Podolsk lifted his chin. “But never again, Kerensky. Never question an order from me again.”
Kerensky spread his hands as if in supplication. He stood that way until Podolsk was gone.
Nearly an hour passed before the general returned his call. The Armenian had lapsed into an exhausted stupor. As the telephone rang, Kerensky told his brothers to revive the man, slap his face, blow pepper up his nose.
The voice on the telephone gave no name or greeting, but there was no mistaking it. It was very soft, somewhat high-pitched, almost fatherly in tone. Stalin's voice was like this. Kerensky knew well that the resemblance was both practiced and deliberate.
He repeated the instructions given by Major Podolsk, first assuring the general that he did not doubt that they were authorized. It was only that they seemed lacking in specifics. If the general could give him some better idea of what he was looking for...
“Where they go,” Borovik interrupted him, “who they see, what they talk about. The specifics are implicit, Kerensky.”
“Yes. Of course, they are.”
“What else, then?”
“Comrade General... it is only that... in the course of watching them, I will surely learn more about them. Would it not be better if I knew more at the outset?”
“Such as?”
“Well. . . Belkin. The diplomat. It has entered my mind that he might be KGB. If that is so . . ”
”I am all the KGB which need concern you, Kerensky.” His heart sank. He liked the feel of this even less.
“Is there anything else?”
“No. Only ... that I had hoped to see you.”
“It is not necessary.”
”I mean, for the thief. The Armenian who stole from your mother. But... I will release him now, as Major Podolsk ordered.”
A hollow silence. “You still have him? In that vat?”
“Yes.”
”De .. . describe him. Tell me what you see.”
The stammer. The faint tremor in the voice. It was what Kerensky was hoping to hear. He began relating how they lured the man to the sausage room, overpowered him, bound him in entrails, gagged him with the snout of a pig. This last was not accurate, but a pig snout is easier to envision than tripe. He added details that Major Podolsk would not have known, such as the plan to feed part of this man to his cousins and such as watching the Armenian try to flop on the surface like a fish whenever they approached the red button.
“Press it again,” said the general. His voice was now a croak. ‘Tell me what he does.”
Kerensky signaled his brother, Feodor. Feodor pressed the button. The Armenian squealed and thrashed. Kerensky described what he saw. The level was dropping quickly. The Armenian had no hope now of gripping the rim. Kerensky had to stand on a chair to see. The man's feet seemed dangerously close to the grinding gears. Kerensky said this to Borovik.
“Shall I stop it?” he asked.
The reply, amid heavy breathing, was an impatient grunt. Kerensky understood. He was to keep talking. He turned the phone from his mouth so that it could capture the Armenian's shrieks. Suddenly, the man began to vibrate, shaking violently as if electrocuted. The shrieks became gasps. The eyes popped wide and the mouth opened into what seemed a frozen grin. There, in a blink, the mind was gone. Both legs to the hips as well.
Borovik's breath came more rapidly. Kerensky wondered if he was masturbating.
“Comrade General?”
Kerensky had given him time to gather himself.
“Yes . . . Yes.” The voice sounded tired but content. A man lost in reverie.
“What will I tell Major Podolsk? He ordered me to release that man.”
A small sigh. “You did. He went into hiding. Left Moscow. That's the end of it.”
“The other thing you have asked of me...Is it...a sensitive matter?”
“What? Oh. You mean the tourists.”
“Is it dangerous, General?”
“No.”
“Could I ask why a KGB officer is traveling with an American policeman?”
A pause. “This is what I wish to know, Kerensky.”
Kerensky grunted. No evasion this time. Leonid Belkin was definitely KGB. But Borovik's tone had become impatient. Kerensky had hoped that the lifting of his spirits would make him more communicative.
“Comrade General, I ask these questions only so that I might choose the proper people. Might it come to pass that I would be asked ... to take strong measures?”
“One must always remain flexible, comrade.”
”I see.”
“Choose well, Kerensky. Not like last time.”
“No. No. This time, no boys.”
“And get busy on this. Their flight has already landed.”
“Immediately. Yes.”
“Do this for me, Kerensky, and the next service I ask of you will take you to America.”
The sausage-maker blinked. Borovik knew well that this had been his dream.
“To New York, Kerensky. And to Miami.”
Drugs, he realized. It must involve drugs. But he thought about meat as well. In America, he had heard, meat like most Russians eat was reserved for dogs. And not just pork from old pigs. In America, the dogs get beef. Even liver. Whole sections of supermarkets have food only for dogs, and this much space is given also for cats. One may even buy toys for them so that they are not left unamused while their owners work.
“Kerensky?”
America has meat-packing plants, they say, where dogs are brought in and allowed to choose what recipes they like best. This, then, is what goes to the supermarkets. Kerensky found this very hard to believe, but everyone who has been to America says it's true. They claim that dogs and cats are even put on television and shown expressing their preferences. This, it seemed to him, was a demand economy gone mad.
“Kerensky!”
“Yes ... Yes, Comrade General.”
“When you bring the sausage to the cousins, you will watch them eat it?”
“My brothers will.”
“No. You: And do it where there is a telephone.”
Kerensky understood. He rolled his eyes.
General Borovik broke the connection. The grinding machine groaned and shook. Feodor kicked it. The machine shuddered to a stop: Kerensky's brother cursed.
Well, Kerensky decided, Feodor will have to dismantle it himself. He must get to the Savoy. Take Sasha because he is the more clever of the two while Feodor is better with machines. Also their cousin, Yakov. Yakov used to drive a taxi and he knows the city inside out. Kerensky gathered the photographs.
Miami.
The very thought of it made him smile.
Miami is nothing but rich old Jews. Tell them that you are from Russia, and also a Jew, they give you everything. Kerensky had heard this.
Not so far from Miami is also Disney World.
3
“Moscow is what? Eight hours ahead of us?”
Susan Lesko's voice rose over the crackle of bacon. Bannerman, still in his white terry robe, sat on the deck of his Westport home, sorting through snapshots of the wedding.
There were two prints of each.
“Seven, this time of year. They should be on the ground by now.”
While he was showering, Susan had set two places for breakfast on the umbrella table outside. Too pretty a morning to waste, she said. At his place, she had left a fresh mug of coffee, a glass of grapefruit juice which he had just poured into the shrubbery, and a second glass containing an assortment of vitamin pills. He had given up trying to persuade her that the coffee at his elbow was all the breakfast he wanted.
She had also left the snapshots and a pencil, asking that he go through them, matching names to some of the less familiar faces. She would then arrange them into two albums, one to keep and the other for Elena.
“Paul? Have you ever been there?”
“Not to Moscow, no.”
“But you've been to Russia.”
Bannerman hesita
ted. “Only to St. Petersburg once. Just in and out.”
He heard a long silence broken only by the rattle of utensils. He knew that she was deciding whether or not to probe further.
“Could you ever go back?” she asked. “As a tourist, I mean?”
”I suppose so. Sure.”
Well... maybe.
The Russians, he imagined, might grit their teeth and grant him a visa. And Susan would love that city. She could happily spend three days in the Hermitage alone. On the other hand, he knew what Leo's advice would be. Let more time pass. The . . . insult . . . runs deep. Wait five years. Maybe ten. The Hermitage will still be there. For right now, it would not be worth the trouble.
Leo would be right.
Being watched, every second of every day, would be the least of it. He would have to make some sort of insurance arrangement and be sure the Russians knew about it. That the price would be high. Even then, there was always the chance that some loose cannon might decide to act out a revenge fantasy. And, the KGB aside, a dozen other intelligence services would be wondering what he was really doing there. As they're probably wondering, right now, about Lesko's visit. As they had about the wedding.
In the United States alone, four different agencies had already contacted him, asking him why else so many of his people had gathered in Zurich last week.
He was patient with them. He went out of his way to calm them. There was no else. The ten who flew over from Westport were those who were closest to Lesko and Elena. More than twice that number had been invited, but Bannerman, as quiet as the past year had been, did not care to risk leaving Westport too thinly defended.
Then, once in Zurich, a new round of assurances became necessary because other contract agents began showing up from all over Europe. Some thirty in all. They had not been invited, but they were not entirely unexpected. Word gets around. They came by to say hello. No, Mama's Boy is not back in business. It was not a hiring hall. Put that out of your heads. It was a wedding celebration, pure and simple.
He could not blame them for wondering, he supposed. After all, each of these men and women had worked for him, at one time or another, when he was Mama's Boy. Many had worked for Mama before. But that was over. If they'll let it be over.
He sorted through several snapshots of the ushers and bridesmaids. These were taken at the rehearsal by one of Elena's cousins, using Susan's camera while Susan ran around arranging the wedding party into a series of poses. He was in many of these. He remembered seeing Roger Clew from the State Department, standing out of range, shaking his head bemusedly as the camera clicked away.
“You wonder why people get curious?” Clew said to him afterward.
“It's just a wedding, Roger. Like any other.”
“No, no. My parents' wedding was like any other. My parents didn't have a wedding party consisting of you, two KGB officers, a former GRU colonel, and a deputy chief of operations from the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
“I'm sure it was very nice all the same.”
“And that's just the men.” Clew brought his fingers to his temples as if to contain his disbelief. “We also have bridesmaids—all very pretty, very virginal, by the way—who include Carla Benedict, who works with a knife, Molly Farrell, who makes bombs, and Janet Herzog, who favors a knitting needle. Not to mention Susan Lesko, who seems to fit right in now that she's been blooded as well.”
This last had bothered him. The various intelligence services had probably begun building a file on Susan during the first month of their acquaintance. Roger's certainly had. That, he supposed, was to be expected. But, at a more visceral level, he didn't like hearing her name lumped in with Carla and the others. She was not like them. Blooded or not.
“And here they are, people who spent most of their lives trying not to be photographed, all posing with shit-eating grins like this was the junior prom.”
Bannerman shrugged. “Shouldn't that tell you something?”
”I know. You're all retired. It makes me crazy.”
“Roger ... don't start.”
The man from State raised his hands. A gesture of surrender.
He cocked his head toward a short, muscular man of indeterminate age who stood off to one side drinking beer from a bottle. “Is that John Waldo, by the way?”
Bannerman smiled. “Pretty much.”
“Why the new face?”
“There isn't any why. He wanted it done and he did it.”
“Is there anyone else here I'd have trouble recognizing?”
“Roger. . .”
The hands again.
“Anyway,” he said, “thanks for letting me come. I mean that.”
Bannerman shook his head. ”I had nothing to do with it.”
Clew was silent for a long moment. “But you didn't stop it. Thanks for that.”
Bannerman said nothing.
“If I should ask Susan to dance tomorrow . . . will she turn and walk away?”
“She understands you, Roger. She doesn't dislike you.”
Clew grunted distantly. The answer fell short of an all-is-forgiven, but he supposed it would have to do. He scanned the room in search of a different subject. He looked at John Waldo again. The job did seem to be purely cosmetic as opposed to a serious attempt at disguise. No facial reconstruction except for straightening his nose. Hair darkened but no change in the cut. Still, except for that bottle of Guinness, Clew might have walked right past him.
Further on, by the buffet table, he saw a tiny woman, short red hair, dressed in a Banana Republic jumpsuit. A nice-looking man, fiftyish, deeply tanned, stood with one hand rubbing her shoulder as he, also, was scanning the room.
“Carla looks good,” he said. “She's gained back some weight.”
”A couple of pounds. She thinks it's too much.”
“How's she doing, generally?”
“Much better. Thank you.”
“Do you think she'd dance with me?”
Bannerman had to smile. “That might be pushing your luck, Roger.”
In truth, Bannerman had been surprised to learn that Roger Clew was on the invitation list. Elena knew that he and Roger had been close for fifteen years, but she also knew that Roger hatched one manipulative scheme too many aimed at getting Bannerman and his people back to work. Water under the bridge, she'd said. A wedding is a time to mend fences.
That, he supposed, might have been one motive. Gratitude might have been another. It was Roger who had quashed two outstanding indictments against her a couple of years back, without which she could never have returned to the United States. Lesko gave another reason. Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, he said, than outside pissing in.
Bannerman heard the sound of vegetables being chopped. It meant that Susan was making one of her western omelets. He rose from the table and walked to the sliding door, hoping to persuade her that the bacon and an English muffin would be plenty. Her omelets were delicious, but if he ate one he would either have to forgo lunch or take a three-mile run this evening.
Instead, he stood watching her. She was at the counter, her back to him, wearing one of his shirts, open to the fifth button, and not much else.
She owned two robes, including a gorgeous oriental, but she seldom wore them in the morning. This was mostly, he suspected, because she knew perfectly well what wearing that shirt did to him. No designer of lingerie had ever come up with anything remotely as sexy as a man's shirt on a beautiful woman in the morning.
She half turned while he was watching, using one of those long straight legs to kick a cabinet shut. The same motion pulled the shirt tight against one breast and partially exposed the other. She was pretending not to notice that he was standing there. She yawned, or pretended to yawn. The yawn turned into a catlike stretch, an arching of her back which caused her breasts to rise as her head rolled languidly across her shoulder. A toss of her long brown hair revealed more of her face. Now he saw the tiny contented smile tugging, just barely, at one corne
r of her mouth. He knew the look. He also knew that there was no use in protesting the western omelet. She would only suggest that there was more than one way to work off a big breakfast.
Bannerman turned from the deck door without speaking. No use in rewarding smugness, either. He took his seat at the umbrella table that Susan had purchased the summer before.
She'd chosen the rest of the deck and patio furniture as well, plus the several hanging plants on wrought-iron poles and all the azaleas and dwarf rhododendrons that bordered the area. His own contribution had been a plum tree which, according to Susan, would not bear fruit for another two seasons.
He could wait. In the meantime, he was quite proud of it. It was the first tree, the first anything, he'd every planted. He'd bought two books that showed him how to care for it, unwilling to trust a single source. Typical, Susan had muttered at the time.
All the same, it seemed to be doing quite well. A few weeks ago, it had exploded into a million pinkish blossoms, and the slender purple leaves had since pushed through. He would check it every morning, pull a weed or two from its base, and then just stand back and look.
The deck had been bare before Susan entered his life. Sometimes, at night, before Susan, he would wander out here with a Scotch and sit against the railing, being careful to stay in deep shadow. All house lights turned off. Even then, he didn't make a habit of it. Habits kill. He would not have dreamed that one day soon he'd think nothing of lolling around out here in his bathrobe, in broad daylight.
His first-ever breakfast on the patio came the day after the umbrella table and chairs were delivered. Susan took his mug and his Sunday New York Times from his hands and told him to get out there and enjoy the morning. That time, he'd stalled for about thirty minutes, long enough to get two of his people to come and check out the area, being careful not to let Susan see them. She found out later. Hit the ceiling.
“That's a crummy way to live, Bannerman,” she told him.
He had not thought of it in those terms. Over the years, caution had become such a part of his nature that there was barely any thought process to it at all. He likened it to the buckling of a seat belt, but Susan dismissed that analogy.
Bannerman's Promise Page 4