Pattern Recognition

"Miscalculated the extent of blat required, or who had it. Paid off the wrong official. Or made the wrong enemy. Sergei's recruiters keep track of court calendars, sentencing… It's essential to get them before they've been exposed, literally, to the standard prison system. Then they undergo testing elsewhere, medical and psychological, before coming here. I suppose some don't make it."

Moths are whirling around the light atop a steel pole, beside the concrete path, and the sense of being on the summer campus of some down-at-heels community college is eerie.

"What happens when they graduate?" she asks.

"I don't believe any have, so far. The facility's quite new, and their actual sentences are generally of three to five years' duration. It's all being made up as it goes along. As are many things in this country."

The path climbs to a sparsely planted grove of young pines, screening a one-story orange brick building that resembles a very small motel. It presents them with four identical entrances and four windows. Ornate white lace curtains are drawn across the darkened windows, but there are lights on above three of the doors.

'You look bagged," Parkaboy says, handing her the cloth-covered rectangle. "Get some sleep."

"I know you're exhausted," Bigend says to her, "but we need to talk, if only briefly."

"Don't let him keep you up," Parkaboy advises. He turns and enters one of the doors, without using a key. She sees the lights come on behind the lace curtains.

"They aren't locked," Bigend says, leading the way into the one to the left. An overhead fixture comes on as she shuffles in after him, bandaged feet smarting.

Cream walls, brown tile floor, hand-woven Armenian rug, ugly forties-looking furniture in dark veneer. She puts the woolen package down on a bureau with a mirror whose borders are decorated with frosted grooves carved into the glass.

She smells disinfectant, or insecticide.

She still has the envelope in her hand.

She turns and faces Bigend.

"Boone was reading my e-mail."

"I know," he says…

"But did you know it before?"

"Not until after he'd called from Ohio to tell me we needed to go immediately to Moscow. I had a friend's Gulfstream pick him up and bring him to Paris. He admitted it to me on our way here."

"Is that why he didn't stay?"

"No. He left because I no longer wanted to be in partnership with him."

"You didn't? I mean, you don't?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because he pretends to be better at what he does than he is. I prefer people who are better at what they do than they think they are."

"Where's Dorotea?"

"I don't know."

"Have you asked?"

"Yes. Once. They say they don't know."

"Do you believe them?"

"I think it's better left unasked."

"What was she trying to do?"

"Change sides. Again. She really did want the position in London, and she'd told them she'd still be working for them as well. Which I had discussed with her, of course. But when your e-mail reached Stella Volkova, and Stella replied, it caused a number of things to happen very quickly. All of the armaz.ru traffic is monitored by Volkov's security, of course. They immediately contacted Dorotea, who, in the course of what must have been a very intense conversation, realized for the first time who she had ultimately been working for—and who she was in the process of betraying, by coming over to my side. She must also have understood that if she could get to you first, and discover how you had obtained that address, she would have something very important to offer them. She might even be rewarded, and perhaps retain her job at Blue Ant as well."

"But how did she know I'd gone to Moscow?"

"I imagine she'd instantly hired replacements for the last two, or perhaps there were more to begin with. I doubt if she ever called off your surveillance, even after Tokyo. She would have needed to continue reporting on you. She isn't a very imaginative woman in any case. If they saw you check in at Heathrow, they knew you were going to be landing in Moscow. There are no other destinations, for Aeroflot, at that time of the evening. She could easily have arranged to have you followed, on this end. Not by Volkov's people, though. She still had connections from her previous job." He shrugs. "She'd been posting on your website, as someone else. Do you know that?"

"Yes."

"Amazing. She had no more idea who the maker actually was than we did, until they revealed it to her in an effort to facilitate her stopping you. But you're dead on your feet, aren't you? I'll see you in the morning."

"Hubertus? Boone hadn't been able to get anything, in Ohio?"