Dale Brown - Puppet Master

The first order of business was gathering information, and the best place to do that was in the local bars. Tolevi assigned Dan and the brother a job: find a good place to stay in town, the nearer city hall, the better. And then he went to drink in some gossip.

Many things about Johnny Givens’s new “condition” were strange, but the weirdest were the shoes.

The feet on his prosthetic legs had been designed to replicate his “original” feet, so that as much as possible walking felt like it always had been. And it did. Except when it came to putting on the shoes.

While Johnny had considerable control over his “feet” and could even wiggle his toes, the prosthetics could not be manipulated to quite the same degree as his “original” feet. This made it hard to get his old shoes on without a shoehorn. Even with a shoehorn it could be difficult; it was far easier to put the shoes on the feet when they were off his body. But though physically easier, mentally it was very difficult — there was no more obvious example that he was now literally half the man he had been.

And it was just strange, like dressing a mannequin. Only he was the mannequin.

Johnny adjusted the shoes and then began strapping the legs to his stumps. Unlike “conventional” prosthetic legs, Massina’s version used feedback via the nerve endings in what remained of his upper thighs to communicate with his brain, interfacing through a series of contacts implanted in the stumps. The arrangement didn’t fool his brain into thinking that he still had his original legs, but the feeling was close, as if he’d put on a heavy snowsuit and clunky boots.

Eventually, it might all feel very familiar, and even comfortable. Eventually.

In the meantime, there was enough flex, as well as support, in the prosthetics to allow him not only to walk but also to run fairly well. In fact, he could run faster and with far less fatigue, thanks to actuators in the leg that literally put a spring into his step. He suspected that he might do extremely well in next year’s marathon, assuming he was in shape to enter.

Which meant a lot of running in the meantime. And for want of something better to do, he decided to start training that evening.

One leg at a time, just like always.

Gestapo Bitch’s joke. He liked her now, admired the way she had goaded him into working harder and harder. She was the perfect bitch, as good as the drugs he was taking, maybe even better.

Johnny strapped on his legs and connected the electrodes. He pulled on his pants, making sure the Velcro straps at the bottom were secure; the pants had always been a tiny bit big.

They were very big at the waist now. Amazing how much weight he’d lost.

Don’t need to stretch these babies. Just grab the phone, some backup dough, and rock ’n’ roll.

Johnny slipped his wallet clip — which held his FBI creds, a credit card, and a few bucks in cash — into his pocket, next to the phone, and hit the road.

The mayor was, by all accounts, a man of extremely sober reputation, completely incorruptible.

The deputy mayor, on the other hand, was open to all offers, intending to make as much as he possibly could before he was fifty, then cash in and move to Crete. Crete was not only the most beautiful place in the world but it was also the home of the world’s most beautiful women, and when he was rich, the deputy mayor was going to bed them all, one by one. This was his God-given right, and anyone who stood in his way would answer for it.

Tolevi heard all of this from the deputy mayor himself, who held forth at кінської голови — Kins’ koyi Holovy, or Horse Head, a bar two blocks from town hall. The man weighed three hundred and fifty pounds if he weighed an ounce, and however he had managed to get his job, his fellow citizens, at least those in the bar, gave him a wide berth. He had a volatile temper, which he hinted at as he spoke, gesticulating wildly even when making a mild point. Three times as he and Tolevi spoke about the power plant and the local coal that fed it — the most benign subject Tolevi could imagine, short of the weather — the deputy mayor balled his fist up and slammed it on the table.

Tolevi could not have wished for a better person to deal with, temper or no. After most of the bar’s patrons had cleared out for the night, he suggested that they move to a table near the back.

“Why?” asked the deputy mayor.

“Maybe we can do business,” said Tolevi nonchalantly.

“What business?” The tone could not have been less pleasant if Tolevi had threatened to rape the man’s daughter. “What business with you, Russian?”

“I am actually from America,” said Tolevi. “And my business is bringing things to Ukraine, where my family was born.”

“What things?”

“Aspirin, cough medicine. And real coffee.”

“You can import these things to my town?”

“Let’s get a bottle and talk.”

The deputy mayor was fond of single malt scotch whisky, expensive under any conditions but outrageously priced here. Tolevi put down three hundred euro for a bottle of Macallan 12-year, which represented a markup approaching ten times what the original would have cost at the distillery.

He brought the bottle back to the table and poured the deputy mayor a drink, three fingers of scotch neat, no ice, no chaser.

The Ukrainian took the glass in hand, toasted the room, guzzled the liquor, and slid the glass back for a refill.

“Where’s yours?” he asked Tolevi as he took back the glass.

“I don’t like scotch.”

“I don’t drink alone.”

Sociable devil, aren’t you?

Tolevi reluctantly went to the bar for a glass and some ice. By the time he came back, the deputy mayor had drunk about a quarter of the bottle.

“So what is your business?” asked the deputy mayor.

“As I said, I bring things across the border,” said Tolevi. “My business is mainly in Crimea, but I’m looking to branch out.”

“Why here?”

“Because there is money to be made,” said Tolevi.

“We have our suppliers.”

“The shelves are bare in the pharmacies. No aspirin. And many other things.”

The deputy mayor shrugged. Clearly the man was a dolt.

“Band-Aids,” continued Tolevi. “Cough medicine—”

“We have many such items in town with the plant. They can get us anything we want. We are richer than Donetsk by far. Richer than Kiev. Even than Moscow.”

“How’s your coffee?” asked Tolevi.

It was the magic word. The deputy mayor lowered his drink.

“Tell me more about your business project,” he said. “How exactly does it work?”

Massina watched the girl as she described what she had done. Much of it was simply adapting program code she had found on so-called black sites on the dark Web — an illegal area used by hackers and other miscreants for various illegal purposes. She had a good understanding of how the different systems worked, and she knew how to look for “holes” or problems inherent in the programming.

She was creative. She was young. She was smart.

The question: Was she inherently evil? Or just a kid who needed guidance?

Chelsea was convinced it was the latter. But Massina could tell by looking at her face that she had some doubts as well.

Not that she would admit them to him.

Giving back the money was the first step. The girl hadn’t spent much; by the FBI’s accounting, less than five thousand. He’d agreed to guarantee a full recovery, which meant he’d be out that.