Dale Brown - Puppet Master

“It’s not easy to get into,” admitted Tolevi. “But I went through the front door. I would have been able to get him out. The money was all lined up. We need to take care of that.”

“The Russian took it over?” asked Johansen.

“It looked that way. There’s some sort of power struggle going on. I’d guess the Russians are in the middle of it.”

Johansen, satisfied for now, leaned back on the seat.

They really need me, thought Tolevi. He’s playing it too cool.

But do they need me as a patsy? Or because I’m the only hope they have?

Either way, there wasn’t enough in it for him to risk his life going back.

“What was your role in all this?” asked Jenkins. “Why are you involved?”

“Ask Yuri.”

“You can tell him,” said Johansen. “He knows you work with us.”

“I’m just trying to make a living. Sometimes I help an old friend out.”

“You make a living by smuggling things.”

“It’s not necessarily smuggling. I just find a way to get things people need from point A to point B, with a lot of interference in the middle.”

“You corrupt people.”

“No. I make my living off of other people’s greed,” said Tolevi. “They’re the ones who are corrupt.”

“Which explains why you had your daughter rip off those ATM machines.”

“You keep talking about ATM machines. I have no idea what you mean.”

“You know nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“The night we arrested you—”

“He wasn’t technically arrested,” interrupted Johansen.

“The night we found you outside the bank with your daughter,” said Jenkins, correcting himself. “Why was she there?”

“She found an ATM card. Being a teenager, she wanted to try it. I punished her, don’t worry. She knows it was wrong.”

“She reprogrammed that ATM card as part of a scam.”

“What?”

“She programmed that card so it would put money into her account.”

“There’s no way my daughter would have done that.”

“That’s my point,” said Jenkins. “No fifteen-year-old girl is doing that. But she confessed. She took the fall for you.”

“Are we talking about my daughter?”

“Someone funneled over two hundred thousand dollars from people all across the city. Borya claims it was her.”

“Get away.”

“You know nothing about that?” asked Johansen.

“Borya did that? No way. She’s a good girl. There’s no way she did that.”

They stopped for a bathroom break and something to eat about two hours out of New York. On the way out of the restroom, Tolevi spotted a pay phone.

“I’m calling my daughter,” he told Jenkins.

Tolevi went to the phone and put in a quarter, then all his change to make the call.

He was still twenty-five cents short and had to borrow it from the agent.

He went straight to voice mail.

“Borya, this is your father. What the hell have you been doing with the banks? You are to talk to no one until I get there. Do you hear me? No one! And… do your damn homework.”

He slammed the phone into the receiver.

“Teenagers are tough, huh,” said Jenkins.

Tolevi gave him a death stare before starting back toward the car.

“I have a kid about the same age as yours,” said Jenkins, trailing along.

“I told her never to lie to me,” said Tolevi. “Never. How did she do this?”

“She claims she found some of the information on the Web and adapted the rest.”

“Bull. Someone put her up to it.”

“Who?”

“I’ll break his legs when I find out. I’ll feed him his balls. Was it Medved, one of his people? He’s a slime.”

“Not having your wife is hard, huh? I don’t think I could raise my girl on my own. She’s not as smart as yours, but she’s still a handful.”

“Everything is a test,” said Tolevi. “Everything.”

Johansen was waiting in the parking lot.

“I have to go deal with something,” he told Tolevi. “I’ll be back in touch.”

“When do I get my money?” said Tolevi. “I borrowed money to get the butcher out. It needs to be paid back with interest right away.”

“You didn’t get the butcher out. There’s no payment.”

“I need that money.”

“Get us the butcher.”

“The place is impenetrable,” said Tolevi. “You said it yourself.”

“Jenkins said it, not me. If you can’t do it, that’s not a problem. But we’re not going to pay you.”

“I really need the money.”

Johansen stared at him.

“I can’t go back to Donetsk,” said Tolevi. “Maybe not even Russia. Not for a while.”

“Then you have a lot of problems that I can’t solve, Gabe.” Johansen looked at Jenkins. “I’ll be in touch.”

Massina caught up with Sister Rose Marie as the nun made her way through the children’s ward. He watched her from the hall for a moment, talking with the little ones. For a woman who had never had any herself, she certainly seemed to have a way with children. She offered neither toys nor candy, yet the Good Humor ice cream truck couldn’t have gotten a brighter response as she walked through the large room, stopping at each bed. Her smile was contagious, but more so was her optimism; she exuded grace, to use the religious term, and the children were eager to soak it up.

As was he.

“I see your secret source of energy,” said Massina as she came out of the ward. “This is your fountain of youth.”

“It is. The Holy Spirit is strong with them. He always gives me energy.”

“What I have to do someday,” he told her, “is come up with a computer program that can duplicate your enthusiasm.”

She wagged her finger at him. “Computers are not people, Louis. They have no souls.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“Don’t blaspheme. Only God gives souls.”

“Why can’t God give a soul to a machine?” asked Massina. “Certainly He could. He could do anything.”

“You are always provocative, Louis. And maybe you are right. A machine with a human soul.”

“Or a machine soul, as God directs.”

“Now we are getting into areas that Sister Williams is better at,” said the hospital administrator. “Have you had lunch?”

“It’s nearly three.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me to the cafeteria anyway. I assume you want to talk.”

“Yes.”

They walked to the end of the hallway, the Sister waving and nodding to patients and staff alike.

“I had a bad experience the other night,” Massina told her in the elevator.

“I saw the news. Someone broke into your building.”

“There’s a lot more to it than that,” said Massina. He had managed to keep much of the story — including the fact that he had escaped to the roof — out of the papers and TV broadcasts. He told her about it now, lowering his voice as they went into the patients’ cafeteria. Sister Rose liked to mingle with the families; she had gotten several ideas for improvements simply by overhearing complaints. This had become more difficult over the years, however; few people in town didn’t recognize her instantly.

Sister Rose selected a tuna salad from the refrigerated display, along with a water. Massina insisted on paying.

“It sounds like quite an ordeal,” said Sister Rose Marie when they sat down.

“It was. There was a moment — I cursed God for putting me up on that roof.”

“You climbed there yourself, though.”

“True. But I felt as if He wanted me to die. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to follow his will.”