It had taken him no time at all to see the signs that led to the phony stack of bones and amateurishly disguised trapdoor. The others seemed bewildered when he showed them. “He went down here.”
“What about the main tunnel?” Bailov asked. “This may be nothing.”
“Talia has the intersection blocked,” Ezdovo pointed out.
“If you’re wrong we could be trapped down there,” Bailov told him.
“You shouldn’t worry, your worships,” a familiar voice boomed from the entrance to the room.
Sylvia was closest and snapped her light on. Melko’s face was contorted in pain but through it he managed a crooked grin. “Talia told me I should stay with her, but I don’t like being left behind. Follow Ezdovo,” he said, sitting down heavily and clearing away some rubble. “If someone is down the main tunnel they’ll have to pass me.” Then, “Go on. All this talk is noisy. I’ve gotten used to the silence down here.”
The small tunnel twisted left at a 90-degree angle and opened into the main tunnel a few meters beyond where it had been walled off. A quick look told Frash that the wall that had initially blocked him was two meters thick or more; that he had so easily bypassed it was a reminder that not all things are as they seem to be. If the schedule he had gotten from Mock was accurate he had three hours to reach his objective. Plenty of time, even with company.
Ezdovo eased his head into the inner chamber and listened for a long time to be sure there was no ambush. Valentine covered him from the hole in the floor while he made a quick circuit and found the exit tunnel. There were fresh marks on the floor and dangling pieces of cobwebs where someone had passed through.
Albert trotted through the tunnel, his light bobbing as the dirt floor sloped gently upward.
The other three followed him out of the bypass into the main tunnel, dropping quietly from the opening to the hard-packed floor. The Siberian flicked his light off and on, barely long enough to do more than ruin the group’s night vision, but long enough for him to see the trail in the dust. There seemed to be no side rooms in this area. “No lights,” he whispered. They moved forward, two to a side, one behind the other, Valentine ahead of Sylvia, Ezdovo leading Bailov.
The iron door was more hatch than door, and old, held in place with a flat iron bar. Two ancient padlocks hung open on pegs beside the door, and it took him a moment to understand the rationale. An escape hatch would be locked from the inside to slow pursuit. There would be no locks on the other side, though dummy ones were possible as camouflage. He tried the bar with his hands, but it was wedged tight and rusty. He thought he felt cool air along the seams. A bar this substantial could not be put in place easily. He shone his light around the end of the tunnel and smiled when he saw a small sledge suspended by a metal ring in the ceiling. So predictable. Had the Church’s leaders ever considered that a way out for them could become a way in for their enemies? The thought made Ali laugh. How would Kennedy react when there was a pistol pointed at his tanned face?
The half-dozen metallic blows that reverberated down the tunnel startled the group. These sounds were followed by a shrill scream cut short, the way a cornered animal stifled its cry, Ezdovo thought. Even the most harmless creatures could be dangerous when injured, and this was the sound of a man, which multiplied the danger manyfold.
Ali writhed on the floor, stunned, trying to figure out what had happened. The last blow had loosened the iron bar. He had braced a leg against the wall beside the hatch when something ripped into his support leg and sent him crashing down. When he touched the leg he felt the bones protruding through the skin. Fuck. The leg was destroyed, useless. He pounded the ground in frustration, his rage growing. Not now, Albert’s inner voice repeated over and over, but it was quickly banished by Ali, whose rage was hot and unrelenting. He dragged himself back to the hatch, pushed up on his good leg and began trying to dislodge the iron bar again.
There was an open iron door and stairs beyond, with a dull light filtering down from above. Ezdovo squatted at the hatch and studied a huge slab of stone that hung at the end of a cable on a pulley system.
“Booby trap?” Valentine asked as he squeezed next to him.
How many had he and Melko gone by in Lenya’s underground maze? “There could be more,” Ezdovo cautioned. He saw splashes of fresh blood on the floor, which explained the scream they had heard. “Brother Johann would have known about such surprises,” he added.
“Frash,” Valentine said, his heart racing. The stairs ahead were narrow, with room for only one person at a time. “We have to string out,” he told Sylvia. “Single file.”
Ezdovo pulled up his hood and went through first, with Valentine, Sylvia and Bailov following.
The stairs curved right. When the Siberian made a clicking sound the others halted below him and waited.
Another hatch; this one slid sideways. Ezdovo pulled it back slowly and looked through a screen into a hall with a marble floor. He eased into the opening, pulled the second cover back, rolled onto the cool marble and breathed fresh air into his lungs. Moving to the other side of the corridor he saw that he had come out of the bottom of a bulky wooden cabinet, its shelves lined with candle holders. When Valentine’s head appeared behind him Ezdovo motioned him to come through. There were drops of blood on the marble. The blood led them into an octagonal room filled with built-in closets and cabinets. A metal door opened onto the square; a set of double wooden doors led to the back of the altar. There was no more blood.
Ezdovo knelt beside a wall, alert but not nervous. Different prey, but only a hunt, one more in a lifetime of them. Expect the unexpected, he warned himself.
Ali grinned at the prospects. He had the injured leg tied off now; a crucifix twisted into his belt had served to tighten the tourniquet. There were four of them. Monks. He had seen their robes. Setting up for Mass, preparing priests’ tools. No hurry. Let them settle in and get busy. The sun was rising, shooting arrows of light into the room. Wait. Let the light get brighter; let them immerse themselves in their tasks. Only one was left now; the others had moved out of view. He had heard the door to the altar area open. He pulled up his hood and prepared himself. It would be difficult to get rid of the bodies, but it was not far to the place where he had come out. They would be safe there. He would have to clean the area as well, and fix the damned leg, but time was on his side. He rechecked the weapon to be sure the silencer was snug and admired the workmanship, his own. Such a simple thing to make, yet so deadly. Where was Albert? You can’t miss this, he said gleefully, but there was no response. What was Kennedy doing right now?
Sylvia leaned against the wall, her body a collection of aches, her hair matted. Just beyond the light she saw the dusty outline of where a crucifix had hung on the wall, and where the light hit it just right a faint trickle of something. A flaw? She touched it with her finger, saw the red wetness and the trail her finger left. Sweet Jesus, she thought as she turned.
Ali pushed the handle upward and eased the door open. Upward pressure always seemed to reduce squeaks; it countered the warping, he supposed. He felt light-headed. The monk in front of him had a broad back. A huge man and an easy target. Take the back, not the head; less blood that way. The monk in the tunnel had bled like a stuck pig. Aim for the midline and offset a couple of fingers left. It would be easy. One here, but where were the others? At the altar? Because of the leg he couldn’t pursue them; take this one now and get the others as they come back. The altar is sacred. Keep it that way. Mother would understand. His mother, his father, son to son, a good way to settle it. The Lek would be honored. Kennedy would die today.
Valentine felt a bump, then heard a clatter and turned to find Frash less than an arm’s length away, his eyes wide, mouth open, shuddering, not continuously but in surges, now, again, like a dance, his chin shaking, his pistol spinning in slow motion across the floor, the silencer shattering, its washers rolling free as he pivoted lazily, sinking onto his shattered leg, popping the tourniquet, eased to
the floor by Sylvia with her small arm around his face and a knife in her other hand, the blade and her hand glistening with fresh blood turning orange in the morning light, a deep red wound under Frash’s chin, a stain spreading like a bib. When the Russians returned they found her sitting beside the body, holding the knife up like an offering to the light flooding through the windows.
226SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1961, 6:50 A.M.Vienna
Father Martin Good stared at the two bodies and blessed himself. Though his face was bloody, Brother Johann looked peaceful. Where were the others?
“Real sorry about this,” Valentine said, “but we’ve got a damage-control problem here and we need help.” The American had fetched him from the archbishop’s palace.
“What happened?”
“Brother Johann got walloped and died instantly.” Valentine toed a length of bone. “This here was the murder weapon.” God made some heads stronger than others.
“I don’t understand,” the priest stammered, his legs rubbery.
“You want to protect the Church, right, Father?”
The priest nodded.
“Good. That’s going to make this a lot easier.” Valentine escorted the priest down the tunnel. “Brother Johann fell and hit his head. His death was an accident.”
“I can’t do this,” the priest protested.
“You have no choice. Things happened down here that neither we nor the Church can afford to have come to light. Remember, it was the archbishop who blocked a proper search.”
Father Marty drew in a deep breath, bowed his head and made the sign of the cross in the air.
“An accident,” Valentine repeated. “For the good of the Church. Go back to the Archbishop’s Palace. Wait until noon, then call for help. Tell the authorities Brother Johann didn’t show up to open the tourist gates. When they get down there they’ll find him. It will look like an accident.”
“God help me,” Father Good said as he stumbled away.
God help all of us, Valentine thought as he went to find the others.
The Russians placed Brother Johann’s body at the exact spot where it had fallen, then swept the area clean of any sign of Frash. Valentine and Sylvia built a wall of cobblestones behind the iron door that led to the sacristy; if anyone ever again discovered the escape tunnel they would never get past the door. They interred Frash’s remains in Brother Johann’s sanctuary, filled the hole under the trapdoor behind them and scattered bones across the floor of the room to a height of four feet, leaving it looking like just another cave of yellowed remains. Someday, perhaps, someone would find Frash’s bones, but who would think twice about another skeleton in an underground filled with them?
The team made their way back to the basement of the Archbishop’s Palace and up the rear stairs, where they helped Melko into the waiting truck. When the Russians got in, the Americans stayed outside. Talia made eye contact with them, nodded almost imperceptibly and slid the door shut.
227SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1961, 10:08 A.M.Vienna
Arizona watched the Kennedys walk smiling from the cathedral to their limousine. A cloud of blue exhaust trailed up behind the vehicle as it sped away from the crowd that had gathered to have a look at the young president and his wife. More women than men, more young than old, he saw. Maybe Kennedy’s aides had rounded them up the way they did during the primaries.
He spotted Valentine in the rear of the dispersing crowd. “Never figured you for a churchie,” Arizona said as he reached him.
“Only funerals,’’ Valentine said. “You can scratch Frash off your do-next list.”
“Dead?”
“And buried.”
“How?”
“Details don’t matter.”
“They do to me.”
“They mattered to Harry Gabler and look where it got him. A man in your line of work ought to be accustomed to ambiguity.”
“I had nothing to do with Gabler’s death,” Arizona said too quickly.
“And nothing to do with keeping him alive, which is the other side of the coin. You sent us into this thing blind, but we handled it. Frash is no longer a problem, which means end of deal.” Valentine handed him an envelope filled with every scrap of paper he and Sylvia had collected along the way. “For the archives.”
Arizona’s eyes narrowed. “He was here?”
“He wanted Kennedy.”
“How close did he get?”
Valentine smiled. “Feet and minutes,” he said over his shoulder as he merged with the Sunday crowd.
228MONDAY, JUNE 5, 1961, NOONMoscow
Meetings were under way at the Defense Ministry, but Malinovsky had no desire now to discuss steel allotments with sweaty comrades, no interest in failures to meet production quotas at the Kharkov tank factory or the desertion of a company of besotted Tadzhiks from a garrison regiment in Vilnius. He went into his study, whose brocade curtains were closed, and sat behind the massive mahogany desk in semidarkness. When the phone rang he picked it up without identifying himself.
“The General Secretary boarded a plane an hour ago,” a hushed voice said.
“To Berlin?”
“To Moscow. The change was announced privately last night. No reason was given. Air, not rail, destination Moscow, not Berlin.”
Malinovsky hung up, unlocked a desk drawer, took out a dusty bottle of Armagnac and set it in front of him. Indonesia’s Sukarno would arrive today for a state visit, and all the arrangements had been made for handling it in Khrushchev’s absence. Now he was returning to Moscow. Obviously something had gone wrong; the Albanians had not reacted to plan. Bastards.
Nikita Sergeievich traveled by train when he felt at peace. Aircraft meant speed and a worried peasant. When the cat’s away, the mice will play. The Armagnac had been bottled in 1812, perhaps in the very month that Napoleon stood on the field at Borodino thinking that the battle was won when it had only begun. What was going on now in the cloudberry mind of Khrush the Beetle? Surely the General Secretary knew now that the battle had been joined and that the enemy was close at hand. His change in plans said he knew. He was alive, but something had happened. Not as good as he hoped, but as surely as Napoleon fell, Khrushchev had begun his descent. Malinovsky opened the bottle and poured just enough of the amber liquid to cover the bottom of the champagne glass.
“Self-discipline is an enviable trait,” a voice rasped from the darkness across the room.
The defense minister was startled but concealed his surprise. When a light snapped on across the room he squinted to see who it was and tapped the base of his desk to release a small drawer next to his knee.
“Petrov,” the voice said.
Glancing into the drawer, he saw that the revolver was gone; in its place there was a gleaming Red Badge.
“So predictable,” Petrov said. “So old-fashioned and true to the species Homo militarus. But I applaud your subtlety, Comrade Marshal; the pieces were carefully played.”
The man under the dim light was small and dark, his eyes sunk into his head, the flesh on his skull tight and opaque, a shrunken head with the power of speech. The revolver from the defense minister’s desk was in his hand.
Malinovsky considered triggering the alarm.
“Disconnected,” Petrov said. “Like us, the alarm system is an anachronism. Mere wire, comrade, severed with mere scissors. A photoelectric cell would be more effective. It’s time you came to grips with modern gadgetry.”
“What do you want?”
“Your plan was so seamless as to be invisible,” Petrov said. “Which made it predictable,” the final word drawn out. “Nevertheless, I must congratulate you.”
When Malinovsky shifted in his chair the revolver shifted with him. For the first time in years, he felt a fluttering of nerves, a sense of terror creeping over him like a wet cloak. “A man who enters another’s house could be taken for a common thief.”
Petrov smiled. “Righteous words from a man trying to steal an entire nation.”
The defe
nse minister eased back in his chair. Had he miscalculated the American or the Albanians? Was Khrushchev hurrying home as he had in 1957, when his throne was in jeopardy? “I’m a soldier,” he said in a voice filled with resolve. “I don’t deal in the riddles of a madman.”
Petrov nodded, though not in affirmation. “Motive,” he said softly. “Motive. One takes the possibilities and examines them carefully, as delicately as one handles the wings of lepidoptera. After all of the possibilities have been eliminated, that which remains would be the answer. One stands in the forest looking for the stag, but doesn’t see it until its camouflage is deciphered; only then does it stand out clearly.” A long pause, a shift of weight, a soft wheeze. “I see you now, Malinovsky, as clearly as that stag. Did you think you could undo what’s done and turn the clock back?” A bony hand waved at his desk. “What vintage do you hoard?”
“1812.”
A protracted sigh. “Borodino. Of course, it would be Borodino. Napoleon wins the day, but the main force of the czar flees to fight again, to find victory in defeat, the Russian way of sacrifice for the greater good. But then who is the enemy, Malinovsky, the Frenchman or the czar? Did those who fell in the imperial cause lay down their lives for nothing? Did 1917 erase what those before had given? Why is it, my dear Marshal, that we Russians make heroes out of failures? The greater the needless bloodshed, the greater a man’s mistakes, the more we love him. Tell me why this is so.”
The man was weak, the color of wax, but to charge him would be a foolish gesture; he was too far away. The blood that trickled from his nose was black, lacking oxygen. There was no threat here, only a small impediment. “All who fall in the defense of the Motherland fall in honor.”
The Domino Conspiracy Page 70