The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “I’ve heard enough,” Talia said wearily. Petrov would accept this as progress. Not that they knew any more now than before, but the interrogation of Shelepin’s staff seemed to have stimulated some countermoves. “Tomorrow at noon,” she said and left.

  Ezdovo followed her and caught up with her outside the hospital. “You look exhausted,” he said as she fell into his arms.

  84THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1961, 1:30 A.M.s’Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands

  Frash had learned early in life that above all other human conditions, human beings most feared being alone, and that this fear was the root of the awe and trepidation inspired by death. Fear of loneliness drove people to endure the most desperate circumstances for the illusion of companionship, and even to mistakenly characterize it as love. To discover a person’s innermost secrets one had only to listen, which was a greater skill than conversation but less understood and inadequately developed in most people. Years before, he had spent a night and a day with Ina VanderLeyden; yet in that twenty-four hours he had plumbed her as thoroughly as if he had injected her with sodium pentothal. It was not animal magnetism that made this possible; rather, it was his ability to listen that encouraged her to reveal her every secret, mistaking his listening and her self-interest as intimacy. The more a person talked, the greater the attraction of the talker to the listener. Sex was a product of listening, yet few people understood this dynamic.

  Part of what Ina VanderLeyden had revealed that night three years before was that one of her firm’s clients was a South African shipping company whose vessels were registered in Liberia. The company specialized in cargos she referred to as “of a dubious nature,” so they needed to hire crewmen willing to take risks. The Dutch law firm’s principal was a former ambassador to Jakarta and Johannesburg who, through a combination of influence and well-placed guilders, had gained access to blank Dutch passports, which he then supplied to the shipping company at a substantial profit. Ina had even shown Frash the safe, opened it and revealed the documents. She had also told him that soon they would have blank passports from many countries: Belgium, Germany, Norway, Greece, even the Soviet Union.

  These and the relative obscurity of s’Hertogenbosch had combined to reunite Frash and Ina; he needed new papers, and the attractive Dutch woman was a potential source. Despite his goal, he did not move directly toward it; she was too skittish, and his unexpected arrival had spooked her. Ali wanted to press ahead, to break into the safe and be done with it, but Albert still had control, and this time he wanted to accomplish his mission with surgical precision. He was on his best behavior and used his skills to get her talking. She told him straightaway that she was now married to a man fifteen years her senior; he traveled a lot because he owned a firm that manufactured components for high-frequency radios for tanks used by NATO; their marriage was one of convenience. Ina stayed on with the law firm because it gave her “something to do,” which translated to not being alone.

  Frash took a room at an inn on the east edge of town next to a canal with water muddied by the runoff from adjacent farmlands. In the morning old men gathered along the canal to fish with long cane poles and gaudy, hand-painted cork bobbers. Last night he had not pressed her; as he knew she would, tonight she had come of her own accord. She was thirty-seven, brunette and thin, with the firm breasts of a much younger woman and long legs with perfectly shaped calves and thighs that flared upward, then tapered suddenly and unexpectedly inward at the top. She wore expensive clothes from Amsterdam and diamond jewelry, her husband having part interest in a diamond-trading firm in Antwerp.

  They spread a quilt on the ground beside the canal. Ina had brought champagne and a wicker basket filled with fresh bread, cheese and pâté. They sat half clothed under a partial moon hidden by haze. Across the canal an occasional lorry or Volkswagen raced by, but mostly they heard only the clatter of bicycles or frogs peeping from the banks. Last night there had been a chaste kiss at their parting; tonight she had shed her clothes and was on him even before they had smoothed the wrinkles from the quilt. Afterward she clung to him, the tone of her voice telling him that it was time to set the hook. “I’ve never forgotten you,” she whispered.

  “You got married,” Frash reminded her. Tease a little, don’t be too eager, make her reach.

  “What does that matter? Perhaps you’re married too.”

  “No.” It was true; there were too many important things to accomplish and life was too short for a long-term relationship. There had been someone once, but she had abandoned him, just the way his mother had died and left him alone. “I’m not well suited to marriage.” Also true.

  “Someday?”

  “I never say never,” Frash said. This was the tricky moment. Part of her needed the illusion of uninterrupted companionship, but she also required excitement, a sense of danger, immediate gratification, the insistence of the id. She was at an age where she was beginning to sense her own mortality and the loss of her youth; it was a fragile period, which meant it could be used to manipulate her.

  “Are you going to leave me again?” Ina asked, her voice wavering.

  “You have a husband.”

  “He’s not important. I want you.”

  This was what he had been waiting for. “You couldn’t go with me,” he said. Work her now: anticipate her intent, deny it, increase the intensity, block her logic with emotion.

  “I have money,” she said. “A lot of it.”

  He caressed the back of her neck. “You mean your husband’s money.”

  “My own. I’ve planned for myself.”

  “Your husband would interfere.”

  “He wouldn’t even notice,” Ina said with a touch of anguish.

  “Businessmen are collectors, which means they can’t stand losing their possessions. In time he would make it difficult for you.” Open the door to possibility gently, he warned himself. Listen to her, Albert said, while Ali whispered, “Get the combination from the cunt.”

  “He doesn’t own me,” she snapped back.

  Indignation? Good. “All merchants are the same. He has the means, so no matter where you go, he could find you. Our lives would be miserable. There would be endless legal entanglements. In my business I travel a lot and I can’t afford that sort of problem. I only have one passport and I can’t risk losing it, even for us.”

  Ina rolled onto her back and stretched her arms above her head, mulling it over; he could almost hear the desperate logic as she swallowed the bait. “But the legal problem would be temporary,” she said. “In time it would be resolved and then we would be free.”

  “I don’t have the patience for all that.”

  “Would your business allow me to travel with you?”

  She had complained that her husband would not allow her to join him on his trips. “Of course. That’s the point, isn’t it? To be free together.”

  She sat up. “What if we had different identities?”

  Albert felt the glow of success. “Possibly,” he said. “It might work.” He had told her that he was an independent insurance investigator, a specialist in fraud working for a percentage and expenses. “But how?”

  Ina was watching him now, trying to come to a final decision. “I can arrange it,” she said confidently.

  He shook his head. “It’s not likely.”

  “My firm,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The company has certain credentials. I showed you the safe that night.”

  “All I remember is you,” he lied. It was important that she think of herself as the author of the idea.

  “The safe,” she repeated. Then she reminded him of the firm’s secret business, just as she had the first time they had met.

  “I vaguely remember,” he said, “but I had only you on my mind that night.” He slipped his hand between her legs to emphasize the point.

  She moaned and shifted her weight, then pushed his hand away and rolled over. “It’s
a good thing one of us can think clearly.”

  “We’d need several identities to stay clear of him.”

  “How many?” she asked, not catching the shift in momentum.

  “At least six for each of us.”

  “It can be done.”

  “But the firm will discover the loss.”

  “Of course,” she said, “but who will they report it to? It’s illegal for them to have such documents. It’s safest to steal from thieves.”

  Her cynicism impressed him. “It’s a big risk for you.” Set the hook deeper.

  “There’s no risk,” she replied. “Can’t you see how easy it is?”

  He could. “If it’s to be done, it has to be soon.”

  “I can get them tonight,” she volunteered.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She reached for her clothes and began to dress. “I’ll get them right now and bring them back.”

  “I know somebody in Amsterdam who can fix them for us,” he said. Another lie; he would do it himself. The CIA had given him a higher education in the use and preparation of false documents. “It will be expensive.”

  She licked his lips and nuzzled her check against his. “Do you have enough?”

  “For the documents, yes, but we’ll need some money to travel on. My funds are in an English bank. I could have them wired to Amsterdam, but it might take an extra day.”

  “We’ll use my money,” she said. “I don’t want to waste even one day.”

  As good as her word, she was back before daylight, gave him the passports and money, made love to him eagerly and left before sunrise. The plan was for him to go to Amsterdam, get the documents prepared, then meet her at the airport. Where were they going? she had asked. Let it be a surprise, he said. As soon as she was gone, he checked out of the hotel, drove to Brussels, bought supplies in a printshop and caught a bus to the Ardennes. He had twelve blank passports now and a substantial sum of cash. By the time she discovered the truth he would have disappeared, and who could she tell? She had said it herself: it was safest to steal from a thief. As he sat in the bus he felt disgust for her weakness. All women were the same, and most men—including Khrushchev and Kennedy—were not much better.

  85THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1961, 5:30 A.M.Moscow

  Bailov had given Yepishev an emergency telephone number. Now, as they stood in a field west of the city, the Goat’s expression told him that there was a problem.

  “You’ve been flying high these past few weeks,” Yepishev began. “The greater the altitude, the weaker the lift. Eventually you risk a stall.”

  “This unexpected get-together is not for discussing aerodynamics.”

  Yepishev stared off into the rising sun. “When you reach the edge of the atmosphere you need the power to blast clear, or else you’re sucked down by gravity. And as difficult as it is to get clear, the reentry is an even greater danger.”

  “Get to the point,” Bailov said.

  “Some years ago I had occasion to confer with a high-ranking official of the CIA,” Yepishev said. “We talked candidly about mutual needs and problems. He is a soldier of sorts and, like us, is constrained by an unwieldy political superstructure. We agreed that a day might come when his service and ours might need to talk openly and off the record. This morning I received a message from the American; that day has come.”

  “Why tell me?”

  “He wants to talk about a traitor the Americans call REBUS. The traitor is ours, or shall I say yours?”

  “Lumbas?”

  “He was passing information to them, but they claim he’s dead now and that our people terminated him. Shot him out of hand, so to speak, in Belgrade.”

  Bailov’s heart was racing, his need for sleep suddenly gone. “What does this code name mean?”

  “A rebus is a puzzle composed of pictures; they say that Lumbas gave them photographs of classified materials from Tyuratam.”

  “You agreed to the meeting?”

  “I have no interest in Lumbas,” Yepishev said, evading the question.

  “But you can arrange such a meeting.”

  “If that’s your wish, but if it goes sour, it’s your problem and yours alone.”

  “Then you expect trouble?”

  Yepishev grinned. “I always expect trouble, my friend, and if you value your worthless skin you’ll do the same.”

  With this they shook hands and Yepishev handed him an envelope. “What’s this?” Bailov asked.

  “Confirmation of your promotion to brigadier general, effective July 1. Khrushchev is retiring old dogs, moving his own people in and up. The list came yesterday afternoon. Do svidanya, Comrade General Bailov. I’ll inform the Americans that we accept and let you know the arrangements.”

  “When?”

  Yepishev shrugged. “That’s up to the Americans.” Which meant there was no way to predict. The Party taught that Americans were one-dimensional, but professional soldiers didn’t rely on political rhetoric to form military strategy. Bailov knew otherwise; like his own people, the Americans were a paradoxical race and exceptionally unpredictable.

  On his way back to the city he drove slowly in order to think. Lumbas was dead and had been an American agent. What did it mean? More important, what did he tell the team? The American request put him in a quandary because Yepishev was sticking his neck out for him. If he told the others about the American initiative, there was some chance that Yepishev might be compromised before the meeting could take place. In the end he decided to keep the information to himself and to alert the team only when all the arrangements had been made; still, having made this decision, he was uneasy.

  Raya welcomed him with more than usual ardor, but soon after they were in bed she began pressing to find out what was wrong.

  “I’ve only got a couple of hours,” he snapped. “Are we going to waste it talking?”

  Raya raised an eyebrow and took him into her arms. “Your tenderness is overwhelming,” she whispered, but he was too lost in himself to hear the sarcasm.

  86THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1961, 7:00 A.M.Moscow

  The Third Tank Guard Regiment had earned its place in Russian history at Stalingrad when a Guards captain named Apahkin had refused food offered by the city’s starving people and said, “Give it to the women and children. The Third Tank Guards will eat iron.” For effect he had snatched up a bolt, popped it in his mouth and swallowed. From then on the men of the regiment were known as Iron Eaters; later they had participated in the assault on Berlin, but the already legendary Apahkin was not with them; the swallowed bolt had lodged in his stomach, where it ripped a hole and started an internal hemorrhage that couldn’t be stopped. He died forty-eight hours after his historic moment, not in battle but sitting in his tank while it was being refueled. Now there was an impressive bronze statue of the famed Apahkin at the regiment’s training ground north of Moscow, and every new recruit who joined the Iron Eaters was required to stand before the statue and swear allegiance to Apahkin, the Iron Eaters, the General Staff and the Motherland. At the conclusion of the sunrise ceremony the new men swallowed a plastic bolt; when it was excreted a few hours later they would attach the memento to the chain that held their metal ID tags and wear it with honor.

  A dozen black and gray tanks were lined up in front of the bronze Apahkin, their crews at attention in front of their machines. Marshal Malinovsky and Colonel General Gubin stood off to one side as witnesses to the ceremony. When it had concluded they saluted the new men, marched silently past the line of vehicles and got into a staff car for the ride back to Moscow.

  “Silly tradition,” Malinovsky complained.

  Himself a former Iron Eater, Gubin still carried his memento in a pocket over his heart. “It binds the men to their history.”

  “If that asshole Apahkin had been one of mine and lived, I would have shot the fool as a traitor,” Malinovsky said. “All we had then were the people, and by losing his own life he jeopardized the Motherland.”

/>   The marshal had been in a foul mood since Gubin had picked him up around midnight. Not that he was ever the jovial sort, but usually he was more considerate of others, and never had Gubin heard him denigrate military rituals. Something was obviously eating at the defense minister, but the general knew better than to question him.

  “Things are happening,” Malinovsky said suddenly. “First that sniveling Trubkin stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, and now Khrushchev has some sort of special team conducting an inquiry.”

  “The woman in Khrushchev’s retinue?”

  “Retinue, my ass! She’s living with the bastard.”

  “Even Furtseva didn’t have that sort of gall,” Gubin said. Ekatarina Furtseva had been Khrushchev’s longtime mistress, a onetime member of the Central Committee and the only woman to ever have the honor of reviewing the troops at the May Day parade in Red Square. Now she had lost her Central Committee position and been banished to the Ministry of Culture to brood out of the Kremlin’s limelight.

  “Would that it were that simple,” Malinovsky said. “Earlier this week several people from Shelepin’s staff were picked up and interrogated.”

  Gubin was stunned. “Who dares pick up the staff of the director of the KGB?”

  “Those with Red Badges. One of Shelepin’s secretaries was not released.”

  “Trubkin’s girlfriend?”

  Malinovsky nodded grimly. “Velak is dead.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind,” Malinovsky said. “Things are moving too fast. We have to slow them down.”

  “I thought you told me not to worry,” Gubin said. It was infuriating to listen to Malinovsky’s righteous preachings when events were unfolding in ways the defense minister had said were not possible.