David Duffy - In for a Ruble

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. No us, though, shug. You stay away from Coryell. He’s Federal property now.”

“This is the gratitude I get?”

“So long as you’re working for Taras Batkin, it is.”

“Suppose what I’m doing for Batkin is purely personal?”

“Only thing personal about Batkin is the fact that I’m gonna nail his ass to the jailhouse wall.”

Something clicked. “You’re working with Aleksei again, aren’t you?”

“Don’t ask questions.”

“Konychev—he’s part of your case, right?”

“I said…”

“You’re having a hard time keeping Efim Ilyich on the leash, aren’t you? He’s not supposed to be going out to lunch at Maison sur Madison or anywhere else.”

“If you don’t… Oh, never mind. Dragons and treasures, that’s my new mantra when it comes to dealing with you.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“You have helped, and I’m grateful.” She gave me a squeeze and a kiss.

“Tell me this much—why all the secrecy surrounding Konychev?” I said.

“Who’s asking—you or your new client?”

“Point taken. I’ll do my own legwork.”

“You would anyway, no matter what I said.”

She did have me pegged.

“Make me one promise, though,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing for Batkin—it is personal, right?”

“Like I said, he’s worried about his stepdaughter. He thinks she’s up to something and wants to know what.” No need to remind her that whatever it was almost certainly involved the BEC. “And no money’s changing hands, if that makes a difference to you.”

She frowned. “No money? You are getting paid, right?”

I nodded. “Information. Or access to information. He’s the only guy I know who can provide it.”

Another frown. “What kind of information?”

“Family history. Gulag history. I’ll tell you all about it once I know what it is. Could amount to nothing.” Hope springs eternal.

She was looking me up and down, but the frown had turned into a smile. “This on the level—or you cooking up another one of your screwball Russian plots?”

“On the level.”

“Good. Remember, I don’t like surprises either. I gotta get to the office. Right after I thank that lion tamer you work with for the assist. And stay away from Coryell.”

I did as instructed, for the most part, because I figured the next surprise was right around the corner. I was right, and it was a doozy. But only the first in a hell of a string.

Two days is a long time when nothing’s happening. I told myself to be patient—when I was in the Cheka, two days was nothing. I used to spend weeks, months, sometimes years, working an agent until he or she paid off. But I was playing a long game then—the Cold War stretched for decades. Victories were few, at least on our side, so the time they took faded once they were recorded. This was twenty-first-century America—waiting was for losers and wimps—you were expected to produce something every day.

Victoria was antsy too—and patience, as a song goes, was not a virtue she possessed.

“Goddamned judge. How long does it take to grant a search warrant?”

“We used to get ’em in hours. On the infrequent occasions when we needed one.”

“Don’t start.”

“Just pointing out the relative merits of different systems.”

“Horse-you-know-what. You’re just pulling my chain—and enjoying it.”

I was enjoying her company—and that contributed to my feeling frisky. She appeared to be enjoying mine as well—at least she was making no haste to return to her apartment uptown. We spent most of our time together talking about things other than the business at hand—everyday things like books and music and movies. The first phase of our romance had ended before we had that chance. Now, we found that, as with art, we had little in common on any of them. Her tastes ran to Hemingway, honky-tonk, and comedy. Mine took in hardboiled noir, bop, and the filmed version of hardboiled noir. The disparities led to spirited arguments that inevitably (and happily) led to equally spirited reconciliation.

Her presence was keeping Beria at bay—as if she locked some door, and he could no longer get in, or maybe she just filled all the available emotional space with love and good cheer (interspersed with the occasional threat), and there was no room for his malevolence. It had been days since his specter last appeared. I made the assumption that this bode well for the future, in all kinds of ways.

Occasionally, we circled in on the subject at hand or one of its multiple manifestations—Batkin, Konychev, the BEC, Coryell/Druce—and if we reached a point of contention, we circled out again. We felt tension and not, we both understood the situation. Get used to it, I told myself more than once, this could be what it would be like going forward. I remembered the feeling I’d had with my ex-wife—I couldn’t talk about my work with her—and I knew where that led. This was different—and better.

While Victoria was at the office, I worked the Basilisk. Thursday, it produced a few tidbits. Coryell/Druce had returned two calls Tuesday when he got back to town. One to Andras. One to the nameless cell phone I’d matched with Nosferatu. Nothing after that. And nothing from Gina. I started to call her more than once but no news meant nothing to report. She’d get in touch when she was ready.

Disobeying orders temporarily, I made a surreptitious trip to Long Island City for a look-see. Victoria’s FBI man was watching the building. Other than that, not much going on.

Batkin called Thursday late to keep the pressure on. He wanted a progress report, he said. I had none. He wasn’t pleased.

“I can close the archive doors as easily I opened them.”

“I can walk away from a teenaged girl and her overbearing stepfather too. Neither of us benefits either way.”

We were both bluffing.

Friday morning, I realized I’d made a mistake. Ibansk.com was the catalyst, with the news that the BEC had dropped offline. Ivanov was uncharacteristically brief. He’d been taken by surprise too.

Has hell frozen over? Pigs learned to levitate? The fat lady finally bellowed?

Even Ivanov is shocked. Word reaches his humble abode that the Baltic Enterprise Commission is kaput, as in no longer functioning. The Internet is suddenly a safer place, or so we’re informed.

Ivanov is skeptical. But a survey of some of the less savory sites on the World Wide Web appears to support the news. They are indeed defunct—as in no response, nothing, nada, nichts, nichto.

Has the heavily armored scourge of the Web finally been felled by some silver cyber-bullet? Or has it only gone into hibernation?

Check back soon. Ivanov’s intrigued.

It occurred to me that I’d been looking at everything from the wrong perspective—just like I’d told Leitz. I’d borrowed his point of view, understandable in the circumstances, he was the one who’d hired me, but a mistake nonetheless. Konychev—or whoever was behind the bugging of Leitz’s computers, and my money was still on Konychev—didn’t give a damn about TV networks. He was looking for something else.

I scrolled back through Ibansk.com, noting the dates of Ivanov’s posts that mentioned trouble in the BEC. One in August, two in September, two more each in October and November, three in December, including the news of the Tverskaya attack, and two in January. The most recent, before today, was last week, the day after I’d been beaten up by Nosferatu.

Ivanov hears the premier hoster of hackers has itself been hacked—although whether this was simple vandalism or invaders with more insidious purposes is thus far unclear.