Puppet Master Page 26

  “Do you trust me, Trevor?” asked Massina, sounding for just a moment like the kind man who had helped give Jenkins’s daughter a new lease on life. The words were exactly those he had used when they’d hesitated about the operations.

  Do you trust me?

  He’d nodded. What choice had he had? To see his daughter walk again, he’d have done anything.

  And now?

  What choice did he have, really?

  “Let me call my boss,” he told Massina.

  Borya looked up as Chelsea came into the room.

  “We need you now,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Did you find my dad?”

  “We’re working on that,” Chelsea told her. “That’s going to take a little time.”

  “Where is he?” asked Martyak. “He really should be involved. It’s his decision.”

  “This is what’s best for Borya,” Chelsea told her. “And he can choose to ratify it or not. But otherwise, she’s going to jail. And for a long time. These are serious crimes.”

  Borya lowered her head. If her father hadn’t been missing, all of this would have been different. She’d have been able to tough it out.

  But losing him was too much. She felt as if she’d been stabbed with a knife a hundred times.

  God, please, get him back. Make them help me! Get him back.

  Borya glanced over at Beefy Bozzone, who’d been keeping them company, playing cards and telling her stories about dogs he’d owned. He seemed to have had nearly a hundred of them, with a particular fondness for pugs, “ ’cause you just about keep ’em in your pocket.”

  His pocket, maybe. He was big.

  “Are you going to come with me?” she asked him.

  “No one’s gonna hurt you,” he told her.

  “I know, but—”

  “Yeah, I’ll come,” said Beefy. “And you guys owe me twenty cents and fifty-five,” pointing first to Borya, then to Martyak. “Don’t forget.”

  “What?” asked Chelsea.

  “Card game,” he explained. “A debt’s a debt.”

  68

  Donetsk—about the same time

  Tolevi brooded silently as they drove, angry with himself for not figuring out that Dan was a plant. It was the sort of mistake that could have gotten him killed—and still might.

  The butcher’s brother sat behind him in the car. Aside from answering Tolevi’s question—“Are you the brother?”—in the affirmative, he’d said only one thing since getting in the car: “Starobeshevskaya.”

  It turned out that Starobeshevskaya was a small city centered around a power plant some forty-five minutes south of Donetsk. The power plant and city were separated from the surrounding area on the north and west by a wide lake and reservoir. Security was intense; they were stopped at a checkpoint a mile from the only bridge on that side of the water, and nothing Dan said about “urgent business” could convince the poorly dressed rebel guard to let them through. His gun was persuasive, but the two cars parked across the approach made it clear this was not going to be the way into town.

  They drove back about three kilometers and turned south, circling around the lake to approach the area from the east. There was another checkpoint; this time Tolevi handled it.

  “I have business with the mayor,” he said in dismissive Russian, leaning across Dan as he rolled down the window. “We’re late.”

  The man asked for their identity papers.

  “We’re Russian, you idiot,” said Tolevi.

  He grabbed Dan’s ID before he could give it to the guard.

  “Drive!” he demanded.

  Flustered, Dan threw the car into gear and drove ahead.

  “Awful ballsy,” he said when they were clear.

  “Sometimes you just have to play the part,” said Tolevi.

  “He’ll probably call ahead,” said the brother from the back. He spoke in Ukrainian, while Dan and Tolevi had used Russian.

  “That’ll be fine,” said Tolevi.

  “Where do we go?” asked Dan.

  “To the prison.” Tolevi turned around. “Tell me about your brother. Tell me everything you know.”

  The butcher—Olak Urum—had been a member of the rebellion until a few months before. But he had fallen out with the leadership over two issues: first, he had opposed Russian “assistance” in the revolution, believing it would not only taint the movement but also lead to annexation, something he didn’t want. And second, he had become disillusioned over the amount of corruption in the newly installed “People’s Government.” Apparently he had made the mistake of protesting this to the head of the Donetsk People’s Army Council—the rebel leadership, of which he was a member—and had subsequently been arrested on trumped-up corruption charges. The butcher owned the shop; the brother was just a helper.

  “The charges, they could make them because we always had meat,” said the butcher’s brother. He hadn’t bothered to give his first name. Tolevi decided that was fine; the less he knew, the better. “Even in the worst time, with the blockade, our shop was open.”

  “And how did you manage that?” asked Tolevi.

  “I don’t know. My brother handled the business always.”

  Tolevi was skeptical—chickens were one thing, but only someone very well connected would be able to bring in large quantities of good beef.

  “The people at the prison, did they know your brother before he was arrested?” Tolevi asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Your brother wants to be saved?”

  “He wants to liberate all of Ukraine,” said the brother. “He has information to expose the rebels. They are very corrupt. A reunion with the west is the only way.”

  It wasn’t the most heartfelt declaration, Tolevi thought, but he wasn’t here to judge where the man’s ultimate loyalties lay. He was just here to get him the hell out of Donetsk.

  The Starobeshevskaya power plant was a massive installation. It burned coal; despite claims that it was one of the “greenest” plants in Eastern Europe, a heavy smog hung over the region as they drove toward the town that supported it.

  If the brother’s story was true, freeing the butcher would be relatively easy, so long as Tolevi could come up with the money. Dan’s presence convinced him that wouldn’t be a problem; he suspected that Johansen simply wanted a bit of distance between the Agency and the rebels if things went wrong. But before he could start spending the CIA’s money, he needed to get a feel for the situation. Who was the highest authority? Was the “mayor” beholden to the rebels who guarded the prison, or vice versa? Where were the Russians in all this?

  Hopefully far away.

  He also wanted to find out about the prison itself. If, as with many Ukrainian facilities, the prison was old and ill maintained, it might be easiest to bribe a few guards and skip the mayor or warden completely.

  The first order of business was gathering information, and the best place to do that was in the local bars. Tolevi assigned Dan and the brother a job: find a good place to stay in town, the nearer city hall, the better. And then he went to drink in some gossip.

  69

  Boston—an hour later

  Many things about Johnny Givens’s new “condition” were strange, but the weirdest were the shoes.

  The feet on his prosthetic legs had been designed to replicate his “original” feet, so that as much as possible walking felt like it always had been. And it did. Except when it came to putting on the shoes.

  While Johnny had considerable control over his “feet” and could even wiggle his toes, the prosthetics could not be manipulated to quite the same degree as his “original” feet. This made it hard to get his old shoes on without a shoehorn. Even with a shoehorn it could be difficult; it was far easier to put the shoes on the feet when they were off his body. But though physically easier, mentally it was very difficult—there was no more obvious example that he was now literally half the man he had been.

  And it was just stran
ge, like dressing a mannequin. Only he was the mannequin.

  Johnny adjusted the shoes and then began strapping the legs to his stumps. Unlike “conventional” prosthetic legs, Massina’s version used feedback via the nerve endings in what remained of his upper thighs to communicate with his brain, interfacing through a series of contacts implanted in the stumps. The arrangement didn’t fool his brain into thinking that he still had his original legs, but the feeling was close, as if he’d put on a heavy snowsuit and clunky boots.

  Eventually, it might all feel very familiar, and even comfortable. Eventually.

  In the meantime, there was enough flex, as well as support, in the prosthetics to allow him not only to walk but also to run fairly well. In fact, he could run faster and with far less fatigue, thanks to actuators in the leg that literally put a spring into his step. He suspected that he might do extremely well in next year’s marathon, assuming he was in shape to enter.

  Which meant a lot of running in the meantime. And for want of something better to do, he decided to start training that evening.

  One leg at a time, just like always.

  Gestapo Bitch’s joke. He liked her now, admired the way she had goaded him into working harder and harder. She was the perfect bitch, as good as the drugs he was taking, maybe even better.

  Johnny strapped on his legs and connected the electrodes. He pulled on his pants, making sure the Velcro straps at the bottom were secure; the pants had always been a tiny bit big.

  They were very big at the waist now. Amazing how much weight he’d lost.

  Don’t need to stretch these babies. Just grab the phone, some backup dough, and rock ’n’ roll.

  Johnny slipped his wallet clip—which held his FBI creds, a credit card, and a few bucks in cash—into his pocket, next to the phone, and hit the road.

  70

  Starobeshevskaya village—after midnight

  The mayor was, by all accounts, a man of extremely sober reputation, completely incorruptible.

  The deputy mayor, on the other hand, was open to all offers, intending to make as much as he possibly could before he was fifty, then cash in and move to Crete. Crete was not only the most beautiful place in the world but it was also the home of the world’s most beautiful women, and when he was rich, the deputy mayor was going to bed them all, one by one. This was his God-given right, and anyone who stood in his way would answer for it.

  Tolevi heard all of this from the deputy mayor himself, who held forth at кінської голови—Kins’ koyi Holovy, or Horse Head, a bar two blocks from town hall. The man weighed three hundred and fifty pounds if he weighed an ounce, and however he had managed to get his job, his fellow citizens, at least those in the bar, gave him a wide berth. He had a volatile temper, which he hinted at as he spoke, gesticulating wildly even when making a mild point. Three times as he and Tolevi spoke about the power plant and the local coal that fed it—the most benign subject Tolevi could imagine, short of the weather—the deputy mayor balled his fist up and slammed it on the table.

  Tolevi could not have wished for a better person to deal with, temper or no. After most of the bar’s patrons had cleared out for the night, he suggested that they move to a table near the back.

  “Why?” asked the deputy mayor.

  “Maybe we can do business,” said Tolevi nonchalantly.

  “What business?” The tone could not have been less pleasant if Tolevi had threatened to rape the man’s daughter. “What business with you, Russian?”

  “I am actually from America,” said Tolevi. “And my business is bringing things to Ukraine, where my family was born.”

  “What things?”

  “Aspirin, cough medicine. And real coffee.”

  “You can import these things to my town?”

  “Let’s get a bottle and talk.”

  The deputy mayor was fond of single malt scotch whisky, expensive under any conditions but outrageously priced here. Tolevi put down three hundred euro for a bottle of Macallan 12-year, which represented a markup approaching ten times what the original would have cost at the distillery.

  He brought the bottle back to the table and poured the deputy mayor a drink, three fingers of scotch neat, no ice, no chaser.

  The Ukrainian took the glass in hand, toasted the room, guzzled the liquor, and slid the glass back for a refill.

  “Where’s yours?” he asked Tolevi as he took back the glass.

  “I don’t like scotch.”

  “I don’t drink alone.”

  Sociable devil, aren’t you?

  Tolevi reluctantly went to the bar for a glass and some ice. By the time he came back, the deputy mayor had drunk about a quarter of the bottle.

  “So what is your business?” asked the deputy mayor.

  “As I said, I bring things across the border,” said Tolevi. “My business is mainly in Crimea, but I’m looking to branch out.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because there is money to be made,” said Tolevi.

  “We have our suppliers.”

  “The shelves are bare in the pharmacies. No aspirin. And many other things.”

  The deputy mayor shrugged. Clearly the man was a dolt.

  “Band-Aids,” continued Tolevi. “Cough medicine—”

  “We have many such items in town with the plant. They can get us anything we want. We are richer than Donetsk by far. Richer than Kiev. Even than Moscow.”

  “How’s your coffee?” asked Tolevi.

  It was the magic word. The deputy mayor lowered his drink.

  “Tell me more about your business project,” he said. “How exactly does it work?”

  71

  Boston—around 9:00 p.m.

  Massina watched the girl as she described what she had done. Much of it was simply adapting program code she had found on so-called black sites on the dark Web—an illegal area used by hackers and other miscreants for various illegal purposes. She had a good understanding of how the different systems worked, and she knew how to look for “holes” or problems inherent in the programming.

  She was creative. She was young. She was smart.

  The question: Was she inherently evil? Or just a kid who needed guidance?

  Chelsea was convinced it was the latter. But Massina could tell by looking at her face that she had some doubts as well.

  Not that she would admit them to him.

  Giving back the money was the first step. The girl hadn’t spent much; by the FBI’s accounting, less than five thousand. He’d agreed to guarantee a full recovery, which meant he’d be out that.

  An investment? Or just a good deed?

  What would Sister Rose Marie say?

  Kiss it up to God, Louis.

  Easy for a nun to say. They kissed everything up to God.

  Jenkins and the U.S. attorney had gone home, as had his attorney. Massina, Chelsea, Borya, and her babysitter, who looked as if she’d been hit by a car, were the only ones in the conference room adjoining his office. Together, they’d finished off nearly two pizzas—one thing he could say for the kid, she could eat. The remains of the second pizza were in the box at the far end of the table.

  He cleared his throat. “This is what I think,” he told her. “When your father comes home, he will review the arrangement my lawyer has worked out. You will give all of the money back.”

  The girl nodded.

  “The money that you’ve spent, you’ll pay off,” Massina continued, “by working here. Assuming your father is OK with that.”

  “How much will I get paid?” she asked.

  “We pay our interns fifteen dollars an hour.” It was a made-up figure—they had no interns. “You will work directly under Ms. Goodman’s supervision. If there is any hint of illegal activity, you will be fired. You understand that?”

  Borya nodded.

  “If your schoolwork slips, you will be laid off.”

  She nodded again.

  “You are a very lucky girl,” added Massina. “Ms
. Goodman believes in you. As for me—the jury is out.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Borya.

  “It means that you have to prove yourself,” said Chelsea. “You have to be on your best behavior.”

  “And you’ll find my dad?”

  “We’re working on that,” said Massina.

  Chelsea wasn’t sure whether it was the fatigue or the reality of what she had agreed to do. Whichever, she felt as if an immense weight of iron had settled onto her shoulders.

  Borya was clearly worried about her father. When he turned out to be fine—which Jenkins said was surely the case, after checking with his superiors—how would Borya react? Would she renege on the whole deal?

  Then she’d go to jail. Juvenile probably, according to the lawyer, though there was always a chance she could be prosecuted as an adult.

  That would be a tremendous waste.

  “Mr. Bozzone will drive you home,” Massina told Borya and Martyak. “He or someone on his staff will stay at your house until your father comes home.”

  “I think we’ll be OK,” said Martyak.

  “No. I want someone there,” said Massina. He got up. “We’re done here. Chelsea, can I see you for a moment in my office?”

  Chelsea started to say good-bye to Borya. The girl hugged her, pressing tight against her chest.

  “It’ll be all right,” Chelsea told her. “I promise.”

  Don’t make promises you can’t keep!

  She walked out with them to the hallway, where Beefy was waiting. Then she went to Massina’s office and knocked on the door.

  “Come,” he said from inside.

  He was sitting at his desk, thinking about something, hand supporting his chin.