Mazurka

by Campbell Armstrong

  “Who killed him?”

  Pagan shrugged. “I can give you an eyewitness description of the alleged killer, and I can tell you the make and registration of the car he was driving, but that hasn’t helped much so far. A young man with some tricky back-up in the vicinity – which perhaps suggests the Brotherhood is still doing active recruiting.”

  Kristina ran the palm of her hand over the surface of the old pictures. She touched her father’s face with a fingertip, then she gathered the pictures together quickly and put them back in the envelope. “So Sundbach betrayed the Brotherhood,” she said.

  “It looks that way to me,” Pagan remarked.

  Betrayal. Kristina got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She closed the door. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, her head tilted slightly to one side. She sat this way for a long time, turning the word betrayal over and over in her mind, remembering the very last thing Norbert Vaska had ever said to her, and she saw her father as she’d last seen him and remembered the way he’d whispered to her before they took him away and she heard his grim words again and again. An unchanging litany of whispered echoes. She wondered if she was doomed to listen to those same echoes for the remainder of her life. Or if Frank Pagan was going to provide the means to silence them once and for all.

  She opened the door. Pagan came to her and held her very tightly.

  “You make me feel good,” she said. “I want you to know that, Frank.”

  “It’s one of those reciprocal things,” Pagan replied, infusing his words with a flippancy that wasn’t remotely appropriate to his feelings. But he was an amateur at the heart’s games and he’d lost once before and he didn’t think he could stand losing again. And already he was beginning to feel the first soft warmth of seriousness.

  There was a knock on the door. He assumed it was room service but when he opened the door he saw Max Klein standing in the hallway, looking a little agitated.

  “We should talk,” Klein said.

  Pagan said, “One moment.”

  He shut the door, surveyed Kristina Vaska’s splendid nakedness. It was almost a crime against nature to cover such wonder up, but he suggested she get dressed. She gathered her clothes together, stepped into the bathroom, and then into the shower. Pagan could hear the sound of her singing Are You Lonesome Tonight? over the thunder of falling water as he admitted Max Klein into the room. She had a good strong voice, but she didn’t know the words.

  Moscow

  The telephone rang in Dimitri Volovich’s apartment – once, twice, a third time before Volovich answered it. He knew as soon as he lifted the receiver, as soon as he heard interference that sounded like wind whistling through a wet tunnel, that this phonecall was coming from a great distance. He wasn’t surprised, then, when Viktor Epishev’s voice came across the line.

  “I’ll be brief,” Epishev said.

  “I can hardly hear you, Viktor!”

  “Tell him this …” The voice was swept away for a few seconds. “… reason to believe there may be a threat to the plan …”

  “A threat?”

  “Just tell the old man that I think I can make things secure in time …”

  “How bad is the damage?”

  “… can’t hear a thing …”

  “Viktor? Viktor?”

  The line had gone dead in Volovich’s hand. He put the receiver down and stood motionless for a moment. The palm of his hand was damp with sweat. He looked around his living-room, the functional leather armchairs, the table piled with books and newspapers, the old family photographs on the wall. He moved, somewhat listlessly, into the narrow kitchen, made a cup of tea, and considered the prospect of having to deliver Epishev’s message to the old man. All the bloody way to Zavidovo with so slim a message, for God’s sake! And the risk involved! Exactly what was this threat he’d mentioned? The old man was certain to ask, and Volovich didn’t have the answers to give.

  He carried his tea into the living-room and made himself comfortable in one of the leather chairs. He loved this apartment, enjoyed the kind of tenants who lived in the other flats. Right now, for example, he could hear the child called Katerina Ogoridnikova practise her piano on the floor above – a sweet sound that drifted gently down, a little Mozart. A talented child, young Katerina, and very pretty, the daughter of a man who operated a chemical plant and a woman who translated foreign journals for one of the ministries. The tenants in this building had a certain social standing, and Volovich appreciated the fact. He had no great desire to go out into the darkness, leaving all this comfort behind, to make the trip to Zavidovo, but he supposed he’d do it in any event since it was his duty to inform Greshko of any communication from the Colonel.

  He set his empty tea-cup down on the table. He went inside the bedroom for his overcoat. Sighing, he did up the buttons, placed his key in his pocket, then stepped across the living-room to the door.

  He opened the door, went out on to the landing, turned to lock the door. Startled by shadows that moved behind him, he dropped the key and heard it clatter on the floor, a sound that seemed to reach him from a long way down, like a stone dropped in a very deep well. He turned his face in the direction of the shadows.

  There were two of them, and they wore the uniforms of corporals in the KGB. Volovich recognised neither of them, but they didn’t immediately worry him because of their inferior rank. He glanced down at his key, seeing how it shone under the lamp on the landing.

  “Comrade Lieutenant,” one of the corporals said. He was a chubby man with a Stalinesque moustache. “You are ordered to stay in your apartment tonight.”

  “Ordered? By whom?” Volovich infused his voice with a certain indignation, but he wondered if he succeeded or whether he sounded unconvincing to this pair. Ordered, he thought. He didn’t like the sound of the word at all.

  “We have our instructions, Comrade Lieutenant,” the same corporal said.

  “And who issued these instructions? Show me paper. Show me documentation. If you don’t have it, step out of my way.”

  There was a sound from the stairs now, the click of heels upon linoleum, and Volovich turned his face in the direction of the noise. A figure loomed up and a face took shape in the light that fell across the landing.

  “Let us talk, Dimitri.”

  Volovich, his heart pounding, stepped back against the wall. He watched General Olsky, in full uniform, bend down to pick up the key, which he then placed in the lock of Volovich’s door and twisted. The door creaked open.

  “After you,” the Chairman said.

  16

  Manhattan

  Gary Iverson stood in the empty apartment in the vicinity of Fordham University, conscious of starkness, white-painted empty rooms and high bright ceilings. The lack of furniture caused a lack of shadow, hence of texture, and he always had the feeling in this place that he was about to be prepped for surgery. He could hear the sound of the other man’s voice coming from one of the rooms at the back, and then the voice was silent, and a door opened at the end of the hallway.

  Iverson looked at the man who came along the hallway to the living-room. He had an uninteresting face, if somewhat kindly, but it wasn’t in any way memorable. Had anyone asked Iverson to close his eyes there and then and describe his companion, he would have found the task difficult.

  “Did you get through?” Iverson asked politely.

  “Terrible connection. Impossible to hear anything.”

  “Too bad.” Iverson stepped inside the open-plan kitchen, looked in the refrigerator, found a couple of bottles of ginger beer. A recipe on the label informed him that this soda was an ingredient in something called a Moscow Mule – highly appropriate. He took out two bottles and gave one to his companion.

  “I wish we had something stronger, Colonel,” Iverson said.

  Epishev opened the bottle, swallowed, made a face. Then he wandered to the large window that looked out across the river, which had a strange lemon tint in the early evening sun. He had been in
the United States on two previous occasions – once to provide security at the Soviet Mission, the second time to investigate the activities of the Soviet Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, a man suspected of being soft on the West, and therefore a possible security risk. Epishev liked the country, or the little he’d seen of it. He understood he wasn’t going to see a great deal of it this time either.

  Iverson chugged his ginger beer. Then he said, “Welcome to America,” and smiled in an artificially charming way. It was also a slightly strained expression because this apartment never failed to make Iverson a touch uneasy – he was forever conscious of Galbraith, ensconced in his basement in Fredericksburg, listening to everything that was said in these rooms. And today he was more than usually sensitive because he knew that Galbraith, having heard of the death of Sundbach at the hands of the unpredictable Andres Kiss, was bound to be wrathful. And when the fat man was angry, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  V. G. Epishev turned from the window. He was still dislocated from the trip, the suddenness of it, his own lack of preparation and insight. He’d known about US involvement in the plan all along, of course – where else was an American plane going to come from if not from the Americans? – but it was only when Malik had introduced him in London to the man known as Gunther that he became aware of the extent of American interest, how it reached inside the US Embassy and spread, if Malik was to be believed, into the upper reaches of American military circles and God knows where else. There’s more to all this than you and I have ever been told, Victor, Malik had said. US involvement doesn’t begin and end with an Assistant Ambassador at the US Embassy. It goes higher, and it goes deeper, and some of the most influential men in America are involved…

  What was painfully obvious to Epishev was how Greshko had kept a certain amount of information from him, but that fact shouldn’t have surprised or irritated him. Greshko had done what he always did so very well. He’d concealed information, and juggled it, doling a little out to one person, some to another, so that the total picture was known only to himself. Devious Greshko, master of deception and legerdemain, creator of his own myth, saviour of Russia. Love and hatred, Epishev thought. Greshko inspired extreme responses in other people, as if any form of relationship with the old man took place on a moving pendulum.

  Epishev, who always imagined he occupied a special place in the old man’s affections, felt resentful of Greshko just then. The old man had excluded him. Yet – and here lay the hold Greshko had, the true nature of the loyalty Epishev felt – he was no less anxious to please Greshko than before. It was a kind of magic, Epishev thought, a sorcery. At a distance of four thousand miles, Greshko’s grip was as strong as it had been at a mere six feet.

  He stared at Iverson and said, “Why is there no furniture in this apartment?”

  “We keep it for meetings,” Iverson said. “Nobody lives here.”

  Epishev said, “In the Soviet Union, this kind of apartment would be occupied by two families.”

  Iverson shrugged and drained his ginger beer. He wasn’t sure what to say to this. He had a script written for him by Galbraith and he had no desire to deviate from it. He put his empty bottle down on the kitchen counter and said, “Let’s talk about Frank Pagan, Colonel.”

  “And the girl,” Epishev said.

  “Of course.” Iverson walked across the room, putting a little distance between himself and the microphone he knew was planted in the vent above the kitchen stove. It would pick up his voice anyhow, but he enjoyed the idea of Galbraith straining to listen. What he didn’t know, but on one level of awareness suspected, was that the entire apartment was one enormous eavesdropping device. The walls had been specially treated with a chemical that amplified any sound and relayed it to a series of hypersensitive pick-ups lodged in the ceiling. A sigh, a whisper, the touch of a handkerchief to a lip, a quiet fart – Galbraith heard it all in Fredericksburg.

  Iverson leaned against the wall, arms folded. He had no way of knowing how much he had in common with Viktor Epishev of the KGB, how they both served masters given to authoritarian whim, strong-willed men who guarded their dominions jealously, who resented intrusions and meddlesome outsiders, and who found trust difficult. Iverson and Epishev – both obedient and yet at times capable of some mild straining at the leashes that held them in place, both loyal, both patriots, both pedestrians in the hall of bevelled mirrors that was international political ambition and intrigue.

  Iverson said, “According to our information, Pagan and the girl are staying at the Warwick Hotel here in Manhattan. Pagan – presumably because of information given to him by the girl, and because he’s come to some understanding of the coded meaning in Romanenko’s message – has started to drift very dose to the Brotherhood. Only this afternoon we were forced to intervene in a situation …” In a situation I might have foreseen but didn’t, he thought.

  Gary Iverson, turning the word ‘coded’ around in his mind, admiring Galbraith’s cunning, glanced at his wristwatch and went on, “I don’t have to tell you how disastrous it would be at this stage if Pagan and Kristina Vaska interfered with things. There’s a third person in the picture as well, a New York policeman called Max Klein, who’s been assisting Pagan. It’s a sensitive situation, as you can well understand.”

  Epishev said, “But the solution is very simple, Iverson.”

  Iverson hesitated. “As you say, Colonel, it’s very simple.”

  “Then what’s holding you back?”

  Iverson paced the floor, stopping at a place where sunlight slicing through the windows. struck his face and made him blink his eyes. “We need your help, Colonel Epishev.”

  Epishev was hardly surprised by the request. He hadn’t been issued a quick visa and flown first-class to the United States on the first available plane just to play tourist. He’d known his help was needed from the start, from the moment when Gunther had stamped his passport in his offices in the US Embassy and told him that Pagan and the girl were now in New York City – ‘pursuing investigations’ was how Gunther had phrased it, his face rather mysterious, as if there were more he wanted to say but didn’t have the authority to say. Epishev knew what the Americans wanted of him. He wanted the same thing for himself.

  “You need to keep your own hands clean,” Epishev said.

  “The situation’s delicate,” Iverson replied.

  Epishev gazed back out over the river. A tugboat came in view, a small dirty vessel spewing out dark smoke.

  Iverson went on, “Killing a New York policeman – to say nothing of a man from Scotland Yard – isn’t something we do with great enthusiasm. You, on the other hand, don’t have …” Iverson let his sentence hang unfinished.

  “Killing isn’t anything I relish myself,” Epishev said quietly.

  “Nobody relishes it,” Iverson said.

  Epishev smiled. “And your superiors have qualms.”

  “Qualms, sure,” Iverson remarked. “But it’s more than that. They’re afraid of unwanted complications. They don’t like the idea of this triple elimination coming back on them, sullying their good name, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  “They’re afraid of ghosts,” Epishev said, a slight scoffing note in his voice.

  “You might say. Congressional ghosts. Journalistic ghosts. We’re a country of inquisitive spectres, Colonel. It’s part of the price we pay for freedom and democracy, you see.” Scoring a point, Iverson thought, and why the hell not? He hated Communism. He hated Communists. He didn’t like this character Epishev coming to the USA with such ease, and he was unhappy with the idea of any collusion between America and the Soviet Union. But he wasn’t the scriptwriter, Galbraith was the creator when it came to situations and scenes, Iverson was merely an actor in the drama. At least he had the advantage of knowing how this particular drama was going to end, and it pleased him to think of the small aircraft floating in darkness with all the density of the Adirondacks lying mysteriously below … He derailed this train of thoug
ht. Anticipation might be amusing and enjoyable, but as Galbraith was constantly saying, The future is the province of soothsayers, Gary. We mere mortals have to make do with the moment.

  Epishev said, “Your superiors don’t have much power, if the killing of three insignificant people causes them such worry.”

  “Oh, they have power, Colonel. But they also believe that discretion is one sure way of holding on to it.”

  “Why do dirty work if they can get somebody else to do it for them?”

  Iverson nodded. “You were given an order from your own superior, Colonel. As far as I understand it, your mandate was to eliminate any threat to the plan. That’s all you’ve come to America to do. Your duty. Plain and simple. Everything you need will be supplied to you. Immediately after the success of your undertaking, you’ll be flown from New York to Germany. You’ll re-enter Russia, your orders will have been carried out, people will be pleased on both sides. You’ll have all the help we can place at your disposal. You can even have the use of our personnel – up to a point.”

  “And what point is that?”

  “The point where their culpability might be established.”

  “By the ghosts you fear so much?”

  “Exactly,” Iverson said.

  Epishev watched the old tug boat vanish from his sight. Then the yellowy river was empty and the sun hung behind factory stacks on the opposite bank. Greshko’s face floated up before him, the smell of the sick-room, the aroma of death that clung to the walls with the certainty of dampness.

  “I have guarantees?” he asked.

  “Cast-iron,” Iverson replied. “Remember. If General Greshko trusted us enough to enter into this partnership, well…”

  Epishev considered this. If Greshko had trusted these people, then Epishev had no reason to feel otherwise. Greshko’s trust, as he well knew, was given only sparingly, and then never completely – but if he’d made an important compact with the Americans, then it was because the advantages in it for him were too attractive to refuse. There was a long silence in the room, broken finally by Iverson, who looked solemn as he said, “You can count on our backing all the way.”