The Talbot Odyssey

by Nelson DeMille

  The guards stopped, opened a door, and pushed her inside. She saw by the corridor’s light a small unlit room, furnished with a cot and a waste bucket and nothing else. The door slammed behind her and she heard the lock turn.

  She stood motionless and listened to her hard breathing, then slowly wiped her cold, clammy body with the edge of her dress. She walked carefully to the far side of the room. There was a high window and she pulled the cot to it and stood on it. The window opened onto the dimly lit service court and a weak light filtered through the dirty panes. The window was barred on the outside and she couldn’t open the outward-swinging casements. The room was oppressively warm and stagnant. She stepped down from the cot and walked back to the door and felt for a light switch, but there wasn’t any. It would be on the outside, she knew. This was a cell, and after two years in cells, one knew something of them.

  Claudia slumped down on the cot. It was the waiting and the uncertainty that eventually destroyed the mind and the will. The interrogations and abuse were almost welcome relief—if they didn’t go too far in inflicting pain. At least during the sessions you knew where you stood. Questions were asked, answers were given. Accusations were made, denials and apologies were offered. Eventually you were either freed, sentenced to a term, or shot. Sometimes, however, they did the other thing. They offered you a job. In her case they had offered her the job of impersonating Countess Claudia Lepescu, who had been arrested at the same time she had. She had accepted the job and spent a year in the same cell with the former countess, until the KGB was satisfied that Magda Creanga, which was her real name, was in every way, except by birth, Countess Lepescu. The countess had been taken away, presumably shot to protect the secret.

  Eventually the new Claudia Lepescu was allowed to emigrate to America under the sponsorship of Patrick O’Brien and his friends, who had been pressing for her visa to leave Rumania.

  And she had done her duty to her Russian masters, ingratiating herself into the circles of O’Brien and his friends. She had even tempted poor Tony Abrams onto the roof. They said he was to be kidnapped, but she had known otherwise. The Russians were treacherous. And now her usefulness as a spy was over.

  There was, however, a glimmer of hope. In addition to her training as an impersonator and a spy, she had received extensive training in another area: She was an accomplished and very talented seductress, a very fine harlot. Perhaps, she thought, for that reason alone, Kalin or Androv, both of whom had taken her to bed, would show mercy.

  She knelt beside the cot and found the waste bucket. The water was clear and she washed herself as best she could, then finger-combed her hair and hand-brushed her dress. Russian men, she reflected, were the easiest of sexual conquests. They knew less about advanced sexual technique than a fifteen-year-old American boy. Their women knew less than that.

  Claudia heard footsteps in the hall. They stopped. A key turned in the lock. The door opened, revealing the dark outline of a man. She could tell he was not uniformed, but wearing civilian clothes. The man reached out and snapped on the light switch outside her door.

  “Alexei!” She came toward him.

  Kalin put his hand out and pushed her away as he pulled the door closed behind him. “Why did you come here that way? They expected you at the gate.”

  She thought, I came that way because Van Dorn told me to: to give his men time to get in position. She said, “They were after me. They found out somehow—”

  “The poison?”

  She nodded quickly. “Yes. That’s all right. Roth did as he was told. I did as I was told.” She came to him again, and this time he let her put her arms around him. She said, “What is to become of me, Alexei?”

  He replied coolly, “You can handle a rifle. Perhaps we will need you later.”

  He did not, she noted, make any long-range promises. She saw his face in the dim overhead light. “What happened to you?”

  “Your friend Abrams and I had an encounter. Where is the bastard now?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t see him at Van Dorn’s.” She buried her head in his chest and her fingers worked their way under his jacket and began pulling his shirt out of his pants.

  He broke her grip and looked at his watch. “All right, but time is short.”

  She undressed quickly and stood in the middle of the floor, naked, her clothes piled at her feet. She smiled. “I want you, Alexei.”

  Kalin undressed, laying his clothes on the floor. He hung his shoulder holster on the doorknob. He said, “We don’t have time for your full repertoire. Please proceed to the finale.”

  She crossed the small room and knelt in front of him, massaging his calves and thighs.

  Kalin leaned back against the door. He said softly, “A woman like you will come in handy during a long siege . . . and I don’t think Androv will make you carry a rifle. No, you have other talents. . . .” He closed his eyes and let his head roll back against the door.

  Claudia’s hands cupped his buttocks. She felt the smooth leather of his holster brushing against her forearm.

  62

  Davis was on the point, Cameron had established a fifteen-foot interval, and Abrams followed. Abrams glanced over his shoulder at Katherine, who was close behind him. They nodded to each other encouragingly.

  They approached the stone wall and Davis hopped it without hesitation, as though it were not an international barrier but just another stone sheep wall in the Falklands. Cameron followed, then Abrams, then Katherine. The patrol moved quickly into the trees of the Russian property.

  Abrams held his rifle by its pistol grip, the sling across his chest, as he had been taught at the Police Academy. He knew the M-16 rifle well enough but had not fired one in some years. He kept his muzzle pointed to the left, cueing off Cameron, whose rifle pointed to the right. Davis held his M-16 under his arm pointing straight ahead. Abrams glanced back at Katherine. She had turned and was walking backward for a few steps as she’d been told, then she swung back around and scanned to her flanks.

  Abrams listened to the music behind them, carried through the trees by the north wind. To the front, skyrockets traveled in a low-angle trajectory, bursting close to the horizon. Their brief glow outlined the towering tree line ahead, and in one shower of golden sparks Abrams caught a quick glimpse of the Russian mansion. They altered course slightly and moved toward the bursting rockets.

  Abrams looked to the front of the file. Davis was almost no longer visible. The night without light was disorienting, alien to civilized man, Abrams reflected, a terror from sundown to sunrise, a nightmare among nightmares. He could not conceive of a darkened continent.

  Abrams heard a sound and looked up quickly. Cameron held his hand high and was clicking a tin cricket. Abrams stopped and knelt on one knee facing left. Katherine crouched and faced to the rear. Cameron and Davis walked toward each other, conferred for a moment, then Cameron came back and knelt beside Abrams. He whispered in Abrams’ ear, “Davis says he sees footprints and disturbed ground. Probably the spot where they intercepted Claudia.” He added, “I’d like to put away that patrol before we get much deeper.”

  Abrams nodded. He never ceased to marvel at the euphemisms for death and murder.

  Cameron said, “We’ll lure them here.” He gave Abrams some brief instructions.

  Abrams motioned to Katherine. She came up and knelt beside him and he put his lips to her ear, repeating the message, then added, “You look good in basic black.”

  Davis had climbed a huge maple tree and was scanning the terrain with his nightscope. Cameron, who had taken Claudia’s panty hose with him, was dragging it along the narrow overgrown game trail that the Russians had used.

  Abrams reached into his field bag and drew out a small electronic ultrasound device. He turned it on to emit a series of short sounds, inaudible to human ears. Almost immediately he heard a dog bark nearby.

  Cameron doubled back along the trail until he reached a small patch of moss-covered clearing. He took the panty ho
se and draped it over the branch of a cedar tree.

  Davis clicked his tin cricket—two short, three long, four short—enemy in sight, three spotted, forty yards’ distance.

  Abrams and Katherine drew closer together and knelt, positioning themselves toward the killing zone beneath the cedar less than twenty feet away. Davis climbed down to a lower branch of the maple almost directly above the small mossy clearing; he lay flat on a large forked limb. The ambush was set.

  Abrams heard the sound of men moving up the narrow game trail. He heard the crackle of a radio, muted voices, and the continuous barking of a dog. He found himself holding his breath.

  Suddenly the leashed dog, a big German shepherd, burst out of the trail into the clearing, pulling a uniformed man who was shouldering a rifle. Abrams quickly shut off the ultrasound device, and the dog quieted, then began to whimper and sniff the ground. The dog came to a halt beneath the cedar.

  A second Russian appeared, speaking into a hand-held radio, his rifle tucked under his arm. The third Russian walked slowly into the clearing. He didn’t have a rifle, but Abrams could make out a pistol in his hand and he guessed he was the boss.

  The shepherd was up on his hind legs now, growling and leaping. The handler pulled him back, and the Russian in charge approached, spotted the panty hose, and pulled them out of the cedar tree. The dog handler lifted the panty hose to his nose and made an obscene joke. All three Russians laughed.

  The handler knelt and let the dog sniff the hose; then, still laughing, he tied the nylon around the radio operator’s neck. The shepherd seemed to be the only one still concerned; he was whining and sniffing the ground, pulling at his leash.

  The radio operator spoke into his walkie-talkie. Abrams listened closely, then turned to Cameron, who was watching him. Abrams nodded, indicating what Cameron had already deduced: The radio operator had reported a false alarm. Cameron gave a hand signal to Abrams and Katherine, then rose out of the clump of bushes, put his silenced M-16 to his shoulder, and aimed.

  Abrams stood also, and was vaguely aware of Katherine a few feet away standing with her rifle raised. The seconds seemed to tick by very slowly.

  The three Russians turned toward the trail. The dog barked again and pulled his handler around. The handler looked up and squinted into the darkness at Cameron not twenty feet away. He let out a startled sound.

  The muzzle of Cameron’s rifle glowed red, and the metallic operating mechanism could be heard above the sounds of the partially silenced fire. The handler seemed to jump backward, high into the air, then fell to the ground, dragging the shepherd with him. The radio operator stood frozen, not comprehending what had happened for a split second, then dropped his walkie-talkie and raised his rifle. A burst of silenced fire from Davis ripped through the overhead branches and drove the Russian into the ground. The Russian in charge had thrown himself on the ground after the two initial bursts, and was scrambling on all fours down the trail. Katherine and Abrams fired simultaneously, their bullets a deadly hailstorm of steel. The Russian crawled a few more feet, then collapsed on his face.

  No one moved for some seconds. The forest was quiet. Then the dog began to howl, accompanied by the moaning of one of the Russians. Cameron quickly stepped forward into the blood-splattered killing zone and looked down at the first two Russians. They were riddled with bullets and appeared to be dead, but Cameron shot them both in the head, then approached the wounded dog. Abrams and Katherine came quickly into the clearing and Katherine stopped short, then turned away. Cameron whispered to her, “Go thirty yards or so down the trail and keep an eye out.”

  Katherine stepped around the bodies without looking down, entered the trail, and stepped quickly over the Russian she had shot. Abrams saw that the shepherd had taken a bullet through its haunches and was dragging itself along the ground toward its handler. Cameron put the muzzle of his rifle to the dog’s head and fired a single shot.

  Davis remained in the tree, scanning the surrounding area. He signaled with his tin cricket—no enemy in sight. Abrams approached the third Russian on the trail and knelt beside him. The man had taken at least half a dozen rounds in the legs and buttocks, but was still alive. Abrams turned him over and saw that the Russian’s legs were nearly severed near the hips and seemed held to his body by strips of muscle and sinew. White bone-shards and marrow covered his uniform. The man, an officer, Abrams guessed by the uniform, spoke in Russian in a pain-filled voice, “Help me, please.” He repeated in English, “Please help me.”

  Abrams answered in Russian, “We’ll send someone for you as soon as possible.”

  The Russian stared up into Abrams’ eyes, then nodded.

  Abrams leaned closer over the Russian and spoke. “What became of the woman? Claudia.”

  The Russian hesitated, then replied, “She’s at the house.”

  Abrams asked, “How many other patrols are there in this area?”

  The Russian seemed to be considering his answer.

  Abrams prompted, “Tell me the truth and we’ll send medical help.”

  The Russian replied, “Two other patrols . . . back along the wall. . . .”

  Cameron walked up to Abrams. Abrams repeated the conversation, then said, “Is there anything else?”

  Cameron shrugged. “This bastard’s not going to tell you the truth anyway.” Cameron leaned over and shot the Russian through the forehead.

  Abrams was startled, but not surprised. One never knew if a coup de grace was meant to be merciful or malicious, and he suspected that Cameron didn’t know and didn’t care.

  Cameron took the Russians’ rifles and pistols and threw them far into the bush.

  Davis swung down from the maple and landed in the clearing. He looked at the three dead Russians. He said to Cameron, “Do you see the green piping on their uniforms? These chaps are from the Chief Border Guards Directorate.”

  Cameron nodded and explained to Abrams, “An elite KGB outfit. A bit like the Marines. Not just flunky embassy guards.”

  Abrams didn’t know if that was supposed to make them all feel better or worse.

  Cameron said, “Well, I wouldn’t be keen on taking on any more of them. Let’s move out, then.”

  Abrams got Katherine, and the patrol reformed, moving toward the exploding skyrockets. They avoided the trails and paths but made good time through the thinning woods. They reached the end of the woods and crouched near the edge of the north lawn.

  Abrams looked out across the wide grassy expanse rising upward toward the great house about a hundred yards away on the crest of the hill. He stared at the fortress-like structure, black and squat against the sky, its ill-omened gables rising above its brooding windows.

  Floodlights illuminated every square inch of the short grass, and spotlights shot powerful beams out into the surrounding woods. One beam fell to their right, and the blinding ray suddenly moved toward them and rested a few feet away. Cameron said, “Steady now. The lights are automatic, not manned. They’ll shift at random intervals and random directions.” As he spoke, the spotlight swung ten yards farther right, then shifted abruptly to the left and swept over them briefly before stopping some yards away.

  Davis said, “I’m sure the bloody listening devices have us by now.”

  Cameron nodded and said, “Ivan does not like trespassers.”

  Davis retorted, “We won’t be trespassers for long. We’ll be in residence.”

  Abrams could make out three people on the raised terrace: guards with rifles walking an assigned post.

  Katherine looked at her watch. “We’re a few minutes late.”

  Cameron nodded. “It won’t matter, if the others haven’t achieved their objectives. We’re not getting across that lawn without help.”

  Davis raised his binoculars and looked toward the house. “I see the walls and plantings of the forecourt. . . . I can see the Japanese lanterns of the drive as well as where it enters the court. . . .” His voice rose, “There’s the van! Pembroke’s made i
t past the guardhouse. The van’s heading for the front door.” He put down his binoculars and looked at the other three. “Damned good show.”

  Cameron nodded. “They’ve got a way to go yet. So do we.” He stayed silent a moment, then said, “It’s a fifteen-second run across that lawn. . . .” He looked at Abrams and Katherine. “What you do is pick a prayer or a poem that takes fifteen seconds to recite to yourself. I’ve picked the ‘Our Father.’ When I get to ‘Amen,’ I expect to be on that terrace. It works every time.”

  Abrams thought it must have worked every time or Cameron wouldn’t be here.

  “All right,” said Cameron, “fix bayonets.”

  63

  Roth’s catering van rolled slowly through the landscaped forecourt, lit bright as day with banks of floodlights. Pembroke peered cautiously over the seat. There were guards armed with automatic rifles every ten yards or so. He turned to Ann. “This doesn’t look encouraging.”

  Roth babbled as he drove, his voice cracking with panic. “Everyone will die. . . . The Russians will win. . . . They will kill me. . . . Oh, my God, Pembroke . . . I didn’t want to work for them . . . they blackmailed me. . . . I was afraid . . . I don’t believe anymore—”

  “Shut up, Roth.”

  The van swung left and drew abreast of the front door, and Roth applied the brakes. Pembroke and Ann moved to the rear of the van with Llewelyn and Sutter, who had their hands on the rear-door latches, ready to jump out and make a fight of it if necessary. All four wore black camouflage hoods.

  A Russian guard approached Roth’s window and spoke in English. “What are you doing here, Roth? I received no message from the gate.”

  Roth’s mouth opened, but no words came out.