by Paul Levine
I was trying to watch the ballet and listen to Foley at the same time. After a while, I figured that the guy in the brown vest was really a nobleman traveling incognito. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell the village gal that he was engaged to a babe dressed in scarlet with a feather in her hat. The fiancée made quite an entrance, what with the blaring of horns and the approach of the hunters. At the same time, the nobleman had some competition from a local guy, a dude in Philadelphia Eagles green. While they were debating who gets the girl by doing some agility drills and pointing their fingers gracefully at each other, Foley leaned close. “Do you have any idea how much money is involved?”
“I’ve heard a billion dollars tossed around.”
He snickered under his breath. “A couple years ago, some amateurs walked into the Gardner Museum in Boston and used knives to slash a bunch of paintings out of their frames. They left behind Titian’s Rape of Europa and the best works of the Italian Renaissance. But they got Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee and some other first-rate work. It was a lousy thirty-minute heist. It was worth two hundred million.”
I let out a short whistle, and behind me, the large woman smacked my head with her forearm, or was it her salami?
“Peanuts, Lassiter. The Hermitage has hundreds of rooms, each more valuable than the entire Gardner collection. Add to that all the other museums in all the republics and figure what I’m talking about. Even with a discount if they glut the market, figure ten billion, twenty, nobody knows.”
On the stage, the scam was up. The brown-vested nobleman had left his fingerprints—actually his coat-of-arms—on a royal sword. The village girl didn’t care for the deception or the nobleman’s fiancée, so she committed hara-kiri with the sword. It made me think of Yagamata.
“What’s Yagamata want?” I asked Foley.
“Everything! He’s stripping the damn country bare. He makes Robert Vesco look like a shoplifter at K mart.”
The curtain fell, and the lights were coming up. “Halftime,” I said. “Let’s get a hot dog and a beer.”
***
We had arrived at the theater early. I had stationed myself at an angle to the main entrance with Foley standing in front of me, his back to the door. It was supposed to look as if we were in deep conversation. In reality, I had a clear view over his shoulder of everyone entering the theater, while I was barely noticeable. I stood there in my striped pants and shiny black shoes, my strangling collar, my eyes darting back and forth looking for the stocky Russian.
We stood there, talking about the Dolphins, the Heat, and the new baseball team, the Marlins. Foley told me it was hard to keep up with sports, as he’d been stationed in Panama, Grenada, Managua, Guantánamo, and more recently Helsinki in preparation for Operation Riptide. I looked at him closely, the creased face, the stony eyes behind the rimless glasses. About forty-seven, forty-eight maybe. “I figure you were in the military during Vietnam,” I said.
“You can call me Major Foley, except Foley isn’t the name, of course. But you’re right. Army intelligence. I had a couple dozen VC working for me out in the bush. Troop movements, enemy strength, that sort of thing. Know what my cover was?”
“Stand-up comedian?”
“World Health Organization gynecologist. Really. I wanted to be a dentist, but we didn’t have the tools. Someone in the Saigon station came up with a whole set of OB-GYN tools, or at least enough for me to keep in the pocket of my smock. You know, you could take somebody’s eye out with the speculum.”
“Don’t tell me you delivered babies.”
“Nah. I’d do a cursory exam, nothing I hadn’t seen before, then let the nurse figure the rest out. When we moved the operation to Pleiku, I ran a whorehouse. Built a secure room for interrogations and made a profit for the Company.”
As I listened, my eyes scanned the sidewalk. I watched as the locals queued up, tickets in hand. I was looking for a brush-cut, husky Russian partial to brown suits. I didn’t see him. The patrons were turned out in what Granny Lassiter would call their Sunday best. On opening night, many of the locals wore their formal duds. Others, the trendy Miami Beach crowd, favored black leather, or black capes, or black silk. It didn’t seem to matter as long as the color was black. The Russians, many of whom worked in the new restaurants and clubs, were freshly scrubbed but not as flashy. I studied the crowd pushing toward the theater. No Kharchenko.
“Was it true what you said back at Nikki’s place?” Foley asked, as we kept up the patter.
“About what?”
“Your father was killed when you were a kid.”
“Yeah. I was raised by my Granny. She taught me how to fish, drink, and curse. Went up north on a football scholarship, saw mountains and snow the first time in central Pennsylvania, then made the Dolphins as a free agent. Hung on as a second-stringer and special teams player for a few years before I got into night law school.”
“My father was killed in Korea,” Foley said, his voice trailing off. “All I ever wanted to do was serve my country. Never thought I’d be breaking and entering museums. There he was fighting the communists, and here I am buying them off. At least they used to be communists. It’s getting confusing out there.” He moved closer to me. “You know what they do when you graduate from spy school?”
“Spy school?”
“Well, Foreign Studies School.”
“Give you a cyanide pill to put in the heel of your shoe,” I guessed.
“They hand you a diploma, just like getting your B.S. in phys ed, or whatever you studied …”
“Theater.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Except when you walk off the stage, you give it back. An agent takes all the diplomas, puts them in a trash can, and they burn them all. We are anonymous workers for democracy and our way of life, Lassiter. We’re the last best hope for mankind.”
I would sleep better knowing that.
***
“Intermission,” Foley told me, as the lights came up. “Not halftime. A theater major should know that.”
I knew. We continued our reconnaissance starting at the snack bar at the rear of the mezzanine. An attendant was selling little bottles of champagne and cellophane-wrapped shrimp cocktails. I followed the line of patrons to the end. No Kharchenko. Maybe if they sold borscht . . .
“We should try downstairs,” I said.
Foley’s face was screwed up in secret spy thoughts. “In Russia, Kharchenko was one of the verkhushka. He’d get special treatment.”
“So what?”
“He would never have come in the front door. Even now, some Russkies are more equal than others.” He grabbed my arm and motioned me back toward our seats. “On a foreign tour, he would have gotten his tickets from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He probably came in the stage entrance with the cast and crew. In Russia, he’d be in a reserved box. He would have made similar arrangements here.”
By the time we got to our seats, the orchestra was playing again. As the lights dimmed, Foley reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a pair of opera glasses. At least that’s what they looked like. He adjusted the focus, pushed a button, and handed them to me. Then he gestured with his head in the direction of the boxes at the mezzanine level to the right of the stage.
Below us, the curtain had opened, and the dead lady was in her grave, wearing white. I raised the binoculars and looked into the darkened boxes. Wow! Infrared. Power plus acuity. I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. A weasel-faced man had his hand on the bosom of a well-endowed woman. Two men snoozed in the next box, their wives chatting away, oblivious to the stage. Nearby, a skinny woman sipped greedily from a champagne glass. An empty seat came next, then a thick-necked man in a brown suit. I looked closer. A white bandage covered one eye, and his face looked as if a cat had dragged its claws across his cheek.
Bingo!
I handed the binoculars to Foley and gave him directions. He nodded and took a look.
“Stankevich!” he exclaimed.
>
“Gesundheit,” I replied.
Foley didn’t thank me. He withdrew a small camera from his other coat pocket. He screwed a telephoto lens into place, aimed, focused, and clicked off half a dozen shots at a slow shutter speed.
Below us, as the music swelled, the lady’s girlfriends, looking like angels in white, swirled around and raised her from the grave. Foley said, “When he was the number three KGB goon in Afghanistan, his name was Boris Stankevich. C’mon, let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Now.” Foley stood and motioned me to do the same. “Wherever he’s going, we’re following, and I don’t want to be stuck here when it’s over.”
“Damn, the show’s just getting interesting.”
The angels had tossed one of the guys into the lake and were after another one. I reluctantly stood and started down the aisle, tromping on toes, drawing curses in guttural Russian. Sure, I wanted to follow Kharchenko. But I wanted to stick around until the end, or at least until I figured out which one was Giselle.
21
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
The mansion was done in the 1920s Mediterranean Revival style. It sat at the end of a brick circular drive trimmed with blooming hibiscus and bottlebrush trees. The walls were pink stucco, the roof mission tiles. You entered an interior courtyard through a loggia flanked by twisted columns. The floor was glazed ceramic tile, the exterior walls adorned with terra-cotta ornaments. There were wrought-iron grilles and wood brackets and casement windows shaded by pink-and-white awnings. There were arches everywhere, some flat, some pointed, some with Moorish elaborations. A second-floor balcony lined with balustrades overlooked the bay.
I had been here before.
There had been a party that night, too.
Only that time, I had been invited.
Foley and I had followed Kharchenko’s taxi from the theater. Once on the causeway, I knew where he was headed. I just didn’t know there’d be a crowd.
Matsuo Yagamata was playing host to his usual collection of political and social animals, some artist and writer types, plus a Russian cultural delegation and the cast and crew of the Bolshoi Ballet. The dancers would be along later. But Kharchenko was here now.
We pulled into the drive behind a line of limos and Mercedes with an occasional Lexus thrown in. Not a Lada in sight. Foley’s government-owned Plymouth drew a look from the valet. For once, I was glad I had dressed up. Nobody stopped us; nobody asked to see an invitation. We entered the courtyard, passed through a segmental arch wide enough to accommodate a herd of buffalo, and came to the pool deck. Once, a thousand years ago or so, Yagamata had stood there and showed off an egg filled with a golden choo-choo train.
The scene on the patio reminded me of a famous party on a balmy February evening just down the street from here. I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been born yet. That night, arriving guests were searched by men with rifles. Miami’s politicians and social elite drank champagne and ate canapés, figuring it was just another Valentine’s Day party. The celebration was more meaningful, however, to the host. While the festivities were in full swing on Palm Island, seven members of Bugs Moran’s gang were gunned down at a garage in Chicago. Newspapermen later speculated that the party was intended to celebrate that event, since Bugs Moran was a bitter rival of the party host, Al Capone.
I wondered what Yagamata was celebrating tonight.
A gentle breeze wafted across the patio, flickering the torches. A string quartet strummed quiet music, guests milling about, oohing and aahing at the sheer delight of being here. Bars were set up every twenty yards or so to save on the shoe leather. In the center of the patio was a buffet table no longer than an average NFL punt.
“Stick with the zakuski, the appetizers,” Foley ordered. How clever. Yagamata, the perfect host, was serving a Russian feast. We loaded our plates with red and black caviar, sturgeon, cucumber-and-tomato salad, and pickled mushrooms. A server handed me a tiny silver pot covered with melted cheese.
“Griby v’smetanye,” Foley said. “Mushrooms and onions in sour cream.”
I washed everything down with a double shot glass of ice-cold Moskovskaya vodka, then did it all again. The training table was never like this. Finally, I went back for blinis with sour cream and caviar.
By the time most of the guests had arrived, I was pleasantly stuffed from the food and warmed by the vodka. Foley hadn’t touched a drop of the liquor. We kept scanning the crowd. Half a dozen Russian officials in baggy suits were lined up at the buffet table, loading their plates as if it was their first meal in a week. Maybe it was.
“Think these guys are happy to be in the West?” Foley asked. “You can’t buy a decent sausage in all of Russia, but look at this. Sometimes you civilians don’t appreciate what we’ve got.”
“Don’t start waving the flag,” I responded, “without acknowledging that this isn’t America. This isn’t real. This isn’t the housewife stretching the food budget with peanut butter for dinner. This isn’t cocaine dealing a few blocks from the White House.”
Foley gave me a nasty look. “Let’s cut the bullshit and go to work. Time to earn our supper.” He nodded in the direction of the quartet. Matsuo Yagamata was working the crowd, moving slowly but steadily, granting each guest a precious twenty seconds or an even briefer hello-how-are-you-so-pleased-to-see-you-again. He wore an elegant tuxedo and smiled graciously at each stop on his way to the buffet table. Over the violins, I could hear him laugh politely at some remark as he gestured with a champagne glass and speared smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres from passing trays.
Foley used the cocktail party shuffle to edge between a woman in a white gown and Yagamata, who caught sight of him, then me. Our host registered surprise, then smiled evenly.
“What an enchanting development to see my government friend and my lawyer friend,” he announced loudly, his eyebrows raised. The woman in the white gown shot us a hostile look.
“Hello, Matsuo,” Foley said. “How’s tricks?”
“Tricks? You and your slang. Should we speak Japanese, so I can have the upper hand?”
“I didn’t come to banter. We need to talk business.”
“At a reception? And violate our protocol? The Russians would be offended.” He shot a look around the patio, and so did I, but I didn’t see Kharchenko anywhere. “Come now, Mr. Foley. Let us teach our new trading partners how to enjoy the spoils of true market economy, or at least, the part that a few can savor.” His voice was tinged with sarcasm as he clamped a hand on Foley’s shoulder, looked around as if afraid of eavesdroppers, and spoke in a stage whisper: “In Russia, the workers used to say of the nomenklatura, ‘They preach water—”‘
‘“And drink wine,’” I said, remembering our conversation on Yagamata’s boat.
“Precisely. Could not the same be said of American and Japanese politicians? Mr. Foley, you cannot abolish class distinction with either communism or capitalism.” With that, Yagamata drained his champagne glass and signaled a passing waiter for another.
“Under any system, Matsuo, you would be in it for yourself,” Foley said.
The laughter rattled in Yagamata’s throat. “And who would not be? In the old Soviet Union, was there ever a butcher, a doctor, or a shopkeeper not tainted by gryazny, the pursuit of profit? Was there ever a Party Secretary who did not relish his seaside dacha, his access to pleasures of the West? There is a Russian epithet that expresses the people’s disgust with their officials.” Yagamata thought a moment and said something in halting Russian that made Foley smile. It was not a pretty sight.
Foley turned toward me and translated, “Let him live on his salary.”
“Precisely,” Yagamata said. “Communism failed because it was based on principles contradictory to human nature. Japan succeeds because it is based squarely on the principles of competition, profit, growth, exploitation of markets and resources. Your own country founders because it cannot decide whether it is a welfare state or an industrial power. As for Russia, it i
s nothing but a decrepit third world country. Mr. Lassiter, do you know why Russian watches are the best in the world?”
“Sure, they’re the fastest.”
Yagamata chuckled. “Perhaps in the free market, the quality of the products will improve. To survive, they will Westernize. Did you see that Pravda held a fund-raiser, just as public television does here? No longer subsidized, the newspaper raffled off rugs and washing machines. What would Lenin say?”
Foley shrugged, and Yagamata concentrated on me. “As Mr. Foley knows, Pravda means truth and Izvestia means news. Unfortunately—”
“There was never any news in the Truth or truth in the News,” Foley added.
“Ah, you two have heard all my jokes.”
Yagamata was still chuckling at the stolen punch line when Foley grabbed his forearm and jerked him close. “This time, Matsuo, you’ve gone too far.” Yagamata’s smile froze in place. “You can’t steal all the art from the Baltic to the Pacific.”
Yagamata pulled away. His face was white with anger. He smoothed the sleeve of his tuxedo. “And why not?”
“You’re raping the country, Matsuo,” Foley said.
“Stealing state property was the national pastime under the communists. I have merely raised it to an art form.” He laughed again. “Art form. That is a pun, is it not?”
“Where’s Kharchenko?” I asked.
Yagamata frowned. “Ah, the business with the girl. Perhaps your Yankee sense of manhood compels you to seek revenge. Those of you raised on John Wayne movies have such an outdated sense of chivalry. Instead, you should have the good sense to be thankful that you were spared. For that, I might add, you should thank me.”
“You’re out of your mind.” I turned to Foley. “Did you hear this? He just admitted—”
“I heard him. Look, Matsuo, it’s over. Everything’s changed. You’ve exceeded your authority. Langley thinks you’re out of control, and I’m under orders to take possession of the new shipment. Everything’s going back to Mother Russia, including Kharchenko. You’ll be paid for your trouble, and paid well. If you refuse to cooperate, you’ll be charged with conspiracy, racketeering, smuggling, and about a hundred other things the boys in Washington will lose a lot of sleep thinking up.”