The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  The journey ended in a hospital room where a little man in a black robe sat on the edge of the bed staring at a plate of cabbage and a bowl of thick white pudding. He looked up. “You were successful?” He looked like a Gypsy, or perhaps a Jew.

  Be careful, she thought. Use the old tricks; when faced with authority, play stupid. “Pardon?” Deafness was even more effective than ignorance.

  The little man stared her down. “You were sent to Tirana to obtain certain information for us. Bailov says you are an intelligent and reliable woman. We’re his colleagues and trust his judgment, and if you’re his friend, you must also trust it. What you’ve done has been in the interests of national security.”

  What should she say? The little man looked drained, but his eyes were powerful. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and told him what she had found, then gave him the film.

  “The two men were half brothers?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’m trained to remember facts; the pictures will prove it.”

  There were no further questions. The tall woman led her to the door, where two men fell into step on either side of her. She felt small and powerless. “These men will escort you to your flat and stay with you until Taras Ivanovich can come.”

  “I can find my own way,” Raya protested weakly. “This is Moscow, not Tirana.”

  “We can’t allow you to be alone.”

  “I don’t understand.” Was there danger? Nothing made sense.

  “Just do as we ask and everything will be fine,” the woman said reassuringly.

  When the elevator doors closed and it descended, Raya was overwhelmed by a sense that she was plummeting into a black void.

  127MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1961, 7:30 P.M.Venice

  Bartolomeo Tomme had made a fortune in the antique business, not because his offerings were superior to those of his competitors but because he knew how to merchandise his wares. Instead of Venice or Ravenna or Florence, Tomme operated from the relatively obscure town of Ancona on the Adriatic coast and employed elderly women to monitor the traffic of antique collectors in other cities. These grandmotherly women approached customers in their hotels and advised them that in Ancona there was a trove of antiques as good as anywhere else but less expensive. They explained that important Italians, having made their fortunes in the late nineteenth century in Italy’s cities, retired to the Adriatic coast, where they had built huge villas and furnished them luxuriously. Now these people were gone and their descendants had fallen on hard times, which made magnificent antiques and paintings available. In a few years such items would make their way to big-city emporiums, where prices would be beyond all but the wealthiest collectors. The message was subtle but clear: Buy now or lose the opportunity. It was a pitch too compelling for bargain-hunting collectors to resist, so the old women pushed customers south while Tomme scoured the country for junk, which he sent to Ancona to be sold at inflated prices. It was a lucrative living, particularly because Tomme owned most of the hotels and several restaurants in the coastal town two hundred and forty kilometers south of Venice.

  What gave Tomme an edge was not just his understanding of the psychology of bargain hunters, but his unerring instincts about all facets of his operations. It was this instinct that sent him to the navy’s coastal service when a tug called Marie III was only four hours overdue from Venice. The tug was loaded with rolled canvases, sixteenth-century religious paintings by a sect of women who had lived in the Dolomites and painted them as an expression of their devotion to Christ. The works were hideous beyond belief but would net him a huge profit, which meant that he was not about to risk losing them. If anyone else had called the coastal service, he might have been ignored, but Bartolomeo Tomme was a much respected and powerful man who made sure naval officials received regular bribes.

  Before the sun came up on the morning following the discovery of Sultana Fregosi’s cigarboat, a patrol craft found the Marie III aground just south of the Po River delta. While the paintings were recovered, there was no sign of the crew. Having got the paintings back, Tomme had no further interest in what happened, but the coastal service and the police launched its customary search for survivors, the hunt concentrating on the area north of where the Po entered the sea. By midafternoon three bodies had been found and flown by helicopter to Venice in gray rubber bags.

  Valentine and Sylvia had been summoned to the city morgue while the bodies were en route. The two dead men were employees of Bartolomeo Tomme; the dead woman was Sultana Fregosi. The last time they had seen her she had been flushed with life. Now her skin was blue-gray, with dark splotches; sea creatures and salt water had accelerated decomposition. Like the two men, she had been shot in the left eye by a 9 mm; all three had been split down the middle and their viscera removed. An old smuggler’s technique, the police explained; if you remove the stomach and lungs the body stays down longer. In this instance, however, the killer or killers had not counted on the tides, and the bodies had been discovered in the tidal flats. Had they been dumped a few kilometers offshore, they would never have been found. Whoever did it, the police speculated, had been in a hurry.

  Sylvia telephoned Monsieur Barrie at the Sûreté in Paris. Ballistics from the Lamoura corpse were wired to Venice, and by midnight they had a match. The prints recovered from Sultana Fregosi’s house, her boat and the antique dealer’s tug matched Frash’s.

  They had to guess at what had happened. Probably Fregosi had told Frash about their visit to the tailor shop, whereupon he persuaded her to go for a boat ride. In the lagoon he shut off the motor, pretended they were disabled and begged a ride from the passing tug. Farther down the coast he killed Fregosi and the two sailors, dumped their mutilated bodies overboard, beached the tug and went ashore.

  Frash’s trail had led from Belgrade to Lamoura to s’Hertogenbosch to Venice, with bodies as markers at most of the stops. They had been close this time but he was lost again, and for now there was no way to track him. Police agencies now had his photograph and immigration officials on the borders had the passport numbers; all they could do was pray that he didn’t slip through a crack in the network.

  128MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1961, 8:25 P.M.Moscow

  Okhlopkin fidgeted in the front seat of the automobile and checked the two-way radio. The illuminated green light told him that it was on and operating properly. Often it wasn’t. Surveillance was boring work, but what choice was there? Images of his Korean girlfriend tried to push the present aside, but he resisted. An officer should concentrate solely on his mission, he lectured himself.

  His people had reported that the tall woman had escorted another woman into the hospital, and that they were still inside. If they came out, his men would see them and let him know. His men? They were wolf tickets and this was their last chance, soldiers who had tried to back out of their commitments to the Motherland or had screwed up and had toppled into the abyss, only to come crawling back to beg for a final chance. Gaponov argued that their desperation made them reliable for dirty work, but Okhlopkin doubted it; they were dog shit.

  How long had it been since the women had gone inside?

  “Sable One, Pup One. Are you receiving?” The voice on the radio sounded frantic.

  The call signs were his creation and he liked hearing them over the radio. The sable was a smart, tough animal like himself, and these men were his children, his stupid pups. “Sable One hears you. Don’t shout.”

  “The short woman just came out the back exit with two Spetsnaz. They got into a gray Pobeda.”

  “Tell me when they move,” Okhlopkin said as he fumbled to start the motor.

  “Do I follow them?” the voice queried.

  “Stay where you are,” Okhlopkin snapped. How many times had he been over the procedure with them? “You stay with the tall woman.” The smaller woman had come as a surprise; she was not one of the regular group that visited the hospital or orbited Khrushchev, and he hoped she would be
easier to follow than the rest of them, who moved like spirits.

  “The Pobeda is moving west, Sable One.”

  Okhlopkin accelerated down a parallel street, then veered right, reaching the intersection in time to see the vehicle pass. Although the traffic signal was against him he floored the accelerator, cut across oncoming traffic and fishtailed into a lane two hundred meters behind the car, which continued west, taking no evasive maneuvers. The men in the Zone had been Spetsnaz, Gaponov told him. Be careful, he had said. The important thing now was that even though his men had screwed up, they had learned that these Spetsnaz were human. Perhaps they were better at offensive operations, but now they were on the defensive, even if they didn’t know it. Tonight he would show Gaponov how a real soldier performed.

  “Pup Seven, this is Sable One. I’m moving west.” He gave the street name and a landmark, a synagogue that had been converted to a Komsomol hostel. “I want you to parallel me on my north flank, understand?”

  “Pup Seven is moving now.”

  Okhlopkin sent another vehicle west on a parallel street two blocks south. It was like tracking a wounded animal, with him as the point of a small triangle and the others trailing on his flanks in case the quarry tried to double back or make a break.

  What was this all about, anyway? Gaponov said that the General Secretary had replaced his personal security detachment with Spetsnaz. He had given no explanation for this; Gaponov said it was their job to find out what was going on, establish patterns of movement and record them. The group that went in and out of the hospital was some kind of elite commando unit, but what went on in there was still a mystery. Gaponov had said not to worry about that; his job was merely to watch and report. Even so, Okhlopkin had some ideas of his own. Perhaps Khrushchev was the captive of a bandit element. Or infiltrated by Jews. The Spetsnaz troops were directed by a small liaison unit whose members had been virtually impossible to follow for any distance; hardly surprising, since Gaponov’s wolf tickets were stupid, unskilled men who couldn’t find each other in a one-hole shit house. If this mission was so important, why were no real troops assigned to it? Or the GRU?

  He had ordered his men to hang back during the operation in the Zone, but they hadn’t listened and he hadn’t been there to stop them because Gaponov had sent him off to Bakovka. The old man and his young wife had been easy kills. It had been a shame to not have a few minutes with the woman before he killed her, a real waste, but his orders had been explicit; it had to look like a murder-suicide. The couple and their brats hadn’t been easy, but he’d done the job and that’s what counted. After he finished the jobs and got back to the Zone he found bodies everywhere: his men, several bearded Georgians and the three Spetsnaz. A real mess, and nothing to show for the carnage, which had happened more or less spontaneously. He had written in his report that his men had been attacked by Georgian criminals while attempting surveillance and had had no alternative but to return fire. He had personally executed the man he had left in charge as an example to the survivors, but it was a nagging failure and Gaponov had been crazy with anger. It was frustrating; how could he honor the great men if his own men could not follow simple orders? This time he would be sure there was no screwup.

  Gaponov had eventually accepted the report, but there was no doubt that his superior knew it was a lie and had accepted it only to cover his own ass, which made them partners in deception. This gave him an advantage; Gaponov could no longer denounce him without denouncing himself. Since coming to this realization Okhlopkin had been alert for an opportunity to demonstrate that neither Gaponov nor his troops could do what he could do. An Evenk could follow a butterfly’s shadow on a cloudy day, and tonight he would do more than follow. If Khrushchev was in trouble, he needed help. This woman was new. She had been brought to the hospital by one of the conspirators and taken away by a Spetsnaz escort, which he guessed signaled her importance, though he would not know how or why until he interrogated her. When it came to extracting information he was an expert; in the past he had made his victims sing whatever song he or his superiors had chosen, but this one would sing the song of truth, and then he would know what to do.

  Okhlopkin was lost in the possibilities of his grand plan when the Pobeda ahead of him suddenly swerved to the curb and stopped. He was past them before he realized what had happened, and was forced to park two hundred meters beyond. By the time he ran back to the building they were inside.

  129MONDAY, APRIL 24, 1961, 9:45 P.M.Moscow

  It had been Petrov’s idea to bring additional Spetsnaz reinforcements to Moscow; Bailov had made the necessary arrangements while Raya was in Albania and was glad to have the assignment. Without it he would have thought about nothing but her; as it was he had been forced to push her out of his mind. He was worried in a way that generated emotions he had never felt before. When she returned he was elsewhere deploying his men. After getting them settled he telephoned Talia.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said right away. “Your Raya did very well, but she’s a bit frayed by the experience. She has some fine mementos of her holiday, which are being developed. We took her home.”

  “And left her alone?” His heart raced.

  “Two of your associates are with her,” she said reassuringly.

  When Bailov arrived at Raya’s apartment he cautioned himself to behave properly in front of his men, but when he got to her flat he saw that the door was standing open and that it was dark inside. Bailov froze on the stairs and listened. A low sound. A moan? The hair on the back of his neck bristled. He chambered a round in his automatic and moved in cautiously. The floor was slippery. He hugged a wall for stability and tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness. Another moan rose; it was low, nearly inaudible and from deep inside the flat, but he recognized it as an expression of pain. Further along he saw the silhouette of a form against the wall. He toed the body, got no reaction, stepped over it and kept moving until he reached the living room, where some light bled in from the outside. Another body was sprawled on the carpet; he knelt and rolled it over. The eyes were open, the face still, and he saw that it was one of his men, a boy from Minsk named Aleksei who had been afraid before his first parachute jump but had eventually made sergeant.

  He thought he detected movement near the door to Raya’s bedroom. Crouching, he started to take a step forward when plaster exploded near his head and showered him. He dived left, rolled and a split second later heard the low snap of a silenced round demolish a pane of glass to his right. “Fuck!” a voice complained; this was followed by a moan from the bedroom. “Stay back,” the voice ordered.

  “Don’t shoot.”

  “Who’s there?”

  He recognized the voice. “Dudek, is that you?” Another of his men. “Where’s Raya?”

  “Unlucky,” Dudek said matter-of-factly. “Who else but me would have had such bad luck?”

  Bailov pictured his soldier; he was a man of skill and currently a private but would soon be a corporal again if he stayed off the bottle and curbed his unfortunate habit of punching anyone who disagreed with him. He was a damn fine soldier when it counted. “Stay calm,” Bailov said softly. “Is it safe to put the lights on?” He stepped over Aleksei’s body, flicked on the switch and saw Dudek propped against the jamb of the bedroom door, his shirt and a pillowcase stuffed into a gaping belly wound. The point of his left shoulder was shattered, but not bleeding heavily; exit wound, he thought.

  “Shot from behind,” Dudek complained.

  “Better than in the behind.” Bailov said, stepping past him. “You’ve still got your balls.” There was another moan from the bedroom and he saw a blood trail leading to the bed. There were dark stains on the cover. He read the signs; someone had fallen on the bed and tumbled over the far side. “Who was it?” he asked Dudek.

  “We had no idea we were being followed,” Dudek said apologetically. “The woman was tired, so we took our time coming up the stairs. We were closing the door when the attack came. It was co
nfusing. Aleksei got shot straight off. I was hit before I could react but I managed to push the woman ahead of me. We exchanged rounds in the dark and then it was quiet. Did we get them?”

  Bailov’s heart sank as he reached the far side of the bed. Raya was on her back, covered with blood, her left leg mangled at the knee, the lower leg sticking out at an unnatural angle. She had taken off her blouse and brassiere and used a wooden hanger to make a tourniquet which her left hand still clutched tightly.

  “Said she was hit,” Dudek called from the living room. “I told her how to stop the bleeding.”

  Raya was somewhere between conscious and unconscious. Her eyes followed him, but she said nothing as her free hand moved some strands of hair off her forehead.

  Bailov used the telephone by the bed to call the hospital. Talia answered. “I need help here,” he said. “We have two cold, two warm.”

  Her voice was calm. “Raya?”

  “Warm,” he said, looking down at her. “Barely,” he added.

  “Help is coming,” Talia said and hung up.

  “I don’t want to die,” Raya Orlava whispered to him. Bailov knelt and loosened the tourniquet. The leg color was bad, the damage extensive. In the field he would have cut the remaining tissue to get the useless leg out of the way, but Raya was not one of his soldiers.

  “Will I lose my leg?” she asked, straining to see, but he pushed her back gently.

  “No.” His concern now was that she might not live long enough to worry about a lost limb. They could argue about cosmetics later.

  “Guns sound just like someone gagging. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Silencers compress the air.”

  She smiled weakly and her head lolled to the side. “Very good, Taras Ivanovich. Your technical explanation is a great comfort to me.” She extended an arm to him. “Come here and hold me, please.”