The Talbot Odyssey

by Nelson DeMille

  Van Dorn had explained that he wasn’t to touch anything else, that it must appear that the one circuit breaker tripped off by itself because of an overload. The one to be turned on wouldn’t be noticed immediately. Stanley held the photograph up to the circuit breakers, reached out, and switched the two that were marked in the picture.

  Van Dorn’s last instructions had been to get out fast, because there would be people racing down to the utility room. Stanley turned to Joan. “Let’s go!” He dashed through the open door, Joan close behind. As they headed toward the boiler room, Stanley heard the sound of hurrying footsteps on a nearby staircase. “Oh, shit!” He picked up his pace, but he was in the area of the small compartmentalized rooms and doors and he became disoriented.

  Joan said breathlessly behind him, “I think we passed it.”

  Suddenly a door to their right burst open and Stanley instinctively dropped into a crouch and remained frozen. Joan did the same.

  Four men, two armed guards and two men in overalls, came quickly through the door, just fifteen feet away. They pivoted left on the run and ran through the passage from which Stanley and Joan had just come.

  Stanley remained in his crouch, his entire body shaking and a cold sweat forming on his face. Joan rose shakily and pulled Stanley to his feet. She whispered, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  They moved cautiously now, finally finding the food-storage area outside the boiler room. Joan stayed in the shadow of a pile of boxes. “Go on. I’ll cover.”

  Stanley dashed across the open space and swung the door out, slipping halfway inside. He scanned the boiler room quickly, and it appeared the same as they’d left it. He motioned to Joan and she dashed across the open area, slipping inside the boiler room behind Stanley.

  Stanley wasted no time. He grabbed the bench and placed it below the conduit, then went behind the boiler and retrieved his rubber trolley. He jumped on the bench and ripped the cloth cover from the hole, raised the trolley, then stopped. His trolley was supposed to be kept from rolling down the sloped conduit by her secured trolley. But hers was gone, of course.

  Stanley wondered for a second what Bergen and Claire had made of the returned empty trolley. He wondered also why they hadn’t sent it back on the cable, attached by a cord or wire. Stanley took out his flashlight and shone it into the conduit. “Christ . . .” About two hundred feet down the conduit his beam picked out the silhouette of the trolley. It had become stuck, probably on a small ridge where the clay conduit pipes joined. “Oh . . . shit!”

  Joan said, “What is it? Why aren’t you going?”

  He turned to her. “Your trolley’s stuck in there. They don’t know you lost it.”

  She nodded as she began to appreciate the situation. “I really fucked up. Well, go on Stanley. Here, I’ll help you in.” She stepped up on the bench.

  “No. No, you go. I’ll wait here. You tell them what happened and they’ll send a trolley back. I’ll be okay while—”

  Joan slapped him hard across the face. “Get in that fucking hole or I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

  He put his hand to his face as he stared at her.

  She pulled the trolley out of his hand, then pushed it back to his chest, curved side toward him and the wheels facing out. “Hold that.” She took a length of nylon cord from around her waist—the cord she was supposed to have used to secure her trolley to the handgrips. She passed the cord under Stanley’s arms and tied the trolley to his chest. “All right, kid, you’re set.” She looked at him a moment, then leaned over and planted a kiss on his lips.

  Stanley flushed and his eyes widened.

  Joan knelt on one knee, then made a stirrup with her hands. “Come on. Move it.”

  Stanley stuck his foot into her hands and found himself lifted up and into the conduit opening. He felt a slap on his buttocks, and he wiggled farther in, holding his arms out to the front. He felt Joan push on the soles of his shoes and he began rolling forward, gathering momentum as the trolley began its long journey home.

  His outstretched hands hit Joan’s stuck trolley and set it rolling free ahead of him. Stanley closed his eyes for what seemed a long time, then opened them again and saw the light at the end of the long dark tunnel. Then the light became blurry as tears formed in his eyes.

  * * *

  Joan Grenville drew her pistol and walked slowly to the door of the boiler room. She knew that the shit was going to hit the fan very soon and she didn’t know if the boiler room was the place to be when it hit.

  Tom was out there somewhere, and so were the others. She’d just completed a very difficult task, and she was in a position to get out. The others weren’t. But as Van Dorn said, no place was safe anymore. Perhaps, she thought, they could use another gun upstairs. She opened the boiler room door without fully realizing what she was doing.

  She found herself wandering through the dimly lit passages of the basement, looking for a staircase that would lead upstairs. She thought that, after all, she should be with Tom.

  66

  Claudia Lepescu worked the small-caliber automatic out of Alexei Kalin’s holster hanging on the doorknob. Kalin, lost in his sexual reverie, noticed nothing. She brought the pistol out, flipped off the safety, and thrust the cold steel deep between his legs to muffle the sound. She fired.

  Kalin’s feet left the floor from the impact and he fell back against the door, uttering only a short groan. Claudia rocked back on her haunches and stared up at him. He seemed unhurt, still standing, a puzzled expression on his face. Then she saw the blood pouring out between his spread legs like an open faucet. Kalin felt it too, and his hands shot down to the wound, the blood collecting in his cupped hands and running between his fingers.

  Claudia stood and took a step back, keeping the gun trained on him, waiting for some sign that he was mortally wounded. Then she saw the color drain from his face and watched incredulously as the whiteness moved downward, like a wave of waxy death, the florid chest becoming milky, then the abdomen and pelvis, the redness pouring onto the floor, leaving his body through the hole behind his scrotum.

  Kalin took a mincing step toward her and opened his mouth. “Claudia . . .”

  She spit on the floor and wiped her mouth.

  Kalin tried another step, but his knees buckled and he fell forward, his hands still on his groin and his face thudding against the floorboards.

  Claudia retrieved her clothes and dressed quickly. She stepped out into the hallway and began walking, Kalin’s small automatic held tightly to her side. She had never been in this house before, but she had seen the floor plans in Van Dorn’s study and she thought she could locate Androv’s office. She had scores to settle, indignities to be redressed. She was a proud woman, and they had not broken her nor turned her into a docile, craven whore, as they’d thought. From the moment she landed in the United States, she had begun to play a cautious double game.

  She passed through a door, climbed a half flight of stairs, and entered the main wing of the house. Claudia believed in preternatural evil and she possessed the superstitious tendencies of her people. She could sense Androv’s evil close by and walked toward it.

  * * *

  Abrams, Katherine, Davis, and Cameron pulled their long black bayonets from their scabbards and snapped them onto the lugs below the silencer and flash suppressors. Abrams thought they were quite lethal-looking. He had never personally participated in a bayonet charge, but what had seemed unthinkable not so long ago seemed perfectly reasonable tonight.

  Katherine looked at her watch. “What’s taking them so long—”

  Suddenly all the floodlights and spotlights on the north end of the house went from glaring white to dying red, then black, leaving a swatch of darkness lying over the north lawn.

  Cameron stood and said simply, “Charge!”

  The four people burst out of the tree line and began tearing across the hundred yards of lawn. They were all good runners and the distance closed fast. Abrams didn’t t
hink Cameron had finished his “Our Father” before they found themselves on the tiled steps leading up to the terrace.

  Abrams was vaguely aware of passing over the swastika in the center of the terrace as the gray stone wall of the house loomed up, punctuated by the windows and French doors that glowed weakly from some distant interior house light. Abrams spotted a guard in the corner, silhouetted against a large window where the two wings came together. He turned and charged.

  The guard heard the running footsteps and squinted into the darkness, then raised his rifle tentatively. In a split second Abrams knew he wouldn’t reach him with the bayonet. Abrams fired a single shot and the man doubled over and crumpled to the terrace.

  Cameron charged into two Russians who were standing together and talking excitedly. They turned toward Cameron at the last moment and Cameron buried his long bayonet into the groin of the closest one, then cut upward and opened the man’s abdomen up to his breastbone. Cameron raised his leg and pushed the skewered man off his bayonet.

  Simultaneously, Davis plunged his bayonet in an overhand harpooning motion through the heart of the second Russian. They both wiped their blades on their victims’ uniforms.

  Katherine had stopped on the steps as instructed and was scanning the windows and glass doors, rifle raised to fire, but no one seemed alerted by the sounds.

  The three men quickly joined her. She said, “Let’s get off this terrace before the lights come on.”

  They ran along the terrace, heading west to the rear of the house, and came upon a huge screened porch attached to the back of the house. Davis crashed through the screen door, followed by Cameron, Katherine, and Abrams.

  They pivoted to the left and Davis ran up to a single door and pushed it open. They rushed through the doorway, into the living room, and spread out behind pieces of massive furniture.

  Abrams half expected to see Henry Kimberly sitting in the chair beside the green-shaded lamp where he had last left him, but the chair was empty. The lamp was still lit, casting a small circle of light around the chair in the otherwise darkened room. Abrams noticed there were still cigarette stubs in the ashtray.

  Cameron rose and looked around. He whispered, “Clear. Let’s go.”

  They made their way across the wide room, rifles at their hips.

  Cameron and Davis went to the left toward the door that led to the gallery. Abrams and Katherine went to the door from which Abrams had spoken to Henry Kimberly. They were to make a sweep of the ground floor, from the west end of the house to the east, room by room: a search-and-destroy operation.

  They were searching, Abrams thought, for Viktor Androv and his KGB pals, for Peter Thorpe, and for Henry Kimberly. They were searching in a physical way, as well as in a metaphysical sense, for the switch that would shut down the ticking clock.

  * * *

  Tom Grenville looked straight down. Van Dorn’s house was directly below, framed nicely between his feet. He wondered how he’d gotten from there to here and if he’d ever get back there again.

  He looked around and saw that the rest of his team were grouping in close around him. They had chosen the roof of the Russian mansion as their landing site, depending, as Van Dorn had said, on what was known in the military as the “pathfinder team.” The pathfinder team’s job was to light or mark difficult zones, and although the roof of the house covered nearly half an acre, Van Dorn had pointed out in the aerial photographs that most of the dark roof was pitched and covered with slippery slate, and where it was flat it was bristling with antennas, a satellite dish, and a microwave dish. Van Dorn had likened these to the wartime anti-parachutist protuberances that were meant to kill and maim. Grenville felt his stomach go sour again.

  But the landing was possible, if the pathfinder team could get the work lights on the roof turned on. However, the pathfinder team, as Grenville knew, consisted of Joan and an acne-faced adolescent. Grenville didn’t hold out much hope for those lights going on, and this brought him some modicum of comfort.

  They were sailing right at the house now, the descent slow from the updrafts, but the forward movement fast because of the tail wind. Grenville knew that within the next few seconds, Stewart would have to decide if they were to land.

  He looked to his left at Stewart, who was about to flash a light signal: a blinking light meant the roof, a steady light meant glide over the house and make for a clearing in the woods. As Grenville watched, Stewart’s light went on, then began to blink. Grenville stared at it in amazement, then looked below.

  The lights on the north lawn had gone black and the rooftop work lights glowed white. “Oh, shit. Joan . . . what are you doing to me?” But inexplicably a sense of pride swelled within Grenville, and he was relieved to discover that she was, at least at that moment, still alive.

  The brightly lit roof was about two hundred feet ahead and a hundred feet below, and their angle of glide might or might not intercept it. Grenville glanced quickly back at the mysterious sixth man, who was now guiding his chute toward the illuminated forecourt that covered nearly an acre of flat grass and gravel.

  Collins also watched the sixth man float farther away. Collins didn’t know who the man was, only that he didn’t belong there. Collins raised his rifle, put it on full automatic, and fired across the fifty yards that separated them.

  The distance to the target was not far, but the relative positions of the moving chutists made it difficult to establish a point of reference.

  The sixth man saw the muzzle flash and fired back. The man had the advantage of red tracer rounds, and he was able to adjust the fiery red streaks until he found his target.

  Collins lurched in his harness, then dropped his rifle and hung motionless. His unguided chute floated southward with the wind toward the distant tree line.

  Tom Grenville watched the exchange with a sense of incredulity. This silent death above the earth could not be happening. He caught a glimpse of the sixth chutist as he disappeared below the higher roofline to the left and dropped toward the forecourt. Grenville could see Russian guards converging toward the man.

  Grenville looked down and saw the flat gray roof less than thirty feet below. He snapped out of his shock and gave a final tug on his risers to try to slow the chute from its southward drift. Stewart, Johnson, and Hallis were so close their chutes were touching his, all four of them now trying to pick out a patch of clear space amid the antennas, dishes, and guy wires below.

  At ten feet it was obvious they might overshoot the house and land on the brightly lit south terrace, where the Russians below, who were in a state of alert now, could massacre them.

  Grenville closed his eyes and waited.

  * * *

  Joan Grenville wandered around the dark basement, pistol in one hand, a diagram of the basement in the other. She had come to her senses and decided to go back to the boiler room where she belonged. Unfortunately, she was lost. She was in a section that had apparently not been seen by a defector or spy, because it was marked on her diagram Unknown. KGB personnel only. That sounded spooky.

  She checked her compass and turned down a narrow passage until she came to an unmarked door that was painted red, the only red door she had seen so far. She passed it, hesitated, then turned and listened at the door, but heard nothing. Slowly, she twisted the white porcelain knob and pushed in on the door.

  There was a black void before her as she passed through the door and stood silently in the dark. She was aware of a rank odor.

  Joan pulled a small red-filtered flashlight from the elastic pouch on her stomach and switched it on. She swung the beam around the walls. Just an empty room. She took a step and found herself falling forward. She put out her hands to break her fall and was surprised to find herself lying in sand. “What the hell . . . ?”

  Joan got up on one knee and took the filter off the light. She played the beam around and saw that the entire floor of the small room was of white sand, newly raked. She couldn’t imagine what it was for. A child’s sandb
ox? No, absurd.

  She rose to her feet and her beam caught something on the far wall. She moved toward it. It was the base of a fireplace chimney, set in the concrete foundation. There was a partly opened ash door at chest height. At least now she had a landmark. She consulted her diagram and noted the location of the fireplace chimneys. She glanced back toward the iron ash door and saw now that it was much larger than an ash door ought to be. It was also fairly new, embedded in fresh mortar around the older brick. It looked, she thought, more like an oven or kiln than an ash trap.

  Joan directed the light inside the black open space and saw a charred skull, the black hollow eye sockets staring back at her. She screamed, dropped the flashlight, and stumbled backward, falling into the loose sand. “Oh . . . oh, my God!”

  She realized, in a flash of intuition, coupled with something she had once overheard, that she was lying in the sand of an execution pit. She jumped to her feet, her hands flailing at the sand clinging to her body-suit as she made her way through the shallow pit and found the door. She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Joan leaned back against the wall and caught her breath. She had lost the flashlight, but at least the pistol was still in her shaking hand.

  She began walking again, willing herself to calm down. “All right, Joan . . . it’s all right.” But the image of the skull stayed with her, and she could actually picture herself kneeling in the damp pit, a cold pistol to her neck, the cremation furnace glowing red across the white, raked sand. “Oh, dear God . . . what sort of people are these . . . ?” Then, suddenly, all the cloak-and-dagger idiocy made sense in a way that Tom could never explain. Nothing she had read or heard about the KGB or the Soviets had made the slightest impression on her. But that room had burned itself into her psyche and she knew it would be part of her forever.

  She walked until she realized she had come around in a circle. “Oh, shit.” She glanced at the diagram under the glow of a dim light bulb, then moved to a door she hadn’t noticed before. The door was solid-looking oak, set in a concrete wall, unlike the doors of thin boards that cut through the wooden partitions. This might lead to the wing of the basement from which she’d strayed.