by Greg Dinallo
“Never known you to do that before,” the fellow said. He turned from Gorodin before he could reply, and began positioning the gorodkys—wooden cylinders the size of bowling pins—within a white outlined square. The object of the game is to clear the square of cylinders with a single throw of the bita, a striped stick the length of a cane. The colleague finished, handed the bita to Gorodin, and nodded challengingly.
Gorodin saw that the cylinders stood in a nearly impossible pattern. He sensed he had to clear them with one throw to end discussion of leaving a live witness. The throw-line was thirty feet from the “city,” as the square is called. He positioned his toe against it, reared back, and hurled the bita toward the cylinders.
It whistled through the air like a boomerang, the stripes blurring in concentric rings, and slammed into the three cylinders on the left. Then it kicked across clearing the center and headed for the wall beyond, leaving one standing. But, as Gorodin had intended, his throw had such force, the striped bita ricocheted off the wall and came back through the city, taking out the last cylinder with a loud thwack.
He swung a victorious steely-eyed look to his colleague. Despite the run-in with McKendrick which blemished the purity of it, Gorodin immensely enjoyed operating in the field again. He was eager for more, and wanted to remove any suspicion that he was unfit.
His evenings had been spent with young Russian women who staff Soviet installations around the world for such purposes. The Kremlin’s spymasters encouraged these liaisons to eliminate incidental social contacts. This lessened the chance that an agent might fall into a honey trap—a sexual relationship set by a rival intelligence group which then blackmails the target to do its bidding.
Gorodin found the State-supplied trysts to be sexually extreme, and satisfying. But they left him emotionally empty.
While at Killenworth, he speculated he would be posted to Moscow or perhaps his home city of Kazan, approximately eight hundred kilometers east of the capital on the Volga. He was pleasantly surprised by the nature of his next assignment. He’d never been to Rome, and looked forward to using his Italian.
* * * * * *
In a Quonset hut in southeastern Louisiana, Theodor Churcher lay on his back in the dark. He had no idea where he was. For a moment, he thought he was dead. But the pain that wracked his body insisted otherwise. The fingers of his left hand tingled and itched incessantly, but he had no left hand. He stared panic-stricken at the bandaged stump, trying to reconcile the discrepancy, and prayed what he saw was part of an enduring nightmare.
Doctor Phan and Dinh’s family observed Churcher’s survival with trepidation, concerned he might make trouble for them upon recovering.
But even in his weakened state, once Churcher’s mind started working again, it started calculating, and he quickly dispelled their fears. He was pleased the authorities hadn’t been notified. The world, and more importantly the Russians, thought he was dead, and he’d keep it that way for now.
“You keep my secret,” Churcher said to Dinh, “and I’ll keep yours—under one condition. Soon as I’m well enough to leave here, I want you to go to Houston and fetch somebody for me.”
* * * * * *
In Houston, Ed McKendrick had been barely alive when the paramedics arrived at the Churcher estate that night. But they had started pumping plasma into him immediately, and six hours of surgery later, his heart was still beating powerfully and his brain waves were peaking evenly; he had survived.
He had spent most of the time in intensive care at the city’s renowned Medical Center.
Andrew had been to see him a number of times, but today was the first day McKendrick felt strong enough to carry on a conversation of any duration. He was staring blankly at the television over his bed when Andrew entered.
“Hey, Drew,” he said, brightening. His face was bruised, fist encased in plaster, shoulder and thigh heavily bandaged; an IV stabbed into his forearm.
“Come to stick your thumb up my ass again?”
“That was your thumb,” Andrew replied. “You’re too big an asshole for mine.”
McKendrick laughed heartily.
Andrew was pleased that McKendrick was his raunchy self again.
“They’re torturing me, son,” he rumbled, gesturing to the TV. “That thing’s on twenty-four-hours-a-day. Christ, I’ve been sentenced to death by Phil Donahue.” McKendrick took the remote control and clicked off the television. “Thanks, kid,” he said, suddenly stone-faced serious. “Thanks a lot for what you did.”
Andrew nodded, and smiled self-consciously. Compliments and expressions of gratitude always embarrassed him. He never knew how to respond.
“I’ve been watching the boob tube all week,” McKendrick said. “Nothing new on your old man.”
Andrew nodded. “Coughlan called the other night,” Andrew said. “He told me some debris from the chopper had washed up east of Gal-veston. The FAA’s running tests. It sounds like it busted up pretty good. He had nothing new on my father either.”
Andrew’s eyes saddened and fell, momentarily.
“Bastards got away with the package,” McKendrick said, purposely breaking the silence.
Andrew nodded grimly, and said, “I looked for it.”
“But you didn’t—” McKendrick prompted, letting it die out when he saw Andrew understood.
“Not a word to anyone,” Andrew replied crisply. “If I’d found it, I would’ve sent it to Boulton.”
“Way to go,” McKendrick said.
“I told Coughlan the truth—we came back to the estate, spotted intruders on the grounds, and idiots that we were, we chased them,” Andrew explained. “I didn’t mention the museum. Couldn’t. I didn’t know about the break-in until I went looking for the package. Nobody’s been down there since that night but me.”
McKendrick pursed his lips, impressed. “Got it figured out yet?” he asked, teasing.
“Partly,” Andrew replied.
His tone left no doubt he was serious. McKendrick’s brows raised in curiosity. He inclined his head toward the door. Andrew reached back and closed it quietly.
“Talk to me,” McKendrick said.
“Well, I spent some time poking around the museum,” Andrew began. “Sure are a hell of a lot of paintings down there. The rest of the world thinks about half of them are in Russian museums,” he added suspiciously.
“No shit?” McKendrick snorted, intrigued.
“Yeah. Gauguin’s ‘Are You Jealous?’ was the tip-off,” he said. “It’s a beaut. Strong patterns, bright colors, two Tahitian girls, naked of course. Your kind of stuff. I saw it at the Pushkin when I was in Moscow with my father. A few hours of research in our library is all it took to confirm the rest were from there or the Hermitage. Any idea how he got hold of them?”
McKendrick lifted his good shoulder in a shrug. “Hell, he’s been doing business over there for years,” he replied. “Who knows?”
“After everything that’s happened,” Andrew said, “it’s the kind of business I’m wondering about.”
“Where’re you headed?”
“Well—Churchco’s into all kinds of high tech stuff. Stuff that’s illegal to export. And—”
“Stuff the Russians are working twenty-four-hours-a-day to get their hands on,” McKendrick interjected, warming to the idea. “Interesting theory.”
Andrew shrugged, feeling disloyal to his father for suggesting it. “It just occurred to me that the paintings could induce that kind of cooperation,” he replied defensively. “I mean, art’s always been my father’s passion. Money would be the last thing that would tempt him,” he explained, adding, “Just an idea.”
“You’ve got a wicked mind, son. I like it.”
“Hey, you’re the one who said something weird was going on,” Andrew retorted. “My father said, ‘send that package to Boulton, to the CIA if I croak mysteriously.’ The coroner said, ‘rapid ascent from a great depth, possibly a submarine.’ ” He shrugged and shifted gears, feeling
the need to supply a more positive explanation. “Maybe he was working on something with Boulton. They were in the OSS together during the war. I don’t know. What’s it matter, anyway?” he asked, suddenly aware of the futility.
“What’re you going to do next?” McKendrick asked.
“Go to Rome—sell Arabians, I guess,” Andrew replied, unenthused and somewhat evasively.
“You guess?” McKendrick prodded.
“Nothing I can do here. You said it yourself, he’s gone. Besides, nothing would frost my father more than knowing I was moping around doing nothing.”
McKendrick nodded in agreement. “Going to Moscow and Tersk, too,” he asked slyly.
Andrew nodded resolutely.
“Horse-trading, huh?”
Andrew’s lips tightened in a thin smile. “Mostly.”
McKendrick grinned. “You’re okay, kid. But watch your ass,” he said sharply. “Those two pansies I beat the shit out of last week—?” His inflection rose, and he paused.
Andrew chuckled and nodded, deciding he actually liked the crude fellow.
McKendrick smiled cryptically. “They were Russians—professionals.”
Andrew looked at him squarely and said, “Figured that.”
* * * * * *
BOOK TWO
ROME
“As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of . . . perceptions, ’tis to be consider’d, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of . . . that chain of causes and effects which constitute our self or person.”
DAVID HUME, A Treatise Of Human Nature
Chapter Twenty
The sun shone with golden brilliance on Comiso, Sicily, an agrarian community sprinkled across a lush southern plateau. A nightingale flew low over the grassy fields, and landed on a vine laden with wild berries. All morning, the bird had been siphoning the sweet nectar and ferrying it to her young, nearby. Now, she heard a distant clanking and stiffened.
About a half mile away, a convoy of earth movers, led by a huge bulldozer, lumbered over the crest of a hill, like an invading army. Indeed, the olive drab equipment displayed military markings, and soldiers from the Italian Corps of Engineers sat in the cabs.
The racket grew louder.
The frightened bird flew off.
A short time earlier, more than a hundred protestors had assembled in the flower-dotted fields. Now they placed themselves between the advancing convoy and the grove where the bird was foraging.
The bulldozer charged down the hill toward them.
For centuries, Comiso’s richly vegetated plateaus have been a haven for wildlife and a nesting ground for birds migrating south for the winter from across the continent—an ideal sanctuary due to the area’s extreme isolation, predictably mild climate, and strategic location in the center of the Mediterranean.
For these same reasons, experts at NATO, in consultation with the Pentagon, had selected Comiso for deployment of one hundred and twelve American cruise missiles. This site “maximized the potential” for the intermediate-range low-flying weapons to be launched without interference from man or nature, and to strike preselected targets with their nuclear warheads.
A year before, when the Italian government sanctioned deployment, hordes of placard-waving peace demonstrators from across Western Europe descended on Comiso. The diverse group had been assembled by a resourceful young woman named Dominica Maresca.
The daughter of a wealthy Venetian industrialist, Dominica grew up in an opulent palazzo on the city’s Grand Canal, and was schooled in local convents. A willowy beauty with the almond-shaped face and long, sharply cut nose of her forebears, she could have been the model for Modigliani’s “La Belle Romaine.” But behind the serene mask throbbed a recalcitrant vein, and at eighteen, she broke with her family and strict religious upbringing to attend the University of Bologna, where she joined the Italian Communist party, and worked as an organizer in elections. The latter brought her to Rome, where her antinuclear stance came to the attention of Ilya Zeitzev, the KGB rezident.
Zeitzev was a ruddy, obese man in his fifties with a lumbering gait, and tiny, tightly gathered features that gave his large face a rather pinched expression. He worked out of the Soviet Embassy—a stone building hidden behind sheets of steel which are welded to the wrought iron fence that rings the grounds—where he was listed as deputy cultural attaché, a cover that gave him diplomatic immunity. This meant he couldn’t be prosecuted should his espionage activities be exposed. Indeed, he could commit murder in front of witnesses, and at worst be expelled. More practically, Zeitzev could park anywhere without his car being cited or towed azway. And in a city of almost two million vehicles, the DPL license plates were the real payoff.
Diplomatic status also gave Zeitzev an entree to events where government, business, and cultural leaders mingled. At such an event, a fundraiser for World Peace sponsored by the Italian Communist party, Zeitzev first approached Dominica Maresca.
The benefit was part of the International Horse Show at Piazza dei Siena in the Borghese Gardens. The amphitheater encircled the forecourt of a fourteenth-century castle which housed the exclusive, elegantly furnished indoor boxes—each connected to a private stable beneath—of the leading Italian breeders. Each box opened onto a sweeping balcony that overlooked the arena and flanked the castle’s entrance, a massive stone door displaying the crest of the original owner. At the trumpeted call to colors, an ingenious mechanism swung the slab upward into a horizontal position behind the castle’s facade, creating a dramatic entrance for the horses. Brightly colored banners ringed the arena, adding to the air of pageantry. That of famiglia Borsa, long prominent in international equestrian circles and philanthropies, fluttered from the center pole.
The current scion, Italy’s Defense Minister Giancarlo Borsa, hosted the benefit. Tall, with thoughtful eyes and flowing white mane, Borsa exemplified the ideal of noblesse oblige in which he was raised as he strode from his private box, joining the guests assembled on the balcony. As if on cue, the sun moved above a prism built into the tower across the arena and, as Renaissance architects intended, projected a beam of light onto the stone door illuminating the crest. The ambient glow created an aura around Borsa as he held court amidst the guests, Dominica Maresca among them.
“You really think Hilliard’s proposal is the answer,” the statuesque Venetian said, provoking him.
“Yes. It will force the Soviets to the table,” Borsa replied. “I think Italy should deploy. Will deploy, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I think it’s a ruse. Sleight of hand to achieve the very thing Hilliard claims to oppose.”
“Young lady,” Borsa said somewhat condescendingly, “Perhaps you’re forgetting, there are those committed to keeping him honest—myself among them.”
“Then it’s time you stopped him from using the promise of nuclear cutbacks as an excuse to build up his own arsenal.”
“It’s obvious you have no understanding of the man’s policy,” Borsa replied, setting off a chorus of support among the group.
“It’s an indefensible policy,” she retorted.
“An apocryphal one, as well,” said Zeitzev, timing his entrance to provide Dominica with an ally just when it seemed there were none to be had. He took her arm and directed her away from the group. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t hold back any longer,” he went on as they strolled along the balcony. “You seemed surrounded by the enemy.”
“By choice,” she said spiritedly. “Best way to turn them around is from the inside.”
“I agree. But as they say in my country, ‘You can’t turn stampeding caribou from the middle of the herd’—not without being trampled.”
“Someone has to take the risks.”
“I might be in a position to minimize them.”
Dominica tilted her head, considering the remark. “Why offer to help me?”
“Because we share the same goals
,” he replied, going on to say he was impressed by her work, and introducing himself as the Soviet cultural attaché.
The latter was a test. Most responded by asking why he was involved in matters outside his official jurisdiction. Most failed.
“Good. I just wanted to be certain,” she said, assuming he was KGB.
A trumpeted fanfare echoed through the arena. The castle’s massive stone door rumbled loudly, and began rising. The prized Arabian horses that would be auctioned to raise money pranced onto the red clay.
That was a year ago, and since, with Zeitzev’s support, Dominica infiltrated the European peace movement and incited many antinuclear demonstrations. Despite her efforts, the cruise missiles had been standing quietly in their silos in Comiso for months.
Recently, pressure applied by President Hilliard on NATO countries reluctant to deploy nuclear weapons had given rise to increasingly rabid opposition. NATO personnel, as well as business and political leaders outspoken in their support, had become terrorist targets.
Such incidents prompted NATO to issue a directive that antiterrorist measures at all bases be tightened. This meant that the wildlife sanctuaries next to the silos in Comiso had to be cleared of vegetation.
About a week later, when Ilya Zeitzev arrived in his office on the second floor of the Soviet Embassy, deputy rezident Antonin Kovlek was waiting for him. Kovlek was a taut man with thick glasses that belied his limited intellect. Prioritizing the influx of intelligence data was one of his responsibilities.
While Kovlek briefed him on NATO’s decision to remove the vegetation in Comiso, Zeitzev took a wedge of taleggio, one of the Italian cheeses that had become his passion, from a small refrigerator. He lowered his massive body into his desk chair, and began peeling the wrapper from the cheese. He knew the vegetation in Comiso provided cover for his agents who routinely monitored the NATO installation, and—should the Politburo so decide—would also provide a staging area from which to launch a terrorist attack on it.