Fraser’s letter was signed, simply, “I’ll always love you. C.”
* * * *
Alexandra was still curled on the sofa in Billie Jordan’s dressing room when Garcia found her.
“Alexandra. Dios, what’s happened?”
“My sister was killed because she discovered a dangerous secret,” she said starkly. “Operation Firebird refers to a Russian agent called Prince Ivan.”
She saw the flare, deep in the dark eyes. “It was all planned decades ago, by the KGB, during the Cold War. Charles Fraser found out, he was going to initiate a mole hunt.” She handed him the letter with trembling fingers.
She paced the small dressing room, watching his face as he read the pages. He was very still, hard. Assessing. He only showed surprise once, and spoke the name in a low shocked voice. “Belankov!”
Finally he folded the letter and expelled his breath in a long whistle. “Christ! I’m so sorry, Alexandra. For you, for Charley. For Eve.”
“I don’t have time for sorrow.” She stopped in front of him. “Clearly you know Yuri Belankov. Who he is?”
“Belankov is a major player – a Soviet businessman who became incredibly wealthy during the ‘anything goes’ Glasnost years by hitting it big in media and telecommunications. He’s a patron of the arts, a lobbyist, you name it, with an extensive network of questionable Russian connections. Smuggling, weapons, maybe worse. And much of Russia’s business intrigue now takes place in D.C. Yuri is that new breed of Russian, one who can maneuver in Moscow’s violent, chaotic business world, and then play the Washington game with equal ease.”
“He’s the Russian you were investigating when we met?”
He ignored her question. “Big man, big flaws, big ideas, an inveterate name-dropper with a fondness for bad jokes and a palpable field of energy around him. People either love him or hate him. Me, I think he’s bad news. I’ve been watching him for months, but I haven’t found anything. Yet.”
“Now you have. He may have been the last man to see Charles Fraser alive.”
Garcia hesitated. “Your sister knew Belankov well enough to recognize his voice.”
“I have to talk to him!”
“Quisiera dejar esto en mi caja fuerte,” said Garcia quietly. “Yuri Belankov is a thread, Alexandra, that I need to follow to its source. I’m interested in the bigger fish. Leave it to me.” He locked eyes with her. “But hear me, Belankov can be dangerous.”
“You believe Fraser’s story.”
“His letter has the ring of truth. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there were rumors of looting of the Presidential Archives – which held the personal files of leading officials and sensitive details from former KGB operations – and of the Old Guard plotting a comeback. As for Eve, it’s true that she was playing in the big leagues - with the heaviest hitters.” He held out his hand. “Let’s have a look-see at the brooch.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t with the letter. Eve must have taken it with her that night.”
“Was it found on her body? Or among her personal belongings?”
“It wasn’t with her things. I can search her bedroom in Georgetown, but... what are the chances it will be in her jewelry box?”
He grinned at her. “What are the chances I’ll be mistaken for Cary Grant? But do it tonight.”
“Garcia, I think the intruder at Cliff House was looking for that brooch.”
His head came up. “Jewelry is one of the easiest ways to move money. Could Eve have hidden the brooch in Maine?”
“No. Billie gave it to Eve after my sister returned to Georgetown. But the intruder wouldn’t have known that.”
“Charley said it was the signal to activate the operation. We’ve got to find that brooch, Alexandra.”
“Eve had two days before Charles’ funeral, before - oh, God, before her own death - to hide the brooch. She would have tried to identify those men Fraser mentions in his letter - the Club, he called them - and then – ” She swung toward him, eyes wide. “Oh, God, Garcia. I know what she was going to do! She would have used her gala at Foxwood to set a trap for the mole!”
“Slow down,” said Garcia. “What gala? What the devil are you talking about?”
“Anthony and Eve hold a huge charity benefit every year at their home in Virginia’s horse country. The estate is called Foxwood. It’s the A-list event of the season. Eve said that everyone who is anyone in Washington goes.” Her breath came out. “Anthony insists on holding it this year in spite of everything. He says Eve would have expected him to do it. Garcia, now that we have this letter, we’ve got to -”
“Whoa. You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Red. We’ve got to apply the rules of evidence here. What’s admissible, what’s hearsay? Names, dates, places have to add up. What we have is an account of events that took place in 1966 and undocumented accusations that are supposed to send us chasing after all the president’s men. Only the barest of threads connects all of this, Red.”
“Fraser left names out on purpose! He was afraid the wrong person would see his words. ‘The President’s Men,’ he called them. What’s this ‘club’ Fraser mentions?”
“The Lions,” answered Garcia.
Lions! The word struck a chord, deep in her memory. What was it? She closed her eyes for a moment, heard the voice of the television newsman on the night of Eve’s funeral. She said, “Of course. Foreign Policy. The Elder Statesmen. The Lions.”
“Si,” said Garcia. “The ‘Old Lions,’ they’re sometimes called.”
She nodded. “I know Senator Rossinski is one of them. And the Director of the CIA, Zee Zacarias. And – Admiral Ramon Alcazar, from Defense?”
Garcia shot her a look. “Not bad, Hotshot. Also NSA’s Rens Karpasian, Judge Dunbar from Homeland Security. And our Madame Secretary of State, Naomi Lourdes.”
“They meet for dinner once a month in some secret, out of the way location.”
Garcia raised an eyebrow. “And how, exactly, did you come across that interesting bit of little-known information, Chica?”
Her shoulders lifted. “Naomi Lourdes is Anthony’s mentor at State. Anthony must have told me.”
“Isn’t your brother-in-law a member of the Club, too?” Garcia raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Don’t go there,” said Alexandra quietly.
“Several appointments - sensitive, critical positions - are expected after the election. Any one of these men could play an important role in the next administration.” He waited a heartbeat. “And Charles Fraser’s letter suggests that several of these men could be Ivan.”
Her gaze held his. “Anthony knows all these people. There has to be a way that he can help us.”
“You said that your brother-in-law wants no part of this, Chica.”
She looked away from him while the thought swirled in her head. Finally she said, “Until tonight, Garcia, my reasons were personal. Find justice for my sister, keep a promise to Juliet. Keep my daughter safe. I honestly didn’t give a damn about your investigation. But now - ”
She waved a hand toward Fraser’s letter. “This is so much more. We’re not talking about just my family now. We’re talking about the future! The election, the men and women who are going to run our county, make life changing decisions. The wrong person in place could be a danger to all of us - including my daughter and my niece. We damn well better do something!”
He stood up. “We’ll do more than something, Alexandra. The ball is in my court now. Or should I say the brooch? A damned piece of jewelry may be our best shot at learning Ivan’s identity.”
She ran her fingers through the spikes of hair. “Yes, the brooch is the key, it has to be. A jeweled brooch somehow connected to Operation Firebird. Yuri Belankov found it in St. Petersburg and brought it to Charles Fraser - who gave it to my sister for safekeeping. That’s what everyone has been searching for! So – the firebird brooch is the irresistible bait for a trap. Something so crucial, so valuable, that someone will do anything
to possess it. That’s what my sister would have thought, I’m sure of it. If Ivan thinks I have the firebird brooch -”
“Don’t even think about it, Red.”
“I hope you have a tuxedo, Garcia, because our plans have just changed. You’re taking me to a reception tomorrow night at Anthony’s estate in Virginia. We’re going to meet the members of that mysterious ‘Club’ Fraser mentioned.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“No? Then why do I see that spark in your eyes?” She held his gaze. “We are going into the heart of that Lions’ den, Garcia. And we’re going to unmask Ivan.”
CHAPTER 28
“...a night in Russia, when nights are longest there.”
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
NEW YORK CITY
The Turkish Bath Club on 102nd Avenue in New York City was open 24 hours a day.
It was very late. Ivan sat alone on a stone bench in a small windowless room, naked and sweating, a thin, once-white bath towel wrapped around his waist. He sipped his sweet tea slowly, the clear glass of his cup fogged now by the moist heavy heat of the baths, and stared morosely at the cracked tiles.
No one knew him here.
The scalding red-hot rocks kept the temperature at 190 degrees. He poured a bucket of ice water over his head and sipped his tea as the steam rose around him. This fondness for heat was so unlike him. Usually, he preferred the cold and snow of his northern woods.
He pictured his lodge on the edge of the mountain, in the deep shadow of the pines, where he would pour himself an icy Stoli and listen to Stravinsky on the old stereo. There, alone in the soft, silent snowfalls of winter, he felt close to his mother and little sister again. The memory of those deep Russian forests haunted his dreams.
He inhaled deeply. Blue steam spiraled upward toward the cracks in the ceiling. He watched it, remembering.
Blue smoke curling up toward the slanted roof.
Russia, 1955. Spit froze before it hit the ground, bouncing on the earth with a sharp marble sound. Every night, in the small house in the forests north of Leningrad, he would sit with his mother and his baby sister, huddled in front of the fire, watching the blue smoke curl upward and listening to the hungry cry of the wolves.
Sometimes, his mother told him the old tales of czars and princesses while the tiny babe suckled at her breast. Sometimes she told him of the ballet she’d seen when she herself was but a girl. And sometimes, she drank cheap vodka and stared into the fire and didn’t speak at all.
Now his mother was dead. And his little sister would be almost sixty, if she were still alive. That little boy was long gone. He’d been someone else for so long, he hardly ever thought of his real name.
Except when the boy came back in the dreams. And lately, those dreams had been coming back to him almost every night. He was on a wolf’s back, riding through a dark forest… The poem every Russian child learned at his mother’s knee slipped like a shadow into his head.
And in my dreams I see myself on a wolf’s back, riding along a forest path to do battle with a sorcerer-tsar
In the land where a princess sits under lock and key pining behind massive walls.
There gardens surround a palace all of glass;
There Firebirds sing by night.
He swallowed the last of the tea and set the glass on the damp floor. It was as if the poet Polonsky had foreseen his life. His future.
After all these years, all the training, all the planning. All the years of being buried so deep that he’d almost forgotten his first life.
He’d hoped Firebird would never happen. But Charles Fraser and Evangeline Rhodes had gotten too close to the truth. And now - now another woman was searching for him.
A woman with a little daughter...
He couldn’t think about that. Almost invisible in the cocoon of wet heat, Ivan thought about his future.
I could leave here now and catch a flight to Canada, he thought. I could make a life away from all this forever, hidden in a mountain lodge with its tall firs and winter snows and memories of home.
No, you will stay right here, he told himself bleakly. You are a Russian, and you will keep your word. He thought suddenly of the old Russian proverb learned at his mother’s knee. If you live among wolves, you have to howl with them.
The door swung open. The heated mist swirled in the light that fell across the floor.
“I’m here, Prince Ivan.”
The man standing in the doorway was tall, well-muscled and fair, with eyes the color of a Siberian lake. When they’d met a week earlier at the lodge in the Green Mountains, the man had introduced himself as Panov. But to Ivan, Panov was simply his new Russian ‘Control.’
“We have trouble,” said Panov. “Alexandra Marik has returned unexpectedly to Washington.”
“She won’t find anything, Panov.”
“And if she attends the gala at Foxwood?”
“Ah... Then I will enjoy her company, of course. We all will. She’s a woman of great spirit, intelligence and grace. A most intriguing combination.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“She doesn’t know who I am.”
“You don’t know what she knows.”
“She won’t cause a problem. Leave her alone. I don’t want her hurt.”
“We cannot let her stop us. I will be at Foxwood, watching her.”
Ivan closed his eyes. “Alexandra Marik has a beautiful little girl,” he murmured to himself. “A child needs its mother.” And then, “I am so sick of death. Leave her be.”
“You concern yourself over a simple game of cat and mouse, nothing more. Perhaps I sent her roses after her sister’s funeral. But I simply toy with her for my amusement.”
“The cat terrorizes its prey, Panov. Just before it kills.”
Panov shrugged. “Her death would be a serious inconvenience for me right now. But the woman and her child don’t matter to me, Prince Ivan. If she gets in the way…” His right thumb and forefinger formed the shape of a gun. “Do svidaniya.”
“You’re wrong. Her death, so closely following her sister’s, would be too coincidental, raise too many alarms. And she is a mother. Her death would matter.” Ivan looked down at the dirty, sweating tiles. “Don’t you ever get lonely, Panov? Don’t you ever wish, just for a moment, that you mattered to someone? That you didn’t have to live a lie, because someone knew and loved you, the real you, and nothing else mattered?”
“No. Never.”
Ivan’s breath came out. “So,” he said finally. “Answers, then. I need to know who has re-discovered my existence after all these years. Who has activated the Firebird, Panov? And why?”
“My contact is a telephone number. A man from St. Petersburg, a voice on the telephone. He is a close friend of my grandfather’s. They are old now, Prince Ivan, the last of the men who planned Operation Firebird in the shadow of the Winter Palace so many years ago.”
“Your grandfather? He was one of the Shestidesyatniki?”
”Da. The ‘men of the sixties.’ He helped to plan Firebird in the Cold War.”
“Loyal men. I’ve wondered what it must have been like when they met with the others so long ago to plan their KGB operations.”
“My grandfather was once a proud Colonel in the army. He believed in planning for the future of Russia...”
“The Firebird files, along with the czarina’s brooch, were sealed long ago. And lost.”
“Russians have a long memory. The files have re-surfaced.”
Ivan became very still. “They are still bent on revenge - after all these years? But the world has changed, Panov. They are clinging to a past that no longer exists.”
“It exists for them, my Prince. They still have no reason to trust the West.” Panov’s voice was flat, emotionless. “And why should they? Every day our strategic weapons arsenals are reduced while the U.S. sits back and plans its national missile defense. The struggle in Russia is greater than ever.”
; “What were your instructions?”
“To follow Alexandra Marik, to learn what her sister knew. Then, last week, I was sent to a safe deposit box in Midtown. The Firebird brooch was there, and a letter with instructions to activate you.”
“For what purpose, Panov?”
“Our beloved country has decayed right before our eyes!”
“And suddenly this is reason enough to - ”
“You have not been back to Russia in more than four decades, Prince Ivan. The symbols of Czarist Russia - our crosses, our golden church domes - are now hidden by a forest of billboards advertising dental floss and Western magazines. Our country has become a shooting gallery for corruption and violence. Contract killings are epidemic, $2,000 American, a real deal. Even those Golden Arches from the West cannot disguise its dark spirit.”
“We are still a proud people, Panov.”
“Nyet. We were a proud, highly trained army once. Feared around the world. Now - our tanks have no batteries, our ships have no fuel or spare parts. We are armed with 20,000 nuclear warheads, but our sub bases have no electricity to keep the reactors from freezing. My brother is a proud soldier, Prince Ivan. But he has not received his military pay for three months. If it were not for our - arrangement, he would be forced to drive a cab to feed his family. It is snowing there now. One of his fellow officers had to sell his coat. Rubles are worthless.”
“I will be able to make a difference, Panov, after the election.”
“You will make a difference now, my Prince. St. Petersburg is but a foreshadowing of the future of Mother Russia. All the more reason to do what we are doing.”
“Tell me what I must do.”
“We must disrupt the upcoming election. Create chaos. The right man must be secured in place, Prince Ivan, he is critical to Russia’s future. But there is someone standing in the way, someone who will push the United States in the wrong direction.”
Ivan stood slowly to face him. “You want me to -”
“Da. One man must die so another can take his rightful place. You are the only one who can accomplish this.”
Firebird Page 20