The Hydra Protocol (13 page)

Chapel reached for the tablet. He tapped a few keys. As he’d expected, nothing appeared on the screen. He typed SHE’S ASLEEP and hit the enter key.

“You should be, too,” Angel told him. “Still, I don’t want to take any chances. I’ve got a preliminary report on those questions you asked me, in case you’re . . . curious. Don’t bother answering, baby—I know you are.”

Chapel tried not to grin. Good old Angel. She could make even a dry intelligence briefing sound like a naughty innuendo. He suspected she did it just to make sure he was paying attention, but he’d never complained.

“Nadia Asimova,” Angel said, “never mind the patronymic. Russian citizenship, born in Yakutia—Siberia, in other words, the exact geographic center of nowheresville. Daughter of a metallurgist and a doctor. Age thirty-one, a little on the young side for you but not ickily so.”

I’M NOT LOOKING TO DATE HER, Chapel typed.

“If men spent more time doing background checks on the women they chased,” Angel said, ignoring Chapel’s words, “they wouldn’t get in trouble so often. Anyway, it looks like she had a pretty normal childhood, except she showed an early talent for gymnastics, which is something they take very seriously in Russia. Got her name in the paper a few times for winning competitions. But she wasn’t just a jock. She did
very
well in school. Top of her class every year, and she even skipped two grades. At sixteen they whisked her away to the Bauman school in Moscow, which is the Russian equivalent of MIT. She started a six-year course in nuclear engineering.”

DIDN’T FINISH?

“Disappeared off the face of the earth,” Angel told him. “There are no black marks on her record—I mean, at all. Her faculty adviser was already looking to place her in a high-powered job during her second year, which means she wasn’t exactly struggling with her course load. But then the records just stop. No incomplete credits, no notice that she had dropped out, but no degree awarded, either. I think you know what that means. Somebody in the intelligence community over there took an interest and recruited her before she could finish her studies.”

FSTEK?

“Yes. FSTEK. Though I had a heck of time proving it. She isn’t on the books with any intelligence group, which is unusual even in Russia. No payroll records, no tax forms, no health insurance forms. The only mention of her anywhere since college is when she received a medal.”

A MEDAL?

“‘For Distinction in the Protection of the State Borders.’ It’s a medal usually reserved for members of the FSB—the organization formerly known as KGB—but it can be given to anyone in intelligence, or even a private citizen. There’s no indication why she got it. She’s too young for it to be a lifetime achievement award, though. She must have done something really valuable to the Fatherland. Something nobody wants to talk about, but they’re real glad it got done. There was a brief private ceremony at FSTEK headquarters in 2011 and then . . . she disappears again. Nothing since.”

NOTHING AT ALL?

“Not that I can find. It wasn’t easy getting what I have,” Angel said. “It’s not exactly like I can just call up the Kremlin and ask them for the personnel dossier on one of their secret agents.”

Chapel frowned to himself. You didn’t expect to turn up much on a spy—the Russian government would go to great lengths to keep Nadia’s operations secret, of course. But there should be something more if she was what she said she was—a “glorified file clerk.” The absence of evidence in this case suggested that Nadia was something like him. Invisible, and vital to Russian state security. THANKS FOR CHECKING, he typed.

“No problem, sugar. You know I’d do anything for you. I’ll be in touch,” Angel said.

“
Joliñiz bolsin
. Bon voyage.” It was the same flat voice from before, the voice of the language file. Chapel shut down his tablet and took the headphones off his ears.

Without the light of the screen, the dimness of the airplane cabin felt oppressive and chilly. Chapel huddled down in his seat. Then he turned and looked at Nadia where she was curled up and snoring, still.

She had pulled a blanket up over herself minutes after takeoff, but now it had slipped down off one shoulder and fallen partially to the floor. She was still dressed for July in New York, and the scarf she wore was just a thin scrap of silk. He saw her hugging herself for warmth.

He felt a sudden wave of tenderness toward this woman. She had saved his life in Miami, which was enough to make him feel something for her, but it wasn’t just that. She really was like him, wasn’t she? Sucked up into the black hole of intelligence before she even knew there were options. A brilliant childhood and then she just fell off the map. No. She’d been intentionally vanished. Taken away from her life because she was too valuable to waste on normal things like having a family, a career, a life.

He wondered if there had been someone waiting at home for her, someone who had dreaded every second she was away, not knowing if she was alive or dead. Someone who couldn’t handle it after a while and walked away from her.

Or maybe not. Maybe she’d never had anybody. Maybe there’d been no time.

Reaching over her, he lifted the blanket and pulled it back up to her chin. He’d been very careful not to touch her, but as he sat back down in his own seat he saw one of her eyes open and peer up at him. Like any good intelligence operative she had the ability to wake very quickly from sleep.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “You looked cold.”

She smiled at him and wriggled around for a second, pulling the blanket closer around herself. A moment later she was fast asleep again.

Damn.

He couldn’t believe he’d let himself get carried away like that. It had been inappropriate, for one thing, and, worse, he’d let his emotions rule him. Always a dangerous thing on an operation.

He sighed and sat back. Tried closing his eyes for a while.

It occurred him only hours later that Angel hadn’t told him the one thing he truly wanted to know—something that had nothing to do with Russian spies. She hadn’t told him whether Julia had called his phone or not.

Which meant she hadn’t.

Angel would have told him, otherwise.

Nadia’s plan was to travel to Uzbekistan, where she knew some people who could get them across the border into Kazakhstan. First, though, they had to make a quick stop in Romania to pick up the third and last member of the team.

At the customs desk in Bucharest, Chapel handed over their fake passports—the best the U.S. military could supply. He had to remove his artificial arm and let the officials x-ray it, even though it was clear they had no idea what they were looking at. A woman in a leather jacket frowned at the arm as it lay in a plastic bin, the lifeless hand dangling over the side. She pulled on latex gloves and then took out a pocket knife. Chapel protested as she extended the blade, but she said she had to stab the arm for security reasons. “What exactly would that prove?” he demanded, but that just made the woman look more stern than before.

Nadia pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and pushed it across the desk.

The customs woman put her knife away. “Welcome to Romania, Mr. Carlson,” she said, with a very warm smile.

As they walked toward the taxi rank, Chapel whispered to Nadia, “If I’d known it was that easy, I would have brought my gun, too.”

“Oh, no,” Nadia said. “There are very strict laws here about firearms. That bribe would have been ten times as much.” She pointed at the restrooms. “I need a moment,” she said. “Can you wait here with the luggage?”

Chapel nodded and sat down on a plastic bench marred by old cigarette burns. He watched the people flow by while he sat with their two small suitcases. Nadia didn’t return for ten minutes. When she did, she had completely changed.

She had ratted out her hair and put on a lot more makeup—far more than she’d worn on the party boat. She had kept her business slacks but rolled up the cuffs to show the pair of cheap sandals she’d slipped on. Her blouse was gone in favor of a halter top and a thin gold necklace with a crucifix. She looked ten years younger.

Chapel must have been staring wide-eyed, because she laughed when she came up to him. “Where we’re going,” she said, “we need to look the part.”

“Should I change?” he asked.

“No, you’ll be fine in that jacket. Just don’t smile, whatever you do.” She smirked at him again. “Come on. We have an appointment to keep.”

They took a bus to a nearby train station, one that had lockers big enough to hold their bags. Once those were secure, they went outside and stood in a long line for private transportation. As they waited for a taxi Chapel argued again that they didn’t need to be here. “This computer tech you want to hire—he’s just a security risk,” Chapel said.

“You don’t know him yet. He’s adorable. You want to just give him a hug, he mopes so,” Nadia told him.

“I’ll buy him a stuffed animal and we’ll leave him here.” He tried to think of a way of explaining to her they didn’t need a computer tech when he had access to Angel. There was no way her guy could beat Angel’s abilities. But how to say that without giving away Angel’s existence? “I know enough about computers for this job,” he said.

“Really. You know how to reprogram a Soviet legacy system from the eighties? In the Cyrillic alphabet? Don’t worry so, Jim. I’ve worked with this man before. He can be trusted. And anyway, I’m lead on this mission, am I not?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chapel said. He had a feeling he wouldn’t have any trouble remembering not to smile. Between the jet lag and this security risk and the fact he hadn’t gotten much sleep on the plane, he was already in a foul mood.

Bucharest didn’t help.

He’d read it was called the Paris of the East, but the city Chapel saw wasn’t exactly a glittering metropolis. Every building seemed to be the same gray-yellow color—maybe the structures had been white once, but the million cars that puffed black exhaust had stained them like a coffee drinker’s teeth. Half the buildings were enormous brutalist office blocks; the other half sprawling palaces that looked like they were about to fall down. Some of them looked like they’d been built from cardboard and then sprayed with quick-setting concrete, they were in such bad shape. Construction cranes and scaffolding covered half the façades, apparently fixing up the buildings as fast as they could fall down.

Chapel couldn’t make sense of the place. There had to be money here—all that construction was costing somebody. But on the street level the city looked depressed and decrepit. He saw piles of trash on street corners, where mangy dogs fought over choice pieces of refuse. The people didn’t seem to take much notice. There were also a lot more Western Union offices than he thought a city like this probably needed. “What’s with all the wire transfer places?” he asked.

“Cybercrime,” Nadia said. “Romania’s principal export.”

Chapel turned to stare at her.

She shrugged. “Perhaps I overstate the case. But this is the European headquarters for e-mail scams and identity theft. There are little towns out in Transylvania—that’s northwest of here—where half the population is made up of arrows.”

“Arrows?”

“People who accept money in a scam, otherwise innocent people who sign for wire transfers and then hand over the money to gangsters. It makes it difficult to trace the money to the actual criminals. Cutouts, as we might say.”

Chapel glanced at the cabdriver, but he seemed oblivious. “Cutout” was an espionage term for the people who transferred information from one party to another without knowing anything themselves. It wasn’t the kind of term you should bandy about when you were working undercover on an espionage mission.

“Relax,” Nadia said. “Are you always so nervous on business?”

“It keeps me in one piece. Well, technically, two.”

She laughed. A lot of people got uncomfortable when he joked about his artificial arm, but not Nadia. Yet another reason to like her, even if he thought her attitude was far too relaxed for the serious work they were doing. Maybe, he thought, he
should
relax a little.

Maybe when Perimeter was shut down and he was home again.

“You’re tired,” she told him. “You didn’t sleep.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He would very much like, he thought, to go lie down somewhere.

“Why don’t you head back to the airport and rest?” Nadia asked him. “I’ll collect our friend and bring him to you. It’s something I can do easily on my own.”

Chapel shook his head. “No,” he told her. “You wanted a
svidetel
, an American witness.” He gritted his teeth. Was she trying to shake him off her trail? “That means I see everything you do. When this is done, when I vouch for you, I need to be able to say I was part of everything.”

He was blatantly saying he didn’t totally trust her, but her reaction wasn’t what he expected. “Good,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be glad to have you along.”

The taxi took them through the various sectors of Bucharest, circling around toward the Strada Lipscani, the street Nadia had asked for. Chapel thought for a second the driver was taking them on a scenic route but Nadia explained they were just avoiding a sort of perpetual traffic jam that clogged the center of town. The route took them past the old princely court of Vlad the Impaler, though Chapel couldn’t see much of it from his window. Eventually the taxi dropped them off on a long street lined with big gray-yellow buildings that Chapel did have to admit looked a little like Parisian houses. One of them had a huge mural on its side of a blue sky full of birds.

They got out and Nadia paid the driver in leis, the local currency. Nadia must have brought them with her—he hadn’t seen her exchange any money at the airport. They headed down the block, passing an endless series of bars and nightclubs that were shuttered up for the morning. Half the places seemed to have English names—the Gin Factory, the Bastards Club—and the rest had names so strewn with accent marks and diacritics that he couldn’t even guess how they were pronounced. “Here,” Nadia said, outside of what looked like an unexceptional coffee bar. They stepped through the glass doors into blaring hip-hop so loud it made the air pulse. A dozen or so patrons were lounging on couches and low chairs, while a bored-looking attendant stood behind a counter lined with samovars. Nadia went up and grabbed a cup of tea without asking or paying. She spoke to the attendant, but the girl just sneered and went back to looking out the windows.