Rand smiled and gave a little bow. “Let me guess—you’d be Catherine the Great.”
“Your intelligence is only equaled by your bravado, Mr. Rand. Has my fame preceded me?”
“Within the hour I heard a compliment to your beauty, which was certainly justified.” He guessed her to be nearing 40, which meant she’d been under 25 in the active days of the Tsar Network. The Russians would have found her of great use in prying NATO secrets from tired middle-aged generals. “Why don’t you put away that gun so we can talk?”
“The gun stays, for the moment. I want to know what you’re doing in Dublin, Mr. Rand, and why you arrived here in the company of Alexander III. I assume you know that designation since you addressed me as Catherine.”
He took a careful step closer. “I do indeed. And I know of the Tsar Network too. A bit of humor, that—with seven Russian agents using code names of dead Russian emperors.”
“We were quite serious at the time.”
“And quite successful too, I imagine, until Paul fell victim to West German counterintelligence. Tell me something—why is Taz trying to kill you all?”
“I don’t believe Taz is.” He could see now that her eyes were green. “Taz is dead.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling those fools,” Rand agreed. “But if Taz isn’t killing them, who is?”
“I think you are, Mr. Rand, which is why I’m holding this gun.”
“Me! That’s insane!”
“Is it? The British would like nothing better than to remove a half-dozen top enemy agents without being blamed for it. This way we fight among ourselves, suspecting each other, while you go about your business. After all, you were present when Taz met his end. You’re in the best position to know the body could never be fully identified.”
“You know a great deal about me.”
“After Tsar folded I was reassigned to Moscow. I worked under Taz in the early ’70s, and he told me a great deal about you.”
“Then you knew him well.”
“Well enough. He had a candid photo of you on his office wall.”
“I never knew that. Did you throw darts at it?”
“No. Taz had a great deal of respect for you.”
“And yet you think I’d do something like this? Kill off Russian agents and blame it on him?”
“We are still enemies, Mr. Rand. My eyes are not clouded by SALT treaties and good-will missions.”
“Moscow asked for my help. I came out of retirement to find Taz, if he’s still alive.”
“They asked for you?” She frowned and considered that bit of information. “It’s difficult to believe.”
“It’s difficult for me too. But that’s what I’m doing here. Cornelius—the man you know as Alexander—met me on the ferry from Holyhead this morning. Apparently I did so well outwitting Taz in life they think I can do it now that he’s dead too.” He’d moved close enough to grab the gun from her hand, but he hesitated, waiting for her next words.
“All right,” she said, lowering the weapon. “I will take a chance.”
“Good! Now suppose we talk about this over a drink.”
But she balked at that. “If what you say is true I must be on my way. A moving target is more difficult to hit.”
“Certainly you can’t think Taz would come after you!”
“Taz, or whoever.”
“Anyone could have left that dying message with Taz’s name.”
“No, anyone couldn’t,” she said. “That’s one reason Moscow is now treating this whole thing so seriously. As I understand it, Paul was writing the message in his blood when they found him. With his throat cut he couldn’t speak, and he died before they could help him. But the message was not faked.”
“Someone could have impersonated Taz, of course.”
“Why impersonate a dead man? Why not simply wear a mask?” She tucked the gun away in her purse. “The killer couldn’t have known Paul would live long enough to identify him.”
“I don’t know the answers,” Rand admitted. “But I have more questions. Who knew you were in Paris, and why did you leave so suddenly?”
“Moscow knew where I was, of course. No one else did. When I heard of the last killing in Amsterdam it seemed wise to move on. I could have returned to Moscow, but I knew Nicholas was assigned to our Dublin embassy, so I came here.”
“Then you know the true identity of Nicholas, not just his old code name?”
“I worked in Moscow for many years, you’ll remember. We learn such things there.”
“You speak English very well.”
She smiled. “It was one of the requirements of the Tsar Network. Before we were recruited we had to know the language from A to Z.”
“I wish I could say I knew Russian from A to Z.”
“That would be difficult, since there is no Z in the Russian alphabet.”
“That’s right. I remember a fellow who worked in the cipher room with me. When the message came through in Russian he used to say he knew the language from A to three, because—”
The telephone by the bed gave two sharp jingles, startling them both.
Rand picked it up and heard a voice he recognized as belonging to Nicholas. “Taz just phoned me,” he said. “Not five minutes ago.”
“What did he say?”
“The same as before—that he’d let me live if I told him where the others were. He wants to meet me tonight at ten.”
“Where?”
“In the courtyard at Trinity College, near the library.”
“Go there, but be careful. I’ll try to arrive early and get a look at him. If it is Taz, it’s time we put an end to this. Do you have a gun?”
“Yes,” Nicholas replied. “I’ll be safe enough.”
“Get there a few minutes late, so I have time to locate him.”
“All right.”
Rand hung up and told Catherine about the meeting. “I want to come with you,” she said.
“Don’t be foolish. You’re a target too. Stay here in my room.”
“All right,” she agreed, much too readily.
He ordered dinner sent up to the room so they wouldn’t be seen together. If Taz was on the prowl in Dublin he could be anywhere. Later, as they ate, he asked, “What is Nicholas’ real name?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I might need to know, and he wouldn’t tell me.”
“It is Max Satatov.”
“Thank you.” He made a note of it.
As he prepared to leave she placed a delicate hand on his arm. “Be careful, Mr. Rand.”
Outside the streets were slick and glowing with a light summer drizzle that had begun to fall, almost invisibly, and Rand was glad he’d packed a lightweight raincoat. The rain was not heavy enough to seek out a taxi, and he walked quickly south across O’Connell Bridge, then a few blocks to Trinity College. He could feel the sharp stones of the courtyard through his shoes as he passed the gate and crossed in the general direction of the library building. Except for a few summer students he passed in the dark, the college seemed almost deserted. The rain had glistened the stones of the courtyard to reflect the occasional lights from a window, but most was darkness. He wondered how he’d ever find Nicholas or Taz here.
Or would only one be waiting for him?
He moved carefully among the shadows, hoping to spot some movement before he was himself seen. For a quarter of an hour there was nothing except the occasional passage of students on their way back from the library. Then, as he pressed his digital watch to read the time as 10:06, he heard a low groan from the shadows of a nearby building. He stepped out cautiously, ready for a sudden attack, and his eyes made out the figure of a man supporting himself with one outstretched arm against the building’s wall.
Rand moved closer and saw the dim features of Nicholas. The man tried to speak, and then Rand saw the blood welling up from beneath his chin. Before Rand could reach him, Nicholas collapsed to the ground.
Ra
nd turned him over and felt for a pulse, but it was too late. Taz had claimed a fourth member of the Tsar Network.
There was a sound of movement farther into the shadows of the building, and Rand moved quickly. His searching hands encountered the sleek plastic of a raincoat and he grappled with the other figure until a little screech of pain brought recognition.
“Catherine!”
“God, Rand, you almost killed me!”
“I told you to wait in the room.”
“I get nervous waiting. What’s happened here?”
“Nicholas is dead. His throat was cut, not moments ago.”
She took a frightened step backward and almost stumbled over the body. “Then Taz must be here!”
“Perhaps. An hour ago you weren’t so sure he was alive.”
“But he phoned Nicholas!”
“Or else Nicholas made up the story.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Suppose Nicholas and some other member of the old Tsar Network plotted the murders together. Suppose getting me here tonight was just another stunt to indicate Taz was alive. And then suppose Nicholas was double-crossed and killed by his partner.”
“You think I killed him?”
“It’s certainly possible.”
“But why? Why would I kill any of them?”
He couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, but he remembered how green they were. “I think it all goes back to the first one to die—Tsar Paul, fifteen years ago. Who betrayed Paul to the West Germans, Catherine?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“It was a member of the network, wasn’t it? Is that why Taz thought you all had to die, because one of you was a traitor?”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I don’t know what happened to Paul. I don’t—”
Something clattered against the cobblestone pavement and Rand turned, the misty rain on his face. He froze as he saw the tall figure step from the shadows not 20 feet away. Instinctively he placed his body between Catherine and the newcomer.
“Good evening, Mr. Rand,” a voice said, thick with accent. Rand couldn’t remember if he’d ever heard it before.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“We last met in Switzerland, some years ago.”
“Taz?”
The figure moved a bit but kept to the shadows. “I did not die in that explosion, though it was a very near thing. I’ve come back now, Mr. Rand—back from the dead, as they say.”
“You killed Nicholas and the others?”
“I killed them, yes. They didn’t deserve to live. It is my good fortune that Catherine has come here too. Now I can make an end to this business.”
He moved then, and Rand saw the glint of light reflected off the knife blade. There was no time to reach his own gun and he knew the blade would strike him down on its way to Catherine’s throat. He knew, and was frozen there seconds from death suddenly remembering a sentence he’d never finished.
“…he knew the language from A to three, because in Russian the symbol for Z looks just like a 3.”
“You’re not Taz!” he shouted as the knifer lunged. And behind him Catherine the Great stepped into the shimmering reflected light and fired three quick shots with her little Beretta.
The figure with the knife staggered, half turned, and toppled to the wet stones.
It wasn’t Taz.
It was Cornelius.
Rand left the bodies there and took Catherine with him on the next ferry back to Holyhead. There was no point in involving the Irish police in a complicated story they’d never understand. He would make his report to Hastings, for transmission to the Russians, and they could carry on as they pleased.
Seated across from Catherine on the ferry, Rand said, “You have to realize the backwards nature of the thing. Cornelius never meant to impersonate Taz at the beginning—I’m sure of that. He was forced into it, to cover up the real meaning of the first victim’s dying message.”
“Real meaning? But the man wrote TAZ in his own blood!”
“Not exactly. Alexander II was killed in the Russian embassy in Vienna, so we can safely assume his body was found by Russians. They reported, and I was told, that the dying man wrote Taz’s name in Russian! But consider the facts. The members of the Tsar network were recruited for their expertise in English, and the first victim actually had it as a native tongue thanks to a British mother. It was said he thought in English. So it’s more likely his dying message was written in English rather than Russian.”
“Of course!” she agreed readily. “There is no Z in the Russian alphabet! TAZ would be written TA3 in Russian.”
“Exactly. The Russian symbol for Z looks exactly like the number 3. If the dying man wrote in English, which I’ve shown is likely, then he was writing TA3 and not the name of the dead Russian.”
“TA3.”
“A dying man’s quick abbreviation of Tsar Alexander III, the only name by which he’d ever known Cornelius.”
“But what about the letter and phone calls from Taz?”
“Cornelius realized the meaning of the dying message at once, naturally, but when the people in Moscow mistook it for a reference to the dead Taz he strengthened the theory by writing that letter. The phone calls, carefully placed to people not familiar with Taz’s voice, did the same. As long as they were thinking about Taz, they weren’t looking for another meaning to TA3.”
“He would have killed me too.”
“Yes, he would have. Both of us. Actually what puzzled me from the beginning was how Taz could know the cities these old agents were working in. And even more puzzling, how he could get close enough to cut their throats even after they’d been warned. Cornelius held an important Moscow post, with access to that information. And even men on their guard against Taz relaxed when they saw it was him—their old comrade from the Tsar Network. He even got to Nicholas, who was armed and expecting an attack.”
Catherine thought of something. “What did you do with my Beretta?”
“Left it in Nicholas’ hand. If the police think they killed each other, so much the better.”
“Why did Cornelius do it?”
“Moscow sent him to make contact with me, so he was high up in the chain of command. I suspect he was in line for an even bigger position, and he felt the need to remove any trace of a past indiscretion. I think Cornelius betrayed Paul to the West Germans fifteen years ago. Either that or some bungle of his caused Paul’s arrest. In any case, he had to silence the witnesses, the members of the old Tsar Network, before he’d be safe in his new position.”
“And you came into it only because of Taz? Because you wanted a chance to battle him again?”
“No,” Rand answered, remembering the old Russian’s face the last time they’d met. “I wanted a chance to prove him innocent of these murders.”
At Holyhead they shook hands rather formally before parting, and Catherine the Great said, “Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
Rand answered with a smile. “But if we do, we’ll probably be enemies.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1970, 1976, 1980 by Edward D. Hoch
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Spy Who Read Latin: And Other Stories Page 9