Money for Nothing Read Online Free PDF Page A

sure," Josh said.
    "It is no longer there," Mr. Nimrin said, "but at that time it was popular with NYU students. You were there as well sometimes, though I don't believe you were an NYU student."
    "I was there to pick up NYU students," Josh said, remembering, with some nostalgic pleasure.
    "I was there for a similar reason," Mr. Nimrin told him. 'To collect young people. You were one of the ones I collected."
    "What do you mean, collect?"
    Mr. Nimrin sat back on the sofa, frowning at the coffee table. He seemed all at once not quite so certain of himself. He said, "At first, I wasn't going to tell you your part in my scheme, but then I realized, if they're interrogating you it won't matter what you give them because I'm doomed either way. Whereas, if you have a clear idea of the situation, it will certainly encourage you to do your best not to become an innocent victim." He looked at Josh. "Believe me," he said, "you do not want to be an innocent victim."
    "I believe you," Josh said.
    "Very well. We must go back," Mr. Nimrin said, "to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The confusion, I would even say devastation, created in the intelligence communities in the east by that disaster was beyond belief. Before, there had been easy alliances, cooperation, a world of known friends and known enemies. Suddenly, it was as though we'd entered a world of warlords, none of us secure in our territory. Who did we work for? Who did we report to? Who would provide our funding? Who was with us, and who against?"
    Mr. Nimrin sighed and shook his head. He adjusted himself on the sofa. Clearly, these memories were painful ones. He said, "It took years, I must say, before the situation was sorted out, even a little. We turned out to be Ukraine, surprising many of us, and linked to Naval Intelligence. The so-called Russian navy, you see, is mostly in the Ukraine, the Black Sea having been the Soviet Union's primary access to open water."
    Josh said, "What do
I
have to do with any of this?"
    "Nothing!" thundered Mr. Nimrin, suddenly enraged. "That's the aggravating thing of it!" Calming himself, he said, "I could see that our future, in our new Ukrainian guise, was extremely unstable. It seemed to me that I should first feather my nest and then retire, before things got worse. This is where you come in."
    "I do?"
    "One of the things that carried over to the new order," Mr. Nimrin said, "was the sleeper fund, moneys to be spent on deep cover operatives, maintained on standby wherever in the world we might have an interest. These sleepers were mostly a joke, as we in the field knew. Our dread was always that we might have to wake one of them and depend on his help in an emergency. So the sleepers were
not
wakened."
    "Is that me?" Josh asked. "A sleeper?"
    "Yes, of course."
    "But I've been wakened."
    "That's the infuriating part of it!" Mr. Nimrin said, pounding his knee. "I have no idea what this operation can be. How could they be so stupid as to activate you? What can they have in mind?"
    Josh said, "What did
you
have in mind?"
    "What, me?" Rage gone, Mr. Nimrin smiled at his former self. "I was quite clever," he said. "I arranged to become a recruiter of sleepers, each of whom would be paid one thousand dollars a month while on standby, then more, of course, if ever activated. I needed people who would look plausible to my superiors, who would vet them once and then never think about them again. Rootless young men, single, with a reputation for radical politics."
    "
I
wasn't in radical politics," Josh protested.
    "You forget," Mr. Nimrin said, "I was your bartender. I heard the loose talk around that bar, and you were very much a part of it. One of my first candidates, in fact."
    Josh sank back on the sofa, trying to remember how much of an idiot he'd been in those days — then, trying not to remember.
    Mr. Nimrin went on, "My goal was to accumulate twenty sleepers, and of course I would divert their payment checks to myself, because none of them