Deep Black

61

Karr stayed in the shower until his toes wrinkled. The hot water washed away seven thousand miles’ worth of grime, then ground away at his skin, shaving off several epidermal layers. Back in the kitchen in fresh clothes, he made a whole pot of very strong coffee and sat at the table, reading an old issue of Car and Driver stowed here at his request. The magazine was several years old and he’d already read it cover to cover perhaps three dozen times; one of the cars it featured was no longer even offered for sale. But he read it eagerly, even thoughtfully, his mind absorbed by details of the Mazda RX-8’s cornering ability and a rant about how hard you had to mash the Z car’s gas pedal to get it really moving.

Between the coffee and the shower, Karr decided he was awake enough to forgo a stimulant patch; the time-released amphetamine made him feel a little too jumpy and he’d only used it once since coming to Russia. It allegedly wasn’t habit-forming, but he figured that was complete bull. His concept of the body as temple for the spirit did not preclude trading vodka shots, eating double cheeseburgers, or forgoing some of the precautions they preached in health class, but he was enough of a control freak to dislike operating in a submerged haze of consciousness.

He closed his magazine and got up from the table. He retrieved a large metal attache´ case from the bottom cabinet next to the stove, opened it, and took out a laptop. Then he went back to the table, pulled out the chair he’d been sitting on, and got down on his hands and knees, feeling carefully for the right tile — he could never remember which of the four beneath the table it was. Finding it, he pressed on one corner and tried lifting it with his fingernails, but they weren’t quite long enough. He tried two more times — he’d actually managed to get it the last time he was here — then gave up and got a pair of knives whose thin blades were hooked slightly; he jostled up the tile with a flick of his wrists, retrieving a large coaxial cable from a compartment next to the plug.

The system took a while to boot up and then check itself. Karr poured himself a cup of coffee in the meantime, sliding back into the chair. As the test pattern came up, he took out his satellite phone and called Blake Clark in St. Petersburg, an MI6 contact whom he’d asked to meet Martin when he arrived. The British agent answered the phone with a sharp “Clark.” Glasses clinked in the background.

“How’d my package do?”

“Arrived and left.”

“Take the flight to Finland?”

“Said you’d told him there was a change in plans,” said Clark.

“Yeah. Which plane?”

“You didn’t tell me I had to baby-sit the chap.”

“He’s gone now?”

“At least an hour.”

“You’re sure he got on a plane.”

“He didn’t come out of any of the entrances. My people were watching for him.”

“Thanks, Blake. I owe you one.”

“Actually, if we’re keeping track, you owe quite a bit more.”

Karr hit end, then keyed Bori Grinberg. Grinberg answered on the first ring.

“Da?” Grinberg’s accent — and language — always started out somewhere around Berlin but could range over to Paris, up to Krako´w, and back to Moscow depending on the circumstances.

“It’s Karr. So?”

“Meter never moved.” Grinberg’s English had a Russian tint to it, which made Karr suspect that he was in fact Russian, though definitive information was impossible to come by. His first name was Norse — but names meant nothing.

“You’re at the terminal?”

“Da.”

“OK, I need you to walk through the building, back near the gate, rest rooms, all that, see if the marker was offloaded. Keep the line open.”

“Walking.”

Karr had slipped three pimple-sized “markers” onto Martin’s clothes before packing him onto the aircraft. The markers contained radioactive isotopes, chosen for their uniqueness and ability to excite the detector Grinberg had in his hand. Karr had told him to wait at the airport and see if the meter flipped.

Grinberg was a freelancer believed to retain ties to Russian intelligence. Karr found him valuable nonetheless, though admittedly he had to use some precautions — such as, in this case, not identifying whom Grinberg was looking for.

Unfortunately, to get Grinberg to do the job, Karr had had to blow one of his equipment cache points in St. Petersburg. Such points were difficult to come by, and replacing it would take several days of angst — not to mention a trip to St. Petersburg, a city he didn’t particularly like. It also meant he compromised all of the technology in the cache, which Grin-berg could be counted on to help himself to.

Which was why all of the technology — the most notable items beyond the tracking gear were some eavesdropping kits and a pair of stun guns that looked like wristwatches — had been purloined from the Russians themselves.

“How we doing?” he asked Grinberg. He could hear him walking through a crowd.

“Nee-yada.”

“You trying to say ‘nada’?”

“Da.”

“You have to work on your slang. But before you can do that, you have to figure out your nationality, ja?”

“Hai!” he said.

“I haven’t heard Japanese from you before. Thinking of moving?”

Grinberg let off a string of Russian curses, apparently aimed at someone who had bumped into him in the airport. It was already clear to Karr that Martin had in fact boarded an airplane — that or bribed Grinberg and Clark to make it look as if he had — and so he turned his attention to the laptop. After clearing himself into the system, he initiated a program that put him on the Internet, spoofing a German gateway into thinking he was in Du¨sseldorf. From there he accessed a file on a server and downloaded a program to his laptop’s prodigious RAM — there was no hard drive. With two keystrokes Karr hacked into the reservation system controlling flights out of St. Petersburg, a destination he had chosen specifically because he found this system so easy to access.

“Ne rein,” said Grinberg.

“French, right?” said Karr, recognizing the phrase for “nothing.” “No trace anywhere in the airport?”

“Nope.”

“Now comes the hard part — I’m going to give you a plane to check out.”

“Plane?”

“Yeah. Actually, it’s still at the gate. I know the flight.” If Grinberg didn’t find the markers on the plane, then Martin had to be still wearing them, which would make the next step considerably easier. Karr keyed his computer and saw that the flight would be leaving in exactly forty-five minutes. “I need you to check the trash and then the plane — they won’t have vacuumed it.”

“Mon dieu.”

“Yeah — uh, you’ll find a ticket waiting at the gate. Round-trip.” He hesitated, waiting for the screen to refresh. The hack was perfect, but the system wasn’t particularly user-friendly — he had to enter Grinberg’s name with an asterisk before each letter. He screwed something up and it came out as “Grinnberg,” which he figured was close enough. “You’re misspelled in the computer, just so you know.”

“They will ask for my credit card,” said Grinberg.

“So give me the number and it’ll be there.”

“You’re going to make me burn a good card?”

“You buy them by the hundreds, don’t you?”

“Karr—”

“Come on, plane’s boarding. It’s worth another thousand euros. Going into your account now.”

Grinberg got the card out quickly. Dean put in the number, then told him he’d call back in about forty minutes, by which time he expected him on the plane.

Twelve flights left St. Petersburg in the hour or so since Clark had lost contact with Martin. Karr looked through the different passenger lists, looking for single passengers paying cash and added to the manifest at the last minute. He found three likely candidates on three different planes — one flying to London’s Heathrow Airport, one to Poznan in Poland, and one to Moscow.

London wasn’t worth checking out, Karr decided; if Martin really was coming west he would have taken the flight Karr had arranged. Poznan was in central Poland, not particularly handy to anything — which would make it a clever choice. But if Martin was being clever, he would have simply bribed someone and taken his ticket, gambling that the airline wouldn’t bother matching passengers.

Not a good gamble these days, but maybe worth the risk.

Nah. Not after everything else he’d been through.

But Moscow seemed too easy.

Karr backed out and went over to an airline Web site that helpfully provided flight information. The plane from St. Petersburg was due in about an hour.

Tight, doable.

Easy, though. But maybe he was due. He did live a good life.