The Leviathan Effect (25 page)

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’ve thought about what you said. I should have told you why I really called the other day.”

“You mean it wasn’t because of Janus.”

“It was. But it was more than that. Weights?” she said.

“All right. Upper-body day?”

She forced a smile and pulled two dumbbells off the rack. Her green eyes glittered in the artificial light. Her hair was down and she wore no makeup today. It gave her a confident, no-nonsense look he liked.

“Under the circumstances, doesn’t it seem a little frivolous to be spending the morning trying to enhance our physiques?” he said.

She shrugged. “Routines are what keep us sane. My dad used to say that a lot. Anyway, that’s not really why we’re here.”

“No? Good.” Mallory watched her reflection in the full-length mirror.

“I’ve changed my mind about something,” she said. “I’ve decided that maybe we
can
share information, as you put it. On a limited basis.”

“Okay. What changed your mind?”

“Something that happened last night.”

“In Baltimore.”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Ruben Sanchez, murdered at his residence in the Baltimore suburbs
. Mallory finished a set of curls with twenty pounds and set the weights down. He knew that she wanted to talk to him on her terms and sensed that if he waited, she’d open up. He also knew that she was taking a risk, breaking protocol and, maybe, the law.

“We’re meeting with someone today,” she said, speaking just above a whisper, as she lifted and then lowered a pair of ten-pound dumbbells.

“Okay. It’s about that, isn’t it?” He nodded at the televisions.
Alexander
.

“Mmm hmm.”

Lift, lower. Inhale, exhale.

That was all he needed to hear, really. He could begin to figure other things now.
Cross clues
. “Can I take a guess who you’re meeting with?”

“Okay.”

Inhale, exhale.

“Victor Zorn?”

Her eyes slid to his in the mirror and he saw that wild look that he liked. “How would you know that?”

“Just a guess.” He watched her set the weights back and shake out her arms. “And who else?”

“What?”

“Who else are you meeting with?”

“Why do you think there’s anyone else?”

“Another guess. I’m thinking there must be two or three others for this to work.”

“Why?”

“Because Zorn isn’t a known quantity. He doesn’t have the creds. But if he walks in with two or three or four legitimate people, it’s a different ball game. Again, I’m just speculating.”

She glanced at him in the mirror, rubbing her hands on a towel. “You’re good. Three,” she said. “Morgan Garland. Dr. Jared Clayton. Dr. Sue Romfo.”

Mallory coughed, pretending not to be astounded. He adjusted the weight on a pulley machine and sat down at the workout bench for a series of overhead tricep extensions. The names answered one question, but immediately raised others.

“When’s the meeting?”

“One o’clock.”

She was lifting again, watching his eyes in the mirror.

“The four of them are going to be there?”

“Apparently.”

Mallory pulled the overhead bar to chest level, then let it ease back up with the pile of weights. “But Vladimir Volkov won’t be part of it.”

“Pardon?”

He studied her reaction, letting the pulley bar return.

“Who is Vladimir Volkop?”

“Volkov,” Mallory said. “Supposedly, Victor Zorn is Volkov’s proxy. Volkov is a Russian billionaire. Second generation oligarch, I’m told. Made his fortune in oil and banking. Supposedly has some strong, but secretive, connections with the Kremlin.”

“Volkov.” She watched him in the mirror.

“Yes.”

“And how would you know that? Or any of this?”

He shrugged, standing. “Well. I can’t say, really. Only that it comes on pretty good authority.”

“Who
is
Volkov? What’s he done?”

Mallory sat on a bench and considered. He could tell her everything he knew or he could cherry-pick. He decided to tell her everything. It was going to be a trade. Plus, he kind of liked her and wanted to help.

“From what I understand, he’s put together a consortium of research companies—geo-engineering, energy, weather—over the past ten, maybe fifteen years. He’s established something of a monopoly on the serious end of the climate control industry.”

“Are you saying this is really about Russia, then?”

“I don’t know,” Mallory said.

“We’ve been led to believe it’s China.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How would Volkov have done all this without setting off alarm bells?”

“I guess very carefully. I don’t know. A lot of the deals were evidently put together through Victor Zorn, using various shell companies and intermediaries. He took advantage of an industry that isn’t carefully monitored. Scooped up individual scientists and research firms in very discreet ways.”

“So who is Mr. Zorn?”

“Not clear. His bio says he’s American, but I think he may be Russian. From what I’ve learned, he may have had connections with organized crime at one point. Have you heard of the Izmailovskaya syndicate?”

“Of course. One of Moscow’s oldest mafias.”

“Supposedly he was involved with them for a number of years.”

She finished another set of curls, set down one dumbbell, then the other.

“Tell me about Dr. Sanchez,” he said.

“Oh.” She reached for a towel and rubbed it over her face. “He was a friend,” she said, looking at herself now. Mallory saw her eyes moisten in the mirror. “A man I had enormous respect and affection for. I saw him two days ago.” She sat, still catching her breath. “I don’t want to get too paranoid but I think he was killed because of what he was going to do.”

“Really.”

“I think so.”

“What was he going to do?”

“I think he was going to talk. He had a couple of contacts in the media and was about to share what he knew.”

“Talk about what?”

“Something we had discussed two days ago. That was the first time I heard the name Victor Zorn, actually. We were supposed to meet again this morning.”

“What did Dr. Sanchez say about Zorn?”

“He told me what you just told me. That he was consolidating research facilities involved with climate studies. That he was a very clever and charismatic man. Dr. Sanchez thought he was about to make a move of some sort.”

“What kind of move?”

“I don’t know. I guess maybe we’ll find out today.”

They were startled by a sudden rumbling. Thunder.

“I’ve been wrestling with going outside of the circle on this,” Blaine said, speaking just above a whisper. “I shouldn’t, but last night changed that. Something inside this circle isn’t right. Some
one
. I can’t figure out what, or who, exactly, but it scares hell out of me.”

A man in a blue windbreaker walked in the door. It was the same person Mallory had seen the other morning. Black shoe-polish hair. Secret Service, probably.

“Want to stretch a little bit?”

As they stretched, she told him about the anonymous email threats, the warnings about “natural disasters” that weren’t natural, speaking succinctly in a soft, even tone.
Trade completed
. If it had come from anyone else, Charles Mallory probably wouldn’t have believed any of it. Coming from Blaine, he did.

“I know I shouldn’t have said any of that,” she told him afterward. “Before last night, I wouldn’t have.”

“It’s good that you did.”

She sighed. “How about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Yesterday you said we’re like two intelligence agencies that aren’t willing to share information. So what else have you got for me? What aren’t you sharing?”

“Oh.” Mallory watched her steady green eyes. He decided to tell the rest of what he had learned. The seven names. There was no
sense in holding anything back now. Afterward, he wrote them out for her on a scrap of paper.

“Okay,” she said, tucking it in a pouch of her gym bag. She draped a towel around her neck. “And so? What do you think this is really about?”

Mallory didn’t say anything for a while. He didn’t want to speculate too much about that. He was formulating a theory, still, coming back to the details that didn’t make sense, but would ultimately stitch it together.

They were sitting on benches in front of the mirror, watching reflections of each other. Sweating slightly.

“I think the endgame is about legitimacy,” he said at last. “It’s about someone who is very resourceful. Brilliant, wealthy, connected. Someone who has created a network that could probably revolutionize science and technology worldwide. But somehow this person has an Achilles heel. Something about his character, his past, is tainted. There is a reason he needs to stay in the background. He’s come this far and now he needs a stamp of legitimacy. The US government could give him that. This President, in particular, seems responsive to grand gestures, to big symbolic ideas. And it sounds like they’re about to hand him one.”

“But if he doesn’t have legitimacy,” she said, “how was he able to get people like Garland, Romfo, and Clayton on board?”

“I know,” Mallory said. “I’m still working on that part.”

He sat up straighter, gazing at the entrance to the gym. Then he thought of another idea. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “What doesn’t seem right to you about all this?”

Blaine snorted. “Where do I begin?”

“Begin with the first thing that comes to mind. What doesn’t fit? Three words or less.”

She smiled, but he could see that she was thinking about it.

“The President,” she said.

Mallory nodded, although he hadn’t really imagined what she would say. “Why, what about him?”

“I don’t know. Something just doesn’t seem right. The President’s career could be on the line over this crisis and he seems to be going along with everything too easily. I don’t know, it just feels kind of reckless.”

“Do you think the President is involved?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Okay.” Mallory stretched out his legs. “And it bothers you because you like this President.”

“No. Well, I mean, yes. But that’s not why it bothers me. It bothers me because I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense. He’s acting like the threats are a separate issue from the storm that’s out there. They aren’t.”

Mallory watched her and he suddenly understood something else about the list. Something he’d missed.

“What are you doing after the meeting?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him this time, not his mirror image. “Why?”

“Let me tell you my idea.”

V
LADIMIR
V
OLKOV STOOD ON
an edge of the pink marbled pool terrace gazing at the sequins of sunlight on the Mediterranean and thinking about fate, as Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony filtered through a dozen speakers concealed in the lush shrubbery. It was a perfect, calm afternoon in the south of France. The sky was nearly cloudless as far as he could see, even as storms were raging elsewhere. Rain was forecast here, too, by the weekend; but by then Volkov would be gone.

“You always find us the most beautiful places,” Svetlana said, coming up beside him and kissing him carefully on the cheek.

Volkov glanced at his gold watch, and showed her a quick smile. His mistress came from where he had once dwelled, a life of few rewards, lots of desires.

“Yes, well, that’s what I do, isn’t it? Now, please, wait for me inside.”

Volkov leaned on the railing and looked back toward the sea, wondering about the monster that was right now raging across the Atlantic.

As a side business, Volkov operated a string of luxury resorts, which allowed him to live in the most agreeable climates on the planet. One day, he would like to see a world in which the weather was hospitable everywhere. Because when the weather was bad, Volkov’s mind became a haunted palace; a place he could not bear to live.

He was a tall, slightly jowly man, once strikingly handsome, who still often felt like the champion athlete that he had been decades
earlier. This morning, he was headed into competition again, after years of secret training. A man in pursuit of a prize.

For Volkov, the championship was Πpoe
KT
, or “The Project.” A plan meticulously constructed over the course of many years, which would be executed now over the course of a few days.

He sat on a chaise beside the swimming pool and took out his encrypted mobile device. Checked his watch and waited. Only fourteen seconds late, the call came.

“Πpoe
KT
is about to go forward,” Dmitry Petrenko said, speaking in his cultured, central-Russian accent.

“And how is he? Is he ready?”

“Victor?” Petrenko was careful not to hesitate, Volkov noticed. “He seems to be.”

“Has he been honest? With himself?”

“So far, yes. I’d say yes.”

There was a silence. “I don’t want you involved, Dmitry, other than to provide security.”

“I have no other intentions.”

“I don’t want you offering any assistance or any advice. Otherwise, we will never be able to say it was really him. This is his project and he must rise or fall by it.”

“I understand that. I have no issue with that.”

“Good.”

Volkov clicked off and gazed again at the azure sea. He closed his eyes and thought about his lieutenant, Victor Zorn, for several long moments.
Mr. Zorn
.

Volkov, raised in Russia during the Cold War, had never been to the States, although he expected to visit very soon. His second wife and their two children lived still in Russia, at a villa outside Moscow. But Volkov kept a boundary between work and family. The Project had been constructed that way. His family understood, without knowing what his real business was; they knew not to question him.

Volkov’s rise had been swift and, it sometimes seemed, to him and others, divinely inspired. He had adopted an aggressive, Western-style approach to management and organization, using his inheritance to buy up oil fields, refineries and pipelines, coal companies and port facilities; winning a major oil company in a loans-for-shares auction before he was forty; and then engineering several highly
leveraged takeovers, selling the acquisitions to strategic investors, at times to himself. For several years, Volkov had even sat as a deputy on the Russian Fuel and Energy Ministry. Everything had been built carefully, and much of it nearly invisibly.