The man was not moving. He sat, hunched over, part in and part out of the taxi. Ratmir was afraid. Had he murdered him, he wondered, or was the man faking? A shadow passed from the sidewalk. Footsteps receded. They were not hurried. Ratmir knew that the next passerby might look in and then run to Red Square for a policeman. He had to get away from there.
Ratmir eased into the driver's seat. He started the engine, praying that there would be no backfire. The prayer was answered. It caught quickly. He engaged the clutch, playing it, letting his taxi creep forward, deeper into the alley, in short jarring spurts. He could hear the big man's shoes clopping along the stones. At last, as he had hoped, the big man tumbled out the still-open back door. His face hit first under all his weight. He rolled until he hit the wall. Ratmir stopped. He reached through his window and pushed the rear door shut, wincing at the noise it made. He put his taxi in reverse and eased back past the fallen man.
Ratmir stopped once more. He had to think. The money crossed his mind, but he swept that thought aside. Not for a thousand rubles would he risk getting within that man's reach again. Unless he first made sure. Unless he finished him. Not for the money, but in case that man woke up remembering his name or the number of his taxi. Even if this man did not go to the police, Ratmir knew that he would be looking for him, for weeks to come, outside the tourist hotels.
It is not fair, Ratmir screamed in his mind.
He had done nothing wrong. If the man lives, he must live in fear. He must stay away from the hotels, but for a taxi driver that was not possible. If this man dies, it's Lefortovo prison and a bullet in the back of the head. Or worse. Unless this man was a liar, that business about KGB, they might take him to Lubyanka. At Lubyanka they would castrate him first. He had heard that they still do that.
Ratmir stiffened. He thought he saw movement. Yes. There it was again. The man's right hand. Even now, it still held those photographs. He was trying to raise the hand. Perhaps to signal. But he had no strength. As Ratmir watched, the hand opened and the crumpled photographs fell from it like leaves. They settled on his chest.
An inner urge told him to go forward again. Cut the wheel to the left. Crush him once and for all. But now he saw that one foot had begun to twitch violently and he heard a sound like the chortling of engine valves. The big man's chest shuddered, coughed once, and was still.
Ratmir touched the gas pedal. Struggling to compose himself, he eased his taxi back out across the sidewalk. There were no pedestrians on it. Up at the corner, a few people were leaving GUM but they were crossing to the metro station. That big man was gone but the younger one still lingered. Ratmir backed out further between the trucks. From there, he looked into the alley. To him, that dark mass was clearly a body, but he forced himself to realize that to anyone else it was only a shadow. A bundle of trash. Still, he knew that it would be discovered soon. In a few hours the old women will be out with their brooms and they will find him.
Calm yourself, he said. Drive away. Do not speed. First thing is to wash the car, get rid of the smell, also get rid of the mallet. He would go to his uncle Pyotr's garage on Kurskaya. Uncle Pyotr would help him. He would know what else to do.
21
Irwin Kaplan's nose was bleeding. His glasses were bent cockeyed. A net smash by Roger Clew had caught him just on the hinge.
Add to that a skinned knee from when he tripped on his shoelace, a sour stomach which would keep him from even enjoying Barton Fuller's brunch and a tennis game which, if a passing doctor should see him playing, would immediately be diagnosed as cerebral palsy.
And now, so the morning should be a total loss, Clew gets a call from Mama's Boy.
Kaplan had urged him to take Bannerman at his word. Call him back on Monday. Better yet, call him back next week. That would give Kaplan a chance to put about ten time zones between himself and whatever Bannerman was calling about.
It was not that he disliked Bannerman personally.
Personally, the guy was hard not to like; and Susan, of course, was practically family. At the wedding, Bannerman couldn't have been nicer. Danced with the wife. Asked about the kids. Wanted to see pictures. But he was being Paul Bannerman then. Mama's Boy was a different story. Kaplan hated that there had to be people like Mama's Boy. He hated that his country, a nation of laws, sometimes felt the need to use them.
Clew had returned the call, not waiting to play out the point. And yet he tells Bannerman that they finished a set. Already, this was enough for Kaplan. He didn't want to hear, not even Clew's end of it. He wanted to stick his fingers in his ears except that it would have looked too stupid. Then Clew mentioned his name. Quoting him. Even asking Bannerman if he wanted to talk to him. Bannerman didn't, thank God.
The next bad sign came right after the call. Their fourth for tennis this morning was Kevin Aylward—he's this loopy, right-wing columnist for the Washington Post. Roger had asked him to go have some coffee, give the rest of them a few minutes of privacy. But he did it with a wink as in, “Be cool, Kevin. I'll fill you in later.”
Kaplan tried to excuse himself as well. But Clew says, “No, no. You might as well hear it. Otherwise, you'll wonder about it and it's not that big a deal.”
On his mother's grave, thought Kaplan, he would not have wondered.
Also, when Roger says it's not that big a deal, especially in connection with Bannerman, it usually means that the potential loss of life is only in the single digits. Kaplan knew this.
He knew it.
Which is why he should not have been surprised when, as Clew was briefing Barton Fuller, he kept seeing these little flickers of eye contact that said, “I'll fill in the blanks after Irwin goes. You know how he gets. Bannerman makes him nervous.”
He tried to tell himself he was imagining it. That it was just a conditioned reflex to Roger's personality. But Fuller was doing it, too. Or at least he was failing to ask obvious questions, or he was frowning at places that did not seem to call for a frown.
Fine.
There was something they didn't want him to know about. Fine with him. If it didn't relate to his job, he didn't want to know anyway.
‘Tell you what,” he said, rising. ”I think three's a crowd here.” Kaplan fished for his car keys.
Barton Fuller nodded with a sigh, then raised both hands. “Please stay,” he said. “It's not what you think.”
“What I think is that you two are playing games with Bannerman again and I don't want any part of it. I particularly resent Roger, here, bringing my name into a conversation that was less than candid.”
“Roger did not lie to Paul.”
Kaplan twisted his lip doubtfully. “Carla's boyfriend,” he asked. “Is he a Russian agent or isn't he?”
Clew started to speak, the beginnings of a denial, but the older man stopped him. “We're not sure,” he said. “That's the truth, Irwin.”
“Fine. Except that Roger as much as swore that this Corsini guy is just another wheeler-dealer who just might have had a nodding acquaintance with a Maf or two over the years but is otherwise basically clean.”
“Irwin . . .” With a gesture, Fuller put this last aside. “What made you ask that question? About Corsini being an
agent, I mean.”
“Look where he's done business. He had to have had a connection, high up, and, at the very least, he'd do favors to protect that relationship.”
“That would make him an asset. Not an agent.”
Kaplan turned to Roger. “Is the guy making money?”
“Some.”
“But not big bucks, right?”
“Not that I could find.”
“So whatever he does, it doesn't seem to be making him rich. To me, it sounds like he gets mostly crumbs. Take away the profit motive and you've got either a lousy businessman or an agent-in-place ”
Neither man answered. More eye contact.
Kaplan grimaced, his expression pained. “You know what offends me here? With all due respect? You think I'm stupid.
”
”I promise you,” said Fuller, “that I don't.”
“Is Bannerman stupid?”
Fuller's eyes narrowed. “What's your point, Irwin?”
“Do you think it'll take him any longer than it took me to draw the same conclusions about Carla's boyfriend? Why didn't you level with him?”
“About what? All this guesswork? Irwin, what we actually know is very little indeed.”
“So instead, you've got him wondering why Roger here was checking this guy out all the way down to his dental charts.”
Fuller stared for a long moment, then nodded slowly. It was clear that this line of thought disturbed him.
“Believe it or not,” he said finally, “Roger was genuinely trying to be helpful.”
Kaplan's cheek twitched. But he said nothing.
“As you know,” said Fuller, “we have made mistakes with Paul in the past.”
No shit, thought Kaplan.
Especially Roger the Dodger, here. Him and some of his grand schemes aimed at getting Bannerman and his people to end their wasteful, selfish, and unpatriotic retirement and come back to work—exclusively, no more foreign clients— for State Department Intelligence, which is to say Roger Clew.
“The mistake here, if there was one,” said Fuller, “was that we tried to avoid the appearance of attempting to manipulate him again. When Roger came to me with what he learned about Aldo Corsini, I instructed him to say nothing to Paul unless asked and, even then, to let Paul make of it what he will.”
“Yeah, well.. ” Kaplan's eyes said that he believed him. “You should have talked to him yourself.”
“Meaning that he will be suspicious of anything Roger says?”
Kaplan shrugged. No offense, he thought, but Roger will zigzag if you ask him what he had for lunch.
It's funny, though. There was a time when Roger was the only human in the entire fed who Bannerman trusted. Which is how Bannerman ended up doing jobs for State as opposed to any of the intelligence services. Roger built his career on that. Being Mama's Boy's control. But Roger gets promoted again, back to the U.S. and the next guy, CIA this time, discovers that no contract agent, none of the good ones, will take a job unless Bannerman gave it the green light. The CIA guy saw this as contrary to the national interest and his solution was to make Mama's Boy disappear, probably under the pachysandra outside that dry-out clinic in Westport. In the end, Bannerman made him disappear instead.
Roger, meanwhile, is now a diplomat, but he hates it. Diplomacy is too slow. He yearns for the good old days when he could spell out a problem to Bannerman and Bannerman would say, “Let me think about it.” A few days later, Clew would pick up a newspaper and find out that he didn't have a problem anymore.
Clew misses all this. It bugs him that Bannerman doesn't. Bannerman likes the quiet life in Westport too much and, besides, he's involved with this girl who is straight and who doesn't know from Mama's Boy—in the beginning anyway—and who, incidentally, happens to be Ray Lesko's daughter, which is how Irwin Kaplan got involved.
Long story. Forget it.
No ... better not to forget. In short strokes, Clew hatches this scheme. The idea was to show Bannerman how vulnerable he is, how much he still needs friends in high places, but the scheme is so fucking intricate it naturally goes out of control and a bunch of people get dead. Roger, by rights, should have been one of them. Bannerman gave him a pass for old times' sake.
Kaplan had not answered Barton Fuller's last question. His mind had wandered. He waggled his fingers in apology. Fuller repeated it.
“He'll wonder,” Kaplan answered. “Like I'm wondering.”
“What Roger is holding back?”
“Among other things.”
“What action, if any, will he take?”
Another pained expression. “What are you hoping for, Mr. Secretary?”
“It's Bart here, Irwin.”
The grimace deepened. “It's Bart when all we're doing is playing tennis. With all respect, I think we're playing something else now.”
Fuller sighed. “Tell him, Roger.”
Clew leaned forward, anger in his eyes. “For the record, Irwin, I didn't call Bannerman. He called me.”
Kaplan shrugged. He said nothing.
“No one is playing games with Bannerman. On the contrary, we're hoping that he will do nothing at all. If Aldo Corsini is an agent, we want him just where he is.”
“I'll ask again. Is he or isn't he?”
“Somewhere near Genoa,” Clew answered, “the former Soviet Union has in fact had an agent-in-place. The NSA has been intercepting his signals for years. First to the KGB compound at Karlhorst in East Germany and then, over the past two years, to Moscow Center. Except for a word here and there, his signals haven't been decoded, he's never been triangulated, and he's never been identified. The truth is that nobody cared that much. The only thing that was even interesting about this character was that the Karlhorst Compound was strictly Second Chief Directorate. Normally, an agent-in-place would have reported to the First Chief Directorate.”
Kalplan saw what was coming at the mention of Genoa. He started to speak, but Clew waved him off.
“Don't get ahead of me,” he said. “Moscow Center, these days, is basically a sort of elephants' burial ground for the old SCD hard-liners. The moderates prefer to use the building across the street. A signal to the First Chief Directorate, in any case, would go to Yasenevo, not Moscow Center. The SCD, whether hard-line or moderate, was tasked with Internal Security. They had no business running agents in Italy any more than our FBI is permitted to run agents abroad. That agent's sign-off, incidentally, is 'Barca.' You know what that means in Italian?”
“Boat?”
“It means sailboat, actually.”
22
Elena could not stay mad at Lesko.
True, he was behaving boorishly. But she could hardly blame him. She had as much as lied to him.
At the very least, she had excluded him. And that in itself was wrong. This good man was her husband. She was carrying his child. To deceive him was to dishonor him. All that aside, he was entirely too perceptive not to have smelled several rats by now.
”I have to tell him,” she said to Leo Belkin.
She said this as they waited at the fountain in GUM, sipping sweet champagne, after Lesko had gone to relieve himself. He was gone a long time. Twenty minutes. He had said that he would be back in five.
She could guess what he was doing with that time. He would have found a quiet place, perhaps a toilet stall, and he would sit there allowing his impressions of the last two hours to settle.
“What the hell is going on here?”
She could hear him asking that question, not of himself but of the dead policeman who was still a part of him.
“David? Why am I getting the feeling that I'm only along for the ride, here? Why do I think that, right now, those three are back at that fountain trying to decide how to handle me? That as soon as I show up, they're going to suddenly be talking about the weather.”
Belkin lowered his eyes, nodding slowly, sadly,
“It's my fault,” he said.
“No more than mine, Leo.”
His lips moved as if searching for words. “When ... I am in the West, I think with this.” He touched his forehead. ”I come home, I'm here two hours, and suddenly my soul is Russian again. Everything comes from here . . . and here.” He touched his heart and then his gut.
She smiled, a hand on his arm. “If that is what makes a Russian, my friend, then Lesko is as Russian as you are.”
A slight nod, more of politeness than of conviction.
Yes, he thought, Lesko is definitely emotional. He is generous, impulsive, utterly loyal to his friends and family. His word, once given, is inviolable. These are certainly Russian qualities.
But there is a difference.
In Lesko's entire life, Belkin felt sure, he had never done a thing for which he was thoroughly ashamed. Not onc
e.
Lesko, himself, would probably argue to the contrary. He might even cite examples of those words and deeds that he regretted most. But they would be only that. Regrets. The occasional stupidities that come with being human. One would never hear, however, that Raymond Lesko stood mute as a friend was unjustly condemned. Or that he followed loathsome orders, without complaint, from men he despised. That he made no protest when good men, better men, were sent to prison on evidence that he knew to be false. That the man who murdered his own father ...
“Leo . . . don't.”
Elena had been watching him, seeing his thoughts on his face. She had heard them before, some of them, those he could bring himself to speak of. She looked up at Valentin. With her eyes and a small movement of her head, she asked that he go and see what was keeping Lesko.
“You are much too hard on yourself,” she said when Valentin had gone.
He didn't answer. A quick shake of his head said, Thank you, but you have no idea.
“You and I, Leo,” she answered as if she had heard him, “we both have had to find our souls.”
He drained the champagne from his paper cup and crushed it. ”I never should have brought you here,” he said.
”I insisted, Leo,” she reminded him. “It is only that I should have told Lesko.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. “Let me tell him,” he said. ”I want him to understand how it was.”
“He will understand. Simply tell him the truth.”
A doubtful grunt. His shoulder was still tender where Lesko had gripped it. But he nodded.
“Leo?” She touched his chest. ”I would like to hear the truth as well. The whole truth this time.”
He looked at her. Then he had to look away. But again he nodded.
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