Ventilators the size of jet engines heaved fresh air into the complex. Still, the tunnel from the Perriman subbasement was clammy, the way Charlie imagined a submarine would be. It ended at an ordinary door, through which Dewart ushered him into a stark, concrete hallway lit with fluorescents that caused the walls to shimmer in a dull blue.
In the sporadic dark offices and meeting rooms on both sides, activity was minimal. Charlie saw only a desk chair roll partly into view and a shadow fluctuate just so. His hope that Drummond was still alive rested in large part on the length of time it took to fly an interrogator from the Caribbean to New York. Twice when he tried to ask questions, Dewart shushed him.
Dewart stepped into the employee lounge, an alcove whose amenities included a spotty coffee urn and a refrigerator on which somebody had taped the note THROW OUT OLD MILK. Still clacking a dry tongue, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out a bottle of Gatorade.
“Have a throne,” he said to Charlie, indicating a bridge table surrounded, incongruously, by a quartet of high-backed, gilded chairs that could have come from Liberace’s dining room. “Coke or something?”
“I’m good,” Charlie said. He sank into a velvet-covered cushion.
This was hardly the interrogation upon which his plan hinged.
Dewart plunked his Gatorade onto the table and sat as well. “So there’s a small matter I wanted to run by you, Chuck. We have a recording of a cryptic phone call this evening between you and twice-convicted felon Leonid Grudzev, a.k.a. Leo Kuchna and Leo the Terrible. Do you have any interest in explaining this?”
“Well…” Charlie said. It was about time.
“ Well, what?”
“You’re not going to be too happy about this.”
“I promise you, I’ll be a lot less happy if you don’t tell me.”
“Okay, have it your way. Once Mr. Hattemer was killed, I figured anyone else in this country with the power to help me probably would be having a bad fall down a flight of stairs or something like that. I called Grudzev because he knows people in low places, and I hoped one of those places might be the new KGB.”
“The SVR?”
“That’s the one. As everyone’s favorite philosopher, Sun Tzu, put it, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ I figured if the Ivans knew about Placebo, it wouldn’t be much of a secret anymore. I know this isn’t the ideal solution, but it’s more ideal than getting killed because I know the secret myself.”
“ ‘My enemy’s enemy’ is an Arab proverb,” Dewart spat. He jerked Charlie up from his chair, slung him against the refrigerator, and handcuffed him to the adjoining refrigerator and freezer door handles, slapping on the cuffs with more force than necessary. Then he was off; Charlie heard his hurried footfalls long after he’d disappeared down the corridor.
Charlie had misattributed the “enemy’s enemy” quote on purpose: it was misdirection, designed to distract attention from his actual intent. His call to the Washington Post and his intentionally clumsy cell phone tradecraft also had been misdirection. As Sun Tzu in fact had counseled, “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.” If Charlie’s incompetence act worked, the Cavalry would worry that spilled beans were now rolling toward the Kremlin. Which meant the spooks would hold off neutralizing him or Drummond. And before they determined that Charlie’s story was pure fiction, hopefully Leo the Terrible would arrive and shoot the place up.