A Revolution of Rubies, page 4
part #6 of Applied Topology Series
“Cuisse de nymphe émue,” Aunt Alesia said, interrupting what I thought were Mr. M.’s scandalous accounts of the goings-on between the Swiss ambassador and any number of ladies who were no better than they should be. And I’d thought the Swiss were boring bankers! Maybe Mr. M. should be in charge of the Paris field office. “He is right, Thalia. You should wear that color more often.”
“I don’t dare,” I said, dipping my croissant in the puddle of melted chocolate. “I’d be sure to spill something on it.” The chocolate tried to drip off the croissant as I spoke, but I rescued it with a quick-moving tongue. One foodstuff that seldom gets away from me is chocolate.
After I’d finished the croissant and sipped about half of my large-economy-sized mug of coffee, I felt better able to cope with the world. “You’re pretty cheerful this morning, Aunt Alesia. Did you find the necklace, then?” While ingesting chocolate and caffeine I’d managed to convince myself that had to be the explanation for the sunny atmosphere at the breakfast table.
“No, but everything is going to be all right.” Aunt Alesia’s rings flashed in the morning sunlight as she straightened her empty croissant plate a quarter of an inch. I noted with some envy that it really was empty. How does anybody eat a croissant without dropping a single flaky pastry crumb? “I’m going to get it back,” she went on. “It’s quite simple really. The thieves made contact with me again. All they want is for you to place one little bug in the Taklanistan embassy.”
“What?”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful that the solution is so simple? I can take you with me to call on Daryush; then you’ll be able to do the same thing you’ve been doing at all these other places. Just teleport back in later and place the bug. You don’t even have to ask your technical officer to help; they’ve given it to me.” She opened her pearl-covered clutch and brought out a small plastic bag with something that looked like an American dime inside it. “As soon as they hear it working, they’ve promised to return the necklace to me so that I can give it back to Daryush. If we get started at once, he’ll never even have to know that they were missing very briefly.”
“Aunt Alesia, I can’t do that.”
“Thalia, from what I hear, you’ve already been doing similar things all over Paris.”
I gave Brad a dirty look. What had possessed him to babble CIA business to my flibbertigibbet aunt?
“Hey, it wasn’t me,” he said. “Your turtle-snake buddy must have spilled the beans while they were doing all that gossiping in French.”
Mr. M. raised his head. “I am proud of your achievements, Thalia.”
I caught sight of a flickering blue flame out of the corner of my eye and winced in anticipation. A moment later TheSila had poured her almost-human form between Aunt Alesia and the sideboard.
“Aunt Alesia,” I said firmly, trying to ignore the appearance of TheSila, “I do – what I do – in the service of my country. It’s my patriotic duty. That duty does not extend to spying on my country’s friends for the benefit of unknown thieves and blackmailers.” Although it did extend to spying on my country’s friends at the behest of the CIA. As far as I could tell, the only countries the CIA didn’t want to spy on were the other Anglophone countries – Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Other allies were fair game.
If I allowed myself to think about it too much, my moral position could get kind of wobbly.
“Family before clan,” TheSila said, “clan before tribe, tribe before country, country before the world. That is the natural order of things, Thalia-my-pet.”
“Do you not wish to help your aunt?” Mr. M. gave me a dirty look. He and Aunt Alesia must have bonded over all that salacious gossip.
“But they’re not unknown thieves and blackmailers,” Aunt Alesia said, “it is obvious who they must be. The Religious Liberation Party of Taklanistan.”
“The who?” My coffee was getting cold; I downed it anyway. I was going to need extra caffeine to keep up with all these people and non-people.
“An outlawed political party,” Lensky said. “They were the principal opposition to the incumbent party, until they were banned last year.”
“And why should I help the Religious Liberation Party?”
“You shouldn’t,” Lensky said over my aunt’s cry of, “To help me, Thalia!”
In Barcelona, Meadow Melendez was having a similarly unprofitable conversation with the American political officer and his assistant.
“Those two Russians have become persons of considerable interest. Our agent in the Russian embassy says they have definitely been sent here to make mischief within the Catalan separatist movement, and we need to know exactly what their plans are.”
“Then why don’t you ask your agent in the Russian embassy?”
“Those two don’t work out of the embassy. They pretend to have no connection with official Russian business. Of course we all know they’re doing their government’s bidding, but they do keep up a pretty good pretense of separation. No, we need someone to engage them directly, and that’s what you’re going to do.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“What the…. I mean, what? Yesterday you were gibbering with rage because Colton told them we were married. You acted like that had ruined a year’s work for you guys.”
Blevins cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. That was an unwelcome surprise, but now we’ve figured out how we can work with it. You’re unhappy in your marriage and just one small nudge from being unfaithful to Colton.”
“What, before we’re even actually married? Thanks a lot!”
“As far as the Russian agents are concerned, you are married, remember? I’m just trying to plan a reasonable scenario within the new limitations.”
“Look, Henry,” Meadow said in her most reasonable voice, “this scenario of yours is not going to fly.” Her voice started to rise. “Married or not, there is no [expletive] way I would ever [obscenity] cheat on Colton, and furthermore there is no conceivable circumstance in which I would allow that chinless Russian clown to [double-barreled profanity] paw me!”
Henry Blevins actually took two short steps back. He shot his boss a pleading glance.
“It’s fiction, Ms. Melendez,” the Political Officer said patiently. “You do understand the concept of fiction?”
“I’m a robotics engineer.” She folded her arms. “We deal in reality.”
“Not any more,” the Political Officer told her. “While you’re seconded to our consulate by the CIA, you’re a spy, and like all other spies, you deal in more or less plausible fiction.”
Meadow glowered. “This particular one is highly implausible.”
“We’ll talk again after lunch,” the Political Officer told her. He felt it was time to retreat and regroup. He, personally, intended to have one of those three-martini-lunches so popular with American businessmen in an earlier and less namby-pamby age. And while he was doing that, young Blevins here could get together with Meadow’s partner Colton and explain the concept of fiction.
***
In Paris, I too was having some difficulties.
“That is a very pretty bug,” Sheng said when I showed him the explosive contents of Aunt Alesia’s purse – sorry, I kept thinking of the thing as an unexploded bomb rather than a bug. “Voice-activated, I presume. And it’s even smaller than the ones the technical division gives me. How come a proscribed political party from a Central Asian ‘stan can get their hands on better technology than the Paris office of our own agency?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, feeling a faint ray of hope. “Maybe they didn’t. Maybe somebody sold them a dud and this doesn’t actually pick up anything.” No, that wouldn’t help, would it? Aunt Alesia had been told she would get the rubies back after Hormuz Rakhim, the RLP representative in Paris, heard conversations from the Taklan embassy. And we needed to make that happen soon. Aunt Alesia had already accepted Daryush’s invitation to a reception and dinner at the Canadian embassy, just a couple of days from now. He would be expecting her to wear those rubies. If we couldn’t retrieve them before that party, Aunt Alesia would have to come down with a very believable, very bad illness.
She had already expressed her unwillingness to fake anything that involved vomiting or other unattractive physical expressions. A broken leg was also out; she pointed out that she’d have to wear a cast for weeks, and this would interfere with her social life – especially with dancing.
I was beginning to lose patience. But Aunt Alesia’s approval had been the sole bright spot in my home life back when my father’s favorite subject had been my physical and moral shortcomings. I was still determined to do my best for her.
“Sheng, I need your help. Can you take this thing apart, figure how it works, and put it back together? Today?” I wanted him to do a little more than that, but there was no point in going into the details unless he thought he could do that much for starters.
His eyes brightened. “I thought you’d never ask.”
It turned out that when assigned to Paris, he’d insisted on having a basement room at the embassy that he could fit up as a mini-lab. One of the frustrating aspects of his job, he said, was that he spent so much time doing black bag jobs and was hardly ever asked to whip up new spy gadgets in his lab.
Engineers. I don’t understand them. He didn’t find being teleported into the Ukrainian’s apartment exhilarating, but he was thrilled at the prospect of poring over a device so tiny that he would have to look at it under a microscope. Oh, okay, under a magnifying glass. A super-powerful one.
“Good. Just a couple more things…” I explained what else I needed. He looked doubtful, but promised to do his best.
In Barcelona, Meadow was still having a tough time with the Political Officer’s plans for her.
“What do you mean, seduce Fedya? I don’t do seduction.”
“Moral objections?”
“Practical ones. Look at me! Did you ever see anyone less seductive?”
“Oh, I am looking at you. And the more I look, the more I think you’re just what we need. You just need a few wardrobe adjustments… Fedya is a boob man.”
“All men are boob men. Why do you think I dress like this? I want them to talk to me, not to my chest!”
“Ah, a few attitude adjustments too, maybe.”
Sheng came through with everything I could wish for. Well before dinner, no less. I would never understand engineers, but I was impressed by his ability to do complex technical work in the daytime. Also, it explained a lot. He was a morning person; I am more of a mornings-ought-to-be-abolished person. Sneaking into houses and offices at two a.m. was probably an offense against his internal clock, whereas I didn’t mind the hours nearly as much as I minded getting up the next morning.
I’d been thinking – and making use of Lensky’s brains and political knowledge as well – while Sheng worked. We agreed that the only person in Paris who would benefit from bugging the Taklanistan ambassador was the representative of the Religious Liberation Party. At least, he was the most likely candidate; the others trailed a long, long way behind. The doddering relics from the Cold War always suspected Russia when there was mischief afoot, but Lensky said the Russians had no reason to spy on Daryush Burkhan. They already had the president of Taklanistan under their thumb – he needed their military to help guard his border with Afghanistan – and an ambassador who plotted against the interests of the president would suffer a fatal accident in short order. Ergashi, the president, had already disposed of most of his opposition in that way.
“Then how come Hormuz Rakhim is still running around loose in Paris?” That was the name of the RLP leader who represented his cause to anyone in the French government who might help him.
Lensky heaved a sigh. “He may not be – not for long, anyway. He’s the third man they’ve sent here since the party was banned in Taklanistan. They keep getting into, um, accidents.”
“Sheesh. How do they keep getting volunteers for the job?”
“It’s more of a grass-roots organization than most political parties. Cut off one head, ten more potential leaders spring up… Ah, I meant that metaphorically. Ergashi isn’t a savage, he doesn’t have his enemies beheaded. He just… arranges fatal accidents for them.”
“Oh. How… civilized.”
“He’s what we have to work with, and his interests align with American interests in Central Asia.” Lensky was uncharacteristically short with me. I suspected that he wasn’t totally happy with our country’s support of this dictator.
All I had to do now was get into the Taklanistan embassy. Aunt Alesia helped with that, at least. She took me with her on a surprise visit to Daryush. It was a very short surprise visit. He had meetings lined up, and she was eager to get out of there before the subject of the Shaimak Rubies came up; he might have thought she’d come to return them. As it was, he looked confused when we departed after just fifteen minutes of polite conversation. Oh well, if I could get the necklace back Aunt Alesia would calm down enough to convince him her flying visit had been perfectly natural. Her attitude that having been married to a French diplomat turned her into a Frenchwoman might be slightly insane, but her social skills were impeccable. It was, I thought, entirely possible that insanity helped with navigating Parisian society. Anyway, the visit had been long enough for me to get a fix on the women’s lounge on the first floor – another reason for Daryush’s confusion; he probably didn’t have many visitors who needed to go to the bathroom ten seconds after he greeted them. Sheng and I could teleport into that room in the small hours and sneak out to place the bug.
Apart from Aunt Alesia’s calling me before afternoon tea at the British embassy, before dinner for herself and her friend Solange with the Austrian cultural attaché and before the reception for visiting artists at the Belgian embassy, the rest of the day went smoothly. Evidently being distracted with worry wasn’t putting much of a crimp in my aunt’s social life. Having no engagements myself, I napped between telephone calls and invited Brad to cook dinner. Last winter he had displayed a surprising talent for cooking, mostly Italian, and I exploited him whenever possible. Eating out at the kind of French restaurants he chose was a three-hour affair that didn’t start until after eight o’clock, and I didn’t have the energy to combine one of those excursions with doing an unauthorized black bag job with Sheng. Also, I was hoping he would go to sleep before Sheng came over. It would be better for both of us, I thought, if he could plead total ignorance of an intrusion into the Taklanistan embassy which the CIA had neither requested nor desired.
That part worked out well. A pasta dinner in itself wasn’t enough to make Brad sleepy, but sufficient and satisfying exercise afterwards did the trick. It also left me glowing with good cheer and confidence; not a bad side-effect. Everything was looking good; there were even some chocolate cookies hidden in the back of the pantry in case I needed to boost my blood sugar later. Sheng turned up exactly on time. I let him in before he had time to ring the doorbell, we teleported into the ladies’ lounge and he found an excellent way to hide the bug in the ambassador’s study. Did I feel guilty about undercutting an ally like this? Not very, especially when I contemplated the president of Taklanistan’s way of dealing with his competition. Besides, Sheng had made sure that the Religious Liberation Party wouldn’t get to hear very much of the conversation in Daryush’s study.
There wasn’t much point in listening now; I was pretty sure that whatever the strange customs of Taklanistan, getting out of bed at three in the morning to have political conversations wasn’t one of them.
I didn’t actually hear anything until the middle of the next afternoon, when we got back from a lavish lunch with the Danish trade officer that had been pretty much a dead loss as far as the Company was concerned; even the CIA, with its penchant for listening in on everybody and anybody, couldn’t work up much excitement about bugging the Danes. However, Lensky had flirted outrageously with the wife of a junior Russian diplomat and with the lady who represented Bulgarian trade interests in Paris. Both of those could result in useful invitations, and I was happy to know that Brad would have to get me included in the invitations when and if they happened. Both the Russian and the Bulgarian had been the sort of tall, blonde, very calm women who had been Brad’s type. Before he met me. I trusted him, of course… But it hadn’t been fun observing the flirtations.
After Lensky declared his intention of taking a nap after the multi-course mid-day meal, with all those toasts in Danish aquavit, I tiptoed into the living room. Putting in earbuds, I opened my iPad and typed in the combination of letters and numbers that Sheng had given me. That was the first modification he’d made for me; he’d figured out the frequency the bug was using and arranged for it to send to my iPad as well as to Hormuz Rakhim of the Religious Liberation Party.
The ambassador was actually in his office. The quality of the signal wasn’t that great – it was strangely muffled – but based on the fact that the other party to the conversation said nothing except to repeat the last few sounds Daryush had made whenever he stopped for breath, I thought that maybe he was dictating letters to his secretary. Good. That should make Rakhim happy. I hoped the letters weren’t about anything important; that would make me happy. Even Sheng hadn’t been able to arrange to pass the bug’s signal through a Taklan-to-English translation program, so all I could do was hope while I listened intently for clues.
I jumped about a mile and a half when Brad spoke from the bedroom door. “Do I want to know why you’re listening to a program in a Farsi dialect?”
“I was using earbuds!”
He ambled into the room and picked up the cord dangling from my head. “Thalia. You forgot to plug them into the iPad.”
“Oh.” No wonder the sound quality had been so bad; I’d been listening to my iPad with earbuds blocking my ears. I pulled them out and realized that in an effort to hear better, I’d turned the sound up so high that Lensky could hardly have avoided hearing it in the bedroom. I shut the iPad down.
