Requiem For a Glass Heart (20 page)

“Ann.” Hain was leaning forward on his forearms on the table, his head thrust toward the radio monitoring the surveillance team. “Looks like these guys are going to that hotel.”

“Chateau Touraine?” She got up and walked to the table, carrying her soft-drink can.

“Yeah,” Hain said, touching a dial, fine-tuning the radio. “Yeah, they are. This ought to be interesting.”

C
ATE SPENT THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON WITH
A
NN
, E
RIKA
, and Ometov once again taking her through her paces as Catherine Miles. Erika told anecdotes about Stepanov that revealed more about his character and that unintentionally told Cate a little about Erika herself. Neither of them, it seemed, had any shortage of audacity, and Stepanov apparently resorted to bluster to buy time, or any other advantage he might gain, whenever he found himself in a questionable situation. This explained some of his overbearing manner when they had met earlier in the day.

Late in the afternoon the two Russians who had flown in from London checked into a suite in the Chateau Touraine wearing new faces and using new names. Jernigan’s photographer was able positively to identify Grigori Izvarin, who now presented himself as Anton Nakhimov. His companion registered as Rudolf Bykov, and his photograph was quickly faxed back to the off-site for identification.

In another surprise move, when Nakhimov and Bykov registered, they also reserved another suite—for one—in Nakhimov’s name. Since Stepanov already had made his own reservations, this was important information.

Everyone realized that the Touraine was going to be a gathering place of considerable significance. Jernigan’s team
quickly swung into action to establish a serious communication station in the hotel. They made contact with the hotel management and arranged for someone to be on the registration desk duty at all times. They tapped the telephone lines to the suites occupied by the Russians and set up a system whereby the bedroom in Stepanov’s suite would be swept regularly for bugs and thus would remain a “safe room” if Cate and Stepanov needed to talk. They would have to watch what they said in the other rooms. The team also immediately surveyed the hotel’s two dining rooms, locating positions where directional microphones could be installed. The installations were designed to be adjustable so the agents could target whichever table the Russians occupied after entering the dining room. It would take an agent only a few minutes to redirect the microphones to wherever they were needed. One microphone was placed in an air conditioning vent that was accessible through one of the kitchen storerooms; the other was installed on a rolling dessert cart, hidden behind a white lace screen attached to a decorative sconce on top.

The tech team stopped short of installing wall mikes in the Russians’ rooms. There was some concern from the look of Nahkimov’s and Bykov’s luggage that they might have arrived with sophisticated debugging equipment. The SOGs were trying to come up with a plan to check this out so they would know what kind of devices to use.

“So the extra room’s for Krupatin?” Cate said to no one in particular. Again they were gathered around the table in the dining room, eating takeout dinners. They all had agreed on seafood. Even Ometov, who had proved to have an insatiable appetite for hamburgers, had been persuaded to forgo them this one time. The radio had fallen silent, since surveillance activity was at a standstill at the hotel. The Russians had not left their room since checking in and had ordered room service for dinner.

“Anybody,” Ann said, eating little pieces of scallop with a toothpick. “Could be anybody.”

“I wouldn’t rule out Krupatin,” Hain mused. He was peeling boiled shrimp, dumping the shells into one of the takeout sacks and piling the pink striped shrimp on a paper plate. A bottle of Heineken was sweating beside his plate.

Erika stabbed a fried oyster with her fork. “Shit, I wouldn’t rule out
anything
or
anybody.”

“When do the techs think they can have something in the room?” Ann asked.

Hain shook his head. “They’re still talking it over, still a little spooked about the equipment.”

“This Bykov bothers me,” Ometov said, looking at the fax of the photograph taken when Bykov registered. “I don’t know what a completely unknown player is doing in this mixture of old hands. This doesn’t seem right.” As he ate, he studied the picture with the kind of concentration usually seen in jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts, as if he were just on the brink of assembling all of the blue sections of the enigma.

“Nothing from London about Krupatin leaving there?” Cate asked.

“Nothing.”

“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Ann said. “He’s just going to show up at the hotel. Just like he shows up in Brighton Beach, out of nowhere.”

“That’s fine with me,” Hain said.

“Yeah.” Erika nodded. “I just want the bastard to show up.”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s Jernigan and John Parmley from the tech squad,” Ann said, wiping her mouth and looking at her watch as she stood up. “You’ve worked with Parmley before, right?” she said to Cate.

Cate nodded.

“They picked up the guy from Quantico at Intercontinental about an hour ago,” Ann said, heading for the door.

Cate tried to ignore a momentary stirring in her stomach and continue eating her fried shrimp. She had to do a better job of keeping herself on an even keel, not allowing her adrenal glands to squirt all over her every time something came at her unexpectedly.

The agent who came into the dining room with Ann and the other two men was in his mid-forties—sparse hair, bespectacled, and thin as linguini. He wore a wash-and-wear plaid shirt with short sleeves. His suit coat was draped over his right arm, and in his left hand he was carrying a thick aluminum suitcase.

“Alan Geller,” Ann said.

Geller sat down with a Diet Coke while they finished their dinner. Since this operation was a special, he said, the
Bureau had flown him down in a charter that was on a twenty-four-hour lease. As soon as he took care of things here he was going right back to the airport and right back to Virginia. No thanks, no shrimp, he said. He had eaten one of those wonderful airport hot dogs in the car on the way into town. He took off his glasses and wiped his face with a paper towel. “So what’s the deal here?” he asked. “Is there a heat wave in Houston, or what?”

“They told you, I guess,” Geller said a few minutes later, opening the suitcase on the tables in the living room, “that it’s basically like Norplant. You ever use Norplant?”

“No,” Cate said, glancing at Ann, “but I know how it works.” She and Geller were sitting facing each other at the end of the tables.

“Okay, fine.”

The suitcase had a foam filler with more than a dozen cut-out spaces filled with rather specific-looking equipment. Geller took out a pair of surgical gloves and began pulling them on.

“Believe it or not, I had to take a three-day kind, of nursing course for this,” he said with an expression of pained impatience at the bureaucratic overkill. “Just for the hygienic aspect of this procedure. I need your sleeves up. On both arms.”

He took out a bottle of alcohol and some cotton swabs. “I’m going to sterilize the areas of implant. Same identical procedure as Norplant, even the same device used for it. These implants are identical in size to Norplant.”

“Why don’t you explain to me how it works?” Cate said.

“Sure.” Geller continued to work, getting all the components ready. “I’ll explain to you the
principle
of how it works, because the actual how is highly technical and of course classified, blah, blah, blah. But I went into it in detail with them on the way in from the airport,” he admitted, jacking his head in the direction of Jernigan and Parmley.

“This is the burst transmitter,” he said as he began the procedure of inserting the implant in her right arm. “It’s a pretty straightforward device, same as always, but improved in many ways for clearer signal and durability of transmission. It’s not nearly as sensitive to disruption as the older devices.”

Everyone watched as Geller deftly placed a single rod into the inside of Cate’s upper arm.

“Under any conceivable circumstances this thing’s going to transmit a receivable signal.”

“What are the inconceivable circumstances?” Cate asked.

Geller grinned. “Okay. You’re in a lead-lined room. You’re in a radiation-bombarded room. You’re under more than seventy feet of water. Stuff like that. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m going to insert five mike rods here,” he continued as he turned to Cate’s left arm. “The biggest drawback with wiring somebody with the conventional method, of course, is the size of the device—getting caught with the thing, discovery. Naturally, with chip technology we’ve overcome that.

“Let’s see,” he said, pausing between insertions. “Let’s just say this is like one of the old integrated systems. Each one of these rods is battery-driven, and the power the battery produces is much stronger than the body’s ability to absorb it. But the batteries wear out quicker because this superior ability draws more energy. So what we have here is five rotating battery systems. When one goes out, another kicks in. Like time-release medication.”

“How long do we have in these five rods?” Hain asked quickly.

“Ten days,” Geller said, pushing the last rod through the syringelike applicator into Cate’s arm. “Two days each. Easy to remember. That’s it,” he said, looking at Cate.

“What about detection?” Cate asked. “What about debugging equipment?”

Geller was already shaking his head. “Got you covered. These things are undetectable with such equipment. They’re not going to find these things by any conventional method.”

Cate rubbed the slightly raised ribs that splayed out in a rising-sun pattern on the soft flesh of the inside of her upper arm. She felt the strange but familiar stirrings of excitement— a mixture of fervor and foreboding—that eventually rose to the surface at the beginning of every undercover operation she had worked. Every undercover agent experienced something similar. It was unlike any other emotional experience, at once elemental and sophisticated. It was as simple as the challenge of survival and as complex as aberrant sexuality. It was an open-ended invitation to risk the unknown.

“One more thing,” Geller said, taking a small package
from his suitcase. He handed it to Cate. “These are a dozen adhesive plastic strips that look exactly like Band-Aids. And they work exactly like Band-Aids. But the absorbent pad is actually a thin sheet of lead.” He turned away from her and began putting his utensils back into the suitcase.

Cate looked at him. “What do I do with them?”

Geller didn’t look up. “Just put one over the rods if you want to prevent transmission,” he said.

Privacy. Discretion. A way to close the bedroom door. Cate looked at Hain. “So who’s going to be listening, then?”

“Me, Leo, Ann, and Erika here at the off-site,” Hain said. “It’s going to the tech room in your regional office. Ennis will determine who can listen there. And Jernigan and Parmley. Remember, even if you put the patch over the wires, do
not
cover the burst transmitter. We’ve got to know where you are at all times, even if we can’t hear you.”

“But Jernigan isn’t going to be here,” Cate said.

“No, Neil’s running surveillance on the Russians. They’ll be expecting that, so even if Neil’s people are spotted it won’t be a big deal. But we’re not tailing Stepanov. Just the two guys who flew in tonight. When you and Valentin leave the hotel, you will not be tailed either. If Krupatin has countersurveillance in place, they won’t see anything. Nothing.”

Cate nodded. Hain decided to address what she might be wondering.

“If you need help,” he said, “it’ll probably come immediately from Neil’s people. They’ll be on the street, and Neil’s going to keep someone in the right part of the city, though they won’t know where you are until he tells them. But they’ll know there’s an undercover agent out there and that they’re on standby for an emergency. It’ll be quick.”

They spent the next hour making sure that Jernigan and Parmley knew how to operate the unusual receiver for Cate’s transmissions. The receiver—which turned out to be something like an electrical relay that enabled the transmission to be picked up by a designated number of conventional receivers—-was under the foam pad in Geller’s briefcase. It was a strange-looking computer, having a panel of digital readouts, a peculiar keyboard, and a high-resolution screen.

“Now,” Geller said with undisguised relish, “this little device is the
future.
We’ve put a Houston street map chip in here. It’ll tell us
exactly
where the burst transmitter is located.
” He punched a key. “The street address.” Another key. “Tells us if the address is residential—house, condo, apartment—or if it’s commercial—retail, strip mall, high-rise, hotel, shopping mall, convenience store, parking.” Another key. “Gives us the location of the nearest fire department, EMS station, police, hospital, all that. Shows greenbelts, vacant lots, bridges, alleys, on and on and on.” He paused and looked around.

“Only thing it can’t do—but we’re working on it—is read elevations.” He looked at Cate. “If you’re in a seventy-story office building or a two-story duplex, this can’t tell them how high up you are. It cannot show vertical locations, so they’re never going to know what floor you’re on. If that’s going to be important, you’ve got to provide a verbal cue. Just keep it in mind.”