“Yes.”
“All right. A few of those companies happened to be here in Arizona. I’m interested in one of those. Ostensibly it was a private air service, one of those shoestring jobs that did everything from private executive charters to cropdusting. After the CIA bought it the facilities were expanded to accommodate air-crew training for student pilots and gunners from Cuba, Haiti, South Vietnam, Hungary and a couple of African countries. Then the lid blew off and the Agency got a black eye because we’re not supposed to run covert operations inside the United States. After the publicity we were forced to close down the operation.”
“Go on.” He was interested.
I said, “The facility’s still there. Planes, ammunition, bombs, radar, Link trainers, the whole battery of military training equipment.”
“And?”
“And it’s on the market. Been on the market for seven or eight years. So far, no buyers. Because the only people who have a use for those facilities are governments that we can’t be seen dealing with. Some of those governments would pay through the nose for the equipment — far above its actual value.”
“You figure to be a go-between?”
“I know those countries. I’ve got the contacts. And I’ve recently chartered a little shell corporation in Nassau that I set up for this deal. The way it goes, I buy the company and its assets from the Government. I turn around and sell it to the Nassau shell corporation. The shell corporation sells the stuff wherever it wants — it’s in the Bahamas, it’s outside the jurisdiction of American laws. When we make the sale, the shell corporation crates up the assets in Arizona and ships them out of the country on a Bahamian bill of lading, and then they’re reshipped out of Nassau on a new ticket so that there’s no evidence in this country of the final destination. As I said, the buyers are lined up — they’ll be bidding against one another and I’ll take the high bid.”
He was flicking his upper lip with his fingernail. He looked deceptively sleepy. With quiet brevity he said, “How much?”
“To buy the aviation company and pay the packing and shipping and incidental costs I figure one million nine hundred thousand. I’d rather call it two million in case I run into a snag somewhere — it’s better to have a cushion. It’s a bargain actually — the Government paid upwards of fifteen million for that stuff.”
“Maybe. But what condition is it in now? It could be rusty or obsolete or both.”
“Obsolete for the U.S. Air Force, maybe, but not for a South American country. And it’s all serviceable. It needs a good dusting, that’s all. I’ve had it checked out.”
“How much profit do you expect to realize?”
“That’s classified. Let’s just say I intend to put a floor under the bidding of three million five.”
“Suppose you can’t get that much? Suppose you don’t get any bids at all?”
“I’m not going into this as a speculation. I’ve already made the contacts. The deal’s ready to go down. All I have to do is name the time and place for the auction — but I’ve got to own the facilities before I can deliver them.”
“Suppose we made you a loan, Mr. Ballantyne. And suppose you put the money in your pocket and skipped out to Tahiti.”
“All right. Suppose we draw up contracts. If I don’t pay the interest and principal you forclose the company. The assets will remain right here in Arizona until I’ve sold them and received the cash down payment, which will be enough to repay your loan. If I skip out with the money you’ll have the assets — and with them a list of the interested governments. Fair enough?”
“We’ll see. Two million is a great deal of money.”
“Did I ask you for two million? I’ve got my own sources of private capital who want to buy in for small shares. I’ve raised six hundred thousand on my own. The loan I need is for one million four.” That was elementary psychology: scare him with a big amount, then reduce it attractively.
Then I dropped the clincher on him. I said, “I’ll need the money for no more than six weeks. I’ll pay one percent a day, no holidays, for six weeks. That works out to just short of six hundred thousand dollars interest. You lend me one million four, you get back two million.”
“I’ll have to check this out first. The name of the company?”
I knew I had him.
* * *
MARGARET LOOKED TIRED but she covered the strain with her smile. She set out cheese and biscuits in the living room while I mixed the drinks.
She said, “They haven’t found any internal bleeding. He’s going to be all right.” She cut me a wedge of cheddar. “He’s a foolish man sometimes but he didn’t deserve this. Money’s only money. Eddie — he’s like a kid playing games. The money’s just a counter, it’s the way you keep score. If you lose a game you don’t kill your opponent — you just set up the board and start another game.”
“Foran doesn’t play by those rules, Margaret. Eddie knew that.”
She drank; I heard the ice cubes click against her teeth. “Did Foran go for it?”
“I won’t know for a while. He’s checking things out. But I think he’ll buy it. He’s too greedy to pass it up. The easiest mark for a con man is another crook.”
“If he’s checking things out, is there anything for him to find?”
“I doubt it. Most of what I told him was true. My boss set up the Nassau shell corporation for me. It’ll be there when Foran looks for it. The Arizona Charter Company exists, it’s on the Government’s books just as I told him it was, and the assets and facilities are exactly as I described them to him.”
“If you pull if off, Charlie, they’ll come after you.”
“I don’t think they’ll find me. And I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it.” I smiled to reassure her. People had been trying to kill me for more than thirty years and many of them were far more adept at it than the brand of thugs that Foran and his kind employed.
I knew one thing. If Foran didn’t fall for this scam I’d just get at him another way. In any case Foran was all finished. Eddie and Margaret didn’t know it but they had pitted the most formidable antagonist of all against Foran. I’m Charlie Dark. I’m the best there is.
* * *
THE RESULTS of his investigations seemed to satisfy Foran. His lawyers drew up the most ironclad contract I’d ever seen. Not a single item of Arizona Charter Company equipment was to be moved off its present airfield location until every penny of the loan had been paid back. The only thing the contract didn’t include was the vigorish — the actual usurious interest rate: on paper we had an above-board agreement at 16% annual interest with a foreclosure date six weeks from the date of signatures.
The money was in the form of a bank cashier’s check and I endorsed it over to the Government in exchange for the deed to all outstanding stock in the Arizona Charter Company. I flew back from Washington to Tucson with the deed and stock certificates in an attaché case chained to my wrist. Twelve hours later they were in a safe deposit box to which Foran had the second key, so that if I skipped out without paying, he would have possession of the documents and stock certificates. If I didn’t repay him within forty days he would be the legal owner of the company and all its assets.
We shook hands at the bank and I departed for the airport, whence I flew to Phoenix and rented a car. By midnight I was on the desert airfield that belonged to me. I dismissed the night watchman and took over the premises. As soon as I was alone I began setting the demolition charges.
There was nobody to prevent my destroying my own property. I had canceled all the insurance policies the day before, so that I was perpetrating no fraud. It was my own property: I was free to do whatever I pleased with it.
The explosions would have thrilled any twelve-year-old war movie fan. When the debris settled I drove to the hospital to say goodbye to Eddie and Margaret.
Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Mainly I regret he’ll never know I had anything to do with it.”
“Keep it that way. If he
ever found out he’d finish you.”
“I know. I’m not that much of a twit — not any more.”
Margaret said, “What will happen to Foran?”
“Nothing pleasant,” I said. “It can’t have been his own money, not all of it. He’s not that rich. He must have laid off a good part of the loan on his Mob associates. At least a million dollars, I’d guess. When he doesn’t pay them back they’ll go after him the way he went after Eddie.”
Then I smiled. “And that, you know, is what they call justice.”
* * *
Challenge
for Charlie
THIS TOOK PLACE several years ago; I must make that clear.
Normally Helsinki is one of my favorite towns but this time I was reluctant to return there because the job was the toughest one Myerson had yet put into my ample lap and the adversary was Mikhail Yaskov, who was — bar one — the best in the business.
Yaskov and I had crossed paths obliquely several times down through the Cold War desades but I had never been sent head-to-head against him before and the truth is I was not eager to face this assignment, although — vanity being what it is — I believed I probably could best him. “Probably” is not a word that gets much of a workout in my lexicon; usually I know I can win before I start playing the game; but with Yaskov I’d be dead if I became overconfident.
The job was simple on the face of it: straightforward. As usual the assignment had come to our section because of the odd politics of international espionage which sometimes can cause simple jobs to become sensitive ones. If it’s a job that would embarrass anybody then it usually gets shoveled into our department.
In this case I was America’s friendly right hand, extended to a country that needed assistance not because of any lack of skill or courage (the Finns excel in cleverness and toughness) but because of a fine delicacy of politics.
Finland is virtually the only country to have fought a war with Russia in modern times and not lost it. Finland is the only country in Europe that fought against the Red Army in World War II and did not get occupied by the Russians as a result. Finland is the only country in Europe that has repaid, to the penny, the postwar reconstruction loans proffered by the Western powers. Yes, I like the Finns.
They share a border with the Soviet Union. The world being what it is, they make a few concessions to the Russians by way of trade agreements and the like. Soviet-made cars are sold in Finland, for example, although few Finns choose to drive them; the Finns don’t admit it loudly in public but they loathe the Russians and if you want a clout in the face a good way to earn one is to state within a Finn’s earshot that Finland is within the Soviet sphere of influence. It emphatically is not; Finland is neither a Communist country nor an intimidated one. It is, however, a nation of realists and while it does not bow obsequiously to the Soviets, neither does it go out of its way rudely to offend them. It treads a middle ground between hostility and friendship, the object being the preservation of Finnish independence rather than the influencing of power blocs. Finland practices true and admirable neutrality.
Mikhail Yaskov was an old fashioned master spy. He had run strings of agents everywhere in the West — usually with brilliant success. The only American agents I knew of who’d come level against him were Miles Kendig, who was said to be dead now, and my colleague Joe Cutter, who by then was running our operations out in the Far East. I was the only one left in Langley who had a prayer of besting Yaskov so I was the one picked to fly to Finland.
The KGB had sent Yaskov into Helsinki because of chronic failures in the Soviet espionage network there. The Finns were too shrewd for most of the Russian colonels who showed up at the Soviet Embassy in ill-fitting Moscow serge disguised as chauffeurs of Second Secretaries or Trade Mission delegates. The apparatus was a shambles and the Organs in Moscow had dispatched Yaskov to take charge in Helsinki, as if the KGB network were a musical comedy having trouble in New Haven and Yaskov were Abe Burrows sent in to doctor it up.
Yaskov was too sharp to put his foot in anything and there was no likelihood of his giving the Finns sufficient legitimate reason to deport him. If they declared him persona non grata in the absence of clear evidence of his perfidy, it would provoke Moscow’s wrath: this Helsinki preferred to avoid.
Therefore as a gesture of good will I was flown to Helsinki to find a way to get Yaskov out of the country and keep him out — without involving the Finnish government.
It was a bloody impossible job against a bloody brilliant opponent. But I wasn’t really worried. I’m the best, bar none.
* * *
IN MY TIME I have pulled off a number of cute and sometimes complicated capers and I suppose, given my physique and age, I could aptly be called a confidence man rather than a man of action. But Yaskov was not susceptible to confidence games. He wasn’t a man to be fooled by elaborate tricks — he knew them all; in fact he’d invented most of them.
There really was only one way to attack him: head-on and straight up. And I had only two weapons to employ against him — his own vanity and his awareness of mortality.
* * *
I MADE the call from a public coin phone in the cavernous Stockmann department store.
Comrade Yaskov could not come to the telephone immediately. Could the caller please leave a number to be called back?
No, I could not. I would call again in an hour. Please tell Comrade Mikhail Aleksandrovitch to expect my call. Thank you.
When I called again Yaskov came to the phone and chuckled at me in his suave avuncular fashion. He had a rich deep voice and spoke excellent English with an Oxford inflection. “How good to hear your voice, Charlie. I do hope we can get together and exchange notes about the Lapland scenery. Two foreigners in a strange land and all that. Perhaps we can meet informally.”
“By all means.”
It was elementary code, designed to set up a meeting without witnesses or seconds.
I said, “Do you happen to know a fellow named Tower?”
“The Senator from Texas?”
“No. Here in Finland.”
“I see. Yes, I know of him.”
“Perhaps we could meet him tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“I don’t mind, Mikhail. You pick a spot.”
“Would Tavern Number Four suit you?”
“Fine, I’ll see you there.” I smiled and cradled the phone.
There was a place called the Tavern #4 but we wouldn’t be there. The conversation had been designed to mislead anyone who might be eavesdropping on the call — one could depend on the Soviet Embassy’s lines being tapped, possibly by several different organizations. The fellow named Tower was in fact a place — the town of Lahti, within fair commuting distance of Helsinki; the town was known for its landmark, a great high water tower that loomed on stilts above the piney landscape. The number four established the time for the meeting.
I was there at three, an hour ahead of schedule, to inspect the area and insure it hadn’t been primed with spies or ambushers. My eyes don’t miss much; after forty minutes I felt secure and awaited Yaskov openly in the parking lot.
It was a pleasant sunny day with a touch of autumn chill creeping south from Lapland: Lahti is hardly 100 kilometres north of Helsinki and the forest cools the air.
Precisely at four Yaskov arrived. It might have been seemly and sensible for him to drive himself, in a Soviet-built Moskvitch or Pobeda, but Yaskov was fond of his comforts and he sailed elegantly into view in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes limousine. Like me he was a man who stood out in crowds anyway — he was not the sort of executive who dwelt in anonymity — and I believe The Organs must have put up with his ostentatious eccentricities on account of the excellence of his performances.
The chauffeur was, so far as I could tell, simply a chauffeur; his face did not flash any mug photos against the screen of my mind. He could have been a recent recruit or an agent whose face had not been put on file in the West but I
doubted it because if the man were of any importance Yaskov would not have exposed his face to me. The chauffeur trotted around to open the limousine’s back door and Yaskov emerged smiling, uncoiling himself joint by joint, a very tall lean handsome figure in Saville Row pinstripes, a Homburg tipped askew across his silver hair. His pale intense blue eyes, illuminated from within, were at once the shrewdest and kindest eyes I’d ever known and I had always attributed part of his success to those extraordinary sighted organs: I suspected they had inspired more candor from his victims than had all the drugs and torture apparatus in the Arbat and Lubianka. Yaskov could charm the Sphinx out of its secrets.
As always he carried a cane. He owned an extensive collection of them. This one was a Malacca, suitably gnarled and gleaming. The excuse was an old leg injury of some kind but he walked as gracefully as an athlete and the cane was a prop, an affectation and I suppose if necessary a weapon.
He transferred it to his left hand and gave me his quick firm handshake. “Such a pleasure to see you again. When was our last meeting, do you recall?”
“Paris, two years ago. When we were all chasing Kendig.” He remembered it as well as I did but it was a harmless amenity and we both smiled. I said, “Why don’t we take my car?” — drawling it with grave insouciance: I didn’t want the chauffeur around.
“Why not indeed,” Yaskov said carelessly. He made a vague sign to the grey-uniformed man, instructing him to wait by the limo, and followed me to my hired Volvo.
We drove out of town along a country road that curled gently through the forest. I made a right here, a left there. After twenty minutes — small talk between us — I pulled onto the verge and we walked across a carpet of pine needles to the edge of a crystal blue lake. Central Finland has thousands of such lakes, each as postcard beautiful as the next; with a suitable net you can scoop up your supper from the bottom — fresh-water crayfish.
There was a log, strategically placed, and I sat down on one end of it. “I’m not bugged.”
Checkpoint Charlie Page 9