The Zurich Numbers

by Bill Granger

  But, she almost sobbed, why can I trust you?

  Because, Vishinsky replied coldly, you have absolutely no other choice.

  So she had come as instructed.

  “A mother’s love,” Vishinsky said softly to himself as he spotted her through the pocket field glasses. Alone and no one around her.

  Stefan, humiliated, blushing beneath the makeup, stumbled toward the giant wooden cake near the entrance to the arena floor. He wore the white wedding dress and veil and his glasses had been taken from him. He could not see very well without them.

  He knew that Wojo was already in the cake, waiting for him. The routine was simple. When the lights went out, the cake was pushed on a wheeled cart to the center ring and Stefan climbed a ladder inside to the opening at the top tier. He would stand on top of the cake while Wojo came out the door of the bottom tier, comically climbed to the top tiers, and “married” the boy before a clown priest on the arena floor.

  Inside the wooden cake, during those few minutes, Jan Tomczek could not protect him.

  It was always horrible. Brief seconds in the darkness, with the stench of the midget overwhelming the closed space. He had wanted to speak of it to Jan Tomczek, but Jan lied to him as all of them lied to him. He would never see his mother again; this nightmare would go on and on.

  “If you tell anyone, if you tell that goon from the secret police, I’ll cut your little cock off, right there, and you’ll be a real little girl for the rest of your life, you understand me?” And Wojo, his breath reeking of the smell of fierce liquor, his reddened eyes wide and mad with a kind of lust, would grab him in the darkness as the clowns wheeled the cake to center ring. Only a matter of seconds to be endured.

  “It will be all right. In a little while.” It was Jan Tomczek talking to him as he tottered toward the cake. Liar.

  The hidden door opened.

  He heard the hoarse whisper from the darkness like the voice of the devil: “Come on, my precious baby, follow me. Follow me—”

  Jan touched the boy’s hand. He turned, looked at the man. Jan had pain in his eyes. There was nothing to be done.

  “Little one.”

  Into the darkness. He felt the hands touch him. He pushed away. He could smell the animal presence of the other, crouched in the hiding place.

  “Little one,” rasped Wojo. Stefan closed his eyes.

  A blue, uniformed usher crossed the empty section and bent over and whispered to the woman sitting alone. Teresa looked up, turned chalk white, nodded, and got up.

  Vishinsky saw this through the field glasses.

  What was happening?

  A sudden panic clutched his throat. He glanced at Mikhail at the other end of the arena, but Mikhail had his eyes on the wedding cake being wheeled to the center ring.

  Vishinsky looked back to see Teresa disappearing through an exit ramp.

  What was happening?

  Vishinsky shoved the glasses into his coat pocket and ran down the concrete steps to the concourse behind the stands. The concourse was filled with circus workers preparing to peddle their souvenirs and drinks and sandwiches during the intermission scheduled after the clown wedding sequence.

  She was supposed to wait for it. To see Stefan. What had impelled her to leave?

  Alexander Vishinsky ran along the concourse, slipping past the workers crowding the aisle. From the auditorium, the band struck up strains of Lohengrin’s “Wedding March.” In a moment the lights would go on and Stefan Kolaki, dressed as a bride, would be perched atop the smallest tier of the cake.

  Something was going wrong.

  Vishinsky reached in his pocket for the pistol, drew it out.

  The backup instruction: In the event that all blandishments fail, if she refuses to return despite your efforts, kill her. Simply and directly. The order could not have been more specific.

  It was the final option. Not that Vishinsky had suspected it would come to this. It would be an admission of failure.

  He reached the end of the corridor. Mikhail was running down the steps and nearly bumped into him.

  “Where has she gone? Where?”

  Mikhail Korsoff was frightened: “I noticed she was gone, I—”

  “You’ve lost her!”

  Mikhail shrank in horror. This, too, would be his fault then.

  “There!” he cried. It was her, in dress and coat and scarf, walking quickly on high heels toward the exit door.

  “She’s gone mad,” Vishinsky shouted in Russian. He was going to be ruined because of this; this was not his fault.

  Both men ran along the concrete corridor, away from the main concourse, toward a side exit door.

  That is when Mikhail saw the pistol.

  “We are not going to kill her,” he said.

  “Yes. That is what I will do,” Vishinsky said.

  “Teresa!” Mikhail cried.

  Mikhail reached her first, pulled her around, tore the scarf from her head.

  Vishinsky stopped, pistol drawn, stared.

  Rita Macklin.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  In that second, Vishinsky turned, saw the policeman pounding down the concrete walk toward them.

  The policeman reached for his holster as Vishinsky fired. The force of the impact knocked the policeman backward. He hit the cement block wall, smeared it with blood, slid to the floor.

  Vishinsky turned, squeezing the trigger already.

  Rita Macklin smiled at him. Bitch.

  The bullet broke Vishinsky’s spine. His skull shattered when he hit the cement—a doctor at the Cook County Morgue later marveled that someone with such a fragile skull had survived without injury for so many years. The pistol clattered from his hand.

  Mikhail Korsoff stood frozen, without a pistol, waiting for the next shot.

  Denisov stepped from the alcove that led to the men’s room. He smiled and shrugged. “I’m sorry, comrade.” It was an apology, Mikhail understood that, the apology of the executioner in medieval times. Denisov turned the pistol toward him and fired directly into Mikhail Korsoff’s face.

  “Now, Miss Macklin,” Denisov said slowly.

  She stood very still.

  He took her arm. “We will leave them.”

  “I love your pretty lips,” the midget crooned, touching them. The boy reached for the ladder. He felt he might scream. He had screamed the first night but no one heard him except the clown wheeling the cake to center ring.

  The midget kissed the child in the darkness; his fingers probed Stefan’s body beneath the layers of wedding dress.

  God, Stefan prayed, kill me. Let me die now, this moment. Hot tears stained his powdered cheeks. He reached for the ladder, through the opening, reached for the floor of the top tier. Wojo’s hands lingered on him from below. Escape.

  He clambered to his feet, stood braced with one hand against the wedding canopy support. In a second, the lights flicked on, hot and bright. They always blinded him. He stood perfectly still, blinking, staring straight ahead.

  At the bottom of the cake, the little door opened and Wojo tumbled out. Children laughed.

  Stefan blinked, felt the tears on his face, wiped at them. He heard the laughter. He hated the laughter, he hated Jan Tomczek, he hated the clowns, all of them so afraid. He hated his mother, who had left him to this terrible end.

  Stefan was twelve feet off the ground. The platform was narrow. Wojo would roughhouse at times, push the child until he thought he would fall. But Wojo would grab him at the last moment and that was part of the act, part of what made the children laugh, even as he screamed. Above the roar of laughter, they could not hear his screams.

  Wojo was beside him now, pushing him playfully. This time, Stefan let go because he wanted to fall. Perhaps he would die then. Perhaps they would let him go back to the asylum. Perhaps—

  “Oh, nononono, little one,” Wojo cackled and grabbed him with strong arms and drew him back.

  Stefan felt dizzy from the lights, the insane lau
ghter, the loud, booming music of the “Wedding March” dressed up in a jazz tempo. He wanted to fall, to die, and he could not.

  Mother, he thought in that moment. I don’t hate you. You would not permit this. You don’t know.

  The preacher was blessing them, Wojo was doing a mock exaggerated bow. Wojo pushed him again, the slide appeared magically, and they tumbled down it, one atop the other, landing in a pile at the bottom while the cake suddenly exploded with roman candles and pops of firecrackers and brightly colored puffs of smoke.

  Applause rolled over them from the stands and then Wojo jumped up to take a bow and another pratfall.

  Stefan ran, half blind in the lights and smoke, for the exit to the work tunnel off the main arena floor. Wojo did a mock bow, kicked the preacher in the pants. The applause and laughter did not stop.

  Inside the work ramp. Safe for another few hours. But where was Jan? There. Leaning against the wall. He ran up to retrieve his glasses.

  Jan stared at him. His eyes were wide, his face puffed. His tongue was protruding from his lips. His face was red and his lips were blue. Dead.

  Now Stefan screamed.

  A hand reached for him. A man in a black coat with strong hands tore him away from Jan Tomczek’s propped body. He was pushed toward the ramp leading to the work tunnel. “Who are you? Who are—”

  Suddenly, behind them, the midget screamed in Polish. “What the hell is going on?”

  The man who held Stefan’s arm turned. Wojo ran up to him. The stranger pushed him, almost lightly, casually, away. The clown slammed against a cement block wall, fell down, got up, cursed, produced the knife.

  “Don’t,” said the stranger. Once, distinctly.

  Wojo smiled, his rotted teeth glistening under the yellowish lights in the entry tunnel. Frightened. They were all frightened. Terrified of this demon. This man saw the devil in Wojo.

  The midget rushed forward with the knife, screaming in Polish, “Mine. My property, she is mine—”

  The tall man stepped aside and simply tripped the clown. He fell gracefully, a pratfall really.

  Except the knife was wrong. The knife was not supposed to be there. It slid into his chest just beneath the throat, chipping the sternum, pushing through all the way, out his back, and Wojo lay dying, cursing.

  The stranger stepped over his body.

  Wojo cried then, a deep wailing cry from a pit beneath the surface of the earth, a primal cry of rage and terror and hatred that echoed back and forth down the cement block walls, amplified, distorted. Stefan heard, turned back once, and saw the blood-soaked floor and the midget clown thrashing out the remains of his life, trying to pull the knife from his chest.

  Through the crowds, through the aerialists, through the high-wire performers, past the cages full of beasts, roaring and pacing behind their bars, a great cat reaching at them, not touching them.

  No one moved toward them. The others fell away from them.

  Stefan felt the nightmare was ending, that perhaps he was dead. Or dying. That he was going to float away in a moment like gossamer on the breath of a spring morning.

  They reached the door to the parking lot that led to the train on the siding. Stefan looked up once at the wintry-faced man who held him. The stranger shoved open the door, held it, pointed with his free hand.

  Stefan saw a black car in the parking lot, the motor running, plumes of exhaust blowing up from the tailpipe into the cold, bright air of winter afternoon.

  The boy hesitated. He could not see clearly without his glasses. He saw the outline of someone beckoning to him. He stood, unsure. The stranger glanced down at him and nodded and pointed again.

  “Stop the kid, stop that fucking kid!”

  Two men, pistols drawn, running through the obstacle course of people crowding the work tunnel, past the caged beasts, running at them.

  The stranger shoved him then. Stefan stumbled outside. It was cold, so cold the air numbed him almost at once. He shivered.

  The stranger slammed shut the exit door behind him.

  “Stefan!”

  It was her voice, distorted by memories, nightmares. From far away—

  He blinked, felt tears again.

  “Stefan!”

  And the vague figure by the car was a woman, holding out her arms.

  The nightmare broke like glass shattered by stone.

  “Mother!”

  He ran, tripping on the absurd white dress, veil torn from his head by the wind, hair blowing wildly. “Mother!”

  “Shoot! Shoot the son of a bitch! Shoot him, he’s got the kid!”

  Gleason raised his piece but the man at the door fired first. In the half-light of the work tunnel, they could barely see him in outline at the door. But they both saw the flash of gunfire.

  Gleason felt his side burn. He took another step, then sank to one knee. He groaned, reached for his side, felt the warm wetness of blood.

  Frankfurter fired, the shot slamming into the steel door, embedded in the insulation.

  Both men fired a second time. Gleason lay prone on the floor.

  Frankfurter hit the door of the electrical closet between him and the shooter at the door. He shouted, “Federal officers, throw it down!”

  The man at the door, without any cover, took a step to the side as though to better see Frankfurter. He raised his piece slowly.

  Thinks this is a fucking contest, fucking asshole, Frankfurter thought and fired twice.

  The first bullet went wide; the second hit him in the right arm, below the elbow, bit off a chunk of flesh and sinew, and kept on into the cement block wall behind.

  Then Frankfurter saw him clearly.

  “Son of a bitch, son of a fucking bitch!” he shouted and fired again.

  The man at the door fired, the bullet chipping at the wall. Then he turned, pushed open the door, and slammed it shut.

  “Jesus, help me!”

  Gleason was moaning. Frankfurter ran out of his hiding spot and knelt beside the wounded man. “Gleason, Gleason, you know who that was?”

  But Gleason had passed out.

  “Son of a bitch,” Frankfurter said, thinking that the assignment was all fucked now, that it was going to be blamed on them, that—

  “Freeze! Freeze right there!”

  Frankfurter turned, frowning, thinking of something else, intending to say, very annoyed, “I’m a fucking federal officer.”

  Instead, as he turned, the two Rosemont policemen, who had a total of seven months’ experience between them, saw only the gun. Had seen only horror of dead bodies in the past two minutes, including the body of a fellow officer. And here was a man with a pistol, turning it toward them, the man who had killed these people.

  That was what they would explain later. The policemen, Officers Daggart and Rourke, were exonerated at the hearing that followed. For firing simultaneously, in error, at a federal officer with the National Security Agency named Leo Frankfurter. The first bullet split Frankfurter’s nose, the second severed the carotid artery in his neck. He was dead as he fell on Gleason’s unconscious body.

  35

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Summary transcript of meeting of the National Security Council, briefing 35/FY1985. To be filed at Archive 13, available only to Ultra clearance personnel (Secty. rank) and downhold until AD2090.

  National Security Adviser: Zurich Numbers was an espionage network operated by KGB in cooperation with Warsaw Pact government, principally Poland, German Democratic Republic, and People’s Republic of Czechoslovakia. Twelve hundred fifty-six persons were processed into the network in the United States and six NATO countries over the past ten years. Principal work at the time the network was destroyed consisted of penetrating Operation Crypto, a research project for development of a new computer-based coding program usable by the armed services until the twenty-first century.

  R Section has provided a complete scenario of the penetration of the Numbers network by personnel from Section G (counterespionage) within D
epartment 21 of NSA. The penetration was directed by C. J. O’Brien, assisted by H. L. Craypool. Penetration involved the appearance of a counterespionage system to misdirect information gathered by the agents of KGB in the United States.

  R Section was subverted in its efforts to obtain information on the Numbers network by agents of Section G, Department 21. See attached statements 1, 2, 3, and 21 by NSA, R Section, the FBI.

  See attached statements 4, 5, 6, 13, and 20 by special agents, FBI, assigned to surveillance of Soviet Embassy headquarters. See attached statements 7, 8, 9, 10 as well as attachments thereto, authorization of wiretap surveillance. See statement 11, summary explanation of NON repeat NON authorized wiretap surveillance of subject, Rita C. Macklin, journalist (see Dossier 1183/2/FY 81, R Section).

  See attached statements 12 through 19, particularly summary by C. L. Hanley, chief of operations, R Section.

  Recommendations:

  1. Deny budget year requests for FY 86 from Section G, Department 21, NSA. Recommend disciplinary action (Label E) on control personnel in G, 21, NSA. Resignation of GS-16 O’Brien is to be accepted, with prejudice. Results to be turned over to the Attorney General for further action. (Action, for the sake of security, is not recommended.)

  2. Commendation medal (authorization AA-21/FY 85/12) for C. L. Hanley, chief of operations, R Section; posthumous to special agent P. X. Devereaux (authorization AA-21/FY 85/13).

  3. Authorize (DD-879/FY85/475, Special Order 23) appropriation (contingency 39) to R Section ($2.1 million) for further investigation of Numbers network, rehabilitation, recompensation, and damages for those coerced, threatened, or otherwise injured by actions of agency Section G, 21, NSA, in UNLAWFUL repeat UNLAWFUL pursuit of NSA objective (Ultra Code 2154).

  4. Authorize (DD-879/FY85/476) compensation ($413,498.21) to R. C. Macklin, journalist, in exchange for completion of Form 21.44 DD/R.

  5. It is affirmed (sworn) that principles embodied in amendments 1, 3, 14, 15, Constitution, will be enforced vigorously by intelligence agencies operating on the soil of the United States.