The Prisoner (33 page)

“But the press—”

“I’m working that angle.” The previous morning, Nikola had hinted at calling a press conference and disclosing the breakout. There had already been a whisper in the evening’s edition of
The Post
, tucked away in Hamilton’s editorial. Nikola said he’d call later. That was more than twelve hours ago, and he hadn’t called. She increased the pressure of her fingers and shuddered.

“And if they talk?”

She smiled at her interrogator. “Who?”

“The fugitives.”

“Talk? To whom?”

“The press. They could—the government. Not to mention … There’s a design behind this madness.” The face on the screen was a picture of growing discomfort.

Odelle narrowed her eyes and breathed in her heavenly musk. “They can’t. No paper will entertain gossip or anonymous calls without clearing it with me first. It’s a question of time. Relax.”

“But the organization … They bombed the power station. … If it comes out—”

“Then we’ll pull the plug.”

He suddenly leaned forward, like a snake about to strike. “We can’t do that.”

“Mmmm?” Her belly glowed. “Why not?” But, of course, she knew the answer.

“We will have to pay. … Not only that, there could be … reprisals. Those people—”

She shuffled in her seat and slowed down. “You mean the mob? There, sweetheart, I fear you’re on your own. I never dealt with them. I don’t exist. Your sugar cubes, your tanks …”

Vinson raised himself, his veins swollen, cheeks flushed;
he was angry. His camera zoomed in and out a couple of times, until it locked on his face once more. “The fuck I’m on my own.” His words hissed, like fat dripping from a roast onto the fire. “You took your cut. We’re partners, equals.”

Odelle narrowed her eyes before twisting the knife. “I don’t agree. Not intellectually.”

Back in the early ‘50s, the Krasnaya Mafiya had discovered the wonders of hibernation. Some people were troublesome enough to merit a quick bullet or worse. But permanent measures often meant a waste of talent that could be useful in the future. Russian sugar cubes weren’t safe, but U.S. facilities fit the bill admirably. Thus, Vinson had hammered out a cold-storage contract with the dons and cut Odelle in on the deal.

“It’s not only money. … These people—”

“Yes, money. I’ve been reading your report. You are asking for increases of almost eight percent. A little heavy,
non?”

“Maintenance costs are soaring, and wages, and consumables.”

“You mean inmates?” She silently bet he would miss the funny side of it.

“Chemicals, drugs, equipment.”

He did. “I’ve been checking your papers. Inflation doesn’t justify what you’re asking.”

“Will you endorse the increment?”

Odelle sensed movement. She glanced over her shoulder. The bed’s netting moved with more intensity. She would leave a note for the housekeeper to have the air-conditioning flow checked. The pin camera whirred faintly. On the screen Vinson’s irises gleamed. Still she waited.

“Half a percent?”

She did a quick calculation. After the increase, Hypnos’s daily housing fees would peak at two hundred dollars per inmate. With a sugar cube population of a little over one million, half of one percent meant a million dollars a day. She could push Vinson for twice as much, but greed could backfire one day. “My friend, would I leave you in the cold?” She would without batting an eyelid, regardless of the money, but mobsters had long memories and she didn’t want to enlarge
her bodyguard retinue. “Yesterday I ordered slight rearrangements. You know? Nothing drastic. A few inmates shifted from the centers to the sides and conversely. It’s numbers that count, isn’t it?”

On the screen, Vinson metamorphosed. Muscles relaxed and conformed to the arrangement that made people trust him—an air of competence and self-confidence. Odelle knew Vinson’s chameleonic savvy well and focused on the avalanche of sensations warming her loins.

“You’re—”

“Brilliant?” she interrupted.

“Beautiful.”

Although he could see only her face, subliminal tendrils must have mixed with the digital bytes streaming from her set. Her reflection was disturbed by a quiet cough. Odelle stared into Vinson’s smiling eyes.

“Er—there’s a problem with your camera.”

Odelle arrested the motion of her fingers and checked the tiny light signaling the device’s operation.

“What’s up?”

“That would be of no interest to you. But your camera changed to wide angle a while ago.”

Odelle sat on the bathroom’s chaise longue, replaying her conversation with Vinson.
There’s a design behind this madness
. She frowned and scraped up the last of her raspberry mousse. Indeed there was. And Nikola had not zeroed in on the designer. Yet. But he would. Nikola was a patient man—thorough and a loyal mercenary. Loyal, because he knew she could destroy him, drag him down in her wake if things got hairy. She stood, reached to her earlobes, and removed her glossy studs, depositing them with care on a crystal tray. Pulling the plug and pulping a few inmates so that the number tallied would leave only Russo and his helpers as loose ends. The young lawyers were no longer minor felons but murderers, after culling their comrade. The lot could go down for life, and she would make sure they did. If—she quickly corrected herself—
when
they cleaned up the mess, she would set up a different set of rules for center use, perhaps
to the point of doing away with the scheme altogether, and to hell with Vinson and his freebies. Well, perhaps not completely if she could recover Russo.
Life consists of compromises and missed opportunities
, thought Odelle, as she reached for a glass of Pellegrino. Then she grinned and took a sip. She’d seized too many opportunities to be entitled to complain.

On the edge of the bathtub, she lowered a foot into the scalding water with agonizing slowness, biting her lower lip to ward off a cry. Time seemed to slow until Odelle could plant the sole of her foot on the bathtub’s bottom, the muscles of her other leg bunching in a painful cramp. She repeated the movement until both her feet settled under eighteen inches of water. To sit down needed a slow ballet lasting several minutes. When she could relax her neck, water lapping her chin and her feet propped on the bathtub’s edges, Odelle surrendered to the steaming water. Her submerged skin had turned an angry red, and the built-up tension in her groin screamed for release.

She slipped her hand under the water.

Eons ago, Miko—a Tayü or first-class Oiran, in Ginza—had taught her the mysteries of a hot bath and shown her a bewildering array of funny-looking things she carried in a long sandalwood case.
I must go back to Ginza. Soon
. Then Odelle started to shake and the scalding water lapped against the marble sides, darkening the teak slats as it sloshed over. She ground her teeth and shook her head from side to side. Then her mouth sagged as a low-pitched wail escaped her lips.

00:06

When Genia Warren finished poring over the thick wad of documents, it was past midnight. She’d been in and out of meetings all day with her staff, drafting security proposals, following the passage of several bills through Congress that affected FBH, and waiting for a summons from DHS Director Odelle Marino. A summons that never came. During a recess, she’d exchanged a few words with Lawrence Ritter, the Federal Bureau of Hibernation security director. He hadn’t heard from Odelle either but knew that she’d been closeted in her offices after canceling or rescheduling all outstanding appointments.

Out of habit, and before turning in, Genia checked her personal e-mail in-box. She read of her mother’s concerns for the pounding her flowers were taking in the fickle weather, and there was a short update from Clare, Genia’s sister doing a postgraduate degree in Europe. There were also a handful of funding requests from her parish and voluntary organizations, but nothing of note. Then her secure console beeped and
RA
scrolled across the screen, followed by a succinct
Check The Post
. She read the advance headlines on the newspaper’s Web site and went to bed with the foreboding that her rest would be brief.

One of Odelle Marino’s most maddening idiosyncrasies was to call meetings with the same forewarning Caligula gave his senators, often gathering directors or staff from the agencies of her fiefdom in the middle of the night, in particular to deliver bad news. Genia had managed four hours of sleep when the telephone blared, announcing Odelle’s ultimatum—a hairbreadth short of a subpoena.

Genia’s security detail, permanently stationed outside her house, would already have been alerted by her night duty staff. By the time she managed a hasty shower and a gulped-down cup of espresso, they had gathered her routine three-car motorcade to whisk her down to the Department of Homeland Security headquarters—a thirty-minute race through half-deserted streets. Once tucked inside her car, she called Lawrence Ritter’s number twice—unaccountably busy at such an early hour—before checking the screen of her communications pad to discover he was trying to reach her. Odelle had also ordered Lawrence to the conclave.

“Know what this is all about?” His voice suggested high spirits.

“No idea,” she lied. “Any developments on the breakout?”

“Nope. Yesterday I requested updates from the DHS. Twice. So far unanswered. I’m limited to whatever they see fit to filter down. As you know, I was asked—no, make that ordered—to keep away from their investigation. Yesterday I also tried to raise the staff at the Washington, D.C., sugar cube. No dice. Whoever is running the show has clamped down the facility to any outside office, and that includes us.”

Genia smiled in the gloom of the partitioned compartment. Lawrence’s reply was unnecessarily lengthy and convoluted, strictly for the benefit of eavesdroppers. “We’ll find out soon. Where are you?”

“Outside the building. I’ll meet you by the elevators at the parking lot.”

“Roger that.” Genia severed the communication and retreated into a corner of her mind, the only place she felt safe from the increasingly obtrusive DHS surveillance, to weigh for the umpteenth time the slowly unfolding events and dangers ahead. A string of weak presidents had looked the other way as the DHS mushroomed out of congressional control, sucking power from scores of other agencies like a vortex. No, she corrected herself, more like a black hole from which not even light could escape. Genia suspected that no one, not even Odelle Marino, had planned to monopolize so much power. But, like a chain reaction, control had radiated from the DHS to permeate decision-making layers of government
to a point where constitutionally elected bodies became paralyzed and a travesty of their former selves. Yes, the DHS needed powerful light shining on its bowels and a thorough flushing of its bilges.

When her car finally stopped feet away from the bank of elevators at the DHS restricted parking lot, five stories below street level, she rushed out, swinging her legs without much elegance and, judging by Lawrence’s cocked eyebrow, forgoing her ingrained decorum.
Calm down, girl, you’re racing
.

“Good morning,” Lawrence greeted her, flashing his ID card past a long slot by the farthest elevator.

Genia eyed his signature uniform—black suit, gleaming black loafers, and cashmere black turtleneck—before glancing at his face, blinking at his faultless beret, and stopping at his sparkling brown eyes. “How you manage to look so awake is beyond me.” She flicked her wrist to steal a glance at her timepiece—05:26.

“I don’t sleep, that’s why.” He stood aside when the elevator doors opened. As she walked past him, he reached to her neck. “You don’t look so bad. I say, forgot to check the mirror, did we?” He leaned over. “It’s on the news,” he whispered, and tugged at the otherwise perfect neck of her blouse. “There, much better.”