No Way Back (21 page)

“I’m sure it won’t be necessary, sir.”

VLAD. FADED NORTHERN COLORS IN THIN NORTHERN
light. Rust-streaked steel, mold-stained concrete, cracked bricks and pitted mortar, peeling paint.

It could have been beautiful. Maybe it was once, little more than a century ago, when energy and money began turning a frontier outpost into a permanent city, rising on low, terraced hills from a fan of bays and inlets ribbed by peninsulas.

I can see this as we make our approach, angling in from the seaward side. The heart of the town is compact, buildings of three, maybe five stories, lots of decorative work around windows and entrances, reminds me a lot of places I’ve seen in old Austrian parts of Central Europe, down to the pastel stucco facades. But gaps have been torn in the rows, featureless concrete boxes crammed in. Also a lot of new work rising here and there, international corporate style: steel and glass. The working harbor—wharves, cranes, warehouses, a web of railroad tracks—is the usual wasteland. And so is everything surrounding the old center. Hard-worn blocks of classic Stalinist-style
apartment slabs, a monotony of poured-concrete warrens nine to twelve floors high, and more still being added, probably using fifty-year-old blueprints.

I look away and catch Nadya’s eye as the Gulfstream banks and drops. She makes a sour face, points with her thumb toward the porthole. We’re passing fast over a huge, bleak, nearly deserted square. There’s a monumental bronze statue in the middle, the figure’s limbs too heavy, awkward. One very tall monolith flanks one edge of the square, dominating the smaller, older buildings around the other three sides.

“Square of the Fighters for the Soviet Power in the Far East,” Nadya says when I look back.

“Is that a leftover slogan? Too ridiculous to be anything else,” I say.

“The name,” Nadya says. “Even now. The ugly white box is the government building. People call it the White House.”

“Gimme a break,” I say.

“Well, this is still Russia, Terry, not one of the independents like the Baltic states or Kazakhstan. There is one rather large difference now, though.”

“What’s that?”

“People here can laugh at such names without fearing arrest for slandering the state.” Nadya smiles.

“People here can’t get arrested for nothing,” Sonny offers. “Any kinda crime you like, here you can do it. Police? Hunh. Criminals are laughing, damn straight, ’cause nobody knows who’s a crook and who’s a cop. Both behave same.”

I’d thought Kim was absorbed in quiet discussion with Yoon and the wizard, but apparently he’s aware of us. “Very different from Busan, isn’t that right, Mister Park?” he says.

“Good order in Busan, Mistah Kim. Everything top-
class. Everything kept clean. New subways, big highways. And no street crime,” Sonny says.

“Exactly. It really makes you wonder about the Russians. How on earth did they become a superpower, develop a nuclear arsenal, orbit space stations?” Kim shakes his head, looks at me. “I’m not referring to the crime problem, of course, Mister Prentice. That’s a natural corollary of the collapse of any police state. It takes a while for order to reassert itself in a positive way. No, you’ll see what I mean when we’re on the ground.”

“How so, sir?”

“All the best new buildings, all the decent reconstructions and renovations of the old ones, were done by Korean, Chinese, and Italian construction workers, financed by foreign corporations setting up to do business here. Not by the Russians. Everything shoddy, shabby, recently made but already deteriorating, you can be sure it was done by Russians. You don’t find that careless sloth in Korea, any more than you do in Japan or Singapore. And that’s why I often wonder about missiles and space stations.”

“And that is the prime reason there is no more Soviet Union,” Nadya says. A Korean of Kim’s father’s generation would bristle at a woman asserting herself, but Kim doesn’t seem to mind at all. He seems to like it.

“The Soviets spent all their money on weapons tech, employed all their best minds on military matters, and rewarded them handsomely, by their standards,” Nadya says. “It drove the state bankrupt, being so single-minded, so paranoid. Moscow did not believe in tears. Nor in dangerously wired electrical systems in cheap apartment blocks, faulty plumbing and heating systems, inadequate food supplies, any of that. Because the
nomenklatura
never had to endure any of that. No won
der the people got fed up, restless, and slipped the leash soon as it loosened a little.”

“I believe that’s correct,” Kim says. “But, you know, I think there’s also something self-destructive in the Russian soul. An inheritance of history, nothing to do with ethnicity or genetics.”

“They do often seem that way, don’t they?” Nadya says. Is there more than a little irony in her voice? Kim doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Yes. That’s why they trouble me,” he says. “I’d much rather deal with the Chinese. They’re devious and duplicitous, of course. But self-interest, self-preservation is always paramount. They never act self-destructively when thwarted. Russians? You can’t be so sure.”

“In those specific terms, our special Russians are quite sinicized, I’m sure, Mister Kim,” Nadya says. “Love themselves madly, the generals do. Self-detonation would never cross their greedy little minds. Nor are they candidates for spontaneous combustion.”

Kim laughs. “Thank you for the trenchant analysis, Doctor Zheryova. You have very effectively put me and my generalizations in their place.”

“Not by design, Mister Kim.”

“But properly, nevertheless, Doctor. I’m aware I have tendencies toward old Korean insularity.”

First time I’ve heard Nadya’s last name. False as her first, for sure. But the “doctor” bit, that could be right. Probably she does have a Ph.D. Worked hard to earn it, then winds up going around posing as an expensive prostitute in shitholes like Vlad. But that’s just this op, and my own insularity. No doubt she poses as other things, at other levels in other places I’ll never know about.

The Best Eastern Hyundai isn’t the Lotte. The amenities are international standard, so’s the management and
desk staff, but the rest of the help is all local: deliberately slow, unsmiling, sullen. Fuck ’em. What I’m thinking about, sitting at the bar having a beer with Sonny, what’s pushed the computer question out of mind, is the fifty klicks between the hotel and the airport. An hour and a half, that’s how long it took the two new Lada limos that apparently belong to Kim’s small Vlad branch office to get us to the hotel, even though the drivers, resident Koreans, drove aggressively, almost suicidally.

The road’s just a piece of shit nobody could navigate faster. Narrow, narrow-shouldered, potholed, and half-blocked here and there by heavy equipment generally used to repair and improve highways, but looking like it’s simply been abandoned there, nobody at all working. Major cramp in our style, if we have to move quick and slick for the plane. Somebody better have a fallback plan. A chopper’d be best, but I’m not counting on one.

Nadya, at least, is smooth as a mink. Within twenty minutes after arrival, max, I feel her slink up next to me, warm and sweet-smelling, her rooms sweep obviously accomplished. She’s so good. Nobody—not even a professional watcher—would suppose for a minute she was anything but the real thing: a Russian working girl plying her trade in a foreigners’ hotel. Just the right mix of hard whore calculation and seduction in her chat and laugh. The perfect calibration of makeup and clothes, down to the shade of red lacquer on the fake nails she’s glued over her real ones. I nod to Sonny: good to go. He drains his beer, walks over to the table where Kim, old Yoon, and Tommy the Wizard are sitting, murmurs to Kim, them follows them to the elevator.

“Dollars,” I say to Irena, as Nadya’s calling herself at the moment for the benefit of any long ears in the vicinity.

“
Nyet, nyet.
Euros only,” she insists, but trailing her fingers down my arm, eyes bright and inviting. We engage
in a little more friendly negotiation. Maybe three minutes after Kim and company have left, she puts on her biggest smile, says, “
Da. Da.
Is okay.” We go up to my room.

“Christ!” she says, once we’re inside, pulling off one false eyelash set. “Feel like such a bloody tart, done up like this.”

“Well, you look a perfect bloody tart,” I say. “You go down to the bar alone, little Jap
sararimen
in blue suits will be patting Irena’s sweet ass, offering many, many yen for your services.”

“Bloody nuisance, that. Well, I’m dragging you with me as much as I can, since I have to stay done up like this,” she says. “Ouch. Bloody underwire push-up bras! I’d like to torture the man who invented them.”

“Think his name was Howard Hughes. And he’s already dead.” I say.

“Strange fact for you to know, Terry. Or are you having me on?”

“What do you think?”

“Well…I think perhaps our Terry, crypto-clandestine warrior, has a bit of a kinky flip side. Dress up in women’s clothing sometimes, do we, love? Ever wear, say, pantyhose, Terry?”

“Sure. Black nylon.”

“Balls.” Nadya snorts.

“Exactly. Helps keep those snug and warm, as well as legs. We all wore pantyhose under our camo. Gets real cold at night in the desert.”

Nadya tilts her head, regards me with her slightly canted eyes. Big doubts visible in them. Then she replaces the eyelash set. “What did we agree on, darling, down at the bar?”

“I believe you said, ‘Super time, you can’t believe.’ Or something to that effect.”

“Ah, light moment’s over, Terry. Work, remember? Did I say thirty minutes? An hour?”

“Thirty.”

“Then that means”—she looks at her wristwatch—“I can leave in twenty-seven. I’ll go up to my room, contact Allison, see if she’s located the dinner spot. You go over to Kim’s, check in with Sonny, familiarize yourself with the layout. Kim’s suite is quite clean, except for my mike. And don’t dare make any snide remarks about the delicious Irena to Sonny or anyone else. You will pay dearly for them later, I promise.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Irena. Work, remember?”

“Stay with Kim for an hour. Then meet me back here.”

“How’ll you get in?”

She holds up a thin plastic wafer. “I believe you’ve seen me use one of these before. You do remember, don’t you?”

“Vaguely. But wait a minute, wasn’t it Allison who broke into my room at the airport hotel that night? And kind of assaulted me?”

“Oh bugger off, you delinquent.” Then she laughs. “Well, at least you’re not one of those tensed-up types. Hell to work with, they are. I much prefer relaxed.”

“Relaxed, but very, very alert, Doctor Zheryova. Count on it.”

“Absolutely. Oh, just as point of fact, that doctorate is the only true thing in my current persona.”

“I believe it,” I say. “I am wondering, though, why you bother to mention it?”

“It is a bit silly of me, I suppose. But having one true thing out in the open seems to help me with my various impersonations. An aide-mémoire, so to speak? So I don’t forget completely who I actually am?”

“I try to forget entirely. Helps on the job, helps you
endure the first few sessions of hostile interrogation, if you fuck up.”

“The Company preaches a different tactic,” Nadya says. “Don’t get—”

“Caught. I know. Very catchy. But operationally realistic? Desk warriors’ dream, only.”

“Why can’t you be more cynical, Terry? It’s so great for morale.”

“Yours seems fine to me. One of the relaxed ones. It is hell to work with those tense types. Their trigger-pull’s too light, tend to go off under too little pressure. ADs.”

“Yet another baffling idiom.”

“Accidental discharge,” I say. “Firearms term. Think of it as, oh, premature ejaculation. But instead of just being embarrassing for one party and frustrating for the other, it’s goddamn dangerous.”

She laughs, really laughs. “Lovely metaphor, Terry. Think I’ll incorporate it into my personal vocabulary.”

“For any Rob types you might intersect with in your private life?”

“Rob?”

“The boy definitely has AD tendencies. Easy enough to see. Tightens up too much, too fast. Can’t stay cool, gets testy and aggressive when he should be chill. Bet he’s an AD-er.”

“That’s it? Quite a relief. For a moment there I thought you were going to share a rather sordid personal experience. Like your pantyhose fetish.”

“If I had that particular secret, I’d certainly keep it secret. From you especially.”

“Because we’ve, ah, intersected, and you’d hate to lose my good opinion?”

“Nah. Because you’re maliciously mischievous. You’d run around telling anybody and everybody—‘Hard to
credit, but our Terry’s a poofter. Shocking, isn’t it? But true. Told me so himself.’”

“I never would,” Nadya protests. “On the other hand, that would create wonderful cover. If I decided it might be lovely to intersect with you again. I am leaning that way rather strongly.”

“Ah, go cruise the bar, Irena. Make a few hundred euros. You’re wasting your time here.”

“Righty-o. Time I intersected with Allison. God, I do hope she’s not in AD mode.”

“YOU WILL BE DINING AT THE VERSAILLES HOTEL,”
Nadya says. she’s lounging on my bed when I return from Mister Kim’s suite.

This is good, she tells me. Pretty turn-of-the-century building, burned out once years ago, luxury renovation in 1995. On the corner of Svetlanskaya Street, downtown. Easy access, egress. Just four stories and forty rooms. But always busy: locals with money like to take their mistresses there for assignations, and there’s a casino as well. The restaurant has two small private rooms for parties of eight or more. We’ve got one.

“I’m going down there presently, do a bit of a recce,” she says. “Should I find anything dicey, I’ll be back. If all’s nice, perhaps I’ll have an early dinner, then try my luck at the casino while you dine. You may not see me until after, in that case.”

“Right here? Same general arrangement would suit me.”

“Right here, but no arrangement, just a debrief.”

“Double meaning in that?”

“Well, of course, darling. You talk, I listen. By the bye, my generals will be ringing Kim in about an hour, to tell him the where and when. Best if you don’t let on you knew in advance.”

So nothing Sonny tells me is news when I’m called back to Mister Kim’s suite about a half hour before we’re due to leave, though I act as if it is. I’m packing, per standard, also carrying my briefcase. Tommy the Wizard’s staying home with his. Room-service dinner on his agenda, I suppose.

There’s a soft breeze, damp and salty, rising up when we step outside the hotel. But it’s got teeth. The chill goes right through my black cashmere overcoat. Vlad’s a so-called warm-water port, doesn’t lock up with ice in winter. But it is late October—Christ, hard to believe where the months have gone. It does get frigid at this latitude, and I’m used to more serious protection than a fine-wool business suit and topcoat in chilly weather.

We move in just one of Kim’s Lada limos, me up front, and Mister Kim in the back between Sonny and old Yoon. No cramping: the rear bench in these relics is wide as a fifties Cadillac. The second Lada tails us, nobody in it but the driver. It won’t park at the Versailles, but slow-circle the short block around the hotel all during dinner. Sonny’s touch.

“We come out, flat tire or something”—he’d grinned when he’d told me—“don’t have to worry about finding no cab, right, Mistah Prentice? Me, I hate hanging out with my butt in the cold, trying to wave down taxi.”

“Never a good idea to depend on getting a cab when you gotta go,” I’d said. “Hunh,” he’d said.

Sonny and I are in sync. We stay that way, flank rear of Kim and Yoon when we enter the Versailles. A Chi
nese majordomo in a tux leads us through a tall arched doorway off the lobby, past the entrance to the casino room and into the restaurant. We don’t stand out at all. Every big spender in the place has a heavy close to his side, and not one seems as concerned as Kim that his muscle look executive. The heavies are as blatant as the swarms of Natashas trying to make their dime.

The place is Russian luxe: too much red brocade, too much red velvet, too many gold fringes and tassels, too much crystal chandelier hanging from the elaborate plasterwork of the ceiling. Judging from the dull glint, the crystals are more likely molded plastic than cut glass. Heavy red-brocade drapes, not doors, screen the private room, which looks like the main dining room scaled down. There’s a fairly large table set for four in the center; I recognize Bolgakov and Tchitcherine standing before it like proper hosts, open arms and big smiles for Kim and Yoon. I slide off, following Sonny, to a smaller table against one wall, where two other Russians are standing. Cheap suits, bad shoes. No open arms, no smiling. The blond one risks a quick glance at my briefcase. I see one rather like it on the floor near his chair. Once the generals and Kim and Yoon have been seated, we four nod and sit, too. The blond Russian shifts the position of his briefcase slightly with his foot.

“New guy,” he mutters to his skinheaded partner, in Russian. “Sure as hell isn’t a slant. I wonder where they brought him in from? Darkie, like some damned Chechen.”

“Excuse me, what are you?” the skinhead says to me.

I look at him blankly. “Sorry, pal, I only speak English,” I say.

“Must be British or Canadian,” the questioner says to his partner.

“They got darkies? You’re shitting me.”

“Sure, up north, Scots or something. Immigrants also. In Canada, immigrants and wild Indians. Bad as Chechens, both.” He grins at me, says “Angliski? Angland?”

“Tried and true, mate,” I say. “Russki? Commie dog?”

That brings a mean laugh from both of them. And ends any more attempts at conversation. Sonny manages to lean back slightly while the food we never ordered is served and we begin to eat. Sonny regards them steadily through those hard black slits of his. The Russians don’t punish the vodka bottle on the table in the typical way, limiting their shots. After a while, the skinhead says to his partner, “The big slant, I think, is trying to frighten us.”

“Oh, he scares me so much I’m maybe going to piss in my pants or something,” the blond Russian says. “Damn fool. He know where he is?”

“They both can go to hell.”

Ignorant thugs, and ignorable for now, I figure. I concentrate on what I can overhear from Kim’s table. It’s kind of alarming. Yoon’s very rusty, or never was much good; his translation is bad. Well, slow and halting, anyway. Can’t judge the accuracy, because he’s putting it into Korean. Sonny can monitor that. I’ll take the generals.

That gets easy quick, because Tchitch starts doing all the talking once the polite chitchat’s finished. Life is good and it’s a perfect world, he’s happy to report. He and his esteemed partner have obtained precisely the product Mister Kim specified. Even better, not a secondhand Russian model or a Chinese knockoff. No indeed. Through a colleague who, until the unfortunate dissolution of the U.S.S.R. worked in East Germany and retains trusted contacts there, they have in hand the latest gener
ation, absolutely state-of-the-art German version! Wonderful news, no? Tchitch beams.

Kim digests Yoon’s translation, looking steadily at Tchitch. He permits himself a small smile, but his eyes are flat and the smile’s almost the same as the one Sonny wears when he thinks he’s hearing bullshit.

Bolgy scarcely looks up from his meal as Tchitch plunges on. A small change in the orginal proposal, almost beneath notice, has become necessary, regretfully. Our colleague was forced, by the quality of the product and certain additional costs and risks of obtaining it, to raise his price. We, feeling certain that Mister Kim would want only the very best, covered the increase out of our own pockets. We will, sad to say, require reimbursement.

Kim frowns slightly, snaps a question to Yoon, who says, “How much?”

Next to nothing, as a percentage of the original proposed cost, Tchitch says. Shall we say a new total of seven point five million?

Dollars or rubles? Stupid—these guys would never deal in rubles. So how big’s the rip here? I wonder.

Kim listens to Yoon, shakes his head. Yoon says, “That is nearly a million more than the original price. Hardly a small percentage. A most unpleasant surprise.”

For them as well…until they examined the merchandise, Tchitch says, getting oilier by the moment. Your clients will be overwhelmed when they see what you’ve brought them. This we guarantee.

Yoon, parroting Kim, says, “Our clients will be shocked at this change of terms. We will be deeply embarrassed to even suggest such an increase.”

I understand your position, of course, Tchitch says. Please understand ours. We wished to provide you with the best in the world, because we are anxious to forge a
long-term and mutually beneficial relationship with you. Regretfully, as I have said, the best proved more costly than any of us expected. It is, after all, a product with no price standard because it never appears in commercial markets. But because we are so confident your clients will be happy, and as a token of good faith toward a continuing relationship, we are prepared to absorb half of the increase, should your client, after examining the product, continue to insist on paying only the original price.

Kim remains quiet for some moments after this concession is explained. Then he has Yoon ask what guarantees exist that the generals will in fact absorb that half?

Because your reputation inspires trust, Mister Kim, and because we also possess a reputation with which you may not be fully aware, Tchitch says, the simplest guarantee: no payment of half the increase at the exchange. Simply keep the funds at your office here, and we will accept a note for it from you. When you have successfully sold the product to your clients at a price that meets your margin requirements, we ask only that you then instruct your office here to honor the note. That is how confident we are in the product. That is our confidence in you.

Kim ponders this, then has Yoon say they have an agreement in principle on those terms. But, naturally, the remainder of the original agreement stands intact: there will be no payment of any sort if the product fails the examination of our expert at the time of the exchange.

Tchitch smiles brilliantly, says he’s absolutely confident the item will impress, even amaze the expert, and the deal with be concluded with complete mutual satisfaction.

But what the fuck is Tommy the Wizard going to test
with his super-lap? I’ve been pondering this off and on from the moment Nadya said think of a chemist testing purity at a coke buy. What kind of computerware could possibly be worth $7.5 million? I don’t know enough tech to take more than wild guesses at that.

The talk moves on to where and when the exhange will take place. Kim’s suite is ruled out by mutual agreement; a bit too public for the generals, but more important, absolutely inadequate for proper testing of the product. Tchitch has a perfect location: a small office building, PrimorEx or something, half a block from the Versailles. Front company for the generals, newly renovated, wired by Japanese technicians for the latest highest-speed Internet access and other electronic conveniences.

I know Sonny’s catching all of this in Yoon’s translation, so half my mind goes back to the merchandise. Could there be any hardware so valuable that’s small and portable? One man cannot carry a Cray. It has to be software, I decide. Military maybe, at that price. But Kim doesn’t do military. And the Germans don’t possess anything military worth having; their entire establishment, tanks to warplanes, is obsolete. Industrial, then? Heavy industry, metals? No, nothing special German there. Chemicals? Good possibility. Pharmaceuticals? Even better. New proprietary pharmaceuticals, thickly iced by German patents? Highest value, so highest probability. But I just don’t know.

I snap to when I feel Sonny, next to me, rise from his chair. Blondie and the skinhead are standing already. I see Kim shaking hands with the generals in turn, see Tchitch usher them out like an unctuous maître d’ who’s just been lavishly tipped. Fall in with Sonny, flank rear of Kim and Yoon. Hear a laugh that sounds familiar as we pass the little casino. I see Nadya, lean
ing on the shoulder of a weasely little guy at the roulette wheel. His fingers linger too long when he slips a chip down her cleavage. Sonny’s first out the front door, blocks it, scans right and left, then moves quickly to the Lada, opens the doors. Kim and Yoon slide in the back, followed by Sonny. I make a fast scan, slip in next to the driver.

The trailing Lada picks up our back before we’ve gone a hundred meters, stays at our back all the way to the Lotte.

Once he checks in on Tommy the Wizard, once we’ve tucked Mister Kim safely in, Sonny and I go down to the bar. There’s a large party of
sararimen
, drunk already and likely to keep on until they pass out, raising a ruckus in Japanese. Sonny takes one look, picks a spot as far away from them as he can find, orders two beers.

Then he says, “This thing, day after tomorrow, what you think? Look okay to you?”

“About as good as it could. Those two dogs tonight, if they’re the best the generals got, the generals ought to be nervous.”

“Yeah, they nothing.”

“And our backup is on the job.”

“How you know that?”

“Saw Nadya in the casino on the way out. She was right there for the whole dinner.”

“No shit?”

“Didn’t see Allison or Carlos, but I’ll bet they were within shooting distance of us.”

“Ho! Pretty slick, damn straight. Maybe I had a wrong feeling about this before.”

“Before we go into that PrimorEx place—what time was set?”

“Five-thirty, day after tomorrow. But Mistah Kim
gotta call those guys around three that day, say it’s still okay.”

“Yeah, five-thirty. Well, that gives our crew a full day and full night to check and tape the place solid. Any tricky bits there, we’ll know in advance. Shit, we’ll probably have a floor plan of the place, every camera and other security measure marked. My feeling is we’ll walk in, stare at that same pair of ugly Russkis while Tommy the Wizard tickles his keyboard, then walk out real relaxed. I’m loose.”

“Most likely you exactly right. But I think I carry maybe six extra clips for my Uzis,” Sonny says. “Case some fools try to mug us on the street afterward, some shit like that.”

“Why, Irena! What a lovely surprise,” I say, seeing Nadya on my bed exactly as I’d seen her that afternoon.

“Oh bugger off, you. Had a miserable evening,” she almost snarls.

“What? Too many chips stuffed down your bra by a guy with greasy fingers?”

“Haven’t a clue what you’re going on about. I’m cross because I lost at vingt-et-un.”

“A lot?”

“Over a thousand, dammit.”

“Rubles. So what’s that in real money? Maybe seventy-five dollars?”

“Doesn’t matter how much. What matters is I hate losing. Especially when I’m cheating,” she says, sitting up. “Now I’m tired as well as cross. So hurry up and tell me all, so I can go intersect with that bitch Allison and get some sleep.”

“Bitch?”

“Well, she seemed rather in one of your AD modes
this afternoon. I did not appreciate it one bit. She’d better be nicer tonight. Now give.”