“They said help yourself and he did,” says Kaplan.
The thing is, he didn't.
Bannerman didn't go to Zhukovka to whack anyone. He went there because it was the one address he had—from some faxes Zivic sent him—where a berserk Raymond Lesko might have gone and Irwin, here, was even offering him a ride.
If anything, he wanted to prevent a killing. Podolsk's.
Leo's uncle turns up out of nowhere and tells him that Podolsk is a plant for the good guys, that he's very close to penetrating Kulik, and Bannerman's going to blow two years of undercover work if he doesn't back off.
Normally, Bannerman could care less and, besides, he thinks this guy has his head in the clouds. But he doesn't want his future father-in-law ... which is how he's starting to talk suddenly ... which might still get his legs broken ... killing the wrong man.
Considerate guy, Bannerman.
Next he hears Irwin's deal. He can see how Fuller might have bought into it. The Russians want to stop the destruction, which they still think is all Bannerman's doing. So does Fuller. But Fuller thinks Bannerman's people have Borovik already so maybe it's pretty much over. He says, let's give Bannerman some room, see if he'll gather his people and get out. Not prolong this thing.
“Would Fuller shaft you?” Lesko had asked when he heard about this window.
“He would ... try not to.”
Nice relationship, thought Lesko. But that, as it happened, was his own take on Fuller. Guy's basically straight but he's a diplomat. A job like that, sometimes you have to make choices. The thing is, so do the Russians.
Bannerman thinks it's possible that these three Russian ministers felt that Borovik, Kulik, and that bunch brought it on themselves. Let Mama's Boy take his best shot. But he says don't bet on it, even if they're basically straight themselves. In their shoes, says Bannerman, he'd look for a way to use this.
“They'd go back on their deal with Fuller?”
He rocks his hand. “It won't look like their doing.”
“What won't? How will they use it?”
“The temptation might be strong to do a little house-cleaning of their own. And let Mama's Boy get the credit.”
“So what if they do? You'd lose sleep over it?”
”I don't have to be alive to get the credit, Lesko.”
“Mr. Clew, sir?”
The voice came from the Lincoln's squawk box. Up front, the guard in the passenger seat was scribbling on a notepad, the radiophone hunched to his ear. He tore off the sheet, lowered the glass divider a crack, and passed it through.
Clew studied it, shielding it. He was frowning deeply. As he read further, however, he broke into a grin. He tried to mask it with his hand. Finally, he folded it to hide a part of the message and showed the rest of it to Lesko.
“Do you know any of these names?” he asked.
There were five. Lesko said he thought he knew two of them. He'd only seen them in Cyrillic before, but they looked like they might be those two Arabs from the restaurant. The other three, he'd never heard of.
“What about them?” he asked.
Clew unfolded the sheet. “An hour ago, your two were shot to death as they left the Sudanese consulate. A witness says the shooters were two men, early forties, short and tall, the short one wore glasses. Sound like anyone you know?”
Bannerman and Irwin here. Lesko curled his lip.
“Of the other three,” said Clew, “two jumped from their apartment windows and the third was crushed under a train. This is all in the past hour. A witness claims this last one was thrown onto the tracks by a very large, rough-looking man who shouted in English .. .”
That choked laugh again. Clew's eyes were watering. He raised a hand. “I'm sorry. It's funny and it isn't.”
Lesko glowered. “Shouted what, Roger?”
“This is in recompense for Elena.”
83
Carla was beginning to like Viktor Podolsk.
She was coming to know him through the sort of books he read and through the single photograph of a slender young man posing with his parents. The face, though perhaps five years younger, matched the one in Nikolai Belkin's file folder.
In the photograph, taken at an outing of some kind, all three were laughing. Podolsk was almost doubled over. She had no idea what the joke was, only that they had shared it and enjoyed it. The mother, trim and stylish, had a wonderful grin. The father had an equally open face. A lot like Yuri's. These people liked and loved each other. She envied Podolsk.
The apartment on the fourth floor of an older high-rise near the Moscow Zoo, was tiny. It was only one room, really, with a thin partition down the middle giving him a bedroom. But the living-room half had floor-to-ceiling windows from which she could see polar bears swimming. Both windows had cushioned seats. One had a wicker back rest. Judging by the stack of books near that one, Viktor Podolsk sat there when he read.
There were quite a few Agatha Christie mysteries, all Russian translations. And some Father Brown mysteries by G. K. Chesterton. But there were just as much Balzac and Flaubert, Dickens and Mark Twain, some in French and English, but much of it translated into Russian. About half of the books seemed to be in manuscript form—fourth or fifth carbon copies.
Yuri explained that many of these books, while no longer forbidden, are extremely hard to get. A rare book, once found or borrowed, would be copied on a typewriter and passed among friends. Or friends would meet and form a circle, passing each page as it was read. Someone had actually sat down and copied the Oxford Book of English Verse. Possibly Podolsk himself. It must have taken years. There was a length of ribbon marking a love sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It seemed strange. Browning was her favorite as well.
Carla had read quite a few of these books, especially the Balzac and a good deal of the poetry. But she could not imagine herself leaving them around like this for other people to see. She never kept books. Or even talked about them. People know you too well when they know what you read.
“Yuri?”
He didn't answer. He was sulking a little, pretending to be watching the street for John Waldo or Lesko. At the same time listening for sounds from outside the door, which he broke to get in here. She'd told him that there was no use watching. Waldo would never approach from the front, and he doesn't make noise. The best thing to do is talk. If he does come for Podolsk, let him hear their voices. Yuri snorted. That's all well and good if it's Waldo, he said, but suicidal if it's someone else.
Well... as long as we're on the subject of dying . . .
“Yuri, I don't think I'm going back. I think I'll just stay dead.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Staying dead? What use is that?”
”I don't choose to discuss it.”
Besides, you big prick, you haven't even touched me since Bern.
“Well, you must discuss it. The notion is absurd.”
“Will you talk to me about Leo's uncle?”
“You will be respectful for a change?”
“Yes.”
“First you, then. Did you suppose you can go on being Lydia?”
She shook her head. “You'll want to claim her body, send it home. If the Swiss haven't made her already, they will. Which means they'll be looking for me. If they dredge up Aldo, they'll charge me with murder.”
”I don't think so.”
“That was my damned rug you wrapped him in.”
“It wasn't murder, and an arrest can be dealt with.”
“I'm not going back. I hate Zurich now.”
“Then return to Westport with Paul. You'll be safe among friends who care about you.”
“Screw that.”
“And why this attitude?”
“They'll feel sorry for me, Yuri. They'll take me to fucking lunch.”
Finally, Yuri understood. Carla, who feared nothing, could not bear to be pitied. In the week since the wedding, the sight of Carla Benedict in love must have been the talk of her whole world. All the same,
the secret could never be kept. Too many people had seen her alive. The Academician among them, Willem Brugg and Susan among them. He pointed this out to her.
Her response was that her side could be trusted to keep silent. If she asked them. Susan especially. Carla hinted that Susan had a secret of her own, which they shared, and Carla would never betray her. Yuri ignored the digression. Betrayal was not the issue.
“In any case, where would you go?” he asked her.
”I might stay here. Here I can be Lydia for a while longer.”
“Carla Benedict, who speaks no Russian, stays in Moscow with false papers? It's too ridiculous. You would be picked up as soon as they see you are not with a tour group”
“Get real, Yuri. This country's a sieve now and the language is money. I can get all I need.”
Total nonsense, he thought. Not at all like Carla. ”I have leave coming. Why don't I stay for a while, show you my Russia. After that, I will take you home.”
“What about Maria?”
”I will ask her permission.”
Carla laughed. “Talk about dream worlds,” she said. “But as long as we are, let's talk about Leo's uncle.”
“You said you'd be respectful.”
. She tried to think of a way. Yuri, meanwhile, dropped his eyes. `
“What was Mr. Bannerman's impression?'' he asked her.
She told him, adding her own.
Yuri did and did not want to hear it. But he listened, sometimes nodding in reluctant agreement. At last, he reached for one of the manuscripts that were stacked by the window. It was one of the Chesterton stories.
“In Bern,” he said, “in General Belkin's office, he had a quotation from this man pinned to a corkboard. It reads, ‘When people stop believing in something, the danger is not that they will believe in nothing, but rather that they will believe in anything.’ ”
Carla started to speak. Yuri raised a hand.
“You can't imagine the pain in this country,” he told her. “All the old ways are totally rejected, even those that worked, even those that were humane. Add to that, there is hardly a man or woman in this country who is not deeply ashamed of something. For forgiveness, some go to church and you know what they find out? That the priest was a KGB informant. That for years, he reported any confessions that might be of interest to them.”
“You knew about that?”
He shook his head. ‘To find out was just as sad for most KGB. So we look for our own priests. We find men like Academician Belkin or we find an Arkadi Kulik. This is what we have come to, Carla.”
“You'd pick Nikolai over Leo?” She stood watching the polar bears.
Another shake. Almost a blush. “That. . . attraction was very recent. Only since I learned how much General Belkin' had misled me ... misled Elena. It was, I think ... bounce-back?”
“Rebound,” she smiled, partly in relief.
”I said very bad things to Mr. Bannerman.”
“It's Paul and forget it. I do that all the time.”
She was watching a police car now. The same one had passed minutes earlier, moving slowly.
“At Elena's wedding, shall I tell you what I was going to ask him?”
“If you could come to Westport. He knows.”
“Would it…I mean, if you were to go back there, and I were to come...for only a visit at first… and I brought Maria .. . would that be unpleasant for you?”
“Why would it?”
That driver, plainclothes, had a machine gun on his lap.
“It is only ... considering that you and I... that we have been...”
“Yuri, don't be a jerk.”
She heard a dull crunching sound coming from the cheaply carpeted hall. The sound was from Podolsk's light-bulb stash, which she had crushed and scattered along the hallway. She reached for her borrowed Makarov. Yuri was already in a crouch, his pistol trained on one side of the doorframe. Carla's came up on the other. Yuri was speaking softly, tenderly in Russian. She realized he was faking sex. She answered with a moan of pleasure. Yuri's breath came faster. More words, grunts. Carla almost shouted “Da . . . Oh, Da. Da. Da.” But she didn't know if Russians did that.
From outside, the clearing of a throat.
“Um.. .If this is a bad time … came Bannerman's voice from the hallway.
84
Before this morning, the recovery room at Hospital #52 had been the office of the Communist-party administrator. His qualifications for managing the affairs of a major hospital consisted of similar positions at a cement plant in Rybinsk and a factory making busts of Lenin in Lvov. His job was to see that treatment was given according to party rank and to see that treatment standards met party norms. He was to assure, for example, that patient mortality figures below 1.85% were published no matter how many actually died.
Until Willem Brugg's equipment came, Hospital #52 had no other recovery room, no intensive-care unit worth the name. Now it had both.
Elena's surgery had taken two hours. Barring complications, the Swiss surgeon told Willem and Susan, she would recover but the news was not all good. A degree of facial paralysis could be expected, possibly permanent. Some hearing loss, same side, was possible. She might have limited` use of her left arm. Paralysis was indicated there as well, suggesting damage to the motor area of the brain.
More serious, one sliver of bone had been driven deep into the limbic system. It is embedded, the surgeon explained, in an area of the hypothalamus that is associated with memory, the capacity to feel pleasure or pain, and the brain's ability to balance extremes of emotion. To remove it would have done further damage. The effect would remain to be seen. The patient will face many months of close observation and therapy. There is an excellent facility near Munich. The surgeon could recommend it without reservation.
“Your father,” said Willem to Susan when the surgeon excused himself, “has an expression that is not so polite but is often appropriate.”
“In a pig's ass?”
“Wonderful expression. It speaks volumes.”
A more detailed report came from Miriam and Avram, who had witnessed the procedure. When they spoke of Elena, they used her name where the Swiss surgeon had not. Yes, he was quite good, Miriam agreed. But so was the mechanic who had once restored a sports car she owned after it had been accidentally immersed in salt water.
Elena was conscious or semiconscious throughout some of it. Parts of her brain had been stimulated with electrodes in order to determine loss of function. It was one of the Russian neurosurgeons who wanted to know, in detail, what sort of person Elena was. He asked, Miriam realized, because he considered her outlook, her strength of character, to be relevant to which invasive procedures they would undertake and which they would forgo. This doctor, she said, she would trust with more than her sports car.
The Russian, on the other hand, had resisted one procedure on the grounds that the risk of infection was too great. Miriam had been about to side with him until she realized that his reservation had to do with the unavailability of the proper antibiotics. There were none to be had in all of Moscow. He relented, happily, when he realized that Willem Brugg had brought enough for fifty such patients.
“Tell that man,” said Willem Brugg, “that he will have all that he needs. For the rest of his life, if necessary.”
Lesko, with Clew, Kaplan, and two bodyguards in his wake, arrived forty minutes later. He had come from the embassy. All five men carried flowers. Hundreds of them. A corsage, clearly meant for a woman, was pinned to Lesko's lapel. His left eye was swollen and discolored. His trousers were split up the seam. What had happened was this.
Upon reaching the embassy compound, Lechmann had gone past to block traffic from one direction while the last two cars blocked traffic from the other. There was no sign of the pursuers, but the guard at the Russian checkpoint had been increased and a Chaika blocked the entrance. Blowing through was no longer an option.
It became apparent that the guards had instructions
to search each of the embassy cars, trunks and undercarriages included. The officer in charge was polite, even apologetic. He said that he had been ordered to detain any Russian national, any foreigner, who could not show the proper papers, and to seize any materials that appeared to be Russian in origin. His orders, he said helplessly, were no more specific than that.
Lesko had little doubt that the object of the search was Podolsk, probably Bannerman, and perhaps the contents of Kulik's safe. That aside, he had no intention of sitting there when he could be with Elena. He climbed out of the ambassador's Lincoln, ignoring a guard who told him to wait inside, and walked up to the checkpoint where Miggs was in discussion with the officer in charge. His intention was to say, “Here's my name, the hotel has my passport and visa, I'm grabbing a taxi.”
But he saw alarm in Miggs's eyes and followed them. Two men, black raincoats, had been standing among the vendors, watching. They seemed anxious. One had been eyeing the police car where Lechmann was standing at the door, arms folded across the roof, trying to look bored. The black raincoat nudged his companion and cocked his head toward Lechmann. The body language said, “Let's just go take a look.”
Lesko called to Lechmann, asked if he spoke English. The two men hesitated. Lechmann shrugged. Lesko reached into his pocket, flashed some money, said he'd pay twenty dollars for a ride to Hospital #52. Lechmann answered by giving him the finger. Lesko blinked but he quickly understood. Lechmann wanted to stage a brawl. .
Showing his teeth, he advanced on Lechmann. Miggs tried to grab his arm, Lesko pushed him away. Lechmann had rounded the police car where he stood, an insolent smirk on his face, daring Lesko to come closer. Lesko did, fully expecting that Miggs would seize him from behind and make a show of dragging him away. Miggs didn't. Lesko hesitated. Lechmann feinted with his left and threw a chopping right that hit high on his cheek.
Lesko didn't know what to do. Grab Lechmann by the neck? Chase him around the car? But now he felt two sets of arms on him, one of them in uniform. Miggs and the Russian officer. Lechmann moved in, aimed a kick at his groin; Lesko took it on his hip. Screw this, he decided. You want realism? He wrenched himself free and stormed after Lechmann, who was dancing away, taunting him. Lesko went for the police car instead. ,
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