The Innocents Club. Taylor Smith

wishing he had an easy answer. “He wants to leave a legacy, I think. I don’t know exactly what, but I can tell you this—he’s dying.”

      The chair legs finally dropped to the floor. “Say what? He tell you that?”

      “Yeah, but even if he hadn’t, I would’ve known. His skin’s the color of that folder there.”

      The deputy’s eyes strayed back to the mottled yellow file on the desk. “No kidding.”

      “Liver cancer, apparently. He says they’ve given him three months, max.”

      Geist’s right hand rotated in an impatient, forward-rolling notion. “And so—?”

      “I think he’s looking to settle a score before he kicks off.”

      “And he wants us to help him to do it?”

      “That’s my guess.”

      “So, what’s in it for us?”

      Tucker hesitated. This was the tricky part. He was pretty sure part of the Navigator’s plan was to undermine the presidential ambitions of Foreign Minister Zakharov. But who stood to benefit from that? Russia? America? International peace and stability? Some unknown protégé to whom the dying old man was preparing to hand his torch of secret power?

      Tucker didn’t know. He only knew who had the most to lose if this wasn’t handled carefully. But how could he tell the deputy director of the CIA that he’d burn these files and the evidence they contained before he’d let any harm from them rain down on the woman whose name the bloody Navigator had known would be the key to forcing his cooperation?

      “Just give me a little more time, Jack. I’ll do you up a full report.”

      “How much time are we talking?”

      “Twenty-four hours.”

      “Done,” Geist said abruptly. He got to his feet.

      Tucker watched him head for the door. He knew he should leave well enough alone, but he couldn’t. “One more thing,” he said. “Why was Mariah Bolt assigned to cover the Zakharov visit?”

      Geist paused at the door, frowning. “That’s pretty much ‘need to know,’ buddy. She doesn’t work for you anymore.”

      “I know that.”

      “And so? You got some proprietary interest there? That’d be tough, since I hear she’s seeing that hotshot TV anchorman…what’s his name?”

      “Paul Chaney.”

      “Right, Chaney. So…?”

      Tucker shrugged. “I’m just curious why an analyst gets sent out in the field.”

      “I had a little job needed doing, and she was the best person for it. Anyway,” the deputy said briskly, pulling open the door, “this is awesome work, Frank, getting your hands on this stuff. Truly awesome. I’ll need that memorandum on my desk soon as possible, though. You’ll get right on it, won’t you, big guy?”

      He winked and pointed his finger in a stagy “you-the-man!” gesture, then was gone before Tucker had a chance to respond with the contempt the performance deserved.

      Chapter Seven

      So, how exactly did one go about luring a man into betraying his country? Mariah wondered. Bat her eyelashes? Show a little leg? Offer to meet him at the Casbah?

      Really. This was hardly her area. As femmes fatales went, she felt about as lethal as a librarian.

      One thing was certain. Even if the DDO’s sources were right and Yuri Belenko was carrying some sort of torch for her—something she highly doubted, since their previous meetings had been pretty innocuous as far as she was concerned—she would not sleep with the man. Once again, she cursed herself for not having turned Geist down flat.

      She hovered at the edge of an upper-level courtyard of the Arlen Hunter Museum, her second visit of the afternoon. By the time she’d arrived earlier, after stopping at Courier Express to arrange for Frank to collect Chap Korman’s package in Virginia, the security detail had already finished their sweep of the site. She’d had just enough time to show her credentials, walk around and get the lay of the land, and run over the program for the Romanov opening, before heading back to the hotel to change into what she was coming to think of as her Tokyo Rose dress.

      Now, after all her scrambling, the guests of honor were running late. Typical Murphy’s Law. It was already after six, and the early-evening sun was casting a magical, luminescent glow over the restless crowd waiting for Secretary of State Kidd and his Russian counterpart to show up.

      It was nearly twenty years since she’d last set foot in California, and she’d forgotten this strange quality of the light, Mariah realized—the way it cast a magical glow on everything it touched, lulling with seductive promises it had no intention of keeping. Like a smiling thief, the place could rip out your heart in an instant and leave you too stunned to do anything but offer up your soul as well.

      A warm Pacific breeze wafted over the balcony walls, and potted palms and crimson hibiscus rustled softly. The air was thick with expensive perfume and the ripe, masculine scent of the cigars in which one or two of the guests were indulging while they waited to see the Russian imperial treasures.

      The irony was not lost on Mariah that the Last Days of the Romanov Dynasty tour should kick off here in the capital of American glitz and materialism. On display were the lavish worldly possessions of that family whose bloody murder had set in motion decades of deadly struggle between Moscow and the West, bringing the planet several times to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe unimaginable in the Romanovs’ day. But eighty years after their massacre at the hands of the Bolsheviks—shot, stabbed, their bodies acid-drenched, burned, then dumped down a mineshaft in an orgy of overkill—the last czar and his family were finally going to be buried in a St. Petersburg royal crypt with appropriate, if tardy, pomp and circumstance. The niceties taken care of, Russia’s cash-strapped regime could get on with the profitable business of exploiting the luckless royals in a manner that would have seemed hypocritical coming from previous communist governments. America, for its part, seemed willing to let bygones be bygones.

      Looking over the list of dignitaries expected at the opening, Mariah’s heart had sunk to discover Renata Hunter Carr’s name near the top, just as she’d feared. Well, no matter. The woman was ancient history, and she herself was a long way from the confused little girl whose daddy had run off with the rich man’s daughter.

      Sure she was.

      She glanced up, feeling dwarfed by the eight-foot-high letters of Arlen Hunter’s name deeply carved into the pearl-gray marble walls of this monument he’d built to himself on Santa Monica Boulevard. So why did suborning treason feel like a piece of cake compared to the prospect of meeting the late magnate’s home wrecker of a daughter?

      Were her masters at Langley even aware of the grudge she bore Renata? she wondered. Did Geist know? Doubtful. It was conceivable that the woman’s name was lodged somewhere in her personnel record, a gossipy detail on her famous, philandering parent, noted in passing, then filed away by whatever spit-polished security specialist had done her recruitment background check—an insignificant detail by now, surely, after eighteen spotless years of service. If Jack Geist had realized how much that bit of personal history still rankled, though, he might have thought twice about sending her out on this ridiculous assignment. Then again, knowing Geist, maybe not.

      She patted her hair self-consciously. It felt too fluffy. She’d amped up her cosmetics for the occasion, too, and her skin felt plaster-coated. An extra coat of mascara had her feeling as though she was peering out at the world from under lacy awnings.

      Ah, well, she thought wryly, the spy, to be truly effective, must be an expert at camouflage, possessed of that subtle capacity to seem neither out of place nor conspicuous. With the bevy of California beauties gracing the arms of the assembled rich and powerful