Rasputin's Shadow

56

It didn’t take Kurt long to call me back. He sounded out of breath.

“You’re going to fucking freak, dude.”

“Go on.”

He said, “She’s his sister-in-law. Inès Alcalde. His wife is Sofia Kirby, née Alcalde. Inès is three years younger, single, a Realtor with a very healthy business. No kids; I don’t think she can have any. It’s like a movie of the week, dude. I hate those.”

“You hacked her medical records?”

“Nope. Facebook again. Seriously, Zuckerberg’s gonna put us all out of business.”

This was good. Really good. “All right, thanks. I’ll take it from here. Consider your free pass well and truly earned. Just don’t use it anytime soon.”

“Sayonara.”

I now felt armed with more than enough to bring Kirby around to my way of thinking. But that didn’t mean that he’d agree to my terms.

I took the elevator up to the fourth floor, found 414, and knocked on the door.

It took a few seconds to get a muffled “Yes?” from Kirby, who was standing by the still-closed door.

“Mr. Kirby? Hotel security, sir.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then he cracked the door open. He was in a dressing gown.

“What is it?” He was seriously annoyed.

I decided the direct approach was best. “Do you think your wife would have a problem with the fact that you’re screwing her sister?”

His face exsanguinated faster than in any vampire movie I’d seen.

I nodded comfortingly. “It’s okay, Stan. It’s going to be fine. She doesn’t need to know. But I’m gonna need a few minutes of your time. So why don’t you throw some clothes on, tell Inès you won’t be long, and come down to the bar with me. Given your line of work, I’m sure she’ll understand. Hell, play it right and she might even get a kick out of it.” I added a conspiratorial wink for good measure.

Kirby was having difficulty processing what I was telling him. In fact, for someone who had been caught committing a catastrophic error, it was apt that his brain appeared to be shutting down altogether.

I moved closer to him. Lowered my voice. “Take a breath, Stan. I’m giving you a way out, and it doesn’t involve money or pain or betraying your country. You can even keep seeing the lovely Inès if you want to, though I’m not sure I can heartily recommend it.”

It took a while for this to sink in, but when it had, he seemed to regain control.

“Give me a second,” he said.

WE TOOK A BOOTH in the even-darker bar.

I ordered a Coke. Kirby asked for a double whiskey, which I thought was entirely justified.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, nervously spinning his iPhone around on the table.

“Not really relevant right now. You just need to focus on keeping me happy and this will all blow over real quick.”

The drinks arrived. He let go of his phone and knocked back both shots within a second of his glass hitting the table. “What do you want?”

“I want you to find someone for me.”

“Find someone?” He studied me, then asked, “What are you, a fed?”

I ignored his question. “Again, not relevant. I just need to put a real name to an alias. A Company one.”

He got my drift immediately, and his eyes went wide. “This is someone at the Company?”

“Yes.” I looked straight at him.

“I thought you said this wouldn’t involve anything like that?”

“It doesn’t. This is personal. And if you do it carefully enough, no one needs to know it ever happened.”

“This is fucking blackmail. I could report you and have your ass thrown in jail.”

I felt a lurching in my gut at the word, like I’d just hit the lowest point on a roller coaster less than a second after being at the highest. But I couldn’t pull out now. “Sure. Go ahead. Tell them everything. But you go down that road and you’re quickly gonna find yourself in one hell of a custody battle and looking down the barrel at ten years of crippling alimony while trying to find women in singles’ bars who won’t mind going back to your dump of a one-bedroom apartment without the promise of chocolates or flowers ’cause you’re still paying for your son’s braces and your daughter’s riding lessons and you can’t even afford a new shirt, let alone gifts for your lover. How does that sound to you?”

I waited for all that to sink in. It didn’t take long.

“You’re an asshole,” he muttered.

“Extreme measures, pal. Not by choice. But don’t doubt my commitment for a second.”

He glared at me, trying to find some measure of hope in my expression. I stared back like a sphinx. Then after a painful few seconds, he broke.

“So who is it?”

This was the point of no return. Once Kirby had the name, the risk that he would go back to Langley and flag it became very real, with unknowable consequences for me and my family. But I couldn’t let go of it. Not when I might be one small step from dragging Corrigan out of the shadows and into the light of day.

“Corrigan. Reed Corrigan. It’s a cover. That’s all I can tell you about him. There are other things, but knowing them may prejudice you, so all you get is the name.”

He studied me for a beat, then asked, “What did he do?”

“When I said it’s personal, I meant it. But one thing I can tell you. He’s a piece of shit. Makes you look like a saint. Keeping the bastard’s real identity a secret is not worth you losing everything you’ve spent twenty years building, and you should be able to get me what I need without anyone finding out. And that would be the end of it. You have my word. Get me the name-his real name-and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then all bets are off. So your best course of action is to find a way because I really want to find him. And the sooner you do it, the sooner I’m out of your life.”

“When do you need it by?”

“It can wait till morning.”

Kirby grimaced painfully, then he shook his head and nodded.

“Is that one ‘r’ or two?”

KOSCHEY INTERRUPTED SOKOLOV’S WORK again, secured him in the small office, and stepped away to make another call.

The Lebanese car dealer answered after the first ring.

“Have your people made a decision?” he asked in Arabic.

The man said, “They’re interested, but they’re nervous. They fear the potential retributions.”

Typical, Koschey thought in silence. All bluster, no guts. Still, he knew they were close to biting. He just needed to press some more and be more convincing.

“Tell them the retributions are coming at them anyway, whether they do anything or not,” Koschey told him. “You know the Americans and the Israelis are gunning for them as well as I do. It’s only a matter of time. They’re not going to let them keep their reactors and their centrifuges. They’re never going to let them into their exclusive club. But if we do this,” Koschey said, using the “we” to include himself in the circle of interested plotters, “we’d be hitting them first. And we’ll have something to threaten them with that’ll make them think twice about retaliating. Attacking them like this is the best defense. And after Stuxnet and Flame,” he continued, referring to the sophisticated U.S./Israeli cyberattacks that had been wreaking havoc on Iran’s computer networks and crippling its uranium-enrichment programs, “the irony of our method won’t be lost on them. Even if they won’t be able to prove it.”

“Since when has that stopped them from doing anything?” the man grumbled.

“We have a small window in which to do this. I’ll need an answer by morning.”

“I’ll let them know,” the man said. “I’ll have an answer for you by then.”

Koschey ended the call and stared at his phone in silence. He knew they’d find his offer hard to resist. He was giving them a chance to strike at the Great Satan in a way they would have never imagined possible. And even that wasn’t the whole truth.

Koschey hadn’t told them who his real target was. They would have never agreed to that. They would have been too scared. But if they did accept his proposal, as he expected, his conversations with them would be enough to frame them for what he really had in mind, and they were hardly in a position to plead their innocence while acknowledging that they’d agreed to bankroll a different terrorist strike on U.S. soil.

Everything was in place. Koschey’s central concern was now time. He needed to do it quickly. Pressure would be mounting and the noose around him would be tightening with every hour now that the Americans realized what he had. Which would make his disappearing act all the more difficult the longer he waited.

He nodded to himself, then turned to retrieve Sokolov and finish what they’d started.

The second hundred million dollars, a new face, and a new beginning were only hours away.