The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  She stared at them for a while. “I see it,” she said, “but whose hand?”

  “Each time we get closer,” he said, “it seems we drift farther from the answers.”

  “When you walk through the forest,” Talia said, “you often don’t see your destination until you’re on top of it, but you can’t let your inability to see it stop you from going ahead.” Petrov’s criticism still burned, and she was determined that if reaching their destination meant pushing the team to its limits she would do so. If Petrov could push, so could she.

  81WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1961, 2:00 P.M.Moscow

  Experience had taught Leonid Sarnov that a good tail needed determination more than skill; over the long haul energy ground talent into dust, so it was the determined tracker who invariably had the advantage, especially if he had a little luck. Not that he would need much luck with this Velak fellow, who moved like a hundred-year-old tortoise. No fast movements, no mysterious destinations, no backtracking or crossovers, nothing unpredictable. It was hard to believe he was KGB; in fact, it was hard to believe that someone like Velak could be of the slightest interest to Melko, much less so important that he would erase a debt just to have the man followed. Eventually he decided that it didn’t matter; if this was what Melko wanted, this was what he would get, even though it was laughably easy.

  It had been forty-eight hours since Velak emerged from the warehouse in Nagatino, went straight to the KGB complex on Dzerzhinsky Square, stayed until 6:00 P.M., then took the metro home and spent the night. Yesterday he had come out at 8:00 A.M., taken the metro to work, again appeared at six and come straight home. Today had started the same way but this time he had unexpectedly emerged at noon and taken the metro home. Lenya had been suspicious immediately, but he was not the sort to assume the worst; maybe Velak couldn’t stomach the food in the KGB’s canteens for three days running. A few weeks earlier, workers in the Foreign Ministry had rioted over their food and used their forks to stab cooks, one another and security guards in a bloody melee that lasted for hours. A woman showed him sets of fresh tine marks on her left arm and said that workers in the Foreign Ministry now had only spoons as utensils. Perhaps conditions were the same at the KGB.

  When Velak entered his building at noon, Lenya engaged a sewer repair crew across the street in conversation; like most good Russians, they preferred a lively chat with an odd-looking stranger rather than work, so they poured a cup of vodka for him and hunkered down to enjoy the respite. Lenya regaled them with stories of women he had known, but all the while he had a perfect vantage point; there were only two entrances to Velak’s building and he could see them both. In the two hours since Velak had gone in nobody else had entered or left the building. A muscle-bound Asian in a too-tight suit had walked past twice in a forty-minute span, but neither Lenya nor his newfound comrades paid any obvious attention. Even so, he had seen the man seem to glance at the door on his first pass, then pause briefly and look up the next time, and this behavior made Lenya edgy. The Asian wore a suit with all the confidence of a nun in a bathing suit, and one of his pant cuffs was stuck in the top of a high black boot. Every Muscovite knew that Asians were the most backward of people, but what sort of lout wore boots with a suit? It was nye kulturny. Mongols were not welcome in Moscow, especially in an area such as this. Probably nothing, Lenya cautioned himself, but if Velak had come home just for lunch, what the hell was taking so long? How could he follow someone who was sitting as tight as a constipated goose, and if he couldn’t follow him, how could he erase his debt? It was time for a decision. What life taught, if one cared to learn, was that one’s emotions and intuitions should not be ignored. Knowledge and reason were adequate for civilized pursuits, but tracking someone on the sly was an uncivilized act.

  The trick to getting into places where you didn’t belong was to pretend that you did. Lenya went to the door to the lobby and stood so that the day watchman could see him, but after several minutes the door had not opened, and when he leaned close to look through the glare he saw that the console was vacant. Circling to the service entrance he tried again, but still got no response. Something was wrong. His instinct was to break in the door, but Velak was KGB and the building might be wired to a nearby security center; if an alarm was tripped, the place would be quickly swarming with armed and nervous KGB personnel, and if it turned out that Velak was all right, he would know that he was being followed and that would end it. Be smart, Lenya cautioned himself; perhaps the watchman has stepped away to piss. But after a few more minutes the man had not returned, so he decided to call from a public phone across the street.

  “Stay put,” Melko said after hearing a brief summary of the situation.

  Ten minutes later Lenya was in the rear of a black panel truck recounting events to Melko and two muscular men with hard faces. Bailov was the one with extremely short hair—a soldier, he guessed. The other one had a wild beard and hard eyes, and he knew immediately that this was not the sort of man to trifle with. He was introduced as Ezdovo. Lenya related every detail, including the peculiar behavior of the odd-looking Asian wearing boots and a suit, and he apologized for not acting sooner, but Melko dismissed his self-reproach and congratulated him for exercising caution.

  “How do we get past the alarm?” Bailov asked.

  Melko smiled. “We go over it.”

  With Lenya guarding one end of the alley and Ezdovo positioned at the other, Melko and the soldier disappeared. After a few minutes Bailov whistled at them from the service entrance. There was no sign of the security man. Lenya was left to guard the entrances while Ezdovo hunted for the doorman and the other two went upstairs to check on Velak.

  Lenya sat at the console and memorized the layout for future reference. Information was life’s treasure; what had no meaning now might have great significance later. After a while a grim Ezdovo reappeared and went past him without speaking. Another half hour passed, and then the truck pulled up to the service entrance. Lenya dialed Velak’s room. “The truck’s outside.”

  “Open the door,” Melko said softly.

  A few minutes later a covered body was carried downstairs on a blanket by Melko and Ezdovo. Then another body was then brought up from the cellar and loaded on the truck, which immediately departed with Ezdovo and Bailov, leaving Melko and Lenya alone.

  “Velak is dead,” Melko said, and then added, “It’s not your fault. In any event, your debt is erased.”

  “No,” Lenya snapped. “I failed.”

  Melko patted his shoulder and left him stewing. What the hell was going on? If Velak was dead, the debt could not be erased. He decided that he would not rest until the account was settled to his liking.

  The sewer repair crew had returned to work after their lunch break, and Lenya strolled over to join them. “How big is the sewer system?” he asked. The place where they were standing was at least two meters deep, but he could see smaller tunnels and pipes intersecting the main below them.

  “All fucked up,” one man said. “Several centuries of systems, all jerry-built. You can drive a truck through some of the tunnels; in others only a starving snake can wiggle through.”

  “Could someone get into the building across the street from down there?”

  “Why do you want to know?” one of the men asked; the question triggered predictable Russian paranoia.

  “There’s an eager woman on the fifth floor, but her husband is KGB. She told me that if I could get into her flat she would give me a time to remember, but I’m no fool; that building is probably rigged with alarms.”

  The men smiled, any doubts they had harbored now transformed by the universal male bond. Their new friend was a man with a mission, and men had to stick together, especially when it came to hanging horns on some KGB shit. “Come on,” one of the men said as he started down a ladder. “We’ll show you how to crawl through our holes into hers.”

  A metal ladder led up from the tunnel to the basement of Velak’s building. “These hatches aren’t
locked?” Lenya asked.

  “No need,” one of the men said. “Only unfortunates like us come down here. It stinks, there are poison-gas pockets, cave-ins, armies of rats, and it’s such a maze that half the time even we get lost. Once a month we find bodies or skeletons. It’s enough to keep all but the worst fools out. Besides,” he added with a sarcastic laugh, “there’s no crime in Moscow,” this being the Kremlin line.

  “But if the building’s wired,” Lenya argued, “it makes no sense to leave the bottom open.”

  “It’s not open,” the man corrected. “The hatch is hard-wired into the security system.” He held out a long black wire with alligator clips on each end. “We have to notify the KGB if we’re going to work in one of their playhouses. Years ago they always had a man come with us to supervise, but these days even the KGB has limits to its manpower. Now we simply bypass the connection and attach a seal when we’re done.”

  “So I can’t get in this way either?”

  The man smiled. “What are friends for?” He climbed the ladder and motioned for Lenya to follow. When they were at the hatch the man attached one alligator clip to the hatch frame, the second to the hatch itself, and opened it. “See? When the wires are in place you can open it and the circuit is preserved; the wire’s long enough so that it won’t get in the way. When we’re done we loop a new seal through the frame and wire it into place.” He showed Lenya where.

  “Shouldn’t there be a seal on there now?” Lenya asked, craning his neck.

  The man shone his light around the hatch, then down the ladder. “Is there a seal down there?” he called to his comrades below.

  There were sounds of movement below. “Nothing,” a voice called up.

  “Bastards,” the man muttered as he took a new one from his pocket and gave it to Lenya. “Nobody gives a shit anymore. They hire new people, teach them nothing and expect old-timers like us to clean up after them. It’s a fucking disgrace. When you come out, make sure you put this on,” he said with a nod toward the seal in Lenya’s hand.

  When they descended into the tunnel again the men slapped their newfound friend on the back, gave him a flashlight and the wire with the alligator clips and went off to finish what was left of their workday. “Leave everything behind the ladder,” the sewer gang leader said. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow. And give her a few pumps for us.”

  As soon as he was alone Lenya searched around the base of the ladder and found a broken seal looped over a valve behind it. He picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket, then turned his head slowly to let the light cover the area in a slow sweep. It would have been better if the workmen had let him come alone, but done was done: the thin layer of muck around the ladder was obliterated by their footprints. Five different mains intersected a few meters away; two of the channels were man-sized and the other three were smaller but navigable. Along the curved sides of the tubes were narrow cobblestone curbs that soon petered out. Thirty meters down one of the smaller tubes he found what he was looking for: a single set of fresh footprints made by a short, wide shoe with an unusual rippled pattern. A boot print.

  Three hours later Lenya emerged in a neighborhood he didn’t recognize. It was an old area interspersed with small, newer apartment buildings and minor estates gone to seed, probably the homes of doctors and merchants who had fallen from grace in the civil war. It was typical that such fine places had gone unoccupied for all these decades, but his countrymen were a superstitious lot; houses retained spirits and accumulated their earthly misfortunes. Some people laughed at superstitions, but he didn’t. What was God if not a spirit?

  There was a small park near the exit from the sewer. Lenya found a bench and sat down, his back aching from being doubled over for so long. The prints, he guessed, belonged to the odd-looking Asian he had seen. There was the broken seal for evidence that somebody had entered the building, and the footprints were fresh. It was possible that somebody had gained entrance through the sewer, dispatched the security man, killed Velak and escaped underground. The tracks showed that the man had made his way confidently; there were no signs of hesitation, no wrong turns; he had come straight as a crow to this exit. Why? Lighting a cigarette, Lenya sat back to study the area. Melko might think that his debt had been discharged, but it hadn’t been, at least not yet.

  82WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1961, 9:00 P.M.Stuyvesant Falls, New York

  During a lifetime in the trade Arizona had worked with or against the top echelon of intelligence professionals on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Some contacts recurred over many years and formed the basis of rudimentary relationships, a few of which were shaded with a sense of trust but most were antagonistic. In Arizona’s mind his foes fell into distinct categories. Wolf of the East German Stasi was a brilliant strategist but an archenemy, pure and simple; Holicik of Czechoslovakia was at the other extreme, a muddling, dull-eyed bureaucrat who needed written orders to know when and where to take a shit and was no threat to anyone, except perhaps to himself; Yepishev of the GRU was somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Somehow the Russian had never seemed as ideologically fire-hardened as some of his colleagues; he discharged his military intelligence responsibilities with apparent efficiency, but Arizona had sensed in the man the resentment of an old-line soldier saddled with unsavory duty, resigned to doing what was required, but loathing it at every turn.

  The last time he had seen Yepishev it had been a one-for-one trade: an American-educated Czech taken in Prague for an Estonian netted in Las Vegas. The Czech had been caught trying to photograph a new Soviet tank during Warsaw Pact maneuvers; the Soviet agent had tried to recruit a McDonnell Douglas engineer in order to buy information about a new interceptor prototype. The trade had been made in Helsinki, which was the preferred venue for such exchanges; Berlin was often painted by writers as the capital of East–West exchanges, but getting in and out of that city was fraught with staging difficulties. The Finnish capital was easier for all involved, and the Finns were politically predisposed to minding their own business. Yepishev was stiff, taciturn, efficient and confident; yet in Helsinki he had unexpectedly opened an avenue so frightening that Arizona had not allowed himself to think about the implications. Without even a preamble the smelly Russian had proposed the unthinkable.

  “We have similar problems,” Yepishev had begun. “We both dance to the tune of politicians who put their own fortunes ahead of their country’s. By law you and I must obey our civilian bosses, so we’re not so different, but we’re also professionals, which means that we can act reasonably when necessary. We look to common sense, not ideology.”

  Arizona let the Russian talk, sensing a proposition in the offing.

  “Our individual objectives are not dissimilar. Each of us is charged with maintaining national security through national strength. We protect our nations’ secrets.”

  Not quite true, but almost. In practice the Soviets were far more aggressive in stimulating trouble as a way of depleting American resources and prestige. Yet Yepishev was essentially correct, and Arizona acknowledged this with a nod.

  “I think a day might come when you and I need to talk with the sort of candor that our political leaders would neither comprehend nor condone.”

  Arizona knew that there was no suggestion of treason in this proposal. It was just what it seemed to be: one professional opening a communications channel to another, and the politicians be damned. Right now there was reason to remember the Russian, Yepishev’s position in the GRU making the growing notion even more attractive. As the Soviet Union’s smaller intelligence service, the GRU was an acknowledged poor second to the KGB. In the West the rivalry between the two organizations was well known; only the true depth of the animus and exactly how the rivalry affected their operational cooperation was in doubt. Given the long-standing trouble between the two, Yepishev might be receptive to an overture, especially if Lumbas represented a KGB effort gone sour. The Russians’ alleged execution of Lumbas without careful damage assessment strongly su
ggested that there were some problems on the other side. If Lumbas had been a danger and had given the West accurate information about the Soviet missile program, Yepishev would want to know, and if he was appreciative he might use the contact to help them trace Frash. The key was to move as quickly as possible; the invasion of Cuba was only a couple of weeks away.

  Pouring himself a brandy, Arizona reminded himself that Yepishev had made a gesture; now it was time to reciprocate.

  83WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1961, 11:50 P.M.Moscow

  Talia needed a long, deep sleep but could not afford the time. Two of Bailov’s men had driven her to the Heart Institute and she had napped in the backseat; when they arrived she was still groggy, her legs as heavy as cement as she trudged along the dark corridors of the hospital.

  The two bodies were laid out on tables. The watchman was fiftyish, with short white hair on his chest and protruding ribs; Velak was short and pudgy, with thin legs and wide shoulders, an assembly of ill-fitted parts. Both bodies had been opened with a Y-shaped incision; their viscera were in stainless steel pans.

  Ezdovo was in a corner, his head against the wall; Bailov and Melko sat on the edge of a metal desk. Gnedin was standing between the bodies, still wearing a rubberized black apron and elbow-length gloves splashed with blood.

  “You look like a dead fish,” Talia said by way of announcing her presence.

  Gnedin peeled off a glove, tossed it into a sink and rubbed his neck. “This one fell down the stairs,” he said with a nod toward the watchman, “and our friend Velak died of an embolism.”

  “Plain language.”

  “Air bubble in his heart. Sometimes happens naturally, but not in this case. Not in either case. This one’s neck was broken before he went down the stairs; Velak was injected with the same gauge needle as used on Trubkin, and expertly applied. Both died instantaneously.” Gnedin tried to explain the medical evidence, but his colleagues were too weary for technical trivia. “Murders,” he summed up.