Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  Six reporters were on their feet, speaking at the same time. Hammond pointed to a tall, smartly dressed young woman. “This lady was first!”

  “Marianne Pelligry, Paris Match,” came the delightful French lilt. “Could you please tell whom you spoke to last night?”

  “There were several people in attendance. I suppose you mean from the Soviet administration?”

  “Yes, who in authority?”

  Mineva leaned over to speak to an adviser and then said, “From the Soviet administration, General Gerovan, and Mr. Andropolov.”

  Sullivan’s voice boomed out in the lull that followed Mineva’s answer.

  “Do you consider they speak with authority within the Soviet administration?”

  “Well, they are members of the Politburo,” Mineva said. “Sorry to show up your scant knowledge of Soviet politics,” he added sarcastically.

  “Tell us what we both know, it won’t take any longer!” Sullivan cracked back. There was a roar of applause. Hammond picked a red-faced reporter near the front row.

  “Levine, The Observer, London. Governor, no doubt you are aware that these two men are the most senior officials of the Soviet secret police.…”

  “What is your question, please?” Hammond snapped.

  “My question, sir, is do you consider the KGB now speaks for the Soviet administration?”

  Several on the official table and among the press howled protests. It was the hottest issue worrying Western nations about Soviet foreign and internal policies.

  Mineva was flustered. “Gentlemen, I have spoken to almost every member of the entire Presidium since I’ve been on this visit, and on other occasions—when our Soviet friends have visited America and when I have visited the Soviet Union. So I really don’t see the point of the question!”

  Others lined up to ask questions as Mineva sat down. He leaned across the table to speak to a Soviet official. About twenty seconds later he stood up once more and opened his arms to the audience.

  “There you are, gentlemen.” He smiled. “I just spoke to a Russian, the assistant to the deputy premier, Mr. Kiruyan. Please have me arrested! He may know someone in the KGB!”

  It drew a laugh from the press and the official table.

  Hammond indicated another question from Philpott. “Do you, Mr. Candidate, endorse extending the most-favored-nation principle to the Soviet Union?”

  Mineva nodded. “That, at last, is a good question, and one I am concentrating on. I think it can best be achieved through private negotiations.”

  From then on questions were restricted to those the candidate could handle. Many journalists were itching to put Mineva on the spot over human rights and political prisoners in the Soviet Union. But those who wanted to pin the candidate on tougher issues were ignored completely.

  At ten, Mineva sat down and acknowledged the clapping during brief “thank-you” speeches. The journalists began to file out of the room and camera crews packed away their gear.

  On balance, Mineva was confident the reports that would be hot on the wire to the U.S. and the world minutes after the conference would be favorable.

  But the questions about the KGB had shaken him. He leaned across to Hammond, who was smoking furiously. “Do you think they’ll bury that KGB bit?”

  Hammond nodded. “Some won’t even bother about it,” he replied, flicking ash everywhere but in a tray provided. “Don’t worry, Paul, you came through well. Real well.”

  Mineva smiled gratefully to a Russian waiter who placed coffee in front of him. He went to pick it up but found it difficult to hold. His hands were trembling. Perhaps he had won the conference on points, but now there was another score to settle. He turned to Hammond again. “How the hell did that sonofabitch Sullivan know about the meeting with Andropolov?”

  The aide shrugged. “You forget about it. I’ll let Huntsman know what happened.”

  Worried by “Mr. Radford” and his unusual line of questioning Herr Muller had tried to contact him again in the hope of learning more about his operations and motives. By noon Friday, the German became suspicious when he could not reach him at the Hotel Berlin. Staff there said the Englishman had not been seen since last evening. They had already alerted the police.

  Muller immediately rang his boss, Herman Znorel in Stuttgart.

  “They have not any deep knowledge of military hardware at Computer Increments,” Znorel said adamantly. “Let me call London and find out what is going on.”

  Muller waited a half-hour for the return call from a near-hysterical Znorel.

  “Radford never went to Moscow!”

  “But I’ve …”

  “You idiot … the man you met was an impostor … a fake …”

  “He knew all about Computer Increments …”

  Znorel swore loudly into the phone at the confused Muller.

  “These are my orders … find that man. Find him today … otherwise our whole business is in danger. You must locate him and stop him from leaving Russia. I’m catching the next plane to you.”

  “What about the KGB?”

  “Don’t say anything yet. If we haven’t found him by tomorrow morning we shall inform them. Now get to it! Everything is at stake….”

  Muller put down the receiver and wandered over to the window that gave a depressing view of the apartment block behind the Hotel Lenin. Locate an Englishman in his late thirties …

  He grabbed his coat and headed for the door. The first stop would have to be the Hotel Berlin.

  Half a mile away, Graham had joined his tour group for a visit to the Kremlin and the czarist treasures. As Victor the guide gathered some of them around the glass-covered gold-and-diamond-studded crown of Michael Federovitch, the Australian moved next to a forty-five-year-old American lawyer, Bob Halliday, who was with another tour party which often linked up with Graham’s group.

  “Bob, could you do me a favor tonight?” he whispered.

  “Sure, Doc.”

  “I’ve met a really nice Russian lady I just might stay the night with.”

  “So what’s new?”

  “Seeing your tour’s leaving early tomorrow for the airport, could I leave my case with you to make sure it gets to the airport okay?”

  The American chuckled. The continuing nocturnal pursuits of this seemingly wild Australian stud had amused him throughout the tour.

  “Sure, Doc. You know, you don’t need a hotel room on a tour like this. You only need a goddamned locker!”

  Anatoli Bromovitch gave a grunt of satisfaction. He was very close to a breakthrough in his efforts to track down Graham. It had taken him less than seventy-two hours.

  In the last two days an exhaustive computer sifting had left him with the names of 1,737 male foreigners between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five. They were possible suspects officially visiting the country at that time.

  That morning Bromovitch had let the Cheetah network compare a huge file on Graham—mainly from data supplied by computer from Lasercomp files—with the limited files on the 1,737 which had mainly been obtained by agents watching and reporting on them at diminishing intervals of time. The Cheetah comparison eliminated exactly 1,700.

  Now the assassin was patiently waiting at his dacha terminal outside Moscow to compare the Graham profile with the updated data on the remaining thirty-seven, which would come from agents inside the Soviet Union assigned to give an hourly report on the suspects.

  Just after 2:00 P.M. the program was ready. He ran it. Thirty seconds later he had an answer:

  SUSPECT ONE BOULTER, DR. ROSS, TOUR 87, CURRENTLY AT HOTEL NATIONAL, MOSCOW.

  Bromovitch immediately called for a run-through of the computer’s analysis. He found that Dr. Boulter had managed to evade surveillance on two occasions in Kiev and had found his way into the Hotel Lenin there, asking questions about the hotel’s patrons. Most were scientists involved in the implementation of Operation Ten. In Leningrad agent Svetlana Moronova had reported Boulter’s tastes in art,
literature and music which coincided exactly with microfilmed evidence from Graham’s London apartment. Most incriminating was the fact that Boulter had left her early the morning the agent tailing Professor Boronovsky was attacked.

  The Australian anthropologist had shown an odd behavior pattern after that. Svetlana had noticed a change in attitude to her and that Boulter had occasionally winced with pain on their last evening together. This pointed to the possibility of a fight with the agent assigned to Boronovsky.

  More and more evidence confirmed that Boulter and Graham were one and the same. The assassin called for photographic comparisons of Graham, Boulter’s passport and of him in Moscow. This caused him to grunt again. Only two months earlier he had successfully used the behavior pattern method of computer detection to nail MI-6’s Steven.

  Strolling out to his orchids, he thought hard on the options left open to him. He could have Graham arrested immediately or take this golden opportunity to have him murdered.

  Bromovitch had never agreed with his superiors in letting Lasercomp dictate KGB actions, even if the corporation was supplying Cheetahs. To the assassin, the liquidation of opposition was always the best choice. Their ideas died with them.

  He reasoned that the elimination of Graham would mean less exposure for Operation Ten than arrest or detention. But he thought it unlikely KGB chief Andropolov would sanction the Australian’s elimination inside the Soviet Union. Bromovitch would have to make it look accidental.

  He quickly planned to establish an alibi and use fringe operatives to do the dirty work.

  After an hour of calling around he managed to contact the two-man team of Igor the Mongolian and Menkelov the Georgian, both of whom, Bromovitch noted from the report on Dr. Boulter, had encountered his quarry in Kiev when they were doing a tail of foreign tourists.

  Both were experienced at setting up accidents, and Bromovitch knew they could be relied on to keep their mouths shut.

  The assassin then took just five minutes more to establish that “Dr. Boulter” would be entertained by agent 8957, Irena Pavliovic, at her flat at midnight that night. She had been assigned to the foreigner since the Leningrad agent’s long report on Graham had pushed surveillance on him into a higher category.

  At 6:30 P.M. Bromovitch was with the two thugs at his dacha. Both men were pleased with the chance to break from their routine work and earn some good extra money.

  “Comrades, we must be certain to make this foreigner’s death ‘accidental,’” Bromovitch said, as he poured them a shot of vodka each.

  “We shall use the truck,” the wiry Georgian said, turning to his huge companion, Igor. He gestured to a window at the front of the dacha. Sitting outside was a large vehicle with a wide front grille.

  Bromovitch nodded approvingly. “You will report to me by nine A.M. tomorrow. Only contact me before then if there are any problems.”

  Irena answered Graham’s knock at the hide-bound front door of her spacious villa apartment on the outskirts of west Moscow. It was just before midnight. She led him into an L-shaped living room. While she fixed him a drink, he wandered around the room examining the several priceless objets d’art and paintings adorning the room.

  Irena, dressed in casual slacks and a loose sweater, handed him a vodka on the rocks, and then reclined on a red couch. She sank back against several multicolored cushions and studied Graham in the reflection of a large gold-framed eighteenth-century Italian mirror as he sauntered to a wall completely covered by shelves of leather-bound books in French and Russian. Irena’s father, who had died in 1965, had been a famous Russian satirist and writer. A Moscow theater was named after him.

  After looking at some of the books for a few minutes, Graham came over to Irena and casually sat down near her on a carved wooden chair. As she sipped her drink, Graham looked above her head at two excellent portraits, in which an artist had brilliantly captured her unusual, mobile features. In one she was smiling broadly. In the other, the artist had painted a serious profile study, which perfectly matched her expression now. She twirled the vodka around in her crystal-stemmed glass. Clinking ice cubes broke the silence.

  “Have you a good memory?” she said.

  “When it’s important.”

  “Good. I have a lot to tell you.” She tapped his forehead. “You must carry most of it in your head.”

  Three hours later, several diagrams and charts on scraps of paper covered a table in the living room. Graham closed a small notebook filled with his own shorthand, unintelligible to anyone but himself, as Irena gathered the paper. She threw it in an unused fireplace, lit it and smiled mysteriously as flames consumed the flimsy material.

  “I would like to give you something for your memory of me,” she said, pushing a round object into his hand as he got up from the table. It was an icon, no bigger than a coin. He looked closely at the colors that danced and leaped from it. On the front was the Madonna and child. On the back was a two-bar cross with a crescent shape under the bottom bar.

  “The cross represents Christ in heaven,” Irena said softly, as she took the icon and carefully pressed a fingernail into the minute groove made by the first bar of the cross. She repeated the action with the second bar. “This represents Christ’s feet, resting. And this—she ran her fingernail around the crescent’s groove—means Christianity will triumph over Islam.”

  The icon flipped open in her hand like an oyster shell. Just discernible was a tiny spool of microfilm. She closed it, and placed it back in his hand. “You must not lose this,” she whispered, and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. Irena took him by the hand and led him to the front door. She gathered his overcoat and scarf. “I hope we meet again, when we have more time.” She opened the door.

  Graham moved to the bottom of the stairs that led to a doorway out of the building and waved goodbye.

  Outside, where the cold wind had subsided and light snow was falling, Igor and Menkelov waited. The Mongolian was asleep in the back of the truck while Menkelov sat vigilantly in the front cabin. Both men wore thick overcoats and turtleneck sweaters to meet this early patch of Moscow winter.

  The apartment block was surrounded by trees. There was only one way back to the road leading to Moscow city center. From the cabin of the truck, Menkelov had a good view of anyone entering or leaving the area. He had parked the truck about fifty yards from a taxi stand.

  After a long stretch and a yawn, Menkelov turned the heaters in the truck down a little. He was beginning to feel drowsy. He tapped his feet to keep the blood circulating, and looked at the clock on the cabin dashboard. The foreigner had been in there three hours.

  “Is he screwing her or something?” Menkelov asked himself. He was becoming impatient for the kill.

  Snow was falling lightly outside as Graham walked between two tall apartment blocks. Only one street light shone weakly about fifty yards away near the small taxi stand. He walked quietly up to the only taxi. The driver was curled up in the front fast asleep. Graham looked around, opened the driver’s door and shook him by the shoulder. It took several seconds to stir him awake. Graham leaned into the car, and turned the key in the ignition. The driver sat up as the car coughed to a start.

  A second later, the sound of a truck lumbering out of the darkness caused the Australian to back away from the taxi. It stopped five yards from him and Menkelov began to climb from the cabin. Graham turned and ran toward the taxi. The driver had staggered out with the commotion around him. Graham pushed him to the ground, scrambled into the car and pulled the door closed. The car engine was running. He slammed it into first gear and planted his foot on the accelerator. The Mongolian reached the car and drove a fist hard down on the roof as it jerked away. Igor chased it for a few yards and gave up, cursing wildly. He ran back to the truck and hauled Menkelov back into the cabin, leaving the confused taxi driver remonstrating in the middle of the road.

  Graham had grated the car through its four gears and put his foot evenly on the accelerator to build up t
o top speed. Snow on the windshield obscured his vision. He tried the windshield wipers. They worked very slowly so that he couldn’t remove the permanent build-up of snow.

  The rearview mirror flashed the truck’s headlights on high beam. It started to gain ground on a flat, almost straight, run of about five miles. Graham put his foot flat to the boards. The truck was gaining fast. When the taxi reached a winding section of the road, the truck was right on its tail and Graham was having to swerve to avoid being hit. But he couldn’t. There was a bone-jarring thud which sent the taxi’s back wheels off the ground. The car skidded to the right. Graham fought the steering wheel. He managed to straighten up and was bashed again, so hard this time, that the bumper bar was loosened. It unhinged and trailed along, leaving sparks, as Graham overcorrected to the left. The Mongolian eased the truck left in the third effort to crash the taxi. Both vehicles were almost on the wrong side of the road. There was a long turn ahead. Graham edged right when he saw the headlights of oncoming traffic. A large transport hauler, like a brightly lit monster, rounded the bend. Graham swung the car right and just squeezed away. The Mongolian’s reactions were much slower. He seemed to panic and applied the brakes as he spun right, but it was too late and too much. There was a tremendous screech of brakes as the transport caught the side of the truck with a tearing sound of metal on metal. The truck was deflected into a skid for about 130 yards before it did a slow-motion tumble to end up on its roof.

  Graham’s taxi had gone into an uncontrollable skid on the slippery road surface, to end up harmlessly facing the wrong direction but on the correct side of the road about forty yards from the upturned truck. He could see the transport hauler driver pull his damaged vehicle to a halt, jump from his cabin and run toward the truck.

  Graham was hesitant for a moment and then made a quick decision. He jumped out of the taxi, wrenched off the trailing bumper bar and got back in. Slamming the taxi into gear, he drove in an arc and sped off. Through the rearview mirror he saw a flash as the upturned truck burst into flames. The hauler driver was driven back by the heat as he made a vain attempt to extricate the two KGB thugs trapped inside. Within seconds they were roasted alive.