by William Hood
The third figure, now only a few yards from the fallen runner, shouted, “Coming, coming … ”
Mitgang broke his stride as he approached the two runners huddled over the fallen body. As he stopped, a thin black man in a dark, one-piece running suit, his hands covered in light cotton gloves, rose unsteadily to his feet. “She’s hurt bad, it’s her head,” the black man said, his breath coming in heavy gulps. “When she fell … a stone or something … her head’s a mess … ”
“Jesus Christ,” the second runner said. “I don’t even dare to turn her over … ”
For a moment, Mitgang stared at the fallen body. “We’ve got to move her a little,” he said. “Just enough to help her breathing … ” He bent to ease the fallen woman’s face from the dirt, and then turned suddenly away, his stomach churning. Her long hair tied in a loose bun, secured beneath a baseball cap, had fallen loose. Her eye hung from the socket, and blood oozed around the bits of flesh still covering the shattered bone around her temple.
“I’ll get help,” the black man said, his voice shrill. “The precinct house, right here in the park, on the 85th Street transverse.” Before Mitgang could speak, the man brushed the loose dirt from his immaculate running suit and sprinted away, along the path toward 85th Street.
“We need help here,” Mitgang shouted. “There’s been an accident.” In the distance another cluster of runners approached.
“A flashlight, has anyone got a flashlight?” Mitgang called, waving his arms. “There’s an accident here, we need light … ”
A heavyset young man, his long hair gathered in a ponytail, dropped to his knees beside the body. He slipped his left hand gently under the woman’s shoulder. With his right hand, he cradled her head. He lifted the woman’s left shoulder and eased her head back from the dirt. He leaned closer to see the wound more clearly. Then, his mouth sagging with surprise, he turned to Mitgang. “Shee-it, man,” he drawled softly. “That’s no accident, your friend’s been fucking shot. Twice, right in the fucking head.” With a widening grin he looked up at the gathering group of runners. “It’s the O.K. Corral, right here in the park … God damn.”
He got slowly to his feet and then stooped and attempted to wipe the blood from his hands on the ragged grass along the border of the path. He straightened up and began to jog in place, lifting his knees high and stamping his feet. “Somebody better go check for the cops and the meat wagon,” he said. “We don’t watch out, we’ve all got cramps by the time they get here.” He pulled a crumpled plaid handkerchief from the pocket of his blue shorts and made another attempt to get the blood off his hands.
4
London, July 1993
“A dry sherry, and two Tanqueray martinis, in and out,” Roger Folsom said, glancing with mock anxiety across the table at Alan Trosper. “You haven’t dropped any of your bad habits, have you?”
“In and out?” Trosper was as puzzled as the waiter.
“Put ice in the glass, and add the vermouth.” The waiter nodded. “Dump the vermouth and slosh in the gin.” With a wink Folsom dismissed the irritated waiter and turned to Emily Trosper.
The dark paneled walls, high ceiling, and abundance of starchy waiters and service staff at Simpson’s usually had a quieting effect on visitors. But Roger Folsom had never bothered to mask his brimming self-confidence with the air of diffidence affected by some case men. He was not quite six feet tall, but bulky enough to occupy the entire side of the booth facing Trosper and Emily.
“I never developed a taste for sherry,” he said to Emily. “Even in Spain I didn’t like it. After a while, I found I could drink the brandy they concoct if I put enough soda and ice in it.”
“Spirits put me straight to sleep, but I rather like sherry,” Emily said with a polite smile. She wore her dark auburn hair pulled up in a French twist and sat erect, barely brushing the back of the booth. Her simple black dress was cut to reveal the graceful line of her shoulders.
Folsom leaned toward Trosper. “Have you heard why I left the Firm?” It was as if he were a salesman breaking the ice by asking a prospective customer if he had heard the latest joke.
Trosper realized it was folly to have hoped the business babble could even be postponed until after dinner. He shook his head.
“Damn it,” Folsom said. He turned to Emily. “In fifteen years, I’ve never known Alan to give a straight, affirmative answer to the simplest question. I don’t know how you can put up with it.”
“I remind him that he’s not sparring with an agent,” Emily said, with a canny glance at Trosper.
“I’ve never got in trouble by admitting I don’t know something,” Trosper said. “It’s when I try to act well informed that people seem to leave out the important parts of the story they’re about to tell me.”
Folsom groaned. “Let’s begin again. Had you heard about my leaving the Firm?”
“I heard that you left a couple of years ago, just after you struck it rich.”
*
When Roger Folsom telephoned to say he was passing through London, and wanted to meet Emily, Trosper suggested they have dinner at Simpson’s in the Strand. In the years since he had resigned from Research Estimates, Inc., Trosper had distanced himself from his friends who remained in the non-official cover intelligence organization. Since his marriage and settling in Emily’s native London to do research for his book on fighting ships, visits by former colleagues had waned. Folsom’s telephone call was a surprise.
“Why do you recommend Simpson’s to visitors?” Emily asked. “It’s not the best restaurant in town, and it certainly isn’t a bargain.”
“Because I’ve never known a visitor who didn’t think it was what a posh London restaurant is supposed to be.”
“And Roger Folsom? Will he expect to see Alec Guinness dawdling over a glass of port with his favorite novelist? Or is he another one of your old crowd?”
“Red Roger joined the Firm four or five years after me,” Trosper said. “He had a good reputation as a case man, but they let him go a while back.”
“Red Roger?”
“Just his hair, Emily,” Trosper said patiently. “Not his politics.”
“Let go?” Emily said. “Is that dainty for getting the sack?”
“He always was a sort of loose cannon,” Trosper admitted, “and there was some scandal.”
*
Folsom picked up his glass, and stared speculatively at the remaining drops of his drink. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about … ” Against the odds, Trosper tried to change the subject. “A strong man’s crossroads? Another martini?”
Folsom stirred from his reverie. “Not at all, I’ve pretty much cut out the booze. California does that to you.” His red hair, flecked with white, had faded, but his normally light complexion was freckled by the perpetual California sun.
“If you weren’t being polite just now, you may not have heard that I left under a cloud.”
“I never knew any of the details,” Trosper said.
Folsom waited for a moment, both elbows on the table, his fingers flexing like a pianist about to strike the opening notes in a complex concerto. “It’s all because of that bastard Volin — Viktor Feodorovich Volin, the kind of creep that gives the racket a bad name.”
Trosper shook his head. “Never heard of him. Is he one of the new boys, or an old Moscow Center survivor?”
“Both,” Folsom said. “Volin actually telephoned our Munich office, in July, ’91, claiming he was an illegal. He was playing hard to get, and trying to work out a deal by dangling names of some Moscow heavies as bait — guys who were short-listed as key players in the takeover everyone was expecting.”
“Hard to get?” Trosper said. “I’ve had the impression that you guys have trouble making your way into the office through the lines of … ” He paused. “What do you call defectors these days — volunteers?”
“There’s always room at the top,” Folsom admitted. “Volin was no dope, he’d dangle a
bit of bait, insist on commitments in advance, and threaten to peddle himself for some of the big money the Germans are tossing around if we didn’t meet his demands. This was a month before the August dustup when the junta, the gang that couldn’t coup straight, grabbed Gorbachev, and announced that they were running things. The key players were exactly the people Volin claimed access to — all the right names — Kryuchkov, the guy Gorbachev had chosen as KGB chief, Pavlov, the prime minister, Marshal Akhromeyev, Gorbachev’s military man, the whole crowd … ”
Trosper laughed. “That coup had more advance publicity than last year’s Super Bowl. The press had been chewing on it for weeks.”
“Which was all the more reason the White House was scared witless at the prospect of an old-fashioned Russian blood bath with half the world’s atomic weapons and chemical warfare gadgets up for grabs.” Folsom stopped short. “You haven’t been away so long that you can’t remember what happens when the squeeze is really on … ”
“Oh, yes.” Trosper smiled. “I remember occasional moments of pressure … ”
“Pressure?” Folsom snorted. “The heat was blistering the paint right off the buildings — the Agency, the Firm, State, the Pentagon. But trade was lousy. Nobody knew whether Gorbachev would last another twenty-four hours, or what Yeltsin had on his mind. Aside from that, Duff Whyte was in the hospital with a heart attack and all but incommunicado.”
“I remember … ”
“So, Bob Dwyer was Acting Controller. When the crowd Volin claimed to know put Gorbachev under house arrest, Dwyer grabbed on to Volin as if he had a new version of the Rosetta stone under his arm.” Folsom glanced anxiously at Emily. At best, talking shop in front of wives was a tricky business. But Emily’s huge brown eyes, half-masked by the reading glasses she affected, showed no trace of the telltale glaze that in others usually preceded a demand for a change of subject.
“Five days after the coup, Gorbachev was back in the Kremlin, still dithering, and Kryuchkov was locked in his own KGB jail. By this time Washington had cooled off, and Dan Webster had pretty well proved that Volin was just a clever illegal agent who had made good use of his time in Prague while staging for his mission in the States. He’d studied the Western press, and was crafty enough to have elicited some bits and pieces from his Russian handlers. For all his smarts, Volin was an outsider who had less access to what was going on than some of the CNN TV people. All he had was one real zinger, and he swapped it for asylum and resettlement help — not as easy a deal as it was when defectors made out like lottery winners.”
Folsom drained his martini and for a moment munched noisily on a bit of the remaining ice. “Volin was to have only one job in the States — he’d been prepped to handle a State Department secretary, Charlotte Mills.” Folsom pursed his lips and shook his head slowly, sadly. “While she was working at the embassy in Moscow, she’d been photographed in what you might call a romantic interlude with a stud, a guy working for some of the Second Chief Directorate hands who were still doing business as usual for the old Moscow Center. Volin’s disclosure was heavy stuff — Mills had access to absolutely everything pertaining to our chatter with Gorbachev right on through to Yeltsin. If it hadn’t been for Volin, she might still be at it. As it was, when she left Moscow, she wound up in a job just about as sensitive at our mission to the U.N. in New York.”
“With the country falling apart around them, how can the Russians find time for things like that?” Emily asked, her voice more surprised than indignant.
“This began in the Gorbachev era, so it was still business as usual when she was set up,” Folsom said. “Nowadays, the service is more up-to-date — less rough stuff, and they’re happy to pay market prices for value received. They’re not much worried about Western military intervention, but they damned well need all the economic and political poop they can get, and they’re willing to go way out on a limb for really good stuff.”
“Doesn’t anyone ever refuse to cooperate?” Emily asked. “I’m always surprised when I hear one of you speak so casually about recruiting someone to be a spy.”
“She didn’t just agree to be a spy,” Folsom said. “She was blackmailed by the oldest trick in history … ” He glanced across the table for support.
Trosper nodded. “It’s an even money bet that right now, somebody, somewhere, is setting up just such a stunt.”
Folsom brightened. “Mills was a drab little thing, but she was decent and hard-working until they ran that guy against her.” He glanced at Emily. “A gigolo, who claimed to be an actor. She had a few good weeks before they showed her the photographs.”
Emily’s face flushed. “Even so, how much trouble should a few pictures of a woman — whatever age — in bed with some hunk cause anyone these days?”
“The poor woman had probably never even heard of the things that bum had her doing.” Folsom’s face colored, and he turned away from Emily to toy with his empty glass.
Twenty years in the racket, and Red Roger could still blush.
“Besides, the bastard probably used drugs to get at her,” Folsom added gallantly.
“Couldn’t she have told someone about it?” Emily asked.
“Of course — she’d have been out of Moscow the next day, and the ambassador would tell the Foreign Office to knock off the Stalinist crap and rein in their goons if they expected any further cooperation from Washington.” Folsom paused while the waiter served thin slices of pale smoked salmon. “As it was, she didn’t ever report it.”
“Couldn’t she have tried to fight back in some other way?” Emily asked.
“That’s the big catch in blackmail,” Trosper said. “Victims with enough spunk will always be looking for a chance to hit back at the bastards who are tormenting them.”
“Sure,” Folsom said, “and that’s why the smarter punks always sweeten the pot with money. For more people than you think, there’s nothing like a tax-free income.” He shrugged. “To her credit, Charlotte Mills never touched a penny. She just stuck it in a separate bank account.”
“Didn’t anyone notice anything?” Trosper asked.
“Mills was a solitary soul, and no one even realized she’d begun boozing. Not that it mattered. By the time Volin’s information hit the fan, she’d been dead for a couple of weeks — shot in a Central Park mugging that went haywire — case closed.” Folsom shook his head. “At first, the security geniuses didn’t quite believe Volin. But he had a set of negatives of the original pictures, just to remind Mills in case she got restive. Then they found a wad of Xerox copies of LIMDIS cables tucked in the office safe she used, and uncovered an account in which she’d been depositing eight hundred bucks a month ever since she left Moscow. That was exactly the salary Volin said she was getting.”
Folsom took a final bite of the salmon before saying, “As it was, Mills’s apartment was ransacked and burglarized a day or so after her death. It was probably done by one of the Moscow hard boys trying to make sure she hadn’t left any compromising stuff in the apartment.”
They were finishing the beef when Emily asked, “Didn’t that poor woman have any friends, someone who might have noticed what was happening to her?”
“Senior secretaries are supposed to be experienced enough to take care of themselves,” Trosper said. “Not that that’s any excuse for failing to keep an eye on the staff in a place as stressed as Moscow was in those days.”
“Douglas Hardwick was the ambassador heading the delegation in Moscow, and he sure as hell was surprised when he was told about it,” Folsom said.
“Is Hardwick the fellow we used to call ‘Lord Douglas’?” Trosper asked.
“That’s the guy, Douglas Huntington Hardwick, a striped-pants, old school diplomat, who spent most of his time impressing everyone with his fluent Russian,” Folsom said. “Handsome Harry Slocombe was his number two, and trying to keep the negotiations on track. He’s been someone’s deputy for so long all he can worry about is getting his own embassy.”
“Harry is a bit stately,” Trosper laughed, “but he’s been around since Brezhnev and his gang were in short pants.”
“Shouldn’t someone have noticed that a secretary had fallen head over heels for some fancy man?”
Folsom glanced uneasily at Emily. “It isn’t that poor woman I want to talk about. It’s me I’ve got to get Alan interested in.”
Trosper knew when he had lost. “Let’s go back to the flat for coffee,” he said.
5
London
Folsom swirled the brandy in his glass and took a deep reflective puff of his cigar. In the soft light of the study, his flushed face seemed darker. “Aside from what Volin had on Mills — who was killed before he even could get to the States — he didn’t know much of a damn about anything. As an illegal, he’d always been kept at arm’s length, all he had to peddle were bits and pieces he had come across in Prague where he’d spent a year or so working up his cover.”
Trosper leaned back in his chair. “You must know this is none of my business.”
Folsom seemed surprised. “Look, I know you’re retired, but with Duff Whyte as Controller, you … ”
Trosper interrupted. “Damn it, I didn’t retire, and I wish to hell people would stop assuming that I did.” He pushed his coffee aside and got up. At the drinks table he poured himself an ample Glenlivet. So much for his resolve not to drink after dinner. He hesitated a moment and splashed a jigger of water into the whiskey. “Four years ago, I quit. I didn’t retire. I quit because I’d had enough.”
“But since Duff Whyte took over, I heard you’d taken on two or three jobs, big ones.” Folsom spoke rapidly, hiding his embarrassment.
“Everyone knows that.” He knocked the ash off his cigar and began to fish for a match.