Thomas Hoover: Project Daedalus

"The Cold War's over, Alex, or maybe you hadn't heard." He strolled on, tugging his trench coat tighter. "What have we got left to talk about?"

"Please. We both did what we had to."

"I still do. Life's too short for anything else." He turned back. "Now how about telling me what's on your mind."

Vance was firm-muscled and lean, with the leathery skin of a man who drank his tequila straight and preferred spending his days in the sun, two habits that also had bestowed a network of threadlike smile lines at the corners of his sea-blue eyes. Aleksei Ilyich Novosty had phoned him at the Athenaeum Inter-Continental half an hour earlier, begging to meet him, saying it was of the utmost importance. A cab was downstairs. The driver had taken him to the old flea market at Monastiraki Square, where Alex's own black limo waited. But now Novosty was playing games, and the days for KGB games were supposed to be in the distant past. What did the man want?

"My friend, give me a moment…" Novosty wiped his brow, manicured nails glistening, then looked up and pointed. "By the way, I've always believed that one is the most exquisite female in the world. That one there. What do you think?"

"Sexy, plenty of style." Vance swept his eyes over the figure, loving how the cloth was shaped by her breast, the vague hint of thigh as one leg brushed against the gauze of her tunic. "But the lady next to her's a looker too. Always seemed a tough call."

Above them, the stone caryatids smiled down, their pale faces timeless and ethereal. They were Greek statues that served as columns for the south porch of the Erechtheum, the Ionic temple standing across from the Doric Parthenon. Down below the steep north wall of the Acropolis, the dark-glazed rooftops of Athens, city of Pericles, droused mutely in the early haze.

"Yes, perhaps you're right." Novosty brushed awkwardly at his patchy stubble, searching for an opening. He knew Vance never made the first move, always waited for the other side to show its cards. "Michael, I… is it true you occasionally still take an assignment? I mean, outside the usual work for ARM. I made some inquiries in Geneva last week. The word is-"

"Hang on. I think you're getting your team colors mixed. I work for the other side, remember?" He stooped and picked up a handful of the grainy red soil at their feet, massaging it in his fingers and wondering why it had taken him so long to get back here, to Greece. This was where he belonged. This was the place, the ancient people, he still dreamed about. But could he fit in again after so many years away? Yes, he'd make it work.

Michael Vance, Jr., had the sangfroid of one who moved easily among the decision-makers of two continents. He was to the manner born-Yale-and he'd long since concluded it was the way man was meant to live. In years past he'd been a field archaeologist, and a good one; then he'd had a brief consulting stint for the CIA. These days, he lived at the Nassau Yacht Club marina, where he moored his restored forty-four-foot Bristol racing yacht, the Ulysses, headquarters for his three-boat charter operation. He was mortgaged to the hilt, but he didn't really care. When things got tight, he could always take on a quick money job for the Association of Retired Mercenaries, ARM.

"The situation is not necessarily what you're thinking," Novosty pressed. "So perhaps you would consider-"

"Whatever it is, the answer's still no. The next three weeks are going to be spent working on a tan."

Why tell Alex the facts? Today he was in Athens for only a few hours, a stopover on the way to Crete. He glanced at his watch-an old Eterna Chronomatic, the 1946 classic he loved-and calculated that the flight for Iraklion left in less than four hours. This time tomorrow morning he would be looking in on the crew from the University of Stuttgart's dig for the German Historical Society, part of the restoration of a Minoan palace near Crete's southern shore. Novosty and all he stood for were the last thing he needed right now.

"Then at least let's have coffee," the Russian said finally, pointing. "I brought some. There in the bag."

Vance needed it, to cut his hangover. Without a word he turned to the marble steps, pried open the white paper, and reached in.

"Plastic." Dismay filled his voice as he lifted out one of the smooth Styrofoam cups and examined it, like an insect. "This nails it. Game over. Our side won all the chips. Now even Greek coffee comes American style." He frowned as he pried the white lid from the cup. "What's left?"

"It's everywhere. Perhaps they'll wrap these statues in cellophane next, who knows."

"I fear the worst." He took a sip, relishing the first hit of the dawn. It was dark and sweet, the real thing despite the container.

"Michael, please… at least hear me out." He reached for a cigarette, extracting it filter-first from his trench coat.

"I have a serious personal problem, and I don't know where else to turn."

Could it be true? Vance examined him more closely. The beard wasn't the only change. The left side of his gray coat bulged as he searched for his lighter. Alex had never bothered to carry his own protection. At least never before.

He knew Alex Novosty was part of KGB's T-Directorate, Russia’s special organization for high-tech theft. In the old days he operated out of Sophia, arranging the laundering of underground Soviet funds by mingling them with the flight capital and drug money that made its way between Turkey's Ziraat Bank, the Vatican's Istituto per le Opere di Religione, and Geneva no-questions fronts with names like the Banco di Roma per la Svizzera.

The truth was, Michael Vance, Jr., and Aleksei Ilyich Novosty had, over the years, often traveled the same paths. They used the same organizations and contacts-Novosty to conceal illicit monies, Vance to expose them.

"You know, I always enjoyed our games." Novosty looked out over Athens, his voice trailing off. "But, as you say, that was the old days. The world's changed. Now perhaps we can just be two professionals. Do some business."

He seated himself on a block of marble, still slightly moist with morning dew, and withdrew a wrinkled clipping. It was from The Times of London. "Here, read this, please."

Vance glanced down at it, then realized he had already read it on the Reuters satellite news service. He had looked it over, stored it in his news-update computer file, and promptly forgotten about it.

MOSCOW, Mar. 18-The Central Committee today lodged formal charges against a CPSU official, Viktor Fedorovich Volodin, First Secretary of the oblast of Sakhalin, in connection with his alleged embezzlement of government funds and subsequent disappearance. The island of Sakhalin, together with the Kuril Islands, is an administrative district in the far eastern region of the Soviet Federated Socialist Republics. Since being taken from Japan in 1945, the southern Sakhalin oblast has been closed to all Western visitors. The island is said to have a major military airfield at Dolinsk and a naval base at Korsakov facing La Perouse Strait, the only year-round passage between Soviet warm-water ports in Asia and the North Pacific. It is an economically and strategically vital part of the Soviet Far East, with the only oil fields in the eastern regions. The amount embezzled is reported at twenty million rubles, which would make Party Secretary Volodin responsible for the largest outright theft of state monies in the history of the Soviet Union…

Vance looked up. "The home team at play. Some ministry shell game, probably. Little budget scam. What's it got to do with you?"

"My friend, this thing is no game." Novosty crumpled his cup. In his other hand, the cigarette remained unlit. "I was… involved. Of course, I didn't know then. But if Dzerzhinsky Square finds out I stupidly let myself be-" He flicked his black Italian lighter, then inhaled. "KGB will post me to Yakutsk piece by piece. In very small boxes."