"It was a brunch order faxed from St. Petersburg to the Bestonia Bagel Shop in Brighton Beach. They asked for an onion bagel with cream cheese, a salt bagel with butter, an everything bagel plain, and two garlic bagels with lox."
"A take-out order from half a world away," Rodgers said. "And it wasn't a joke."
"No," said Herbert. "Bestonia sent back a confirmation. Definitely spooks."
"Right," Rodgers agreed. "Any idea what it means?"
"We sent it over to cryptology," Herbert continued, and they're stumped. Lynne Dominick says the different bagels could represent sectors of the city or of the world. Or they could be agents. The different kinds of spreads could stand for different targets. She said she'll keep working on it, but she called Bestonia and they've got a dozen kinds of bagels with twenty different 'shmears.' It'll take a while."
"What about that shop, the Bestonia?" Rodgers asked.
"Clean until now. Owned by the Belnicks, a family that came from Kiev via Montreal in 1961."
"So they're a deep plant," said Rodgers.
"Very," Herbert agreed. "Darrell informed the FBI and they put a stakeout team on the shop. Nothing's happened so far except for bagel deliveries."
Darrell McCaskey was Op-Center's FBI and Interpol liaison. By coordinating efforts between the agencies, he allowed each to benefit from the other's resources.
Rodgers asked, "You're sure they're bagels?"
"We videotaped the open bags from a rooftop, examined the footage," Herbert said. "They look like bagels all right. And the deliveryman seems to get the right amount of money for the size of each order. Nobody that gets a delivery goes out for lunch, so they must be eating what's in the bags."
Rogers nodded. "So that brings us back to something brewing in St. Petersburg. What's DI6 doing about it?"
"They've got a man on-site," said Herbert. "Commander Hubbard has promised to keep us informed."
"Good," Rodgers said. "And what do you think about all this?"
"I feel like I just took a short Twilight Zone hop back into the 1960s," Herbert said. "When the Russians spend big money on something these days, I worry."
Rodgers nodded as the intelligence chief signed off. Herbert was right. Russians weren't gracious losers, and they were faced with the possibility of the loser in an election having access to a secret operation with agents in the U.S.
Rodgers was worried too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Whatever the season, the heat of the day leaves St. Petersburg almost immediately, chased away by the wind that rises from the gulf in the late afternoon. The cool air is carried to every comer of the city by the webwork of rivers and canals, which is why the warm glow of indoor lights appears earlier in the day. It's also the reason why pedestrians, who brave the often brutal winds and knifing cold, feel a special kinship after sundown.
The effect of sundown was almost supernatural, thought Fields-Hutton. For nearly two hours he had been sitting beneath a tree on the banks of the Neva, reading manuscripts stored in his Toshiba laptop. At the same time he was listening to his Walkman that was actually a radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the peso behind the door. Now, as he watched the sun drop lower in the sky and the streets begin to empty and the riverside promenade become virtually deserted, he felt as though people had to be indoors before the vampires and ghosts came out to prey.
Either that, he reflected, or I've been editing horror and science-fiction comic books for far too long.
He was getting cold. He felt colder than even his London-hardened flesh was accustomed to. What was worse, he was beginning to think that the afternoon had been wasted. All he had heard since he tuned in to the bug was trivial chatter about sports, women, whip-cracking bosses, crowbars ripping up crates, and the comings and goings of people working on the TV facility. Not exactly the kind of surveillance that made the pulses race back at DI6.
He looked out across the river, then gazed back toward the Hermitage. The museum was striking, its dozens of white columns now ruddy with sunset and the ribbed dome gleaming. The tour buses were beginning to carry their groups away. The day shift started to leave. The night shift was just arriving. The local citizens who had spent their Sunday at the museum were filing out to meet trolleybuses or to take the fifteen-minute walk to the nearest Metro stop, the Nevsky Prospekt Station. Soon, like the streets themselves, even the great museum would be deserted.
Fields-Hutton hoped that Leon had been able to get him a hotel room: he was going to have to come back in the morning and continue his surveillance. He was convinced that if anything untoward was going on here, the TV studio was the place.
The Englishman decided to go back inside and stake out the room for a few minutes, to watch and see if someone other than the work crew used the room near closing time. Someone he might be able to describe to the photo division at DI6— a military person in civvies, a government official, a foreign agent. What's more, there was always confusion and pressure in the days before and immediately after the start of any new operation. Moreover, a worker leaving the place might say or do something that would tell him what was really happening here.
Closing up his computer and rising on bones that an American agent once described as belonging to Arthur Fiedler— he stood with a symphony of pops— Fields-Hutton brushed off his pants and left the Walkinan on as he walked briskly toward the museum.
To the right, he saw a couple that had just left the museum strolling hand in hand along the river. He thought of Peggy, not of the first fateful walk they took, the one where she brought him into the spy business, but of the walk just five days before along the banks of the Thames. They had talked about marriage for the first time, and Peggy admitted that she was leaning toward it. Of course, Peggy had the constitution of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and it might take her an eternity to fall— but he was willing to run the risk. She wasn't quite the demure creature he had always envisioned himself ending up with, but he enjoyed her pluck. She had the face of an angel. And, most important, she was well worth waiting for.
He smiled as a young woman jogged toward the river with her Jack Russell terrier. He didn't think they had the English breed in Russia, though the black market was smuggling anything and everything these days, including dogs that were fashionable in the West.
The woman was dressed in sweat clothes and a baseball cap and carried a small plastic water bottle. As she approached, he noticed she wasn't perspiring. That seemed strange, since the nearest apartments were at least a half mile away and a runner should have worked up a sweat by now. She smiled at him. He smiled back. Suddenly, the dog broke free of its leash. it darted toward him and took a bite from the inside of his shin before the jogger was able to pull it away.
"I'm so sorry!" she said as she thrust the yipping dog under her arm.
"It's all right," he said, wincing as he dropped down on his right knee and examined the painful wound. He set his computer aside, took out his handkerchief, and wiped away the blood from the two semicircular rows of teeth marks.
The woman knelt beside him, her face a mask of concern. With her right arm clasped tightly around the frenzied terrier she held out her left arm, offering him the water bottle.
"This will help," she said.
"Thank you, no," Fields-Hutton said as the teeth marks filled anew with blood. Something wasn't right about this. She was too concerned, too attentive. Russians weren't like that. He had to get out of here.
Before Fields-Hutton could stop her, the woman poured water on his wound. Rivulets of blood streamed down his leg into his sock as Fields-Hutton reached out to stop her.