“Perhaps. If you had a chance.”
“I could run for it.”
“You won’t. You’re no fool.”
“Would you kill me if I tried?”
“I’d hate to.”
“Thanks.”
“Besides, you’ll help us for your father’s sake. He’s an old man. He trusts you. And now I trust you, too. You’ll deliver the letter. Unopened.”
“What about the rest of the evidence you mentioned?”
“You’ll get it at the Upstairs. On the first or second of October.” She stood up.
“From you?” He stood up, too. Their bodies almost touched.
“Maybe.”
“If you come there, I may try to rape you.”
“Promise?”
She opened the door and shouted for the two men. They came running up the stairs. Florian had a 9mm Makarov in his hand. “Don’t be stupid!” Her voice sounded like a slap in the face, and the big man blushed. “Put that gun away.” She turned to Rust: “How quickly can you leave Moscow without arousing suspicion?”
“I have an important interview to make the day after tomorrow. After that, I could produce some plausible excuse to leave.”
“Good.” She put her hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You’d better say goodbye to Helmut here and now.”
Rust closed his eyes. “Say my name again.”
“Helmut.”
“Again.”
“Helmut.”
“That was in the message. Not Helm. I’m almost sure.” He waited. The three looked at each other. “Come on. What does it mean to you?”
“There must have been some trouble. Perhaps Igor was caught and interrogated. He wouldn’t be able to withhold information, but he could always make a slight alteration in the message. Like Helmut instead of Helm.”
“Then why was the message delivered by the CIA? Igor wouldn’t have been worried about them, would he?”
“Don’t know.” She sounded desperate. “That’s just what I was trying to tell you. We don’t know and you don’t know how badly your government is infiltrated.”
“Okay. You think Igor was caught, forced to confess, and the CIA was duped into delivering the message. Right? But then why hasn’t my father been arrested?”
“Because Igor knew nothing about him. Or me. He was given a chance to escape with the message from somebody unknown. But something went wrong. I don’t know what. But it means you must be careful even when you get home. You’re probably watched.” She gestured toward Florian. “Let’s go. We’ll wait for you two downstairs. Don’t be long.”
Rust sank into an uneasy silence. He had nothing to say. He had never kissed his father. It would be too formal to shake hands.
“Keep warm,” said the old man idly. “I’m grateful to you. I hope you’ll succeed with whatever you have to do. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever meet again, but I’ll pray for you every day. And in return, you think of me if you ever go to Geneva. Have a look at the Red Cross building for me. And the lake. With the water jet. All that sparkling water almost halfway up the Eiffel Tower. I used to dream about it in the camps.”
“Incidentally, a friend of mine is trying to sort out one or two problems about the camps. Can you remember if in camp BV 523 the guards could see from the nearest watchtower into the foundry area?”
His father hesitated. “No, I don’t think so. No, definitely not. That’s where we used to warm up if there was a chance.”
“How far would you say the nearest perimeter watchtower was?”
“From the foundry? Oh, about a hundred meters, something like that.” He became very agitated. “Can’t remember. Let’s not talk about it.”
“How many guards are on night duty?”
“It varies. I don’t know.”
“One more thing. How deep is the outer safety perimeter in VS 389/2-5?”
“Twenty or thirty meters. Full of mines, of course.”
In the cab, Yelena gave Rust a bottle of ordinary vodka. “Drink some. When you get back to the hotel, pretend to be drunk. No shouting, no singing, a quiet drunk. Even our police are partial and understanding toward drunks, especially quiet drunks. A man must be proud of his drunkenness and others must show due respect. Only your KGB watcher will be reprimanded for losing you for the night, but even he might be forgiven if it’s found that you used your time to get drunk. It’ll tell them what your weakness is.”
Wednesday, September 19
U.S. Congress resolution shows determination to contain Cuban subversion “in any part of this hemisphere,” prevent the creation of Cuban military capability that could endanger U.S. security, and work with the OAS and freedom-loving Cubans to support Cuban aspirations for political self-determination. Judy Garland is hospitalized with “an acute kidney ailment”; drug overdose denied.
*
MAJOR BOYCHENKO KNEW HE HAD BEEN LUCKY. HE HAD escaped from being held responsible. Just. He knew that, too. And he could not have complained if they blamed him personally. Rust was, after all, his charge, and Rust had got away from his tail once before breakfast and once at night. Boycheriko was called by the police at dawn: a friendly detective warned him that his daughter had been seen the previous evening in the long line at the cinema showing Clear Sky, that anti-Stalinist film. Boychenko blamed the authorities for failing to ban such rubbish, but gave a piece of his mind to that stupid girl, too — how the hell could she expect to get into Foreign Trade with that kind of record?
That was the bad news. Other events cheered him up in the morning. He heard that the raped girl might be willing to marry his son. Her father seemed disinclined to embarrass Boychenko. Then came something positive about Rust. A telephone tap on the American embassy picked up a call from a French newspaper correspondent who, apparently, had acted on Rust’s behalf, setting up a rendezvous. Because of the name reference, Rust had been traced to Boychenko, who, in turn, duly observed the lunch meeting between the American and Jim Holly, a junior on the commercial attaché’s staff but suspected as a CIA operative. The two men made no effort to keep the meeting a secret — after all, visiting journalists could expect some legitimate guidance. Nevertheless, Boychenko noted in his report “the clandestine nature of making the arrangements.”
In the evening, Boychenko left his number two in charge and decided to have an early night. He listened to his wife, who always knew the latest jokes. “So the Vostok makes another circuit around the earth, and Ivan waves with mad enthusiasm to the sky. His son says, ‘Don’t be stupid, they can’t see you,’ but Ivan tells him that he’s only waving goodbye to our meat and butter for yet another year.” And that was when the phone rang. For a second, Boychenko thought that the flat had been bugged. He had warned his family often enough not to spread stupid jokes about the economy. He picked up the phone, fearing the worst, but relaxed when he recognized the duty officer’s voice: report at the Spetsburo. Now. Now? At once.
At nine in the evening, life was at a standstill in Dzerzhinsky Ploshchad, the square dominated by Children’s World, Moscow’s largest toy store, and the statue of the father of the Soviet secret police. Behind the bronze figure of that notorious Pole, a few of the tall windows were lit, breaking the ominous shadow of the two fused and remodeled buildings of the All-Russian Insurance Company, better known as the Lubyanka.
Boychenko ran along the parquet-floored dark-green corridors and wondered if he would still be around when everything was repainted light green as planned. He arrived at the Special Bureau No. 1 out of breath. If they wanted to arrest him, they would have sent for him rather than call him. And it would not be the Spetsburo. That was sabotage and assassinations.
“Wet affairs.” So the news was unlikely to be as bad as all that. But you never knew.
A full colonel sat behind a desk three times the size of Boychenko’s and wasted no time even to greet the wheezing major. In the glow of the white globe on the high ceiling, his face had an eerie quality as
he opened a blue plastic folder.
“I see you were attached to this bureau before my time.”
“Yes, from 1951 to — “
“I didn’t ask, did I?”
“No, comrade.”
“And you were fully trained.”
Boychenko said nothing. Yes, he was fully trained for major assassination assignments, prepared and cleared for foreign missions, organization of boyevaya gruppa, the combat gangs that could kill or abduct targets as required, yes, he was well trained — and then wasted with what was now euphemistically described as the Reorganization, meaning de-Stalinization, damn Khrushchev.
“You’re familiar with this Rust and … a junior embassy man, Joe Holly?”
“Jim Holly, Jim.”
“Doesn’t make much difference, does it?”
“No, comrade.”
“Right. Well, here’s your chance to get back into doing something more constructive than Tourists. We’ve information that the two will meet again tonight at eleven on the rampart of Lomonosov. Why the university we don’t know. You’ll be there only to finger them and supervise the squad from Line F, but don’t interfere with their work — they have their full scenario. I think it’s best if you don’t show your face at all. At least at this stage. Clear?”
*
Rust disliked Jim Holly. He asked the wrong questions and tried to look much too important at the morning meeting. Then despite everything they had agreed on, he called again and insisted on this second rendezvous in the evening. Even his choice of place was awful: the wind threatened to blow them off the deserted hill as they walked and pretended to enjoy the sight of Moscow at their feet.
“Did you pass on my message?”
“Of course,” said Holly smugly.
“To whom?”
“I thought that you’d know better than to ask. Now tell me what the joke is.”
“What joke?”
“Let’s not play games, Rust.” He pulled Yelena’s envelope out of his pocket. The seal was broken. “So what’s the joke?”
“You promised not to open it.” He looked inside. There were only a few empty sheets of paper. “Have you … “
“Yes, we’ve tried chemicals, the lot. So now you must tell me everything.”
“You’re crazy. I’ve told you everything.”
“Sure you did, friend. You told me to use the diplomatic bag and forward an empty envelope unopened to Langley. And make a fool of the whole station over here. Come on, joker, we need to know your source, we need evidence.”
Yelena was only a name with a face to Rust. He could tell nothing about her. Only his father would be evidence, but he wouldn’t want to mention him. So he chose to stick to his original story. “I told you. I was stopped by a stranger in the street. He seemed to know everything about me, my work, my past. It sounded convincing that he knew something important and I must pass on his message with the evidence in the envelope. With more to come to me in Florida on the first of October. If it looks like a joke, why are you asking for a second helping?”
Holly took his arm, and his tone became very confidential. Rust could almost hear Holly’s training officer instructing the recruits how to create a friendly atmosphere.
“Look, friend, you don’t know how things go these days. But this bit of info you claim to have could be serious. And I mean I really mean serious. The station chief may want to see you personally. Anything about porokhovyye konfety in Cuba is real deadly. It can’t wait till October.”
Konfety. Why did it ring a bell? “Konfety?”
“You see, friend, you’ve been out of the game too long.” Holly was enjoying himself shamelessly. “It’s KGB slang for missiles, of course. Everybody in the business knows that, but I guess it came after your time.”
Julia-Rosa’s shopping list. The jotted notes and doodles must have been made by a KGB merchant. Elliott would have understood, Rust was sure.
A Skoda and a large, fully enclosed van stopped next to them. Three men in dark-blue raincoats got out of the car and approached them.
“Identity papers.”
Holly produced his diplomatic passport. The spokesman of the three pocketed it. Holly protested loudly. Rust took out his hotel card. The man studied it, then pocketed that, too. “Will you come with us, please?”
They were bundled into the van unceremoniously. Holly’s protests were silenced by the appearance of a 7.15 mm Tokarev, a cumbersome service revolver. The inside of the van was lit by a small bulb. It was like a cell with no windows. They drove off. After some thirty minutes, the van stopped.
The man with the gun spoke to Holly in Russian. Both captives pretended not to understand. The man kneed Holly’s underbelly. The diplomat howled. The man laughed. “This place is soundproof.”
“Yob tebya pereyob,” said Holly, demonstrating the range of his Russian — “Fuck you to the fucking nth degree.”
“That’s better.” The man produced a sheet of stolen letter paper with the American embassy letterhead. “I want you to write a letter, and then you can go and protest. Don’t worry, you’ll always be able to deny it or say that you wrote it under illegal pressure.” He raised the gun and inserted it in Holly’s ear. “All right?” Holly nodded. “Use your own pen.” The man read some notes and began to dictate. “Dear Vassily. I won’t be able to tell you this face to face and suffer the sight of pain in your lovely eyes … ”
“Now wait a minute.”
The Russian screwed the gun farther into Holly’s ear. “ … in your lovely eyes, so this is to warn you. I’m sure you’ll understand. We must break it off. Jill is suspecting us. Not only my marriage, but also my whole future is at stake. So this will be the last time. Even if it breaks my heart. Please forgive me. But don’t forget. I won’t. I’m sure: Your Jimmy.”
Holly laughed. “And you hope to compromise me with that crap? You’re crazy. What do you hope to achieve?”
“Now how could you expect me to answer that, sir?” The man tried to sound friendly and conciliatory. “I’m only doing a job. You know how it is. You write it down and I let you go. Then the big chiefs can argue.”
“Don’t sign it!” shouted Rust. He was pistol-whipped in the face. Why didn’t they do that to Holly?
Holly watched the trickle of blood on Rust’s face and signed the letter.
“Thank you,” said the man and put away the letter. One of his men pulled on plastic overalls and rubber gloves. “You may go now.” He got out of the van, followed by Holly and the man in the overalls. The third man drew aside his coat and took his gun out of a holster, but made no attempt to restrict Rust’s view of open country and the canal bank.
After a few steps, Holly turned and was about to say something, but he faced the man in the overalls and a large butcher’s knife. The blade went through his throat with an expert thrust from right to left, giving him no chance even to scream. Blood spurted everywhere. The gunman stood well back. The plastic protected the other as he went about his work efficiently, without much enthusiasm. The knife plunged into Holly seventeen times. He counted them aloud. Holly must have been long dead by the time he stopped. The gunman consulted a sheet of paper. “Two more,” he said.
The other stabbed the body twice more, then threw down the knife. The gunman crumpled up Holly’s “letter” and dropped it on the ground. Rust began to understand. It was to be a homosexual murder set up, complete with multiple cuts inflicted in a “frenzy of passion.” Somebody might even be caught, sentenced and executed for it.
The killer pulled off the plastic overalls. He took great care not to let blood spill on his clothes underneath. Rust looked around. There was no sign of the Skoda.
“Sergeant!” The shout came from somewhere outside Rust’s vision, probably from the driver’s seat. The gunman walked off in that direction.
They had kicked Holly instead of hitting him with the gun. They must know that the embassy would conduct its own post
mortem when the body was found. All the injuries would have to be compatible with the faked stabbing fury. Rust concluded that his own death would occur somewhere else, in different circumstances that would allow for any sort of injuries. Some accident. They might blame his drinking for it. Had he not returned to the hotel completely pickled only the night before? Or they might make him just disappear. It had happened before. To his father, for instance. Run, run, run, instinct urged him. Wait! Schramm’s teaching drifted back to him. There must be one right-moment; wait for it.
The sergeant walked back into Rust’s field of vision, picked up a stick, and pushed the letter under Holly’s body. “Quite an original paperweight, right?”
“Too wet for documents.” The killer was quick to prove his sense of humor. He stuffed the plastic outfit into a brown paper bag.
Rust kept asking himself why they had let him witness all this. They might have forgotten to shut the door. Plain carelessness. Strange. They seemed to know exactly everything else they were doing. So there must have been a reason for that, too. Of course. They had begun softening him up with the sight. Because they would want to know the source of his information. There would be interrogation. Torture. The thought suddenly made him see himself clearly, sitting there stunned and muted, almost hypnotized by the chain of events and hopeless odds. The two men started back toward the van. If he had a chance at all, he would have to take it within the next minute. His guard would not kill him. The gun was on safety. They needed him. If provoked, the man might copy his sergeant and try his hand at pistol-whipping.
“You shits, you’ll pay for this,” Rust hissed and kicked the man’s shin.
“Fuck you!” He swung the Tokarev to deliver a wild backhand, but Rust was ready for it. He ducked and bobbed up with his outstretched hand, hitting the guard’s unprotected throat. The gurgling rattle told him that he had not missed. The guard began to topple like a sack of flour in slow motion. His attacker’s fist hit his temple.
Rust moved to the corner behind the door. The two men were standing a few yards away. They seemed to take forever. If they called the guard, Rust would have to shoot them and run for it.
In the Company of Spies Page 9