The Zurich Numbers

by Bill Granger

  “What deal could you make?”

  He seemed surprised. “Me. For Teresa. And Stefan. It depends if they want to play.”

  “What the hell are you telling me?”

  “What I told you in Washington. What I tried to make you understand. They want me, Rita. Nothing else matters right now. So what do they lose if they terminate Teresa’s contract right away, give her the kid, get Krueger’s guarantee back? And get me in return?”

  “How can you give up like that?”

  “I’m not sure I can. But I know I can’t go into Poland and find Stefan and bring him out. This isn’t a movie. They have to want to let him go.”

  She stared at him. Her eyes were damp. “You bastard. You’re going to let them kill you. You don’t even care what I want.”

  “On my terms. If I can arrange it that way,” he said. “I told you that in Washington.”

  “Why are you doing this for her? She’s nothing to you. What about me?”

  “You’re the other part. I want to see why they want you. If they don’t care that much, you’re free. And you’ve got all of Teresa’s tapes about the network. You can use the tapes as leverage. Against them. Against the Section if the Section comes down on you. Mainly, I think, against NSA.”

  “Loose ends. You were talking about loose ends.”

  Devereaux ran his hand over his chin. He felt tired. His mouth was sore from the blow Denisov had given him. “Trust is limited, Rita. I think you’ve learned that. But I’m not trying to fool you.”

  For the first time, he looked vulnerable. He stared at her, his hands open, his legs apart. “I used you twice. It’s my turn to pick up the check.”

  “I didn’t care. I love you.”

  “I love you. So what does it mean? I mean, if we can’t survive?”

  “What about Melvina?”

  “She’s all right. My friend Rocca took out the Russian. Peter is back. He’ll watch out for her. You can tell her what happened after this is over if it fulfills your familial sense of duty.”

  “You arrogant son of a bitch.”

  “Exactly,” he said. Paused. Slowly. “Son of a bitch.” His gray eyes glowed in the light of the red setting sun. He looked away from her. “My father worked in high steel. He was killed. Fell thirty-six floors. My mother was a drunk. I saw Mary Krakowski that first morning in Melvina’s kitchen, I knew her.” His face was savage. “I knew that bitch. I knew she was going for the vodka. I was only interested at first. Fascinated with her. Then the kid was killed. And then Teresa happened. No. I don’t know Teresa and I don’t want to know her. She’s just another poor soul in life who thinks she has to be happy. I never told you those things because they weren’t important.”

  Rita touched her cheek. “Your mother—”

  “Melvina was right. My mother was a drunk, worthless. Even before the old man was killed. I was two or three, I barely knew him. I remember the way he smelled. Sometimes I think I can smell him. It’s forty years later and I remember his smell. He never drank, never swore. I didn’t know about the swearing but Melvina told me that. I knew about drinking. I knew my mother’s breath.” Devereaux glanced out the window; the sun was down, the sky was red. “She drank gin at the table in the morning. The way Mary drank vodka that morning. I couldn’t save her. But Teresa. Well, who says that people can’t delude themselves?”

  “Me. My happiness counts.”

  “You’d never find it with me, babe.”

  “You never gave it a try.”

  “I ran around,” he said after a long pause. “Killed a kid. I was eleven.”

  “You killed a kid?”

  “He had some territory, it turned out. It was pointless. You had to run a gauntlet to school. Through his territory. I went to the dime store on Forty-third Street one afternoon—we lived down there—and bought a yellow-handled switchblade knife. A buck ninety-eight. Money I stole.”

  She stared at him. His gray eyes were shining with memory; his voice, still flat, was edged with a funereal pace.

  “I knew what I was going to do. He came up and gave me his shit and I just pulled the knife and stuck him. In the tit. Right into his heart.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He couldn’t believe it. He held my shirt. A big kid. Stupid fucking bully.” Devereaux smiled. “I pushed him back and he went down.” He looked at her. “You see? Killers are born, not made.”

  She said nothing.

  “The cops got me. I went down to family court, over to the Audy Home. And Melvina bailed me out. Went to court, had my mother declared incompetent. Melvina had her pull. Hell, my mother was incompetent. But that didn’t make me want to kill someone. I just wasn’t going to put up with that shit.”

  “What happened to your mother?”

  “She drank herself to death a bit faster than she was supposed to do it. She died two years later. I saw her twice. At my first communion and at my confirmation. Melvina was churchy. She made it clear to my mother that it was a special treat for her. Melvina is a bitch. Was. Is. I don’t know. She made me what I am.” He paused. “No, I don’t mean that. I made myself what I am.” He smiled. “Sordid, huh?”

  They sat for a moment, frozen in their places like actors in a mime company, waiting for lights, for the magic of some music or spoken command to unfreeze them.

  “Why are you going to kill yourself?”

  “Because you are the only thing I ever wanted,” Devereaux said. He altered his voice. “And if I can’t have you, there’s no point to anything.”

  She giggled. He stared at her. Smiled.

  Still in a changed voice: “Maybe I won’t kill myself if you promise to be mine ever more.” Then, softly, “Rita.”

  She began to unbutton her blouse.

  He watched her.

  She took her blouse off and unfastened the front clasp of her brassiere. Her breasts were freckled, her nipples red, large. She stood up. “Do you want to feel me?”

  He touched her. Her bare breasts pressed against his jacket.

  “At least take your gun out,” she said.

  He unzipped his trousers.

  “Not that one,” she said.

  He grinned and removed his jacket and the pistol clipped to his trousers. He took off his trousers.

  “You locked the door.”

  “I thought of everything,” he said.

  “My God, I love you,” she said and she was crying. He felt her tears on his bare shoulder. He held her too tightly but she didn’t care. He kissed her eyes and tasted her tears.

  They lay naked on the leather couch. For a long time, he kissed her, softly, insistently, his tongue on her breasts, nipples, between her breasts, on her neck, her mouth, her eyes, to kiss the wetness away from them. Her body arched toward him, her belly pressed against his belly. She groaned and took his neck with her hands and pulled his face to her and licked his lips with her tongue. She took his hand and placed it between her legs. She was open for him. “See,” she said. “See?”

  He moved over her, pressed into her deeply, kissed her, arched his body down to meet her body rising. He lay in her lap. He moved. She moaned, dug her nails into his back; at climax, her head rocked back and forth like a child’s head, listening to secret music, her eyes closed to feel the music. He pressed still in her. He closed his eyes. He saw her in his mind as she was, naked beneath him, and saw her another time, when he first took her in the house on the mountain, before the fire, her body glowing in the reflection of the flames. He saw green eyes like prisms bending the spectrum until she was all colors. He opened his eyes. Her eyes were open, watching him. She moaned again and he could feel her convulsions, and this time he was lost in her. It never ended. When it ended, he kissed her, very gently, on her lips and slipped out of her lap, beside her, holding her.

  They lay huddled, side by side, on the leather couch for several minutes.

  “No more crying,” he said.

  “Big girl,” Rita said.

  “Everythin
g will be all right,” he said. He held her naked against him.

  “Don’t tell me lies. Not now,” she said.

  “Maybe it’ll work out.”

  “No. You don’t believe that.”

  “No.”

  More silence. It was night. The room was dark.

  “There’s no way out of this,” she said.

  “No. If we don’t do anything, we’ve done something. Might as well go down swinging.”

  “I want you to save yourself for me. No more good-byes, no more facing facts. Fuck facts,” she said. “I want you. There must be desert islands still or slow boats to China. KGB isn’t God, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Then save yourself. I’m going back tomorrow. I’m not afraid of them. I’m going back home and if they start leaning on me, I’m going to tell them about their goddam Numbers and tell them to lay off.”

  “Tough guy.”

  “Yeah. I’m a helluva lot tougher than they are.”

  “Don’t leave yet. It isn’t safe.”

  “When will it be safe?”

  “When I call you. From there. In a little while.”

  “You’re not coming back. You bastard. I see you going away right now. You’re lying here and you hold me but you’re already taking off. You bastard.”

  Another silence.

  “I’d go anywhere for you,” she said finally.

  “I’ll remember it. Can you keep house?”

  “Is that going to be necessary? You want somebody to keep house, get a housekeeper. This is all I’m good for.”

  He kissed her on the cheek; he licked her ear.

  “Levy is going to suspect we’re up to no good in here,” she said.

  “Yes. He’s a good agent.”

  “Look.” She leaned on one elbow and stared at him. “I don’t want you to die.” Her eyes were shining clear, without tears, glittering though there was no light. “I don’t care about your mother or father or your great-aunt or whether you believe in God or root for the Cubs or brush your teeth after meals. Am I getting through to you?”

  He waited, smiling slightly.

  “If you get killed, I’ll feel terrible. But if you just die, just walk in and lay down and play dead, I’ll never forgive you. Just once put aside all your reservations and your little secrets and your ‘perhapses’ and tell me you won’t just lay down and play dead. Not for them.”

  He kissed her.

  “Tell me,” she said. She hadn’t moved.

  “I won’t die,” he said. “If I get killed, I want you to feel terrible. But I promise. No reservations, no secrets, everything open.” He kissed her again. “I won’t just die.”

  21

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “What about November?” asked Yackley, the New Man, head of the Section. His eyes were in shadows. A single lamp on his desk and nothing else to light the room. Hanley sat across from him. Beyond the window, the red-eyed aircraft warning lights in the Washington Monument blinked on and off. Winking.

  “Stripped. We were crossed by the Puzzle Factory.”

  “Why?”

  “Too big a job? I don’t know. KGB is going at this full tilt. There’s more.”

  “Do I want to know about it?” Softly.

  “Not now. I gave him what he wanted. He said he’d be back to us. It’s a matter of days now.” Hanley was so tired; his voice seemed slow to his own ear. “He needed an independent contractor. Two, actually. I gave him names. Some money out of the special fund. Passports. Identification.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is up? Why is down? Why did he go back to Chicago in the first place? He’s found the tip of something. It looks small but it just might be the tail of the dragon. Somehow, the Puzzle Factory is involved and they’ve got a hard-on. For November, for the Section. I did what I did for the Section.”

  “You could have told me this before.”

  “No. You would have found some reason to stop it.”

  “I can still stop it.”

  “No. He’s beyond us.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Hanley lied.

  “What did he want?”

  “He said if it worked out, he’d give us a present. To take care of his girlfriend. He said he’s finished.”

  “They can’t do that to one of our—”

  “He isn’t our agent now. They know that. We stripped him clean, too, when we turned him over to NSA for repro work. He’s arranging his own funeral.”

  “Shit,” said Yackley.

  22

  FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

  Craypool took one of the pens out of his shirt pocket and marked a note in the margin of the yellow legal pad in front of him.

  O’Brien made a face and lit a cigarette. “Why do you have so many pens?”

  “What?”

  “Why—forget it.”

  “Pens?”

  “Forget it.”

  Craypool stared at the sheet. It had been a rebuke; he was sure of it. “We could upset the Numbers ourselves. Turn it over to National Security Council at the next meeting.”

  “Give it to the Hooverville crowd.”

  “Yes,” Craypool said.

  “I’d rather try to contain it. If it’s still possible.”

  “Item: Macklin is gone. Item: Devereaux is gone. Item: Teresa Kolaki is gone. Gone where? We ran an airline credit check. Do you suppose they paid cash? If they got cash, who did they get it from?”

  “What about the shine?”

  “He’s back in his cage in Chicago. Something happened there.”

  “Tell me something happened there. We get signals out of the Opposition camp you wouldn’t believe. They don’t even know where Malenkov is.”

  “But the shine wasn’t there when it happened. Whatever happened.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “The shine took Kolaki somewhere.”

  “Flights at that time?”

  “Early in the morning. Not overseas but anywhere else. New York, D.C., L.A., Frisco. Anywhere.”

  “Shit. Doubleshit.”

  “I think November has to probe Krueger in Zurich. I told Morgan to stay there.”

  “And Krueger?”

  “He’s as pissed off as we are. This Rimsky tried to hold him up about the guarantee money. Said Krakowski was back in Poland.”

  “Everyone is working a con. We point the finger at November, they can’t waste him. He’s moving. I can feel it. He’s doing something out there and we don’t know what it is.”

  “He’s got Kolaki. We have to figure that. But what does that mean to us? Or him? It’s a matter of time for him. Even for his broad.”

  O’Brien blinked at Craypool’s sudden vehemence. It was the hour, he decided. Nearly midnight. The days were too long. He’d have to talk to the Director in the morning. What could O’Brien tell him?

  “I really don’t want to blow this.”

  “Neither do I,” said Craypool. “But how long until the Section tumbles to what’s going on?”

  “That depends on November,” O’Brien said. He stubbed out the cigarette. He lit another. “We alerted Morgan, in the clear. KGB has to pick it up. Let’s just wait on it.”

  “How long?”

  “Forty-eight hours, tops. Then we have to go one way or the other. If they haven’t taken care of our problem.”

  23

  WARSAW

  Matron woke him at four A.M.

  “Stefan. Stefan.”

  He opened his eyes. She put her finger on her lips.

  “Wake up and get dressed.”

  Obediently, he sat up, put his feet on the cold floor. Stefan Kolaki, age nine, resident of State Children’s Asylum Number 3, in a suburb of Warsaw, occupied bed 34 in a dormitory for boys between the ages of seven and ten. The younger children were in another asylum. The older ones were on the top floor. The girls were in another wing.

  Stefan Kolaki rubbed sleep from his eyes.


  The dormitories were long but not wide. The ceilings were painted gray and the walls green; the windows were small because heat was a precious commodity. His personal things—clothing, a photograph of his mother, pencils for school, books and papers—were arranged in a wooden footlocker at the head of his bed. He stood up and picked up his glasses and put them on. He looked at Matron, who stood waiting for him. He removed his nightshirt and put it under his pillow and shivered naked in the cold. He slipped on underpants and then his jeans. He reached for his shirt, put it on, buttoned it.

  “Sweater, too,” Matron said. “Hurry along. And bring your coat.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Put your clothes in a bag. Everything.”

  “Has my mother come? Is she here?”

  “Be quiet. Don’t talk foolishness. Hurry or you’ll wake the others. Hurry, you’ll miss breakfast.”

  Socks and leather shoes. He opened the footlocker and put the photograph of his mother, wrapped in a shirt, wrapped in a sweater, in the bag.

  “You won’t need your schoolbooks.”

  “This is my notebook.”

  “All right. Take it.”

  The dining hall was in the basement; the food was prepared in large pots. There wasn’t much meat but there never was, for anyone. No one in the place was particularly unkind to the children; some were very loving.

  He felt giddy. Maybe it would be a surprise. She would be waiting for him at the train station.

  Stefan Kolaki was not tall for his age. He was puny and had little energy. He had vision problems and wore glasses nearly all the time. His hair was blond and his eyes were bright blue. If he had known it, he resembled his father at that age. His father was dead. He remembered, in a dream, his father bending over his crib one night, kissing him on his forehead. His friend Jozef said Stefan couldn’t remember what happened to him as a baby; he must have dreamed it.

  He followed behind Matron, who carried his bag, down the sleeping dormitory corridor, through the double doors, down the concrete steps to the basement. The lights were on already; the cooks were preparing hot cereal for breakfast, baking bread. Milk in steel containers sat on a wooden counter. He pulled out a bench and sat down in front of a cup of milky tea and a bowl of hot cereal. He sipped the tea, which tasted sweet, and scalded the tip of his tongue.