The Innocents Club

Never again.

Geist leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “My watchers said Belenko seemed real disappointed. Guess he decided he wasn’t going to get to first base that night. We decided to start keeping an eye on him, though. Then, day before yesterday, we hit pay dirt.”

“Pay dirt?”

“He had dinner with his brother in Moscow. The guy’s a literary critic for Isvestia, did you know that? Belenko told him he’d met Ben Bolt’s daughter. I guess your father’s novels are popular over there, too?”

Mariah nodded. “Your people bugged their conversation?”

“Yup. Belenko mentioned he was heading back to the States this week, said he was hoping to see you again. Maybe he was just trying to impress big brother, but from the way he spoke, it didn’t seem like it was the finer points of modern fiction he was looking to pursue, if you know what I mean.”

Mariah sat back, momentarily stunned. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think you’re reading this correctly.”

“You never noticed Belenko had the hots for you? You’re a very attractive woman, Mariah.”

She passed on the flattery. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’ve run into this kind of thing before. It’s not me that’s the draw, it’s my father.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“He is. He died when he was twenty-eight.” She sighed. “It’s hard to explain. It’s the phenomenon of being related to fame. There’s a look certain people get when they twig to the fact that Ben Bolt was my father.”

“Certain people?”

“Certain grasping, upwardly mobile characters. Or, I don’t know—maybe they’re just fans. People like that want to get close to their heroes, even if only indirectly. Given the way Russians lionize poets and writers, Belenko could be very susceptible. As I say, I’ve seen it before. You can be ugly as a post and stupid as dirt, but if you’re related to somebody famous, it never matters to those who are too easily impressed.” Even though she herself found more to regret than celebrate in her connection to Ben Bolt, Mariah thought grimly.

“Be that as it may,” Geist said, “it’s a hook. I’m still thinking it would be a good thing if you ran into Belenko again. In fact, I think you should get to know him much better.”

“Are you saying you want me to seduce the man? Because if you are, I’m sorry, the answer is no. I interpret satellite data and write depressing reports on arms shipments that nobody reads. I wasn’t recruited to be a swallow.”

His hand made solicitous “there-there” motions, patting the air. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Mariah. I’m not asking you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I just want you to reestablish contact with Belenko, see where his long-term interests lie. Feel him out. Note I said ‘out,’ not ‘up,”’ Geist added, smirking at his own wit. “If you get any hint he might be interested in joining forces professionally as well as personally, you let me know. We’ll take it from there.”

“I’m not comfortable with this,” she said, head shaking.

“You’ll do fine. It’s only for a day or so.”

“A day or so? I thought you just wanted me to cover the Romanov opening.”

“That’s probably all. Foreign Minister Zakharov’s going to be in L.A. for a few days, as I said, but we’re not sure Belenko’s staying the whole time. One way or the other, though, it’s two days, tops. Promise. I know you’ve got a vacation coming.”

“What about the State Department? Secretary of State Kidd doesn’t like Ops officers on his delegations.”

“I know, but that’s the beauty of it. You’re not Ops.”

Aha! Just as she’d suspected. The fact that she’d read him right gave her little satisfaction.

Geist went on. “It’s already been cleared with Kidd’s office. Since you’ve worked with them before, he’ll go along with it now. State has no idea about your approach to Belenko, mind you. We’ve said we want to use you as a quick conduit for intelligence briefings of the secretary in case the crisis heats up between Russia and Turkey.” A small skirmish had been developing between NATO ally Turkey and the Russians over the latter’s support to Kurdish rebels in Turkey. It was hardly at the level of “crisis,” Mariah thought, but Geist must have oversold its potential to get Kidd’s approval.

“I suppose my own deputy has also agreed to this?” she asked, knowing full well that the well-meaning but ineffectual analysis chief was no match for a determined operator like Jack Geist.

“Naturally.” Geist leaned back into the sofa and laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “All I’m asking you to do is help us take advantage of an opportunity, Mariah. If Belenko agrees to come on the payroll, my people in Moscow will manage him. I have full confidence in you to handle this.”

Somehow, that was small comfort.

Mariah took her victories where she found them. The year and a half since David’s death was just a blur, a blind succession of days filled with all the textbook stages of grieving, save acceptance. But denial she knew. And anger. And bargaining with fate: Let this not have happened and I will live an exemplary life all the rest of my days.

Fate wouldn’t be bargained with, however, so the best she could do was allow herself a small sense of triumph at getting out of bed each morning—an act of sheer will, requiring a certain determined amnesia in order to ignore the losses strung like thorns along the beaded chain of her life.

This resolve to carry on was entirely for Lindsay’s benefit. If she could have, Mariah would have sheltered her precious daughter from every harsh and buffeting wind, but she’d been powerless to keep David’s life from slipping away on them. Lindsay had been robbed of a father’s unconditional support at the worst possible moment, poised on the brink of adolescence, that moment in life when young people are already beginning to suspect that they’ve been duped and that the safe haven of childhood is an illusion fostered by a vast parental conspiracy. All Mariah wanted now was for her daughter to hold on to faith in the possibility of happiness, the constancy of love and the notion that people are mostly good—even if these beliefs held only the shakiest of places in her own personal credo.

At fifteen, however, Lindsay seemed equally determined most days to reject her mother’s take on life, love and all other matters, great and small. This was one of those days when nothing Mariah did or said or wore or suggested was going to earn even the most grudging approval.

“Not the blue one, either?” Mariah asked, pulling yet another hanger from her closet. They were in her upstairs bedroom of the condominium town house Mariah had bought in McLean, Virginia, after it became clear David would never recover from the car crash that had ripped apart their family—a deliberate attack that had also injured her daughter, but missed its intended target: Mariah herself.

Lindsay picked up a magazine from the bedside table and began flipping through it, her beautiful, dark eyes avoiding both her mother and the dress. “Whatever,” she said grudgingly.

Her hands were again decorated with ink doodling, Mariah noted, her nails painted blue-black. She’d been forbidden to go to school looking like that, but with school out for the summer now, Lindsay was testing limits again. Between the skin drawing, the hammered-looking fingertips and the third earring in one ear, her beautiful little girl seemed determined to transform herself into something out of Edgar Allan Poe. Why?

Mariah turned back to the mirror, gritting her teeth. They would not fight tonight.

From outside the flung-wide windows, the sweet, heavy scent of magnolia blossoms in the park-like condominium complex wafted across the warm evening air. But underneath that, the air crackled with the static charge of a storm brewing. July had arrived with all the restless, humid promise to which hormone-wracked youth are susceptible. Other people, too, perhaps, but not her, Mariah thought. That way lay only grief. She looked past her own reflection to her daughter’s. It was going to be a long summer, and not all the storms would be outside.

Pulling her gaze away from Lindsay, she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. It was getting late, and she was damned if she’d stay up half the night agonizing over wardrobe choices for an assignment she’d been dragooned into. She should have said no, and not just because of the assignment. There was also the contact site: the Arlen Hunter Museum. Hunter himself had died several years back. Was his family still involved in the museum that bore his name?

The Hunter family. Mariah grimaced. It wasn’t the family she was worried about. It was Renata. Would she be there? Well, what if she was? Why should it matter? Renata couldn’t hurt her anymore. Had no power over her unless Mariah handed it to her, and why would she do that? Simple answer: she wouldn’t.

She studied the dress in her hand once more. It was sleeveless and front-buttoning, with a high, Chinese-mandarin collar. The shimmering cobalt silk made a striking contrast to her softly cropped blond hair and cast her smoky eyes in an unusual light. It seemed suitable enough, but living with a teenager was enough to shake anyone’s confidence in her own judgment.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

Lindsay’s bare shoulder lifted in a dismissive shrug. She was wearing a black halter top over heavily frayed jeans. A full head taller than Mariah’s five-three, with impossibly long legs, she was fair-skinned and fine-boned, with the doe-eyed delicacy of a Walter Scott heroine that belied an increasingly headstrong nature.

“A little fancy, isn’t it?” Lindsay said without looking up. “I thought this was a work thing. Why don’t you wear one of your suits?”

“It is work, but it’s also a gala opening. I don’t want to look like one of the museum guards, do I?”

Again, the shrug. “Wear what you want, then.”

Lindsay tossed the magazine aside and flopped down onto the big four-poster bed, thick curls washing like copper-colored waves down the smooth expanse of her back. As she landed, the corner of Mariah’s eye picked up a tumbling dust bunny, expelled from under the bed by the exasperated whumphing of the mattress. She tried not to think how long it had been since the vacuum had made a house call under there. She wondered, too, how this maddeningly irritating girl could be the cornerstone of her happiness, her reason for living. Some days, motherhood felt like pure masochism.

Giving up all hope of approval, she lay the Chinese-silk dress on the bed, by the garment bag lying next to Lindsay. Her suitcase was on the floor, and it already held most of the things she’d need for their vacation to follow. Lindsay’s own bag was packed, zipped and standing by the door of her bedroom down the hall.

“I still don’t see why I can’t come with you tomorrow,” Lindsay grumbled. “I would have liked to see the Russian royal treasures, too, you know.”

“I’ll take you another time. The tour’s coming through D.C. We’ll see it at the Smithsonian.”