35
Taz and Rosesat with her in the NTSB conference room. Clarissa didn’t know if either of them spoke Russian but that couldn’t be helped. Besides, they would only hear her side of the conversation.
But Gregor hadn’t taken Clarissa’s call.
She supposed that was hardly surprising. He must suspect that she’d been instrumental in the disastrous loss of a major spy satellite that he’d mentioned the last time they’d spoken. That a top FSB agent had been implicated would have spooked him badly. What he, hopefully, still didn’t know was that it had been stolen in midair rather than destroyed, and the FSB agent had become an elite guest at a highly secure CIA black site.
As a department head at the Progress Rocket Space Centre in Samara, it was no surprise that Gregor was gun-shy about taking her call.
However, Clarissa knew his weak spot.
Or she had a year ago.
The cyber twins had bounced her call off a server farm in Turkey, which they still controlled access to after last year’s hacker war, to reach around the new Iron Curtain.
Taz, Jeremy, and Rose all watched her. She’d prefer to do this in private, but she might need these people in the future. A bridge would be better than a firewall.
The twins needed less than thirty seconds to place her call to Gregor’s woman. It paid to hire the best.
“Vesna, are you still with the same man you were fifteen months ago?” Clarissa opened the conversation in Russian without any preamble.
The woman’s gasp of surprise, tinged with fear, confirmed her identity and her answer.
“Is he still at the same job?” She didn’t have to wait long for the woman to regain her composure.
“Da.”The offer Clarissa had once made to the woman—to report Gregor to the FSB as a foreign agent, as Clarissa’spersonalforeign agent—hadn’t been forgotten. If he went down, there was no doubt that his lover would go down with him. Vesna had been very motivated to cooperate after that.
“Let him know that he has a single hour to contact me regarding Russia’s space-based laser program.” She didn’t need to repeat the threat.
The silence stretched long enough for her to become aware of some rhythmic, thumping sound in the background but she couldn’t quite identify it.
Jeremy entered the room, but Taz shushed him with a quick “Tijo!”,followed by a finger to her lips when Jeremy looked puzzled. Well, that answered that question. Jeremy didn’t speak Russian. And Taz could do more than speak it, she could think in it.
“He does not works with the lasers,” Vesna finally spoke. She tried to sound resolute, but failed miserably. Protecting her man or herself? Probably both.
“Then he has fifty-nine minutes to determine who does and call me back.”
“Holding on please.” The woman didn’t mute the phone. Instead, there was noise of motion, a door, and then a growing thump of American rock and roll. It was a sound Clarissa had heard on prior calls with Gregor. Vesna worked at his favorite sex club in Samara, Russia.
The volume grew until ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” was painfully loud. She hated disco. It also muffled the whispers and the hand-off of the phone.
“Da.”Gregor did not offer his usual greeting referencing their affair some years ago. Long before she’d married Clark and eventually become the Director of the CIA, they’d had a delightful dalliance. He remained the most robustly equipped man she’d ever been with. Typically, also a common point of their flirting calls since. Not this time.
Nor did she offer any tease in return. “A satellite-based laser assaulted one of our aircraft carriers seventeen hours ago. Vesna says that you don’t work with lasers.”
“I don’t.” But he didn’t sound surprised. So he too had heard of the attack.
“Was it Russian?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“A question that perhaps the FSB could be asking if I tip them off.”
“Now, Cla—”
“Don’tsay my name.”
“Right. Sorry.” They’d always used nicknames: Monster for how nature had blessed him and Beastmaster for her efforts to tame it.