Politika

TWENTY-FOUR

A few moments past eleven o’clock at night, Pete Nimec sat at his laptop computer in his home office, his face a study in concentration as he read the e-mail that had just appeared on its display regarding Gordian’s ongoing investigation into the events in Russia, code-named “Politika”:

Nimec moved his cursor to the menu bar, clicked on the Download option, then rocked backward in his chair and waited, smiling a little. Alex was so often correct it was uncanny. And he never disappointed.

When the transfer was done, Nimec logged off the Internet server, opened the first of the three files, and began scrolling through it:

Nimec let his eyes go down to the following section; what Alex meant by “sketchy” might have constituted a full academic treatise for other researchers.

The next few paragraphs were devoted to a summary of the agreements, which were more declarations of principle and intent than formal pacts. Something he read farther down in that same section, however, made Nimec sit up straight with interest:

Nimec read those lines twice before continuing, his eyes riveted to the screen, a low, thoughtful sound issuing from his throat. It seemed to contain the answers to a lot of questions — and that was what bothered him. He mistrusted the obvious.

He sipped the lukewarm coffee on his desk and scanned the rest of the document.

Ten minutes later Nimec reached the end of the dossier. He printed it out, closed the file, and opened the next one on his download queue, a detailed rundown of the Lian Group’s various international holdings.

It was midnight before he’d finished looking over Nordstrum’s reports, and the feeling he had after having skimmed the last of the three was a more intense version of how he’d felt midway into the Bashkir file — a sense that things were just too damn easy. Somehow, he was reminded of a trip he’d taken to the Great Adventure Theme Park in New Jersey many years before. You drove along automobile paths that led through simulated wildlife habitats, but the truly dangerous animals were restrained behind not very well camouflaged fences. The idea being for visitors to have the illusion of traveling down a safari trail while in fact remaining on a safe, contrived, and carefully overseen route.

Rubbing his eyes, Nimec again made hard copies of the reports, then abandoned the program, switched off his computer, and closed its cover. He pushed back his chair, stood, and stretched, rotating his neck and shoulders to work the kinks out of his muscles. He was simultaneously exhausted and wired, and knew himself well enough to realize he would be unable to sleep. There was something else here, something he wasn’t getting, a layer of understanding that seemed just out of reach.

Nimec shook his head. He needed desperately to unwind.

Leaving the office, he went across the wide, unpartitioned space of his living room, dining room, and kitchen to his private elevator. He thumbed the Call button, and when the car arrived rode it to the upper level of his triplex condominium apartment.

The elevator opened into a rec/training complex that spanned the entire floor and was divided into four large areas, all enclosed by a circular indoor jogging track: the dojo where he conducted his daily martial arts exercises, a fully equipped boxing gym, a soundproof target range, and the room he was headed into now, a faithful recreation of the dingy Philadelphia pool hall he’d haunted as a teenager, learning the game from some of the best players, not to mention the most seriously degenerate gamblers, ever to work magic with a cue stick… his own father unrivaled among them.

He pushed through the door and went inside. The room held two rows of antique championship tables with scarred frames and green baize playing surfaces that had been restored to their original appearance and leveled for optimum performance. There was a Coca-Cola soda bar with a Formica snack counter and rotating vinyl stools. There was a Wurlitzer jukebox that was wrapped in neon tubing and stocked with vintage rock and roll 45s. There were cheap plastic light fixtures from which a bilious glow seeped through conscientiously preserved layers of grime. The wall-to-wall memorabilia Nimec had scavenged from innumerable secondhand shops and flea markets included outdated nude pinup calendars, as well as signs stipulating ancient game rates and prohibitions against betting by minors.

The only thing missing was the pervasive bouquet of sweat, brilliantine, and cigarette smoke, and while Nimec supposed he was better off without that final touch of authenticity, he often had a perverse longing for it all the same.

Flicking on the lights, he pulled one of his custom twenty-ounce cues down off the wall and went to a table. He took six of the balls out of the built-in storage shelf at its foot and arranged them in a semicircle around a side pocket, having decided to work on his drills instead of racking up for continuous shooting. It had been over a week since he’d gotten in any practice.

Nimec chalked his stick, bent over the table rail, then laid the cue tip in the bridge he formed with his fingers and methodically sawed it back and forth.

Out of habit, he had placed the eight ball in the lead spot, his way of discharging any bad luck at the onset. He always took luck very seriously into consideration, had since his days in the Army Rangers, when he’d developed a host of elaborate — some had called them superstitious — rituals for courting good fortune in battle. Though his propitiations to Fate had assumed different outward forms in civilian life, the general practice had stuck.

Now, as he visualized the intended path of the cue ball, his gray eyes showed the quiet, steady focus of a sharp-shooter. The trick here was to pocket the balls in sequence from right to left, using draw English to gain position each time for the following shot.

Keeping his wrist loose and his arm close to his side, he brought the stick straight back and then came through with a fluid, precise stroke, striking the cue ball below center to apply reverse spin. It sank the eight ball and came rolling back toward him, stopping right behind the next ball in line.

Exactly where he wanted it.

He pocketed three more balls in rapid succession, but on his fifth shot inadvertently tightened his hand around the butt of the cue stick, causing it to jerk upward at the last instant. To his annoyance, the cue ball went clattering down along with his fifth object ball.

A scowl creased Nimec’s angular face. He had scratched like a rank amateur.

He took a deep breath. A lot more than just his game was off tonight. A whole damn lot. Nordstrum’s reports seemed to indicate that the FBI was, as the press had been claiming for days, in possession of an intact explosive package; he doubted the Lian-Zavtra connection would have been made so quickly without a scientific check of taggants or traceable components within the instrument of destruction. Of course the chemical residue of tagged, detonated charges also would have yielded that information, but the bottom line remained the same either way. Bashkir’s handprints were everywhere. There was good reason to suspect he was at the innermost level of the bombing conspiracy, if not its principal architect. But what would his motive have been? To fire up isolationist sentiments in the U.S., provoke a reassessment of the food relief effort that was drawing Russia closer to the West? That was the only explanation that made the slightest bit of sense, and there were too many problems with it. Bashkir was a military man. Someone who had held one of the highest posts in the Russian Navy, commanding the world’s second largest fleet of ballistic-missile subs. He was also a dealmaker, used to carefully weighing his decisions. Would he really be able to justify the wholesale murder of civilians for such indirect and uncertain gains? Moreover, he recently had been involved in negotiating major arms transactions between his country and China, and perhaps even had a financial interest in a Russian firm that listed weapons distribution among its diverse shipping enterprises. He would know how easy it would be to follow the trail of the explosive from manufacturer to purchaser, and that the search would eventually lead to questions about his role in the bombing. Where was the sense in the thing?

Frowning, Nimec crouched down, reached into the pool table’s innards again, and set the balls up at one end of the table for a point-of-aim drill. The more he thought about Bashkir’s possible complicity, the greater his misgivings. It wasn’t just that the puzzle was incomplete; he felt as if he’d been given pieces that didn’t fit at all, and had been slipped into the box to confound him.

He supposed there was nothing to do except take it one step at a time… and the logical way to proceed was to follow the explosives from their point of origin to the final point of sale.

He put some more chalk on the tip of his stick, leaned over the table, and began firing balls into the corner pocket opposite him. First thing in the morning he would give Gordian a call. As an exporter of American technology, Roger had constant dealings with people in Customs, and one or two of them might be good for a tip. If Lian was the producer of the explosives, and Zavtra had acted as the middleman outfit, who had received them in the United States? And how exactly had they been moved?

Somebody had completed the transfer, and Nimec intended to find out who it was.