The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage by Francesca Salerno

equipment, not including anything, regrettably, made after the Soviets tested their first nuclear bomb in 1949.
     
    After wandering around the neighborhood for twenty minutes, he found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the Dostoevskaya metro stop, the newest in the city. He let the waiter bring him a plate of half a dozen excellent pelmeni , portions of ground pork and onion wrapped in thin, unleavened dough and boiled, like a dumpling. He followed this with a dish of herring and potatoes, washed down with vodka. He had more vodka after his meal and arrived back at the Slavyanka pleasantly drunk.
     
    Colonel Marchenko had responded to his email when he checked his computer, indicating that he would come to the hotel the following morning around 10 AM.
     
    In order to reduce the risk of their emails being detected, Jacques LeClerc and Wantree had agreed that they would each access a dummy MSN Hotmail account LeClerc had set up before Wantree left England. Each of them had the password and would leave messages in the Drafts folder, unsent.
     
    When Wantree had read LeClerc’s message, he would delete it, write his response, and save it, too, in Drafts . That way, no email traffic was actually sent over the Internet. The emails were simply saved internally within the account to which both men had access. They were read there, and then deleted, unsent. Such a system could not alert tracking devices because there was nothing to track.
     
    When he was through checking for Marchenko’s emailed response, Wantree noticed there was a new message in Drafts . It was from LeClerc and read “Expect client rep to join you in Moscow later this week. M has been advised.” The more the merrier, Wantree thought, as he deleted it. He would ask Marchenko about it. He drafted no reply to LeClerc.
     
    ***
     
    The retired KGB colonel was waiting for him the next morning in a stuffed armchair in the lobby. Wantree spotted him at once. Marchenko was a flamboyant figure, with a military bearing his civilian clothes could not disguise—dark eyes under a stern brow; a neatly clipped mustache. It occurred to Wantree that Jacques LeClerc was likely no match for him, physically or intellectually. He approached the Russian.
     
    “So, Mr. Wantree, you are English, are you not?” The colonel did not extend his hand or get up from his chair.
     
    “English indeed, and a military man like yourself,” Wantree said jauntily. He immediately regretted the boast.
     
    “Ha!” Marchenko roared. “I am glad to know it! Then we will work well together!”
     
    “I meant I served as a civilian technical advisor to my government,” Wantree said.
     
    “I take your meaning. To be frank, I had forgotten that the British maintained the kind of—capability—to which you refer. You were always a small part of NATO, and NATO is another acronym for USA.”
     
    “We are a proud nation, like Russia.”
     
    “You will take a coffee with me?”
     
    Wantree nodded. Marchenko raised his hand and snapped his fingers with a crack like a dry tree limb breaking. A waiter came scurrying over and Marchenko spoke to him peremptorily. Then he sat back and studied Wantree.
     
    “I am not enthusiastic about Monsieur LeClerc’s plan to have you make an inspection,” Marchenko said when the two espressos arrived. “It complicates matters, and it weakens security.”
     
    “I am discreet.”
     
    “That may be. But now I learn that LeClerc is sending someone else. This is unacceptable.”
     
    “I too was surprised by this. I just learned of it myself. I was not involved in your negotiation with Jacques LeClerc,” Wantree said. “He simply hired me the way the buyer of a used car might hire a mechanic to check out the vehicle before sale. I am merely a technician.”
     
    Marchenko took this in, holding the espresso cup delicately in his large hand.
     
    “Tell me what you will require to authenticate the device.”
     
    “I will need to see it of