Black Rose

CHAPTER 50

Elizabeth looked up as Stephanie came into the room.

"Steph, what's the matter? You look like you just found a worm at the bottom of your coffee cup."

"I did find a worm, but it wasn't in my coffee. I got into the old KGB files, looking for more information about Vysotsky."

"And?"

"And, I discovered what he was doing back in the 80s."

"Something tells me I'm not going to like what you found," Elizabeth said.

"He was an assassin. Moscow used him for wet work abroad. He was one of the few agents trusted to work in the West."

"In America?"

"Yes. He was here in nineteen eighty-seven."

The date clicked in Elizabeth's head.

"You don't mean…"

"I do. Vysotsky is the one who killed Selena's family. He planted a device that released acid onto the brake lines on her father's car. The acid ate through the line, the brake fluid drained out and the next time her father hit the brakes it was all over. The car went through a guard rail and fell more than four hundred feet."

"How did he know when and where they were going?"

"Someone told him. The report refers to him as Kolokol. It means "bell" in Russian."

"That was the KGB code name for Aldrich Ames," Elizabeth said. "He set her father up to be killed."

Elizabeth opened a drawer at her desk and took out her aspirin bottle. She shook three into her hand and swallowed them with coffee.

"They should have shot him," Stephanie said.

"Ames? Yes, they should have. But we don't do that here. At least he'll never be a free man again."

"I don't think Selena will be satisfied with that."

"I'm not sure we should tell her," Elizabeth said. "It's bad enough that she found out her father had an affair with a Russian agent."

"Not to mention that she has a half-sister who's a Russian assassin."

"What a mess," Elizabeth said. "I'm not inclined to pile anything else on her."

"What about Vysotsky?"

"I wish I'd known this before. How come it didn't turn up in the past?"

"I found this on the SVR computers in Moscow. It was misfiled. Sometimes I wonder how the Russians ever get anything done, considering the size of their bureaucracy and the mistakes they make."

"That's excellent work, Steph."

"What about Vysotsky? It changes our relationship with him."

"It does," Elizabeth said, "but I can't say it surprises me. No one gets to his position of power in SVR without getting his hands dirty."

"Sometimes I wonder about our hands," Stephanie said. "Look at what we do. I tell myself we hold the boundaries, that there are things we won't do and that makes it all right. It helps me sleep at night."

"We make mistakes, Steph. It bothers me but the boundaries aren't set in stone. It's not a game. People who think civilized rules should always apply haven't a clue what it's like out there, where Nick and the others are. There aren't any neat moral and ethical lines."

"Sometimes I think there are only two kinds of people," Stephanie said. "The sheep and the shepherds. I guess we're shepherds."

"There are three kinds," Elizabeth said.

"What's the third?"

"The wolves. You forgot the wolves."

"It's hard to think of them as people."

"Speaking of wolves, Nick found a lair in France and took it out."

"What happened?"

"It was a trap. Nick said there were a dozen men waiting for them, hiding inside the house. Lamont was hit."

"How bad?" Stephanie asked.

"Bad enough. His leg's broken, he lost some blood. He's out of action."

"There's no way Gutenberg could have known we were coming."

"Then why were his men waiting for us?"

Stephanie looked thoughtful. "They might not have been waiting for us, exactly. He must have discovered the trace on his laptop. He'd want to know who was watching. Sending that email about the meeting in France was bait. It makes sense that whoever read it might go after him, and that's just what we did. All Gutenberg had to do was have his men in place and wait and see who showed up."

"The Russians didn't show up," Elizabeth said.

"That's curious, isn't it?"

"It makes me wonder how the Russian trace got on his computer in the first place. How easy would it be to tap in when he's online?"

"Not easy at all," Stephanie said. "Gutenberg isn't using some standard firewall to keep out hackers. He has one of the most sophisticated security protocols I've ever seen. It would take someone with my level of skill to get into it. I only discovered that trace by accident. It's possible someone else got past his encryption but I think it was planted directly onto his computer."

"Who would be able to do that? A man like Gutenberg isn't going to leave his computer lying around where anyone can get to it."

"He's been spending a lot of time in Paris," Stephanie said. "He stays at the George V every time he goes there. Maybe someone we don't know about is staying there with him."

"Does the hotel have CCTV cameras?"

"They must," Stephanie said. "Everyone does these days. I could get into them through the hotel computer. "

"Take a look and see if anyone looks interesting," Elizabeth said.

"It could be anyone he's with."

"My guess is that the person we're looking for will show up more than once."

Stephanie glanced at the clock. "It's getting late and I have a dinner engagement with Lucas. I'd like to tackle it tomorrow if that's okay with you."

"Tomorrow is soon enough," Elizabeth said.