The Innocents Club. Taylor Smith

already! Last time he’d seen her? Her dad’s funeral. A heartbreaker even then. Like her mother. Grandmother, too. Incredible Ben would abandon his pretty wife, Andrea, for a man-eater like Renata Hunter. Human nature, Chap thought…no accounting for it.

      He reached for his drink. Misjudged the distance. His perspective was all wonky, he realized idly. Fingers only brushed the glass. It tumbled in slow motion to the deck, each amber drop distinct as it splashed on the wooden planks.

      Chap felt his butt slide a little on the smooth plastic bottom. So tired. His head lolled on the cushioned rest. He looked back toward the bedroom. Squinted, then frowned. Was that someone in the doorway?

      “Hey, you,” he called. Thought he did.

      Did he?

      Figure in the doorway never moved. Half hidden in shadow. Just a grim smile. Teeth gleaming like a goddam Pepsodent commercial.

      Well, let him stand there, Chap thought grumpily. Guy wasn’t going to make the effort to be sociable, neither would he.

      He lay back and closed his eyes. So comfortable.

      He felt himself slipping a little more. Opened his eyes. Guy in the doorway still watching him. Why? he wanted to ask, but he felt a little dizzy. Short of air. Inhaled deeply and slipped again on the slick plastic, his body pivoting. Almost on his side now, shoulders underwater.

      Be up in a minute, Em. Just gonna grab forty winks here, okay?

      So sleepy. A deep sigh. Another long slip on the smooth bottom, his head bumping on the hard plastic edge as Chap Korman sank beneath the churning bubbles.

      Chapter Six

      The quiet was beginning to get on Tucker’s nerves. When he started hearing the building breathe, he knew he was losing it.

      Logically, he knew the deep thrum permeating his office walls was the reverberation of massive air conditioners. Their primary function was to cool—not people but a vast array of supercomputers, satellite receivers and transmission devices—sensitive equipment that bristled day and night, processing the agency’s sensory input and outgoing commands.

      Once aware of the pulsing rhythm, though, Tucker couldn’t shake the sense he’d been swallowed alive by some huge beast of prey.

      He glanced at his watch, wondering if he had time to run out and pick up Mariah’s letter from the Courier Express distribution center in Falls Church. The place was open till 10:00 p.m. He had plenty of time. What he didn’t have was patience. Geist’s secretary had phoned down over four hours ago to tell him to stand by to be summoned upstairs for a debriefing on his Moscow trip. Now he was itching to walk out.

      It would have been premature to tell Mariah this Urquhart character might not be as far off base as she thought. Better to find out what the professor knew, then decide what to do about it. This should have been ancient history by now, Tucker thought grimly. She had enough on her plate. Damn them all to hell, anyway.

      One file sat on his desk a little apart from the others he’d pulled from the Navigator’s crate. He’d stumbled across it not long after talking to Mariah. Finally, the pieces were falling together. His late-night message from the courier. His cryptic conversation with the Navigator in Moscow. And the reason why he, in particular, had been chosen to receive this loaded gift.

      Tucker had met with Georgi Deriabin late at night in a modest dacha on the outskirts of Moscow—although recognizing the infamous Navigator had required a leap of imagination on his part.

      Deriabin was tall and skeletally thin, with weathered skin the color of mustard. His wispy white hair was shorn to a stubble, leaving his head almost as smooth as Tucker’s own. On closer examination, Tucker saw the ravages of chemotherapy. When the old man reached out to shake hands, Tucker was afraid he’d crush those birdlike bones.

      “I’m glad you could come, Mr. Tucker.”

      “Hard to turn down such an intriguing invitation.”

      The wizened figure just smiled and shuffled ahead of him into the cottage. Most of the ground floor seemed to consist of a small sitting and dining room. A cloth-covered table had been set for two, a bottle of vodka nestled in an ice bucket alongside.

      Since Tucker’s arrival that morning, he’d spent the entire day at the Intourist Hotel, waiting, as directed, for further instructions. The smell of onions, sausage and other good things now was a painful reminder he’d eaten nothing all day except a protein bar he’d taken from the emergency-rations stock of the Company plane that had flown him in.

      “You will join me for dinner, yes?” Deriabin said.

      Tucker considered refusing for about a millisecond, then nodded.

      As soon as they sat down, a portly woman he took to be the housekeeper started carrying in food, generous platters of herring, black bread, sausages and sauerkraut, blinis and piroshki. Hearty but simple fare.

      Tucker glanced around. The cottage, too, was comfortable but modest, with white plastered walls, exposed rough beams and sturdy country furnishings. A KGB safe house? he wondered. Or a sign of the Navigator’s reduced fortunes? Yet how diminished could Deriabin’s position be when he’d been able to arrange not only to get a message out, but also for the CIA plane to over-fly and land in Russian territory?

      The old man poured a glass of vodka for each of them. The toast, the first of many that night, was perfunctory enough, if ironic.

      “To your good health, Mr. Tucker.”

      Tucker considered reciprocating, but in the other man’s case, the wish seemed a little belated and beside the point. He lifted his glass and nodded, then followed the old man as he threw it back.

      They directed their attention to the food, but Deriabin ate little, picking at it for a few minutes before setting his fork aside and lighting a cigarette. “You will excuse me, please. The food, I assure you, is excellent. And perfectly safe,” he added, reading Tucker’s mind. “Unfortunately, my appetites are no longer what they once were. Liver cancer, my doctors tell me. I gather I have a few weeks. Three months, at best. But we must live for the moment, no?” He refilled their glasses, raised his briefly, then downed it in one gulp.

      Over the next few hours, Tucker watched the bottle slowly drain, doing his part to keep up with the old man. Deriabin seemed coherent, despite his obvious illness and the amount of drink he’d consumed. Like most men with unfettered power, he seemed to have lost the art of two-way conversation, requiring only an audience. Tucker was content to give him one, and Deriabin rambled on about myriad subjects both philosophical and trivial without ever zeroing in on the heart of the matter—why he had made contact. Tucker decided to let the hand play itself out. Having taken up the dare and come, he was at the old man’s disposition. All he had to do was keep his cool and see where things went.

      When the dishes had been cleared away, they sat alone and uninterrupted. For a while, a television droned in another room, where, it seemed, the housekeeper and driver were watching a dubbed version of Jurassic Park. Pretty appropriate, Tucker thought as he listened to the dinosaur across the table from him rehash the good old days, when the struggle between the Soviet and American empires had dominated the international landscape.

      The bottle was nearly empty when Deriabin threw out what seemed at first to be no more than a drunkard’s complaint. “Women!” he grumbled. “Why is it so impossible to put a good mind and a good ass in one package, eh? Tell me that.”

      No reply was expected. Tucker let the man rant.

      “Every woman with half a brain they ever sent up to me had a face like a potato and legs like tree stumps! And the decent-looking ones? The mental capacity of pickled herring—although,” Deriabin added, arching a grizzled eyebrow, “there’s good eating in that, just the same, eh?”

      He chuckled at his own humor, but it quickly turned into a strangled cough. His yellowed skin grew darker as he gasped and pulled a handkerchief