Chapter 14 Blackjack
BLACKJACK
Dagger’s message came in at zero five hundred.
Something you need to see.
I lay there for a full minute, looking at the ceiling before I got up.
I was already half awake, thinking about waking Katarina up with my tongue between her legs.
Instead, I rolled out of bed and got dressed in the dark, hoping I wouldn’t disturb her. Once I had my boots on, I was ready to head out, but stopped in the doorway.
My kitten was on her right side, with her head resting on her arm. Her dark hair was loose across the pillow, and her cheeks were flushed from the room’s warmth.
Three seconds later, I crossed to the bed, sat on the edge, leaned forward, and kissed her.
She roused, opened her eyes, and was about to wrap her arm around my neck when she blinked.
“You’re dressed.”
“There’s something Dagger wants me to see.”
She groaned and used my shoulder to pull herself up.
I kissed her again. “Sleep. If it’s important, I’ll let you know.”
“He wouldn’t have sent a message this early if it wasn’t.” She covered her mouth when she yawned. “I’ll shower quickly, then join you.”
This time, I groaned.
“What?” she asked.
“You, naked in the shower. Me with Dagger in the command center.”
Katarina laughed. “Go to work, Blackjack.”
Outside, the cold came off the lake through the trees. Two of the three lanterns along the stone walkway were lit. The third was out, and I made a mental note to replace the bulb when I returned later.
I walked with my hands in my jacket pockets and my head down on the path that was starting to feel like a commute. Three days at Onteora, and the ground under my boots was already starting to feel familiar.
Anna was in the kitchen when I came inside.
“You’re up early,” she said, glancing up from the dough she was kneading on a bread board.
“Work called.”
She filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me.
“You’re a godsend. Thank you.”
“I’d ask if you slept well, but that would be a silly question, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Like a log, Anna.” I winked and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
She chuckled and kept at it as I walked into the great room.
“Bishop, wait!” she called after me. “I was hoping you and Katarina could help bring the Thanksgiving dishes up from the basement later.”
I stopped and turned around. “Sure thing. How many are there?”
“Four boxes. Thank you, Bishop.”
Few enough that I could manage them myself.
“See you later, Anna,” I said, heading for the covered walkway that led to the boathouse.
The first light was breaking over the lake in a thin line at the horizon. I was used to being on the move at this time of day, and the sunrise usually motivated me. Except today, I wished I were still in bed, with my kitten snuggled up beside me.
Dagger had his laptop open when I walked in. Givre was beside him on the phone.
When I approached, he turned the screen toward me and pushed two sheets of paper across the table.
The first was a one-page summary. The other was a photograph of a hand-drawn diagram.
It was done in pencil on graph paper, and the date in the upper right corner was written in Cyrillic—September 1989.
I read the summary. Dagger had been running the private banking institutions Horatio and Mikhail had identified against everything K19 had on Vasiliev’s current shell structure.
The same routing appeared in three of the shells Vasiliev was using right now—a beneficial-ownership loop running through one of the old private banking institutions, then out the other side under a different name.
Givre ended her call. “Hamburg is confirming the same routing structure from their end.”
“It’s not noise,” I said.
“No,” Dagger said. “It’s not.”
Katarina walked in twenty minutes later, read the summary like I had, then looked at the photo Dagger set on the table in front of her.
“That’s Horatio’s handwriting.”
“Yes,” Dagger said.
She held it beside the routing chart. “He found this in 1989,” she said.
Dagger nodded. “It matches the current network exactly.”
She set both down. “Then, we know what we’re looking for.”
Mercury came through the door two minutes later. She picked the summary page up from the desk.
Nobody spoke while she read.
She set it down, lifted the photograph, held it for a moment, then set that down too.
“My father and Mikhail watched Romanov take shape in the last years of the Soviet Union,” she said.
“They were the only two people in the West who understood what they were looking at while it was still coming together. The men behind it killed them for it before they could prove any of what they knew.”
“And it leads somewhere,” said Katarina.
“Yes.” Mercury straightened. “It certainly does.”
By midafternoon, I’d been staring at the Romanov board long enough that the connections had stopped resolving into anything useful, so I took a break and went outside.
The air was cold but would clear my head.
Off to my right, a little ways up the hillside and shrouded by trees, there was a cottage I hadn’t noticed before.
Anna was standing with her hand on the porch rail.
Julian was beside her. She chuckled when he said something that made her shake her head.
They looked more like old friends than property owner and caretaker.
When I turned to go into the building, I saw Mercury standing on the covered pathway, looking out at the lake.
I stood beside her. “Everything okay?” I asked.
She turned to face me. “I’ve been a part of Katarina’s life since she was born,” she began. “In all that time, I’ve never once seen her reach for something she wanted. Not for herself. She’s reaching for you.”
“I know,” I said.
“You need to understand the weight of that responsibility. It will not be easy to carry.”
“I promise you, I do understand, and it’s easier than you think.”
Her eyes were riveted to mine. “Do you love her?”
Did I? On some level, I did even though we’d barely scratched the surface of our relationship. “I care very much for her,” I responded honestly.
She put her hand on my forearm and squeezed. “That’s a good start.”
The main camp smelled like roast chicken when we came in for dinner.
Anna had been cooking all afternoon. Everyone was invited, and the conversation and laughter stretched into dessert.
The best moment was a story Katarina told about her first winter in Lausanne that made Polina laugh quietly into her napkin.
After we cleaned the kitchen, I leaned against the counter and looked at her.
“Move your things to Ohkwari,” I said.
She set the dish towel down. “Um. Okay.”
We went upstairs, and I pulled her bag from under the bed and opened it on the mattress. She told me what to take from the drawers, and I packed while she managed the bathroom herself, one-handed, then returned with what she needed. I added it to the bag and zipped it.
“Is that everything?” I asked.
“I travel light.”
The path between the main camp and Ohkwari ran through a stand of birch. The cold came off the lake through the trees, and the loons were calling out on the water.
“Do they do that all night?” she asked.
“Most of it.”
“I kind of like it,” she said.
Inside, I set the bag on the chair. She told me where things went, and I put them there. Clothes went on the left side of the wardrobe, the compass on the nightstand. In the bathroom, I moved my stuff out of the way, and she arranged hers.
When everything had a place, she sat on the edge of the bed, and I sat beside her.
“Anna wants us to bring the Thanksgiving stuff up from the basement tomorrow,” I said.
“What Thanksgiving stuff?”
I shrugged. “That’s just what she said.”
“We never celebrated in Lausanne.”
“Maybe it’s something they only did when they were in the States,” I suggested.
Katarina shrugged, then rubbed her hands together. “I can’t wait to see what else is down there.”