Eddie grunted. "And you have to get rid of Fist. It would work out perfectly for you."
"Perfectly," Vasily agreed. "By the time the people in Moscow sort things out they'll have forgotten all about me, if anyone still cares. They'll be blaming the Agency, and the Agency will be in shreds. You might even think of this as a gesture for suffering humanity."
"Humanity? What about Rakow's girl and her kid? What about that hooker in Washington? What about Wolf the music man? Weren't they part of humanity?"
"They certainly were." Vasily said it smoothly, as if these arguments all were words he had heard before, words for which he had fashioned answers over years of constant phrasing. "And they are also part of the past. The future is what counts now. Your future. And Chalice's."
"More bait."
"The best kind. If you quit now, you'll never have her. Not the way you want her."
"And you? She said that you'd agree."
"What choice do I have? It's her decision, not mine." He raised his hand in a lazy benediction. "Dear fellow, you hardly need it, but you both have my blessing."
"We'll need it, all right. You know how sick she is."
"Yes, of course. That's something you'll have to live with."
"Maybe not. All this killing . . . it's gotten to her. Just like it's gotten to me. I'm hoping that when it's all over, maybe she'll change."
Vasily turned away to hide his expression. "When it's all over. That's a pleasant thought to dwell on. Do you know yet where you'll be going?"
"I've got a few ideas. You?"
"Of course." He laughed. "Don't ask me where, and I won't ask you either. Much better that way."
"What if we called it quits right now? Would that change your plans?"
"My plans aren't subject to change. If you quit now, for my own sake I'd have to do the job alone."
Eddie looked at him, startled. "You could never handle it."
"I'd have to. As long as Fist is alive I have no peace. A minimum amount of peace is necessary when one reaches my age."
"Your age, my ass." Eddie said it scoffingly, but with affection.
"Thank you, but I'm ten years older than you are. It's a paradox, but life becomes rather more precious the older one gets. Perhaps because it passes more swiftly."
"I still don't see how you can do it alone."
"It's a matter of technique, instincts, and a little bit of luck." He smiled. "I'm certainly a technician, and I must say that over the past few months my instincts have been developing rapidly. As for the luck ..."
"The luck runs out sometimes."
"That's also a possibility. One never knows."
"How do you plan to do it?"
"With the laser. Use it as a heat source and project it. If the pulse length is short enough, the thermal shock will take out the entire building. What do you know about exothermic chemical reaction?"
Eddie looked thoughtful. "Enough to know that you'll need ruby or neodymium if you want to use a Q-switch. You'll have to get the pulse down to ten nanoseconds, and suppress feedback from the mirrors."
"One day I'll learn not to ask you questions like that." Vasily shook his head admiringly. "I can get the neodymium. Have you worked with a Q-switch?"
"I know how to do it," Eddie said impatiently. "That's not what I meant when I asked what your plans are. I know you can build the damn thing, with or without my help. But there are thousands of tourists swarming around Colonial Williamsburg this time of the year. How the hell are you going to wander out onto the green with a laser slung over your shoulder and point it at that building? You'll start a riot, or maybe a small war."
"I won't start a war, I'll just take advantage of one. The War of the American Revolution. The mock battle between the colonial militia and the British Army. All I'll need is one of their cannon."
"The cannon," Eddie murmured. "Yeah, sure. You could load it into the cannon."
"How do you think I should dress? As a British officer, or an American? I think the British uniform is more my style, don't you?"
"Yeah, it matches the red in your eyes. How do you figure to get to the cannon?"
"You're going to tell me how. I assume you know where they're kept?"
"And the uniforms and muskets, too."
"Then there you are. You've answered your own question."
"It's impossible to do it alone."
"Not impossible. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Of course, I'd prefer to have you there with me, but—"
"I'll be there," Eddie said grimly. "You know damn well I'll be there. You knew it all along, didn't you?"
"Certainly. You pay your debts."
"That's right. I would've been feeding the fish at Cozumel if you hadn't been on that beach. I guess I can do the same for you."
"Start work tomorrow?"
"The sooner the better."
Vasily laid a hand on Eddie's shoulder. "Thank you, my friend. You won't be getting any sentimental speeches from me, but thank you. When all this is over—well, if circumstances were different, I'd take you with me to where I'm going. I'd teach you to play a decent game of chess, and we might grow old and quarrelsome together. But that can't be. When this is over, our paths diverge."
Eddie nodded.
"But you'll have your lady for company. Go to her now. She's probably waiting for you."
Eddie nodded again, started to say something, then shook his head, and left.
I gave him my blessing, Vasily thought. I should have given him my sympathy as well.
He smoked a last cigar, pondering the frailty of man, and the need for love in whatever disguise it came. He decided that he was glad he was ten years older. He walked through the field of cactus to the house, enjoying the clear starlight and the soft night air.
"Technique, instinct, and luck," he said to himself, and to the far-stretching stars. "Except that I don't really believe in luck. For if I did believe in it, I should also have to believe that we've already used up far more than our earthly share."
18
It was the last lap of the journey, and both Eddie and Vasily knew it, were glad of it, and hungered for it to be over and done with. They drove north through the six hundred miles of dreary, unchanging Mexican desert in the Chevrolet pickup with the camper top, their equipment broken down into simplest components and scattered in cartons and suitcases, disguised as souvenirs, and buried in hollowed-out copies of pre-Columbian statuary. They joked a lot on the drive, and insulted each other in the easy camaraderie that had grown between them; but behind the light-hearted mood was the tense desire to be finished. At Mata- moros they crossed over into Texas without incident, stood a perfunctory search there by U.S. Customs, and late on a Sunday afternoon pulled into a Holiday Inn outside Lake Charles, Louisiana. There they stopped for two days to reassemble the laser.
On the same day that they left San Miguel, Chalice flew back to Williamsburg with firm instructions. There would be one more telephone call to the Madison Hotel in Washington. That would be on the following Saturday, to confirm that on Sunday, Crowfoot, Parker, and Fist would be in conference behind the deceptive frame-and-shingle facade of the building they believed impregnable. After that call she was to return to her home in Williamsburg, and wait.
And on Monday, Eddie thought wistfully, we'll be thirty-five thousand feet above the Pacific and heading out to a world where they'll never find us. No more hunters, no more hunted.
With the laser assembled, they left Lake Charles and bounced across the South, staying at a succession of identical motels. Somewhere in South Carolina they stopped to make final preparations, and Eddie explained how the mock battle at Williamsburg worked.
"It's just another tourist attraction, but it's a good one," he said, sprawled on one of the twin beds. "The battle goes off about eleven in the morning. There are maybe a hundred soldiers, just local people and college kids. Half of them are dressed as militia, the other half as British soldiers. If we move
fast enough, they won't know what's happening. How are you coming?"
Vasily sat on the other twin bed, busily sewing the costumes together. The local tailor in San Miguel had made them, shaking his head in bewilderment and muttering pleas to various saints when the two crazy gringos had brought in the scarlet cloth and the sketches of what they wanted. Then, when they had tried them on and been satisfied, Eddie had insisted on picking them apart at the seams and scattering the pieces in the suitcases among his trousers and sweaters and shirts, worried that the Customs officials at Brownsville would think twice about two grown men traveling with eighteenth-century British military uniforms. After a few protests, Vasily had agreed. Now he stitched and sewed, grunted and cursed.
"In my old age, I have become a seamstress. You were the one who insisted on taking these apart. You should sew them together."
"You sew, I reap," Eddie said, straight-faced.
"You mean you sit there and watch television while I stitch away like an old woman. Thank you, my friend. I won't forget this."
"Get those seams straight," Eddie said. "Not too tight under the arms. I hate it when a jacket's too tight under the arms."
"Why? Does it squeeze your brains? Here." Vasily tossed the red tunic and breeches across the bed. "Try them on."
Struggling into the tunic, Eddie looked at himself in the mirror. He tightened the belt and adjusted the tricornered hat. After a minute of gazing, turning this way and that, he screwed his face up in an expression of horror. Simulated sobs broke from his throat.
Startled, Vasily asked, "What is the matter?"
"We . . . good Gawd!"
"What is it?"
"We've . . I we've lost India!"
On that same Friday morning, Thomas Crowfoot punched the blue button on CYBER and began to read the printout that the machine silently and efficiently spewed, page by page, into the output tray. Colonel Fist and Colonel Parker stood nearby, watching as the old man scanned the dark-gray print.
Into the machine, Crowfoot had first fed the physical descriptions, provided by Colonel Fist, of every woman with whom Vasily Borgneff was known to have been seen—even for a single evening—over the past ten years. The machine was then given the same data relative to Eddie Mancuso. NO KNOWN REPETITIVE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP AT PRESENT, CYBER had said back in February, and its Zhukovka counterpart had echoed the phrase in its printout on Borgneff. And yet Crowfoot had suspected, and then seen, what the others had missed.
A woman in Barcelona eight months ago, with whom the Russian had spent two nights at the Hotel Colon: tall, dark-blond hair, in her middle or late twenties, believed by the KGB's Madrid desk to be Scandinavian. A brief and casual affair, nothing more, with no investigatory follow-up recommended. And then the Mancuso dossier: a tall, dark-blond woman, age twenty-six to twenty-eight, whom the subject had apparently picked up at a sidewalk cafe in Christiansted, St. Croix, in March of 1976. A woman answering the same description had been seen leaving his
Manhattan apartment on a Monday morning approximately ten months later. No positive identification. The reports had been filed away with thousands more, considered too insignificant to be fed into CYBER's memory bank.
Crowfoot had then programmed CYBER with the physical descriptions of all Colonial Squad and dachniki female personnel. Results: negative. He pondered that problem for two more days, and then punched in the computerized dossiers of all close relatives, including wives, daughters, and suspected mistresses, of all O Group and Five Group members. That process took less than fifteen minutes; the first file to be matched against the known description of the woman who had appeared both in Barcelona and St. Croix was that of Mrs. Frederick Parker, born Catherine Alexandra Ripley.
"Well, there it is," said Crowfoot, and tossed his copy of the printout onto the table.
Fist did the same with his, looked at the two Americans, shrugged, and walked to the other side of the room, disassociating himself from what was to come. Parker's face turned red, and then a sickly white. He struggled to maintain a semblance of dignity, although in that moment he knew that his career and his marriage were both ended.
Finally, he said, "It's—it's hard to believe, Tom."
"Harder for you than for me."
"What are you going to do?"
"What would you do in my place?"
"You mean—extraction?"
"A perfect example of a colonel's mentality at work. That may be necessary later, but first I want to have a little powwow with your wife. Any objections?"
"None," the colonel said grimly. "Let's go."
"Not you, Freddy. I'll see her alone."
That evening he sat across the coffee table from the colonel's wife in the half-timbered house in Williamsburg, shuffling papers and sipping sherry as a faint smile played upon his lips. But his eyes were coolly calculating. Catherine Parker drank Scotch with ice and water, and her long, red-tipped fingers were steady on the glass, her eyes unswerving as the old man told her what he knew.
"You understand that your position is untenable," Crowfoot finished. "I won't inquire into your motives right now. If I had more time, perhaps . . . but in fact they truly are of little interest to me. I need information. All you've got. If you won't give it voluntarily, we'll use scopolamine. You know what that is, I'm sure. The larger doses are dangerous, but they ensure the telling of the truth. Actually, we'll have to use scopolamine in any event, to make sure that what you say now is accurate. But it would certainly be in your interest, Mrs. Parker, to make this first stage of confession a truthful one. It would make me feel a whole lot more kindly toward you later on."
Chalice considered carefully. "And may I ask how it will all end for me?"
"That depends," Crowfoot said. "But you do see that you have no options."
"It would seem that way."
"Good. I'm interested only in the present, since there's a certain urgency. Where are they now?"
"In Mexico. En route to Virginia."
"You've told them about Colonel Fist being here?"
"Yes."
"And they're coming here to . . . ?"
"To kill all of you."
"How unfriendly. How do they plan to accomplish such an ambitious act?"
"I don't know. They didn't tell me."
"Oh, dear." Crowfoot sighed. "Please don't lie to me at this stage of the game, Mrs. Parker."
"Why should I lie? You told me about the scopolamine. I know you meant it. I don't know their plans."
"Do they plan to infiltrate the building in some way, or reach all of us individually?"
"I don't know, Mr. Crowfoot."
"I tend to believe you, but we'll still have to verify. How can we contact them? Do you know their route?"
"They left Mexico in a Chevrolet pickup truck, but they may have abandoned that and picked up something else. They're going to call me at a number in Washington on Saturday. That's to find out where you all are."
"And if they were to succeed, Mrs. Parker, what were their plans? And yours, if I may be presumptuous?"
"I was going to leave with one of them," Chalice said calmly. "With Eddie Mancuso."
"Well!" Thomas Crowfoot smiled. "That may still be possible." He stood slowly, conscious of the creaking of his bones and the ache in his knees. "We can go now, if you're ready. I apologize for this. You do see that it's necessary. No," he added, as Chalice turned toward the staircase. "Please don't go upstairs. Not even out of my sight. It's a warm night. Come as you are, my dear."
By midnight, Crowfoot had administered the injection of scopolamine, had gone through the questioning again in somewhat greater detail, and had assured himself that Catherine Parker was telling him the truth. While she rested and was brought gradually back to a normal state, he sat at the colonel's desk, the lights dimmed, the air conditioner softly humming, to consider the situation.
He reached a decision.
His first step was an order that neither Colonel Fist nor Colone
l Parker was to leave the building. There were apartments on the first floor where they would be comfortable for several days. And safe, which was even more important. The building was impregnable to intrusion by two men, and the only danger lay if either Parker or Fist should venture outside it. That would not be allowed until the second and third stages of his plan were completed.
The woman is a psychopath, he realized. She cannot be trusted. But she can be easily manipulated if one turns the right key. He believed now that he knew the key.
When Chalice's mind was functioning again, he fed her sandwiches and two cups of coffee, and then sat with her in what had been her husband's office. She smiled at him wanly.
"Are you satisfied that I told you the truth, Mr. Crowfoot?"
He nodded, and then said, "I want this all to end, my dear young woman. It has been exceedingly costly to this Agency and to our Russian friends as well. If you cooperate, it can be brought to a peaceful conclusion. And if that is indeed the result, then you will be free. Both you and your friend Mr. Mancuso. I can't answer for Borgneff s future. I'm sorry to say I must defer in that matter to the judgment of the man we know as Colonel Fist. You do understand that, don't you?"
"Yes."
"We're arranging for the telephone call from your friends to be routed to this building. For the moment, although it may be a slight inconvenience, you'll stay here. You'll take the call here. You may speak freely. You may tell them everything that's happened. And then I would like you to arrange a meeting, under what we used to call, in more civilized days, a flag of truce. I would like to offer them amnesty."
Chalice laughed quietly. "Do you think they'll believe it?"
"Probably not, but it would certainly be worth their while to listen. I'm sure they are ingenious enough to construct adequate safeguards for themselves—they seem to be very adept at that. I'll accept any reasonable conditions. I'll even talk to one of them if they prefer not to come together."
"Either one?"
"No," Crowfoot said. "If it's one, it must be the American."
THE DEATH FREAK -- An Eddie Mancuso Thriller (Eddie Mancuso And Vasily Borgneff Book 1) Page 23