Matthew Dunn - Slingshot

Alina looked uncertain. “If he’s not dead yet, right now he’s as good as dead. Isn’t sending the message worth the risk?”

“Would you be willing to press Send on your phone, knowing you might actually be pulling a trigger?”

“I. .”

“In any case, there are other risks.”

Alina frowned.

Moving to the sofa, he sat next to Alina and held one of her hands between his. “I believe that the man who’s leading Lenka’s captors is very smart. There’s every possibility that he will suspect your message was dictated by me. That would place you in danger.” He glanced at Maria. “ Both of you.”

“We could move somewhere safe.”

“Where?”

“My parents’, or my aunts’.”

“Does Lenka know their identities and locations?”

“Yes, he’s. . Oh, I see.”

Lenka could be tortured to reveal their addresses.

“I’m sorry-we can’t discount that possibility. Plus, I suspect you’d need to keep up your work at the university.”

“I have to earn my salary.”

“No doubt, but they could get you there.”

Alina squeezed his hand. “There must be something we can do.”

“Maybe, but sending a message would endanger far too many people.”

Including his sister.

Alina stared at nothing and said quietly, “You said you’d try to bring him back to me. Did you mean what you said?”

“Yes.”

Alina looked at him and smiled. A tear ran down her cheek.

Will said, “There is still hope.”

“What hope?” She yanked her hand away from him. “You don’t know where he is; you don’t know who he’s with; you know nothing about the paper he’s stolen; and you don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

Will nodded. “All of that has to change. I need his home address in Russia. Can you give that to me?”

Alina frowned. “Sure, but. . how can that be useful?”

“Have you been there before?”

“Three times. It’s a rural cottage, outside Moscow.”

“Did you notice whether he keeps a safe in the house?”

“I don’t think so. . No, I’m sure I’d have seen one if it was there. The house is small.”

“Does he have a private space-a locked cabinet, drawers, anywhere that he’d use to keep things that only he could access?”

The confusion on Alina’s face was evident. “No. I told you before: he didn’t like to hide anything from me.”

“That might be true, but he might have wished to hide something from you that he considered dangerous.”

“Like what?”

“Information.” Will stood and put on his overcoat. Maria was still playing with the shapes. Will grabbed one of them and moved it quickly back and forth on the wire while smiling at the child. Maria giggled and tried to get the shape, but Will moved it out of reach, then gave it to her. He thought for a moment before reaching into a pocket and withdrawing his wallet. It contained 1.6 million Belarusian rubles, the approximate equivalent of two hundred dollars. He pulled out all of the cash and held it toward Alina. “I don’t know if it’s enough to get a new baby carriage, but please accept it.”

Alina looked offended. “We manage. I don’t need your charity and I certainly don’t need spy money.”

Will tried to think what to say. He settled on honesty. “It’s my own cash, and in any case if you get her a new carriage it will save me from being petrified that I’m going to slip while carrying her next time I come.”

“Next time?” Alina’s expression had changed.

“Just. .” Will felt awkward. “Just to see you’re both okay.”

Alina’s eyes narrowed. “Lenka may not be in my life right now, but as you say, I must have hope that he’s alive and will come to me. I’ve no desire for another lover.”

Will sighed. “That’s not why I’m here.”

The anger returned. “I agree. You’re here because you have an agenda to get the stolen paper.”

“ Please, take the money.”

“Are you attempting to cleanse your conscience?”

Will shook his head. “No, no.” He gestured toward Maria. “I just want her to have a waterproof roof over her head. That’s all. Please .”

Alina’s expression became neutral. “No strings?”

“None.”

She hesitated, then took the money. “I can’t say it won’t help. What do you hope to find at Lenka’s house?”

“A secret.”

“Won’t the police have searched the place and be guarding it?”

“Probably.”

“Then you mustn’t go there.”

Will saw that she was genuinely concerned. “You’re right that I’ve got no idea what’s going on. But I have to go there. It’s my only chance of helping Lenka.”

She kept her eyes on him, seemed deep in thought, and said quietly, “He told me before our first visit to his home that he’d made the place ‘Maria-proof,’ that he bought a gate for the stairs so that she couldn’t hurt herself by climbing them, that the only dangerous place was the basement, though he kept that padlocked.”

“Basement? Where?”

“In the hallway.”

Will studied her. “What’s in there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do! You have no secrets, remember?”

For a moment, Alina looked angry. Her expression changed. “Lenka told me once that if anything were to happen to him, I should go to the basement. One of the electricity sockets is false. Behind it is a hole. He keeps money and valuable documents in there.”

“Thank you.”

Alina shrugged and said in a matter-of-fact way, “I think we’d like it if you came back. Can you eat kotleta pokrestyansky ?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll cook the dish next time you’re in Minsk.”

Very few women had cooked for Will. For the briefest of moments, he felt totally removed from the real reason he was here. “I’ll trim the pork cutlets, if you like?”

Alina nodded. “That would be a help.” She moved away from him. “I. . I’ll write down Lenka’s address.”

As she walked out of the room, Will placed one of his big scarred hands against Maria’s cheek. She looked at him and smiled. Quietly, he sang her a children’s song, one he remembered from his childhood, and when he finished he stared at her, feeling nothing but guilt. He was sure his decision not to send the message was the right one. It was probable that William would have seen through it and in turn would have killed Lenka and gone after Alina, Maria, and Sarah. But it was possible that the ruse would have worked. He wondered if Mikhail had a young daughter.

It seemed ever true that in order for him to save one person, at least one other had to die.

Tibor walked quickly along the corridors of CIA headquarters in Langley. He was in the part of the building that housed the National Clandestine Service and specifically was moving through the section belonging to the Office of Russian and European Analysis. Most of the doors in the corridor were closed; beyond them were intelligence officers who kept their doors shut to protect their secrets from others within the organization. Tibor smiled as he continued walking, because no number of closed doors could prevent Flintlock having access to the CIA’s secrets.

As he moved along the corridor, he mentally ticked off the operations and investigations that he knew were ongoing within the rooms on either side of him-a four-person team was planning an attempt to sell a Brussels-based Russian FSB officer a vehicle which, unbeknown to him, contained a beacon tracking device; a case officer was pouring over one of his French agent’s files because he was beginning to wonder if the agent’s intelligence was too good to be true; a team leader was berating her staff after a countersurveillance operation in Copenhagen had gone badly wrong and resulted in a CIA operative being held in a Danish police cell for two days; a nervous officer was making preparations to up the ante after years of grooming a GRU major under business cover, and get on a plane to meet the major in Zurich and tell him that in truth he was not an arms dealer and that the major had instead been passing secrets to an officer of Serbia’s Security Information Agency; an operations officer was at loggerheads with a paramilitary officer because one wanted a mission against a Chechen terrorist to continue to be invisible satellite surveillance and the other wanted to bring it to a head with a joint SOG-SEAL assault; and an intelligence officer was sitting at her desk doing nothing, racked with grief and guilt because one of her best Russian agents had taken his own life to end the constant fear that one day he’d be caught and exposed as a traitor.