The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “And you agreed to meet me in order to tell me.”

  “No, I want you to stop this nonsense. I want the killing to end.”

  “Whose?” Sylvia was having trouble following her.

  “I never expected to see that one,” Madame Celiku said, returning the photo. “His parents were dead and I assumed it was over, but the whore—his mother—was smarter than I reckoned. They said he was insane, put in an institution when he was a child. A hopeless case.”

  “Who?” Sylvia was really losing track now.

  “The son,” Madame Celiku said. “That one,” this said with a finger waved at the photo.

  “Institutionalized?” Albanian, crazy? Were they talking about the same man?

  “When he was young, just after they moved to America—during the war. This came from his father’s own lips. We were in bed, which is always where these secrets come out. He wept—said it was hopeless. He loved his son and couldn’t come to grips with the boy’s insanity. The French handle such things better.”

  “Yet the son visited you?”

  “Last winter. He was a handsome man, nearly the likeness of his father; he had the same gestures, same eyes, even the voice. He’d have an easy time with women.”

  “How many times did you see him?” Sylvia wanted to ask more but something held her back.

  “Just once.”

  “Then what?”

  “I have no idea,” the old woman said, pivoting her wheelchair. “He never came back.”

  “But you wanted me to know that he had been in an institution?”

  “Of course,” the old woman said, tugging a satin cord that brought the maid at a trot.

  “I don’t understand why.”

  The woman stared over her shoulder. “Because I sensed that you would know what must be done.”

  Sylvia needed to talk to Valentine. Did Arizona know any of this? If he did, why had Frash been recruited into the Company? “Do you still think that?”

  Madame Celiku followed Sylvia to the door; when she opened it, the old woman grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her back. “Kill him,” she whispered. “Before others die.”

  70FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1961, 12:35 A.M.Paris

  There were no floodlights on the spires of Notre Dame, but the lights of passing traffic played tricks and made it seem as if the cathedral’s flying buttresses were swaying. Valentine and Sylvia sat on the quay that ringed île St.-Louis; it was cool and threatening rain. A couple had wrapped themselves in blankets at the base of the wall behind them. A convoy of barges passed by and sent small waves slapping against the concrete embankments while Sylvia recounted her meeting with Madame Celiku, taking care to repeat the old woman’s precise words.

  “You’re sure she said there was something between her and Frash’s old man?”

  “Unvarnished,” Sylvia said, “which is unusual. Even woman to woman, most of us wouldn’t be so explicit.”

  “And she made a point of the fact that at one time Frash’s dipstick might have been a little short of oil?”

  “She blames Frash’s mother for his condition. Both parents were mixed up with the Albanian liberationists, but apparently Frash’s mother was the driving force.”

  Vallentine shrugged. Albanians again. “She’s old. Age plays tricks with memories.” He had noticed this in himself—a sign of his own mortality, he supposed—but he seldom let such thoughts linger. “If Frash was a rubber-room alumnus he’d never have made it through the CIA screening process. I don’t buy it.”

  “The Company is fanatical about screening candidates. We’re required to take a polygraph every year, part of the institutional paranoia about possible infiltration by the Russians. It’s possible, I think, that there could be misjudgments made in various psychological and emotional analyses, but not in a background check. You can’t believe what sort of resources are directed at this,” Sylvia said. “It’s the cornerstone of the selection process. If Frash was in a booby hatch when he was a kid, there would be no way to hide it, and no way the Company would hire him.”

  “Maybe the old bat’s just beating her gums.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” she said. “But—”

  “But nothing about Frash has been reasonable so far,” he said, finishing her thought.

  “The father married another woman. Madame Celiku is obviously still jealous. Frash was close to his mother, so maybe she told me the story to make trouble for Frash.”

  “Do you buy that?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Jealousy doesn’t have much to do with logic.”

  The couple behind them were passing a cigarette back and forth. “We really don’t know a hell of a lot about Frash,” Valentine said. “But what we do know smells more and more like two-day-old catfish.”

  When they got back to the hotel they went directly to their respective bedrooms. Later he heard the shower come on; the water hissed for a long time.

  Later still he found himself standing in her doorway. “Get out,” she warned from the darkness.

  “I think it’s time we had ourselves a chat with our friend back in the home office,” Valentine said.

  “We can discuss it in the morning.”

  Only later did it occur to him that she had been as awake as he was, and he wondered what this meant.

  71FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1961, 8:15 P.M.Fulks Run, Virginia

  The estate was right out of a high-rolling realtor’s dream: sculpted green pastures, a dozen sleek brown Morgan horses grazing free, a long white gravel driveway with crocuses poking up on either side, a red-brick house with eight white Doric pillars, Negro servants in black uniforms, beagles in small kennels beside a white barn, the whole place contained by white-slat fencing laced with photoelectric cells and monitored by several lookouts with 30.06s and German-made scopes. It was a fortress in disguise, and now that the day’s meetings had ended and the sun had set, the perimeter was awash in floodlights while armed guards in black kept to the shadows. Arizona stood at the window in his room and stared out into the white light that washed the grounds.

  The entire day had been spent discussing the Cuban operation, and he had been pressed to confirm that Cuban pilots would receive new MiGs at the end of May. It was true, he had assured the group. The information came from a high-level asset called REBUS—Frash’s asset—but he had volunteered no details and the others had accepted it because sources of this magnitude were not customarily revealed in such a mixed group. Despite his assurances, his colleagues and a liaison man from the White House had grilled him about the dates and the facts; he had stuck with what he knew. Cuban pilots were being trained to fly MiG-17s in Czechoslovakia; by the end of May they would be back home and with them would come a squadron of Soviet-built jets. Once the MiGs were in place an invasion would be impossible without full-scale—meaning American—air support.

  This single piece of intelligence from Frash’s asset was pivotal to the timing of the operation; the White House man had whined several times that the CIA was trying to force an executive branch decision without giving the president full information. Arizona had wanted to slap the arrogant little bastard in his three-hundred-dollar suit, but he had repressed the urge and calmly explained again that Cuba was not his venue, that it was mere chance that one of his people had learned this, and that as a team player he had simply passed it along. If he hadn’t, he would be back in the office rather then getting the third degree in the Shenandoah Valley. What the White House should be doing, he argued, was thanking their lucky stars that the CIA was so efficient and that one of their not-inexpensive assets had paid off. Without this break they risked sending Cuban expats and some World War II–vintage birds into a squadron of modern jet fighters. After this reply the White House man had sulked, and Arizona had congratulated himself.

  The White House man was thirty-five at the most, but had zeroed in on the most crucial factor of the plan. All the while he was urging the man and his own colleagues to not worry, Arizona kn
ew that there was no justification for such advice. Frash had slid into parts unknown, so there was no way to get confirmation. Venema was still investigating. Valentine and Sylvia had not reported from Yugoslavia in some time, the damned Belgrade station chief had gotten himself snuffed over some Yugo dame, and now his widow was all bent out of shape. To top it all off, he had gotten a cable from Mossad liaison in Washington, D.C. saying that the Israelis were set to receive the special shipment in Istanbul and would transfer it to Tel Aviv, not Haifa. Would Washington please confirm final disposal of the shipment? What the hell did that mean? Be calm, he urged himself throughout the day; chaos is only a state of mind.

  When the phone rang Arizona expected it would be Bissell wanting yet another assurance about the MiGs, but when he answered, a female voice said, “Please confirm by voice, then pick up line five.”

  When Arizona said his name into the phone a special device in the telecom center verified his identity and emitted an approving tone. He pushed 5 on the console. “Yes?”

  “Venema here.”

  “It’s about time. What have you got?”

  Ever the consultant, Venema described his travels, the meeting with Dr. Missias and the encounter with Frash’s ex-girlfriend in California. Only then did he lay out the possibilities. “One, Missias is right all the way. Two, Missias was correct with his initial diagnosis, but wrong about his reading of the spontaneous remission. Three, Missias is wrong all the way.”

  “And the winner is?” Arizona asked impatiently.

  “The ex-girlfriend corroborates Missias.”

  “Meaning Frash is a nut case?”

  “Certifiable, and chances are that if I keep digging I’ll find more. The Calvin woman is not likely to be the only downstream victim.”

  “No,” Arizona said. “As of now you’re out of it.”

  “We should formally review the instruments,” Venema protested. “This has to be viewed as a temporary setback. We need to do some more fine-tuning, that’s all. We both know that the principle of paper vetting is the wave of the future—”

  “Fuck the future,” Arizona said and slammed the receiver down. Great, he thought. Frash was a psycho, and today he had used his mysterious asset’s information to set the timing of the Cuban invasion. Jesus, schizoid and violent. How the hell had an apparently severe nut case faked Venema and him? Forget the past, he cautioned himself. If Frash is alive he’s a serious risk not only to you but to the Soviet-East Europe division and the Company itself. What if he’s wrong about the MiGs? Or lied about them? Was this Soviet disinformation? The big question now was whether Frash was alive, and if so, where? It was going to be a sleepless night.

  A second call came an hour later. “This is Crawdad, remember me?”

  “I’m glad you called.” It was the truth.

  Valentine said, “Your boy’s asset was a Russian named—”

  “No names,” Arizona said, cutting him off. Was?

  “This line isn’t secure?”

  “More a matter of prudence. We need a meet.”

  “We’ve had similar thoughts over here,” Valentine said.

  “You’ll have to come west,” Arizona said. “I can’t leave the country just now.”

  “Say where.”

  “New York. Same drill as last time; I’ll leave instructions.”

  “You know about Gabler?”

  “We’ll talk.” Of course he knew about Gabler; to nobody’s surprise his widow was threatening to talk to the media about her husband’s death. Arizona felt caught in a whirlpool pulling him downward at an increasing rate. “What about your primary objective?”

  “A Kiowa Indian once told me that the secret to hunting buffalo is finding the damned things. So I asked him, ‘How do you find them?’ He says, ‘Follow their turds. When you find a wet one you’ll know you’re close.’ In this case I’d say the turds over this way are getting wetter.”

  “Get to New York fast.” What did they have?

  “Right, Jefe,” Valentine said and hung up.

  72SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1961, 4:30 A.M.Moscow

  Talia dialed the telephone number that Ezdovo and Melko had found in Trubkin’s apartment. It was early morning, a time ideal for catching somebody off guard. The phone rang several times before it was answered by a sleepy male voice. “Mandrich here. Who the hell wants to talk at this hour?”

  “I’m sorry to call so early, but I want very much to see you.”

  “Who is this?”

  “A friend of Roman Trubkin.” Talia had a naturally enticing voice, but when she made an effort she could be irresistible and now the charm was turned all the way up.

  “Trubkin?” She could hear Mandrich struggling to clear the cobwebs from his mind. “Poor bastard was killed in a traffic accident. I saw his obituary in Soviet Air Force. Have we met?”

  “No, Colonel, but I would like to remedy that.”

  “Of course,” he said too eagerly, but just as quickly his defense instincts kicked in and he backed off. “Why?”

  “You were his friend.”

  “I have many friends, but their women don’t call me out of the blue.”

  “Trubkin was murdered,” she said, “and I’m not his woman.”

  There was no delay in his reaction this time. “Who are you?” he asked in a whisper. Then, “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “You can call me Talia, and I assure you that your friend was murdered. He was injected with a lethal dose of a drug.”

  “The paper called it a traffic accident.”

  “Do you believe what you read in Soviet newspapers?”

  “We weren’t close friends,” Mandrich said in an obvious effort to distance himself from the potential trouble that Trubkin now represented.

  She had expected this. “He had your telephone number.”

  “He probably knew lots of people. Call one of them.”

  “No, Colonel, he had only your number.”

  “I saw him recently,” Mandrich confessed.

  “I want to meet you,” Talia repeated.

  “My schedule won’t permit it,” he said weakly.

  “Then you must change your schedule to accommodate us.” Us, not me; give him a sense of a group, she told herself. Let him guess which one.

  “I have important meetings.”

  “Call in sick. It’s a time-honored practice.”

  “I’m sorry,” he snapped, “but I don’t make it a habit to engage in verbal jousts with the mentally ill. You need help, young lady.” Mandrich was adept at tactical switches; he had moved quickly from defense to attack.

  “I’ll send a vehicle. Say in one hour?”

  “Impossible,” he persisted.

  “Would Lubyanka be more convenient?”

  There was a long pause this time; she guessed that he was weighing nonexistent options. “I’ll be waiting,” he said with resignation.

  “Your address?”

  “You don’t have it?”

  She sensed a glimmer of hope in his voice and countered it with a preemptive laugh. “Don’t be difficult, Colonel. I can have it in minutes, so let’s not play childish games. I want to talk to you and that’s all. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “You’re certain he was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  He gave her the address and hung up abruptly.

  “Well?” Melko asked after she set the phone down.

  “He’ll be there,” she said. “He has no choice.”

  73SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1961, 5:45 A.M.Moscow

  Colonel Sergei Mandrich lived in a brown apartment building in a nest of similar buildings surrounded by pockmarked streets and narrow sidewalks buckled by hard winters. There were no trees or parks nearby, and the nearest metro station was three kilometers away. The colonel was standing by the curb checking his watch when Melko eased the Volga to a stop. Talia opened the back door and watched Mandrich ease himself in as if he would be sitting on eggs. He was short and muscular, with a
neatly trimmed blond mustache, a thick neck and straight white teeth. His head was an odd shape and his eyes set in such a way as to give him the appearance of a snake.

  “Thank you for coming,” Talia began.

  Mandrich tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. “Let’s get this over with,” he said grimly.

  She noticed that he avoided looking at her. “You saw Trubkin before his death.”

  “It was a month before that, maybe more. Who remembers details? We met and had a few drinks.”

  “You invited him?”

  “No, no, it was Roman who called me.”

  “Why?”

  Mandrich pondered this for a while before answering. “The two of us go—went—back a long way. We met a couple of girls that night—you know, the usual sort of thing,” blushing when he said it.

  From his demeanor Talia understood exactly what sort of girls and night it had been. “But you hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

  “It had been at least two years. He lost his position in the cosmonaut program and dropped out of sight. Trubkin didn’t like to lose and this wasn’t his fault. His inner ear wasn’t right and that was the end of it. An act of God.” He looked to see her reaction and seemed relieved when she said nothing.

  “You’ve still not told me why Trubkin wanted to see you. You leave me to infer that it was purely social, but I can tell that you were surprised by his call.”

  “It was mostly social.”

  A hedge. “Mostly?”

  Again Mandrich paused to gather his thoughts. “He asked some questions about how personnel are assigned to sensitive projects.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t volunteer, and I didn’t press him. His questions weren’t anything earth-shattering, so I saw no harm in answering.”

  “I see,” Talia said, letting the silence work for her. Few people under stress could keep quiet; it was as if a sheer volume of words could stave off danger.