“Huh?” she reacted.
“You can call me Jeremy.”
Alex looked at him for a second, thinking. He obviously wasn’t there to arrest her for her work on the elections case, and she was interested in this challenge. Her gut was telling her that by working with Walcott she could come closer to identifying V, her elusive Russian mastermind, the mystery man taking the front and central spot on her crazy wall. That gut feeling, that thin wisp of hope was worth putting up with Agent Weber. Maybe there was room for some decent collaboration between the two of them. Maybe.
She shook his hand and replied reluctantly, “Alex.”
“Shall we start again?” Jeremy asked insidiously.
She grabbed her Stella and gulped down half the bottle, then sat back in her armchair.
“Tell me again, why do they need me? Or why do they think they need me?”
“Here’s the long story, short. Two teams of engineers used the corporate van between detailings. On Tuesday, the fleet manager found an illegally copied document in the van. One of these eleven people dropped it by accident, but that means someone made an illegal copy of a file containing critical state secrets, the laser cannon technology I was talking about this morning.”
“And?” she asked. “I still don’t follow why me.”
“You can infiltrate technical teams, that’s what you do, right?”
“Right… That’s what I do. So what’s your plan of action?”
She reached over to the coffee table and grabbed her laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“Booking us flights. Never mind me, what’s your plan?”
“Get you acquainted with the case, get you credentialized first, then we proceed from there.”
“Polygraph, huh?” Alex asked, thoughtful and a little concerned.
“Yup,” he said.
“Mandatory?”
“Gotta do it.”
“Then you better make sure they don’t ask me the wrong questions,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“About the case I’ve never worked on,” she said and winked, “the elections case.”
“I think that can be arranged,” he replied coolly. “What else would you need?”
“I need reading materials about the laser cannon. I can’t hope to infiltrate those teams without having the slightest idea of what that is and how it works. And I’ll need Walcott’s procedure manual, or someone who’ll walk me through everything I need to know about making copies, gaining access to documents, that kind of stuff. I think Mason Armstrong can take care of that.”
“What else?” Jeremy asked, taking notes.
“I need you to work with me and run background checks, people’s profiles. I need access to their files, work histories, financials, all that. Just routine for you.”
“You got it. How are we doing on flights?”
“Like hell,” she replied, frowning and slamming the laptop shut. “With these options we won’t make it to Norfolk before 10.00PM. Let me make a call.”
“It’s 2.00AM!” he exclaimed.
“He won’t mind… I hope.”
She dialed a number from her cell’s memory, and the call was answered immediately.
“Brian? Sorry to bother… I need your help badly. I need to bail out on your case, and I need to borrow your jet.”
She paused for a minute, listening to Brian’s answer, and watching with amusement how Jeremy’s jaw dropped. Then she thanked Brian and closed the call.
“Who are you, people?” Jeremy asked.
…43
Vitaliy Myatlev and Defense Minister Dimitrov lit their cigars, waiting impatiently for the aide to finish his work. The two of them stood by the open window overlooking Moscow’s cityscape under a rare and wonderful blue sky.
The young aide set up a tray of hors d’oeuvres on the small coffee table. Small saltine crackers in a silver bowl. Beluga caviar in another bowl, this one sitting on a bed of ice. Pate de foie gras on a crystal tray, set on bite-sized pieces of toast. An unopened bottle of vodka, Myatlev’s favorite brand, Stolichnaya, ready to serve in an ice bucket.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” the aide asked. Myatlev just waved him away and the young man disappeared.
“What are we celebrating, Vitya?”
“How can you ask that?” Myatlev responded, feigning offense. “Only the first successful recruitment in our new network of agents. And what a first!”
“Smolin’s asset?”
“Da,” Myatlev replied, engulfed in thick cigar smoke. “Smolin said the first set of documents is impressive.”
“Tell me already, I’m growing older by the minute,” Dimitrov said humorously.
“Smolin’s asset confirmed that the Americans have the laser cannon weapon ready to deploy.”
“Fuck it… Petya’s going to be mad, so mad. He’ll say we were asleep at the wheel again. You know how much he hates any news that anyone’s ahead in anything.”
“Smolin’s source is very close to the project; he’ll give us more intel. Then we’ll know more.”
Dimitrov reached for the bottle and poured vodka in two glasses, then threw some ice cubes in them. He handed one to Myatlev and raised his in a joyless cheer.
“Ura,” he said, then gulped the liquid.
“Ura,” Myatlev said in unison, then continued, “You keep forgetting something, Mishka. You keep forgetting we should celebrate.
“Hard for me to think of celebrating, when the news is so bad.”
“Yes, but think of the big picture,” Myatlev insisted. “You, more than anyone else in this government, should be able to see the big picture. We have a new network in place. We have new handlers in the field, recruiting and getting us results. We have intel, good intel, and we’ll have better intel soon. And we have channels that we’ve tested now and we know they work. We’re back in business, Mishka, like in the old days.”
“Good,” Dimitrov cheered up a little, “I can drink to that!”
Myatlev quickly obliged and refilled their glasses with generous amounts of vodka.
“It only took Smolin a couple of weeks to hook his first asset, just a couple of weeks. Do you know how rare this kind of talent is? Even for us?”
Dimitrov nodded appreciatively.
“And I have found more like him. We can deploy all the good ones, to consolidate our network of assets.”
“What are you going after, Vitya?”
“Big data, Mishka, I am going after big data.”
Dimitrov rubbed his forehead thoughtfully.
“Do you want to hear me say I’m too old for this game? I won’t say it. Maybe I’m too old for your methods, but not for the game.”
“We’re both old fucks, Mishka, don’t kid yourself. But we can still get it up, we can get the job done like never before. That’s why we have hordes of young people in our organizations, da?”
Both men laughed hard, clicked their glasses, and drank their vodka.
Myatlev invited Dimitrov to approach the coffee table and try an appetizer.
“Now tell me,” Dimitrov asked, “what’s with this big data you’re talking about?”
“There isn’t anything you can’t find out when you’re willing to grab data in a massive way. The Americans are joining all their databases now, associating what people do with where they work and what they spend money on. Such incredible power.”
“And you want us to do the same?”
“Umm… yes, but in a different way. I want us to create backup plans to our backup plans, to grab any amount of intel there’s to be had out there.”
“On what?” Dimitrov asked, his eyebrows at an angle, conveying his confusion.