"Oh, Sikari's efforts, his companies . . . I would like to participate in a little of it. To that end, I'd like to get a message to Harold Middleton." He was perfectly calm, vaguely amused. "I might be able to spot him a few details on Sikari."
"Such as?"
"You can understand why I might want to share that solely with Colonel Middleton."
"And you can understand why that won't happen."
Barrett-Bone feigned a sulk. "Pity."
"You'll talk to us."
"And if I don't? Please don't throw out idle threats. Your reputation precedes you. That's the problem with being honorable, you know. Damn hard to scare people."
Tesla took his face in her hand, squeezing till his lips pursed. "You tried to kill an innocent woman."
He shook off her hold, but for a moment his insouciance wavered. "Ah, that's where you're wrong. The people I represent and I had nothing to do with that. That was Sikari's cock-up. A woman on his payroll named Jana. South Asian lass, lovely to look at, nasty disposition. None too trustworthy, either."
"And what people do you represent?"
"I think you missed a subtle hint in what I just said. This Jana, she's none too trustworthy. She's a bit of a loose bird. She's playable, if the conditions dictate. And the price is right."
"Why should we believe you?"
"Well for fuck's sake, luv, why should anyone believe anybody?"
Tesla leaned close. Whispering in his ear, she said, "If you call me luv again, I'll shoot you for the sheer pleasure of it."
He regarded her with mock horror. "What is it with American women?"
"What people do you represent?"
"Look, I've already put a few cards on the table here."
"Who's the Scorpion?"
He withdrew behind a mask of coy bemusement. "I'm not sure I know who you mean. Sounds like a comic book hero to me."
"A villain, I'm betting."
He shrugged. "The narcissism of minor differences."
The driver honked at a wayward cyclist, who responded with a hand-flick to the chin. Tesla said, "You work for him. The Scorpion."
"I'm here, talking to you, on my own graces. And just to confirm my bona fides, I'm going to fill you in on a little detail that should make it clear I know of what I speak."
He cocked an eyebrow. The two women waited.
"You've seen a bracelet, no doubt. You took it off the body of a poor sod named Kavi Balan. Jana was the one who blew him up--the old exploding cell phone ploy. Understand she damn near got you with the laptop."
"So she was the one at Cap D'Antibes."
"That's right. The bracelet has a certain significance, a meaning, if you will. The elephant, the spray of water--"
"The moon," Tesla said.
"Quite."
"Tell me what the moon means."
Barrett-Bone cocked an eyebrow. "And you'll . . . ?"
"I'll consider your request to speak with Colonel Middleton more mindfully."
He sighed. "You're a tough one, miss."
"The moon. Tell me."
"Well, I'm sure you've realized it has nothing to do with Islam. Sikari being Hindu and all."
"Go on."
"The crescent moon as a symbol predates Islam, actually. Byzantium chose it long before Mohammed ever came upon the scene, as it were. It represented the goddess Diana. She was a huntress--stop me if you know the story--but she was also a protector of the weak and vulnerable. A heavenly light in the darkness, oh my." He fluttered his hand, a music hall wave. "Sometimes you see her as a torchbearer, lighting the way for others. She was regal, proud, majestic, driving her chariot through the wilderness."
"What does that have to do with Sikari?"
He shook his head. "The question you should be asking is: What does it have to do with Jana?"
"Well?"
"She's looking for the Scorpion. Everyone's looking for the Scorpion."
"Sikari too, I assume.
"What if I were to tell you that Sikari's dead?"
Tesla struggled to conceal her shock. The man who was the center of the Volunteers' mission--dead!
Barrett-Bone continued, "And killed by his own son, it seems. But Jana's still a loose cannon."
"Looking for the Scorpion."
"And maybe that's not all."
"Go on," Tesla snapped. "Tell us."
"Look, one more hint, then I'm finished. Have you heard about the Baglihar hydroelectric dam?"
Despite herself, Charley Middleton stiffened. Wiki had been hacking and cracking nearly round-the-clock the past few days, trying to break through encryption codes and fending off countermeasures--Trojan Horses, root kits, backdoors, key loggers, bots, zombie attacks--in an attempt to determine what Sikari's next move would be. That effort had revealed the existence of the Scorpion--though no details about him--as well as turning up mentions of the Baglihar dam.
Tesla shrugged. "It's a dam being built in India."
"Kashmir," Barrett-Bone corrected. "More precisely the Jammu region of India-administered Kashmir."
"The area Sikari comes from."
"Quite."
"What about it?"
"You know there's a bloody serious dispute over the thing."
Pakistan had protested to the U.N. that the dam threatened irrigation from the Chenab River, on which the country's agriculture relied. It even went so far as to accuse India of deliberately going ahead with the project simply to deprive Pakistan of the water it needed to survive. Negotiations between the two countries had broken down over the issue of Islamic terrorism in the region, and so the World Bank, which brokered the 1960 Indus Water treaty for Kashmir, had appointed an arbitrator to review the dispute. Just recently the arbitrator had issued his determination: India, which claimed the dam was needed to provide much-needed electric power, was fully within its rights to finish the project, with a minor concession of lowering the spillway five feet.
Tesla said, "What does the dispute have to do with Sikari? His side won."
"Did it now?" Barrett-Bone sank back into the seat, arms crossed, winking. "I'm afraid that's all I'm prepared to say. For now. Till I get my face-to-face with the fabled Harold Middleton."
As prison cells went it wasn't half bad--one of those vast drafty rooms in some provincial estate house on the outskirts of Moscow, or possibly out in the neighboring countryside, a relic from the Romanov era, showing all too well the inevitable wear and principled neglect of the socialist century.
The floorboards were dull and pitted, the walls dingy and water-stained. The windows had been sealed up, leaving a musty smell of mildew and rot, tinged with the scent of wood smoke seeping in from somewhere. Not here--no wood in the fireplace, no warming blaze, just a ridiculously clap-trap space heater resembling a helmet with a red-hot face behind the grille. It gave off about as much heat as a nightlight. Except for three rickety chairs, it was the only piece of furniture in the room.
Middleton gathered his coat tight around his body, breath purling out from his nostrils in airy plumes. His lips felt numb.
How many hours had they kept him here? How many more to go--and what then?
At least there'd been no torture, not for him. He'd heard the cries from elsewhere in the large house--the woman with the buzz-cut hair, he supposed, his attacker. Ruslan's killer. They'd spare her no excess. The questioning would almost be secondary.
He glanced up at the ceiling, a stained expanse of yellowing plaster blistered and cracked to the point it resembled a contour map. He'd sat there staring up at it for hours at a time, creating an imagined landscape, tracing the rivers, the feed-streams and tributaries, the floodplains, the drainage basins, the terraced hillsides and marshy wetlands and vast beckoning steppes. Where would the cities reside, he wondered, where the outlying villages? From which direction would the Mongol horsemen--or the Nazis' vaunted Sixth Army--invade?
When this manner of passing time faltered, he closed his eyes and tried to mentally reconstruct the late Beethoven sonatas, the
Hammerklavier in particular, with its echoes of Bach in the fourth movement fugue--which of course only reminded him of Felicia.
And this was his third manner of passing the time: He wondered where she was, if she was all right. If she was alive. His guilt quickened into rage that melted into fatherly concern that dissolved into hopeless sorrow. In time the despair would slither on to Charley, then Leonora--named for Leonore, heroine of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio--which would return him to his mental reconstruction of the sonatas, until at last the ceiling beckoned once more.
He tried not to think of Ruslan. The bearish Russian had known the risks, they all did. Even so . . .
The room's lone door opened. Mealtime, he supposed. Breakfast? Lunch? Supper? He'd lost all sense of time. But instead of the hunched and ferret-faced crone--a real one this time--who'd delivered his tray of borscht and black bread earlier, served with a raw quartered onion and a glass of vodka, a tall and well-dressed man appeared: vigorous, vaguely military, with that chiseled Slavic bone structure, the uniquely soulful eyes. He wore a simple black suit beneath a heavy wool overcoat; his bluchers were muddy. Entering alone, he closed the door behind him, to the clatter of deadbolts from the hallway outside.
"Mr. Middleton," the man said, his English suggestive of British tutelage, not American. "I trust you've not been too terribly inconvenienced?"
His smile seemed sincere, his tone matter-of-fact. Middleton thought of the screams he'd heard through the walls just hours before--inconvenienced? "Not in the least." He wrapped his coat tighter and glanced up at the ceiling. "I've been admiring the view."
The stranger obligingly followed his eyes. "My apologies for the delay. We wanted to be sure we had the facts before troubling you."
The facts. Of course. That's what torture provides, the troubling facts.
"I suppose it would be impertinent of me to ask who, exactly, you mean by 'we,'" Middleton said. He assumed the old KGB men who'd saved him had fobbed him off on some shadowy element within the security apparatus. Gangsters, maybe. Perhaps both.
The stranger smiled, pulled up one of the other two skeletal chairs, brushed its dusty surface, sat. "I'm at liberty to tell you this: There are several groups very interested in--how to put it?--acquiring you, let's say. Considerable sums have been offered. Tempting sums. But we--and no, I will not tell you any more about who 'we' are--do not concern ourselves so much with financial reward as the singular satisfaction provided by one thing and one thing only: information. We like knowing what's going on. It's our reason for being."
Bingo, Middleton thought. Remaining poker-faced, he said, "Would it be too much to have your name?"
"Yes. I'm sorry." The smile remained rigidly in place. "No names. We're prepared to protect you, Mr. Middleton, from those who would gladly pay for the privilege of your company. People who would, I'm afraid, most definitely make things very difficult for you. But in return for this protection we are offering, we expect something in return."
The Man with No Name's voice trailed off into the void. He extended his hands in either direction, to suggest the vast store of knowledge--the information--he expected to receive.
"Several groups," Middleton said. "I can think of just two who might be interested."
"You underestimate your worth."
"This interest is current?"
"No. Some of it appears to go back a ways. You have made your share of enemies, Mr. Middleton. I find that admirable, incidentally. But yes, two groups originally found their way to a back channel, contacted us, inquired. Then a third came forward--same realm of interest, let's say. The others seem to bear old grudges, but once they learned there was a bidding war, they were spectacularly obliging."
Three, Middleton thought. Sikari, the Scorpion and who else? Chernayev? But why would he bid against Sikari? And how could he know that Middleton was interested in him? "It appears I have little choice."
The impish smile lingered, even as the man shrugged. "As Sartre says, one always has a choice, if only in how to die."
Middleton considered it. He could hand himself over to his enemies, but why? They would suffer no hesitation. They would most certainly make things difficult. They would inconvenience him. He shuddered, picturing it. He knew he had his virtues, knew himself to be selfless and moderately brave, but he lacked certainty on the issue of withstanding torture hour after hour, day after day, week upon week. Perhaps he would have the spine to lie, buy time. But when there was no more time to purchase, what then?
And it wasn't just his own torture to consider. The old KGB apparatchiks had taken both of his cell phones, the encrypted one and his regular one. All it would take is one call to Wiki, Leonora, Felicia, Charley--the signal would pinpoint their locations.
Middleton chafed his hands together to warm them. "How shall we do this?"
You would have thought he'd just praised the man's taste in lovers: The smile turned gracious, his sad eyes shone. "Well, don't laugh, but I prefer the dialectic approach."
Who is this character, Middleton wondered. "Fire away."
"Let's start simply. You are interested in Devras Sikari. Correct?"
Middleton didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"Very good. And why did you come here in that quest? To Russia?"
That wasn't a question. It was a test. "One of my people was killed, another badly wounded, by an explosion in Florida at a location linked to Sikari. The device used was thermobaric, which suggested a Russian source, given the army's use of such weaponry in Chechnya and--"
The man raised his hand. "Please, Mr. Middleton, do not insult me." The smile faded. "U.S. Marines have used thermobaric weapons in Iraq. They were used extensively in the second battle for Fallujah. The device is called a SMAW, shoulder-launched multi-purpose assault weapon. It was used against fortified positions--houses, mosques. You think we don't know this? Good God, a six-year-old who can Google could tell me as much."
Middleton replied, "And did you think I wouldn't have other leads?"
"I'm serious, Mr. Middleton. If you are not candid with me, your value plummets. Especially vis-a-vis the sums of cash being offered."
Middleton pulled the collar of his overcoat tight against the chill. "If you'll let me finish? This Russian connection was Arkady Chernayev. I hope to speak to him. I want to know about these explosives."
The man's smile vanished entirely. "You were going to talk with Arkady Chernayev."
"I had to try."
"To accomplish what? Do you hear what you sound like?"
"The group I represent does not have much but persuasion in its arsenal."
"You hoped to persuade him."
"Yes."
"You're either a fool or a liar."
For a moment Middleton wondered if he'd been wrong. Perhaps this man wasn't some rogue intelligence agent after all, but one of Chernayev's operatives--though his protestations had a vaguely theatrical ring. He was vamping, trying to goad a response. And what would Middleton tell him--the truth? That he believed Chernayev and a great many other Russians saw an arms race on the subcontinent as inevitable. Worse, that China, before that arms race proceeded much further, would invade Kashmir from its own controlled areas in Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract, doing so for the water, contriving some pretext for the offensive such as protecting an otherwise expendable ethnic minority. Russia could either get drawn into a ground war with China or let proxies wage the fight for it--enter Chernayev. The reason his company had been bailed out during the recent financial crisis was because of his pledge to use his private army to facilitate the development of a friendly force in Kashmir--nationalists perhaps, rabid idealists no doubt, but still susceptible to simple bribery. Would they remain so with a secret source of heavy water, a cache of nuclear arms? Was Chernayev aware of the copper bracelet? Were his Russian facilitators?
All of this went through Middleton's mind as he pondered the man's question: Why would Chernayev involve himself in such an outlandish scheme?
/> But in any case, Middleton needed information. He decided to play the man right back. He took a gamble. "I didn't have any choice but to come here. My leads to the Scorpion dried up. Chernayev was all I had left," he bluffed.
The reaction was subtle but telling. Trying not to sound eager, the man said, "What do you know of the Scorpion?"
"So he's not bidding for me?"
No answer.
Middleton had a flash. And tried another gamble. "I don't know much," he said. "But I'll tell you it was confusing. We couldn't figure out how one individual could pay for all of Sikari's education and then stake him after he graduated with start-up capital for his corporations? It had to be companies or foundations that were involved."
The man replied as if the Scorpion's support of Sikari were common knowledge. "You never thought that the companies he, or she, owns ultimately were set up as subterfuge. Layers upon layers of companies. Like BlueWatch."
"BlueWatch?" Middleton frowned. "The security outfit in Dubai?" BlueWatch had been the subject of a number of investigations following the shooting deaths by overly enthusiastic employees around the world. Most of the investigations had ended without any prosecutions--some said the company had intimidated prosecutors and judges, forcing them to drop charges.
The man said, "But the cash ultimately came from one individual who controlled all the companies. The Scorpion."
So he'd not only confirmed the Scorpion had paid for Sikari's education and financed his companies but that, for some reason, No Name and his organization, whatever it was, had been following the Kashmiri's story very closely. And undoubtedly they too were eager to find the Scorpion.
Which told Middleton that he--or she--was the answer to everything.
"Well," he told his captor, "like I was saying, we weren't successful in finding the Scorpion."
No Name continued, "Do you know Sikari's own description of his benefactor? He said he was 'holy, but of this world.'"
"Yes, but I think that was a corrupted translation. The words Sikari used were jnana and vijnana. The prefix vi, when added to a noun, tends to diminish or invert the meaning of that noun. Jnana is spiritual knowledge. Vijnana, then, is practical or profane knowledge. Sometimes vijnana and jnana, used together, are meant to suggest knowledge and wisdom. All he meant was the man had not just a worldly but philosophical bent."
No Name shrugged. "What more do you know about this Scorpion? Tell me and I'll make your life here easier."