Whirlwind (36 page)

Paychecks aren’t the only thing in life.

I’m thinking about your children. About my grandchildren.

Oddly enough, so am I. What is it, Charlie?

A check from your father. A damned big check. In point of feet, a whopper.

I told him not to do that. Just send it back.

You sure?

Unless you think it can buy more happiness than we have.

Never happen.

Give it to me, Charlie. I’ll write him a note. It will be better coming from me than from you.

It’s a graduation present, Charlie.

We’ve had this discussion before.

I’m putting my grandson through medical school. And you’re going to live with it because you don’t have a choice.

Like hell.

Oh, Charlie, give up. Who do you think I’m doing this for? You? Scott? Nope, I’m doing it for myself. Seeing Scott through the best school in America is a present I’m giving myself. Indulge me. I’m getting on in life. Don’t deny an old man with only a few years left to him the pleasures that remain.

You are an astonishingly creative liar.

It takes one to know one.

Tell you what, let’s leave it up to Mary.

Nice try, but I already cleared it with my daughter.

I’ve lost this one, haven’t I?

Yup. Try to be gracious about it.

How do I look bald, Charlie?

As beautiful as ever. More beautiful.

They say it will grow back. Once the chemotherapy is over, my hair will come back.

I don’t give a good goddamn about your hair. Just get better, okay?

Mr. McKenzie, I regret telling you this, but your petition for compassionate parole has been denied.

My wife is dying.

Sir, I wrote the strongest recommendation I could. The parole board endorsed it. Seven votes for, none against. Washington overruled us. That’s unprecedented. In all my years in the penal system, I’ve never seen anything like it. If there is something else I can do … well, Mr. McKenzie, you would have my whole hearted support.

She doesn’t have long left. There’ll be a funeral soon. See if they’ll let me attend. Even if I have to go in handcuffs, I want to be there.

Hi, sweetheart. I brought you some flowers. Big damned bouquet. It’s got all sorts of stuff in it. Roses, carnations, mignonettes, mums, and a whole bunch more. Wish you could see it. You loved … love flowers. Next to the kids and the cats, and maybe me, flowers were closest to your heart. Are closest to your heart. Here, let me put them next to the stone. Maybe you can smell them. I hope so. You’ll get a fresh bouquet every week. I’ve set that up with the people who run this joint. Don’t worry about the cost. Your dad is helping with the bills. And I’ll be by too pretty much every day, I suppose. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, there’s no place I’d rather be, no place I ever wanted to be, than with you. We can talk. We’ve still got a lot to talk about. All the stuff we never got around to saying, and especially the stuff I could never bring myself to say. Oh, damnit, Mary, I love you so much, and you always deserved a better guy than me.

REM, doctor. He’s dreaming now. The sedative is wearing off.

Give him until morning before waking him up. He’s not young anymore, and he’s got a lot of healing to do.

J_five oak, old olive, and liquidambar shaded suburban Livermore’s streets from the thirsty sun of a California afternoon. Irina drove cautiously beneath blue shadows.

Had she not known the address, one of dozens memorized for emergency use, she wouldn’t have given the house a second glance.

Think Russian, she ordered herself. I must begin to think in Russian. I am going home, and should no longer think in English.

Within minutes she’d be safe in an ordinary-looking house on an ordinary-looking street, the first stop on the underground railway that would carry her, triumphant, to victory.

The house was just ahead, to the right. She slowed, studying it.

Think Russian.

Kvartim-lovushka middle-class simplicity in wood and stone: blue-grey with white trim, a picture window and half-drawn curtains, a small front yard surrounded by a low hedge, a chocolate-colored door with no windowpanes. George and Sue might live there, or Alice and Mike. Their last names would be Jones or Ford or Smith, because only single-syllable Americans would live in a dwelling such as this.

So the house appeared. Appearances are deceiving.

Kvctrtim-lovushka. Translation: mousetrap.

The lady of the house would speak English more naturally than Irina. The week before, or the month before, or whenever the mouse met her, she would have sounded like the girl next door, although she’d look much better than that.

Inside, the mouse would find comfortingly familiar furniture. From Sears, perhaps, or Levitz. Nothing flashy, nothing out of the ordinary. Mice felt safe in such surroundings. That was the point.

Well, yes, the mouse might be a little nervous about the husband. However, Sue or Alice told him there was nothing to worry about. During those long phone calls, or the exchange of e-mail messages that began so innocuously, but later became less so, she complained of her spouse’s busy travel schedule, later turning complaints into hints, and, after all, it would be so easy to visit her on a quiet, suburban afternoon.

Komprometiruyushchikh materia lakh

A video camera behind the bedroom mirror, and another in the lighting fixture above. A microphone concealed beneath the nightstand. Tape decks in the attic. Two agents sweating at the monitors, exchanging the usual jests as the mouse took the bait.

Komprometiruyushchikh materia lakh compromising materials.

They called such women little birds; “swallows” to be specific. You earned the job title by going to a very special school. For male officers one of the perks of serving with KGB, now FSB, was to be practice subjects for that school’s students.

Better still, homework.

Swallows. Many jokes were made about the word. In Russian or in English, the puns were much the same. Men laughed. Women did not.

Irina’s skin was clammy cold. Memory is a knife in every human heart; remembered betrayal pierces deepest.

No! No introspection, no reflection, no reflection on a past that could not be changed! She must, absolutely must, focus her full concentration on the only thing that mattered: escape.

Eyes flicking left, Irina drove past the house.

Brosovyy signal? Nyet.

If the mousetrap was in use, a signal would be visible something as plain and innocuous as the house itself. Here, the town of Livermore, home of America’s largest nuclear weapons laboratory, that signal was a tricycle near the front steps.

No tricycle, no danger. The house had not been compromised. She could enter freely. And she, in possession of the Whirlwind computer disk, would have won.

Although, of course, Charlie would have lost.

Irrelevant! The fate of a defeated foe is irrelevant! And, curse me, I must stop thinking in English!

Not daring to use the telephone, the occupant of this simple suburban home would send a runner to the San Francisco Rezidentura, an hour’s drive west. Shortly thereafter, an anonymous car would be dispatched together with a full garde rob operativnyy, an entirely new disguise. She’d be spirited out of the country, first to Canada, then on to Moscow.

Then, at last, she would have won her father’s respect. For what little the respect of such a man might be worth.

She braked to a halt at the corner, looking left and right for traffic. Good citizen, careful driver, she switched on her right turn signal. Drive three blocks, she told herself, slipping back into English unaware, and leave the car. They will not find it soon, although when they do, Scott will take the blame.

Unfortunate but necessary blame.

Four hours earlier Charlie’s son had rented her an aquamarine Toyota at the Chico airport. Understanding that her license and credit cards were compromised, Scott had gotten the car under his own name. He asked no questions, said nothing except that he believed his father would approve.

Giving her the keys, he smiled. At that moment he did not merely look like a young Charlie, he was Charlie. She kissed him, and he didn’t understand why.

Neither did she.

Turning right, eyes watchful of her rearview mirror, she thought about her mad flight from Arizona. A small plane of erratic performance. A broken radio and primitive navigational systems. Nearly seven hundred bumpy miles at a hundred and twenty miles an hour; three refueling stops; the sickening closeness of treetops as an antique engine groaned over the Sierras; Lake Tahoe distant indigo ink; a long slow glide down the mountains’ western slope; Sacramento and its wide river; then farm country, nut orchards, a hot brown landscape, and a small college town.

She and Charlie’s son had taken rooms at a Best Western. They paid cash, paid in advance. She still had the money Charlie had given her, although that, her wallet, and her father’s pistol were all she had.

She bought toiletries and a change of clothes at a shopping mall. As she shopped, she laughed, Scott made her laugh, he so much resembled his father in word, and attitude, and appearance.

Dinner was delightful. It was just like being with Charlie.

Ah, there. After the next block, anonymous as all the blocks before, the neighborhood changed. Slightly lower on the social scale, its houses had a weary look, tired people with soul-killing jobs. More cars lined the curb. She could slot her rented Toyota between an unwashed Buick and a brown station wagon of indeterminate make.

Park. Lock. Take the keys. Walk to the mousetrap.

And heave a sigh of relief because it would be all over, and she would have nothing more to worry about.

Except that I must worry about Charlie. Scott did not think it safe to call not to call his doctor friend at the clinic, not to call his sister… what is her name?… Carly. Perhaps I should find a phone. I passed a gasoline station a few miles back. Surely they will have a pay phone. But, no, the lines will be monitored, of that I may be certain, for if I were in command, it is the first order I would issue.

She noticed she was thinking in English again. She decided to think in Russian later.

I believe I should circle the block. Just to be safe.

How strange to worry about Charlie. He was merely an enemy who had been overcome. There was no debt between them, no bond, no reason why she should think of him at all. His fate was immaterial, was it not?

I promised I would come to him again. Why did I say that?

Because he trusted her. Because he put her safety ahead of his own. Because he gave her a computer disk with which she might purchase her life.

With which he might have purchased his own.

She almost missed the stop sign. Slamming on her brakes, she jolted to a halt. A shouting woman with a baby carriage stood at the curb. Irina accelerated away.

They might kill him. That man, that Schmidt, hates Charlie. In the hotel, in the Hilton, they said… he said… he promised to kill him.

And Charlie mocked him. At risk to his own life, he mocked him to save me.

Why did he do that?

Does there have to be a “why”? For a man like Charlie, perhaps there never is. Perhaps the only “why” is because he is who he is, and cannot be otherwise.

She could see him, oh, that infuriating grin, as he stood on Mitch Con-roy’s porch with a bag of Big Macs in his hand. He was still smiling when she chained him to the sink, more amused than worried, and although he was her enemy he was, well, charming. No charm, though, when he faced down Schmidt, one man against ten in a motel lobby, no weapon in his hand, but armament more powerful bravery that lions might envy. And then … and then … he knew about her father, knowing far more than he said. He knew the worst, she was sure of it, although he was too good a man to speak a truth he surely had deduced. So shrewd, he knew it all, but kept it silently locked within him. Instead he spoke of sailboats, bad enough, and somewhere deep within she understood that he would spare her that other thing, and was grateful to him for that.

He made her smile. Out of simple goodness, he made her smile, and what man had ever done that? His story, so sweet, a fable of a fairy-tale paradise, a peaceful little village called San Carlos, did such a place exist? Would such a warrior as Charlie lay down his shield and sword, and retire there, no ambition greater than the comfort of cats?

Oh, Charlie, Charlie, do you think I did not know what you did? Do you think I did not see you drop sleeping pills into my drink? I took them willingly, Charlie, I took all your baits because I thought myself more cunning than you,

and was always thinking one step ahead of you. But you were not fooled, were you? I cannot fool you. Nor can you fool me. We share the same mind, Charlie, are the same person. And do you know, I have never felt closer to any human being than I feel to you, and how could I have left you behind?

Her jaw was clenched painfully tight. She had never thought she’d want any man’s love. Now that she did, she found the emotion unexpectedly sad.

I have won no victory. I only have been given it, a gift from someone who never was my enemy.

The medal they would pin on her would not be hers, for she had not earned it. She would stand in uniform on a podium with ribboned officers, a parade of tribute on the field below. After a speech acclaiming achievements that belonged to another, the guest of honor would rise from his seat to affix a medallion to her blouse. Ceremony demanded it. The proper forms must be observed. It was not enough that they give her an award; they would insist that it be presented to her by he who made her what she was, a loyal and faithful servant of the state, a daughter who was as much credit to her fatherland as she was to her father. In dress blue uniform and bright brass buttons, he would step forward.

A cold kiss on either cheek.

And a salute. A salute! He would salute her not because he honored her but because, at long last, she had become what he wanted her to be. She had become no different from him.

Cruised and aching, Charlie slammed down the notebook computer’s screen, switching the wretched, balky machine off. The only portable that David Howard, he of the egregiously underfunded Indian Health Service, had been able to scrape up was as slow as molasses and as user-friendly as… Charlie snarled … as Bill Gates.