“In other words, everything that Borovik is not. What got him in trouble?”
”A number of things.” Sostkov wrinkled his nose as if to say that they did not amount to much. “First, he was selling fuel to Latvia during the embargo a few years ago. He would trade it for Baltic bricks and textiles which he would sell to the Leningrad cooperatives. There was also a scheme involving lottery tickets.”
“You mean printing counterfeits?” Kulik seemed disappointed.
Sostkov shook his head. “He had someone in the lottery office who would give him the names of those who held winning tickets. He would then buy those tickets for more than their face value and sell them to black-market operators who needed a way to account for their income.”
Kulik nodded appreciatively. ”A clever idea,” he said. “How did a dolt like Borovik catch on?”
A shrug. “Someone informed. Say what you want about General Borovik, but at least he recognizes talent when he sees it.”
Kulik's expression soured. Sostkov realized his mistake. Borovik had also recruited those clowns, the Kerenskys. And through them, two criminally stupid drivers who managed to wipe out an entire valley.
But Kulik was on another train of thought. “Talent is one thing,” he said. “Can Podolsk be as ruthless?”
“Ruthless as Borovik?”
Kulik rocked a hand. “With Borovik, it's more of a sickness. A man needn't be a brute or a bully. Merely decisive.”
“I suppose ... he would have to be tested.”
“As you were tested, Sostkov?”
The former captain said nothing.
“Your colonel was a decent man, you know. A humane man.”
“Yes ... I know he was.”
“Any regrets?”
He started to shake his head but stopped himself. “From time to time,” he answered truthfully.
“Of the act itself? Or the necessity?”
“It had to be done. I didn't have to like it.”
The older man smiled, ruefully, then more warmly. He rose to his feet and, one hand on Sostkov's shoulder, walked him toward the door of his library.
“You cannot know,” he said, “how good it is to hear you say those words. The world has enough monsters. It doesn't need more.”
Sostkov blushed a little. The older man patted his back, and closed the door behind him. The general returned to his desk.
He had his own regrets, he said within himself.
This Sostkov was a good one. Very steady.
But he was also the only man still living who could place Arkadi Kulik at that burial pit.
The others were gone. His chauffeur, Mischa, had seen to four of them. Then Mischa's own turn came. That was hard. Mischa had been with him for six years and he had, after all, saved him from being flattened against the Zil.
Nor was a new Zil so easy to find.
But there was no great hurry, Kulik supposed, as long as Sostkov stayed where he could keep an eye on him. There was time to pick and choose his replacement. Perhaps he did not have so far to look. He liked what he had been hearing about this Podolsk.
Well... that could wait.
He looked at his watch.
Another hour or so with these charts and then it's time to think about dressing for dinner. Sostkov seems very pleased that he's been invited. But it's good for him. All work and no play, et cetera.
In the outer room, dialing the number of their man at Ostankino, Oleg Sostkov felt good inside. It was nice to be understood. Nice to be respected. It also wasn't bad to have some money.
His thoughts turned to the BMW which was coming in just ten more days. Silver with black leather seats. Fuel injection. Getting high-octane petrol that won't clog it will be a problem but... such a car...it was worth the extra effort.
His call was disconnected. He grumbled and tried again.
Someday soon, he would drive his new car all through Europe. Find a pretty girl to go with him. Or pick up a French girl along the way. General Kulik says it's easy. He says that these days, saying you're KGB—even former KGB—gets them very excited.
It had bothered him, for a while, that all the others were sent on missions to the West and he had to stay home. Even Kulik's driver, big Mischa, got to go. One the other hand, none of them got a BMW with leather seats.
General Kulik was a good boss so far. The best he ever had. The only one, certainly, who invited him along when he went out for dinner.
He was not all puffed up like some. He was a man you could talk to as long as you didn't go too far. As long as you kept in mind that bent-up golf club leaning next to his fireplace.
13
“Where are we?”
Carla's head jerked up at the bleat of a nearby horn. She'd been dozing.
“Only forty kilometers to Bern,” Yuri told her. “Not long now.”
For a moment, as her head cleared, she seemed to panic. Yuri knew what was happening. Memories were flooding back. She was trying to believe that they were only dreams. But then she saw that this was Aldo Corsini's car and it was Yuri who was driving. Her head sank forward. She hid her face in her hands.
Yuri Rykov reached for the back of her neck and began massaging it, gently. She did not respond. She waited until he took his hand away, then drew up her knees, holding them tight against her chest.
Yuri groped for the ice bag, which had slid into the well of her seat. It was watery but still cold.
“Put this back against your cheek,” he said. “It is still very swollen.”
She took it. With her other hand, she turned down her sun visor and looked at her face in the small vanity mirror. She moaned softly. Her left eye was partially closed. The swelling extended down one side of her nose and to half of her upper lip. She brought the ice bag to her face, hiding once again.
“Are you going to stay with me?” she asked.
“While it is daylight, yes. Then I must go back to Zurich, also to my embassy in Bern.”
”I mean, are you going to stay with me.”
He eased off the accelerator, moving his lips as if searching for a reply that would be correct.
“Don't do me any fucking favors, Yuri.”
The Russian sagged.
“Never mind.” She hugged herself tighter. “I'm not in the mood anyway.”
A part of her hated Yuri for knowing what he knew. For having seen her like that. For having Maria. She had no one now. She needed him to hold her, not rub her neck. She needed to get lost in him.
A bigger part of her hated herself, not least for taking this out on Yuri. He'd been kind to her. He deserved better.
Still...
She was embarrassed by the way he bathed her. As if she were a child. She did not resist when he eased her out of the raincoat with which she'd covered herself. Or when he knelt to peel off her torn and splattered panty hose. He had lifted her onto her bathroom counter, sat her there, washing the blood from her arms and chest, sponging it from her hair. She did not resist. Nor did she help.
It was not so much that she'd been naked. He'd seen her body before. In California. But then it was a woman's body and not just a thing to be scrubbed. In California, he thought she was beautiful. She needed to hear that now.
Such perfect skin, he told her then. Like coffee with cream. No freckles, unusual for red hair. No scars, except for the one across her throat that even Yuri mistook for a natural crease. Perfect breasts, he said. Not large, but that is good. Always, he said, they will stay high and proud.
Now she was just one more part of a mess that needed cleaning. Fixing. He stuffed cotton into her cheek to control the bleeding where her teeth had cut into it. He took ice from the kitchen and fashioned a compress. Then he dressed her, choosing a skirt, blouse, and blazer because they required less cooperation than her customary jeans and leathers. He found her wigs in a bedroom closet. They were her working wigs. Disguises. Worn to hide red hair when needed. He chose one for that purpose. Blond, a helmet cut. The look was ten years
out of fashion, but it changed the shape of her face. She did not resist when he sat her down on her toilet-seat cover and put the wig on her. She sat there, holding the compress as he stuffed more of her clothing into a bag. He rolled Aldo up in the ruined carpet and hoisted him onto his shoulder. He took Aldo out, stashed him someplace. She wasn't sure where. Yuri was all business. He never even put his arms around her when she shivered. Or when she cried. She had called him at Maria's house, needing him. She called five times before he finally got home from the garden party. Even then, he could not come, not right away. You must wait, he whispered, until Maria takes her daughter to her parents' house and then leaves for her concert. Carla had understood that. But she needed him right then.
Aldo.
Dear sweet Aldo.
You bastard.
“Yuri?”
“Yes, Carla.”
“His eyes changed.”
“The Italian's eyes? How so?”
‘They just changed. One second he was Aldo, the next he was someone else.”
“In his eyes, what did you see?”
She wasn't sure. When you step in dog shit, see it on your shoe—that was how he'd looked at her. An hour before that, for weeks before that, he had looked at her the way Yuri did in California.
The punch came so fast. Too fast, too well aimed, for an amateur. And he used the butt of his palm so that he wouldn't risk a knuckle. That has to be learned.
“He would have killed me,” she said quietly.
“You saw ... rage?”
She shook her head. Not rage. At least not for being spit at. It was more like resignation. Whatever it was that he was after, she had ruined it for him. Now she was shit on a shoe.
“He thought I was nothing. A naked little nothing.”
Yuri reached for her knee. Another squeeze. This time she placed her hand on his.
“How did you meet him, Carla?”
“He was feeding the swans.”
Yuri saw a mental picture. An irrelevancy. He blinked it away. ”I mean, which of you initiated this contact?”
She understood. “Me. Not him.”
Or she thought so until now. Perhaps not. Perhaps he was just very patient. Very professional. ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’ A cardinal rule. Right up there with ‘Never risk a knuckle.’
Yuri wanted details.
She was already remembering.
The first time she saw him, she told Yuri, she was having dinner. By herself. It was at the Kronenhalle in Zurich. She ate there once a week on average, usually at the same table but not always on the same day.
She saw Yuri's frown. She understood it. It was not a strict routine but it was a routine nonetheless. Routines kill.
Yuri made no issue of it. But he knew the restaurant. Just off the Quay Bridge where the Limmat River flows into Lake Zurich. Quite good as Swiss-German restaurants go. A very nice art collection on the walls.
She was dining alone, she told him, and so was he. She had barely noticed him. Over coffee, she was sitting back getting lost in a Matisse which she particularly admired. Their eyes met. He smiled, apologetically, as if to say he had not meant to intrude upon her privacy. He made no further overture. He paid his bill and left the restaurant, first taking the unused bread from his basket and wrapping it in a handkerchief.
She finished a second cup of coffee and, as she often did, chose to walk off the meal along the shore of the river, going up as far as the tramway station, crossing at the Banhofstrasse and coming down the other side. She saw him again on the Quay Bridge. He was breaking small pieces from a dinner roll and giving them to a small boy who was there with his mother. It was the boy, actually, who was feeding the swans. Carla walked past them. The man did not seem to notice her. She stopped and watched. The boy spoke to her, in German, calling her attention to all the birds below. Several families of them.
Only then did the man turn. A hesitation, and then a smile of recognition. He offered her some of his bread. The offer was made in German. She answered in that language but he heard her American accent. They conversed briefly in English. Carla wished him a pleasant evening and walked to her car.
A week later, when she dined at the Kronenhalle again, he wasn't there. If he had been, she supposed, she might have wondered. She fed the swans by herself.
By the time another week had passed, she had forgotten him. But once again, there he was at the Kronenhalle, sitting under the Matisse. She caught his eye. She nodded a greeting. He smiled and stood. He asked if she would care to join him for dessert and coffee. She did so, bringing her own bread to his table. They fed the swans together.
Soon they were seeing each other, trying new restaurants, taking walks, talking. Carla told him about herself, inventing where necessary. She had grown up in California, then moved to Connecticut where she managed certain properties owned by the Brugg family. She created a husband who had died in an auto accident. There were no children. She told him of her sister, a film student, who had been murdered last year in Los Angeles. Carla, after burying her, had come to Europe to escape the pain.
His name, he said, was Aldo Corsini. A widower, also no children, a fact he regretted. His wife had died when their lake house in Lugano caught fire. He still owned their flat in Genoa, but he lived on his boat because the flat contained too many memories.
When he was younger, he acted in films, many westerns, was killed three different times by Clint Eastwood and twice by Lee Van Cleef. Most of his other roles were as dissolute young Romans and then as dissolute aging Romans. Finally, he said it was time to grow up. He founded, with the backing of some friends, a small business which he ran from the boat as well. It was a venture-capital firm. Actors make good salesmen, he said. What he did was help other companies find markets for their products, cut bureaucratic red tape, get financing. For this last, he was often in Zurich. He enjoyed dancing if it was slow, any sort of sailing but especially by moonlight, a good meal with the right wines, and American ladies if they had red hair and green eyes that seemed sad and lost. He understood, he said, the emptiness she felt. He, too, was trying to rebuild his life.
They became lovers. He made love in the manner of a man who likes women. Constantly aware of her, constantly attentive. Pausing now and then just to look at her, talk to her, laugh with her. Carla's pain began to recede.
A month of weekends at her boathouse passed before he asked, or rather hinted, that he would very much like an introduction to the Brugg family. She answered that she would prefer, for now, to keep business out of their relationship. If he didn't mind.
She watched his eyes. She saw no disappointment.
Not long after that, they were dining at La Rotonde, the restaurant in the Dolder Grand Hotel, when Willem Brugg entered with a party of six. Willem saw her before she noticed him. He approached, was introduced, and asked them to join his table. Aldo tried to decline. Willem insisted. Throughout the meal, he and Aldo talked a great deal. Carla saw, however, that this was none of Aldo's doing. He was trying as best he could to converse with the others, but Willem and his wife were fascinated by him, intent on learning what sort of man could bring a glow to the cheeks of Carla Benedict.
That evening led to other invitations. Several charity functions. At a reception following one of Maria's recitals, Carla introduced him to Yuri Rykov and Leo Belkin. She introduced them as only as Russian diplomats. He also met and chatted with the several contract agents who were already on retainer to the Bruggs. She did not tell him what they were. She introduced them as friends of the family, accountants, factory managers, or by whatever job function crossed her mind.
Carla realized that it would only be a matter of time before Aldo learned more about her. She decided that she must tell him something of the truth. If he could not deal with it, better to know sooner than later.
She told him, during one of their walks, which parts of her life were real and which were lies. The dead husband was a lie, the sister was not. She told him that she
was an intelligence operative, or had been, and that her life had been a violent one. She told him of her years in Europe with the man known as Mama's Boy and of their expropriation of a sanatorium and a goodly amount of other real estate in a small Connecticut town called Westport. - It was far more than he had any right to know. She realized that. It was just that once she began talking she found it hard to stop. Expropriation? You say you helped yourself to an entire American town? How could this be possible?
Well. . . sort of.
She explained to him that the CIA had been running a number of safe houses there for more than forty years. They were originally intended for the debriefing and supervised retirement of agents brought in from the field after years of deep-cover operations. The sanatorium was for those who were too dangerous or too damaged ever to be released. The others, over the years, became a sort of private army for certain people in the government.
Several years ago, she told Aldo, they lured Mama's Boy there from Europe. Why is too long a story. But once they got him inside that sanatorium, he was never going to leave. Mama's Boy—Paul Bannerman—saw it coming. About a dozen of us, she said, slipped into Westport.
We freed him, but now we were all on someone's hit list and there was nowhere to hide. So Bannerman decided that we might as well stay there. We threw the federals out. We moved into their houses, took over their businesses. They couldn't do much about it because the Westport facility was illegal to begin with. We let them know that if they tried to retake it with guns, what they'd get was a bloodbath and a front page scandal. It's been a standoff, more or less, ever since.
Aldo could scarcely believe a word of all this.
But he had heard of this Bannerman, he said. Several years ago, there was an article in the German magazine Stern entitled “America's Terrorists.” The nom de guerre, Mama's Boy, struck him as a strange choice for a man who, one assumes, wished to be feared. Aldo had thought that he must be dead or in prison by now. As for the rest of it, it was too much to absorb. He said that he was shocked and—he would admit it—more than a little afraid of such people. He would need time to think.
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