"I need your help. How quickly can you get here?" Provalov asked, knowing that Reilly lived only two kilometers away.

"Ten or fifteen minutes."

"Quickly, then. I'll be at the bar. Dress presentably," the militiaman added.

"Right," Reilly agreed, wondering how he'd explain it to his wife, and wondering why he'd had his quiet evening in front of the TV interrupted.

Provalov headed back to the bar, ordered a pepper vodka, and lit a cigarette. His quarry was seven seats away, also having a solitary drink, perhaps waiting for his table to become available. The restaurant was full. A string quartet was playing some Rimsky-Korsakov on the far side of the dining room. The restaurant was far above anything Provalov could afford as a regular part of his life. So, Koniev/Suvorov was well set financially. That was no particular surprise. A lot of ex-KGB officers were doing very well indeed in the economic system of the new Russia. They had worldly ways and knowledge that few of their fellow citizens could match. In a society known for its burgeoning corruption, they had a corner on the market, and a network of fellow-travelers to call upon, with whom they could, for various considerations, share their gains, ill-gotten or not.

Provalov had finished his first drink, and had motioned to the bartender for another when Reilly appeared.

"Oleg Gregoriyevich," the American said in greeting. He was no fool, the Russian militia lieutenant realized. The American's Russian was manifestly American and overloud, a fine backward stealth for this environment. He was well dressed also, proclaiming his foreign origin to all who saw him.

"Mishka!" Provalov said in response, taking the American's hand warmly and waving to the bartender.

"Okay, who we looking for?" the FBI agent asked more quietly.

"The gray suit, seven seats to my left."

"Got him," Reilly said at once. "Who is he?"

"He is currently under the name Koniev, Ivan Yurievich. In fact we believe him to be Suvorov, Klementi Ivan'ch."

"Aha," Reilly observed. "What else can you tell me?"

"We trailed him here. He used a simple but effective evasion method, but we have three cars tracking him, and we picked him right back up."

"Good one, Oleg," the FBI agent said. Inadequately trained and poorly equipped or not, Provalov was a no-s.h.i.t copper. In the Bureau, he'd be at least a supervisory special agent. Oleg had fine cop instincts. Tracking a KGB type around Moscow was no trivial exercise, like following a paranoid b.u.t.ton-man in Queens. Reilly sipped his pepper vodka and turned sideways in his seat. On the far side of the subject was a dark-haired beauty wearing a slinky black dress. She looked like another of those expensive hookers to Reilly, and her shingle was out. Her dark eyes were surveying the room as thoroughly as his. The difference was that Reilly was a guy, and looking at a pretty girl-or seeming to-was not the least bit unusual. In fact, his eyes were locked not on the woman, but the man. Fifty-ish, well turned out, nondescript in overall appearance, just as a spy was supposed to be, looked to be waiting for a table, nursing his drink and looking studiously in the bar's mirror, which was a fine way to see if he were being watched. The American and his Russian friend he dismissed, of course. What interest could an American businessman have in him, after all? And besides, the American was eyeing the wh.o.r.e to his left. For that reason, the subject's eyes did not linger on the men to his right, either directly or in the mirror. Oleg was smart, Reilly thought, using him as camouflage for his discreet surveillance.

"Anything else turn lately?" the FBI agent asked. Provalov filled in what he'd learned about the hooker and what had happened the night before the murders. "d.a.m.n, that is swashbuckling. But you still don't know who the target was, do you?"

"No," Provalov admitted, with a sip of his second drink. He'd have to go easy on the alcohol, he knew, lest he make a mistake. His quarry was too slick and dangerous to take any sort of risk at all. He could always bring the guy in for questioning, but he knew that would be a fruitless exercise. Criminals like this one had to be handled as gently as a cabinet minister. Provalov allowed his eyes to look into the mirror, where he got a good look at the profile of a probable multiple murderer. Why was it that there was no black halo around such people? Why did they look normal?

"Anything else we know about the mutt?"

The Russian had come to like that American term. He shook his head. "No, Mishka. We haven't checked with SVR yet."

"Worried that he might have a source inside the building?" the American asked. Oleg nodded.

"That is a consideration." And an obvious one. The fraternity of former KGB officers was probably a tight one. There might well be someone inside the old headquarters building, say someone in personnel records, who'd let people know if the police showed interest in any particular file.

"d.a.m.n," the American noted, thinking, You son of a b.i.t.c.h, f.u.c.king the guy's hookers before you waste him. There was a disagreeable coldness to it, like something from a Mafia movie. But in real life, La Cosa Nostra members didn't have the stones for such a thing. Formidable as they might be, Mafia b.u.t.ton-men didn't have the training of a professional intelligence officer, and were tabby cats next to panthers in this particular jungle. Further scrutiny of the subject. The girl beyond him was a distraction, but not that much.

"Oleg?"

"Yes, Mikhail?"

"He's looking at somebody over by the musicians. His eyes keep coming back to the same spot. He isn't scanning the room like he was at first." The subject did check out everyone who came into the restaurant, but his eyes kept coming back to one part of the mirror, and he'd probably determined that n.o.body in the place was a danger to him. Oops. Well, Reilly thought, even training has its limitations, and sooner or later your own expertise could work against you. You fell into patterns, and you made a.s.sumptions that could get you caught. In this case, Suvorov a.s.sumed that no American could be watching him. After all, he'd done nothing to any Americans in Moscow, and maybe not in his entire career, and he was on friendly, not foreign ground, and he'd dusted off his tail on the way over in the way he always did, looking for a single tail car. Well, the smart ones knew their limitations. How did it go? The difference between genius and stupidity was that genius knew that it had limits. This Suvorov guy thought himself a genius . . . but whom was he looking at? Reilly turned a little more on his bar stool and scanned that part of the room.

"What do you see, Mishka?"

"A lot of people, Oleg Gregoriyevich, mainly Russians, some foreigners, all well-dressed. Some Chinese, look like two diplomats dining with two Russians-they look like official types. Looks cordial enough," Reilly thought. He'd eaten here with his wife three or four times. The food was pretty good, especially the fish. And they had a good source of caviar at the Prince Michael of Kiev, which was one of the best things you could get over here. His wife loved it, and would have to learn that getting it at home would be a lot more expensive than it was here. . . . Reilly'd done discreet surveillance for so many years that he had trained himself to be invisible. He could fit in just about anyplace but Harlem, and the Bureau had black agents to handle that.

Sure as h.e.l.l, that Suvorov guy was looking in the same place. Casually, perhaps, and using the bar's mirror to do it. He even sat so that his eyes naturally looked at the same place as he sat on his bar stool. But people like this subject didn't do anything by accident or coincidence. They were trained to think through everything, even taking a leak . . . it was remarkable, then, that he'd been turned so stupidly. By a hooker who'd gone through his things while he was sleeping off an o.r.g.a.s.m. Well, some men, no matter how smart, thought with their d.i.c.ks. . . . Reilly turned again. . . . one of the Chinese men at the distant table excused himself and stood, heading for the men's room. Reilly thought to do the same at once, but . . . no. If it were prearranged, such a thing could spook it . . . Patience, Mishka, he told himself, turning back to look at the princ.i.p.al subject. Koniev/Suvorov set down his drink and stood.

"Oleg. I want you to point me toward the men's room," the FBI agent said. "In fifteen seconds."

Provalov counted out the time, then extended his arm toward the main entrance. Reilly patted him on the shoulder and headed that way.

The Prince Michael of Kiev restaurant was nice, but it didn't have a bathroom attendant, as many European places did, perhaps because Americans were uneasy with the custom, or maybe because the management thought it an unnecessary expense. Reilly entered and saw three urinals, two of them being used. He unzipped and urinated, then rezipped and turned to wash his hands, looking down as he did so . . . and just out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other two men share a sideways look. The Russian was taller. The men's room had the sort of pull-down roller towel that America had largely done away with. Reilly pulled it down and dried his hands, unable to wait too much longer. Heading toward the door, he reached in his pocket and pulled his car keys part of the way out. These he dropped just as he pulled the door open, with a muttered, "d.a.m.n," as he bent down to pick them up, shielded from their view by the steel divider. Reilly picked them off the tile floor and stood back up.

Then he saw it. It was well done. They could have been more patient, but they probably both discounted the importance of the American, and both were trained professionals. They scarcely touched each other, and what touching and b.u.mping there was happened below the waist and out of sight to the casual observer. Reilly wasn't a casual observer, however, and even out of the corner of his eyes, it was obvious to the initiated. It was a cla.s.sic brush-pa.s.s, so well done that even Reilly's experience couldn't determine who had pa.s.sed what to whom. The FBI agent continued out, heading back to his seat at the bar, where he waved to the barkeep for the drink he figured he'd just earned.

"Yes?"

"You want to identify that Chinaman. He and our friend traded something in the s.h.i.tter. Brush-pa.s.s, and nicely done," Reilly said, with a smile and a gesture at the brunette down the bar. Good enough, in fact, that had Reilly been forced to sit in a witness stand and describe it to a jury, a week-old law-school graduate could make him admit that he hadn't actually seen anything at all. But that told him much. That degree of skill was either the result of a totally chance encounter between two entirely innocent people-the purest of coincidences-or it had been the effort of two trained intelligence officers applying their craft at a perfect place in a perfect way. Provalov was turned the right way to see the two individuals leave the men's room. They didn't even notice each other, or didn't appear to acknowledge the presence of the other any more than they would have greeted a stray dog-exactly as two unrelated people would act after a happenstance encounter with a total stranger in any men's room anywhere. But this time as Koniev/Suvorov resumed his seat at the bar, he tended to his drink and didn't have his eyes interrogate the mirror regularly. In fact, he turned and greeted the girl to his left, then waved for the bartender to get her another drink, which she accepted with a warm, commercial smile. Her face proclaimed the fact that she'd found her trick for the night. The girl could act, Reilly thought.

"Well, our friend's going to get laid tonight," he told his Russian colleague.

"She is pretty," Provalov agreed. "Twenty-three, you think?"

"Thereabouts, maybe a little younger. Nice hooters."

"Hooters?" the Russian asked.

"t.i.ts, Oleg, t.i.ts," the FBI agent clarified. "That Chinaman's a spook. See any coverage on him around?"

"No one I know," the lieutenant replied. "Perhaps he is not known to be an intelligence officer."

"Yeah, sure, your counterintelligence people have all retired to Sochi, right? h.e.l.l, guy, they trail me every so often."

"That means I am one of your agents, then?" Provalov asked.

A chuckle. "Let me know if you want to defect, Oleg Gregoriyevich."

"The Chinese in the light blue suit?"

"That's the one. Short, about five-four, one fifty-five, pudgy, short hair, about forty-five or so."

Provalov translated that to about 163 centimeters and seventy kilos, and made a mental note as he turned to look at the face, about thirty meters away. He looked entirely ordinary, as most spies did. With that done, he headed back to the men's room to make a phone call to his agents outside.

And that pretty much ended the evening. Koniev/Suvorov left the restaurant about twenty minutes later with the girl on his arm, and drove straight back to his apartment. One of the men who'd stayed behind walked with the Chinese to his car, which had diplomatic plates. Notes were written down, and the cops all headed home after an overtime day, wondering what they'd turned up and how important it might be.

CHAPTER 20.

Diplomacy Well?" Rutledge took his notes back from Secretary Adler.

"It looks okay, Cliff, a.s.suming that you can deliver the message in an appropriate way," SecState told his subordinate.

"Process is something I understand." Then he paused. "The President wants this message delivered in unequivocal terms, correct?"

Secretary Adler nodded. "Yep."

"You know, Scott, I've never really landed on people this hard before."

"Ever want to?"

"The Israelis a few times. South Africa," he added thoughtfully.

"But never the Chinese or j.a.panese?"

"Scott, I've never been a trade guy before, remember?" But he was this time, because the mission to Beijing was supposed to be high-profile, requiring a higher-level diplomat instead of someone of mere amba.s.sadorial rank. The Chinese knew this already. In their case negotiations would be handled publicly by their Foreign Minister, though they would actually be run by a lesser-ranked diplomat who was a foreign-trade specialist, and who had experienced a good run of luck dealing with America. Secretary Adler, with President Ryan's permission, was slowly leaking to the press that the times and the rules might have changed a little bit. He worried that Cliff Rutledge wasn't exactly the right guy to deliver the message, but Cliff was the on-deck batter.

"How are you working out with this Gant guy from Treasury?"

"If he were a diplomat, we'd be at war with the whole d.a.m.ned world, but I suppose he does know numbers and computers, probably," Rutledge allowed, not troubling to hide his distaste for the Chicago-born Jew with his nouveau-riche ways. That Rutledge had been of modest origins himself was long forgotten. A Harvard education and a diplomatic pa.s.sport help one forget such distasteful things as having grown up in a row house, eating leftovers.

"Remember that Winston likes him, and Ryan likes Winston, okay?" Adler warned his subordinate gently. He decided not to concern himself with Cliff's WASP-ish anti-Semitism. Life was too short for trivialities, and Rutledge knew that his career rested in Scott Adler's hands. He might make more money as a consultant after leaving the State Department, but being fired out of Foggy Bottom would not enhance his value on the free-agent market.

"Okay, Scott, and, yeah, I need backup on the monetary aspects of this trade stuff." The accompanying nod was almost respectful. Good. He did know how to grovel when required. Adler didn't even consider telling Rutledge about the intelligence source in his pocket, courtesy of POTUS. There was something about the career diplomat that failed to inspire trust in his superior.

"What about communications?"

"The Emba.s.sy in Beijing has TAPDANCE capability. Even the new phone kind, same as the airplane." But there were problems with it, recently fielded by Fort Meade. The instruments had trouble linking up with each other, and using a satellite lash-up didn't help at all. Like most diplomats, Rutledge rarely troubled himself with such trivialities. He often expected the intelligence to appear as if by magic, rarely wondering how it had been obtained, but always questioning the motives of the source, whoever that might be. All in all, Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.

But on the plus side, Adler admitted to himself, Rutledge was a competent diplomatic technician who knew how the banter worked, and how to present a position in the gentlest possible but still firm terms. The State Department never had enough of those. As someone had once remarked of Theodore Roosevelt, "The nicest gentleman who ever slit a throat." But Cliff would never do that, even to advance his own career. He probably shaved with an electric razor, not for fear of cutting himself so much as fear of actually seeing blood.

"When's your plane leave?" EAGLE asked his subordinate.

Barry Wise was already packed. He was an expert at it, as well he might be, because he traveled about as much as an international airline pilot. At fifty-four, the black ex-Marine had worked for CNN since its beginnings more than twenty years before, and he'd seen it all. He'd covered the contras in Nicaragua, and the first bombing missions in Baghdad. He'd been there when ma.s.s graves were excavated in Yugoslavia, and done live commentary over Rwanda's roads of death, simultaneously wishing that he could and thanking G.o.d that he could not broadcast the ghastly smells that still haunted his dreams. A news professional, Wise regarded his mission in life to be this: to transmit the truth from where it happened to where people were interested in it-and helping them to become interested if they were not. He didn't have much of a personal ideology, though he was a great believer in justice, and one of the ways to make justice happen was to give the correct information to the jury-in his case, the television-watching public. He and people like him had changed South Africa from a racist state into a functioning democracy, and he'd also played a role in destroying world communism. The truth, he figured, was about the most powerful weapon in the world, if you had a way of getting it to the average Joe. Unlike most members of his business, Wise respected Joe Citizen, at least the ones who were smart enough to watch him. They wanted the truth, and it was his job to deliver it to them to the best of his abilities, which he often doubted, as he constantly asked himself how well he was doing.

He kissed his wife on the way out the door, promising to bring back things for the kids, as he always did, and lugging his travel bag out to his one personal indulgence, a red Mercedes two-seater, which he then drove south to the D.C. Beltway and south again toward Andrews Air Force Base. He had to arrive early, because the Air Force had gotten overly security-conscious. Maybe it was from that dumba.s.s movie that had had terrorists getting past all the armed guards-even though they were merely Air Force, not Marines, they did carry rifles, and they did at least appear to be competent-and aboard one of the 89th Military Airlift Wing's aircraft, which, Wise figured, was about as likely as having a pickpocket walk into the Oval Office and lift the President's wallet. But the military followed its own rules, senseless though they might be-that was something he remembered well from his time in the Corps. So, he'd drive down, pa.s.s through all the checkpoints, whose guards knew him better than they knew their own CO, and wait in the plush Distinguished Visitors' lounge at the end of Andrews' Runway Zero-One Left for the official party to arrive. Then they'd board the venerable VC-137 for the endless flight to Beijing. The seats were as comfortable as they could be on an airplane, and the service was as good as any airline's first cla.s.s, but flights this long were never fun.

Never been there before," Mark Gant said, answering George Winston's question. "So-what's the score on this Rutledge guy?"

The SecTreas shrugged. "Career State Department puke, worked his way pretty far up the ladder. Used to have good political connections-he was tight with Ed Kealty once upon a time."

The former stock trader looked up. "Oh? Why hasn't Ryan fired his a.s.s?"

"Jack doesn't play that sort of game," Winston replied, wondering if in this case principle was getting in the way of common sense.

"George, he's still pretty naive, isn't he?"

"Maybe so, but he's a straight shooter, and I can live with that. He sure as h.e.l.l backed us up on tax policy, and that's going to pa.s.s through Congress in another few weeks."

Gant wouldn't believe that until he saw it. "a.s.suming every lobbyist in town doesn't jump in front of the train."

That engendered an amused grunt. "So, the wheels get greased a little better. You know, wouldn't it be nice to close all those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds down . . . ?"

George, Gant couldn't say in this office, if you believe that, you've been hanging out with the President too long. But idealism wasn't all that bad a thing, was it?

"I'll settle for squeezing those Chinese b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on the trade balance. Ryan's going to back us up?"

"All the way, he says. And I believe him, Mark."

"I guess we'll see. I hope this Rutledge guy can read numbers."

"He went to Harvard," Secretary Winston observed.

"I know," Gant said back. He had his own academic prejudice, having graduated from the University of Chicago twenty years earlier. What the h.e.l.l was Harvard except a name and an endowment?

Winston chuckled. "They're not all dumb."

"I suppose we'll see, boss. Anyway"-he lifted his suitcase up on its rollers; his computer bag went over his shoulder-"my car's waiting downstairs."

"Good trip, Mark."

Her name was Yang Lien-Hua. She was thirty-four, nine months pregnant, and very frightened. It was her second pregnancy. Her first had been a son whom they had named Ju-Long, a particularly auspicious given name, which translated roughly as Large Dragon. But the youngster had died at the age of four, b.u.mped by a bicycle off the sidewalk into the path of a pa.s.senger bus. His death had devastated his parents, and even saddened the local Communist Party officials who'd officiated at the inquest, which had absolved the bus driver of guilt and never identified the careless bicyclist. The loss has been sufficiently hard on Mrs. Yang that she'd sought comfort in a way that this country's government did not especially approve.

That way was Christianity, the foreign religion despised in fact if not exactly in law. In another age she might have found solace in the teachings of Buddha or Confucius, but these, too, had been largely erased from the public consciousness by the Marxist government, which still regarded all religion as a public narcotic. A co-worker had quietly suggested that she meet a "friend" of hers, a man named Yu Fa An. Mrs. Yang had sought him out, and so had begun her first adventure in treason.

Reverend Yu, she found, was a well-educated and -traveled man, which added to his stature in her eyes. He was also a fine listener, who attended to her every word, occasionally pouring her some sympathetic tea, and gently touching her hand when tears streamed down her face. Only when she had finished her tale of woe had he begun his own lessons.

Ju-Long, he told her, was with G.o.d, because G.o.d was especially solicitous to the needs of innocent children. While she could not see her son at this moment, her son could see her, looking down from Heaven, and while her sorrow was completely understandable, she should believe that the G.o.d of the Earth was a G.o.d of Mercy and Love who had sent his Only Begotten Son to earth to show mankind the right path, and to give His own life for the sins of humanity. He handed her a Bible printed in the Gouyu, the national language of the PRC (also called Mandarin), and helped her find appropriate pa.s.sages.

It had not been easy for Mrs. Yang, but so deep was her grief that she kept returning for private counseling, finally bringing along her husband, Quon. Mr. Yang proved a harder sell on any religion. He'd served his time in the People's Liberation Army, where he'd been thoroughly indoctrinated in the politics of his nation, and done sufficiently well in his test answers to be sent off to sergeant school, for which political reliability was required. But Quon had been a good father to his little Large Dragon, and he, too, found the void in his belief system too large to bridge easily. This bridge the Reverend Yu provided, and soon both of the Yangs came to his discreet church services, and gradually they'd come to accept their loss with confidence in the continued life of Ju-Long, and the belief that they would someday see him again in the presence of an Almighty G.o.d, whose existence became increasingly real to both of them.

Until then, life had to go on. Both worked at their jobs, as factory workers in the same factory, with a working-cla.s.s apartment in the Di'Anmen district of Beijing near Jingshan-Coal Hill-Park. They labored at their factory during the day, watched state-run television at night, and in due course, Lien-Hua became pregnant again.

And ran afoul of the government's population-control policy that was well to the left of draconian. It had long since been decreed that any married couple could have but one child. A second pregnancy required official government permission. Though this was not generally denied to those whose first child had died, pro forma permission had to be obtained, and in the case of politically unacceptable parents, this permission was generally withheld as a method of controlling the living population, as well. That meant that an unauthorized pregnancy had to be terminated. Safely, and at state expense in a state hospital-but terminated.

Christianity translated exactly into political unreliability for the communist government, and unsurprisingly the Ministry of State Security had inserted intelligence officers into Reverend Yu's congregation. This individual-actually there were three, lest one be corrupted by religion and become unreliable himself-had entered the names of the Yangs on a master list of political unreliables. For that reason, when Mrs. Yang Lien-Hua had duly registered her pregnancy, an official letter had appeared in her box, instructing her to go to the Longfu Hospital located on Meishuguan Street for a therapeutic abortion.

This Lien-Hua was unwilling to do. Her given name translated as "Lotus Flower," but inside she was made of much sterner stuff. She wrote a week later to the appropriate government agency, telling them that her pregnancy had miscarried. Given the nature of bureaucracies, her lie was never checked out.

That lie had merely won Lotus Flower six months of ever-increasing stress. She never saw a physician, not even one of the "barefoot medics" that the PRC had invented a generation earlier, much to the admiration of political leftists all over the world. Lien-Hua was healthy and strong, and the human body had been designed by Nature to produce healthy offspring long before the advent of obstetricians. Her swelling belly she was able to hide, mostly, in her ill-fitting clothing. What she could not hide-at least from herself-was her inward fear. She carried a new baby in her belly. She wanted it. She wanted to have another chance at motherhood. She wanted to feel her child suckling at her breast. She wanted to love it and pamper it, watch it learn to crawl and stand and walk and talk, to see it grow beyond four years, enter school, learn and grow into a good adult of whom she could be proud.

The problem was politics. The state enforced its will with ruthlessness. She knew what could happen, the syringe filled with formaldehyde stabbed into the baby's head at the very moment of birth. In China, it was state policy. For the Yangs, it was premeditated, cold-blooded murder, and they were determined not to lose a second child, who, the Reverend Yu had told them, was a gift from G.o.d Himself.

And there was a way. If you delivered the baby at home without medical a.s.sistance, and if the baby took its first breath, then the state would not kill it. There were some things even the government of the People's Republic quailed at, and the killing of a living, breathing human infant was one of them. But until it took that breath, it was of no more consequence than a piece of meat in a market. There were even rumors that the Chinese government was selling organs from the aborted newborns on the world's tissue market, to be used for medical purposes, and that was something the Yangs were able to believe.

So, their plan was for Lien-Hua to deliver the child at home, after which they would present their state with a fait accompli-and eventually have it baptized by Reverend Yu. To this end, Mrs. Yang had kept herself in good physical shape, walking two kilometers every day, eating sensibly, and generally doing all the things the government-published booklets told expectant mothers to do. And if anything went badly wrong, they'd go to Reverend Yu for counsel and advice. The plan enabled Lien-Hua to deal with the stress-in fact it was a heart-rending terror-of her unauthorized condition.