Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  “Could you tell Mr. Sheppard Irena Pavliovic is here, please,” she said in heavily accented English to the sullen female desk clerk.

  “There’s a note for you from Mr. Sheppard,” the clerk said, handing over a piece of paper from a pigeonhole. The woman read it and pulled a face.

  Graham turned away. He thought it must have been another Svetlana connection. But before he had reached the elevator, the woman was behind him, touching his arm.

  “Excuse me, don’t I know you from somewhere?” she said, studying him intently.

  The Australian stared at her, stunned. It was the beginning of the MI-6 contact.

  “I’m sure I know you,” the woman continued with a thoughtful smile, “I never forget a face, especially a handsome one.”

  Graham forced a grin. “I’m sorry … or …” he faltered, “I don’t believe …”

  The woman kept looking at his eyes and she said pleasantly, “Forgive me,” and then turned to walk out the front entrance.

  The Australian continued on his way to the elevator. It had been too fast, too sudden. Why would they try that in a crowded lobby probably crawling with people just waiting for something suspicious? Then he thought ruefully, only he had acted in an uncertain way. The woman had been so poised, assured. He pressed the call button. The doors opened, three men got out. Graham looked back at the entrance. He could see the woman speaking to a taxi driver at the rank in front of the hotel.

  He turned and walked quickly out of the entrance, into the street and over to her.

  “I know now,” he said brightly. “What a coincidence. Weren’t you on the boat in Leningrad last night?”

  The woman looked up with a blank expression at first, and then broke into an enormous grin. She thrust out her hand which Graham held lightly for a moment. “Of course. How marvelous!”

  “Would you care for a drink?” Graham said, with as much cool as he could muster. He was aware that several taxi drivers nearby had been watching them.

  “I have an appointment right now. Perhaps you would like to join me?” The woman slid into the back seat of the taxi.

  “Fine,” Graham said, getting in beside her.

  “The Cloud,” she ordered the driver. He started the sluggish black Volga sedan and drove them off on the short ride to Sretenka Street.

  The woman introduced herself as Irena and then rapidly acquainted him with the people they were about to meet. One was Kerana Taram, the petite brunette Graham had seen Irena with the night before, and for whom she worked. The other was an American business client of theirs, the managing director of the 3C’s company from Minnesota. Irena explained with much gesticulation that Kerana’s business company, called Tork International, was in “communications.” It introduced American business to contacts in the Soviet Union, and vice versa. Based in New York, and with branches in Moscow and Los Angeles, it had been started by Kerana. She had been born in Russia, but brought up and educated in the U.S. and was now capitalizing on her background, Irena explained carefully. Her own job, she said, was to act as a liaison between Kerana’s company and the power circles of the Soviet government and bureaucracy.

  The Cloud restaurant was in a quiet alley. The door was painted in shimmering black and white squares, and above it was a simple, white, mushroom-shaped nuclear cloud. Inside it was opulent and dimly lit for a romantic effect. Heavy black and crimson draperies, all velvet and brocaded and embroidered in gold, hung low in front of the dining area. The carpet was a deep red plush. A violinist dressed in a purple robe played superbly as Irena and Graham moved to the table where Kerana and the American, Bill Sheppard, were in the middle of a meal.

  After introductions, and an effusive explanation by Irena of her chance meeting with Graham, Sheppard, a rangy bespectacled man in his early forties, ordered champagne.

  A little taken aback when Graham didn’t appear to know of the 3C company, he said proudly, “That stands for Computers, Communications and Cybernetics. We’re the biggest supplier of peripheral equipment to those three areas that there is.”

  Sheppard poured champagne for Irena and Graham and insisted they have some chicken while he and Kerana Taram had dessert. Resuming his conversation with the Australian, he went on, “We supply everything from TV displays to cables and electrical equipment.”

  “I guess you must have trouble getting through the red tape here to make a sale,’ Graham said. It sounded like polite conversation. Sheppard was finding it hard to contain himself.

  “It depends on what you’re selling,” he said, lowering his voice, “and what I’ve got they want. Very, very badly.” He looked across at the two women, now engrossed in conversation in Russian. Sheppard drank his champagne and called for another bottle.

  “Christ, man,” he said, “you just have no idea. They’re signing on the dotted line. They’re desperate to get hold of anything to do with Lasercomp.”

  “Lasercomp? What are they doing here?”

  “You mean what aren’t they doing here!”

  “I thought I read somewhere they were not allowed to sell their computers here.”

  Sheppard smirked. “That’s true, but they’re here, believe me, and I’m one of their biggest suppliers.” He took off his coat, loosened his tie and filled all the glasses.

  Graham looked skeptical. “NATO wouldn’t allow it.”

  The American gave a knowing smile. “NATO-shmayto. Let’s just say that where there’s a will there’s a way.”

  “How do you get around regulations?”

  “We work out just where 3C’s equipment would be seen as ‘harmless’ and for nonstrategic use, by the U.S. trade department and NATO, and we tell the Russians how to place orders.” He paused to smile and salute the two women who had stopped to listen to the conversation. Kerana seemed perturbed but soon Irena was speaking to her again in Russian. Sheppard, leaning his arm on the back of Graham’s chair and breathing alcohol into his ear, said, “You know, the Russians are pretty damned slow on the uptake when it comes to business. I have to say to them, ‘Now, if you want such and such, you have to ask us for it, making sure you stipulate it’s for cash registers in stores.’ Then a little light goes on above their heads, and we get a request for equipment to go into a store cash register system.”

  “That’s pretty shrewd, but surely there can’t be that much business here. Lasercomp can’t have too many computers in the Soviet Union.”

  Trying hard to look sober and serious, Sheppard, with his face almost touching Graham’s, said, “Don’t you believe it. I’m involved in some very big deals with the chairman of Lasercomp himself this week.”

  “Clifford Brogan?”

  “Right. And he doesn’t deal in peanuts. I’ll be signing around fifty million dollars’ worth alone this week.”

  “No wonder you’re celebrating!”

  At that point Kerana broke in. She had seemed slightly concerned about what Sheppard was telling the Australian. “Please. Can we go now? We have much business tomorrow …”

  Sheppard leaned across the table and gave her a slobbery kiss. Graham smiled at Irena. Her intelligent eyes fleetingly locked on his as they all began to gather their things to leave.

  He had waited apprehensively for the words he wanted to hear so much that would have signaled the Radford impersonation was off. But they never came. MI-6’s Radford three would be on his way to Moscow tomorrow.

  As they hailed taxis outside the restaurant, Irena turned to Graham. “It has been a pleasure to meet you. I would be pleased further if you would join me tomorrow night at the Bolshoi.…”

  The Australian wondered for a second if she had perhaps slipped up. Maybe she had forgotten tomorrow was the day for the impersonation? Then he dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. This woman was supposed to be MI-6’s best agent in the Soviet Union. An error like that would be out of the question.

  He shook hands with her and accepted the invitation.

  “I shall phone you,” she called,
climbing into a taxi.

  Graham returned to the National with Kerana and Sheppard, and politely refused his invitation to continue drinking at the bar. Once back in the hotel room, slowly, agonizingly, he turned his mind to the fact that the onus for the impersonation rested squarely on his shoulders.

  He began to separate from the rest of his luggage the clothes and make-up he would require.

  Commander Gould’s warnings about abandoning the assignment if there were any doubts at all kept ringing in his ears. But the Australian could not sort out real from imagined fear. Everything in the end seemed to revert to one question. Did he have the nerve to go through with it?

  He took out his camera, a replica of Radford’s, and unconsciously played with the film shutter mechanism.

  The spring had gone.

  Graham tried it several times and then put it down as if it were contaminated. To him it was.

  He had always been meticulously careful with any recording and film equipment and only six hours earlier the camera had worked perfectly when he had taken pictures in Red Square. Someone must have broken into his room…. He rummaged through his luggage. There was no indication that any of the Radford impersonation “kit” had been uncovered or isolated. Without foreknowledge, that would have been impossible. Yet the damaged camera was another excuse for aborting the impersonation.

  He got into bed weak from the sense of relief that enveloped him. But it was to be a night of fitful sleep. His conscience was not going to let him forget that the coward in him had just won a round.

  Resigned to seeing out the next two days as quietly as possible, Graham the next morning joined his tour group on a visit to the Lenin Museum.

  As he walked the short distance across from the National he tried to satisfy himself that the trip to the Soviet Union would be successful enough without his actually getting into the computer operations center by impersonating Radford. He had gained valuable information from Boronovsky and the Ukrainian-American. There was a chance Irena would find a way to pass on the military and other details that MI-6 wanted. Apart from the personal dangers, he could foul up everything if he was caught now. On the other hand, Graham knew the only way to get a whole rather than piecemeal perspective of what the KGB was doing and planning was to go in, speak to scientists and see for himself….

  From London it had all looked easier. At close range events were too close. And conditions since his near slip-up in Leningrad had changed. The risks were now extremely high.

  The Australian stopped in front of the museum as other members of his tour group moved inside to the warmth and away from the biting cold that howled across Red Square and swirled the light snow that was falling.

  He stood staring at the long line of Soviet citizens waiting patiently across the square for a glimpse at Lenin in his mausoleum. A myth? A cult? A religion? Lenin and Leninism. Everything the KGB was attempting would be done in his name. Propaganda would tell the Soviet administration that the most advanced computers invented were the answer to all Marxist-Leninist dreams of central economic control and state planning. The fact that machines were being fed into the master network primarily to boost Soviet missile forces, and secondly for complete political control, would be kept secret.

  Graham wondered what the Great Revolutionary Leader would make of events today. Would he have approved of police state tactics? He had himself introduced them even more efficiently than the czars. But would he consider them necessary in today’s less turbulent political climate …?

  The Australian drew his overcoat collar high over his neck and walked into the Lenin Museum. For the next ninety minutes he wandered around the museum with some of his tour party, trying to concentrate on what the guides were reverently saying about Lenin the god, and his achievements; trying to forget that time was slipping away, if he was going to do anything about Radford…. Many times his thoughts drifted to Radford three, who would right at that moment be halfway to Moscow….

  The end of the museum excursion was an hour-long show of old documentary films about Lenin and the Revolution. Somewhere in the course of those sixty minutes something in Graham’s subconscious snapped. He got up just before the end and groped his way past the guides in the cinema and out into the cold, heading for the National.

  Instead of going into the hotel he walked for about twenty minutes until he reached Gorkova Street. Finding a telephone booth he went in and lifted the receiver. Running through his mind was the role he had rehearsed awake and asleep, ad nauseam.

  Grasping the phone firmly Graham dialed the number of Herr Fritz Muller, the Moscow director of Znorel Electronics….

  “Muller,” a voice answered bluntly.

  “Ah, Herr Muller, it’s Harold Radford here,” Graham said, affecting an upper-class English accent. “I am the managing director of Computer Increments, U.K. We have an appointment for this afternoon at three.”

  “Yes,” the voice said with a trace more animation, “that is correct. Have you just arrived?”

  The Australian was about to answer in the affirmative but stopped himself. “I’m about to check into my hotel.”

  “The Berlin?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a few seconds’ silence before Muller asked, “Do you know how to get here?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been to the Lenin several times before on other visits here. Second floor, isn’t it?”

  “Ja. I see you at three then, Mr. Radford.” Muller hung up and Graham shut his eyes and breathed deeply as he replaced the receiver. It was done now. He had to keep that appointment. Otherwise Moscow would be turned upside down looking for a Mr. Radford….

  The Australian hurried back to his hotel to disguise himself. He had just enough time to carefully prepare, take a taxi as Radford near to the Hotel Berlin and take another taxi to the appointment at the Lenin.

  He began by washing his hair and brushing it forward with a distinct parting to the top of his skull on the left. Then he applied a skin cream to lighten the complexion. Next Graham tinged the edges of his hairline with gray paint, applying more above the ears and above the temples, and a little on the top of the scalp. To complete the transformation he changed into a three-piece Savile Row suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, and put on special thick-framed prescription spectacles.

  Standing back from the mirror in the bathroom he compared himself with the head and shoulders portrait of Radford’s forged passport. He had more hair than Radford and was not as heavy in the face. But to be exactly the same as the passport could invite suspicion.

  Graham sauntered around the room attempting to ape Radford’s bouncing gait. The movement relaxed him marginally. He was getting inside somebody else. He stepped up to the bathroom mirror and pulled a few faces, affecting Radford’s pompous habit of looking down his nose. He laughed nervously and then said aloud to his reflection, “Time for a stiff drink, you bloody twit.”

  He unpacked some duty-free vodka, poured himself a liberal helping, and sat back on the bed. Half whispering to avoid being picked up by the bugging devices that were almost certain to be in the room, he ran through the key phrases in Radford’s vernacular—”jolly good … frightfully kind of you … absolutely smashing …”

  He looked at his watch. It was 2:30 P.M. Time to go. Making sure there was no one in the hallway, he walked quickly past the elevator and took the stairs to the second floor. He found the back fire escape. A back gate led to an alleyway which took him out to a side entrance of the National. Graham hailed a passing taxi and seven minutes later arrived a few hundred yards from the Hotel Berlin. He walked the short distance to the Berlin, waited near the front entrance and then caught a taxi to the Lenin, timing his arrival with a few minutes to spare.

  Muller, short, stout and balding, greeted Graham at the entrance to his office, a converted hotel suite. Eying the Australian carefully through a pair of aluminum-framed spectacles perched on his beaklike nose, he ushered him in.

  The office was comfortable
and appeared underequipped. Only one ticking Teletype was in a corner of the room.

  Graham took a seat opposite Muller, who sat down at a leather-topped desk.

  “Now, Mr. Radford,” he said, looking over the glasses, schoolmaster fashion, “first, I must ask you to show me your visa, passport and letter of introduction from Herr Znorel. A precaution we must take, you will understand.”

  The Australian nodded. “Typical German efficiency,” he said, pulling the documents from an inside coat pocket.

  Muller remained unsmiling at the remark and skimmed through Graham’s forged note of introduction. He then picked up the visa and passport and eyed the photographs, then the Australian, and then the photographs again. Handing them back he said, “All right, Mr. Radford. Let us start at the beginning. How much do you know about what happens to the computers you send here?”

  “Very little. That’s why your managing director wanted me to visit you here.”

  Muller nodded, and coughed diffidently. “Of course. Herman told me you would soon be our second biggest supplier. He believes it is important that you are better informed.”

  “Naturally. It is to our mutual benefit.”

  Making a little play of fumbling for the right phrase, Muller said, “We, that is to say, our client, the Soviet government, is happy to inform you to a certain point. You must realize you are privileged to be here. Only one other of our suppliers has been here and actually visited the main computer center in Moscow.

  “Herman tells me your company may be able to help a great deal in supplying communications systems,” the little man said, eying his visitor carefully.

  Graham’s brain raced. He knew the real Radford had been studying communications systems in recent months. But he did not know if Radford had claimed he could supply them.

  “Mr. Muller,” he said arrogantly, “I know a great deal about communications. But I am not restricting my possible assistance to just this area.”