“Hey,” he said, coming in. “We lost.”
“So I heard.”
“Check the scores?”
“I wanted to see what kind of mood you’d be in.”
He laughed. “Nah. You can’t really expect the Nats to win. So when they lose, it doesn’t really bother me. Someday, maybe.”
He couldn’t quite read her expression. Was she working? She was using the family laptop, so he thought not.
“Checking the news?” he asked.
“The weather. My flight schedule has been changed. I’m leaving in the morning.”
“Oh. OK.”
“I talked to Caroline. She’ll be here right after class. From what I understand, she’s very excited about going to Prague.”
“I told you she would be.”
“I also spoke to General Magnus today,” said Breanna.
“How is he?”
“He’s going to Prague, too.”
“Really? Suddenly, it’s the cool place to be.”
“He wants to show off the Tigershark to the Germans and the English. He thinks he can sell it as a next-generation NATO fighter.”
“Tigershark?”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
“Hey, being dumb is something I don’t have to pretend to be.” Zen popped the top on a Rogue Porter — he could tell he needed something substantial.
“You set this up, didn’t you?” said Breanna. “So I’d come with you.”
“Honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about. The Tigershark — it’s a dead deal. You can’t even get it past your own Air Force brass. Manned interceptors have no future in the Air Force. It’s not what I want, but—”
Breanna got up from the table and stormed away.
“Hey — what’s up?” asked Zen. “I didn’t talk to Magnus. Is that what you think?”
The Tigershark had been to air shows before. It was just a coincidence.
He glanced at his watch, wondering if it was too late to call Magnus and see if there was something else involved.
More than likely, not.
Quarter past eleven. Far too late to call. Too late, really, to do anything but drink his beer.
34
Danny, Nuri, and Flash spent the night planting video bugs along the roads, making sure that all of the approaches to the farm were covered. Meanwhile, the Predator V circling overhead was joined by its companion shortly after daybreak. The second aircraft had a ground-penetrating radar that could see into the buildings, as well as hunt for bunkers and other surprises. The pair could stay over the farm, orbiting at roughly 40,000 feet virtually undetectable, for a week.
There were two men inside the main house, in what seemed to be some sort of control room at the back. Probably it was a security post. Otherwise, the place was empty.
Surveillance network established, Danny and the others drove south to find a place to rest. Worried that stopping nearby might inadvertently tip the people at the farm off, Danny drove almost thirty kilometers away, not stopping until he spotted a small inn that sat above a twisting path from the highway. He pulled off the road and waited for the others. It was just after 6:00 A.M.
“That says restaurant and hotel in Russian,” said Nuri when they drove up. He pointed to the sign, hand painted in a neat script.
Danny had seen the Romanian sign in Latin script but not the smaller Cyrillic, which was on the other side of the road.
“How come the sign’s in Russian?” asked Flash. “I thought all the Russians were on the eastern end of the country?”
“That’s the greatest concentration,” said Nuri. “But remember, this was part of the Soviet Union before the breakout. Russians are everywhere.”
There was no special reason to be suspicious, but Danny still decided to look for another place. They found a small café about two miles farther down the road. Two trucks were parked out front.
“You sure you’re not getting paranoid, Colonel?” asked Flash as they got out of their cars.
“I’m always paranoid,” said Danny. “Let’s get some grub.”
They left their mikes open while they ate, hoping the MY-PID would pick up and translate useful local gossip. But the talk was mostly about the weather and a hike in government-controlled gasoline prices, planned to go into effect in a week. The fact that the three strangers in the corner were American didn’t provoke any comments.
Nuri went over and spoke to the hostess, asking about hotels. Bits and pieces of French and Spanish flooded into his head as he spoke. This was both a help and a hindrance, giving him more vocabulary and at the same time making it harder for him to get the right pronunciation.
Nuri had always had a certain fluidity with languages. It was one of his prime assets as a CIA officer. MY-PID helped tremendously — but it also made his ability less important. The next generation of field officers would operate with implants in their head, speaking fluently in any language they dialed up.
The waitress mentioned a few chain hotels back close to the capital. Nuri said he wanted something local.
“You are an American, though,” she said, switching to English. “You want to stay here?”
“Yes,” he said. “My friends and I are researching locations for a movie. We’re from Hollywood.”
“Movie?”
“The Sound of Music,” he said. “We’re doing a remake.”
Nuri was particularly happy about this cover story, and he had to practically bite his tongue to keep from embellishing it. There was always a temptation to add details when you had a good story. And this one was perfect — a movie version of the famous musical, to be shot here in Eastern Europe, with elaborate village scenes. Who wouldn’t eat it up? But the more details, the more likely you were to be tripped up.
“Hollywood,” said the waitress, practically gushing.
She started talking about a movie she had seen being made in the States some years before, when she had been an exchange student in California. If it was during her college days, thought Nuri, it must have been at least twenty years ago.
The memories sprang out in a jumble. Even if her accent had been pure, Nuri was sure he would have understood only a third of it.
Finally, he managed to steer the conversation — or monologue — back to hotels. There were several places in the area, she said, but none worth the trouble.
“Well, we do have to sleep,” he told her.
“Then the Latino, two kilometers on the road, that direction,” said the woman. “And I know just the place where you can set your movie.”
Nuri listened to her suggestions, mentally noting that they were all to the south. He asked if there might be anything to the north, trying to get information about the farm without mentioning it. But even when he named the town it was located in, she just shrugged and said she didn’t know that area very well.
“Give you her life story?” Danny asked when he came back to the table.
“Just about. There are a couple places down the road.”
They found the motel the waitress recommended in the center of a village two miles away. It wasn’t hard: A large 1950s era farm tractor stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, as much a landmark as mascot.
During the Soviet years the town factory had churned out tractors, as many as five hundred a week. The plant had closed soon after independence, and the old buildings now housed a variety of small businesses, including two that repaired and rebuilt the tractors originally produced there.
The town had a population of about five thousand, most living in the village center. Housing projects from the 1970s and early 1980s, their yellow bricks weathered to a dull brown, crowded around somewhat newer structures, brightly painted, which sat around the edges of the small business district. Main Street was the local highway; a pair of blinking lights slowed cars down as they approached, though crossing from one side to the other could be a dangerous undertaking.