Deception (4 page)

“The wrong room?”

“Right name. Wrong person.”

Keyes closed his eyes.

Leonard was starting to swear again. The man could curse like a stevedore—a skill he had no doubt learned with the circus. Keyes opened his eyes and looked at the fish pond. A sliver of orange darted below the surface. The beauty and balance of nature, he thought. The fish moved in tiny circles—circles within circles. The entire garden was oriented to create natural, soothing flows of energy.
Relax.

“The damned bellboy,” Leonard was saying. “He gave me the wrong—”

“I'll take care of it,” Keyes promised.

“Easy for you to say. You're not the one—”

“Relax,” Keyes said, and then exhaled, trying to take his own advice. “I need you to hang on. Where are you?”

“I'll call back,” Leonard said, and the connection went dead.

3.

He was missing lunch as well as breakfast.

He used the thought of the dinner awaiting him—a big dinner, a one-thousand-five-hundred-calorie dinner—to keep his spirits up as he prepared for Leonard's return call. He desperately needed
something
to keep his spirits up. All these resources and all these employees, he thought—all this feng shui and all the fish in their little Japanese gardens—and still events were spiraling out of his control.

Should have gone to the DIA
, he thought.

The Defense Intelligence Agency was officially responsible for security concerning Applied Data Systems. But if it came out that Epstein had run, those higher-up might lose faith in Keyes's ability to direct this particular show. In reality, of course, the fault lay not with Keyes, but with chance. The damned Italian bellboy had given the wrong room, because there had been two Epsteins in the hotel. A stupid mistake; an unpredictable one.

Don't make it worse
, he thought.

Go to the DIA.

No. Barbarians at the gate. As long as he had other options—such as Roger Ford and Ron Nichols—he would use them.

Roger Ford had been a friend since college. The friendship had deepened after graduation, when they'd both found themselves inside the Beltway, two ambitious young bachelors trying to make their careers. In the years since, they had gone their separate ways; Ford had ended up CIA, Keyes ADS. Yet the foundation had been laid, and the friendship remained.

Ron Nichols was an employee of ADS whose official position was “Crisis Management Counselor.” Each year, Ron Nichols collected a paycheck of one hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars. But Ron Nichols did not exist. Keyes had created the identity sixteen months before, to maintain an emergency fund for special occasions just such as this. When Ford supplied a name as a personal favor, the expenses were paid out of Ron Nichols's pocket.

ADS, existing as it did in a shadow capacity, experienced both advantages and disadvantages compared to other government agencies. The advantages were primarily financial. Keyes's budget pinched a little here, a little there. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, had come up with the lion's share of the money. From LANL—Los Alamos National Labs—he had lifted some key personnel, in addition to a hefty chunk of funding. The rest had been appropriated from the NSA, whose funding was entirely black—not specifically accounted for in the general U.S. budget, resulting in the nickname “No Such Agency.” The five-thousand-dollar ashtrays purchased by the White House helped, in reality, to finance the NSA.

But there was a flip side. So many chefs in the kitchen meant that everybody felt ADS should be accountable to them. There were dozens of people, scores of people, like Dick Bierman, just waiting for Keyes to fuck up. Then they would step in and make a grab for the reins themselves.

So he couldn't go to the DIA—not while there were other options available to him.

Daisy came into the office and set a file on his desk. He gave her a nod and turned his attention back to the phone in his hands. He was speaking with an Italian policeman who believed Keyes was a detective second grade of the New York City Police Department, tracking a murder suspect who, according to a tip from his ex-wife, had fled to Venice.

By the time Leonard called again, he was ready.

“Epstein boarded the ship this morning,” Keyes said. “It means he doesn't think anyone's followed him. So you'll have no problem.”

Leonard muttered something.

“Spilled milk,” Keyes said. “No use in dwelling on it.”

Leonard said nothing. Keyes quickly moved on, all business.

“They'll reach Methoni tomorrow, spend the day there, and pull out again after dinner. What I want you to do is get yourself to that island tonight—”

He consulted one of the several files open on his blotter.

“—and find a room. There are six hotels; any one will do. The nearest airport is Kalamata, about thirty miles away. Once you've got that taken care of, let Daisy know the details. I'm putting together some backup on this end. They'll meet you at the hotel, and lend a hand.”

“Backup?” Leonard said.

“Mm. After you book the room—”

“I work alone,” Leonard interrupted.

“Not this time, you don't. If it had gone right in the hotel …”

“That wasn't my fault.”

“I realize that,” Keyes said steadily. “But you'll need backup. Because you're going to do it at the fortress of Sapienza, tomorrow morning. And while you're doing it, we'll need someone to go aboard the ship, to clean out the man's cabin.”

In fact, Keyes thought, this was likely not necessary. Epstein may or may not have destroyed the paper Greenwich had glimpsed, which contained formulae that predicted the lifetime of microscopic black holes, according to Greenwich, so brilliantly. But whether or not the paper still existed hardly mattered. Greenwich had assured Keyes that Epstein's results could be repeated—by Greenwich himself.

All that mattered was that Epstein be silenced before he caused too much of a stir. Regaining the formula itself, however, would let Keyes rest easier over these coming days. Not only would he have it for himself, but he would also be assured that it hadn't fallen into other hands. And although he did not exactly doubt Greenwich's claim that he could reproduce the results, he would rather leave nothing to chance. So he would err on the side of caution.

“Fortress of what?” Leonard was saying.

“Sapienza. That's where the tour group's heading tomorrow. Find a spot where you'll be able to get it done. And leave no witnesses. Can you handle that?”

“I'll handle it,” Leonard assured him.

“Let Daisy know the details,” Keyes said, and hung up.

For a minute, he did nothing but stare blankly at his desk. Then he reached for the phone again, and dialed Roger Ford in Washington. Lately he had been calling in too many favors. Even the oldest friendships—perhaps especially the oldest friendships—could be taxed only so far. But he was willing to take the chance. He needed to finish this now, and that meant playing hardball.

When it came to playing hardball, nobody beat Roger Ford.

Ford sounded busy; they ran through pleasantries in record time. Then Ford asked if Leonard had been able to supply the services that Keyes had required. Keyes informed him that there had been a slight problem—no fault of Leonard's—and he was anxious to put together a team to set things right.

“A small team,” Keyes said. “Just one or two. Men who can get the job done. And they have to be available now—today.”

Ford sounded distracted; Keyes could hear fingers tapping on a keyboard. “What kind of job are we talking about?”

“He'll need to penetrate a secure area and conduct a search. And be able to handle himself if something goes wrong.”

Ford paused. Keyes waited, unsure if the man was considering the problem or working on something else.

“I'm thinking of a name …”

Keyes reached for a pen.

“A man named Dietz. He retired a few years ago. But he still does us a favor from time to time, off the record.”

“Background?”

“A decade at Langley in the seventies. In eighty-three he became part of a joint FBI-CIA operation called COURTSHIP. Working in New York City, recruiting KGB to spy for Uncle Sam. When the FSB—Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti—came around, the game changed a bit. New blood. By spring of ninety-one Dietz burned out, and took early retirement. But once or twice a year, he comes out again—off the record, as I said. For the paycheck, I assume.”

Keyes frowned. “I was hoping for field experience.”

“Dietz qualifies. When he does a job for us now, it's not pushing papers.”

“Got a number?”

Ford gave him a number. They ran through more cursory pleasantries, then Ford announced that he had a meeting and hung up.

Before making his next call, Keyes paused.

Could the two of them—Leonard and Dietz—get it done? If he went ahead with his own people now, instead of going to the DIA, he would be committing himself even more than he had already.

They could get it done, Keyes thought. They were professionals, and there wouldn't be anyone aboard the ship equipped to offer much trouble, even if he felt so inclined. The passengers were most likely elderly. The crew was doubtless underpaid. At worst there would be an overzealous security officer, who would quickly find himself in over his head if he tried to interfere. Yes, Epstein had made a fatal mistake in running to the ship.

At first, Keyes had assumed it was a feint—Epstein had let his wife make the reservations in order to throw ADS off his track. But the Italian police had seen him boarding the ship that morning, and so now he was trapped. A sitting duck.

Strange, that so brilliant a man could make such a stupid mistake.

But mistakes happened. Witness the hotel room fiasco, he thought. Mistakes happened all the time, and geniuses like Epstein were no less prone to them than others. In fact, Epstein was notoriously absent-minded, even among his own colleagues. The sort of brain that could juggle imaginary numbers like bowling pins was not the same sort of brain that paid the rent on time each month.

And Epstein had run almost on a whim, at the beck of some strange higher moral calling. After making his breakthrough, the week before, he had panicked. He had not thought things through.

But maybe Keyes should give the man more credit. Maybe Epstein's moral qualms were only a matter of Keyes's own projection. Maybe the man planned on selling his secrets to the highest bidder. Or perhaps he had run so blindly only because he had no intention of living long enough to be captured. If he had stumbled onto something that could make the atom bomb look like a child's toy, after all, he might have felt that suicide was the only way to keep his discovery safe …

… well, that would be just fine. Epstein's results would be repeated by Greenwich. On that, he had Greenwich's word.

The important thing was to silence the man. Within twenty-four hours, it would be done. Then things could get back to normal.

An explosion thundered, from far underground. The photograph of his son jittered on his desk. Keyes reached out and straightened it.

Back to normal, he thought again. Or as normal as things ever got, around ADS.

He reached for his phone and dialed the number Roger Ford had given him.

THREE

1.

“My first time on a cruise,” Jill Murphy said, “I was puking the whole time.”

She shoveled a forkful of bacon and eggs into her mouth—a diminutive woman of about sixty-five, with close-shorn platinum-blond hair and lively emerald eyes.
Spitfire
was the word that came to Hannah's mind to describe her. That was likely a more generous term than Jackie Burns, the cruise director, would have chosen. Jackie was watching the woman warily, no doubt concerned that Jill Murphy would throw a wet blanket over her carefully cultivated atmosphere of good cheer.

Jill Murphy chewed for a moment, swallowed, and then went on.

“That was on the
Illyria
, eight years ago. Right after my Harold passed away. I remember it clear as day. I was working on a letter to my daughter, and I'd be writing a sentence, then going into the bathroom for five minutes and throwing up, then coming back and writing another sentence—”

Hannah looked sullenly at her bowl of fruit and yogurt, and set down the spoon in her hand.

Four people sat around the aluminum table on the Boat Deck, in matching wooden chairs with floral-printed cushions on the armrests. To Hannah's left was Jackie Burns, with her auburn hair still damp from her morning shower. Then Jill Murphy, chattering on blithely about vomiting every five minutes. Across the table was a man who had been introduced only as Yildirim: a Turk in his mid-forties, raw-boned and handsome, with jug-handle ears and sleepy eyes that remained focused on his plate.

“I'm sorry,” Jill said. “Is this gross? Vicky doesn't look as if she feels very well.”

It took Hannah a moment to realize that the reference had been to her. Then she waved a hand. “I had a rough night,” she said.

“Who didn't?” Jill asked. “I was up half the night watching them cart out that guy from twenty-one. If I was the superstitious type, I'd say it was a bad omen. And you know, now that I mention it, isn't
twenty-one
an unlucky number? Three times seven, or something like that?”

“Seven's lucky,” Jackie corrected.

“Oh, probably I shouldn't say it too loud. Most of these people have one foot in the grave already.”

Hannah felt as if she had come into a conversation already under way. “Someone … died?”

“Last night,” Jill said. “It happens all the time on these things. Right, Jackie?”

Jackie only shrugged.

“The poor man.” Jill scraped a thread of egg onto the edge of her fork. She raised it halfway to her mouth, and paused. “I was talking to him just yesterday. Bruce Greene, was his name. And his poor wife. I can't imagine.”