The Ransom of Black Stealth One

THIRTY-EIGHT

Within twenty-four hours of the girl’s release from Brooks, a score of middle-echelon men in both CIA and NSA knew many details of the Black Stealth One fiasco. Ivan the Terrible, his nose buried in a tin of Chicken of the Sea, did not even look up from his feast as Sasha said, “You know, Ivan, I never thought I would add a name to the list of possibles.”

Sasha had added Kyle Corbett to his list of possible decoys after realizing the man had broken Snake Pit security well in advance of the theft— perhaps years before. It did not matter so much where the man had been hiding since the false report of his death. What mattered most was that Corbett’s record went back a long way, and he had proven himself adept at espionage.

“What a joke if the KGB has been running him all this time, Ivan,” murmured Sasha, giving the cat a languid scratch on the rump. Ivan lifted his sleek hindquarters in response, but continued to pursue a morsel of tuna inside the tin. “But if the man had gone over, it’s probably old Pyotr what’s-his-name, Karotkin, who’d have handled him. And those people are no slouches at wringing a man dry of information.” Karotkin, and the men who made his policies, would not have waited for years to make use of Corbett’s intelligence; that much was certain.

“So it’s most likely that Mr. Kyle Corbett is running loose with his own agenda. As you do, Ivan.” Now the cat looked up. “And as I do,” Sasha went on, giving the cat a scratch between the ears. “I need not care about his motive unless he’s waited until now so that he could go over to the Other Side with the airplane. That would be good news and bad news, and it’s certainly possible.” But so long as the mysterious Corbett remained a loose cannon after his rolling rampage through U.S. security, he might still have a close connection within the intelligence community somewhere, and he might pop up almost anywhere. Sasha mulled those implications over until the cat’s nose emerged from a perfectly clean tuna can.

Ivan commenced an elaborate ritual, licking a paw, then using it to remove the last traces of tuna oil from his face. “Oh, you can get clean”—Sasha smiled at the cat—“but Corbett can’t. He would be a more credible Sasha than I am. And even if he is finally caught, who would believe his denials?”

The loss of Black Stealth One was already having its effect on all those who had endorsed the false ransom operation. Men at the very top would have their sacrificial victims chosen; men near the top would be wise to prepare for early retirement. And that could cut the decoy list in half. “Well, no matter,” Sasha said. He had a new decoy, returned from the dead as it were, who would serve nicely. The point might well be moot; Sasha himself might never again perform a service of any great importance.

It suddenly occurred to Sasha that his own survival and that of the evasive Mr. Corbett were tightly intertwined, an irony as broad and as deep as espionage itself. Sasha began to laugh so abruptly that Ivan bolted from the table.