Puppet Master

Flash forward

Johnny Givens walked into Louis Massina’s office, powered by pride, adrenaline, and a dollop of nervousness.

“Mr. Givens,” said Massina cheerfully, rising from his desk to meet him halfway. “So good to see you.”

Johnny extended his hand. The two men shook.

It’s amazing to think I’m touching a fake hand, thought Johnny. As artificial as my legs.

“I’m told you’re making excellent progress,” said Massina.

“Thank you for your help,” said Johnny.

“You’ve put the effort in. It’s all you.”

Massina smiled broadly. He was an interesting man — a genius, surely, and a rich one. Yet he was “real,” humble in many ways. He didn’t talk down to Johnny, as many people did. Nor did he offer bs pep talks.

“Things are moving ahead?” asked Massina.

“Yes. I didn’t come to thank you. I came to ask for a job.”

“A job? Aren’t you — you’re still with the FBI?”

“The Bureau isn’t going to let me go back to the field. I’m on, uh, a furlough. Unpaid.”

“I see.”

“I’d like to be part of your security unit,” said Johnny. “I’ve been thinking about your organization, the things you guys are into. You can use people like me.”

“You’ve only been out of the hospital for a few weeks.”

“Nearly a month.”

A long furrow appeared on Massina’s forehead. Johnny’s exaggeration was a silly lie.

“I’m not a scientist,” said Johnny. He had rehearsed a long speech, but now, faced with giving it in person, he faltered. He’d intended to list his assets as an investigator, wanted to point out how Smart Metal really needed someone like him who could spot trouble, maybe check over security flaws, be involved…

But the words wouldn’t come. His mouth had suddenly dried up. His tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth.

“We may be able to find a place,” said Massina. “But only after your rehabilitation is over.”

“I know what you’re doing — you’re pursuing this investigation into the mafya and the bank scams. I can be part of that.” Even in Johnny’s ears, his voice sounded an octave too high — tinny, almost pleading.

Definitely pleading.

“None of that concerns you,” said Massina, suddenly cold. “You go and complete your rehabilitation. Take care of yourself. The recovery period is at least a year. The drugs that have gotten you to this point—”

“I’m ready to work now.”

“Come back when rehabilitation is over,” said Massina. “Then we’ll sit down with my HR people and figure out where you’ll fit in. Assuming you don’t want to stay with the government.”

Anger suddenly welled inside Johnny. Why the hell did he lose his legs? And his heart?

“I’m afraid I have a full slate of appointments today,” said Massina, abruptly going back to his desk. “Several people are waiting to talk to me.”

“Listen.” Johnny trembled. “I need a job.”

Damn it to hell! Don’t you dismiss me, too!

“I will help,” said Massina. “When your rehab is complete. When the doctors say it’s complete.”

Johnny stood in the middle of the office, unable to move. This had not gone the way he thought it would.

“I can do a lot,” he said weakly. “I can help.”

“I’m sure. And you will.”

Massina looked past him to the door, which had been left open. Johnny turned and saw Chelsea Goodman and two other Smart Metal employees in the doorway, staring.

“You’re making a mistake,” he told Massina.

The scientist said nothing. Depression, sadness, a sense of utter futility chased away the optimism Johnny had felt only a few moments before.

Johnny knew that he owed Massina a great deal, probably even his life. But he wanted to yell at him, demand to be taken seriously. He was ready to work.

Massina wasn’t blowing him off. Yet it felt like he was.

Don’t project, he told himself. Don’t turn him into the source of all evil. Keep your head up. Don’t beg, and don’t betray yourself. Or him. You owe him a lot.

“I’ll be back,” Johnny said finally, managing to turn and walk slowly out of the office.

36 Real time

Best to face the music quickly.

Chelsea was on her way to the FBI task force’s debrief session, knowing she would see Flores there, when her cell phone rang. It was Massina.

“Yeah, boss. What’s up?”

“What happened last night?” he asked.

“We got someone.” She briefly summarized what had happened. “I’m on my way over to debrief with the task force. I’m not sure whether they’re going to need us anymore.”

“Jenkins just came in here and told me they’ve ended their operation and we’re out,” Massina told her. “What’s going on?”

“They ended it?”

“Agent Jenkins interrupted my breakfast meeting to tell me,” said her boss. “Why did they close it down?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out. Get our equipment back.”

Massina hung up. Chelsea knew from his tone that this was far from the end of things. She also knew that she had better come back to the office with at least some explanation, plausible or not.

She arrived at the task force office a few minutes later, not knowing what to expect. No one answered when she buzzed at the back door; she was just taking out her cell phone to call Jenkins when the door opened.

It was Flores.

Awkward.

He waved her in, then followed her into the team room. It was empty.

“Aren’t we meeting to debrief?” she asked.

“Jenkins called about an hour ago to tell everyone to take the day off.” He shrugged. “I guess he knew we all had hangovers.”

“What’s going on?” asked Chelsea.

“Have a seat.”

Chelsea pulled one of the chairs away from its workstation and sat down. She’d taken a long shower at her apartment; between that, a handful of Tylenol, and two cans of ginger ale, she felt almost refreshed.

Flores, on the other hand, looked like Chelsea had felt a few hours before.

“The guy is hooked into the CIA somehow,” said Flores. “They said cease and desist.”

“The CIA?”

“It’s total bullshit. He’s mafya. Russian mob. Take a look.” Flores led her over to one of the workstations. “You’re not seeing this,” he announced, dropping his voice to a whisper as he tapped a few keys. A long text document appeared. Chelsea was nearly halfway through when she realized that it was referring not to the suspect, whose name she remembered as Gabor Tolevi, but someone named Medved.

“This is the guy?”

“No, this is a guy we think he may work for. Or with. Or something. Medved is mafya. Where the CIA comes in, I have no idea.” Flores leaned close to scroll down the screen. He smelled like Dove soap and cheap shampoo; at least he’d showered. “This is a reference to a photo, here, which shows them together.”

He tapped the screen and a picture of two men appeared. The faces were in the shadow; Chelsea couldn’t tell if either was the man at the ATM last night.

“Tolevi’s on the right,” said Flores. “He’s got some sort of import thing going on. Goes to both sides of Ukraine. Maybe legal; I’d bet not.”

“I see.”

He was uncomfortably close. She slid to the side and got up.

“The CIA gave you this?” she asked.

“Nah. This is our stuff. The Boston PD has some minor stuff on Medved and his associates. You never get a good picture of these guys, of what they do, unless you get informers. But they’re pretty tight around here, as tight as the Sicilians were in the thirties and forties.”

Chelsea spotted the coffee carafe and decided she wanted a cup. It was a good excuse to put more distance between them.

Flores followed her across the room.

“I guess I’m unclear what’s going on,” she said, sipping the coffee. It was pretty bitter, despite being weak. “Are you guys stopping the operation? Was this guy involved?”

“I don’t know. They couldn’t find anything that would definitely link him to the theft.”

“What? We saw the string, the extra coding.”

“You saw it; we didn’t,” said Flores. “When they looked at the card, there wasn’t anything special on it.”

“You looked at the card?”

“He said we could.”

“Did you check the account?”

“We need a warrant to do that.”

“Give me the number.”

“I can’t,” he said, glancing at the workstation.

Chelsea didn’t need more of a hint. She walked back to the computer. There were several windows open; she moused around until she found a list that showed data inquiries from the compromised machine. Rather than copying them, she sent the page to the printer. Getting up to retrieve them, she bumped into Flores.

He reached to her. For a second she thought he was going to hug her, and she worried what she would say. But he only held his palm out as if to stop her from falling.

“I’m fine,” she said, slipping past.

“You don’t remember last night, do you?” Flores asked as she retrieved the list.

“Some.”

“You fell asleep on the bed. You took off your jeans, and boom. You were out.”

“I don’t usually drink.”

“I collapsed next to you. We didn’t do anything.”

Chelsea searched his face, not sure if he was telling the whole truth, not sure whether she wanted to ask for more details. He seemed to be trying to smile, but he could only turn up one half of his mouth.

He seemed apologetic. Because they hadn’t managed to do anything?

“I just wanted you to know — I just…” Flores fumbled with his hands, rubbing them together, as if washing. Finally, he jabbed them beneath his arms, squeezing his chest. “I wouldn’t take advantage of you… I like you.”

“I like you, too, Flores.”

Later, back in the lab at Smart Metal, she wondered to herself if she should have kissed him then.

37

By the time Tolevi got home, Borya had left for school. As angry as he was, he was too exhausted and jet-lagged to go to her school and confront her. He rationalized that little would be gained by pulling her out of class; it was far more sensible to wait until she came home. Still unsure exactly how he would punish her — or even how to find out exactly what she was involved in — he sat down on the couch and flipped on the television. Within moments he was asleep.

Given an unexpected reprieve, Borya spent the school day attending all of her classes, uncharacteristically participating in each one, even in a discussion of Catcher in the Rye, where her teacher complimented her definition of alienation. While her opinion of the book had not changed—dreck—she was now aware of a certain parallel between the main character and her own life. Hers was more interesting and she was smarter, but Holden Caulfield did at least have the right impulses, even if his inventor couldn’t express them properly.

Caulfield’s escape to New York had a certain appeal, given her father’s likely attitude at her breaking curfew and using a “found” ATM card (the explanation she had settled on), but ultimately she decided to go home. She knew from experience that his anger would be short-lived. She also knew, or guessed, that he would be unable to figure out what she was up to, and as long as she supplied a halfway decent story to explain it, the repercussions would be limited.

I found the ATM card on the way home and decided to see if it worked.

A simple story, impossible to refute. She worked on the narrative as she walked home, imagining it unfolding as an interrogation:

He’d like that answer. Maybe he wouldn’t believe it — she could offer to have him call her teachers, who’d all remember how bright she’d been today.

Curfew was going to be the sticker. She couldn’t get away from the basic fact that she had been out late. So she was going to be in trouble for that, no matter what else.

She could say she was sorry about that, right away.

I throw myself on the mercy of the court and I fall on my sword.

He’d ask where she got such expressions. She could mention Catcher in the Rye, even though they weren’t in there that she recalled. He’d accuse her of changing the subject. She’d say she was simply answering questions.

A thousand variations occurred to her as she neared her home. She needed more time to rehearse — she turned quickly up the block, planning to circle until she felt ready.

Tolevi leapt from the couch, caught by surprise.

“Easy,” said Yuri Johansen. “Slow down.”

Johansen stood in front of him in the living room. Two men, both in black pin-striped suits, stood behind him. Both looked as if they could headline a heavyweight boxing match, even in formal wear. Johansen himself was dressed in tan khakis and a pullover sweater, casual. Tolevi shook his head, trying to wake up. He’d been in the middle of a dream.

His wife was in it, alive. They were in a building somewhere, running, lost… He couldn’t remember the details.

“What’s this ATM scam you’re running?” asked Johansen mildly.

“What ATM scam?” asked Tolevi.

“The FBI has you fingered for a bank scam. That’s why they picked you up. Luckily for you, I intervened. It wasn’t easy. I had to get the deputy director involved.” Johansen turned to one of the suits. “Go make him some coffee.”

“Why are you here?” Tolevi asked.

“Because you were in trouble.” Johansen shook his head, smiling. “You are being a naughtier boy than we thought.”

“I don’t like games,” said Tolevi. He thought of the pistol hidden below the end table, and the other, behind the dresser in his bedroom. It was impossible to reach either, and beyond foolish to use them, yet something about the idea of shooting Johansen appealed to him in a way it never had before.

Kill all of them and be done with them.

Then what? Escape to Mexico with Borya. Or Russia, or Kiev.

Neither would do.

“End whatever you are doing with the banks,” said Johansen, his tone once more businesslike. “That is over.”

“I’m not doing anything with the banks.”

“Your mob connections — it’s time for you to ease them off. To the extent you can without destroying your contacts.”

“I’m not part of the family. You know that. But they are very useful.”

“Find another way to get things done.”

“Why are you giving me orders?” asked Tolevi. “That’s not how I work.”

“Have some coffee,” said Johansen, nodding at the suit who was approaching with a cup. “You take it black, yes?”

Borya trotted up the stairs, ready to deal with her father. She pushed through the outside door and walked quickly through the hall. The building had once housed two apartments; when it was remodeled, the exterior stairs to the second floor were retained, along with the opening to the first floor near the rear of the hall. Borya swung her key from its string on her pocket, then saw that the door was ajar.

A sure sign her father was home and awake.

Oh well.

She pushed inside, taking two steps across the foyer before spotting the two men in business suits gaping at her near the open dining area on the other side of the living room. Her father and another man, older, with white hair, were sitting at the table. She didn’t recognize any of them, aside from her father.

The man with the white hair turned and looked at her.

“You must be Borya,” he said cheerfully. “Hello.”

“We’re busy,” snapped her father. “Go do your homework.”

“I get a snack,” she said, taken off guard by his tone. “I—”

“Later.”

Borya put her head down and headed quickly through the living room to the back hall.

Why were the men here? Were they police?

They must have discovered her ATM scam. She cursed herself for letting it go on too long.

Gluttony. That was the worst sin. The nuns told her that all the time. Why hadn’t she listened? They were humorless old farts, but they did know certain things, things that could at least get you out of trouble, or steer you away from it.

She’d damned herself by being too cocky, too confident. She didn’t need the money — she’d barely spent any of it. She’d done it for the thrill, and what was that now, now that they were going to send her to jail?

Borya closed her door carefully and threw herself on the bed, completely in despair. She would never get out of this. They would drive her to jail, lock her up until she was an old woman.

My life is over.

She rolled over to her back, staring at the ceiling and trying to hear what the men were saying below. Their voices were too low and muffled to make anything out. Reluctantly, she got up and crept to the door. Still unable to make any sense of the muffled voices, she cracked the door open and put her ear into the opening, holding her breath as she listened.

“We need you there by the end of the week,” said one of the men — the white-haired geezer guy.

“That’s all you tell me?” That was definitely her father. He was speaking sharply, his tone even harder than he used when the nuns called about a test she had blown off.

The white-haired guy said something too muffled to make out. Then her father again:

“I can’t leave my daughter.”

“Find a way.”

They weren’t talking about ATMs and the banks. They weren’t here about her at all.

Borya’s mood rocketed. She pressed her ear against the open space, leaning out, curious now.

Careful! Curiosity killed the cat.

“Use this phone to contact me tomorrow,” said the white-haired guy.

Chairs scraped. Footsteps.

Borya pushed the door closed and tiptoed over to the bed, trying to be quiet.

If they come in, I’ll pretend to be asleep.

As soon as Johansen and his goons were gone, Tolevi went to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of vodka from below the sink. He poured three fingers’ worth into a tumbler and downed it all. He refilled it, this time about two fingers’ worth, and once more drained the glass. Then he splashed about a finger’s worth in and went to sit down on the couch.

Tolevi might be a smuggler by trade and an occasional spy, but he was not a killer, let alone the sort of action hero who could dig through the weeds and come out with a prize. That’s what they needed here.

Waltz out of Donetsk with some sort of CIA prize? Surely the rebels and the Russians would object. Violently.

Tolevi had killed before, but that was when he was young, and they’d deserved it. Then it was kill or be killed, and such decisions were not really decisions, were they? The species had evolved to make that very decision, to take that action. Kill or be killed.

Going into a place specifically to seek danger — that wasn’t him. Profit, yes, and sometimes that involved risk. You could balance that as an equation — it was math: X risk equals Y profit. But this was a little more complicated: risk to X power equals? Profit.

He could make the visit pay — that would be a good idea as a cover in any event. But beyond that… was finding some forlorn CIA contact something he wanted to do?

Did he have a choice?

“Daddy?”

“Hey, Sugarbaby.” Tolevi put down the glass and went to his daughter. She clutched him tightly, her fists grabbing the back of his shirt. She was getting big, reminding him more and more of her mother, God rest her soul.

“Who were those men?”

“Businesspeople.”

“For work?”

“Yeah. Something I need to do. It means more traveling.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I’m afraid I have to.”

Tolevi wasn’t sure how much his daughter truly knew about his “business” arrangements. And naturally he kept any hint that he was working for the CIA from her.

On the other hand, an array of characters had visited the house over the years, and she’d met even more at various parties father and daughter attended. Borya even knew a number of mobsters’ sons and daughters. Though they never spoke about that part of his life, he suspected she had at least an inkling of his connections. It occurred to him that he should discuss that at some point.

But not now.

“I don’t like it when you go,” said Borya.

“I don’t like to leave you either. But you have school.”

“The lessons are so boring. They’re a waste.”

“And what were you doing out last night?” asked Tolevi. “Why were you out after curfew?”

“I found an ATM card,” she said.

She’d held on to him all this time; now she let go and sat on the chair across from the couch. He hadn’t realized how warm she was until she let go; he almost shivered.

Maybe she had a fever?

“Where did you find this card?”

“I found it near the school. I wanted to try it.”

“So you rode your bike all the way across town?”

Borya’s expression seemed to say, Where else would I have gone? She had a way of doing that — turning a perfectly natural question around as if it were the most bizarre thing in the world to ask.

“Where exactly did you find it?”

“On the sidewalk. Near school.”

“You know it was stolen?”

“It was?”

“That’s what the police say. It could have gotten you in a lot of trouble.”

“Oh.”

“You rode your bike pretty far in the dark,” Tolevi said, deciding to drop the business about the card. It was only natural that she would try to use it. He couldn’t fault her for that.

“It wasn’t that far.”

“It was after curfew.”

“I know I broke curfew.” She shook her head. “I know you’re going to punish me. I deserve it.”

Even though Tolevi knew this was a tactic designed to win leniency, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat proud of her for taking responsibility. She really was a good daughter — brilliantly smart, responsible, able to take care of herself. She didn’t go running all over town with druggies, and she wasn’t throwing herself at boys. She studied, got excellent grades. All the nuns said she could get into MIT. It was just a question of what she wanted as a major.

Probably some computer thing. He’d really prefer a doctor. But she had to follow her own muse.

“I am going to punish you,” said Tolevi. “We’ll figure out the punishment together.”

“Do you have the card?”

“Of course not. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Do you know whose card it was?”

She shook her head solemnly. Tolevi searched for something to say. He didn’t think she’d stolen it herself — Borya wasn’t like that — but it was just possible one of her friends had. That Susan Abonfinch or whatever her name was. She was a little sneak.

And the boyfriend last year. He was headed for the penitentiary — though if Tolevi saw him around Borya again, he’d save the state a lot of expense.

“What’s my punishment?” asked Borya.

Tolevi felt a pang of sorrow. Her voice sounded so much like her mother’s.

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“No television for a month?”

“That may be too severe,” said Tolevi, already weakening. “Two weeks. But—”

“I won’t do it again. I promise.”

“And not while I’m away, especially. I worry about you.”

Borya jumped up from the chair and hugged him again, pushing her face against his chest. She was going to be some heartbreaker, this girl. Worse than her mother.

“You haven’t called me Sugarbaby in a long time,” she told him.

“I always think it.”

“I love you, Papa.”

“I love you, too.” He pushed her gently from his chest. “Now don’t take advantage of that.”

“I won’t.”

“Ha! I’m going to call Mrs. Jordan and see if she can stay with you while I’m gone. In the house. So she’s here all the time. Do you have much homework?”

“Just science.”

“Do it. Then we’ll go out for pizza.”

“I’d rather sushi.”

“Sushi, then. Go.”

More and more like her mother every day, Tolevi thought as he looked for Mrs. Jordan’s number in his phone’s index.

38

Jenkins had no intention of giving up the case. If anything, the fact that the CIA had reached out to pressure him made him all the more determined.

But he had to be careful now, more careful than he’d been. Putting Mr. Massina off was the first step. Staking out Tolevi’s home was the second.

The three men who came down the stairs looked a little too polished for mob types, at least not of the Russian variety. The shorter guy might be; he was older, casually dressed, and while he didn’t look particularly Russian, he had the swagger Jenkins associated with a street hood.

The other two, though. They might be bodyguard or enforcer types, except for their ties. In Jenkins’s experience, Russian mobsters never wore ties, except in court. They preferred open collars beneath their suits.

He took all their pictures anyway.

With no backup, he wasn’t in a position to follow them, but he did want to at least get a license plate. He slipped his car into gear and waited for them to get almost to the end of the block before he pulled out.

They turned the corner. Jenkins accelerated, not wanting to lose them. As he came around the corner, a white panel truck cut into his lane. Jenkins hit the brakes so hard the car veered to the right, just missing a Volkswagen parked near the corner.

“Son of a bitch,” he shouted.

He laid on the horn, cursing. Then another car hit him from behind, pushing his vehicle into the VW. Jenkins pounded the steering wheel and went to grab the door handle.

Instead he found himself being lifted through the already open door. Before he could react, he was thrown against the hood of his car. His jacket and arms were pulled behind him, and his gun holster twisted back. As two men, each much larger than himself, pinned him against the car, another removed his wallet and his pistol.

“Let him go.”

Jenkins shook himself free as he was let up off the car. He turned and saw the man with the white hair who’d come out of the apartment holding his wallet and service pistol. He was grinning.

“Special Agent in Charge, huh?” The man flipped the wallet to him but held on to the gun. “You have to be more alert in Boston, even down here.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just some friendly advice.” The man flicked the magazine latch on the pistol, dropping the box to the ground. Then he cleared the chamber, making sure the weapon was empty. “The streets can be pretty mean. I know you have a pistol on your leg,” he added. “Reaching for it wouldn’t be the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I’m going to nail you,” said Jenkins.

The man laughed. “You don’t even know who I am. Let me give you another piece of advice — don’t poke your nose into places where it doesn’t belong. The next person who sees it may not be as considerate as I am.”

He tossed the gun into Jenkins’s chest so quickly that the FBI agent didn’t have time to grab it; it bounced through his hands and fell to the ground.

“I’d get the car fixed if I were you,” added the man as he started away. “Boston police love to give out tickets for broken taillights.”

39

Johnny Givens took a deep breath, then pushed himself forward on the parallel bars.

The legs, newly fitted, felt unsteady.

That was the strange thing — they felt unsteady. He really did feel them, even though they were carbon fiber and fancy plastic and wires and circuits — not skin, not blood, not bones or nerves.

Fake legs.

But he could feel them.

Partly this was his brain making things up. His mind was substituting what it knew for the sensations that were tickling the nerve endings in the stumps. But there were real sensations. That was the marvel of the legs Massina and his people had invented for him. They were real legs. Almost.

“Keep going, Mr. Givens,” said Dr. Gleason. Gleason was the doctor in charge of his health, the head of a large team of surgeons and other specialists, therapists, scientists, engineers, nurses, and probably a dishwasher or two. Despite his other responsibilities, Gleason spent at least an hour every afternoon with Johnny.

The physical therapist spent three hours each morning, and four in the afternoons. Every moment sucked. Johnny called her Gestapo Bitch.

Not to her face. She looked like she could put him through the wall if he did.

“Use your legs to walk,” she commanded from the far end of the bars. “Move!”

“Easy,” said Gleason. “I don’t want his heart overtaxed.”

“He’s barely at sixty beats a minute. I’ve seen nine-year-olds work harder than this.” Gestapo Bitch shook her head in disgust. “Move, Givens, move! And put your weight on your legs. They’re not going to break!”

Givens put more weight on his left foot, pushing forward. He was a little kid, learning to walk again.

Was he ever going to really walk again?

“You’re doing really well, Johnny,” said Dr. Gleason. “Keep going.”

Johnny felt his hips swinging as he maneuvered down the bars. That was good — he was supposed to use his whole body.

Sweat poured down the sides of his face, down his back, across his neck. It flowed from every pore in his torso, from his arms, from his hands. Gestapo Bitch might think that he was barely working, but he knew better. He could feel the mechanical heart beating away.

It was interesting, though. It did increase its rate, but not nearly as much as a “real” heart would. It was very steady, measured, as if it knew better than the rest of his body what he needed.

As Johnny reached the end of the parallel bars, the sweat from his hands made his palms slippery. He decided to stop and wipe his hands on his shirt, needing to dry them. Steadying himself on his left side, he took his right hand off the bar and ran it down his right rib cage, the driest part of his T-shirt. As he started to switch sides, his left hand slipped. He quickly shoved his right hand toward the bar, but his momentum pitched him to the side. He tried grabbing the bar, but it was too late; he unceremoniously toppled backward, to the floor.

Son of a bitch!

I am never going to do this! Never!

Why the hell did God screw me like this? Why is he such a bastard?

“Are you all right, Johnny?” asked Dr. Gleason, starting over.

“He’s OK,” scolded Gestapo Bitch. “Get up and go back. You don’t stop until you get to the end. You stop, you do it again.”

Johnny didn’t move.

“Do you need help?” asked Gleason.

“He doesn’t need help,” snapped Gestapo Bitch.

Damn you, bitch!

Johnny reached up to the bar. Gestapo Bitch loomed over him and smacked his hand away. “Push yourself up with your legs. Use them or lose them.”

“They’re not my legs,” he told her.

“They sure as hell are. Push yourself up with your legs.”

“I hate you.”

“Good. Now push yourself up with your legs and stop being a crybaby.”

“I’m going to kick your ass when I’m better.”

Gestapo Bitch leaned in until her face was an inch from his. “I’m waiting for the day, Sissy Breath.” She straightened. “Now get on your feet.”

40

Louis Massina was not used to giving up, much less being told to give up. There was simply no way that he was not going to pursue the ATM thieves.

On the contrary, it was now his number-one priority. But Massina being Massina, the issue was not simply one of revenge, let alone getting his money back. It had provoked a wide range of thoughts about computer security, national security, and even politics. Petty thievery was one thing; being able to infiltrate and manipulate the banking system, quite another. The FBI’s sudden decision to drop the case suggested many things to Massina, not least of which was the possibility that the government could secretly manipulate the banking system for its own purposes. Even if that wasn’t what was going on here — more evidence would be needed on that score — the potential surely existed.

Massina had always taken Internet security very seriously; that was a necessity at a firm where IT was critical to its operations. Chinese and Russian hackers, almost surely state-sponsored, constantly tried to break into Smart Metal’s systems. And they were only the more notorious — just in the past week, hackers from several Western European countries had tried to breach the company’s e-mail systems. Most of Smart Metal’s work was done on internal systems that would not allow any outside access, from trusted sources or not, but even that system had to be constantly monitored for potential breaches.

Still, Massina had never viewed computer security as a potential business area; he’d been under the impression that there were already plenty of other businesses in that field. But maybe that wasn’t true: if the banking system could be so easily compromised, then surely there was room for innovation.

And innovation was what they did. For a profit, of course.

So he had both altruistic and business reasons for pursuing the matter as he walked into Number 2 conference room to meet with Chelsea and his head of security to discuss it.

“The FBI has dropped out. We’re pursuing this on our own,” he told them as he walked into the room. It was 10:40, five minutes before the time he had specified for the meeting, but both Chelsea and Bozzone had worked at Smart Metal long enough to know they were expected early. “What do we know?”

“We know that sticking our nose into police matters is in general a very bad idea,” said Bozzone.

Massina smiled. It was exactly because of remarks like that — speaking his mind even though it was not what Massina wanted to hear — that he valued Bozzone.

Not that he was necessarily swayed by his advice. But the reality check was useful.

“What else do we know?” Massina asked.

“That most likely we’re looking at a gang with connections to Eastern Europe,” said Bozzone. “Most likely suspects. And that the CIA is involved.”

Massina followed Bozzone’s gaze over to Chelsea. Number 2 conference room was small, arranged somewhat like a living room with a sofa facing a ring of three chairs and a love seat; there were side tables next to the chairs and at the ends of the couches. It was the only room in the entire building, aside from the restrooms, that did not have hardwired computers. It was something of an oasis.

Chelsea and Bozzone were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, looking slightly uncomfortable; Massina sat in the leather chair at the center of the circle, as was his wont.

“That’s what one of the task force members told me,” said Chelsea. “The FBI backed off because of that.”

All the more reason for us to pursue it, thought Massina.

“I’ve been thinking about the situation a lot,” continued Chelsea. “If it’s not on the card, then the command string must come from the accessed account somehow. It nests in the ATM machine for a limited amount of time, then self-erases.”

“Not at the processing points?” asked Massina.

“Well, the FBI looked there, so presumably no. Anyway, if I could examine the account that was accessed when that string was sent, it might tell me a great deal.”

“Do it,” said Massina.

“With the bank’s permission or without?”

Massina waved his hand. “However you need to.”

Bozzone cleared his throat. “You know, breaking into accounts, whatever the purpose, it’s pretty much an illegal act.”

“Is it?” asked Massina. He was not speaking theoretically; as he understood the law, stealing something from a bank account was definitely illegal; manipulating something in the account was almost surely illegal; but looking at something in an account — that wasn’t covered.

“You bet it’s illegal,” said Bozzone.

“We’re not doing anything to the account,” said Massina. “I can get a legal opinion if you want.”

Bozzone shook his head.

“It’s possible the FBI already has the data,” said Chelsea.

“Talk to them,” said Massina.

“But they don’t want our help,” said Chelsea.

“Maybe national security is involved,” said Bozzone. “We don’t know.”

“How would that be?” asked Massina.

“I don’t know. But if the CIA is involved, there may be a lot of things we just don’t know.”

“So let’s find them out,” said Massina.

A long moment passed. “The idea of attacking the account seems pretty sophisticated, but on the other hand, they don’t take much money,” said Chelsea, interrupting the silence. “I would think if a gang was involved, they’d go for a big kill.”

“I agree with that,” said Bozzone.

“Maybe that’s what they’re planning.” Massina slid forward on the chair.

“Maybe the FBI has actually already solved this, and they’re just waiting for that hit,” said Bozzone. “Then they strike. It’s possible the CIA is actually helping them.”

“I didn’t get that impression,” said Chelsea.

“Let’s stop dealing in the dark,” said Massina, springing to his feet. “By the end of the day, I want to know what resources we need, what people, whatever it takes to pursue this. Chelsea, come up with a plan.”

Massina was already out the door before either Chelsea or Bozzone got up.

“OK,” said Chelsea.

“Listen, I don’t think this is a good idea at all,” said the security chief. “Bad, bad, bad.”

“I kinda got that.”

“If you are doing anything even borderline illegal, I don’t want to know about it. And for the record, I don’t think you should do it either.”

Chelsea nodded.

“I don’t think you should do anything illegal,” repeated Bozzone. “Nothing.”

“I heard you.”

“Is the FBI really out? Or is that a smoke screen to get us to stop being interested?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Ask your boyfriend,” said Bozzone.

“My boyfriend?” Chelsea felt her face warm.

“Don’t you have some sort of connection there?”

Was he just being a bit of a wiseass, or had he somehow seen her? Or had someone else seen her and told him?

“If you hear anything of use from your police friends,” Chelsea told him, “let me know.”

41

Tolevi was just getting into his car at the parking garage two blocks from his house when a large man in a dark suit approached from the shadows. This was not entirely unexpected; if it had been, Tolevi would have stepped on the gas and run him down.

Actually, he was sorely tempted to do just that now, even though he knew the man well. Or more accurately, because he knew the man quite well.

Instead, he held his temper and rolled his window down.

“What are you doing, Stratowich?”

“Looking for you. Medved wants to talk to you.”

“What a coincidence. I want to talk to him.”

Stratowich snorted. He didn’t believe him, though it was in fact true.

“Get in,” Tolevi told him.

“That’s not how this works. I drive you.”

“I’m not getting out of my car. You can get in, or you can follow. Your choice.”

Stratowich thought about it for a moment, then went around to the passenger side. Once again, Tolevi suppressed the urge to hit the gas.

“Nice car,” said Stratowich as he closed the door. “New?”

“Six months.”

“You could have used this to pay your debt.”

“I need a car.”

In truth, though expensive, the Mercedes E63 S wouldn’t come close. And it was leased.

Tolevi played with a bit of its twin turbo V-8 power as he raced the light. The big brakes worked pretty well, too; they kept him from crashing into the side of a Nissan Altima that pulled out in front of him just ahead of the intersection.

“Jeez, take it easy,” croaked Stratowich.

Tolevi grinned. “I will if you put the pistol away.”

“It’s in my pocket.”

“Then take your hand out of your pocket. You’re likely to blow your nuts off and mess up the leather.”

Tolevi drove at an easier pace for the next half hour, skirting the airport and heading north along Route 1A, heading for a bar Medved owned not far from the Boston Yacht Club; how he had managed to get the zoning changed to permit the conversion of two former family homes to commercial was a mystery only to those naive enough to believe in the Tooth Fairy. The Russian mafya was not particularly large in the Boston area, at least not when compared to places like New York and L.A., but what it lacked in absolute size it made up for in connections, with both the legitimate power structures and the illegal underground, still largely dominated by the Irish and the Italians, respectively.

Maarav Medved was not the top Russian in the local network. Not only did Tolevi not know who the chief was — the “pa khan” had no business contact with anyone below his generals — but Medved’s exact position was murky as well. Maybe he was a general, or maybe he was just a colonel; Tolevi couldn’t tell. And obviously he would never ask.

Like many other Russian mafya organizations around the world, activities in Boston were decentralized and malleable; your position often depended as much on your ability to bully and persuade as it did on the size of your army and the number of your guns. Tolevi had to deal with Medved because he needed his dock connections to unload his items without problems; from that arrangement, others flowed. Tolevi cut him percentages of certain deals that were of interest, and sometimes carried messages back to Russian and other Eastern European countries for him. He’d also borrowed a fair sum, which had come due with interest, undoubtedly the subject of tonight’s meeting.

Medved welcomed Tolevi with a bear hug when he walked into the club. One reason was that, business aside, he seemed to like Tolevi, who was easy to talk to and smarter than most of the goons Medved surrounded himself with. The other was that he liked to personally make sure his visitors were unarmed.

“Beautiful night,” said Medved. He nodded to Statowich, who went off to sulk by the bar. “Nice and warm. Should we sit outside?”

“Fine with me.”

Tolevi followed him outside. They chatted in Russian for a while, Medved asking about his daughter; Tolevi inquiring about the health of Medved’s mother, who had recently had a heart attack.

“You were in Russia last week?”

“No,” said Tolevi. “Crimea.”

“That’s Russia. Now.” Medved raise his glass. “Putin, he is a bold one, no?”

Tolevi shrugged. “Obama’s a pansy. Anyone could have taken it.”

“What were you doing in Crimea?”

“For one thing, seeing my mother-in-law.”

“Your mother-in-law?” Medved laughed. “And she didn’t shoot you?”

“She would if she could. I had some other business. When the arrangements are finalized, of course we’ll make the appropriate requests.”

“Very good.” Medved reached across the table for the vodka bottle. Tolevi caught the strong scent of sweat. It was not a warm night; there was no reason for Medved to sweat as if he’d been out running a marathon.

Medved filled Tolevi’s glass, then his own.

“So what did your friends want?” Medved asked.

Tolevi heard the door opening behind him and immediately went on his guard. He shifted his weight in the chair, calculating what he would do if grabbed from behind.

If it was Stratowich, kick him in the shin — the bone there had been broken barely a year before and was still tender. Anyone else, though…

“Which friends do you mean?” asked Tolevi. “My cousin?”

“Your friends at Center Plaza.” Medved slapped his glass on the table.

As if that’s going to intimidate me, you fat frog.

“The FBI?”

“So Stratowich was right.”

“Like a broken clock,” said Tolevi. “They seem to think I’m a spy.”

“Are you?”

“Not as far as I know.” Tolevi pushed his glass forward, staring into Medved’s eyes. After a few moments, Medved frowned, then refilled both glasses.

“They followed me there from the airport,” Tolevi told him. “They made some sort of bullshit excuse. You know something about it?”

“I know that you don’t want to talk to the FBI under any circumstances.”

“No shit.”

That was the moment, Tolevi thought, when Medved would signal whoever was behind Tolevi.

He waited, trying to keep his muscles as relaxed as possible. He’d need to push into whoever attacked, catching them off guard before he kicked for the groin.

Would it work?

Probably not. But it was better than simply giving up.

“Why are they following you?” Medved asked.

“I’m wondering the same thing,” said Tolevi. “They followed me to the ATM and accused me of being involved in some sort of scam they didn’t explain. Maybe you can find out why. You have contacts.”

“Why did they release you?”

“I called a friend.” Tolevi had to be careful not to give too much away about that — mentioning that he worked with the CIA would be even worse than the FBI. “An attorney. I have rights.”

Medved smirked.

“They were asking about ATM cards, something I don’t deal with,” added Tolevi quickly. “Is that something I should be worrying about?”

Medved shrugged — which convinced Tolevi that he had an ATM scam operating.

Great. But why did they come after me?

A subject for another time — Medved will tell you nothing you can trust.

“In any event,” said Tolevi, “I assume they were looking to make me into some sort of spy. But they failed.”

Medved studied his drink. “You owe me a lot of money.”

“I’m about to conclude a deal that will pay you in full.”

“With the FBI’s help?”

“You think I’ve lost my head?”

“I think you need money.”

“I do need money. You know I’m good for it. I’ve owed you more in the past. I always pay.”

“You see, Gabor, this is why we are friends.” Medved downed his drink and poured another. “Because we understand each other. We’re family. But. Debts must be paid. And talking to the FBI, to the federal’nyy d’yavol—that would be something my friends would not like. And I would not like.”

Tolevi’s Russian was not perfect, but Medved’s was worse. Still, the meaning—“federal devils”—was pretty clear.

“I can’t stop them from harassing me. I think this whole business is them thinking I’m a spy. So if you have influence—”

“I think this is a personal matter for you,” said Medved lightly.

“Fine. I do need your help. I need some travel documents to go to Donetsk.”

“Why there?”

“You want your money, right?”

“You can talk to Demyan.” Medved shrugged. “But make it clear it is not my business.”

“Unless there is a profit.”

Medved smiled.

Tolevi downed the rest of the vodka, then got up to leave.

“By the end of the month, but no more,” warned Medved. “And talking to the Americans, never a good idea.”

“I’m not so foolish,” said Tolevi.

42

“The bank refuses to cooperate without a warrant,” Dryfus told Jenkins. “We’re not looking at that account. Or any other without the paper. They did say there’s been no reported theft in any of their accounts during the past forty-eight hours.”

“None?”

“No.” Dryfus shook his head. “We must have scared him into shutting down.”

“Or laying low.”

“It’s not that they’re being uncooperative,” said Dryfus. “They’re just sticking to procedure. Covering their asses.… How’s Johnny?”

“He, uh, he’s doing a lot better.”

“Without his legs?”

“He’s got, uh, prosthetics.”

“Like the blade runner things?”

“No, these are, they look like real legs.”

“I’ve been meaning to go over there.”

Jenkins understood. He’d had to force himself this last visit: it was tough seeing Johnny, even if the doctors said he was recovering at a remarkable pace.

“We have to figure out a way to get this guy,” Jenkins said. “For Johnny.”

“Sure.”

The look on Dryfus’s face suggested just the opposite of what his response implied — the incident that had claimed Johnny’s legs was not connected. Boston PD had already made an arrest.

And his brother, James?

This isn’t a personal thing. This isn’t a personal thing. And you have no evidence tying them together.

I’ll get it, god damn it. I’ll get it.

“Boss?” Dryfus had a concerned look on his face.

“Just thinking,” confessed Jenkins.

“We can’t get a subpoena?”

Not without saying who it’s aimed at, Jenkins thought. And that will kill it. Even assuming they could get it, which was a stretch.

“We need more evidence,” said Jenkins. “We have to just keep plugging away. We’ll dig into this Tolevi character, see who his connections are, what he does with the mob, everything. Something will come up.”

“He’s got a kid,” said Dryfus. “Raising her himself. His wife died of cancer when she was like three or something.”

“That’s nice. I’ll nominate him for father of the year. Right after we put him in jail.”

The information that Tolevi had a daughter — and Jenkins’s flip remark — haunted him later in the day. Not because he didn’t think a father could be a criminal: there were plenty of examples of that.

What bothered him was the fact that he kept thinking of different ways he might use the girl to get information on her father. And even for him that ought to be out of bounds.

Jenkins had worked for the Bureau for some sixteen years. Like just about every other newly minted agent, he’d started out as a strict by-the-book guy, unstintingly self-righteous — so much so that if he could go back in time and confront his younger self, he would slap him across the face, then throttle some sense into him.

Experience had erased both the self-righteousness and his approach to solving crimes. But that was not to say that he believed that the end justified the means. If he had long ago stopped being an Eliot Ness wannabe, still he believed in observing the broad rules of justice and procedure. He wouldn’t plant evidence, for example. And he wouldn’t harass children.

Yet since he took this case — no, since his brother died — reality had appeared starker than ever. The guys in the white suits were losing the fight to the guys in the black suits. Why? Because they had to follow procedures that made no sense.

The best among them — his brother, Johnny Givens — followed their impulses to do good. Where did that leave them? Dead or crippled.

And yet… if there were no rules, where did that leave anyone? Where did that leave society? There were too few people like Massina, altruistic do-gooders who acted generously, righteously, under any circumstances.

I need to solve this case somehow, Jenkins told himself.

I’ll talk to the girl, but I’ll be careful about it.

43

Tolevi had told Medved about the trip not only because he needed travel documents but also because he figured that it would be far easier to get in and out of the Donetsk area if the Russian secret services thought he was helping the rebel government. Which meant that he had to contact someone he knew in Moscow, and word of that would inevitably filter back. It was even possible that Medved would start the information chain himself, since scoring points with the various services was always useful.

Tolevi had nothing against helping the rebels at the same time he was hurting them, especially if this brought a little extra profit. As it was, the sum Johansen promised would barely cover what he owed Medved. Making a little money on the side was only prudent business.

Smuggling guns into the contested area would have been foolish and barely profitable; not only were the Russians already supplying plenty but the rebels had raided Ukrainian armories and had enough guns and ammunition to supply a force several times their own. What they didn’t have was medicine and related supplies. Even aspirin would get a pretty good markup. A truckload of baby diapers would double or triple its investment.

In theory, of course, shipping such items into the contested area of Donetsk was strictly regulated, if not forbidden. But Tolevi knew he could work around that. The question was how. He wouldn’t bring the items now, of course; instead, he would make arrangements with buyers and shippers, setting things in motion. It was a bit like the opening sequence in a chess game — you thought some twenty moves ahead, preparing the board for the final onslaught.

He pondered the details and pitfalls as he drove to Quincy to see Demyan Kasakawitz for the paperwork he needed to enter Russia. Kasakawitz was a Pole who worked out of an electronics distributorship not far from Quincy’s business district. Ostensibly the distributor’s bookkeeper, he had the thick glasses and meticulous manner of a careful forger. His documents were known to be top rate, and among other things he had supplied Tolevi with the title to his last car, which he had traded in as a down payment on the AMG’s lease.

Short and round, Kasakawitz was a friendly man, the sort who always had some sort of sweets on his desk and could be counted on for an off-color joke or two before getting down to business. Today, however, was different: when Tolevi went into the back where his office was, a tall, thin man hovered behind him, staring with unblinking eyes at Tolevi as he greeted the forger. Kasakawitz answered with a low grunt, and Tolevi told him he would come back.

“No, I have the package for you,” said Kasakawitz, still not smiling.

“Where is it?” asked Tolevi.

“First, tell me about these robots,” said the other man.

“What robots?”

Kasakawitz got up, clearly not wanting to be included in the conversation. “I am going for a cigarette.”

Tolevi folded his arms and waited until they were alone. “What exactly is it you want?”

“Stratowich told you about a robot and sent you a video.”

“Stratowich.” Tolevi shook his head. “He’s a dunce.”

“He erased the video. But he sent you a copy.”

Tolevi took out his phone and checked the messages. “Looks like I erased it, too.”

“Show me.”

“I don’t think so.” He wasn’t lying, exactly: Once read, the file would no longer appear on his phone, though it was easily recovered from the server. But he was reluctant to hand over his phone.

“You are going to Russia. You need friends there.”

“I have friends there.”

“Give me your phone.”

“I need it.”

“Let me make sure that you don’t have the video.”

Tolevi handed it over. “Do you own this robot, or what?”

“No. We want it. Can you get it?”

Now, that was a business proposition if ever Tolevi had heard one. Unfortunately, he was already busy.

“Maybe when I get back. I’ll need more details. You have my documents?”

The man stared at him for a few moments more, then pointed to a large manila envelope on the corner of the desktop.

“When you return, we will talk.”

Tolevi rolled his eyes and reached for the envelope. The tall man grabbed his hands just as his fingers touched it.

“You live a dangerous life, Gabor Tolevi,” said the man. “Do not cross us.”

Ordinarily, Tolevi would have acted on impulse, breaking the man’s grip and then teaching him that there were limits to what he might stand for. But there was so much venom in the man’s voice — and his grip was so strong — that Tolevi decided to be cautious.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Now let me go before I break your nose.”

A smile flickered across the man’s face, as if he would like to see Tolevi try. But he released him all the same.

44

Finding the account from the inquiry string that her program had captured was not difficult once Chelsea understood the protocol.

What was baffling, though, was the fact that the account didn’t seem to exist.

To make sure she understood the protocol and was therefore getting everything right, she canvassed the cafeteria for anyone who had an account at the same bank. She recorded a query with the card — that morning Massina had leased an ATM machine for the lobby, for research as well as his employees’ convenience — then replayed everything with the account information.

Nothing. Nada. The account didn’t exist.

Which a bank manager confirmed for her in person when she went to inquire about it, asking about a check supposedly written on it.

It had to have been erased. There were ways to get the information back — looking at backup files would be the easiest, but she’d need the bank’s cooperation. And if they weren’t going to cooperate with the FBI, they surely wouldn’t work with her. She didn’t bother asking.

Not sure what to do next, she went back to the lab and replayed the drone footage. It had taken the drone about ninety seconds to get over the site after receiving the command.

Which wasn’t all that much time, but it was certainly after the card had been used.

So why was the suspect facing in the direction of the ATM when the drone arrived?

At the time, they thought it was because he’d heard the boy on the bike behind him, but the more she considered it, the more Chelsea wondered. She went back to the drone’s video and zoomed in, looking at the scratchy images from the distance. The earliest image showed the suspect on the sidewalk alone, walking toward the ATM. It wasn’t until several frames later that the bike appeared.

Maybe nothing.

Or maybe they had gotten the wrong person.

The person on the bike was a girl. The drone had gotten a decent facial image, good enough to use for a search.

The computer system went to work, testing the image against a series of commercial identity databases, starting with anyone ever charged with a crime in Massachusetts — police mug shots had recently been declared public information. After the criminal databases turned up nothing, it began trolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, paging through a mountain of selfies.

But it wasn’t until a full five minutes had passed — an eternity considering the computer resources Chelsea had at her command — that it found a hit on a picture that had appeared in a school newsletter the year before.

The girl’s name was Borya Tolevi.

Gabor Tolevi’s daughter.

Chelsea replayed the drone’s image, looking at the confrontation between the two. There was no sound, but it was clear that the two were having an argument.

What about, Chelsea wondered. But it wasn’t hard to guess.

45

Time for a run.

Johnny Givens stood at the end of the field, surveying the track. It was an old cinder-and-dirt affair, exactly a quarter mile, dating from the days that the grounds had belonged to a Catholic school. Never quite abandoned, it had recently been adopted by a local track club, whose members had smoothed out a decade’s worth of ruts and re-topped it with extremely fine gravel, donated by an area mining operation. It was even but hardly perfect, but that was fine as far as Johnny was concerned; he could run here without being bothered, and there would even be less shock to his stumps than on a “real” track.

Stumps. He was just getting used to the word.

“You don’t really think you’re going to be able to run this,” snarled Gestapo Bitch. She’d seen him in the hall and followed him out.

“I’ll walk it if I have to,” he told her.

“Are you trying to prove something?” she retorted. “You’re barely off the IV.”

Damn straight he was trying to prove something. Johnny took a breath, then leaned forward.

Suddenly he was running.

Not very fast, or very steadily. But with Gestapo Bitch watching him, he sure as hell wasn’t giving up.

The doctors were feeding him with some serious medicine, steroid concoctions, and a shelf full of vitamins. He was their guinea pig. But that was fine by him.

His heart pounded as he took the first turn. The weight on the side of his head grew. His arms weren’t keeping up with his legs.

The left one gave way. Johnny collapsed to the ground, face-first.

Damn! Damn!

Why does God hate me? Why is he doing this to me? Why?

Johnny pounded the ground. Tears rolled down his face.

Why?!

“I told you,” snickered Gestapo Bitch.

He slipped again getting up. Tiny stones were embedded in the palms of his hands. The front of his shirt was covered with dirt.

Run. Run!

Unsteady, he took a step to find his balance, then began running again.

More a trot, but he had to move.

Why is God doing this to me?

46

“Nice bike.”

Borya looked across at a short black woman. She had her own bike, a Trek Silque with custom red fade paint on a gray frame.

“So’s yours,” Borya said, tightening the strap on her backpack. She tried to puzzle out who the woman was.

Not a mom; more an older-sister type.

“What are you doing?” asked the woman.

“Riding home.”

“Want some company?”

Weird.

“Free country. I guess.”

“I’m Chelsea. Chelsea Goodman.” The woman stuck out her hand.

“You a lesbian?” asked Borya.

“No.” Chelsea laughed. “Why?”

Borya shrugged.

“I have a question for you,” said Chelsea, sliding her bike parallel to Borya’s. “What do you know about ATMs?”

Borya stabbed at the bike pedal, launching into a sprint. She charged down the block, wind whipping back her hair. She sped across the intersection, barely dodging a turning car, then crossed back and turned the corner.

She looked up. Chelsea was pedaling alongside.

“Nice bike,” she said again. “You change gears a little too much. You can pedal a little longer before shifting for better speed.”

Borya put her head down and pedaled furiously. Her legs were starting to tire, and as she felt the burn growing in the top of her thighs, she realized she would never be able to outrun the woman, who was still alongside her.

You’re an old suck. You should be tired!

Borya dropped to her usual pace. She thought of leading the woman across the city but decided she’d have a hard time losing her. Besides, her father had given her strict orders to check in with him from the house phone when she got home.

She narrowed her eyes as she rode the last block and a half to the house, practicing the glare she would greet the woman’s inevitable questions with. She felt as if she was putting on a costume, becoming someone else — a superhero tough girl, impervious to attack.

Pedaling around to the back, Borya hopped off the bike as she glided toward the back porch. She picked up the bike in one motion and carried it up the steps without stopping. The front wheel was still spinning when she began wrapping the chain through the frame to secure it.

“You’re still here?” she said nonchalantly, as if noticing for the first time that Chelsea was parked at the base of the steps.

“You never answered my question,” said Chelsea. “What do you know about ATMs?”

“They give you money.”

Borya turned to go inside, deciding it would be easiest simply to avoid talking to the woman. But Chelsea was quick, and prepared: she hopped off her bike and was at the door in a flash, pushing it closed as Borya reached her hand in with the key.

“Are you a cop?” asked Borya.

“No. I’m not a cop.”

“Why are you here?”

“I know what you did. I’m interested,” added Chelsea.

“In what?”

“In how you do it. You’re good with computers. I’ll bet you’re great in math, too. And also bored in school.”

“Maybe.”

Borya sensed — knew — that the woman was just pretending to be nice so she could get what she wanted. Still, the attention was flattering.

“If you show me how you did it, I’ll show you some cool stuff,” offered Chelsea. “Computers, robots, and other cool stuff.”

“Yeah, right — like you’re going to offer me candy next,” snapped Borya. “You’re going to break the door.”

“I work for a pretty interesting company,” she said. “We need more smart people to work there. Women especially.”

“You’re hurting me.”

Borya faked tears. It was a lousy try, but it worked. The woman let go of the door.

“See ya,” said Borya, slipping in the key and unlocking the door. She expected Chelsea would try to stop her, but she didn’t. Borya squeezed past her and fled into the house.

Chelsea stood on the back porch for a moment, considering what to do. She sensed that she had aroused the girl’s curiosity but at the same time had somehow made a misstep, either coming on too strong or not being enticing enough.

I should have mentioned money. That’s probably what motivated her in the first place.

Money? Here? Unlikely.

Should have been clearer about not being a cop.

Threatened to turn her in if she didn’t come with me.

That’s kidnapping.

She stood on the porch for a few moments, until she was convinced that Borya wasn’t coming back out. Then she went down to her bike. But she wasn’t going home — she walked around to the front and went up on the stoop. She rang the bell. When there was no answer, she sat down on the steps.

One of the teachers had told her a little bit about Borya when she was waiting. Most of it she could have guessed: smart girl, somewhat rebellious, good at math.

The fact that she had lost her mother when she was young and that her father hadn’t remarried — that was unexpected. If not for that, the girl would have been very similar to her.

Maybe. Had Chelsea been that rebellious?

You were a handful, she heard her father say.

She laughed.

Maybe I was.

Borya locked the door and raced upstairs, checking to make sure she hadn’t missed her father’s call.

No calls.

She ran to her room and woke her computer from sleep mode. She checked Facebook and her e-mail, then looked quickly at her father’s account — if school or the police were trying to contact him, she wanted to know.

A lot of spam, nothing official.

She’d just backed out of the account when the phone rang. She grabbed it without looking at the caller ID, then belatedly realized it might be the police. She held it to her ear, listening.

“Borya, what are you doing?” demanded her father. “Talk.”

“I’m about to do my homework,” she said. “I just got home.”

“How much homework do you have?”

“Not much,” she answered without thinking. The truth was, she had done it all in school already, at least the homework that she cared to do. But an ambiguous answer gave her room to maneuver.

“I’m on my way home. Do we need milk?”

“Um… let me check.”

As she trotted down the stairs, she noticed the woman sitting on the steps at the front of the house.

That’s no good. How do I get rid of her?

“Yeah, I guess, um, we do need milk,” Chelsea told her father after picking up the downstairs phone.

“Anything else?”

“Wait…” Chelsea walked to the refrigerator and opened it. It was well stocked — and in fact there was a nearly full gallon of milk right in the front. “No, nothing. Snacks, maybe.”

“You don’t need any more potato chips. They’ll give you zits. I’ll be home in a bit.”

He hung up. Chelsea put the phone down and went back to the refrigerator for the milk. She drained the jug into the sink, leaving only a finger’s worth at the bottom, then ran the water to remove any trace.

The woman was still there. This was not going to do. Her father was already past the ATM situation. A question or two from this Chelsea, and she was back in trouble, big time.

The phone upstairs began playing a message that it was off the hook. Borya trotted up and turned it off, then traded her uniform skirt and blouse for jeans and a sweatshirt.

Still there. What happens when Dad comes home?

Borya had to get rid of her somehow. She stood at the top of the steps, hoping for an answer.

Nothing occurred to her.

There was something near the door. She slipped down quietly and picked up a business card.

Not a cop. OK. What was Smart Metal?

AI and Bots… artificial intelligence and robots?

Huh?

Borya put the card on the table, then paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do.

The doorbell rang. She turned. It was Chelsea.

Open it or not?

She undid the latch and yanked the door open.

“What do you want?” Borya demanded.

“I want you to come with me and see my lab. I want to give you a tour.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.”

“You’ll leave me alone?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going in a car.”

“I don’t have a car.”

Borya peered out to the street. The woman was alone. “You’ll let me go home when we’re done?”

“Absolutely.”

“I have to be home because my dad will have a shit fit.”

“Of course.”

“You’re not lying. You’re not the cops?”

“I’m not the cops. I know what you did.” Chelsea’s voice became a little less sweet. “I’m interested in it. But I’m not turning you in. I would love to know how you did it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s fine. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait. I need to tell my father where I’m going,” said Borya, who was already thinking of an excuse — the library or a friend’s, nothing related to this woman.

“I’ll wait out here.”

47

Jenkins slowed the car as he approached Tolevi’s house. There was someone out front with a bike, waiting by the driveway, back to him.

A girl, but not Borya.

There was Borya, coming up the driveway with her own bicycle. She hopped on. The other girl started riding as well.

Is that Chelsea Goodman?

Jenkins got a good side view as he passed. It was Chelsea. What the hell was she doing with Borya?

He turned at the next corner, then accelerated away. He had to think about this.

48

Chelsea took a step back, watching Borya as she stared in awe at the tiny flying machine. She had told the airborne bot to fly into the 3-D maze and retrieve a tulip; the UAV was now wending its way around a string of Plexiglas baffles, buzzing up and down as it looked for its target. It passed a decoy lily, then a bunch of daisies, and finally hovered above the tulip. It circled twice, measuring the stem, then dove down and plucked the flower near its base. Moments later it hovered above Borya’s hand, waiting for her to take its prize.

“It’s for you,” prompted Chelsea.

“Wow.”

“Bot B, go home and close down,” commanded Chelsea. The small aircraft climbed a few feet, then zipped across the lab to the bench where its “nest,” or launching pad, was kept. It plopped down on the pad and promptly shut itself off.

“Is this some sort of trick?” asked Borya.

Chelsea laughed. “No, but sometimes it does seem like magic. Come here. I’ll show you the coding.”

She walked over to a sixty-inch computer screen powered by a workstation at the side of the room. Chelsea tapped the command key and had it display one of the subroutines the on-board computer used to pick out the flower by comparing it to its on-board records.

As impressive as the demonstration was to the uninitiated, the bot had actually done nothing that wasn’t being demonstrated in the MIT robotics lab three or four years before. The truly innovative thing was its size and autonomy. The processors used a carbon nanotube architecture (licensed from IBM for experimental purposes only) that made the small aircraft’s brain as powerful as a 1990s-era mainframe. The nanotubes replaced silicon, allowing the transistors on the chip — essentially the on-off switches that made everything work — to be about a twentieth the size of the smallest possible in silicon, roughly 7 nanometers. They were thinner than strands of DNA.

Borya gaped at the coding. It was a proprietary language, presented here without notes and explanations.

“It’s not C++,” said the girl. “But this sets up an array, right?” She pointed to the screen.

“Very good,” said Chelsea. She tapped the keyboard. The screen began scrolling quickly. “I just want you to see how long this is.”

“Wow,” said Borya as the characters rolled off the screen.

“This is just one subroutine. There were five thousand six hundred and thirty-two involved in that test we just ran.”

“Really?”

“When we started, there were almost twice that many. We had to find a way to tighten it up. We’re still working on that.”

“How long did it take you to write this?”

Chelsea laughed. “I’d love to take credit for writing the whole thing,” she said, “but I had a lot of help.”

“How many people?”

“I can’t tell you that.” It was, in fact, proprietary information, as were the tools they had used to help construct it. “But I can say that it wasn’t just people. Automated tools are very important. They’re like computer writing assistants.”

“I’ve heard of that,” said Borya.

“Smart Metal is a pretty cool place, huh?”

“It’s all right.”

“Hungry? We can get something to eat. There’s a café upstairs.”

“I should go home,” said Borya. “My dad will be wondering where I am.”

“No soda?” Chelsea asked. “We have Coke, root beer—”

“Do you have potato chips?”

“We do. Come on.”

Borya followed her to the elevator. The doors in the hallway were to other labs, where different scientists and engineers were working. A few wore white clean-room-style suits, but most were dressed in jeans and casual shirts. There were computers and sensors and wires everywhere. When they’d come in, Chelsea had walked Borya through a display area of artificial limbs. It was like a museum exhibit, starting with peg legs and moving up to a sleek arm and hand with thin metal tubes and wires, which, Chelsea told Borya, connected to a person’s nervous system.

She wanted one. Not that she would trade her actual arm for it, though.

“Who’s this?” asked a short, white-haired man as they stepped off the elevator on the top floor.

“Mr. Massina, this a friend of mine. Borya.” Chelsea put her hand on Borya’s back and pushed her gently toward Massina. “She’s a high school student. She’s very good at math.”

“Hmmmm.”

Borya stuck out her hand. Massina shook it. He had a firm handshake, though not quite as crushing as her father’s.

“Keep studying,” he said as he let go. Then he stepped around her and entered the elevator, frowning until the doors closed.

“He’s a bit of a sourpuss,” said Borya.

“He owns the company,” said Chelsea. “A lot of the things you’re looking at, he invented.”

“Really?”

“Yup. He’s pretty much a genius.”

Chelsea got the girl some chips and a soda, then led her out to the terrace. It was a beautiful early spring day, nearly eighty degrees; the large windows at the side were open, letting in the gentle breeze.

Borya had clearly been impressed, but that was all. Chelsea had imagined that the visit would open her up. She’d ask a few questions and find out everything there was to know about the ATM scam — like, had her father put her up to it? Was she involved? Had she even done the coding, possibly with the help of some scripts off the Internet? Just how precocious was this girl?

But Borya hadn’t opened up. And sitting down at the table overlooking the harbor and skyline, Chelsea felt as if she was back in middle school, trying to make friends with one of the cool girls.

That had never gone well.

“Have you thought about college?” asked Chelsea. As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them; they were something a parent would say.

“No.”

“College is a good thing.”

God, I’m hopeless.

“Uh-huh.” Borya ripped open the bag of chips with her teeth and began eating.

Don’t ask her about a boyfriend. Or anything else about school.

What, then?

“So — what did you do with the ATM card?” There was nothing else to talk about, Chelsea decided. She might as well just cut to the quick.

“The ATM card?”

“The other night. One of my drones, a Hum, saw you at the machine.”

Borya shrugged.

“I know you have a way of stealing money from the accounts. I’m not going to turn you in. I just want to see how you do it. It’s pretty clever.” Chelsea’s mind flailed, trying to come up with some strategy that would work. “Did you write it in C++?”

“You have to use coding that the bank systems understand,” said Borya.

“And how’d you learn that?”

“The machine at the bank uses one language, then it gets translated. You don’t know that?”

“I don’t know anything,” fudged Chelsea. “I don’t work on those systems. Did you have to revise the program every time you hit a different bank?”

“I have to go.” Borya jumped to her feet.

“It’s at the intermediary,” said Chelsea, finally realizing that she had been mistaken about how the thefts were arranged. The code in the bank account that was queried went there, which then issued other commands. Otherwise it’d be too cumbersome.

“I have to go. My father is going to be looking for me.”

“Sure,” said Chelsea as nonchalantly as she could. “Come on. I’ll get you a ride.”

“I have my bike.”

“Sure you don’t want a ride?”

“No.”

“When do you want to come back?” Chelsea asked as they waited for the elevator.

“Come back?”

“You haven’t seen half of the awesome stuff we have. There’s plenty more.”

“I don’t know.”

Borya said nothing until they got to the lobby. Chelsea walked her to the security desk, where they retrieved her phone.

“You’re not coming with me, are you?” asked Borya. She seemed worried.

“I have to work.”

“OK.”

“Here,” said Chelsea, holding up her phone. “Here’s my number. Text me when you want to come back.”

Reluctantly, Borya pressed the key combination to allow the phones to exchange information.

“Anytime,” said Chelsea at the door to the lobby.

She watched Borya spring to her bike, chained at the rack in the vestibule. She mounted it and rode it through the door, clearly impatient to be gone.

“That was our thief?” Massina stared at Chelsea from behind his desk.

“Apparently. I’m not sure whether her father put her up to it or not.”

“Hmmmph,” said Massina. Finding out a teenaged girl was responsible for a string of thefts that had the FBI twisted in knots — that wasn’t exactly what he’d thought they would find.

On the other hand, if a kid could do this, then the field was wide open for improvements.

“We should think about taking her on as an intern,” suggested Chelsea.

“What? Reward a hacker?”

“She’s fifteen. She’s smart enough to figure this out — maybe with some help, maybe a lot of help, but still. She’s got potential. The kind of person who ought to be working with us.”

Massina pressed his lips together. No way was he hiring the girl, under any circumstances, even if she wasn’t a thief, and even if her father wasn’t part of the Russian mob.

“I was wrong about how it works,” said Chelsea. “She gave me a hint. I have to work on it.”

“Commercial applications?” asked Massina.

“I think so. If you want to branch out into banking systems and security.”

“Keep working on it,” he said, turning back to his computer.

49

Needing to perfect an excuse for her father, Borya stopped briefly at Mary Lang’s house on the way home. Mary, an awkward, wallflowery kid at school, was overjoyed to see her, eagerly inviting Borya in and asking if she wanted to stay for dinner.

Borya ignored both invitations, asking instead about a social studies assignment she had finished at school. Lang ran and got the handout with the question, copying it out for her in a neat script. Handing her the paper, she offered to help with it; Borya managed a polite smile, then told her that she had to get home.

“Did my dad call your house?” she asked, stepping back from the door. Mary shook her head. “If he does, I was here all afternoon. Right?”

“Oh, yes.” A bright smile broke out on Mary’s face. She practically salivated at the idea of being in on a conspiracy. “The whole afternoon. Doing social studies.”

“Not the whole afternoon,” coached Borya. “Just from like, three. Until now.”

“Until now.”

“Gotta go.”

“See you tomorrow,” said Mary Lang.

“Oh yeah.”

Borya flew home on her bike, confident that her cover story would stand any scrutiny her father threw at it. Skidding to a stop behind the back porch, she hoisted the bike on her shoulder and hustled up the steps, chaining it quickly and heading inside, barely catching her breath.

Her father was standing in the kitchen.

“What is Smart Metal?” he asked.

The question drained the blood from her head. How had he found out where she had gone?

He must really be a spy, she thought. He must have put a bug in my clothes.

Her father held a business card out to her. “Smart Metal?” he asked again. “Chelsea Goodman?”

“Oh.” Borya struggled to come up with an explanation. She had completely forgotten about the card; it must have been in the front hall. “My, uh, she’s my friend’s older sister. They do computer stuff. And robots.”

That wasn’t enough explanation. Borya struggled to find the line between just enough information to satisfy him and not enough to get her into trouble. Part of her wanted to tell him about the place — it had been the coolest thing she’d ever seen, awesome beyond awesome. But opening that door would expose her to many more questions.

“Uh, she, they want to hire more girls to be in, uh, like STEM stuff,” said Borya, stitching in information from a school assembly they’d had a few weeks back. STEM was big, especially for girls.

Study your math!

Ppppp.

But finally an assembly had proved good for something.

“What STEM?” asked her dad.

“STEM, you know. Like, science, technology, engineering, and mom.”

“Mom?”

“I mean math.”

The unintentional slip caught them both by surprise. Borya felt as if she had lost all the air in her chest. Her father looked the same way.

“I… I don’t know why I said that.” She felt tears starting to well in her eyes.

“It’s OK, baby,” said her father softly. His eyes were heavy as well.

Tolevi worked silently in the kitchen, making his daughter’s favorite dinner, soft tacos with extra cheese. Technically, it was only her third or fourth favorite — pizza was number one, and her aunt Tricia’s pot roast was number two — but it was the only one of her favorites that he could actually cook himself.

Borya didn’t know her mother’s cooking. If she did, those would surely be her favorites.

Tolevi pushed his sadness away, concentrating on the meat cooking in the pan. He stirred it around, working it until no pink remained. He drained the oil into the sink, then put the pan back on the stove and began adding sauce and spices.

I need to ask about this friend’s sister, he thought as he stirred. Get us off the topic of missing mom.

“Borya, set the table,” he called.

“Already done.”

He turned around, surprised to find his daughter already at the table. He wondered if she had somehow heard what he was thinking.

“Good day at school?” he asked, getting the taco shells out of the warming tray.

“OK day.”

“A lot of homework?”

“I’m on it. I told you I did most of it.”

“You did?” He didn’t quite succeed in making that sound like a statement rather than a question.

They ate in silence, Tolevi dreading the fact that he had to tell her that Mrs. Jordan had bailed on him and he was substituting a former au pair, Mary Martyak. Borya hated Martyak, and he wasn’t particularly fond of her himself, but she was the best he could do on short notice.

“Can I be excused?” Borya asked, her plate clean.

“I have to travel again.”

“You told me.”

“I’m going to be gone for a week. Maybe more. I don’t know. The business — there are a lot of loose ends. It may be less time,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. “But Mary Martyak is coming to stay with you, starting tomorrow.”

“I thought Mrs. Jordan!”

“She can’t. But Mary was very excited. She really likes you.”

“Ugh. Is she still doing that history stuff?”

“Anthropology.”

“Whatever. She thinks she’s a psychiatrist.”

“You mean psychologist.”

“And a know-it-all. And bossy.”

“She’s in charge.”

“Phew.” Borya got up from the table with her plate. “I’m old enough to stay by myself.”

“And break curfew like the other night?”

“I won’t do that again.”

“Maybe next time. Break curfew or give Mary a hard time, and I’ll sell you to the nuns,” he told her, softening what had started as a threat into a joke. His daughter came and hugged him around the neck. “I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Where were you this afternoon?”

“Mary Lang’s, studying. You said I could study with friends. That’s always been a rule. If their parents are home.”

It was a rule. Though she should have told him.

She had texted, though, hadn’t she? He was so distracted with everything else now that he couldn’t remember.

Focus on your daughter. She’s all you have.

“Mary Lang is the little fat one?” he asked.

“No, you’re thinking of Georgina. She’s kind of skinny, with kinked-up hair.”

“You know if anything ever happened to me, you would go and live with Uncle Bob and Aunt Lisa, right?”

“What?” Borya practically crossed her eyes as she stared at him.

“I’m not saying something is going to happen,” he added quickly. “But you know them and like them.”

“Yeah.”

Bob and Lisa weren’t actually related to Borya or her father, but were such close friends that they fully earned the title of uncle and aunt. As long as Borya could remember, she had spent at least a week with them every summer in upstate New York, where Uncle Bob owned a radio station and Aunt Lisa had the world’s biggest collection of nail polish, always gladly shared. Their three daughters and son were a few years older than Borya, and all were out of the house now.

“But nothing’s going to happen to me,” added Tolevi. “That I promise.”

50

Johnny Givens took a deep breath, then lowered himself on his haunches in a squat. He put his two hands on the bar, closed his eyes briefly, then lifted.

The bar with its plates weighed only twenty-five kilos, not a lot of weight; before his injury he was doing military presses with eighty easily.

But this was different.

He came up out of the squat slowly. So much of this was done with your legs, yet he felt nothing there, only a very slight strain in his shoulders.

Hardly any strain.

Up. Up!

He cleaned the bar, pulling it from his waist to his chest with a quick jerk. Too quick a jerk, really; bad form, but he had it and this was no time to critique technique. He paused a moment, then pushed up slowly, shoulders doing the work.

Easy.

He felt a slight tremor at his back, the muscle weak. He fought against it, remembering what the doctor had said about how it would feel. This was all very strange. It was his body and yet it wasn’t his body.

I’m still who I am. Still me. Still Johnny Givens.

But who was Johnny Givens? An FBI agent? No — the Bureau had already put him on permanent disability, the bastards. The one time the bureaucracy actually worked expeditiously, and it was to screw him out of a job.

“Oh don’t worry,” said the idiot HR person, “you’re on full disability. Losing your legs does that.”

He wanted to scream at her. But some inbred courtesy kicked in, and all he did was hang up — gently.

His mother would have been proud; he’d controlled his temper.

But, Mom, you just don’t understand. Being polite, being reasonable — that’s not always the best way to do things. Sometimes if you don’t yell at people, they think what they’re doing or saying is OK.

The world is not a reasonable place. If you’re reasonable, you’re at a disadvantage.

Johnny lowered the weight to his shoulders. He took a deep breath, then slowly lowered himself. He could feel the strain in his thighs.

Really? Strain in your thighs?

You have no thighs! You have no legs! You’re metal and carbon and wires and digital crap and fake stuff. You don’t exist from a few inches below the waist.

He knew he had nothing there, and yet he felt it. He was sure he felt it.

He let go of the weights and stood straight up, head swimming.

“You’re not supposed to be in here!” said Gestapo Bitch.

He glanced up and saw her in the mirror at the side of the room. She had her arms crossed and was staring at him with a look of disgust.

“Who says?” he snapped. He didn’t bother to look at her.

“It’s not on your rehab program. Weights — no.”

“Yeah, well, here I am.” Johnny squatted back down, grabbing the bar.

Up, up up!

He held the bar straight overhead, then lowered it slowly to his shoulders, then pushed back up.

Six reps.

Six — you can do it.

Six.

“Your form sucks,” said Gestapo Bitch as he returned the bar to the ground. “Your tush is too far out. You’re going to strain your back. Then what are you going to do?”

“Bench presses.”

Straightening, he walked over to the dumbbell rack, still refusing to look in her direction.

“You hate me, don’t you?” she asked as he selected a pair of dumbbells.

“Bet your ass.”

“Good.”

Johnny made a fist and slammed his right hand down on the twenty-kilo barbell.

“What turned you into such a bitch?” he shouted, turning to confront her.

But she was gone.

51

The Mercure Arbat was a well-regarded hotel in central Moscow used by many tourists and a decent number of businessmen, including those who had appointments at the nearby Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gabor Tolevi booked a room there not because he liked the hotel — he did, in fact, but that was beside the point. He needed a place not only convenient to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but also one that would make it seem that he was doing nothing to hide his trip from any of the intelligence agencies that might be involved in Donetsk, including and especially SVR.

Which meant that he would be followed whenever he left the hotel. He decided to test this with a walk immediately after arriving. Not bothering to change his clothes — he wanted it to be as easy as possible — he left his bag in the room and went out, strolling casually, as if taking in the sights.

A young man in a blue sport coat and faded black jeans followed him out of the lobby. Tolevi wandered a few blocks, then went toward the metro, curious. Ordinarily the Russians used teams to trail anyone of real interest, and their usual procedure would call for a handoff at fairly regular intervals. But his shadow didn’t change, even inside the station; either Tolevi was considered of low value, or he was being followed by a Western service, probably the Americans, who didn’t have the manpower to waste on large teams.

For someone used to the T in Boston, walking into a Moscow metro station was almost always disorienting. The stations, or at least those in the central part of the city, were works of art, temples even, as if the trains running through them were mythical gods. Walking into Smolenskaya metro station, which was hardly the fanciest, was like walking into a nineteenth-century monument. Arched glass fronts welcomed passengers, huge stone blocks made up the walls, and the platform could have been a dance hall at Versailles.

The architectural flourishes and the artwork made it easy to feign interest while checking around, but Tolevi still couldn’t spot anyone tracking him except the man in the blue sport coat. He hesitated when the train came in, almost deciding to turn around and go up in the crowd, which would force the man to show that he was trailing him. But there was no point in that. He wasn’t trying to lose the trail, just make it seem as if he was taking precautions. And so he got on, rode two stops to Aleksandrovsky Sad, and walked to the Russian State Library; he mingled briefly inside, then came out and returned to the subway, heading back to the ministry.

The man in the blue jacket had disappeared, but Tolevi couldn’t figure out if he had been handed off or not. As a final touch, he hailed a cab — more a whim, as he saw one nearby — and had it take him to the ministry.

Even with all of his travel across Moscow, he was still nearly an hour ahead of his appointment. And this being Russia, it was another two and a half hours before an assistant to the deputy he’d been assigned to meet had him ushered in. The man’s name was different from that of the person he’d been told to meet, which was not unusual.

Tolevi could complain about none of this. He sat as patiently as he could, trying not to squirm as the bureaucrat fumbled through some papers on a desk that looked as if it were a receiving station for a recycling operation. Files and loose papers were piled everywhere in the office, including on top of the computer at the side.

“You are wanting to import household items,” said the clerk, fumbling with the paperwork.

“No,” said Tolevi. “Common medicines — aspirin, cough syrup, bandages.”

“Not Russian?” said the man, looking up.

“These items are going to our friends in Donetsk,” said Tolevi. “There are needs.”

He handed the man the paperwork. The man frowned, then slowly read through it.

When Tolevi first started out in the import business, he’d made the mistake of offering a bribe to a Russian official. Fortunately, he did this subtly enough that he could back out with some amount of grace — and, more importantly, avoid arrest. It was not that all Russian officials were scrupulously honest; they were probably no more honest, on average, than the officials in other developed countries. But corruption here took place at a different level than it did, say, in Azerbaijan. One did not bribe the men responsible for looking over the paperwork. If a bribe were to be required, it would be presented elsewhere, and always as a fee related to some function. It was very civilized.

He’d already paid that fee. This should just be a formality.

The clerk read through the paperwork, carefully checking each line against some mysterious page on his desk. Tolevi had no idea what he might be doing — the paperwork was very straightforward at this stage — but he knew better than to question the man.

Finally, the man reached down and opened a bottom drawer. He took out a stamp and crashed it down on Tolevi’s documents until each was marked.

Tolevi stared at the red characters in disbelief. The word — in Western letters, it was o-t-k-l-o-n-i-l — meant “rejected.”

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, trying to maintain his temper. “Why is this rejected?”

“You’re a foreigner.”

“Yes, but I have the proper forms. I was told I had approval.”

The clerk launched into a long explanation, speaking very quickly. Tolevi spoke excellent Russian — he had done so since he was a child — but he couldn’t understand half the words, let alone the logic.

“How can I appeal?” he asked when the man finally paused to take a breath.

“Appeal?” The clerk could not have looked more confused had they been speaking Greek. “There is no appeal.”

“There is always a process,” said Tolevi. “I have been in business now for—”

“I am sorry. I have another appointment.”

“No. I want to see your supervisor.”

The man rose. Tolevi debated; he could stay, which might bring out a supervisor, or it might result in a call to security. Once security was involved, anything could happen, including jail on whatever charge happened to be popular that day.

“Really, there is no way?” said Tolevi, rising.

The man shook his head.

“Here.” Tolevi took out a business card. “I am staying at the Mercure. Uh, if maybe something changes?”

“It won’t.”

“Take my card anyway,” said Tolevi, knowing he sounded more than a little desperate. “If it does.”

The man wouldn’t even look at it. Tolevi placed the card on the corner of the desk and left.

Was he being held up for another “tax”? But in such a case, it was unlikely that the clerk would have stamped the papers. The ministry could always issue new papers, but that required steps that others might see; it was unusual.

He was walking back to the hotel to have a drink and puzzle out the situation when he realized that the man in the blue sport coat was following him again.

Part of him wanted to confront the bastard and see if he had anything to do with the rejection. But good sense prevailed; Tolevi simply continued to the hotel and made his way to the bar. He ordered a vodka and tonic, then took a seat across the room.

The man in the blue jacket hadn’t followed him inside. Tolevi looked over the rest of the room, but if his shadow had an accomplice, he couldn’t pick him or her out.

He could go on to Donetsk without the permit and complete the CIA portion of his trip. But it would dent his cover story and, more importantly, prevent him from doing any real business, as the contacts would want the assurance that he could deliver the promised goods.

More importantly, it might mean that the Russians he dealt with no longer wanted him doing business in their territory. That was a problem of potentially catastrophic proportions.

Had he angered someone in the trade ministry?

Maybe Medved had somehow. But that seemed unlikely.

The drink was weak, the vodka not the best. Tolevi decided he would go upstairs to his room and rest a bit before having lunch.

Heading for the elevator, he spotted a restroom and ducked in. He was washing his hands when two other men came in, both Russians, both dressed like workers. Barely noticing them, he dried his hands and started for the door. It swung open just as he reached for it, smacking his right hand; as he jerked back, both of his arms were grabbed and he was pulled backward to the far side of the sinks. Three more men entered, two dressed as the others were, in T-shirts and black trousers. The third wore a tracksuit that would have been high fashion in the U.S. around 1980.

“What the hell?” Tolevi sputtered in Russian.

“Gabor Tolevi, welcome to Moscow,” said the man in the tracksuit. “State your business.”

“I was washing my hands.”

The man holding his left arm jerked it upward, pressuring Tolevi’s joints. The man in the tracksuit shook his head, though Tolevi wasn’t sure whether it was at him or the goon holding him.

“You’re in Moscow for business,” said the man in the tracksuit.

“I don’t talk to people when I’m being bullied.”

“Are we not gentle?” Tracksuit laughed, but then he waved his hands and the men behind Tolevi let him go. “We’ll use English,” he added. “So you’re more comfortable. And your accent is very bad.”

“I hang around with the wrong crowd.”

“You are here to sell medicine to the rebels. That is not a good thing.”

Rebels.

Until now, Tolevi had guessed the men were SVR or otherwise Russians. But the word rebel marked him as a Ukrainian.

Or did it?

“Medicine is medicine,” responded Tolevi.

“Yes, the medicine is one thing. Who it helps is another.”

“Aspirin helps everyone.”

“And that’s what you’re selling?”

“I don’t have the right permit,” said Tolevi. “So I’m not selling anything.”

“That is a shame. So you have no reason to go into the rebel lands, then?”

The man didn’t look particularly Ukrainian. Was he SVR posing as Ukrainian to test his loyalties? Or maybe mafya.

The only way to find out was to play along.

“Maybe I can find some reason to go there,” said Tolevi.

“Give me the papers you brought to the ministry.”

Tolevi hesitated. One of the men behind him — the one on the left, obviously an overachiever — moved close, reaching for his arm again.

“Work with us, and things will go well,” said tracksuit. “Hesitate, and — what is the saying, ‘All is lost’?”

Tolevi took the papers out of his sport coat pocket and handed them to the man.

“In the morning, there’ll be an envelope under your door,” said tracksuit. “Go about your business. We will contact you when we need you.”

He waved his head at the others, who shoved Tolevi as they walked to the door. Tracksuit paused.

“We know you spoke to partisans in Crimea,” he said. “That would not be a good thing to do again.”

And then, with a frown, he left.

52

Chelsea had forgotten she had a date with Flores until he texted her that afternoon, asking what kind of food she liked.

Japanese, she answered, taken off guard.

Neither.

But that wasn’t a good answer.

Flores met her at Sushi Z, a trendy place not far from downtown that served all-you-can-eat plates of sushi for twenty-eight bucks a pop. The menu consisted of two pieces of paper, on which you marked what you wanted; the one caveat was that you had to finish all you ordered, or be charged for it. Flores ordered a pair of dragon rolls and spiced crab sushi; Chelsea, not impressed by the frenetic pace of the waitresses, ordered tuna sashimi.

The warm sake Flores recommended was good, and very easy going down — too easy, thought Chelsea after her first few sips, and she resolved to go more slowly.

She wasn’t sure about Flores. He wasn’t the sort of guy she had gone out with before. She couldn’t decide whether the fact that he worked for the FBI made him more or less interesting.

He was white, but that wasn’t necessarily a big hang-up; she’d gone out with white guys before. And her father was white — though anyone seeing her just automatically checked the black box.

They talked about movies and then their food, light chatter without commitment or pressure. She was feeling good — partly a function of the sake — until their plates were cleared.

“So what’s the daughter like?” asked Flores out of the blue.

“Daughter?”

“Tolevi. You met his daughter, right?”

“The ATM guy?”

“Yeah. I heard you made friends with her.”

“How’d you hear that?”

“Just heard it.”

Chelsea refilled her sake cup without commenting.

“You know, if you guys are still working on that, we could possibly trade information,” said Flores.

“How so?”

“I don’t know. It might be useful. If you talk to the daughter, maybe she can tell us about her father. What he’s up to.”

Oh, so he’s pumping me for information. This isn’t a date.

She felt both relief and disappointment — mild disappointment. This was business, not romance.

Trade information. But what?

“Do you know how the scam worked?” he asked.

“Do you?”

“We haven’t been able to find the key,” he confessed. “The code — there’s nothing there.”

“Your boss told my boss to drop everything,” said Chelsea.

“My boss says a lot of things. That doesn’t mean you and I can’t work on it.”

Chelsea finished her sake. “I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it.” Flores looked up as the waiter approached with the check. “I got it,” he said, holding out his hand.

Jenkins was just leaving the task force headquarters when Flores called him on his cell phone.

“How did it go?” he asked Flores.

“She didn’t really say much about the girl.”

“Nothing? They totally dropped it?”

“She only said you told her boss to back off. That was pretty much all I could get out of her.”

“Keep at it.”

“This isn’t really the kind of thing I’m comfortable with.”

“I know Massina. He’s not going to drop this. If one of his people is talking to the girl, they’re definitely working on it.”

“You’re the boss.”

“That’s right.”

53

For hours, Tolevi drifted between sleep and wakefulness. Every time he started to slip off, his mind threw up something that spiked his attention just enough to keep him from drifting off: possible problems at the border, possible trouble getting into Donetsk, how to get out of the country if the airport was suddenly closed.

And the identity of the people who had stopped him in the restroom. Clearly they were Russian, aiming to help the rebels even though they’d tried to provoke him with the clumsy reference.

SVR, then. He had contacts, he could check.

Not wise.

He tried moving his mind away from those thoughts, but nothing was safe: thinking of home, he began fretting about Borya, worrying how she was getting on with the babysitter. Nothing was safe: he thought of a baseball game between the Red Sox and the hated Yankees he’d been to recently…

For some reason it triggered a memory of the goons who had trapped him in the restroom.

Yankees fans, no doubt.

Around 3:00 a.m. he heard a noise at the door. He rolled out of bed, grabbing for the piece of iron he’d put on the nightstand to use as a weapon. Twenty-four inches long, the flat bar was part of his suitcase frame, specially installed to be used as a last-resort weapon in places like Moscow, where obtaining a real weapon was either not worth the effort or too dangerous. It was solid and heavy, more than enough to disable someone temporarily, if not break their neck — something he had done some years before in Brazil, of all places.

Bar in hand, he slipped to the side of the wall and waited, expecting someone to come in. Within moments he realized that wasn’t going to be the case; a clerk had only walked by and slipped in the bill.

And another envelope, just as the goons had promised.

Tolevi stood by the door, listening. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing. Finally he bent and took the envelopes, then tiptoed back to his bed. He used the small light on his keychain to open the envelope. His import papers had been perfectly duplicated, with two exceptions — the stamp now indicated that the import had been approved, and two zeroes had been added to the number of tractor trailers he was authorized to import.

Two hundred containers’ worth of aspirin and cough medicine? The profits would be considerable — but so was the up-front cost. And that was if he could make the necessary arrangements, both to buy and to sell.

But his new “partners” had probably taken care of at least one half of that equation. The question was how to avoid getting stuck with the bill, since a shipment this size would require hefty deposits.

Opening the other envelope, he saw that his bill had been paid, undoubtedly by his new “partners.” There was a note attached with a Post-it.

One of his SVR contacts. So at least he was sure about whom he was dealing with.

Despite the fact that Russia and the Ukraine were fighting a war in all but name, trains and airplanes still traveled regularly between Moscow and Kiev. Getting to Donetsk was a little more complicated — all airplane flights were officially canceled, though it was still possible to charter something if you had the right connections. The train took some twenty-one hours and traveled across three borders, if one counted the rebel area; while Tolevi had the requisite papers, driving was far faster and at least arguably more reliable.

This was not without its own complications. Tolevi left the hotel at five for Moscow airport; he boarded a plane three hours later for Rostov-on-Don in the south. There he had arranged to meet a driver he trusted because of prior arrangements. But when he got to the bus station where they’d agreed to meet, neither the driver nor the car was there. Though this was uncharacteristic, Russians in general were not exactly known as paragons of timeliness. Tolevi stood near the curb at the corner of the building, not far from the closed ticket window, waiting in the cold. After half an hour, he concluded that his driver was not going to show. He was just walking toward the terminal door, intending to call a taxi so he could get to a rental car, when a Mercedes C class sedan drove up alongside him.

“Mr. T?” asked the driver as the window rolled down. He spoke in broken English. “So sorry late. Needed petrol.”

Tolevi didn’t recognize the man — or the car, for that matter.

“Who are you?” he asked in Russian.

“Boris send me.” The man stuck to English. “His wife have baby.”

Boris was not a young man, sixty at least, and Tolevi couldn’t imagine him being married to someone young enough to still be fertile.

“I don’t need a driver, thanks,” said Tolevi.

“Boris told me you go over border, need guide,” added the man. “I know how to get around.”

“Yeah?”

“Вам потрібен гід,” said the man, suddenly speaking Ukrainian. “Vam potriben hid.”

It meant “You need a guide.”

“Mozhlyvo,” replied Tolevi. “Perhaps.”

“Call me Dan.” This in English.

“Where do you come from, Dan?”

“Do you wish to know too much?” asked the man rhetorically.

“You have papers?”

“I can get wherever you need to go. Your Ukrainian is not bad,” Dan added. “But you will immediately be spotted as a foreigner. Maybe Russian, maybe not.”

“What’s Boris’s wife’s name?” asked Tolevi.

“Anas, after Anastasia, and she is young enough to be his granddaughter, I think. How the old devil does it, I don’t know. You are to pay me half in advance.”

“Good,” said Tolevi, opening the car door.

In Tolevi’s experience, there were two kinds of drivers — ones who said absolutely nothing as they drove, and ones who said far too much.

Dan was one of the latter. Despite his earlier hints about Tolevi not knowing too much, he told his entire life story within their first half hour. He was a native of Temyruk, a tiny town not far from Donetsk; like many in the region, he was of Russian extraction and had been visiting friends in Rostov when the civil war began. Twenty-eight years old and a trained architect who had never worked as an architect, he was at least nominally on the side of the rebels who now controlled Donetsk, though Tolevi suspected what he said about the rebellion was more calculated to win his trust than to express his true opinions.

Whatever. Dan had clearly found a way to make the rebellion profitable; he was practiced at going back and forth across the border, something that became clear as they approached it. Rather than going through Vyselky, the town that sat on the highway they were taking, he detoured two miles east, driving across a succession of dirt farm roads in a crazy pattern of Zs. After about a half hour of this, they emerged on a paved road, driving north for another fifteen minutes before seeing even a single rooftop in the distance.

“We have about an hour to go,” Dan announced. “We can stop in Amvrosiivka for something to eat if you are hungry.”

Tolevi took that as a hint. Dan drove to a small café a few blocks off the highway; the recommended pirozhki—meat pastries — were excellent.

“How long will you need me for in Donetsk?” asked Dan as they finished.

“I don’t need you there,” Tolevi told him. “You can go after you drop me off.”

“Boris thought you would need a guide. I can stay for two days.”

“And did Boris tell you what I was doing there?”

“Only that you have business. I assume you bring items into the country.”

“Something like that.”

Tolevi nursed his beer. He didn’t trust Dan, of course, and was more than half convinced he was in the employ of the men he’d met in Moscow. But if that was the case, he might be useful, and in any event wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of. Tolevi decided to keep him where he could see him.

“I might find having a car and driver useful,” he told him. “If the price is right.”

“Another ten thousand euros would cover it. And my expenses.”

It was far too much, but the response was reassuring — it made it more likely he was on his own. Tolevi bargained him down to five, with expenses and gas. He might have gone further, but Dan was still smiling; Tolevi had learned long ago better to leave everyone happy than to scrape shins fighting over a few dollars.

Donetsk was a strange mixture of calm and violent destruction. Though it was close to the front line held by regular Ukrainian troops, a cease-fire had been in place for several months. This meant that residents could go about their business with some degree of normality, except for the periods when both sides exchanged artillery or rocket fire. These exchanges took place on almost a daily basis and followed a predictable pattern: one side would fire first, then the other would answer. The exchanges would last no more than five minutes; always the side that initiated the gunfire would stop first.

There were two unpredictable things: one, when the gunfire would begin, and two, where the shells would land. Damage was neither limited to military areas nor reliably repaired. An otherwise normal-looking city block was punctuated by blackened, burned-out façades; another featured row after row of bricks so neatly piled up that they looked as if they were for a new construction project, rather than salvaged from the buildings that had once occupied the craters behind them.

More than a year before, a railroad bridge over one of the main highways into town had been destroyed, temporarily blocking passage on the road. The rail cars had been removed, and much of the track and its overpass torn down, but the ends of the tracks on either side were still there, jutting above the road like fingers trying to close. Debris — ironwork, mostly, along with large chunks of concrete — sat scattered at the sides of the road. Tolevi couldn’t help but think they would make the perfect cover for an ambush as they passed.

The city was much as he remembered it, though there were noticeable gaps and plenty of burned-out buildings. The Donbass Hotel, one of the grandes dames of Ukrainian hospitality, stood untouched at the corner of Artyoma Street. Tolevi hadn’t bothered to make a reservation; he had guessed, correctly, that there would be no problem getting a room.

The hotel, which only a few years before was regularly filled with tourists and businessmen, was now mostly empty, operating out of sheer will. Only a single car, marked with prominent UN signs on the sides, hood, and trunk, sat out front.

A mustachioed clerk snapped to attention as Tolevi and Dan came in. Rooms were quickly found — fourth floor, back side; you didn’t want to face the street if you didn’t have to. Tolevi gave Dan a hundred-euro down payment and told him to take the rest of the night off.

“Won’t you need a guide?” asked the young man.

“I can get around for a while. We’ll meet for breakfast. Seven a.m.”

“That early?”

“Arrange a wake-up call.”

Tolevi checked the room. He assumed that he was being watched by the local intelligence network, whatever that might be; while he couldn’t be sure there was a direct connection between the rebels who were now in charge and the SVR, he had to assume that there was. Nonetheless, it didn’t look as if he was being followed when he left the hotel for a stroll.

Despite the presence of Ukrainian troops to the west and north, the city appeared calm, and there were no signs of rebel fighters, or Russians for that matter, in the area near the hotel. Tolevi walked several blocks without seeing so much as a policeman, let alone a military vehicle. Cars and trucks, mostly Western, passed; there was less traffic than he remembered since his last visit, but more than two years before. People passed with shopping bags slung from their shoulders; the handful of luxury shops near the hotel all looked open for business.

Tolevi found a café and went in, ordering a coffee; if anyone thought he was out of place, they didn’t stare or make any overt sign. He paid with Russian rubles — it had been declared the official currency a year before — but the waiter didn’t seem to care, nor did he say anything to the woman who paid in hryvnia, the official Ukrainian currency.

Reasonably sure that he wasn’t followed into the café, Tolevi left and continued walking, heading toward a small park a few blocks from the hotel. He found a bench near some children playing on a swing, and once again scanned the area for a tail. Still not seeing one, he walked a few more blocks to a store that sold prepaid telephones. He bought one, then summoned a taxi.

Twenty minutes later, Tolevi arrived at an early-Soviet-era apartment building. After the cab turned the corner, he walked around the block, turned left, and went into a gray four-story building that smelled of simmering cabbage. He walked up a flight, paused one last time to make sure he wasn’t being followed, then went up to the top floor and knocked on the door of an apartment at the far end of the hall.

The man who answered the door nearly dropped the cigarette from his mouth when he saw Tolevi. He grabbed it, then spread his arms wide to embrace him.

“What? What are you doing here?” asked the man, ushering him inside.

“Business, Grandpa. Business.”

Denyx Fodor was not Tolevi’s real grandfather, but he had known Tolevi as a baby, and the families had once been close enough to earn that sort of endearment. They had not seen each other since Tolevi’s last visit to Donetsk, and Fodor cataloged the changes with some relish over a bottle of French wine. The old man still had a store of bottles left over from the days when he imported it; that business had crashed during Ukraine’s depression, which had preceded the revolution and then been deepened by it. Now he was semiretired, with small interests in two shops in town; the proceeds paid his rent but not much more.

Tolevi waited patiently through Fodor’s stories, mostly of rebel and Russian outrages, then explained the outlines of the deal he had come to make, carefully leaving out the business in the restroom, as well as the CIA mission.

“We can get medicine at the pharmacies,” said Fodor. “But not reliably. And the quality — I think it is Chinese.”

“This will be from the West,” said Tolevi.

“You can get past the embargo?”

Tolevi shrugged. “There are ways.”

“And what do you need of me?”

A ride to a place where using the cell phone would not be a problem either for Fodor or anyone else, and a set of eyes to watch for anyone following. Fodor was more than game.

They finished the wine while waiting for the sun to go down, then went out to Fodor’s car, a ten-year-old Lexus. A half hour later they stopped near a railroad siding that had not been used since before the civil war.

Tolevi walked down the tracks for five minutes before making the call to the number Johansen had given him. There was no answer.

He was walking back, considering what to do, when a text arrived with an address and the words “butcher shop” in Ukrainian.

Right. Pick up some meat. Ironic and yet fitting at the same time.

“I need another stop, please,” he told Fodor when he got back to the car. “And go over the river so I can throw the phone away.”

54

Gestapo Bitch’s real name was Joyce Kilmer, “like the lady who wrote about the tree.” She had been a CPA with a running fetish until she’d broken her leg.

Learning how to properly rehab after the injury had taken her quite a while, until she’d found the right specialist. It had convinced her she could do better.

“What did you learn from the Marines?” asked Johnny Givens as they warmed down after his Saturday morning run. Kilmer had surprised him by joining him.

More of a surprise was the fact that she didn’t bark at him, only laugh.

“Let’s just say she pushed me,” said Kilmer. “Then I met Mr. Massina.”

“You work for him, not the hospital?”

“That’s right. Keep walking. We need two circuits. Then we’ll work on some core exercises.”

They completed the walk, then began doing some exercises. Sweat flowed from Johnny’s pores.

“All right,” she announced suddenly. “You’re done.”

“Really?”

“Until five o’clock, yes. Kale smoothie for lunch. Don’t forget your medicine.”

“I can’t forget that.”

“It’s important. Your body has been through enormous trauma. You’ve come a long way very fast — too fast, probably. But there’s no going back. Just stick with the program.”

They walked back to the building in silence.

“I didn’t know you worked Saturdays,” he told her as they reached the door.

“I don’t. But you’re my prize pupil.” She smiled.

“Is that why you’re being so nice?” he asked as the door flew open.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep kicking your ass. But…” She paused. “They’re going to release you this week. I wanted to make sure you’re OK with that.”

“Really?”

“Technically, there’s no reason for you to be in the hospital. The amount of recovery you’ve done, the stage you’re at — it would be, well, two months at least. But physically, you’re there. So, a hospital being a hospital, they’re ready to let you go.”

“Wow.”

“But you have to keep up with the program.”

“I will. There’s no doubt about that.”

“Good.”

“Are you going to still work with me?” Johnny asked.

“You’ll be assigned a new therapist. Two, probably. The post-release team likes to work in pairs.”

“But I was just starting not to hate you.”

“Time for you to fly, little bird. Fly, fly, fly.” She patted him on the back. “You’re on your own.”

Despite what he told her, Johnny didn’t feel ready. He didn’t think he’d ever be ready. So when he saw Sister Rose Marie waiting in his room when he got back, Johnny felt something close to panic.

“How are you?” asked the diminutive nun.

“Good.”

“You’ve come a long way. How do your legs feel?”

“Strange.” He laughed. “Very strange, still. But — I guess this is how life is going to be.”

“It is.”

“You guys have treated me really well.”

“It’s what we do,” said the nun sweetly. “We’re thinking of releasing you.”

“Ms. Kilmer told me.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know.”

The nun nodded solemnly. “We’ll continue to see you on an outpatient basis. We have a therapist I’d like you to work with.”

“Ms. Kilmer has been pretty good. I’d like to keep working with her.” Johnny sat on the edge of the bed.

“The therapist I was talking about is a psychologist. Because there are issues.”

“Like what?”

“He’ll talk to you about that. There are adjustments. But physically… Johnny, you’ve done more in two weeks than a lot of our patients do in six months. Partly, it’s the drugs and the legs themselves — Mr. Massina’s work is quite incredible. But most of it is due to you. Even so… you do have adjustments you have to make. Mentally.”

“Sure.”

“Are you a religious man, Johnny?”

“I’m not Catholic, Sister.”

“I’m not trying to convert you,” she said gently, “but I do believe that faith can be a powerful component of healing.”

Johnny didn’t know how to answer that.

“You’re still angry with God, I would imagine, for doing this to you,” said the nun. It was as if she read his mind. But maybe that wasn’t so hard to figure out.

“It is what it is,” he said.

“God only gives us what He knows we can handle,” she told him.

“I guess.”

“Nurse Abramowitz will be in to help with out-processing Monday,” said the nun. “She’s Jewish, by the way.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“To her, I would suspect.” She smiled. “If you ever need anything, I’m always here.”

55

Tolevi had Fodor drop him off several blocks from the address he’d been given. The old man was dubious; it was not a good part of town, even before the war, and aside from that it was a frequent target of the government’s mortaring. But Tolevi insisted, and in the end the old man reluctantly let him go.

“I’ll see you before I leave Donetsk,” Tolevi assured him. “And we will solve the world’s problems.”

“That will take more wine than I own,” said Fodor sadly. “Take care, young man. Take care.”

The streets were dark, lit only by the dim light cast from nearby windows. There wasn’t much of that: more than half of the buildings Tolevi passed were gone.

Tolevi walked to the south first, away from the address, always on guard against being followed. The air felt damp and cold; a storm must be coming on, he thought. With so many buildings gone, he had to guess at the block segment where the butcher shop would be. He came around two blocks east, walking with a quick, businesslike pace toward his destination.

He was very conscious of the fact that he had no weapon to defend himself with. Ukraine was not known for crime; if anything, before the war Donetsk was far safer than Boston, itself a relatively safe city. But war and deprivation made people desperate.

I can take care of myself.

The butcher’s shop was dark. The storefront, which had probably been plate glass not too long ago, was covered in plywood, but the door at the side was glass and intact. Tolevi knocked on it, pushing his head to the glass and trying to see if there was any light inside. But the place appeared empty.

He stepped back to look at the apartments above. No light came from any of the windows. The sky was overcast, and without light from anywhere nearby, it was difficult to see, but to Tolevi it looked as if the right corner of the top floor appeared jagged, torn off by some prehistoric monster — or, more likely, a mortar shell from government lines.

He knocked again, this time much louder. Still nothing.

All right, then. I’ll come back in the day.

Tolevi cupped his hands over his face and peered inside, trying to see if the place was simply abandoned. But he saw only shadows, and even these weren’t more than indiscriminate clouds.

He stepped back, reluctant to leave. Finally he turned in the direction Fodor had taken bringing him here.

Tolevi was a long way from the hotel, but there was no alternative to walking. He turned his collar up against the cold and hunched forward, hands in pockets.

“You! Stop!” shouted a voice in Ukrainian behind him.

Tolevi kept walking.

“I said stop!” repeated the voice. It was deep, masculine, at least middle-aged, maybe older.

No. Stopping is never a good idea, Tolevi thought. Stop and be killed, or robbed at least. Walk and at worst they think you crazy, and who messes with a crazy man in a war zone?

He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets, hoping it looked like he had a gun.

“I said halt!” This time the man behind him used English.

Surprised, Tolevi stopped. The man flipped on a flashlight, casting a long oval ahead that silhouetted Tolevi on the street.

“Turn around or I shoot,” said the man.

Tolevi turned. Three men were standing a few meters away. The one in the middle had a Kalashnikov.

“Show your hands,” said the man, still in English.

“What are you saying?” asked Tolevi in Ukrainian, though of course he understood. “I speak Ukrainian and Russian. Take your pick.”

“Hands up,” repeated the man in Ukrainian.

The man on his right walked up to Tolevi. He was a few inches shorter, and much thinner. Pointing at Tolevi’s sides, he indicated he was going to frisk him; Tolevi widened his stance and submitted.

“What were you doing at the shop?” asked the man with the rifle when the search was over. He played the flashlight’s beam across Tolevi’s face.

“Looking for meat.”

“At this hour?”

“I was looking to make some stew,” said Tolevi.

Still holding the rifle, his inquisitor handed the flashlight to the man on his left, then took out a cell phone. He looked at the face of the phone for a moment.

Give me the answer, thought Tolevi. Ask me who is it for.

But instead, the man asked again why he would go to a butcher shop in the middle of the night.

“I heard sometimes it is open,” answered Tolevi. “If you want meat.”

“You don’t look familiar.”

“I’m a visitor. Trying to find food for a friend.”

“You will come with us,” said the man. He slipped the phone back into his pocket.

“I don’t want any trouble,” said Tolevi.

“You will come with us.” He pointed the gun at Tolevi’s face. “Now.”

56

Johnny Givens stopped at the foot of the steps to his house on St. Charles Street and took a deep breath.

“I’m home,” he said to no one in particular. “Home.”

He put his hand on the rail and went awkwardly up the steps. There were so many things he had to get used to — his new legs, his mechanical heart, his new status as a “medically furloughed/soon to be retired on full disability” former government worker.

The last would be the hardest, he was sure.

Givens’s home was a duplex in Fields Corner West, an area described by the real estate brokers as “up and coming,” though some of the residents might take issue. It certainly had the requisite mixed population — Vietnamese as well as Hispanic, black, and younger white. But it was also the neighborhood where Guinness had first been served, which made it quintessential old-school Boston. Had Givens been in a different kind of mood, he might have gone to the very bar, the Blarney Stone, which was only a short walk from, or a longish crawl to, his house.

But he wasn’t in a drinking mood. Stepping into his apartment was like stepping into a different life — an old one that he had left not a week but eons ago.

It wasn’t just that the place smelled stuffy, or that here and there a fine layer of dust had settled. The dimensions of the rooms seemed to have changed. The walls looked darker than he remembered, the furniture shabbier. His bed, unmade since the morning he left, looked different, smaller and angled in the room in a way that was unfamiliar. Nothing was exactly the same, and when he went from the hallway between the bedroom to the kitchen, he tripped over the wooden threshold. He caught himself on the doorway, but even as he righted himself he felt sheer panic, his emotions free-falling.

What if I fall here and can’t get up? What if my heart stops? What if the legs become unattached or stop working?

What what what…

Irrational fears, all of them. If anything, he was stronger than he’d been — he’d always had a flawed heart, even if he hadn’t known it; now he had one that was perfect, as the doctor who’d plugged into its magnetic sensors had told him with some glee before his release.

His artificial legs were several times stronger than flesh and bone. The drugs had pumped his muscles to a peak he hadn’t experienced since high school, and maybe not even then. He was a bionic man, better than before.

Yet, not complete. Missing. A man missing who he was, who he had been.

Johnny straightened himself and walked to the refrigerator to take stock. The milk was bad, but there was an unopened bottle of cola on the top shelf. He took it out and, in a sudden fit of tidiness, poured it into a glass before sitting down at the kitchen table to drink it.

He’d only taken a single sip when his cell phone began to buzz. It was in his pocket, set to vibrate — which in itself was weird, because he had no way of feeling it.

Everything was different in this world.

It was a Boston number. He didn’t recognize it, but decided to answer anyway. Maybe it was a doctor — or the hospital calling to tell him there had been a mistake; he wasn’t supposed to go home.

“Hello? Johnny?”

“Who is this?”

“Chelsea Goodman. I stopped by to see you. They told me you were released.”

“I was. I am.”

“Oh. That’s great.”

Johnny felt as if he should say something, but he wasn’t quite sure what.

“You should come to the office,” said Chelsea. “Everyone would love to meet you.”

“I’d like that,” said Johnny. “When?”

“Whenever you want.”

“How about now?”

“Well, it’s Saturday, but… sure. A lot of people are here. Including the boss.”

“Maybe I’ll be there in a while, then,” he said. “What’s the address?”

The outside of the Smart Metal building was very nineteenth century. Brick interrupted by steel cross beams, large windows that caught the sun and reflected the nearby harbor, a shiny metal roof with thick standing seams and snow guards.

Inside, Smart Metal was the future, and beyond.

While the shell of the old factory building had been restored, the interior had been gutted and completely rebuilt. It was now a building within a building, sleeker than anything Johnny had ever seen. The entrance lobby rose five stories above street level. Thick panels covered with granite rose to the ceiling; steel and glass walkways ran the length of the interior. Behind the panels on the first four floors were labs; there were offices on the fifth. Thick glass pipes ran across the top of each hallway, a ceiling of conduit, optic fiber, and HVAC trunks.

For all its high-tech look, cooling the building was a major problem, Chelsea told Johnny as she led him through; though the most powerful computers were confined to the basement “processing farm,” there were workstations and even mainframes scattered throughout.

“It got so bad last year Mr. Massina assigned me to write an algorithm that would take into account how much the computers were being used,” she said, pausing at the elevator on the first floor. “Since then it’s been better. Everyone sets their lab at a different temperature, though, which drives the maintenance people batty.”

The elevator arrived. Like everything else in the place, it was cutting edge, both in appearance and in function. There were no buttons anywhere on the exotic wood paneling; you spoke the floor where you were going. There was a security benefit to that — the elevator would not take you to a floor if you weren’t authorized to go there, explained Chelsea.

“Can’t you just take the stairs?” asked Johnny.

“Doors won’t open, except in an emergency. If you weren’t with me, you couldn’t get out of the visitors’ area on the first floor. That’s why you don’t need a pass.”

“You’re my pass.”

“That’s right.”

“I better not let you out of my sight.”

Chelsea led him out into another hallway, this one on the fourth floor. So far, they had seen labs where mechanical birds flew through mazes and an electric piano was hooked up to a computer that was composing its own music — melodic but somewhat boring.

“This is the biomechanical lab,” said Chelsea. “This where your next heart will be grown.”

“Grown?”

Chelsea smiled, then waved him through the door.

Full-spectrum fluorescents bathed the interior of the building with light so intense that Johnny had to shut his eyes so they could adjust. When he blinked them open, he found himself standing at the edge of a long row of what looked like oversized aquarium tanks, the sort a fish farm might use when breeding small fish. The interior of the room was very humid, and the place had a sweet smell unlike the rest of the building.

“Nutrient baths,” said Chelsea, stepping over to one of the large tanks. “Think of them as large, artificial wombs.”

Johnny followed her. The tank, a good three meters long and another meter wide, looked empty, except for a pair of marbles nestled in what looked like rubber material at the bottom.

They weren’t marbles.

“Eyes,” said Chelsea. “They’re grown from pig cells. The difficult thing is the interface.”

“Human eyes?” asked Johnny.

“They will be. Eventually. We have a lot of work to do.”

She continued down the tanks. Two lab technicians were working at the far end, running a series of tests on handheld instruments whose wires snaked into one of the tanks. Chelsea waved at them but didn’t interrupt. She led Johnny around the tanks to a bench where a set of large flat screens, each roughly eighty inches diagonally, were lined up in front of keyboards. Screen savers played on the screens, creating multi-stringed parabolas that morphed from red to green to blue and back. They looked like webs made by spiders tripping on LSD.

Chelsea tapped one of the keyboards. The screen behind it blanked. She bent over and began typing rapidly.

That girl has a beautiful shape, Johnny thought. He’d noticed it before, but something about the way she leaned forward now made lust erupt in him.

It scared him a little. He wasn’t sure he could act on that impulse anymore. It was the one area he hadn’t talked about with the doctors — an oversight born of shyness and fear.

But she was beautiful.

“This is what your mechanical heart looks like,” said Chelsea as a three-dimensional image rotated on the screen. “And this is what the next generation will look like.”

The device on the left side of the screen looked like a pair of inverted and intertwined trumpet mouthpieces made of white plastic. The bottom openings were fitted with corded plastic tubes; the tops looked not unlike the fittings on home plumbing. Between these two carbon and fiber constructs was a plastic-covered collection of circuitry, artificial nerves that not only governed the pump but were also grafted to Johnny’s nervous system and a set of leads that could be used to test and monitor the unit externally.

His was handmade, fitted, and programmed specifically to his needs. All of them were, adapted from a basic but flexible blueprint.

On the right side of the screen was something that looked exactly like a “real” heart except for the wires and the nubbed fitting on the bottom.

“How long before that’s ready?” Johnny asked.

“Mmmmm… Hard to say. The growing techniques are still in their infancy.”

“Is this what you do?”

“No. My field is AI — artificial intelligence. I work primarily with the robots. But I do a little of everything. That’s what I love about working here.”

“I want to work here,” Johnny told her. He felt he was gushing almost — he was intrigued and excited by everything he saw, and it was hard to hold his emotions in check. “I want to be part of this. How do I join?”

“As scientist?”

“As — security or something like that. Are you still working on the ATM case?”

“Well…”

“You are,” said Johnny. “I can help on that.”

“We’re working on it, but not with the Bureau. Not officially,” she told him. “Your boss didn’t want us involved.”

“Well, I can work with you on that. I can be involved. You’re not an investigator, but I am. Who do I talk to?” Johnny asked. “Mr. Massina?”

“I don’t know that there are openings.”

“He told me if I wanted anything, to see him. Is he in?”

“Isn’t it kind of soon for a job?”

“Take me to him. Please.”

57

The air inside the building smelled like pulverized brick, as if the façade had been ground into tiny particles and was now being sent through the ventilating system: an impossibility, given not only the lack of such a system in the structure, but anything resembling a roof. There was no electricity either, and nothing that it could have powered; Tolevi followed the path of his captor’s flashlight as he was marched to a crate at the back corner of a building a block from the butcher’s. The nearby floor was littered with rags and shoes. He kicked one as he walked, and something rolled out from under the pile; it was a syringe.

It took him a few moments to realize the building had been used as a makeshift hospital.

“What is your name?” asked the man with the gun when Tolevi sat down. So far the men had done nothing physical to him, barely even threatening him, really.

No doubt that wasn’t going to last.

“Gabor Tolevi.”

“Why were you at the butcher’s?” asked the man with the gun again.

“Stew meat,” said Tolevi.

Against all logic, he hoped for the reply that would show the man was his contact. Instead he got a slap across the face.

“Why are you here?”

“I am in the import business,” said Tolevi. “I sell things at wholesale and—”

Another slap, but this one was with the butt of the AK. Tolevi tumbled to the floor, jaw broken.

“You will tell me why you are here, Russian,” demanded the man. “No more games!”

Before Tolevi could think of an answer, the room exploded. He felt himself being thrown backward into an abyss, the world vanishing beneath him.