Tod Goldberg - The Bad Beat

I’d planned on leaving Sugar behind, but circumstances had changed. I hadn’t expected Big Lumpy to die. I hadn’t expected to be the unwitting dupe in some larger game-a position I was absolutely not comfortable with, but which I’d need to react to with suitable force and control. And I hadn’t expected the need to get Sam trained in the fine art of wind technology, the burgeoning echo system of black market bandwidths and, of course, make sure it was all plausible enough to get Yuri to bite on it, so that the rest of the plan could go forward. Getting a man who shot rockets into businesses off the street was a good thing, but the more tangible issue was that otherwise he would kill Brent the first chance he got. And Fiona’s death was a real possibility, too. Yuri Drubich probably considered Fiona’s breaking his wrist as bad form. What I did know, however, was that Yuri wanted to see Brent and Henry, wanted to make them pay for his inconvenience. They probably knew what Brent looked like by now, but they probably had no idea what Henry looked like. They knew enough to blow up his office, but not enough to destroy his home, which told me they were still grasping at straws.

So I needed to find someone who could plausibly pass for Brent’s father.

I needed someone who would do exactly what I said and wouldn’t ask too many questions.

I needed someone who might know how to manage a few million dollars discreetly… and who wouldn’t mind working with Sugar, if need be.

That decreased the pool by a legion.

I opened up the envelope Big Lumpy had left for Brent and read the terms and conditions of his inheritance, such as it was. A good lawyer would help, but the closest thing I had to that was another man good at moving papers around. And, as it happened, the perfect person for the job at hand, too.

“Barry,” I said into my cell phone when my favorite money launderer answered, “I need you.”

When you occupy a defensive position, it’s important to find good cover. If good cover isn’t available, a spy will try to conceal himself as best as possible. This can mean that he hides behind a bush or a mustache, in a burned-out car or on a crowded bus. Concealment provides time to reorganize and recalibrate an attack and, if done correctly, might also allow a spy to do a little… spying. Because there’s nothing a spy appreciates more than the opportunity to view and analyze his own information-which is why Sugar and I were sitting on the patio of Odessa sipping tea while we waited for Barry to show up.

None of Yuri’s people knew about me, as far as I could tell, and Sugar had escaped out the back door of Henry’s office before he could be spotted. And since Sugar’s car wasn’t registered in his name, whoever Yuri thought he was intimidating by destroying the car wasn’t actually Sugar.

If we were going to exchange information and money, I’d want to do it in public, but I’d want to do it in a place where Yuri felt comfortable, so I figured visiting his place of business was a nice way of getting the lay of the land.

Plus, I’d placed bugs inside the main shop beneath several of the shelves holding tea and accoutrements while we waited to be seated.

“You really think this is a good idea?” Sugar said.

“Well,” I said, “if anyone here suspected we were anything but tea enthusiasts, they would have poisoned us already.”

“I do feel itchy,” Sugar said.

“That’s probably an allergic reaction to being wrapped in plastic.”

“Man, I wasn’t made for this spy game,” he said.

“Which is why you shouldn’t say things like ‘I wasn’t made for this spy game’ in public. It tends to be a red flag.”

“You just want me to sit here and shut up?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sip your tea. You may find you enjoy it.”

“It tastes like dirt, you want my opinion,” Sugar said.

“That’s one thing I don’t want.”

We’d been there for only fifteen minutes and thus far I hadn’t seen a man with a broken wrist or a woman with balance issues who was also bleeding from the ears, so maybe they were both taking a personal day. Our waitress was a young Cuban woman-maybe nineteen or twenty-who didn’t seem to possess any outward signs that she was a Castro supporter here to overthrow the American government, nor did she seem all that interested in bringing us hot water in a timely manner. In fact, the entire tearoom seemed to be filled with people mostly interested in doing their jobs at the rate tea steeps. Which was fine. They didn’t even bother to attempt to peek at the folder filled with documents that I brought with me. I was just another businessman on a business lunch with his drug dealer.

But across the street from the tea shop was another story. Though the information we’d received said that Yuri’s business was registered here-which it was-I could tell now that it was both an issue of keeping up appearances and total convenience.

On the southeastern corner, there was a seven-story condo complex that looked to be made entirely of metal and glass, which made me first think that the air-conditioning bills would be enough to drive any man into an illegal trade, but then when I saw the name of the complex-the Rai Gardens-a familiar tingling sensation began working up my spine.

On the northeastern corner was a five-story office complex that flew the flags of several different countries, including, right in my line of site, the flag of Moldova, a former Soviet state located between Romania and Ukraine. I called Sam.

“How good is your Russian?” I said.

“I’ve had to replace all verb conjugations with information about bandwidth, I’m afraid. Why?”

“Because I’m sitting here at Odessa looking at a condo complex called the Rai Gardens.”

“Doesn’t rai mean ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise’ or something like that in Russian?”

“See,” I said, “you’ve retained just enough information to be useful.”

“I’m trying my best,” he said.

“I need you to do me a small favor,” I said. “Find out where our Ukrainian friend’s wife is from.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to make sure a hunch I’m having is correct,” I said. “The Moldovan Consulate is about fifty yards from the teahouse. I’m going to guess that our Ukrainian friend married a woman from across the border.”

“And that he keeps a place inside the Rai Gardens?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns the Rai Gardens,” I said. “Fiona said she got knocked out and he was there in a matter of minutes. It makes sense that he’d live close enough to asylum and his business interests. It’s too coincidental not to be true.”

“Just as soon as I finish digesting some very interesting information about the wind turbines in Dubai, I’ll be on it. But listen, Mikey, this information Big Lumpy gave us? It’s a lot more comprehensive than whatever Brent knows.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This laptop, it’s loaded with video of test sites. We’ve got formulas here that mean nothing to me but must mean something to someone. I mean, when he said that he’d make the information government secrets, I really think he meant it. He has a whole Power-Point presentation on here that I’d say he didn’t just whip up overnight before he died.”

“You know his connections,” I said.

“But what if he’s trying to screw us? What if we give this information to Yuri and it really is the kind of thing that will give him a leg up, give terrorists a leg up, too?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, Sam,” I said. “He was NSA. I don’t see him doing that. He said it would bring Yuri down, and I want to believe him.”

“I don’t know, Mikey,” he said.