The Fedorovich File

by Ross H. Spencer

  “Mawlniyuh is functioning! Ivan Leonid was a Krahsny Lentuh man, obviously. Mawlniyuh executed him—a bullet in the back of the head is Mawlniyuh’s trademark, and you’ll be in no danger until you’ve found General Fedorovich.”

  “Uh-huh—that’s providing that Krahsny Lentuh doesn’t find him first?”

  “Krahsny Lentuh isn’t looking for him—it’s letting you do the looking!”

  “Fedorovich is with Olga Karelinko—I know that,you know that, Krahsny Lentuh knows that, the fucking Duke of Buckingham knows that, the—”

  Natasha cut him off. “And so does Mawlniyuh, believe me.”

  Lockington tilted his martini glass, draining it, “What a mucking fess.”

  “Lacey, this is coming into focus now—something has to break, and it’ll be soon!”

  Lockington said, “Christ will return to earth ‘soon’.”

  “You’ll find General Fedorovich before Christ returns to earth.”

  Lockington glared at his empty martini glass. He said, “Your confidence is genuinely appreciated.”

  Natasha got up, taking his glass. She said, “Another vodka martini?”

  “Usually, you don’t have to ask.”

  “Usually, four is your limit. This’ll make six.”

  “Usually, I don’t have a bum neck.”

  Natasha leaned down to kiss his forehead. “I hope I don’t live long enough to become usual.”

  Lockington said, “If you do, have a happy five hundredth birthday.”

  46

  They’d left the house at noon sharp on Sunday, driving south on Belle Vista Avenue, turning east slightly beyond Calvary Cemetery, beginning the long descent to Lake Glacier on a winding leaf-strewn road. They were walled in by trees—maple, pin oak, birch, pine, buckeye—towering on either side. There was a perceptible change in temperature, so dense was the shade. At the bottom of the hill they emerged from the multihued tunnel, Lake Glacier sparkling blue ahead of them, diamond-bright in October sunlight.

  Lockington turned south along the rim of the lake. To their right was more forest than Lockington had seen in his Chicago lifetime, a rolling mass of autumn colors, red, maroon, orange, flaming against a backdrop of fleecy white clouds. Natasha pointed excitedly toward the lake shore. “There, Lacey—there’s a nice spot, under that big tree!”

  He spun the Mercedes across the road and into a U-shaped parking area. They got out, Lockington carrying Natasha’s big wicker picnic basket, Natasha following, toting the gallon thermos jug she’d filled with lemonade and “just a touch” of vodka. Knowing Natasha, Lockington figured that would translate to something in excess of a quart. They trudged across a broad grassy expanse, pulling up at a rough-hewn table at the foot of a giant sugar maple near the lake. They sat on splintered benches across from each other, and Natasha looked around, her pale blue eyes wide with wonder. She said, “Oh, but it’s lovely here—it reminds me of Odessa!”

  Lockington said, “You’re in Youngstown, Ohio’s claim to fame—this is the biggest city-limits park in the United States.”

  “Really, is it? Who told you that?”

  “I forget.” He hadn’t forgotten, it’d been Pecos Peggy Smith on a night in late spring, but Lockington considered it a subject best avoided.

  A gaggle of Canadian geese stalked sedately along the water’s edge fifty or so yards to the south. Two white-haired black men were fishing from a small rowboat a few yards clear of the shoreline, chatting, laughing, catching nothing, having a wonderful time doing it. The surface of Lake Glacier was dotted with ducks, probably more than a hundred, floating, drowsing, minding their own damned business. Lockington liked ducks—like pigeons, they were too intent on their own affairs to meddle with those of others.

  Natasha poured plastic cups of her lemonade-vodka mixture, bumping her cup against Lockington’s. She said, “To us, Lacey.”

  Lockington winked at her and they drank. It was excellent stuff, Lockington thought. They sat in Mill Creek Park’s profound silence, Natasha watching clouds, Lockington watching Natasha. She gestured urgently over his shoulder, to the north. “There’s a cloud that looks almost exactly like a dragon!”

  Lockington turned to peer at Natasha’s cloud. “Having never seen a dragon, I’m in no position to make comment.”

  “Well, dragons look like that, only their tails are longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  “That would depend on whether you’re talking about a big dragon or a smaller dragon.”

  “I was under the impression that all dragons are big.”

  “Yes, of course, but big dragons have to be smaller dragons before they can become big dragons.”

  Lockington leaned across the table to kiss her—he just couldn’t help it.

  Natasha said, “Thank you very much!”

  “You’re welcome very much.”

  A silent half-hour went by. There were occasional comments—these subdued out of respect for their surroundings—and Natasha smiled at him half a dozen times, Lockington noting that her fourth smile had been the best of the bunch, barely edging out her sixth. People in love notice things like that, he thought. Fifteen feet above their heads a chunk of bark was ripped from the sugar maple and a splitsecond later from high to the west there came a sound like the breaking of a distant balloon. Lockington’s reaction was spontaneous, almost devoid of thought. He was on his feet, vaulting the table, grabbing Natasha’s left arm, jerking her from the bench, dropping her on the lake side of the maple, pinning her to the ground, her head close to the tree trunk, throwing himself on top of her. She lifted her head to stare at him. There was a grass smudge on her cheek. She said, “Well, I’m flattered, I must say, but I don’t like this location! Can’t you wait until we get home?”

  Lockington snapped, “Stay down—sniper!”

  Natasha’s gallon thermos jug disintegrated on the table, the lemonade-vodka mix streaming between the weathered planks. Natasha said, “Yes, now that you’ve mentioned it, I see what you mean.”

  “That’s two, and that’ll be all—thank the Good Lord for sugar maples!”

  The black fisherman were staring at them. Lockington waved and they waved back, grinning. Lockington hoped that they weren’t thinking what he knew damned well they were thinking. Natasha was saying, “This doesn’t fit—did he want you or me?”

  Lockington said, “Me, if he wanted any body, which I doubt.”

  “Why you? You’re the trailblazer! I ’m the one who walked out on the KGB—Krahsny Lentuh would see me as a traitor!”

  Lockington got to his feet, extending a hand to assist Natasha. “He’ll be long gone—only suicide-mission snipers hang around.”

  Natasha was dusting the seat of her slacks. “Who says that he isn’t a suicide-mission sniper?”

  Lockington shook his head. “He’s a lousy shot, or he’s an excellent shot pretending to be a lousy shot, and I’ll take the latter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s Mr. Mawson up in the woods. Mawson put a slug through Brenda Willoughby’s eye, and he missed us by five yards, that’s why!”

  “His second shot didn’t miss by five yards!”

  “His second shot came after he’d given us time to get behind the tree.” He walked to the table, grabbing the picnic basket, opening it. “Ham or cheese?”

  47

  The holiday had gone flatter than a politician’s promise. Natasha had been strangely subdued throughout the remainder of their Sunday afternoon in Mill Creek Park. She’d sat looking across Lake Glacier, nibbling detachedly on a sandwich, then a cupcake, saying little. The biggest part of their picnic lunch had been contributed to the Canadian geese.

  They’d driven directly back to Dunlap Avenue where Natasha had gone to the kitchen table to sit poring over eight-spoked wheels until Lockington had given up and hit the hay. In the small hours of the morning he’d felt her slip in beside him, snuggling close, caressing his chest, but he hadn’t stirred—the cri
ck in his neck had been letting up and he’d seen no future in aggravating it.

  Shortly after dawn he left her sleeping, moving quietly so as not to disturb her, showering, shaving, dressing to go into the kitchen and start a pot of coffee. He was leaning against the kitchen door, staring morosely into the misty’ woods behind the house, sipping a cup of black coffee when Natasha came into the kitchen barefoot in her robe, blinking, shaking her head. She murmured, “Sorry, Lacey—I didn’t get to bed until after three-thirty.” She seated herself at the table, lighting a cigarette, yawning.

  Lockington sat beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it—one of these evenings we’ll work on those wheels together—we’ll figure it out.”

  “No—we can’t have many evenings left, and I don’t believe that we can do it.”

  “The hell we can’t—it’s just a matter of covering all the possibilities!”

  She grimaced. “We’d be lucky to live that long—not if you mean that we should try every letter in every spoke-opening.”

  “Well, sure—that’s the only way it can be done, isn’t it—trial and error?”

  “Probably, and if that’s the only way it can be done, we’re up against a googol, possibly a googolplex!”

  Lockington squinted at her. “If we’re gonna discuss this, let’s discuss it in English.”

  “A googol contains one hundred and one digits—look it up.”

  “Uh-huh, and if that’s a googol, what’s a googolplex?”

  Natasha clamped her hands against her temples. “Lacey, I can’t comprehend a googol! Forget googolplexes!”

  “Well, who knows? We might get lucky.”

  Her laugh was brittle. “I’ve been trying to get lucky for nearly a week!”

  “Those jumbled footnote reference numbers—they don’t help?”

  Natasha shrugged. “They’re probably the text of what General Fedorovich has to say, if he has anything to say, but we won’t know until we find the key, if there is a key!”

  “Which there probably isn’t, so don’t knock yourself out. How about a slice of toast?”

  She made toast and they ate in an atmosphere of gloom before Lockington got up to put on his jacket and hat. Natasha kissed him. “Try to bear with me, Lacey—I’ll put this thing behind me, honest, I will!”

  Lockington said, “Why don’t you let me have a copy of those footnote numbers? If I run into some spare time I could give it a shot.”

  Natasha nodded, returning to the kitchen, scribbling rapidly on a legal pad, ripping the sheet free, folding it, stuffing it into his shirt pocket. She said, “You know the basic version—first wheel, A through H—second wheel, I through P—third, Q through Υ—X and Z are eliminated—Q’s a space. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  She put her arm around him, accompanying him to the door. He drove to the Mahoning Plaza without the slightest intention of bothering with the wheels. He’d made the offer to boost Natasha’s sagging morale, and he’d been thinking of Barney Kozlowski—the puzzle would give the kid something to occupy his mind. Lockington felt a trifle guilty. But just a trifle.

  48

  When Lockington entered the office, Barney was leaning against the desk, frowning, yawning, hands clasped in front of him, rotating his thumbs. Lockington got the drift—the boy was bored stiff and the pained expression on his face indicated that he was on the verge of saying so. Lockington beat him to the punch.

  “Kid, I have an important assignment for you.”

  “I’ve already swept the floor, Mr. Lockington.”

  “I’m serious, son.”

  Barney was lighting up like a Budweiser sign. “We’ll be going out on something of consequence?”

  “Well-l-l, we won’t be going out, but there’s a matter of importance that I’d like you to tackle.”

  “A matter of importance—how important is it?”

  “A man’s life may depend on it—that would make it important, wouldn’t it?”

  Barney was standing erect now, the slouch gone from him. “Whose life?”

  “A Russian defector’s—a bigshot Soviet general who took it on the duffy out of East Berlin.”

  Barney slammed his hands together, creating a sound similar to a clap of thunder. “And the KGB’s after him!”

  “Right!”

  “And he’s in the Youngstown area!”

  “Right!”

  “Damn, then you are into a blockbuster! I had a hunch on that!”

  Lockington motioned to the bench near the window and they sat there, Barney studying the wheels Lockington sketched in his pocket notebook, leaning forward, watching intently as Lockington jotted letters into the spoke-gaps, numerals around the rims. Barney said, “It’s a secret code!”

  Lockington said, “It’s secret, all right.”

  “But are you sure that the letters are supposed to come in the right order like that? If it’s a crypto thing, I’d think that they should be all mixed up.”

  “Maybe they should, but we have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

  Barney was shaking his head. “We’ll need more than this—there has to be a key!” Suddenly, there was an authoritative air about the youngster.

  Lockington produced the sheet of legal paper bearing the scrambled footnote numbers, explaining that X and Z were to be eliminated, that Q would probably indicate a space, going on to describe the mechanics of the problem as Natasha had detailed them. He said, “It’s just possible that these numbers constitute a message.” He handed the sheet of legal paper to Barney. “Want to take a whack at it?”

  Barney said, “Why, sure! I’ve done a lot of reading on espionage, and I ran into a cipher system like this in Ralph Collingsworth’s Here’s to the Next Man Who Dies.”

  Lockington said, “I haven’t read it.”

  “Want me to tell you about it?”

  “I doubt that we’ll have time for that, Barney—this is a pressing matter.”

  “Well, anyway, it was one helluva story—World War I background—France, 1917—Spads, Bristols, Fokkers, German spies all over the place—”

  Lockington broke in on him. “Yes, I’m sure it was all very exciting.”

  “Yeah, but what I’m driving at is that this sort of coding was common during the First World War—you see, googols are probably involved! You know about googols, Mr. Lockington?”

  Lockington stifled a false yawn with the back of his hand. “Googols? Yeah, I was raised on ’em.” Then he said, “There’s scratch pads in the bottom desk drawer.”

  49

  He left the office, his smile sly. Barney Kozlowski would be busy for a while—quite a while. He drove into Mill Creek Park, checking his rear-view mirror occasionally. Nothing there. There’d been cars behind him yesterday, several, but on a sunny October Sunday, they’d been expected—Krahsny Lentuh didn’t own every automobile in Youngstown. He parked where he’d parked on Sunday afternoon, walking to the table they’d occupied, studying the trunk of the sugar maple. The bullet had grooved the tree west to east at a slightly downward angle, the deepest portion of the gash being its western tip, indicating that the shot hadn’t been fired from dead west, but probably from just a shade to the north.

  He walked directly west, crossing the road, beginning the climb up the hill, forging into the trees. The forest was silent, dense, damp, cool, and he reached the crest of the hill, puffing just a bit, his shoes wet with dew. He looked down in the direction of Lake Glacier, seeing nothing but trees. He found a stump and sat on it, lighting a cigarette, considering yesterday’s situation. Sunday traffic along the western side of Lake Glacier would have been reasonably busy—a man with a rifle would have stood a good chance of arousing curiosity, but a man carrying an oblong case might have gone unnoticed—he could have passed for a tree surgeon or possibly a trombone player out to commune with nature. No matter how Mawson had worked it, he’d been in the forest on the hill, the sonofabitch.

  Lockington departed
the stump, heading north, crunching through an ankle-deep carpet of leaves, pausing frequently to look to the east, his view always obstructed by trees. He walked approximately fifty yards before descending the slope of the hill a few feet and doubling back to the south. The process went on. He crisscrossed the steep slant several times, dropping down toward the road on every lap, tripping over fallen branches, slipping, sliding, sweating, cussing, but finding what he’d been looking for—a small barren spot more than halfway down the hill. Kneeling there, Lockington could see the Sunday table perhaps one hundred and twenty yards distant. The gap was narrow but adequate for rifle fire.

  He pawed through the leaves until he struck brass, a thirty caliber casing, and in the damp soil he found the tripod’s indentations. He studied the cartridge. There was no identifying print around the firing cap. He combed the area thoroughly in search of its mate, finding nothing but twigs, toadstools, and a few rain-discolored Marlboro cigarette butts, a couple of which were lipstick-smeared. The secluded spot would have provided a fine setting for love in the afternoon—or in the morning, or when-the-hell-ever—the cover was excellent, the leaves soft.

  Once upon a spring afternoon he’d found a small forest clearing with Natasha, and they hadn’t left it until dusk. And early on the following morning, a man with a rifle had been killed in the clearing. By other men with rifles.

  50

  Driving north on Belle Vista toward Mahoning Avenue, he wondered why he’d bothered returning to Mill Creek Park. Surely he hadn’t expected to find Mawson’s address carved into the trunk of a buckeye tree. As it’d turned out, he’d come across more than he’d hoped for—a spent thirty caliber rifle casing, make and vintage unknown, which established nothing and led nowhere.