, beginning with some background about how the movements of all Biopreparat personnel had been carefully monitored and recorded. The KGB knew when these people left home, when they arrived at work, when they left work and when they arrived back home. They also knew the names of all family members, what their movements were, and the names and movements of their friends.
Not so obvious were a number of more subtle indicators, such as how often people like Gorev laughed, what the audible level of his conversations were, who he sat with at lunch, how he spent his leisure time, what his normal expressions were throughout the day and to what degree those expressions changed when approached by an overseer. These and other statistics were then graphed and a baseline of normality established, so that if a significant change occurred in that pattern, it would be noticed.
Such a change occurred just over six months ago but was so slight it did not alarm his superiors. The good doctor was, after all, deliberately infecting labor camp prisoners with various strains of anthrax to determine which forms were the most lethal. He then set about purifying and concentrating those strains into a weaponized form that could wipe out an entire population. And while the subjects of these experiments were convicted enemies of the state, their constant cries of agony quite naturally took an immense emotional and psychological toll. Hence, certain behavioral fluctuations were to be regarded as normal.
“Which Gorev used against us,” said Talanov. “He avoided setting off any alarms by working within those tolerable limits to organize and execute his defection. And not just for himself, but his wife, his daughter and his parents. That demonstrates premeditation, cunning and meticulous attention to detail, which is why the KGB in Leningrad failed to locate him. They had no idea who they were up against. So Leningrad called Moscow and Moscow called me.”
“The Ice Man himself. The one who sees what others don’t.”
“There is nothing magical about it,” responded Talanov. “I simply analyzed who I was dealing with, and in doing so, figured out where to look. In Gorev’s case, inverse logic told me where he would not defect – Helsinki, London or any of the northern European cities – which would be too obvious for a man so methodical and cunning. But I needed specific information as to where he would defect. So I went to Sverdlovsk and questioned Gorev’s colleagues and minders, from whom I gleaned the name of a political prisoner who had been assigned to clean Gorev’s laboratory. That prisoner’s name was Volkov and the date of his assignment to clean Gorev’s lab coincided with the first recorded changes in Gorev’s behavior. Based on that statistical correlation, I looked deeper to find that Volkov, a former history professor, was imprisoned because he had been quoting Thomas Jefferson in the classroom about all men being created equal. Not so bad, except that Volkov went on to say that all governments should be accountable to the people.”
“So the prisoner, Volkov, infected Gorev with American ideology?”
“An interesting use of the word, but, yes, that’s how it looks. Gorev was infected by Volkov’s Jeffersonian philosophy. Records show the two men were often seen conversing quietly. So I kept digging and what did I discover? That Volkov had a cousin, an artist, who defected to the Costa del Sol in 1978.”
“So Volkov has a cousin here in Spain?” Sofia asked.
“That’s right.”
“Do you know his name and where he lives?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then why not simply stake out the cousin’s house and abduct Gorev when he arrives? Why drive around in a Ferrari drawing attention to ourselves?”
“Because he’s not going to the cousin’s house.”
“Then, where?” asked Sofia. “Surely the Americans are not meeting him in a casino?”
“Inverse logic again told me someone as methodical as our good doctor would not choose such an obvious location, in case we were on to him. As to where he would defect, well, we have the Americans to thank for that. It was not difficult to decipher their chatter, with their clumsy references to a special package being delivered to the office.”
“With ‘office’ being a reference to their safe house?”
“Precisely.”
“Do you know where their safe house is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then we are back to my original question. Why the charade? Why not remain invisible so that we can take him by surprise?”
“On the surface that makes sense,” said Talanov. “But I do not operate on the surface. I let them operate on the surface. I let them think they’re tracking me when it’s actually the other way around.”
“I do not understand.”
“The Americans know we’ll come after Gorev. He’s one of our top scientists and he’ll be carrying information and possibly samples from our biological weapons program. So they know we cannot allow him to defect. But if they don’t know where we are or what we’re planning, they’ll be on high alert, looking in all directions, taking extra precautions. We don’t want that. We want them to be careless. And the best way to do that is let them know exactly where we are, in plain sight.”
“I hope you are right,” Sofia said, “because the Americans will kill Gorev if it looks like we are going to intercept him. They cannot allow us to return with him to Russia. Not now. Not ever. And certainly not alive.”
Sofia suddenly hit the brakes. Ahead of them in the middle of the road, was a man waving his arms. Dressed in a white tank top and black pleated slacks, the man looked to be in his late twenties and had curly black hair. Sofia downshifted into second and brought the Ferrari to a stop.
The man approached and Sofia rolled down her window.
“¿Estás bien?” she asked.
The man drew a pistol from the rear of his slacks and pointed it directly at Sofia’s face. “Sal del coche!” he yelled just as another man stepped into the wash of the headlights, his pistol aimed at Talanov, motioning him out.
“Ahora! Now!” he shouted.
