“No, you don’t say that in Russian, do you?”
A small boat put out from the town and curved toward the landing craft. The water was very still and very blue, and the boat cut through it neatly. A flock of pelicans took off and skimmed low and dropped down again.
“Those pelicans had better get ready for a busy day tomorrow,” Tarp said.
“Soldiers playing games.” Repin did not sound contemptuous, but sad. He threw the big mango pit into the water and licked his fingers. “‘War games.’ Nice expression. ‘Hit the beach. War games.’ Funny business, language.”
A little helicopter buzzed over the low brown hills that lay beyond the town. It came very fast, then slowed as it passed over the town and its single dock, then came out toward the landing craft and circled them. After one pass it came toward the tanker.
“Here comes Mr. Smith.”
Repin grunted. On the tanker’s deck men were running toward the helicopter pad. Otherwise the deck was empty, the submersible already off-loaded and the big French choppers gone.
The former president stepped down to the deck with a smile and a wave, still like a politician, and spent a few seconds being introduced to the ship’s captain. He was wearing bush clothes and he looked tanned and healthy and rich.
He also looked pleased with himself. As he shook hands with them his mouth spread into a grin; his eyes were bright even behind the big sunglasses he was wearing and he seemed very pleased indeed. “I’m supposed to be up at Okavango looking at elephants!” he shouted as they left the pad. “Couple of newsmen even chased up there after me, I hear!”
“You like going incognito.”
He laughed. “Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I guess I like it. Well, what’s the word?”
Tarp took him to Repin’s suite, which had been checked for bugs and judged secure. “Mr. Smith” lay back in an armchair with his hat on a table in front of him, still with the sunglasses on, and waited to hear about the plutonium.
“We got it, that’s all.”
“I know you got it! You sent me the report. Where was it?”
“Where we thought it would be.” Tarp looked at Repin. “We’re ready to move on to the next step, sir.”
“Oh, just like that? You guys don’t waste any time, do you!”
“It was our agreement, Mr. Smith,” Repin said carefully, “that priority was to be given to the return of the plutonium to the Soviet government. I am sure you remember that.”
The former president stared at him. He had wanted to be told a good story about finding the plutonium, and he was not very happy at being denied it. He tugged at his bush jacket. “Yeah, that was our agreement. I didn’t realize there was so much of a hurry about it.”
“We have some more to do,” Tarp said carefully. “You remember, sir, you thought it important that we help Moscow out with this and then remind them that we did so. I believe it’s your move, sir.”
“Huh?”
Repin was sitting at the former president’s right. “Contact has to be made with Andropov personally,” he said. “No other way. That, I hope, is your specialty, Mr. Smith.”
“Huh? Oh, I see! Oh. Hmm.” He looked from one to the other of them. His big jaw was cocked to one side as if he had a cigarette holder clamped between his teeth. “You want me to go to Moscow and tell him you’ve found his stuff. Is that it?”
Repin smiled. “Very nice.”
“It’ll take time to set up. I’ve never found the Kremlin very quick, you know.”
“They can be quick,” Repin said.
The former president looked unhappy. “I sort of hoped we’d all have a chance to relax here tonight and, you know, talk.”
Tarp tried to be diplomatic. “I believe Laforet could arrange to have you meet privately with Andropov as soon as you arrive, sir.”
“You mean I’d miss the marine landing here, too?”
“I think you’ll just have time for that, sir. It’s on for one hour from now. I think that would just give you time to make the noon flight. If you make your connections, you could talk to Andropov over breakfast. Laforet’s got the schedule made.”
“I was going to do it through Washington.”
“No, sir.”
“Huh? Oh, I get it. Right. We weren’t going to ask for that kind of support. Okay. Okay. I fly to Moscow, I meet with Mr. Andropov — pardon me, but the irony of me going out of my way to make sure that the Kremlin gets back its plutonium is pretty strong — and then?”
“Moscow will arrange the transfer,” Repin murmured. He sounded almost kind, as if he did not want to offend the former president with too ironic a truth. “Your marines come aboard this ship tomorrow, I believe.”
Tarp nodded. “Mock takeover of friendly tanker. That’s the story for public consumption. ‘Rehearsal for possibility of Mideast crisis,’ and so on. They’ll stay aboard to guard the plutonium until the Soviets arrange a transfer.”
“How are they gonna do that, anyway?” The former president squinted up at Tarp, who was standing.
“By submarine, at night, would be my suggestion. It isn’t really our business, sir.”
“Huh? Gee, I’d sure want to know. Don’t you guys ever get curious?”
Like Repin, Tarp was feeling kind. “It’s usually better not to know.”
“Security?”
“Yes, and — other people screw things up sometimes. It’s better not to know, once your part is over.”
The former president thought about that. He did not seem to like it very much. “I’d rather carry it right through myself. All the way.”
Tarp smiled. “Yes, sir, so would we. But we don’t get that chance, as a rule.” Their eyes met. Tarp was thinking about Viet Nam, and he suspected that perhaps “Mr. Smith” was, too.
“Now, sir, about Moscow: some arrangements will have to be made for us.”
“For you?”
“Yes, sir — we’re going back in. We’re going after Maxudov.”
“You know who he is?”
Tarp hesitated, and Repin said, “We know how to find him.”
Tarp sat down opposite the former president. “You’ll be given a code and a contact through Laforet. Everything’s got to be kept very, very tight. Maxudov mustn’t get a hint of what’s happened. You’re to be very forthright with Andropov and you’ve got to get him to be forthright with you. If he’s already kissed this thing off, he’s got to tell you. Then we’ll have to know if they’ve had this ship on satellite surveillance, and if they have if they’ve made anything of it. However, as things stand now, we don’t think that Maxudov knew where the plutonium was, so we don’t think he’s going to be spooked even if he knows that this ship was down there.”
“At least you hope so.”
“Yes, sir. Then we need a secure route into the Soviet Union and we need security in Moscow. Repin’s supposed to be dead, but Maxudov must know by now that he isn’t. So it’s better if we’re not seen. The KGB will have a blanket over all legal means of entry, and we have no way of knowing how much of that goes right to Maxudov. Therefore, we have to have another way in — military aircraft would be best, with no KGB or political officers involved. That’ll have to come straight from Andropov through the air force. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“Tell Andropov we’re going to flush Maxudov out. We’re to have complete control of the operation, or we won’t play. However, he’ll probably want to put surveillance on the three suspects, using agents who are completely outside the usual state apparatus.”
“Can he do that?”
Repin closed his eyes, owllike, and opened them slowly. “He can do that.”
“We’ll require a safe house when we reach Moscow. A car, something nondescript that can go anywhere — special plates, but not too special. A trustworthy driver. Somebody from the guards is okay if Andropov personally will vouch for him.”
“Weapons,” Repin said.
Tarp glanced at him. “You think?”
/> “Weapons.” Repin thudded the tip of his right index finger on the table next to “Mr. Smith’s” hat. “Definitely. You go to catch a tiger, you carry things to kill tigers.” He looked at the former president. “Pistols.”
“You guys are something,” he said.
“Big pistols,” Repin said. “This will not be nice work.”
“Okay.” He looked toward Tarp. “You’ll run through this with me again?”
“Indeed I will, sir. Several times.”
The famous smile appeared. He seemed to have forgiven them for missing his story. “Sounds good,” he said, slapping the arms of his chair. “Sounds good!”
They went up on deck and ran it again and again, until a marine colonel came aboard to take the former president to the landing craft. He delighted him by buckling an issue .45 around his waist and telling him that he would be riding the second boat in. Beaming, the former president went down the ladder to the boat, and as it started away from the tanker, he turned and gave Tarp and Repin a crisp, happy military salute.
“You think he will remember it all?” Repin said as they leaned on the rail. “Our lives depend on that man doing it all just right.”
“He ran the United States for four years, Repin.”
“Da — and look at the United States!”
*
The marine detachment came aboard next morning when the sun was barely clear of the dry hills behind the bay. A sweet-scented land breeze was still blowing, causing a ripple on the water as their craft came across. Tarp inhaled the faintly spicy odor of the land and waited for them. They came up the ladder on the run, weapons ready but not loaded, and then Tarp and the captain took the marine commander on a tour of the Global Clipper. He knew nothing of either Maxudov or the plutonium, but he knew that he was supposed to secure the ship and everything on it.
“You understand that this part of the operation is not a mock-up, Captain?” Tarp said.
“You bet.” He wasn’t yet thirty, but he had that hard-nosed, humorless look that made for authority. “That’s live ammo those guys are carrying.”
Tarp had noticed. Still, he hoped they would have no cause to load it into their weapons.
He went to Repin’s suite, where Pope-Ginna, in borrowed pajamas, was sitting with an enormous breakfast spread around him. Repin was dressed but unshaven, and his face was puffy with sleep.
Pope-Ginna always flinched now when he saw Tarp. He seemed comfortable with Repin, but he could not restrain his distaste for Tarp; like a dog who has been kicked, he was always shy of a certain kind of boot. Still, he managed a smile and said vaguely, “Grapefruit?”
“I’ll have a papaw.” Like Repin, he relished the fresh fruit. He began to peel it. “Do you feel ready to travel, Admiral?” he said easily.
Pope-Ginna’s face tightened again; his response to Tarp had become a tic. “Where to?” He tried to say it rather gaily, as if it were a joke. In a bright, very false voice, he said, “I didn’t bring my resort clothes,” and laughed and looked from one to the other of them.
“There’s something that has to be done. Some telephone calls to make. In London.”
“I see.”
Pope-Ginna licked his lips and sat back from the table and looked at Repin, who said smoothly, “Admiral Pope-Ginna may be concerned, perhaps, about security people in Britain. About what maybe is said to them.”
“People might think the wrong thing,” Pope-Ginna said quickly. “If they were told only about — you know. About the Homburg. The general run of people wouldn’t understand about my, my role in the, ah, big picture. With MI-six, I mean. And during the Falklands crisis.”
“Yes.” Tarp ate a slice of the papaw. “I’ll arrange for you to give a statement to British security, but not on British soil, Admiral. You can make whatever deal with them you like. That’s not my business. I want you to make some phone calls.”
“Yes. I see. Well … I don’t have much choice, I suppose.”
“None at all.”
“Whom am I to telephone?”
“John Bull.”
“Ah. Hmm. Yes, I see.” He looked appealingly at Repin and then turned to Tarp. “I don’t want to be pushed out someplace where Jock can do whatever he likes with me! Do you understand? That may sound cowardly, but — it’s the truth. I don’t want to make your telephone call and then be … abandoned.”
“You won’t be abandoned.”
“If you just chuck me back to Argentina, you know, I won’t last a day. Not a day. Jock’s a very powerful man.”
“There’s no plan to send you back to Argentina just yet. You could probably stay in England, for that matter. Never go back. You can make a deal with the British, I’m sure.”
“My money’s in Argentina,” Pope-Ginna said thinly.
“You could live comfortably in England, I imagine.”
Pope-Ginna seemed to shrink. “Comfortably, yes. But I wouldn’t be rich.”
“You wouldn’t be dead, either.”
After many seconds of silent thought, Pope-Ginna joined his hands on the table and said, “I will do whatever is necessary. But I really have to return to Argentina. I demand it. In my own time, in my own way, I have a score to settle there.”
Tarp wiped his fingers on a napkin. “We leave in two hours.”
*
The sunshine was thin and without warmth in France, and the earth looked as if it might never let a seed sprout in it again. The views around the farmhouse were all of the bleak kinds of landscape that had taken all the romance out of farming in the paintings of the late nineteenth century: black, gray, and brown, and above them a sky of watery blue.
Tarp was sitting in the other farmhouse, where the French security guards lived, and he could just see the roofs of the tumbledown farm from where he sat. He had a telephone and a scrambler, and he was trying to talk to Juana for the first time in many days, trying to forget the sharp presence of her and to make sense of the half-garbled, inhuman sounds that came out of the scrambler.
“I cannot understand!” he shouted into the telephone. “Repeat!”
“Schneider’s wife!” Her voice sounded faraway and not at all like her.
“Yes, I got that. Schneider’s wife!”
“Was killed in an auto accident. Understand?”
“Yes! Got it. Any chance it was anything but an accident?”
“What?”
“Was it an accident?”
“The police said so. But Kinsella says the police would say anything they were paid to say.”
“Could it have been murder?”
“Kinsella says yes.”
She had made contact with Kinsella in Buenos Aires almost immediately. Kinsella was part of an intelligence cell that was trying to bring the air force to power in the ruling military junta; above all, Juana told him, the navy was their prime enemy.
“Anything new on Schneider?”
“I’m checking the men you call his ‘butlers.’ His bodyguards.” The line had cleared, and, although the voice still did not sound like hers, it was at least understandable. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes! Check the code name Gaucho. See what you can find.”
“All right. Anything else?”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“What?”
“I love you!”
Tarp was embarrassed. “Good,” he said lamely, and hung up. He sat and looked at the instrument, hating it, as people must have been hating it since the day it became the means for putting a man and a woman into the illusion of communication.
“Done, monsieur?” the communications man said. He reached for the unit.
“Yes, thank you.” The man mumbled something; Tarp slipped out of the chair. He hesitated in the doorway, looking over a muddy yard where cars had left watery ruts, feeling in himself the opposing pulls of the desire for action and the desire for this woman. The telephone call was an annoyance, for it reminded him of her without making him close
to her; it intensified the pull without allowing him to yield to it. Given that impasse, he let himself yield to the desire for action. He breathed deeply, looked once around the cheerless landscape, and then launched himself into it as if he meant to do battle with it. As perhaps he did, for he marched over the field with enormous strides, his rubber boots sucking up great gobs of mud that he ignored in his eagerness to get to the place where action started.
He came to the rocky track and started up it, passing the place where he had found Juana the first day after he had come back from Moscow. There was nobody there now; the place looked deserted. As he came closer, however, a hatless man in a long overcoat came out and stood waiting for him.
“Mr. Carrington’s been looking for you, sir.”
“I was at the other house.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tarp started for the door and the man stepped aside, then came along behind him. Tarp held the door, but the man shook his head. “I’m to wait outside, thank you.”
“Right.”
The house was cold. There was no fire in the kitchen now; Therese was in Paris with Repin. The guards had turned on an utterly useless electric heater in the main room.
Johnnie Carrington was standing near the heater. He looked taller and thinner; the left sleeve of his dark overcoat was empty. His face had a new acidity to it, and Tarp thought of what Repin had said about Hitler and evil — learning to live with the rest of us in the real world. It was slightly sad to see it in Johnnie Carrington, who had been young and who was young no longer.
“All set?” Tarp said brusquely, being very businesslike as if it were the means to make them both less conscious of the maimed arm.
“Yes, I think so.” He passed his hand over his face. “The admiral’s reading over the typescript of our little agreement. He’s terribly cautious. I suppose it’s natural.” He looked down and away from Tarp. Tarp thought that he looked as he would for the next twenty years or so — handsome, slender, rather worn out by his service. Women would find him more attractive now, he thought, not less. “Will there never be an end to this, do you think? The leaks, the double agents. Men who sell out.”
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