Dale Brown - Puppet Master

Borya loved math — it was the only class she felt any emotion for, good or bad — but she had other things on her mind today. Like collecting the money from last night’s haul: the primary reason she’d come to school.

The bell rang. Borya glanced at the board, quickly memorizing the homework assignment, then began filing out.

“Borya, please,” said Mr. Grayson, calling her just as she reached the door.

She turned and walked back to the desk. Grayson was a tall, middle-aged man. He had a slight stoop and perpetually smelled of peppermint, which some students thought came from schnapps but Borya knew came from the candies he chain-sucked between classes. Though not handsome like her father, he was not an ugly man, if one disregarded his overgrown nose hair.

“Mint?” asked the teacher, reaching into his drawer for a bag of the candies.

“No, thank you.”

“So — asymptotes. Interesting equations, no?”

“Uh-huh.” Borya wondered why he had called her back.

“You know, you didn’t show your work on your last quiz,” he told her, still smiling.

She shrugged. “It was too easy.”

He frowned. They’d had this discussion several times. To Mr. Grayson, the steps were always more important than the actual result. Inevitably, he explained, you will reach a point where there will be a mistake, and solving it requires a precise review of steps, and your memory, no matter how good it may be, will fail.

She didn’t disagree; there certainly were situations where reviewing steps was absolutely necessary. That just didn’t include the questions on most of his quizzes. Or even the tests, for that matter.

“I’ll try to remember,” she said, taking a step to leave.

“There was something else.” Grayson had a habit of bunching his lips together when he explained a difficult concept in class. He did that now. “Some of the teachers and the principal — it’s been noted that you’re not doing that well in some of your classes. English, for example.”

“ELA? We read stupid stuff.”

“What are you reading?”

“ Catcher in the Rye .”

“Hmmm.”

“I really don’t give a shit about Holden. He’s kind of a jerk. You know what I mean?”

Grayson frowned, but clearly he did know. She could tell.

“Well, be that as it may,” he admitted. “But still, you have not been in that class.”

“I have this autoimmune issue,” she said. “Sometimes it kicks up.”

“Yes, I’ve seen. Well… is there something else, something up at home? I only ask because the principal, Sister Josephine, is concerned.”

Sister Josephine was always “concerned” about something. Unfortunately, her concern generally expressed itself in the form of detention.

“We’re good,” said Borya.

“I know your mother isn’t, isn’t with us anymore,” said Grayson quickly. “Very unfortunate.”

Borya smiled, nodded, then quickly left, knowing from experience that Grayson would have nothing else to say. Men especially were sweet when they thought about her being dead and all.

A few minutes later, Borya entered study hall, where she got a pass to go to the library. After a few minutes pretending to work on a paper about the odious Catcher in the Rye, she opened another window in Microsoft Explorer, tapped a few keys to get past the school’s rather pathetic nanny program, then entered the URL of a site that allowed her to roam the so-called black Internet without being traced. Within moments she was looking at a bank account in the Czech Republic.

Eighteen thousand dollars, exactly. Not bad for a night’s haul.

The zeroes intrigued her. Theoretically, there was nothing special in the fact that the digits aligned so perfectly, but they appealed to her sense of beauty nonetheless.

She heard the footsteps just in time, completing a small transfer to the account she used for withdrawals before closing the screen.

“Not copying, I hope,” said the librarian, peering over her shoulder.

“I don’t see why we have to read a book fifty years old,” complained Borya, not even bothering to counter the implicit accusation of plagiarism. “Do you?”

“Cite your sources,” said the woman, her voice not entirely pleasant.

“I know that.”

“J. D. Salinger is a classic,” said the librarian as she moved on. “And it’s seventy years old. Nearly. Check your sources carefully.”

School over, Borya walked down the steps and turned the corner slowly, careful not to betray any sense of urgency to the teachers she knew would be monitoring her from inside. Three blocks later, she continued to resist the urge to break into a trot, walking deliberately in the direction of her home. Mr. Grayson’s talk was fresh in her mind; she knew the nuns were “worried” about her, which inevitably meant they would be talking to her father when he got back, even if he didn’t call himself.

That could mean many things, including a possible grounding; she’d have to prepare for the worst.

Three hundred dollars in cash, rather than the usual two. The machine dispensed the money gladly. She smiled for the camera as the money came out.

Her dad was due back for the weekend. Maybe one more sweep, tomorrow night. Then lay low for a while. She was getting bored of ATMs anyway.

By the time he reached Henri Coandă International Airport in Romania, Tolevi was exhausted. The adventure at the Crimea airport was the least of it.

The flight to Armenia had been late, and his connection missed. That left him to fly on TAROM airlines, whose idea of first-class luxury was a worn leather seat in a forty-year-old Ilyushin II-18D. The four-engine Russian airliner was powered by noisy turboprops, and even though he sat toward the front of the aircraft, their drone bulldozed past his Bose noise-canceling headphones until his head felt like splitting apart. Released from the plane, he went straight to the restroom, where he soaked his face in the sink.

He caught a glimpse of himself as he swallowed four Tylenol for his headache. Tolevi looked like a Russian businessman, or maybe a member of the mafya —gray suit jacket over a plaid shirt, new leather briefcase hanging from a strap.

His black hair had a few strands of gray. Had those been there before he left the States?

He slicked them down before heading to the food court.

Tolevi’s CIA contact was milling around near the popsicle-shaped pop art sculpture by the escalator. Tolevi was surprised — ordinarily a low-level officer, usually fresh from the farm, met him. Instead, it was Yuri Johansen himself.

That couldn’t be good.

Tolevi went to the Burger King kiosk and bought a Whopper, along with fries and a shake, then found an empty table. Ordinarily, his contact would wait, confirm his identity, then follow him to the restroom, where they would make the exchange. But Johansen came straight over and asked if he could sit.

Another very bad sign.

Tolevi gestured for him to sit. He played it as if he didn’t know the man, not sure what to expect.

“We heard what happened at the airport,” said the CIA officer. “We’re glad you made it.”

I’ll bet.

“Did you get it?” added Johansen.

Tolevi glanced up at him. “When exactly have I failed?” he said in Russian.

Johansen smiled. His Russian was very good, but he stuck to English.

“We’re very appreciative. There’ll be a bonus.”

“The man I met in Kerch,” said Tolevi. “Very young. The movement — I don’t know how long they can last.”

He’d debated whether to mention it, deciding he better, in case something went wrong.