Robert Tanenbaum: Malice

"Good night, Mr… Butch. I'll contact you again when we know more, though I may not have the pleasure of bringing it to you myself. Just be careful of who you trust."

Karp heard the door click open and remembered the thought in his dream about unfinished business. "Oh, by the way, David, I wanted to thank you for all you've done," he said. But silence was the only reply, and he didn't know if he'd been heard.

There was the sound of running feet and his door was flung open by the young police officer, who entered with his hand on the butt of his gun. The officer shined his flashlight directly in Karp's eyes and then around the room.

"Uh, sorry, Mr. Karp," he said. "I was, uh, down at the nurse's station making sure they were okay when your room buzzer went off and then the power went out."

"That's all right, Officer," Karp replied. "I must have hit the button by accident in my sleep, and these old hospitals are always dealing with little power outages. There's nothing to worry about."

The officer turned off his flashlight, wished him good night, and left the room. Alone in the dark again, Karp repeated himself. "Nothing to worry about at all."

"Why don't I go and, you know, slip into something more comfortable," Ariadne Stupenagel purred, fending off the groping hands of her lover. "Now, now, no long faces…be a good Murry-wurry and fix us a couple of teeny-weeny martinis."

Gilbert Murrow pouted. It had been a long, frustrating day filling in for his boss at the District Attorney's Office, and he'd have just as soon forgotten the preliminaries with Ariadne and gone straight to the main event.

Then again-now that he had a moment to consider what she'd just said-it might be worth the wait. He never ceased to be amazed by her imaginative and ceaseless attempts to keep their sex lives ramped up. Which meant that he couldn't be sure if "something more comfortable" meant naughty silk undergarments from Victoria's Secret or something in leather and chains from the Kittens Toy Room catalog that she kept in her nightstand.

Besides, he thought, a martini might take the edge off the day and give me the courage necessary to keep up with Ariadne's more imaginative ideas.

"Make the drinks and meet me on the roof, sugar buns," she called over her shoulder. "I've been dreaming all day long about holding on to the railing and looking out at the lights of the city as you slip up from behind me and…" She purposely left the end of the sentence dangling, like Murrow's jaw, and disappeared into her bedroom.

With effort, Murrow willed his mouth shut and hurried to the "bar," which occupied most of the kitchen counter. He intended to make Vespers, the famous James Bond vodka martini from Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet," Murrow said in his best Bond, which wasn't very good. "Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

He'd just located the bottle of Kina Lillet when he caught sight of the New York Guardian newspaper lying off to the side. His attention was drawn to the top headline, Russians Implicated in St. Patrick's Crisis. Groaning, he read the first couple of paragraphs beneath Ariadne Stupenagel's byline.

A Russian agent allegedly working with the Islamic terrorists who took over St. Patrick's Cathedral and held the Pope hostage was captured by U.S. federal agents inside the cathedral last month at the conclusion of the hostage crisis, according to a well-placed source.

The public was originally led to believe that all the terrorists involved in the plot had been killed inside the cathedral, except for criminal mastermind Andrew Kane, who escaped only to drown in the Harlem River.

However, a separate government source close to the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed that a "person of interest" had been taken into custody near the cathedral rectory.

Asked if the person of interest was one of the terrorists, the only response was "damn straight she was."

Russian government officials deny that any of their agents were in the cathedral when it was stormed by federal agents. And U.S. officials have declined to comment on the record. But the first source identified the "person of interest" as former Soviet KGB agent and current member of the Russian secret police Nadya Malovo…

Murrow rubbed his eyes, hoping that it might produce a miracle that would make the story disappear, but it was still there when he looked again. He decided to add an extra jigger of vodka to the shaker. His boss, Butch Karp, was sure to assume that he, loyal and tight-lipped aide-de-camp Gilbert Murrow, was one of the unnamed sources. Karp, who'd recently been released from the hospital, was already too fond of accusing him of "sleeping with the enemy," a journalist, and this was sure to add fuel to that fire.

Karp had a love-hate relationship with Ariadne that went back decades, before Murrow was even on the scene. Part of it was that Karp considered most journalists in the same light as he did porn stars and politicians; part of it was that Ariadne had been Marlene's college roommate and there was the inevitable friction when a man came between two female friends. Sometimes when Butch and Ariadne squared off, it was all that Murrow-who at five foot eight was four inches shorter than Stupenagel and nine inches shorter than Karp-could do to step between them without being physically injured.

Karp had been surprised, and not thrilled, when Murrow and Ariadne had become "an item." He'd warned Murrow that she was a vamp-having allegedly bedded crown princes, athletes, and dictators (word had it that she'd broken Fidel's heart) to get her stories. But other than raising an eyebrow, he had not continued with his dissection of her character when Murrow politely but firmly let it be known that he did not appreciate any aspersions on his girlfriend's character.

In fact, Karp had even been willing to admit over the past couple of months that as journalists went, Ariadne was not the worst of the lot. She did not burn her bridges for a scoop. And while she could be a loud and abrasive advocate of the "people's right to know," which did not always coincide with Karp's view of what they should know, she also knew when to keep a secret.

For the most part, Karp also seemed to believe Murrow when he said that he wasn't divulging any state secrets during pillow talk. Name, rank, and serial number is all she gets out of me, Murrow had promised.

I doubt that in a literal sense, but I'll take your word for it if it means not having to hear all the squishy details, Karp had replied, but with a smile.

The truth was that Murrow knew that she was working on another story about the attack, but he purposefully didn't ask what it was about. Nor did he know where she was getting her information. He didn't want to know. As a couple, they had an agreement: he wouldn't talk with her about anything confidential from the DAO, and she wouldn't stop asking him questions and promising exotic sexual favors if he answered them. So far he'd kept his side of the bargain. Then again, because she'd been generous with the favors on what she suspiciously referred to as her "investment plan," his resolve had never been really tested.

One of Ariadne's earlier stories about the St. Patrick's Cathedral attack indicated that the terrorists had helped Kane escape.

Sources say that the plan was for Kane to then assume the identity of a federal Homeland Security agent-including plastic surgery to aid his disguise-and breach the security surrounding the Pope's visit.

Having been deprived of his vast wealth by District Attorney Karp's motions to freeze his assets after being indicted, Kane attempted to ransom the Pope for one billion dollars, which he demanded from the Vatican Bank.