The Twentieth Day of January

by Ted Allbeury

  He thought about Dempsey. Andy Dempsey, the smiling character in the green corduroy jacket. Tireless and energetic. Heir to a packet of millions, dilettante art-critic, every girl’s favourite escort. The charmer who screwed but didn’t tell. Even with Jenny he never knew if Dempsey slept with her. She had been introduced as Andy’s girl at the party, but there had been no come-back when he took her for himself. Just the usual happy Dempsey smile and no comment.

  Thinking of Jenny made him think of Laura. She had agreed not to make any move for a divorce until after the inauguration. From the moment he had been a gubernatorial candidate she had closed the bedroom door and all the other doors. Quiet, unassuming Laura had views of her own. She had said he’d never make it, and even after he was Governor she would have no politicians in the house. He would miss young Sam, but Sam was part of a package, and the price of the package was for him to get out of politics. Her father had tried to talk her out of it way back, but she had been adamant and scathing. She had said he was a stooge, the monkey who took the chestnuts out of the fire for the professionals, the wheeler-dealers. She wanted him back teaching at Yale but would settle for him staying in the consultancy. She had been jealous of his every success. Nothing convinced her. She’d probably even voted for Grover, the bitch. But he would miss them, they had been the only security he had. But if Dempsey and his friends thought he was a stooge … He stood up and switched on the TV.

  Nolan swore softly under his breath, stopped the car and got out. He’d told them a hundred times not to leave their cycles lying in the drive. As he lifted up the cycle and leaned it against the hedge the six-year-old blonde came running towards him. He mentally toned down what he had intended saying. She was so pleased to see him, and anyway he loved her.

  Walking behind the child was his wife, smiling, because both his women were well aware that they could disarm him in seconds.

  As he swung up the small girl he bent to kiss his wife.

  “Both lots of slides have come back. I’ve had a sneaky look at them and they’re great.”

  “Are those the Disney World ones?”

  “Yes. D’you want to read Sal the Riot Act about her bike?”

  He grinned. “I guess not. But it is a damn nuisance. I have to leave the car across the path half in, half out.”

  “It’s getting too cold for her to play outside. And too dark.”

  The small girl was stroking his face. “Will you fix my bike for me, Dad?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s the chain again.”

  Nolan drove the car into the driveway and carried the cycle into the garage. He switched on the light and put the cycle up on the bench. He cleaned and oiled the chain and fed it slowly on to the wheel. He tested both brakes and they were hopelessly slack. Like most CIA men, Nolan did not find it incongruous to come from dealing with the seamier side of the country’s life to fixing a bicycle chain on a child’s bike. Their training and their experience had taught them the value of routine and perspective. A routine that automatically checked brakes on kids’ bikes meant that you never carried a .45 Browning that wasn’t reliable. And a perspective that made the vigilance worthwhile, because your family was your stake in the country you were protecting. And you then valued other men’s families, too. Without a stake you were just playing games.

  CHAPTER 6

  At Copenhagen Kleppe paid cash to continue to Stockholm, and when the plane landed at Brumma he took the airport bus into the city. At a bookshop in Kungsgatan he picked up a Dutch passport in the name of Van Gelder and took a taxi back to the airport.

  The Russian at the Aeroflot desk saw the KU in front of the passport number and looked up for a moment as he reached for the boarding card. As he handed it over he smiled faintly.

  “Have a good trip, Mijnheer. They’ll be calling you in a few minutes. Gate seven.”

  “Dank U heel.” And Kleppe smiled back. He liked KGB men with a touch of humour.

  At Sheremetyevo it had stopped snowing, but even the few yards across the tarmac to the big black Zil were breathtakingly cold.

  There was nobody to meet him except the driver, but that was normal. Why give any watchers a clue, however insignificant?

  It was eight o’clock local time, and there were lights in all the apartment blocks that lined the road to Moscow. There were gaunt skeletal frames silhouetted in the moonlight where new blocks were under construction.

  He looked out again as the car turned into Kalinin Prospekt. He sighed. No matter how you looked at it, Moscow was a dreary city. Pittsburgh on a Sunday night. And all over the Soviet Union men sold their souls and women their chastity for the privilege of a Resident’s Permit in this grey city. The place in the Soviet Union where it all was at. He smiled to himself, and wondered idly what he would do if they ever recalled him.

  The car stopped, and the driver stood holding open his door. He picked up his bag and stepped out into the snow. He looked up at the front of the house. They never put him up twice in the same place but it was always luxurious. The driver gave him two keys and he walked up the stone steps and unlocked the big door. An old babcha stood smiling in the open doorway on his right.

  It was like a stage set for Turgenyev. Heavy curtains, rose-wood panelling, large pieces of furniture and the smell of steam heating. He loved it. It was nice to be back. It was Russia. The prodigal son must have felt like this. His Russian was sometimes clumsy now, but the old lady smiled and nodded as he talked to her.

  There was a small pile of envelopes on the brown chenille tablecloth. They were propped up against a shining brass vase that held half a dozen large chrysanthemums. He picked up the envelopes and opened them one by one.

  There was a KGB identity card in his name, complete with an up-to-date photograph. They were probably showing him that some of the boys in New York still kept an eye on him as well as taking his orders. Two permanent passes for ten days at the Bolshoi, with a printed list of performances. A card with a list of official telephone numbers and another with girls’ names and their numbers. The big envelope had two thick wads of ten rouble notes. There was a short note of welcome to him from the Secretary to the Presidium, handwritten. As he picked up the last envelope the telephone rang. He picked it up.

  “Yes.”

  “Comrade, they ask if you could attend for a very short meeting this evening. Ten o’clock at Dzerzhinsky Square. A car will come.”

  “Is that Ivgenia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell them for you alone I come.”

  He heard her laugh softly before she hung up.

  It had started six years before. He had been in Moscow on a routine visit and he had given a talk at the training school in Leningrad for senior KGB agents. The subject was the two American political parties, and he covered their structure, finances, method of operation and the election processes.

  He had been called back a month later, and for two days a team of four had questioned him about the way in which a State Governor was elected in the United States. Everything was noted and analysed down to the most routine details. They had spent four hours on the powers of a ward-heeler. They had raised points that he couldn’t answer, that most Americans wouldn’t be able to answer, either. They had gone over the Constitution word by word, and State election laws. Back in New York it had taken him three weeks of hard work finding out the details that they wanted. Copies of official forms, photocopies of old forms that had been completed. There were requests for novels and films which dealt with American politics. There was so much material that he had had to take it to Washington for onward transmission in the diplomatic bag.

  There had been nothing on the subject for the next four months. Then he had been recalled again. The meeting had been in the main operations room. There had only been four others beside himself. One of them was Andropov, the Director of the KGB, and the other three were all members of the Presidium. When they had told him what they proposed it was impossible to hi
de his incredulity. He had been aware of Gromyko’s grim face and the piercing grey eyes watching his face as he argued against their plan. They had listened without comment or argument to what he had said and then they had broken off for lunch.

  When they had reassembled they were joined by a KGB colonel. He had recognized him right away. It was Rudolf Abel, his predecessor in the US. The man the Americans traded back to the Russians for the release of U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Abel looked old and ill, his white hair sparse and lank. His hands trembled as he sorted through a pile of papers, but his eyes were alert as if all his vitality were concentrated there.

  Andropov had started the meeting.

  “Comrade Kleppe, maybe we should have put this to you before this meeting so that you’d had time to absorb our proposals. In your training talk you planted the seeds of this operation. Our friend the comrade colonel will explain.”

  He nodded to Abel who looked at all the faces round the table, and finally at Kleppe’s.

  “Comrade Kleppe, when you were last here you went over the details of the United States election process and an analysis was made of the conclusions, to see if they would allow my proposals to be considered.” He paused and pressed his chest as if he were in pain. Then he continued.

  “Let us deal with basic simplicities. It is clear that in the United States a man is elected because of a combination of money and influence. You stated this many times in different ways. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “All I am saying is that we have the money, and the influence to get a man elected. That is a fact, yes?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “Which do you doubt, comrade? The money or the influence?”

  “It depends what level of election we are talking about.”

  “State Governor.”

  “That would cost a lot of dollars.”

  Abel’s eyebrows went up, and his thin lips were scornful.

  “The cost of a small patrol boat?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So you doubt the influence, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many politicians do you know, comrade?”

  “Several hundred.”

  “Important businessmen?”

  “The same.”

  “Trades Union leaders?”

  “A dozen.”

  “Fine. And you are only one of our people in the United States. We have three or four more of your calibre, hundreds who are efficient and tens of thousands who can carry out simple instructions. Is that influence enough?”

  “Sure. But there’s the question of finding a man. The timing. There are specific qualifications.”

  “Time—we have decades, comrade. Qualifications are age, residence, citizenship and no criminal record, yes?”

  “And willingness to co-operate.”

  Abel smiled coldly, and looked at Andropov who nodded.

  “I think we have such a man.” Abel leaned forward towards Kleppe. “One of the people reporting to me from the United States has the possibility of such a man. He wishes to be in politics for business reasons. He is young, a typical American, little money, no influence, likeable but almost no chance of political success. He lacks the two ingredients you identified—money and influence. We could supply those.”

  “How could we approach him?”

  Abel nodded and smiled. “We have no need to do that. The person who reports to me is this man’s friend from schooldays, from university.”

  “And how should we control the control?”

  “That would be your responsibility, comrade. The control is already known to you. He is obligated to us, and obligated to you. He has co-operated for five years without reward. Not extensively, because we have not asked for much. But he will do as we ask without pressure.”

  Kleppe smiled. “I’d prefer with pressure.”

  “Ah well, comrade. There are some points of pressure.”

  “Who is the man? Your contact?”

  “Dempsey. Andrew Dempsey.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “You do, actually. We instructed you to get him out of Fresnes in 1968. And his lover Tcharkova.”

  “My God, yes. A young fellow. The scene at the airport. Those fools from our embassy. Yes. That has possibilities. Who is his friend?”

  “A man named Powell. Logan Powell. We thought we would try to make him State Governor of Connecticut.”

  “And then?”

  Abel shrugged. “And then maybe nothing. Or maybe we do the same exercise elsewhere. It is an experiment, a tactical exercise. What our friends in the US would call practical democracy.”

  Kleppe laughed. “It could be very interesting.”

  “It will be, comrade. It will be.”

  He had spent a week with Abel and his team planning the details, and being given a picture of the Soviet resources in Connecticut and New York that were not already known to him.

  They had given him a letter and some photographs from Halenka Tcharkova. The photographs were of the girl and her daughter.

  But that had all been years ago. They had done what they set out to do. And more. They had made their man the Governor of Connecticut. And now he was President-Elect of the United States. They had put up a complex of heavily guarded buildings thirty kilometres outside the Moscow Ring Road. And over two hundred specialists had planned the operation, analysed the reports and given advice to their people on the ground in the USA. People who had worked day after day to help Powell’s campaign had no idea that they were serving some Soviet end. And others had worked with single-minded dedication, knowing that they were working for the Soviet Union but without any idea of what the Soviet plan might be.

  He had been reluctant at first, despite the planning, to risk his KGB record on the back of this audacious operation. But as the months went by the impossible became possible and the possible a fact.

  What was so amazing was that it had not, in fact, been difficult. It had been hard work. But no harder than the two American political parties normally experienced in State and Federal elections. It was just that there were no balloons, no smoke-filled back rooms. There were no discussions, no wheeler-dealing; people were given orders and they carried them out. Even the cheating, conniving, and pressures were little more than politicians normally employed. But there was no need for fund-raising except as a show, and the secret workers were not motivated for a few months. They had been motivated for years. What was more, they knew that their candidate could actually deliver what he promised. There would be genuine benefits for all. For just under thirty million dollars in cash the Soviet Union would have the Americans out of Europe. The end of NATO and the end of Europe as an independent entity. Not a shot fired, and the United States would be limited to its own territory. Slowly being squeezed, decade by decade. Even the Soviet’s most hawk-like plans had only envisaged its destruction, not its occupation. And as Krushchev once said, “The wolf does not fear the dog, but his bark.”

  The Kremlin were amazed and euphoric about their success and his own position was established for all time. There would be pressures and arguments about how Powell would be controlled, but he could cope with all that. And when the crunch came he would bow out gracefully and let them take over.

  The car came for him at twenty to ten and when he went up to the meeting there were smiling faces waiting for him. The congratulations were genuine and, although bordering on the fulsome, very welcome.

  A little later they sat at a small table and Gelov brought out his check file. He re-read the first page quickly and then looked up at Kleppe.

  “Are you satisfied about Dempsey?”

  “In what way?”

  “We have no current pressure on him except the girl.”

  “We have. When we got him and the girl out of jail it was a turning point for him. That and the girl will be enough. He helps us with conviction.”

  “Conviction?”

  “Well, maybe not conviction,
but let us say with enthusiasm and goodwill. He has the hope that in time the girl can come to the United States with the child but I have given no firm promise.”

  “He was pleased with the proxy marriage?”

  “Very pleased.”

  “And his pressure on Powell, is that enough?”

  “I expect to hear statements from Powell in the next few weeks that will confirm he is responding. He has no choice, of course. And what we require of him fits the American mood.”

  Gelov nodded. “It fits our mood too, comrade. We need consumer goods and food to keep the people quiet. They have seen the success of the dissidents in Warsaw and Prague. There are some who would like to try that here.”

  “Where’s the colonel?”

  “Abel, you mean?”

  Kleppe nodded.

  “In hospital. Dying. A week maybe, not more.”

  Gelov stood up, gathering his papers.

  “Tomorrow then, Viktor. Say ten o’clock.”

  Kleppe was shaken awake from his deep sleep at four in the morning by a KGB major and a man in plain clothes. He sat up in bed, looked at his watch and looked with disbelief at the two men.