The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “Don’t misread me,” Malinovsky growled back. “It was inevitable that an investigation take place. We don’t want to stop it; we simply want to slow it down and send it off in the wrong direction. The Albanians need time to mount their response.”

  “Assuming that they will.”

  “I know what they’ll do,” Malinovsky said. He also had an idea of what else needed doing now. When a opponent was deployed in line you broke him by attacking his flank, then wheeling 90 degrees to deplete the enemy a few at a time. It was time to give Khrushchev’s new friends reason to worry about their own health.

  87THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1961, NOONKosino, Russia

  When Talia and Ezdovo arrived, Melko was sitting on the stoop staring into the distance, and she saw immediately that something was wrong. Gnedin and Bailov were in the bedroom with Petrov, whose flesh was ashen, his eyes swollen. “Is he . . . ?”

  “Not yet,” Gnedin said. “Cancer spreads, invades the organs, shuts down systems. With radiation we can try to kill the cancer cells faster than the healthy ones, but at best it only retards the process.”

  “You said he refused radiation,” Talia reminded the doctor.

  “He can’t refuse now,” Gnedin said. “The decision is ours to make.”

  “No,” Talia said. “It’s his life and he told us what he wanted. No X rays and no drugs. He’s still the chief.”

  “Morphine for pain,” Gnedin said.

  “Nothing,” she said firmly.

  “At least let me move him to a hospital,” he pleaded.

  She glanced at Bailov and her husband, who nodded. “All right,” she said, “but no intervention.”

  “He’ll die,” Gnedin said.

  “In his own way and by his own choice,” Talia said. “We owe him that.”

  88THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1961, 8:30 P.M.Lamoura, Franche-Comté, France

  This time Arizona’s orders to Valentine and Sylvia had been explicit: Return to Paris, track down Frash’s Albanian contacts and stay in touch. If they could backtrack his involvement with the Albanian expatriates they might be able to make some educated guesses about where he was. Though not knowing how the meeting with Arizona would turn out, Sylvia had anticipated something like this and in their absence had put Mr. Li on the case. On landing at Orly Airport they took a cab to the Marais and walked to the hotel.

  After they showered and changed into fresh clothes, Li brought tea to their flat and sat down. “There is a gentleman at the Sûreté,” he began. “He is associate director of the domestic intelligence branch, and by all accounts is a competent man and exceptionally ambitious.” He paused. “Yet Monsieur Barrie is not without vices. He is both an enthusiastic gambler and consistently unlucky in games of chance. At present he is also unable to repay certain individuals, and has approached an acquaintance of mine for a loan to consolidate his debts. But as fate would have it, my colleague is not sufficiently capitalized, so I have agreed to finance Monsieur Barrie’s loan if certain stipulations are met. Barrie has been involved in investigations focusing on what some have characterized as a war between Albanian expatriate factions. I’ve had a good chat with him, and it seems that our friends at the Sûreté have been suppressing information. For example, Monsieur Barrie has reason to believe that certain recent events in the village of Lamoura are related to the events here.” He handed Sylvia a slip of paper with a telephone number on it. “I have informed Barrie that when you are satisfied with his cooperation, his fiscal problem will be ended.”

  “Just like that?” Valentine asked.

  “He has no alternative,” Li said solemnly.

  Sylvia dialed the number and asked for Barrie.

  “A moment, please,” a woman said.

  “Barrie here.”

  “Li gave me this number,” Sylvia said.

  The voice shifted from satin to burlap. “Oui,” he said, and a long pause ensued. Was he trying to collect his thoughts? “Lamoura is a village north of Geneva,” he said in bursts. “Franche-Comté. It may be of interest. Historically,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper. “Concentrate on late March. Ask for Constable Grave; he will help you. Tell him I directed you to him.”

  “Thank you,” Sylvia said.

  Barrie lingered on the line. “You will tell Li that we have spoken?”

  In other words, is my debt canceled? “We’ll let you know how it works out,” she said and hung up.

  “Well?” Valentine asked.

  “We’re taking a short trip,” Sylvia said, retrieving her coat and heading for the door.

  Li took them to a garage behind the hotel; there was a new Jaguar under a black tarp and he gave Sylvia the keys. “A windfall,” he explained. “It’s yours for as long as you need it.”

  Sylvia flirted with the red line on the tachometer, but the Jaguar clung solidly to the road; after a hundred kilometers Valentine admitted that she knew what she was doing and leaned back to sleep. They stopped once for petrol and covered the five hundred and fifty kilometers in four hours flat.

  Constable Grave, who worked out of his home, was bearded, five feet tall and wide-waisted, with sunburned cheeks and chapped lips. He came to the door with his trousers unbuttoned and a shirt in his hand. “Yes?” He had small eyes set close together, a thick, protruding mouth and a chestful of gray hair that grew onto his shoulders like furry epaulets. He resembled a species of East Indian monkey.

  Sylvia explained that she was a journalist from the Paris bureau of the Associated Press. She flashed a card from her purse and earned a grunt from the constable. She had covered several murders of Albanians in Paris and had been directed to Lamoura with the suggestion that there might be a connection here.

  “Who sent you?” the constable asked.

  “Monsieur Barrie of the Sûreté.”

  Grave flashed a smile. “My wife’s second cousin,” he explained. “I read about the Paris killings and told him that I had a possible link between his stiffs and mine.”

  “You had a murder here?”

  Grave began buckling his belt. “We found the body on the morning of March 14. A fire had been started but rain put it out before it could get going.” The constable grinned. “At first I thought it was a prank, but when I got up there and smelled the place, I knew. You can always tell that smell. Not at all like a sheep or a cow—or anything else, for that matter. Sweeter. You never get used to it. That’s why I left Paris: too many stiffs. Here death is seldom violent, but there are exceptions.”

  “You say you notified the Sûreté?”

  Grave rolled his hand. “As a matter of procedure. I may live in the country but I’m no bumpkin. I trained in Paris and have seen the worst it has to offer. I could tell you stories.”

  “The Sûreté wasn’t interested?” Sylvia asked.

  “Here we say that Paris is interested only in Paris. Understand?”

  She smiled encouragement. “But you suspected something.”

  “Certainly.” Grave slid his shirt over his head as he led them around the house to a brick garage. His office was up a set of steep wooden stairs built along an outer wall. A fat Siamese cat was asleep on the window ledge. “We aren’t complicated here,” he said. “If one of the villagers goes awry I pick him up and set him straight. Country people still feel shame, so you can talk to them and settle them down. It’s not like Paris. Up there. . . .” He didn’t finish.

  Grave fetched a green folder from a battered wooden file cabinet and set it on a table. The grainy photos displayed black-and-white gore. The corpse’s death mask distorted its features and there was some bloating, but the fire damage was not extensive.

  “Did the newspapers report this?” Sylvia asked.

  “Locally, yes, but only here, and it was, shall we say, homogenized. There are lots of tourists around here and we depend on their generosity, so we can’t have our newspapers scaring them off. We characterized the cause of death as a probable suicide.”

  “But it was murder?”

 
“Look at the photographs and read my report. I wrote it with care—so that one could conclude that it was suicide or murder, a necessary blurring of distinctions, but an expert would see right off what I suspected.”

  “Fingerprints,” Valentine said, picking up a small card from the folder.

  Grave bowed. “Procedure.”

  The Americans were impressed. The little constable was thorough, confident and perhaps considerably more competent than appearances suggested. “Why are you telling us this?” Sylvia pressed. “I’m a journalist.”

  The constable fumbled in a desk drawer and spoke to them while looking for his pipe. “Simple. You’re not.”

  “You saw my credentials.”

  “Ink is cheap.” Grave smiled. “American intelligence, I would guess. Barrie sent you, is that not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “There,” the little man said with conviction. “Despite his many flaws he’s not a stupid man. He knows what went on so he wouldn’t send a genuine reporter because then he might be embarrassed, and my wife’s cousin does not like to be embarrassed.” Grave lowered his voice. “Bad for the career. Besides, he sits high in the domestic intelligence branch. I conclude, then, that you are trustworthy, so we talk as one professional to another.” He lit his pipe and waited for his visitors’ reaction.

  “Okay, straight talk,” Sylvia agreed. “It will make our work easier. Why not suicide?”

  Valentine spoke up. “Shot in the eye.”

  Grave nodded. “Exactly. Suicides shoot into their mouths or a temple, but never into the eye. Not once can I remember such a thing, and in Paris I saw many suicides. Perhaps they don’t want to see it coming,” he joked. “Nine millimeter: small hole in, substantial hole at exit, what the gentlemen in forensics call splattering. It’s caused by a soft-nosed bullet in a steel jacket. Quite effective. I have what’s left of the slug.”

  “How does this connect to the killings in Paris?”

  “Professionally done and, as I understand it, a 9 mm was used there as well. These would appear to be earmarks. The Paris killings were assassinations and there was a wad of newspaper clippings about them in the cabin where the body was found. They were singed by the fire, but most are still readable.” He went to the file cabinet and took out a box filled with charred paper.

  Valentine was still skimming Grave’s report. “No weapon found.”

  Grave smiled. “Does a suicide eat his weapon after shooting himself?”

  Sylvia was still not satisfied. “But there’s no actual link to the Albanian émigrés.”

  “Technically the connections are only circumstantial, but I have a body killed by the same caliber weapon and there were clippings about the previous murders. A lawyer might fret over circumstantial evidence, but I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t worry so much about such things. All I care about is what I have, and what I have seems to connect—or at least raise suspicions. It doesn’t matter to me what the evidence adds up to; a cop feels these things, and this one feels strong to me.”

  “Does Barrie concur?”

  “Not in so many words. He said that publicity about Albanian feuds would only serve to further sully the reputation of Paris, so it remains a suicide, case closed. You know how the press handles such matters. Personally I don’t see Paris as being anything except an aging whore well past her prime, so how can her reputation be sullied?”

  “We’d like to get copies of your records,” Valentine said, tapping the folder.

  “You’re in Lamoura, not Paris. Take them, and the slug as well.”

  “That leaves you with no record.”

  “Country constables are forever misplacing things,” Grave said with a laugh. “I don’t need them and you do; otherwise Barrie wouldn’t have sent you to me. Call it professional courtesy; besides, I don’t like unsolved murders. Now you can finish it and I can forget about it, whatever it is.”

  “Identification?” Sylvia asked.

  “The dead man? I have only the fingerprints, which is less than some leave and more than others.”

  “Didn’t the Sûreté run them?”

  Grave shook his head. “Barrie said it wasn’t advisable. I think that he was afraid that it would raise suspicions. Especially when I told him about this.” The constable opened the desk and took out a small plastic bag. “This was in the fireplace.”

  Sylvia took the bag and saw the remnants of a glass ampule. The glass shards were covered with dark soot. “You know what this is?”

  Grave nodded solemnly. “Some Nazis carried them at the end of the war.”

  Sylvia was sullen as they raced through greening foothills on their way back toward Paris. “Not a planned killing,” she shouted over the straining engine.

  “Why?”

  “Tried to cover it with a fire but didn’t stick around to make sure.”

  “Maybe we can convince Barrie to run the prints,” Valentine suggested.

  “I expect he’ll be real happy to help,” Sylvia said as she shifted into fifth gear and accelerated still more.

  “What was in the plastic bag?”

  “Suicide pill,” she yelled. “Cyanide. Soviet agents carry them.”

  He thought for a moment. “The stiff was a Soviet agent?”

  “Somebody is,” she said through clenched teeth.

  89FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1961, 2:40 A.M.Tirana, Albania

  The interior of the prison was painted black, the intersections of the narrow stone corridors lit by small red bulbs. The Albanians had learned from their KGB mentors how to design a facility to keep every prisoner isolated. When inmates were moved they were sandwiched between two guards, and escorts snapped metal clickers to let others know that they had priority. Those without the right of way turned their prisoners face first into specially built alcoves in the corridors so that they couldn’t see anything. It seemed to Lejla Llarja that the prison was overrun by boisterous crickets.

  She was taken into a long room with heavy glass windows that looked down on the prison cells. Even in the poor light she could see bent limbs and fresh scars, evidence of torture on the naked prisoners below. But the end cell was different; it was well lit and decorated like a parlor, with a bed, a desk, an easy chair, two lamps, a radio and a bookcase filled with books. Newspapers were stacked along a wall. Her father was sitting in the chair, reading. He wore a robe and slippers and looked thin, but the bandage on his left hand was clean. The memory of his severed finger made her shudder.

  After a couple of minutes she was led away, steered again through the black corridors and taken outside, where Haxi Kasi was waiting in a Russian automobile, the motor revving. She got in beside him and looked straight ahead.

  “You saw him?” he asked.

  Lejla nodded.

  “Good,” Kasi said. “We’re keeping our part of the bargain, and you must keep yours.”

  The killings in Paris had not been difficult because they had no connection to reality. She had convinced herself that it was just a game. The dead men had been strangers, nameless men—targets, not people. It was easy to shoot a target if you ignored the blood. The important thing was that her father was alive and that she was the reason. There had been a time when she had considered herself independent, but now she realized that this had been an adolescent illusion. One’s blood inexorably connected one to family, and there was nothing to be done about it. As a little girl she had studied the Ten Commandments and thought of them as a list with priorities. Honor thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not kill. The former took precedence over the latter.

  90FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1961, 11:00 A.M.Moscow

  How did one come to grips with the whims and thoughts of great men? Captain Eduard Boryavich Okhlopkin did not understand; even when he got things right they invariably were used against him. First it had been the man with the iron constitution. He had filled the bastard with vodka, then injected the aminazine just as he had been instructed, but the man had carried on as if unaffected, and Okhlopkin had worried
that something was wrong with the drug. This left him no choice; he had waited until the man was in the street, then run him down. Was it his fault that a militiaman had somehow wandered into the street before his second pass? It had not been his intention to run over the fool, but he was there and might be a witness, so what choice did this leave? The great man’s representative had raged at him. The drug and alcohol would have worked, but how was he to know? Gaponov had assured him that the aminazine would be quick and foolproof, yet the man had walked several kilometers after he had stuck the syringe in his ass. Had he made the drug? Had it been his idea to use it? No, but it remained his fault. The militiaman was bad luck, and he had taken him out to prevent the possibility of a witness, so why was the colonel so angry? He had done what Gaponov had asked; couldn’t he see that?

  Now there was another mess. It must look natural, the colonel had reminded him, and it had nearly turned out that way; the one called Velak had been easy enough, but the security man had spotted him on the way out and demanded to know how he had gotten in. He had not been briefed on this possibility and had handled it the only way he could think of—by making it look as if the man had fallen down the stairs. A natural death and an accidental one in close proximity might provoke some unusual interest, but he had been careful; in any case, what other choice had there been? The important thing was that the people the colonel wanted out of the way were dead, so why all the fuss over minor details? They asked him to take care of things and he did so, but Gaponov’s unwillingness to see what was so obvious was exasperating. An hour ago he had been dressed down by the colonel, who recounted his shortcomings while writing prissy little notes to himself. He congratulated himself for taking Gaponov’s crap with a grin, which seemed to irritate the colonel, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and let the man ramble on. His superior had warned him that no more errors would be tolerated; Okhlopkin was to send his men into the Zone to “squeeze” some scum, while he himself would take care of more important business, and this time it must be done perfectly.