by Stuart Woods
“Thank you,” she said, and turned to leave.
“Brooke Kirkland,” Malakhov called out as she reached the top of the steps.
Rule turned and looked back.
Malakhov grinned. “Whatever Viktor Sergeivich is up to, I can promise you, you will not like it!”
She could hear him laughing through the closed door as she walked from the schoolhouse with Ed Rawls. “Jesus,” she said, “that was an education.” She stopped at her car and turned to Rawls. “Ed, did you ever have some wild idea, and when you started to chase it down, everything you learned supported it?”
“Yeah,” Rawls replied, “Once or twice.” He grinned at her. “Pretty scary, isn’t it?”
“It sure as hell is.” She threw an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, I appreciate this more than I can tell you.”
“Remember,” he said, “you cannot put today’s stuff in any file, you cannot cite it to support any theory.”
“I remember,” she said, getting into her car and starting it. “See you around Langley, Ed.”
“I hope so, Kate,” he replied, not smiling. “I really hope so.”
She drove to Stowe and turned toward Burlington and her plane. She had come up here for background, for confirmation, and she had gotten it, she thought. She wondered why, instead of feeling elated, she felt depressed.
22
HELDER was wakened by a cold and wet sensation on the top of his head, followed instantly by the pain in his shoulders. He felt as if his face were about to explode, and it took several seconds for him to regain enough consciousness to understand his condition. He was hanging upside down from his airplane-style shoulder harness, and the straps were cutting badly. From a distance, there was the sound of water rushing under pressure, and he realized that the minisub was being flooded, and that the water had reached the top of his upside-down head.
He clawed at the emergency harness release in panic, thinking he would drown soon if it would not release. It released all too well, dumping him into a foot of water. He scrambled upright, spitting and choking and trying to orient himself to the sub’s capsized conditioned. The instrument lights were still burning, and so was the overhead dome light, except that it was now underwater, and it cast distorted rays about the chaotic interior of the Type Four.
Helder looked about him. Valerie Sokolov was floating face down a couple of feet from him. He grabbed at her and heaved her upright—she might still be alive—then he cried out and shrank from her. A screwdriver handle protruded from her right eye; the blade had been driven in to the hilt, directly into her brain. Her other eye stared blankly, and her jaw hung slack. Helder remembered grabbing something and jabbing at her to make her let go of him. He had succeeded.
It took a moment for him to recover from this sight and to begin to realize his situation. The minisub rested upside down on the bottom, at an angle of about ten degrees off the perpendicular, and water was coming in fast from the area of the hatch, which now rested on the bottom, making escape from the sub impossible. In the original Type Four, another hatch existed; in this truncated version, that had been eliminated. The main hatch was the only way out.
Helder tried to be calm and consider his position. The lights were still burning in the sub; that meant he still had battery power. He groped for the switch for the outside lamps, found it, and switched it on. The seabed outside the sub sloped gently downward in the direction of the sub’s angle from the perpendicular, encouraging him to think he might be able to roll the machine at least partly over. He flipped off the switch, chose a part of the sub’s hull on the downhill side and threw his weight at it. The sub rocked slightly, then settled back into its original upside-down position. He flung himself repeatedly at the hull, but the sub’s attitude would not change.
Helder closed his eyes and tried to think what resources were available to him. Power, he had power. He thought for a moment, then reached up for the propeller controls. He took hold of the control handles and shoved the starboard throttle to full ahead and the port throttle to full back. The engines rose to a high whine, and the sub began to shudder. Then, slowly, the after end of the minisub skidded a few inches sideways, and the sub began to roll over. Helder had not been ready for this change of attitude, and he found himself clinging desperately to whatever handhold he could get as the sub rolled over to rest on its port side.
That cleared the hatch, he thought, if the sub’s resting on it had not jammed it. Water sprayed violently from the breached hatch, sending out a painful, needlelike spray. Helder stood and started tearing at a locker door on the starboard side of the sub, now above his head. It came open, and two escape lungs fell on top of him. He grabbed one and inspected it quickly; it seemed to be all right. The lung consisted of a pressure regulator, a mouthpiece, a nose clamp, and a small bottle of compressed air, said in training to contain a ten-minute supply. Helder had used one once, in an escape tower at sub school. He snapped the strap around his neck and looked about him again. His emergency gear, still sealed in its heavy plastic envelope, floated at his feet. He picked it up, broke the seal, and squeezed as much air from the envelope as he could before rezipping it shut. He had to ascend to the surface as slowly as possible, and he didn’t want the air in the envelope to pop him up too quickly. He looked around again; he seemed to have what he needed.
The spray from the hatch was driving him crazy. He waded aft past it, shielding himself from the needles, and opened the sub’s seacocks. Water now streamed into the minisub in two columns that equaled the size of his wrist. The sub would fill quickly, now; when it was full of water and the pressure was equalized, he would be able to open the main hatch and escape, if the main hatch would open. He walked back to his emergency pack, picked it up, and leaned against the sub’s hull. He slipped the regulator mouthpiece into his mouth and opened the valve. Air under pressure rushed into his lungs; the escape lung was working. He turned it off and waited, hoping against hope that when the sub was full of water, the hatch would open. If it would not, then he had hastened his own death by opening the seacocks.
The water was up to his chest, now, and he reckoned he had little more than a minute left. Trina Ragulin popped into his mind. He pushed away the thought. He needed to concentrate on his ascent, now. Suddenly remembering, he unzipped the pocket of his running suit and fished for the packet of cyanide. He threw it into the rising water. Not that way. He was going to be captured if he reached the surface; the area must be crawling with patrol boats by now. The water rushing into the sub drowned out any engines he might have heard. If he was captured, he would deal with that, but he would not kill himself, no matter what.
With the water at his chin, he bit at the regulator mouthpiece again, opened the valve and adjusted the nose clamp. He began to breathe forcibly out, ejecting the air pushed into his lungs by the pressure. He tried to breath evenly and deeply, as the last air inside the sub was denied him. He groped his way along the hull until he came to the main hatch, then spun the pressure wheel. It moved freely; thank God for that. He pushed at the hatch and it opened about half way, before stopping against an obstruction. It would move no further. He grabbed his emergency pack, shoved it through the opening, and squeezed in behind it. For a moment, he thought he would not be able to get through, and panic began to rise in him; then, suddenly, he was free and floating.
He had been in something like 30 meters of water, as well as he could remember. He let himself rise slowly, breathing deeply, trying to count off the meters. The water was shockingly cold, and he tried not to think about it as he counted. When he reached thirty, it seemed warmer, but he was still not at the surface. There was light all about him, though, and he knew he would be there soon.
Suddenly, the air from the bottle stopped, with no warning, at a moment when his lungs were only half full. That couldn’t have been ten minutes, he thought, no more than four or five. He held desperately onto the breath, then, finally, began to release it. Whe
re was the surface? At the moment when he thought he would have to inhale water, he broke into air, spitting out the mouthpiece and gulping. He looked around, treading water. There was fog, thick fog, and it was raining lightly. Perhaps he would not be captured.
He could hear engines on two sides of him, one near, one far away. Helder unzipped a corner of the plastic envelope containing his gear, blew air into it, and resealed it. Now he had something to support his weight in the water. He unsnapped the escape lung and let it sink away from him. He kicked off the running shoes and struggled out of the track suit. Naked but for a jock strap, he could swim better. But which way to swim?
He waited until the engine noise of the boat nearest him receded, then he put two fingers into his mouth and whistled as loudly as he could. The noise died immediately, seemingly absorbed by the fog. He turned ninety degrees and whistled again. The noise died. He turned another ninety degrees and tried once more. This time, a hint of an echo. He threw his arms over the plastic pouch and started to swim, using the pouch the way he had used a kickboard when he had practiced for the school swimming team as a boy. He concentrated on kicking equally with both feet; he had no wish to swim in circles. He continued for half an hour by his watch, whistling occasionally. The echo grew more distinct and returned more quickly. He rested for five minutes, then continued. The next time he stopped, his feet touched a rocky bottom. He waded for a moment, lost the bottom, then found it again. A moment later, a patch of green appeared before him, a manicured bit of lawn. He crawled out onto the grass and peered into the fog. Up a slight incline, he could see the outlines of a small, white house. Afraid to stop and rest, he rose and staggered wearily along the water, looking for some sort of shelter. Shortly, a tiny boathouse swam toward him through the thick fog.
The door was not locked. He went inside and found a sports motorboat of about five meters moored along a catwalk. He stepped onto the boat and collapsed onto an upholstered seat. There were two damp beach towels in a locker under the dashboard, and he used them to dry himself as best he could, then gathered them about him. He was alive and, for the moment, safe. Nobody would be using the boat in this fog. Warmth washed over him, and sleep was not far behind. His cheek touched the upholstery, and he was gone.
23
RULE went to a pay phone as soon as she got into National Airport, thumbed through the yellow pages, and dialed a number. It was after nine on Sunday evening, but she reckoned there’d be a twenty-four-hour operator, and she was right. The woman asked her to hold while she switched the call.
“This is Danny,” a man’s voice said.
“Danny Burgis?”
“The very same. Who’s this?”
“Remember Biggles?”
“Sure I do.”
“He suggested I look you up for some work.”
“What sort of work?”
“I want a house swept. Two houses.”
“One of ‘em yours?”
“Yes.”
“You calling from there?”
“No. Biggles said to use a clean phone.”
“Right. What’s your address?”
She gave it to him.
“How soon will you be there?”
“About half an hour.”
“Thirty-five minutes okay?”
“You mean you want to do the sweep tonight?”
“If that’s not inconvenient. I do some of my best work at night. I’m speaking from my car, now, and I’ve got everything I need with me.”
“Okay. Thirty-five minutes, then.”
“Right. What’s your name?”
“Katharine Rule.”
“Okay, Katie, when I get there, I won’t ring the bell, I’ll knock with my fist. When you let me in, don’t say anything. I’m six-one, one-seventy, baseball cap, windbreaker, gorgeous. That’s a townhouse, right? What’s the layout?”
“Entrance, living room, and dining room on the main floor, kitchen and study one floor down, two bedrooms on the top floor.”
“I’ll start at the top of the house and work down; when you’re clean, we’ll talk. How many phone lines?”
“One.”
“Extensions?”
“Uh, five—no, six.”
“How many TV sets?”
“Two—bedroom and living room.”
“Turn ‘em both on before I get there. If there are any radios in other rooms, turn those on, too.”
“One in the kitchen.”
“Right. Thirty-five minutes.”
Rule retrieved her car from the parking lot and drove home. She went around the house, turning on TV sets and radios, then waited in the entrance hall. On the dot, there was a tap at the door. She opened it, and a man came in. He shook her hand and mouthed, “Hi.” He was as described, and in addition, had short gray hair and about two weeks of gray beard. The letters BS stood out on his baseball cap. He started up the stairs, and she went into the living room and watched an old movie on TV. Forty minutes later, he came into the living room with a finger at his lips. He picked up the telephone, passed a meter over it, unscrewed both the mouthpiece and earpiece, then replaced them.
He walked over to where she sat, bent over, and whispered, “Where’s the main phone box?”
Rule gave an elaborate shrug and shook her head. He nodded and left the room. Ten minutes later, he came back into the living room and switched off the TV.
“You’re clean,” he said, digging into a pocket and dumping two small electrical devices and a slightly larger black box with a short aerial onto the coffee table. “You had two bugs, on the master bedroom and entrance hall phones. Both of them could receive when the phone was hung up. Nothing else in the walls or electrical outlets or lamps.”
Rule picked up the two devices and turned them over in her hand. “You’re sure there’s nothing else.?”
“That’s what you’re paying me for, Miz Rule.”
“Sorry.”
“Not much of a bugging job, just the two. Either he was sloppy as hell or he got interrupted before he could finish.”
“What sort of equipment is it?”
“It’s adapted from some common Japanese components, the sort of thing you’d find at any Radio Shack. Nothing to indicate it’s of any other foreign origin. It’s pretty good, but nothing special. The two little pickups heard you on the phone or within a twelve or fifteen-foot radius in the same room, transmitted the sounds over your telephone wires to your main box downstairs, then to the black box, which transmitted a one-watt VHF signal into the air, the sort of thing that could be picked up, practically speaking, no more than a quarter of a mile away. It’s a pretty chintzy installation; your man would sit in his car or in an apartment across the street and listen or record. Only I doubt if he went to the trouble to rent an apartment; that would be too big an investment to support what he had in your house. He’s probably been tailing you. Your movements pretty routine? Office, grocery store, night out, that sort of thing?”
“That sort of thing.”
“No point in a big stake-out, then. Better to tail you home and listen in. Where’s your car?”
“Out front a couple of doors down. BMW 320i.” She gave him the keys, and he left. He came back five minutes later.
“Clean,” he said. “This is minimum stuff. His assumptions are, you don’t know he’s tailing you, you think you don’t have anything to hide. You work with Biggles?”
“Sort of.”
“You talk about your work on the phone, or around the house?”
“Never.”
“How about at the other house?”
Her ears burned as she remembered her conversations with Will about Majorov. “Never,” she lied.
“You want me to check the other house?”
She gave him the address and dug Will’s key from her purse.
“A friend?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
“In Stockholm. He left this morning.”
“Go
od. I’ll do it now, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Be back in less than an hour,” he said.
Rule got undressed and into a hot tub. She got the polish off her nails, shaved her legs, washed her hair, wondered what she’d been recorded saying. She was in a robe with her hair in a towel when Burgis returned.
“You forgot to tell me about the alarm system,” Danny Burgis said.
“Oh, my God, I did! Did the cops come?”
Burgis shook his head and grinned. “Luckily, it was one of mine; I have a master code. My outfit has installed a couple of dozen systems in Georgetown. You could use one here, you know. This is a bad town for burglary.”
“You’re right, we’ll have to talk about that. What did you find over there?”
“Exactly the same setup, bedroom and living room. That means two each was all he meant to install; he didn’t get interrupted twice. You were lucky this time, though; his system was down. One of the two batteries in the black box was half out of its bracket. It didn’t fall out; the guy was just sloppy. My guess is it hasn’t been in long, and it’s never worked. Your man hasn’t had a chance to get back in and correct it.”
“Danny, have you got some fix on who this is? I mean, the sort of people?”
“Well, it ain’t one of yours and Biggles’ colleagues; They like state-of-the-art stuff, the sexier the better. This is too simple for them. You in the middle of a divorce?”
“No, I was divorced two years ago. Why?”
“Well, I would have made this a maybe a domestic matter, a private investigator, but if you’ve been divorced that long, that doesn’t fit. You’re not in a fight over custody or money?”
“No, that was all settled amicably at the time. He didn’t want my kid, and I didn’t want his money.”
“Well, that leaves the opposition, doesn’t it?”
“Does it? Anything to indicate he’s foreign?”
“Nothing special. I’ve seen some of their work. Even a Russian might make his own stuff from locally available components, especially if he was worried about it being found. If it’s the opposition, you’re not very important to them; the effort isn’t big enough. They’re maybe trying to catch you in your friend’s bed for some blackmail. That would add up. Maybe they hoped to squeeze you for some paperwork from your office. Anybody tried to lean on you?”