Steven Gore: Final Target

“At 9 A. M. Geneva time.”

“That quick?”

Gage nodded. “At 2 A. M. our time you call your banker and say, ‘Mr. Green will call with instructions. He has the looking glass.’”

“Looking glass?…I don’t get it.”

“You don’t need to get it. Just say exactly that-you need to write it down?”

“No. But…but what’ll happen to my money?”

“That depends on where you want it to end up.”

Matson shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“How about Costa Rica? Good place. You’ll fit in there. Lots of people speak English. But you’re gonna need a passport.”

Matson smiled, as if he finally had a correct answer. “I have one.”

“I’m thinking you don’t want the cops to figure out where you are. Right?”

“I thought of that already,” Matson said, his voice firm.

“If you use your passport, they can find you.”

“I’ve got a backup. Panama. I’ve got a Panamanian passport.” He smiled again. “And it’s real.”

“Good thinking. But if it’s in your name, they can still find you.”

“No. A friend of mine set it up. She has one, too. I used her name.”

“What’s that?”

“Tarasov.”

Gage raised an eyebrow. “Tarasov? You mean like the Russian maffiya guy?”

Matson’s eyes widened. He swallowed hard, then licked his lips. “What do you mean?” Matson’s voice rose to a squeak. “What Russian maffiya guy?”

“Well, he’s not really Russian. They just call all those guys Russian maffiya. He’s Ukrainian. Works out of Budapest. Got pushed out of Ukraine by a gangster named Gravilov. I don’t know if they ever made up. It’s hard to follow these things. You could look him up on the Internet.” Gage shrugged. “Of course, I could be wrong, Maybe she’s not related to him. There have to be lots of folks in the world named Tarasov.”

Gage paused, idly looking about the restaurant, letting Matson founder on the ragged shores of his imagination.

“I can’t remember what Tarasov’s first name is,” Gage finally said, scratching his head as if searching his memory. “No wait…it’s P-something. Pavel, Pavlo, Petro…”

Matson glanced toward the door, then mumbled to himself, “Petrovna…”

“Can’t be. Petrovna isn’t a man’s name. It’s what they call a woman’s patronymic. You know, from the father’s name.”

“Alla Petrovna Tarasova,” Matson whispered.

“What’d you say?”

Matson looked up. “I’m fucked. I’m really fucked.”

“What do you mean?”

Matson glanced at the door again. “I need a place to hide-now. Right now.”

“What kind of mess are you in?”

“I can’t say. I just can’t say.” Matson ground his hands together on the table. “You’ll get your money. Just don’t ask me.”

At 2:03 A. M. Gage’s cell phone rang as he was lying in bed next to Faith. It was Viz, Matson’s new bodyguard.

“Mr. Green. I’m with the guy. He made the call.”

At 2:04 Gage called Geneva.

“This is Mr. Green. I have the looking glass.”

Faith propped her head on an elbow.

“Yes, Mr. Green,” the banker answered.

“In two minutes you’ll receive an e-mail containing banking particulars. Transfer the entire KTMG Limited balance to that account except for ten thousand dollars to cover your fees.”

“Yes, Mr. Green.”

Gage flipped open his laptop on the bed table, sent the prewritten e-mail, then called Viz.

“Tell Matson you’ll be taking him north into the mountains for a few days, then to Costa Rica. I’ll give him the details when I get up there.”

Gage hung up and looked over at Faith, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

“Mr. Green?” she said, giggling and reaching for him. “Whatever is my husband going to think?”

Alex Z was sitting cross-legged on the landing in front of Gage’s office building when Gage walked up the stairs the next morning.

“You listen to the news on your drive in?” Alex Z said, standing up.

“No. Your new tracks. It was the first chance I had since Jack got shot. They’re brilliant, even to the ears of an old guy. I’m really proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

Alex Z swung open the door and held it for Gage.

“Why the special treatment?” Gage asked.

“You’ll see.”

Alex Z led Gage into the conference room, where he found Professor Blanchard sitting, his bleary eyes fixed on a corner television that displayed CNN coverage of an election-eve opposition demonstration in Kiev.

“Hey, Professor, what’re you doing here?”

Blanchard glanced toward Gage, then back at the television. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d catch up on Ukrainian politics.”

“Since last night.” Alex Z smiled and pointed at a cot in the corner. “He snores.”

“Your wife finally send you packing for insubordination?”

Blanchard jumped up, pointing at the television. “Here it is!”

“Explosions in Crimea” burst onto the screen, overlaying unfocused, jerky videophone images of a reporter standing against the earth-toned, minareted backdrop of Istanbul.

A shudder of relief passed through Gage as he dropped into a chair.

Then a voiceover: Turkish authorities reported that NATO satellites over the Black Sea indicate that three explosions occurred at the Ukrainian Crimean missile testing site approximately four hours ago.

Gage looked over at Blanchard, in awe of the old man with the power to reach into Central Europe and derail an arms-trafficking scheme from his little workshop in the Berkeley hills.

Since the accidental shooting down of a Russian airliner a few years ago, NATO monitors all Ukrainian missile tests. Seventy-eight passengers and crew members died in that incident. As in the case of the airplane disaster, Ukrainian authorities are denying the NATO claim. NATO is expected to release satellite images of the explosions later this evening.

“How’d you do it?” Gage asked.

Blanchard glanced over. “You wanted a Trojan horse, you got one. I made the missiles think they arrived at their targets before they left the ground.” He grinned. “And I disguised the flaw by planting a program that invaded their server. When they tested the guidance software, the results screen always displayed SatTek’s most successful performance data.”

Gage imagined the devastation on the launch pads, concerned not about Gravilov and Hadeon Alexandervich, but about the Ukrainian hourly workers who made their living pushing brooms around the missile site. “You think anybody was hurt?”

“Not unless they were riding it. They’re all supposed to be in bunkers.”

“Can they fix the other devices?”

“No. Given how close this is to the shipment date, that wasn’t a test, but a demonstration. Making these missiles was just a cookie-cutter job. And once the software is embedded in the hardware, that’s it. Finito. Burned in is burned in.”

Gage smiled. “Hadeon Alexandervich must be pissed.”

“Who?” Blanchard asked.

“The president’s son. This was his deal. His and Gravilov’s.” Gage paused, thinking about what the Middle Eastern buyers would do next. “I should’ve said their customer-probably Iran-will be pissed. Hadeon Alexandervich is about to wet his pants. It’s a big mistake to annoy the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.” The rest of the future snapped into focus. “My guess is that they’ll go after Hadeon Alexandervich, and Hadeon Alexandervich’s father will send State Security after Gravilov.”

“I thought Gravilov was the president’s roof,” Alex Z said.

“Looks like the roof just fell in.”

“What about Matson, can’t he buy his way out?” Alex Z asked.