The Innocents Club

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.”

“Yeah, right. Next year. You could have wangled me into the grand opening.”

Mariah shuddered at the thought. It was bad enough she had to go herself. “The invitation list was tightly controlled,” she said. “With the secretary of state and Russian foreign minister coming, the security contingent alone will take up half the hall. Anyway, this is no social occasion for me.”

“I wouldn’t get in the way. I didn’t in Paris.”

“That was different.”

“Yeah, it was. Those were private meetings. This is a public opening. If I got dressed up, I’d blend right into the background. I look old enough. I don’t even get carded at R-rated movies anymore.”

Mariah frowned. “R-rated movies? I don’t remember approving that.”

“Mom,” she said, rolling her eyes, “everything’s R-rated these days except Big Bird. I’ve told you about every movie my friends and I have gone to.”

Her friends included a six-foot, tank-size junior named Brent who’d started hanging around lately. Drive-in theaters and boys with shiny new driver’s licenses were bad enough, Mariah thought. Now, add R-rated movies to the long list of subjects that she and Lindsay could argue about.

Not tonight, though.

“The point is,” Lindsay said, “I can almost pass for twenty-something if I get really done up.”

“That’s all I’d need,” Mariah said, rifling through her bureau, trying to find her travel makeup bag. She and David had bought the oak double dresser at a country estate auction not long after they were married. Now, for the first time in her life, she had more drawer space than she knew what to do with, and she could still never find anything. The bag finally appeared. “I don’t want to be worrying about some guy hitting on my baby girl while I’m supposed to be picking Russian brains.”

Lindsay’s mouth rounded in a mock-pitying pout. “Aw, poor Mom! Double-oh-seven never had to baby-sit while he was spying on Dr. No, did he?”

“Double-oh-seven, my foot. I’m just an old desk jockey who gets unchained from time to time for a closer look at the other side. Those visiting dignitaries, however, have roving eyes and hands. I’m not exactly going to blend into the background if I have to be beating them off you like some crazed fishwife, am I?”

Lindsay blushed, confirming the general wisdom that redheads look adorable in pink. “Get outta here. You’ll be beating them off yourself in that dress.”

Mariah was packing her toiletry kit, but she turned to her daughter with a look of mock astonishment. “Oh, my gosh, is that a vote of confidence I’m hearing? You do think the dress is okay?”

Lindsay flipped over onto her back. “It’s fine. You going without me tomorrow isn’t.”

“You’re coming right behind me! Honestly, Lins, I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. It’s barely forty-eight hours.”

“Because it’s boring here. All right? And there’s a party tomorrow night, and I’m not going to get to go to that, either! And if I don’t—” She rolled off the bed and headed for the door. “It’s not fair!”

The walls vibrated with the stomping of her feet down the hall and the slamming of her bedroom door, and then, the stereo came on loud. Very loud. Too loud for open windows and even the most well-baffled condominium walls.

Mariah massaged her forehead, trying to loosen the vise that was in the process of clamping down on her skull. When did the age of roller-coaster hormones end? It couldn’t happen too soon.

She took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm. The neighbors were away. The music still had to be turned down, but she would not fight. Not tonight.

She zipped her makeup kit and tossed it on top of the open suitcase. Then, steeling herself, she went down the hall and knocked softly on Lindsay’s door. No answer. The second rap was a little louder. Not aggressive. Just loud enough to be heard.

“What?” Lindsay snapped from the other side.

Mariah opened her mouth to ask if she could come in, but what if the answer came back no? Better to take acknowledgment as invitation. When she walked in, Lindsay was stretched on her stomach across the unmade bed, arms hanging down as she flipped through a pile of plastic CD cases on the floor beside her.

“We need to turn the music down,” Mariah said. “The windows are open, and it’s getting late.”

“Fine,” Lindsay said, but didn’t move.

Mariah walked over to the desk and lowered the volume on the stereo. The chair, typically, was covered with clothes from the try-and-toss ritual Lindsay went through as she debated her image each day. Mariah made a move to start hanging them up, but if she did, she knew it would be interpreted as criticism—not that the mess didn’t warrant it, but there was a time and a place, and this wasn’t it. On the other hand, she wanted to sit down, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit on top of all those clean clothes. She compromised and draped the whole pile over the back of the desk chair, then settled and looked around.

The decor was in a constant process of transformation. Nothing was ever removed, but layer upon layer was added as Lindsay’s interests evolved. Between posters of rock bands and animals, new ones had been hung—book jackets and astronomical phenomena, two of the many passions of this difficult but incredibly bright daughter she was trying to raise. Images of the Milky Way and the Horsehead Nebula hung interspersed with others of writers as diverse as Jane Austen, George Orwell and Ken Kesey—and, Mariah noted, one whole wall of Ben Bolt, the grandfather Lindsay had never known.

Maybe it was just coincidence that she’d discovered her grandfather not long after losing her dad. Ben’s novel Cool Thunder had been on her freshman English curriculum, after all. But Lindsay had taken her Ben Bolt study well beyond school requirements, reading everything by and about him that she could get her hands on.

Not surprising, Mariah supposed. At a certain point, everyone wants to know who they are and where they came from, and she herself hadn’t provided much information over the years. Where Ben was concerned, she’d operated on the theory that if you can’t say something good about someone…

“Why couldn’t I stay at Chap’s while you’re working?” Lindsay asked sullenly.

Chap Korman was the literary agent who’d handled Ben’s work from the start of his career. His house in Newport Beach, California, was only a couple of blocks from the cottage where Lindsay and Mariah were spending their three-week vacation. Since her own mother’s death twenty years earlier, Mariah had become sole guardian of Ben’s estate, and it was a credit to Korman that she felt as close to him as she felt estranged from the memory of his former client.

“There really wasn’t time to arrange it with Chap and change your ticket—although, to be perfectly honest, Lins, I didn’t even think of it. Carol was the first person I thought of.” Carol Odell was the married daughter of Mariah’s old CIA mentor and boss, Frank Tucker. The families had always been close. “She and Michael are really looking forward to having you there for a couple of days. So is Alex. Apparently, he’s having sibling anxiety over the new baby. That little guy’s crazy about you, and you haven’t seen much of him lately.”

“It’s not my fault. I had exams and everything.”

“I know. But when this assignment got thrown at me and I tried to think how to work it, Carol’s just seemed like the best idea. I did try to call you,” Mariah added, “but the phone here was tied up all afternoon.”

“I was talking to Br—to my friends about the party at Stephanie’s tomorrow. It’s not fair I can’t go.”

“There’ll be other parties. This couldn’t be helped.”

“It won’t be the same! People won’t be around later.”

“People? Are we talking people like Brent?”

She nodded miserably. “He’s going to Connecticut to see his dad. I won’t see him again till school starts.”

Mariah said a quiet prayer of thanks for that. She didn’t think she was being overprotective. At eighteen, Brent was just too old and altogether too smooth. But she adopted what she hoped was an appropriately sympathetic expression and reminded herself not to let any dismissive platitudes pass her lips. The only safe recourse was to agree that this development was, indeed, as earth-shattering as it seemed from a fifteen-year-old perspective. “I know it’s the pits,” she said. September was a long way off, thank God.

Lindsay sighed, a real heartbreaker of a sigh. Mariah moved next to her on the bed and stroked that beautiful copper hair.

“Carol says Charlotte’s just started smiling,” she ventured. Lindsay smiled a little at that. Mariah put an arm around her daughter’s slim shoulders, bending to kiss her head. “I know how frustrated you are, Lins. Me, too. I’m so fed up with work these days, I could put a chair though the window. We really need this vacation.”

It seemed they’d been planning it forever. A beach holiday, they’d decided, in a rare instance of total accord—three weeks of relaxing, swimming, tanning, shopping. Long walks on the sand. Maybe a few sailing lessons. California wouldn’t have been Mariah’s first choice. She’d have opted for the Hamptons or the Carolinas, but there had been advantages to going west, not the least of which was the chance to spend some time with Chap Korman, who wasn’t getting any younger. That was certainly where Lindsay’s vote had gone, in any case, so California-bound they were—with this one small wrinkle.

“Just be patient? I’ll go do this job, and then we’ll have three whole weeks to veg in the sun.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Mariah hugged her again, too grateful for the diverted crisis to listen to the doubts gnawing in the back of her mind. Doubts that should have told her there was something altogether too coincidental, too pat about this sudden call to duty on an old enemy’s turf.

If she’d been less distracted, less weary, less defeated, she might have pulled her wits about her faster and found a way to turn Geist down flat. But she hadn’t. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before she felt an unseen hand clawing at the frayed threads of her life.