Limbo Man (20 page)

Chapter 14

“So what’s in Florida?” Vee asked the moment she fastened her seat belt.

“A traitor.”

“You remember that, or Petrovski told you?”

“Both,” Sergei said, cinching his belt in place. “I remember the weirdo in Florida from previous visits, but not going to Florida the day before the meeting in New York. Arkadi says I did and that I was seen going into the meeting. I see no reason for him to lie to me, so . . .” Sergei shrugged.

“Petrovski’s anti-nuke?”

“Mass murder is not his style.”

“Aw, come on. He runs the Russian Mafia for the entire East Coast.”

“He does not blow up cities with nuclear bombs,” Sergei growled, tossing her a glare intended to stun an ox.

“Okay, Vee conceded, “did he tell you why you went to Florida?”

“He didn’t know, but I presume it was to see the weirdo who’s willing to bargain away his country and thousands of lives for a fat account in the Caymans.”

Oh, shit!
There was only one conclusion she could draw. “You know this weirdo, don’t you? You’ve seen him, talked to him. Which sounds like you’re the one who was suborning him.”

“Not me. Tokarev. Naturally, the terrorists would come to the very best. You have but to ask, and Sergei Tokarev will find it.” Evidently, realizing he’d dug a rather large hole for himself, he added, “How else could I keep close track of what was going on?”

Vee huffed, frantically shifting the puzzles pieces on her mental game board. The man was maddening. Was he a high-level Russian mafioso who’d found the line he wouldn’t cross? Or maybe a long-term undercover agent for some super secret government agency, as she’d come to suspect over the last few days? Possibly for the Russians, instead of the U. S.? Or was he acting for some one or some cause she hadn’t even thought of?

Did he even know what he was? Or was he playing the whole scenario by ear?

Then again, perhaps she was the only thing being played.

Vee heaved a sigh loud enough to be heard over the start of the Citation’s engines. “So just what part does your weirdo traitor play in this nasty mess?”

“He has access to U-236. It’s not easy to come by, or the ten lost bombs might have been put in play years ago. Minus the ones that have already been found,” Seryozha amended.

“And how many is that?”

“Americans, three. Russians, two.”

“And you know this how?”

“Am I right—the Americans found three?”

“Yes. My father admitted that the last time I talked to him. Believe me, you are his primary concern at the moment. Jack Frost is only slightly less anxious to talk with you than he is to have you find the one that’s about to go boom.”

“Being interrogated by Homeland Security is not part of my agenda.”

As the Citation roared down the runway, Vee didn’t bother to hide her smile. There the man was, sitting beside her as casually as seatbacks-upright-for-takeoff would allow. A battered thirty-something, dressed once again in black. Tall and lean, obviously not at full strength, yet holding the fate of a sizable portion of the U S of A in his hands. And yet he could find a moment for dry humor.

And diverting the answers to her questions. Fine. She’d try a different approach. “You said there are two factions in the
Organizatsiya
. How do terrorists figure in?”

He thought about it
as Vee waited,
holding her breath
.
Careful
. . .
careful
. . . don’t even sneeze.

“One of the missing bombs surfaced when terrorists contacted our people in Uzbekistan. They needed a conduit to U-236 and the expertise to renew the triggering mechanism. The Brotherhood in Tashkent called on Petrovski and me. To Tokarev,” he amended hastily. “They needed the best. It is not easy to suborn a traitor and not get caught. Finding, tempting, making arrangements—not just money, but holding the source’s hand, arranging transportation of radioactive material—”

“You’re
bragging
about it?”

“I am
controlling
the mission, and maintaining my reputation. Sergei’s reputation,” he corrected.

“That’s sick.”

“It is clever.” He tapped the brown fuzz on the side of his head. “U-236 is an isotope not found in nature. It can only be created in a lab or from the by-products of nuclear fission.”

“Nuclear waste.”

“Depleted uranium.”

“Nuclear waste,” Vee repeated grimly.

“It is, however, easier to create U-236 in a lab by bombarding U-235 with an extra neutron. But in that form it breaks down rather quickly. Which is why the bombs need a fresh supply.”

“And what do you do with it once you’ve got it?”

“Didn’t Daddy tell you? The ten bombs that went missing twenty years ago can only be set off by U-236.”

“Sounds familiar,” Vee conceded, grumbling. “It’s been a wild few days.”

“Sorry,” he returned, looking genuinely chagrined. “Sometimes I forget that being an expert on bombs that have been obsolete for a quarter century is not a common skill.”

But terrorists love you.”

“Ah,
da
,” he agreed without so much as a hint of a smile.

They were airborne, and climbing, Vee’s ears protesting, as they always did. Yet excitement mounted. Seryozha had actually talked to her, dredging facts from what had been a very murky—or perhaps reluctant—pond. If she could just keep him talking . . .

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Surely those four hours they didn’t sleep last night counted for something. Perhaps he needed reminding. “Seryozha, I’m sorry too. You were certainly right last night. Your powers of recovery are amazing.”

With a sound that was half laugh, half groan, he ran his hand through his hopeful brown fuzz. “Did we get any sleep at all?”

“Forty winks here and there. I think. It could be my imagination.”

“
Bozhe moi
,” he breathed, “I hope Daddy didn’t bug these seats.”

Vee gasped, almost forgetting why she’d begun this distracting conversation
. Mission, mission
. She had a mission. “I, ah, have a question for Tokarev.”

“Um-m?”

“Did he—did
you
—play a part in recovering the two bombs the Russians found?”

Sergei steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Ah,” he mused, “the answer to that is almost the first English word I learned.
Classified
. In my case,” he added, slow and soft, “it is also personal.”

Damn! He
was
a spy. But for which side? He was definitely bucking for Churchill’s full mouthful:
a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma
. A description of Russia that could have been written expressly for the Sergei Whoever sitting beside her. Limbo wasn’t just where he’d been when he couldn’t remember so much as his name. For him, Limbo was a known habitat. A land of phantoms and will-o-the-wisps. Deadly chimeras and men who dealt in weapons of mass destruction.

Seryozha was so deep in this mess, she should kick him to the curb, call in the
Feds
, and be done with it.

But there was a bomb to find before
a city was vaporized
, and only Sergei had the map somewhere in his head. Certainly, that last bit about the search being personal was significant. She knew it, but had no idea why. What could possibly be personal about long-missing atomic bombs?

The pilot announced their flight time to Orlando Executive Airport would be two hours and forty-five minutes. Odd. They weren’t going to a city with a nuclear reactor, like Tampa or Miami. Nor somewhere with college research labs like Tallahassee or Gainesville. But to Orlando, resort capital of the world. A rather remarkable place to pick up a little U-236.

“You have a yen to explore the Magic Kingdom,” Vee pronounced with care. “If you’d only told me, I would have packed my mouse ears.”

“See—again you are angry. Last night you were so anxious for me you said you would wait until the airplane to find out where we were going. You had me, this is now the airplane, and the pilot has told you where we are going.”

“The next time your little soldier is standing to attention, panting, my reaction may be considerably more drastic!”

“Ah, I am so frightened. Sergei and Seryozha both laugh.” A dramatic pause. He flashed a grin that curled her toes.

Vee snorted, plunged her head into her hands. “Un-be-lievable. We are as bad as children on the playground. I’m afraid the pressure’s getting to us.”

As Seryozha lifted the arm rest that separated them and Vee snuggled into his shoulder,
dejà vu
hit him hard. He’d done this before. Airplane. Long Island. Old house on a hunk of rock. Holding a gun to Vee’s head. Staggering along behind a shopping cart in some discount store, barely able to put one foot before the other.

The blue of Long Island Sound flashing by on the right, seen through . . . a train window. New York City . . . subway . . . Vee trashing her
cell phone
. . . more subway . . . smoke . . . gunshots . . . hospital white . . .

And then nothing. An abyss, a black hole that had swallowed the meeting with Leonov, Massoud, and his last trip to Florida along with it.

Sergei winced. He’d just experienced a major breakthrough, but not far enough.
Govnó!
Not far enough.

He closed his eyes, struggling, demanding . . . fighting his brain for control of the details he needed. The weirdo was Dr. Weldon Robey—he’d known that since the flight to Wyoming. Yet not so much as a glimmer of what had happened on that fast trip to Florida. Or at the meeting in New York . . .

Steady
. Twelve years undercover in the
Organizatsiya
had not been blown by one short trip to Florida. Not with the clout of Tokarev’s more than a thousand successful arms shipments and his status as Arkadi Petrovski’s nephew. Truth was—Seryozha insinuated one arm behind Vee’s back and realized he’d done that before as well. Truth was . . . twelve years as Sergei Tokarev and he was no longer playing a role. He was one of the world’s most successful arms dealers, no matter what his original motive might have been. As much as he’d like to believe being Sergei Tokarev was the only way to do what he had to do, Vee was right to doubt him.

Five bombs down and five to go—if the American count could be believed. But at what cost? The weapons he’d smuggled over those twelve years had probably killed as many people as the bombs could.

He thought of the photos he’d seen of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe not. And the weapons he smuggled didn’t have nuclear warheads.

To hell with it. Robey had better have the answers he needed.

Sergei Ivanovich Zhukov closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Once upon a time, Orlando Executive Airport—designed for those compan
ies and private citizens who
fly their own planes—had been a few quiet runways on the edge of the city. Now, it was a considerably less quiet enclave of small planes and runways sandwiched between business-packed State Route 50 and Orlando’s East-West Expressway, with a variety of shopping malls adding to the general chaos. There was a particular irony, Vee thought, to a row of small planes parked with their tails a scant ten feet from Jo-Ann’s Fabrics.

You could also walk from the airport to Macy’s and Penney’s, cash checks in English or Spanish, buy sports equipment or a honey-baked ham. And for spoiled executives who didn’t want to walk a block or two to sample the treats, there was a mind-boggling array of car rental agencies. Mr. and Mrs. Mark Wilson had no trouble acquiring an unobtrusive forest green Corolla, ready to roll.

The wall-to-wall businesses along Route 50 also included several restaurants whose only claim to a picturesque view were the hangers, parked single-engine planes, and long expanse of runways in their backyards. Vee and Seryozha slid into a booth at Houlihan’s with a mutual sigh of relief. They were in Florida, they had a car, they were hungry. The filet mignon in Atlantic City seemed a lifetime ago.

“So?” Vee challenged, as she reached for the iced tea she’d ordered to offset the eighty-plus temperature outside.

“Any personal contacts here?”

She frowned. “In Sarasota, two and a half hours from here, but I can’t think of anyone in Orlando. We had some phone and e-mail interaction with the office here, but nothing personal. You think we’ll need back-up?”

“Unofficial maybe. Definitely no calling out the troops. One or two people you trust, stand-up types who’ll do what they’re told and not ask questions.”

“You don’t think you and I can handle one weirdo professor?” Vee teased.

“Did I say he was a professor?” Seryozha at his most bland and annoying.

You called him Dr. Robey. I assumed that was academic rather than medical.”

“Try nuclear physicist.”