Angel Eyes (73 page)

"We could always go to the KGB. I'm sure they have darkrooms to spare."

"Very funny." Russell looked morose. "I'm sorry, Tori, but I can't help thinking that Nikolev is something less than totally sincere."

"I think you're wrong, Russ, and like it or not, we're both gambling our lives on it. Nikolev has already revealed enough of himself to make us reasonably sure of him.''

"Then I 'm an unreasonable person.''

"No," Tori said, giving his hand a squeeze. "Just a careful one."

At last a waitress showed up and they ordered.

"Don't get your hopes up," Russell said. "The food won't be coming any time soon."

"It'll be getting dark soon," Tori said, watching the lights come on in Red Square, the onion domes of St. Basil's glow a burnished gold at the waning of a long afternoon. "This is a cold city, even in the beginning of summer."

Russell grunted. "That's because the temperature has nothing to do with it." He sat back abruptly. "It's the waiting I can't stand."

"Unfortunately, that's all we can do until we get a reply from Mrs. Kubysheva."

"If we get a reply. With Bondasenko gone to ground, the organization won't be taking many chances."

"I think the dire situation is exactly why we'll hear from them,'' Tori said. "They wired Hitasura for help, we know that. Now that we've come, they'll see us."

"Yeah, but according to Nikolev, it seems we're not the only ones who know about that communication. The KGB must have broken the organization's code. I wonder what else the KGB knows?"

"I think Nikolev told us as much as he dares-perhaps, from his point of view, too much."

"He's the goddamn KGB, Tori."

''He's also a human being. He's obviously unhappy with what he has been doing. It seems to me he wants the best for his country. I think he's not so very different than we are, Russ. He's caught in a spiderweb of deceit, and now he's doing the best he can to crawl out of it."

"Christ, I hope you're right about this guy."

Tori stared out at the domes of St. Basil's. She was struck by how alien this city seemed to her. She remembered stories her father used to tell her that his father had told him, legends of valiant Ural mountain wolves in winter, tales of courageous Georgian peasants in high summer, sagas of brave soldiers caught on the ice fields of Siberia. How different this strange and unpleasant place seemed from the settings of those magical stories.

How she had hated when her father had spoken to her in his native Russian. She had known he was only trying to help her in her studies, but she despised the Russian classes she was taking-hated everything Russian. She had wanted her father to speak English like the fathers of all her friends. Now, to her surprise, she found that she wished he were here with her to talk with her in Russian, and to guide her around this remote and forbidding metropolis.

She wondered whether he would like it here if he ever came. She suspected that he would be depressed by modern-day Russia, as she was. Perestroika or not, it was still as backward as a third-world country.

It was not until ten that they were finished eating. Night was coming down at last.

"It's not going to happen," Russell said. "And now we've lost Nikolev as well. He's off in some place called Zvezdny Gorodok."

"Star Town," Tori said. "Where they train and house the cosmonauts for the Soviet space program."

"We never should have allowed him to go without us."

"Too late for that."

The bill came on a small tray. Tori picked it up, saw a piece of paper, smaller than the bill, lying on the tray. She scooped it up, read it quickly, excitedly. Then she looked up, said softly to Russell, "We're in business."

"Irina," Mars said, "come here for a moment."

Irina gratefully abandoned her faked search through the hard disk of Valeri's Toshiba, went across the room to where Mars was standing. He was in deep shadow, and she could not make out his face.

"In here," he said, pushing open a door for her to step through.

Inside the small cubicle he said, "Now that Odysseus is asleep in his bed, I want to have a talk with you.''

Irina nodded, keeping herself as calm as she was able. She wished she could control her heartbeat as she had read the priests of Tibet could.

"What did he tell you about his sources of information?"

Irina blinked. "Sources? I thought Natasha Mayakova was his source."

"She was a courier, yes, that's clear." Mars said. "But I don't believe she could have brought him all his information. He's always too up-to-date when I see him. Natasha saw him only perhaps once a week. I see him more often."

"He didn't say anything, and in any case, I felt I couldn't press him."

"He didn't say anything about Lara or Tatiana."

Irina could feel her heart skip a beat. "No."

''Was he suspicious when you asked him about his sources?''

"No," Irina said. "I didn't word it as a question. Anyway, he seemed to have other things on his mind."

"What, for instance?"

Irina looked away. "He's very . . . sexually active."

"Ah."

"Are you angry?"

''Ask me that in half an hour,'' Mars said.

Irina's head swung around. She kept her eyes on him. "What will happen then?"

"I'll know unequivocally whether you have betrayed me to Valeri Denysovich."

There was a buzzing in Irina's ears, and she thought she would faint. "What are you saying? Valeri is KGB. You know how I loathe them."

Mars said, "I am now prepared to say that I don't know as much about you as I would like."

"You're very different here," Irina said, trying to break off this inquisition. She hoped she was able to keep all wariness out of her voice.

''Not here,'' Mars said. ''Now. Valeri has declared open war on me." He shrugged. "This will be a difficult and trying time for us all." He moved with the casual grace Irina was used to, but she noticed that he always kept himself between her and the door. "You should take that as a warning."

"But how can you suspect me?" Irina said. "Didn't I give you Natasha Mayakova?"

Mars nodded. "Indeed you did, but that could have been a mistake."

''Mistake? I knew exactly what I was doing.''

"I wonder," Mars said. His gaze seemed to penetrate her defenses layer by layer. "The work you have been doing is tremendously strenuous even for a trained professional-which most certainly you are not. You have to be mentally and emotionally tough to be able to befriend people and then on command betray them.

"You spend so much time pretending to be someone else that often you actually become that someone else. Isn't it so, Irina? Admit it, it happens to even the most hardened professionals. Illusion becomes real and vice versa. In a way, it's a form of camouflage. If you believe your false identity is real, so will everyone else around you. Surely you can see the logic of such a trap. In any case, I'm told by experts that it's a sound psychological principle."

"No matter," Irina said somewhat defensively. "It hasn't happened to me."

"No?" He was very close to her now. Close enough to hear the rapid pounding of her heart? "Who are you, really? The sweet Irina Ponomareva my family knows? Or the devious Katya Boroskaya who is using Natasha Mayakova? Or the tough Irina Ponomareva who is spying on Valeri Denysovich?" He cocked his head sagely. "You know, even I get confused trying to sort through all these different personalities. It certainly would be understandable if you did, as well."

"I don't understand what you're doing," Irina said. "Why are you trying to put words in my mouth?"

Mars spread his hands. "I'm just trying to sort out illusion from reality, fact from fiction, myth from certainty. I'm like an archaeologist at an important historic dig. Many people are counting on the acuity of my skills."

"I don't know what you're getting at."

"You know, I blame myself most of all, Irina. I'm afraid I pushed you into this triple life. I see now the foolishness of my action. But it was compulsive. Surely that absolves me, if only a little. Valeri Denysovich pushed me to it. Because of him, you've been walking a perilous tightrope, and now you've fallen off. You've lost your center, you've forgotten who you really are, what your true allegiance should be.

"As I said before, it's perfectly understandable. Certainly, there's no hint of a criminal act involved, nothing you could be charged with, no matter what your confession might bring to light. I'd see to that personally." He reached out to touch her comfortingly. "You can count on me, Irina, to be your guardian angel."

The odd and terribly frightening thing was that Irina almost believed him. There was so much essential truth in what he was saying that it was easy to accept the entire package-believe everything: that she would be off the hook, that she would not be charged, that he would protect her no matter what. No endless Siberian whiter, no bars over her moon, after all. It was so very tempting.

He made it so difficult to see the lie hidden away beneath his version of the truth, but Irina did see it at last and, imagining him torturing Natasha, she wondered how on earth she was going to fight this enormously powerful and charismatic creature.

She could see that she was out of time. It was obvious to her that Mars was pushing for a resolution-soft or hard-one way or another. She had to fight him, but how? Then she thought of Odysseus, Mars's prisoner for almost eighteen months. He had successfully fought Mars. How? By applying Mars's own psychology and boomeranging it back at him. Mars might on the surface seem invulnerable, but Odysseus had certainly proved that to be an illusion.

Mars was now frightened of Odysseus because Odysseus had convinced him that he was metamorphosing into another kind of being. Was that a complete lie? Irina did not know, and she suspected that, for all his bravery and bravado, Odysseus did not know, either. After all, he had been made into an experiment to see the effects of cosmic rays on the human body and mind.

And he had had the communication, he had seen the color between the stars, the color of God. Who could know how that had altered him, or even whether the changes were not still going on? Certainly not Mars.

So there was a way to fight him, then.

As Mars's fingers wrapped around her wrist, she collapsed in his arms.

"I don't know what more you want from me, Mars," she whispered. "I've given you everything you've wanted."

"I want the truth, Irina. Only the truth."

She put her head on his shoulder, molded her body against him, not as a siren, but as he would wish for, a helpless, confused female dependent on him for guidance.

"Irina," he said in her ear. "Just tell me everything. It will be all right. I promise you."

"Oh, Mars." Bringing to mind images of her betrayal of Natasha Mayakova, she began to weep. "When Odysseus took me by surprise in the pool, I was helpless, you must believe me."

''I do, koshka. I see his physical effect on Tatiana and Lara.''

"I was at that time of the month. I was fertile."

She felt him stiffen, and she clung to him all the more.

"There is no way to know for certain, of course," she went on relentlessly, "but a woman can often tell these things far sooner than even a doctor can. But now I am afraid. I don't know what Odysseus is any longer. I don't believe even he does, though he puts on a brave face. Now I don't know what is forming inside me. What if it's-but that is too unspeakable to even contemplate. I would kill myself. I would-"

She stopped as Mars thrust her convulsively away from him. He stared at her for a long tension-filled moment.

"How could you?" he said at last. "How could you be with him at just the wrong moment?"

"I told you. He took me by surprise." Irina made herself shiver. Who am I? a tiny voice reverberated in her mind. "He gave me no time to think. He made me helpless."

"I-"

At that moment a sharp rap on the door interrupted them.

"What is it?" Mars showed his nerves by nearly shouting.

"Captain Nikolev is here," Tatiana said.

"Tell him I'm busy. I'll see him-"

''He says he must see you now, comrade. It is most urgent."

"Shit!" Mars said. He looked at Irina. "Get back to the computer. Find that White Star information. Now."

He went out into the pool room, ignored Irina as she slipped past him.

"What is it, Captain?" he said tersely.

Nikolev took Mars aside. Both Tatiana and Lara were staring at them.

"We have located Valeri Bondasenko."

"Excellent," Mars said, for the moment forgetting the sliver of terror Irina had handed him. ''Bring him here.''

"I am afraid that is impossible, comrade."

"Nothing is impossible. Captain. Do it! That's an order. I must have the secrets of White Star contained in Valeri Denysovich's computer."

"You and I will have to go to him," Nikolev said.

"I won't leave here," Mars said flatly. "I do not trust the Hero alone with Lara and Tatiana."

''Bring some of your men in."

"No," Mars said. "Such an overtly aggressive act would destroy everything I've worked for here. The Hero is far too important to us. He is a doorway to a whole new technology."

"Then take the computer and come with me."

"Do as I order!"

''But you don't understand, comrade,'' Nikolev said. ''There was only one way to get to Bondasenko, and I used it. Remember the American diplomatic mission from Tokyo? I intercepted them at Sheremetyevo. They are the Americans that White Star asked for in the coded cable we intercepted."

Nikolev leaned closer. "I convinced them of my sincerity. They believe I am on their side. They told me they know a way to contact Bondasenko, and they are at the Rossiya Hotel doing so right now."

"Is that where Valeri Denysovich has gone to ground?"

"No. The hotel is apparently one of White Star's dead drops." Nikolev watched the play of emotions flicker across Mars's face. "We must go in as friends. Or, at least, I must. The Americans can convince Bondasenko to access the computer. I know that you do not want to let it out of your sight, so I suggest the two of us go."