by William Hood
“In the circumstances, I suppose I’ve little alternative,” Trosper said as he shifted uneasily on the low-slung sofa in front of Zitkin.
Zitkin’s expression had not changed from the moment he beckoned Trosper and Widgery to follow him from the Praha hlavni nadrazi to the unmarked car, standing alone in a No Parking zone directly in front of the busy entrance to the central rail terminal. After cautioning them not “to essay anything foolish,” Zitkin remained silent. With Trosper in the front seat, and Widgery in the rear, he drove a twisting route across Vinohrady to a shabby apartment building. Once inside, they walked up two flights to a sparsely furnished studio apartment. Zitkin relegated Widgery to a stool in the minuscule kitchen, and motioned Trosper to the sprung sofa in the bed-sitting room.
“When we talked last time, I thought you were too experienced to trust your work to a miracle,” Zitkin said heavily.
Trosper took a deep breath. “I can explain … ”
Zitkin dismissed the offer with an impatient brushing movement of his hand. “You realize, I trust, that you have disappointed me.”
Trosper nodded. “I’m truly sorry that in the circumstances I had no alternative but to act as I have.”
Zitkin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “When I released you the first time, I thought I made it clear that neither you nor your confederates were to return to the Czech Republic for at least twelve months.”
“You did indeed make it clear, and I had every intention of respecting your wishes. Unfortunately, it was urgent business, not merely, as your writer put it, that ‘Prague doesn’t release you. This Muetterchen has claws’ … ”
“Don’t quote Kafka to me,” Zitkin said sharply.
“What I’m trying to say is that the urgency and the importance of the trip made it essential for me to return on almost no notice. There simply wasn’t time to inform you of the problem and to ask your indulgence for a few hours.”
“That’s not good enough … ”
“I understand,” Trosper said.
“I’m not sure you do,” Zitkin said.
“Let me tell you why we’re here … ”
Zitkin’s nod was barely perceptible.
“My service is in touch with a Russian, a former Moscow Center man who had been trained for a mission in New York, but who defected to us even before he started work in the States.”
Zitkin remained impassive.
“He left our custody a few months ago, and since then has become a renegade, working on his own. Using a false identity, and pretending to be someone else, he wrote to us demanding a large amount of money for information on an important Moscow Center operation in Washington, an activity he claimed the SVR will not possibly give up, even in these days of improved relations. Because he knew Prague well, and assumed we had no facilities here, he demanded that we meet him here. As you know, that meeting was aborted.”
“Yes, yes,” Zitkin said impatiently.
“You will also understand that the one bit of information the Russian gave us in the canister you so kindly protected turned out to be much more important than the man thought. It led us to a serious communications leak.”
Zitkin raised his eyebrows, but remained silent.
“Forty-eight hours ago the Russian reached us through a roundabout channel he set up, and again demanded a meeting in Prague. This time, he said he would pass us the information on the other, allegedly more important, Washington operation.”
For the first time, Zitkin showed interest.
“As a matter of background I can tell you that the man spent a year, possibly longer, in Prague during the Soviet occupation, working with the rezidency. He left our custody before we could finish the interrogation, so I’ve no idea how much he knows about their activity here. I can say he’s aggressive and wily enough to have picked up quite a bit.”
Zitkin nodded. “As you may know, we saw this man when we picked you up last time. We’ve continued to look, but we haven’t been able to uncover him in Prague. There’s no record of him in any hotel or pension or in criminal circles.”
“I can tell you where to find him today … ”
“Well now,” Zitkin said, “are you offering me a compromise — I let you go, you tell me where I can find this renegade Russian?” He shook his head in mock surprise. “Have you already forgot that we’re an independent country, forced to be even-handed with our friends, and our not-so-friends? Do you understand?”
“No, I do not understand,” Trosper said. “We face the same antagonist.”
“Your enemy is my enemy? Those days are over … ”
Trosper shook his head. “I said antagonist, it’s you who said enemy. There’s a difference. I don’t have to remind you that the cold war is gone, and the world is almost back to what it was sixty years ago. Traditional friendships, generations-old political hostilities, half-forgotten antagonisms, centuries-old ethnic — even tribal — hatreds, have all rekindled. I know of no country that’s not actively keeping an eye on its antagonists and, as you surely must know, its neighbors as well.”
“I must enforce our laws even-handed, treat everyone the same,” Zitkin said. “I let you all go once, I can’t do it again without my people finding out. If I arrest anyone, I must arrest all.”
“Good enough,” Trosper said. “Since my friend and I haven’t committed any crime, and you’ve no reason to suspect that we have, perhaps you could settle on merely detaining us until we leave.” Trosper leaned closer to the table. “Let me explain … ”
36
Prague
“So, Mr. Anderson, we meet at last.” Viktor Feodorovich Volin, a.k.a. Sinon, a.k.a. Sam, a.k.a. Otto Karlheinz Gruber, thrust out his hand. “Not the best weather for our little get-together … ”
“Not the best place, either,” Trosper said, peering through the rain-spotted, clear-glass cheaters he had decided to wear. Volin was about five-ten. The excellent camouflage of his worn lodencloth topcoat, heavy shoes, and sodden black Steierhut pulled well down over his forehead reinforced the bleak aspect of the park.
Volin nodded approvingly. “Security comes first, I’ve always said that.”
“If so, isn’t there some place we can get out of the weather long enough to conduct our business?” Trosper glanced uneasily along the length of the park.
“There’s a little kavama, on the other side of the park, not too far. It’s all right for a Pils, or coffee and a sandwich.”
“Good enough.” As Trosper turned to step beside Volin, he glanced quickly around the barren park. In summer, he supposed, there would have been annuals sparingly planted in the desolate beds beside the sidewalks that twisted through the patchy, yellowed grass in a series of loosely linked oval patterns. The leafless trees gave a clear line of sight from one end of the park to the other, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards. At the top of the park, one man huddled so implausibly on a bench that Trosper dismissed the possibility that he might be a watcher.
“Just one thing,” Volin said as they moved slowly along the graveled walkway.
Trosper expected Volin to assert himself early in the meeting, and would wait for the right moment to restore the balance in their relationship.
“The money?” Volin offered an ingratiating smile.
“What money?”
“What you owe me for the information I gave you on Colonel Pickett … ”
Trosper shook his head. “There isn’t any colonel … ”
In his surprise Volin stopped short, and tugged at Trosper’s arm in an effort to turn him around. “Of course there is, you’re lying.”
Trosper pulled his arm free. “You’re making yourself conspicuous … ”
“Colonel? Major? What difference does his rank make? I gave you all the information you need to find that guy.”
“What makes you so sure the information you gave us on the man you call ‘Colonel’ Pickett is news?”
“What the hell are you talking?” Vol
in demanded. “My sources are perfect, that’s an important guy, I should have charged you more.”
Trosper stopped walking and faced Volin. “Look, if you want to call yourself Otto Gruber, that’s your business — something between you, the Austrian passport people, and any country that doesn’t like visitors traveling on false papers.” He took a few steps more. “But don’t try to pull that Sinon, high-level Moscow Center crap on me.”
Volin’s face flushed, his eyes narrowed. “That woman, that damned Lotte, I’ll teach her some lessons … ” Cursing, he turned away.
Trosper grabbed Volin’s arm and spun him around. “One step in her direction, comrade, and you’ll think you’ve been run over by a goddamned train.” Volin wrenched his arm free and drew back a clenched fist. Trosper braced himself and with both hands shoved Volin hard in the chest. Caught off balance, Volin lurched backward, sprawling onto one of the wooden benches ranged alongside the gravel walkway. As he hit the bench, his hat jarred loose and fell brim down onto the wet gravel. He pulled himself into a sitting position.
Trosper picked up the hat, slapped the brim against the sleeve of his trench coat, and dropped the hat in Volin’s lap.
“Don’t try that again,” Volin said. His voice, as he gulped for air, was too high-pitched to convey a threat.
“Don’t you ever, and I mean ever, make threats to touch any of our people.” Like a dancer after a strenuous solo passage, Trosper struggled to mask his own deep breathing. He was, he realized glumly, gasping almost as heavily as Volin.
“Big damn deal,” Volin said. “You people squeeze me like a lemon dry, then throw me in the garbage … ”
“I haven’t got time to listen to that self-pitying crap,” Trosper said. “The minute you thought you were out of Moscow’s reach and had something to sell, you came to us begging for asylum. You got it and we were paying you a better salary than anything you had ever wheedled out of Moscow when you decided to sneak off and start this stupid swindle. If you think I’m going to pay for information you held out after you signed our agreement, you’re just plain dumb.”
Volin remained seated as he flicked the remaining specks of gravel from his hat. He glanced up as if to speak, but stayed silent, and for a moment Trosper glimpsed him full-face in the cold gray light. Thick black hair, touched with gray, combed straight back, with a receding hairline forming a crescent that gave the impression of a high forehead and broad brow. Prominent, Slavic cheekbones crowded the dark eyes set deep beneath heavy black eyebrows. Volin’s jaw was broad, but tapered sharply as it formed his chin. For a man to have been so prized by women, he was neither handsome, prepossessing, nor even interesting. The most that could be granted Volin was a bland, shifty expression, and a slight feral overbite.
“Let’s stop this nonsense, and get to business before something else comes unstuck,” Trosper said. “The last time I was here, your stupid letter attracted so much attention at the hotel I nearly went to jail … ”
“How could I know the clerk was on the security payroll?”
“Now, you’ve got me standing around in a park, conspicuous as a bowling ball on a billiard table … ” Trosper scanned the park. Still no sign of surveillance. “Let’s stop the nonsense and get down to business.”
“All right, you can give me the money at the kavama.”
“Just to speed things up,” Trosper said, “did it ever occur to you that we might know the fellow you mentioned, the man you said was a colonel?” It would do no harm to keep Volin on the defensive. Volin’s eyes widened. “I don’t believe you … ”
“Or that all you did by butting in was to jeopardize another activity?” If Volin were ever in a position to peddle this story in Russia this might add a confusing dimension to Moscow’s analysis of the Pickett case. “I don’t know who the hell you think you’re dealing with, but if — ”
“If?” Volin interrupted loudly. “What ‘if’ can there be? I told you about the guy, and where to find him. Now you tell me you knew all about it anyway. Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t give a damn whether you believe it or not,” Trosper said.
“So, pay me … ”
“It’s the other matter that interests me, what you described in your letter as the important case.”
“Look, you’ve checked on Pickett, you know that I know what I’m talking. You know I have sources.”
“Up to a point,” Trosper said.
“I’m not trying tricks. There’s money to be made in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia. To get in on the floor, I need some capital. I have things to sell, but I have to pay my sources. These are tough guys, used to having things just so. I can’t play fools with them.” Volin shook his head in wonder, a fair imitation of an honest man perplexed when his true character is not immediately perceived. “Where do you think I learned about Pickett if I don’t have sources?”
“For Christ’s sake, you learned about Pickett when you were in on his recruitment, right here in Prague … ” Trosper took a few more steps before saying, “Why didn’t you explain this in the first place? Why all this crap about Sinon, the illegal who had been offered the chance to return to Moscow or stay in the States at his own expense?”
“I handed you Mills, the embassy woman, and that’s worth ten times what you paid me,” Volin said. “Why should I make a gift of Pickett? You people wouldn’t pay any more for him than I was getting. You already had me, just a dumb defector you thought didn’t know enough to get decent treatment … ”
Before Trosper could respond, Volin pulled himself off the bench and stared nervously across the park. “You smart people would have laughed at me, and stolen what I know, and that’s all what would have happened.”
“Why all the nonsense of coming here to meet you?”
“It’s the best place I know where you couldn’t just grab me up.
Trosper glanced over Volin’s shoulder. The park was empty but for a thickset woman at the far corner, slowly wheeling a pram. He wondered if there was a baby in the carriage or a walkie-talkie. Maybe both.
“I have five thousand dollars with me, a retainer. But first I want to know about the other activity … ” Trosper’s voice trailed away. From the corner of his vision, he saw the woman bend over the pram and then straighten and begin to move briskly toward the street. At the bottom of the park, a Skoda pulled to the curb. Two men, both wearing hip-length leather coats, stepped out and stood leaning against the car, staring directly into the park. At the top of the park, across from the Krizikova church, a four-door Fiat pulled to the curb. Three men spilled out, stepped across the sidewalk, and strode rapidly into the park.
“Damn,” Trosper said loudly. “Damn and blast.”
Volin muttered a curse in Russian. He eased himself sideways as if getting ready to run.
Trosper touched his arm. “It’s not worth it, they’ve got us staked.” He nodded in the direction of the two men leaning motionless against the car, and turned to direct Volin’s attention to the three men who were advancing like beaters herding game toward marksmen at the far end of the park. “Keep to your cover,” Trosper murmured. “They haven’t got anything on us … ”
A second small Fiat drew up at the side of the park. Zitkin thrust himself out of the front seat and strode deliberately toward the bench where Trosper and Volin were being patted down. Still at a distance, Zitkin shouted “Haendkaf” and something less intelligible in Czech.
“Restraints,” Zitkin said as he reached the group. “For two such dangerous spies, the new regulations say we need handcuffs.” He turned belligerently to Trosper. “Some damned security you’ve got, two meetings and you get arrested each time. Now you’re really in trouble.”
Lieutenant Syrovy, still in his tweed cap, grasped the chain linking the cuffs and prepared to lead Trosper away. “You are under arrest and will be at the disposal of the Inspector.” He turned to Volin and said something in Czech. “Ich verstehe Sie nicht” Volin said angrily
.
“There’s not to be talk between you two.” Zitkin spoke directly to Trosper, and then repeated the instruction in German to Volin.
Hampered by the handcuffs, Trosper wedged himself into the rear seat of the Fiat. From the side window, he could see Volin being pushed into the Skoda.
*
Zitkin leaned forward, his hands palm down on the desk. “It will be easier for us both,” he said in German, “if you realize from the beginning that I know who you are, and have a good notion of what you are doing in Prague.”
The wainscoted walls, leaded windows, and what Trosper assumed had been a decorative plate rack encircling the room suggested that Zitkin’s interrogation area had once been the dining room of the small villa on the eastern outskirts of Prague.
The binaural audio was high quality, pitched to monitor voices without magnifying the distracting barrage of peripheral sounds — doors slamming, windows rattling, papers being shuffled — that can make monitoring an interrogation a nervous agony. The see-through mirror was sited to give the viewer an unobstructed view of Zitkin and the prisoner. Trosper pulled his chair closer to the glass and adjusted the earphones.
Zitkin plucked a sheaf of papers from a tray at the side of the desk. He scanned a few pages and tossed the papers back into the tray. “We will begin,” he said heavily, “with your passport.” He leaned forward, both elbows on the desk. “My technician doesn’t like it. What’s more, I don’t like it.”
Injured innocence flickered across Volin’s face. “There’s some mistake … I don’t understand.”
“There’ll be time enough for that tomorrow, when we check with the Austrian authorities, our friends in Vienna.”
“What problem can there be?” Volin’s voice rose. “My passport is just like all the others, all the Austrians who come here for tourism or business … ”
“Perhaps,” Zitkin said. “But all in good time.” His German was fluent, almost without accent.
“Why am I here, why all this unpleasantness … ?”