“I got it,” said a voice. “The whole conversation.”
“On tape?” Gogol asked.
“Yes. On tape. I’m sending it by the courier. He’s leaving Washington within a few hours.”
“Then I’ll see him”—Gogol looked at his watch—“in the morning sometime.”
“Yes. This tape is going to blow out all the doors and windows of a certain building I could mention.”
“Marvelous,” Gogol said. “Simply marvelous. How is my friend Limoges?”
“For once he talked too much.”
“We’ll see,” Gogol said. “In the morning.”
He walked back to his guests with a light step. Snow was whirling at every window.
Later, alone, at bedtime, Gogol watched her step out of the filmy silk gown, leaving it on the tiles of the bedroom floor, abandoned. “Which deadly sin is this?” he asked her.
She paused beside the bed. “You are guilty of all seven.”
He walked over and put his arms around her. “There’s only one sin I’m interested in right now—how many times I can make love to you in my lifetime.”
She looked at the stone wall beside the bed. “You’re doing very well so far.” Scraped on the wall were a row of tallies, each with four vertical marks and a fifth drawn diagonally through them.
“I want to fill the whole wall,” he said.
“And how about the other deadly sins?”
He laughed. “You really softened up the stuffed shirts with that one. But your list of sins is outmoded. I have a list of deadly sins for modern times. I’ve made my own list.”
“You are evil.”
“No, not evil. Just sensible. In this world you have a very short time, and as your friend Nietzsche says, ‘All things are lawful.’”
“Let me hear your list,” she said. She smirked expectantly.
“Well, the first of the seven deadly sins is Poverty ….” He watched her smile broaden.
“Two. Boredom …” He paused.
“Go on,” she urged.
“Hunger.”
“That’s three.”
He smiled at her nude figure. “Chastity.”
“You wicked man. That’s four.”
“Growing old.”
“Ah-ha! You did believe what you were saying about brain transplants, didn’t you?”
“Slow cars …”
“That’s six,” she said.
“And the seventh is living in Russia.”
He watched her laugh, a superb smile with a deep, knowing chuckle. She touched his beard and looked into his eyes.
“Lovely pale blue,” she said. “Much too pretty for a man.” She patted his beard. “Be careful, Eric. You like danger too much. You are riding a tiger.”
“I get off when I wish.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. You were born to ride the tiger.”
“So? What’s so bad about that?”
“The tiger always comes back alone.”
Chapter 11
The courier arrived in Zurich on the morning flight from Washington. He pressed past the sauntering passengers, worked his way through passport control, skirted the baggage-claim area, and the NOTHING TO DECLARE customs desk, and hurried to a waiting automobile. The driver carried him quickly to Zurich on the auto route along the Limmat River then to an apartment just off Universitat Strasse. It had begun to snow again.
The driver let the courier out in front of a small apartment building, and waited with the motor running while the courier admitted himself with a key. He walked through the lobby and mounted a short flight of stairs. At the top he unlocked an apartment door and entered.
Gogol sat on a couch, arms folded, his heavy winter coat neatly folded over the back of the sofa, a briefcase by his side—like a traveler waiting patiently for a train.
The courier crossed the room and handed him an audio tape cassette.
“Will that be all, Mr. Marten?” he asked in Russian.
Gogol nodded.
“It’s begun to snow again, sir,” the courier said. He turned and left.
Gogol carried the cassette to a dining room table, put it into a tape deck and pushed the play button.
When the taped conversation began, there was a muffling of some sort over the microphone, but the two voices were clear enough. After a few sentences he was able to differentiate between Brewer’s voice and Sauer’s. Then he remained standing by the table impatiently.
“So what did they get?” Brewer’s voice asked.
“Who?”
“The Moscow smugglers. In Vienna.”
“Oh.” A rustling of paper. “Confidential, of course.”
There was a long pause.
“You know how bad this is?”
“You’re the computer expert, Brewer. You tell me.”
“This is state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line computer technology. The latest computer-operated soldering station. A prototype unit for disk drives. Vital parts for two central processing units.”
“So?”
“So this helps the Russians make state-of-the-art electronic components for space weapons—Star Wars stuff. It’s just the kind of capability we don’t want them to have.”
“It’s that bad?”
“If they’ve managed to swipe the software to go with this, they’re in production right now, making military hardware to use against us.”
Gogol’s impatience drove him to pacing. As the conversation wound on, he strode up and down the small room.
“Something’s coming down,” Sauer said. “And they don’t want those Rooskie pickpockets swiping it.”
“What’s coming down?”
“I don’t know. Something. All I have is a word I overheard …‘Cassandra,’ whatever the hell that is.”
Gogol clapped his hands together and settled into a chair. “Bravo!” he cried to the tape deck, applauding. “At last. Cassandra.” When the tape ended, he rewound it and started it again. Then he called Revin in Cologne.
“I have momentous news. A major breakthrough. Yes yes. I’m very serious. Where shall we meet? How about my favorite city? No, not Paris. Zurich, Viktor. Zurich! We’ll visit my money.” He laughed easily. “Tomorrow? Of course. I’ll pick you up at the airport. The evening flight. Auf Wiedersehen, my friend. When you hear what I have, your hands will tremble.”
Chapter 12
Brewer called Dore Hesse at the National Security Council.
Hesse said, “My kid’s in a high school play tonight. I can’t see you.”
“A drink at Khyber Pass.”
“Is this important, Brewer?”
“In twenty minutes.”
“Damn.”
The faces strung along the bar at the Khyber Pass were like a living photo album of Brewer’s past: men he’d worked with during his fifteen-year career. Some saluted him silently with the wave of a glass. Others spoke to him. Some thumped his back.
Dore Hesse entered and strolled along the bar, pumping hands like a politician working a crowd.
“The last time I saw you here, Charlie,” Hesse said, “you were sitting at that table having lunch with Bobby McCall. It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks later that he slapped the knife into your back. It’s very good to see you all put back together.”
“Thanks for the recommendation,” Brewer said.
Hesse made a sour face. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Come on, Dore. Your fingerprints are all over the gun.”
“Charlie, I can’t talk to you about this.”
“You put my name in the hat.”
“Charlie, I want to say two things to you. Don’t ask questions now. And go do what you have to do.”
“Limoges has seen too many spy movies.”
“No comment.”
“Why did you give him my name?” Brewer asked.
“I wasn’t the only one, Charlie. He asked everyone in Washington, and your name headed every list.”
�
��You know what the job is, Dore?”
“No.”
“A high-wire act with no net.”
“Look, Charlie. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what he had in mind when he asked for recommendations.”
“You should have asked. Tell me who Limoges is.”
“He’s an academic—Ivy League colleges mainly. Contemporary history, political science, something like that. He writes thick books on Russian intelligence that no one reads. So everyone uses him as a consultant. He’s been involved in the usual alphabet stuff. He’s chairman of the Technology Export Control Committee at NSC.”
“A yo-yo. You gave my name to an authentic, certifiable industrial-strength yo-yo.”
Hesse rubbed his face thoughtfully and was silent. Then he said, “Charlie, you have the fatal flaw of having the unique characteristics he was looking for.”
“What characteristics?”
“Cheers,” Hesse said, holding up his glass.
Brewer touched Hesse’s arm. “What was he looking for?”
“Someone who likes playing long odds—”
“What makes you think I like long odds?” Brewer asked. “Come on, Charlie. I’ve played poker with you. I’ve been to the races with you. You’re a genuine Silky Sullivan, running dead last, then in the home stretch pulling the trigger and beating the pack. That’s what Limoges wanted. Come from behind, never say die, and a tremendous homestretch kick. You not only like long odds, you’re addicted to them.” Hesse sighed. “What did you want to see me about?”
“I need everything you have on Russian high-tech smugglers and their styles. Cases they’ve been involved in.”
“If you’re trying to stop high-tech theft, you’re taking on the whole Directorate T.” Hesse snorted. “Charlie Brewer versus twenty thousand Russian spies.”
“How do you like the odds?” Brewer replied. “Is that Silky Sullivan enough for you?”
“Listen, Charlie. A French team of specialists was sent up against Directorate T. You know about this? One of them was found in a trunk in a railroad station in Milan. Another was found dead in his car on the corniche near Monaco. And two others disappeared. The French are smarter than we are, Charlie. When they realized that Directorate T was behind the murders, they shut the Reds down, booted them out of France, and that was the end of that problem. And here we are, standing on our border, waving them in. Directorate T is nothing to mess with if you don’t have solid backing from the front office. And you don’t. Okay?”
“Case histories, Dore.”
“Charlie, I didn’t know what the job was. I apologize. Don’t take this assignment. Hear? You’ll be all alone.”
“Case histories,” Brewer said again.
“Okay, okay,” Hesse said at last. “I’ll get what I can. If you get caught with it, it’s my ass.”
“Are you playing the violin for me, Dore?”
“Get a Woodcrest attaché case. Model 1212-B. Buffalo brown.” Hesse wrote the number on a paper bar napkin. “And bring it to the British Embassy tomorrow at four. And one last time—I promise you I’ll never put your name in the hat again if you’ll do one thing for me. Call Limoges and tell him you quit. Don’t take this assignment.”
Chapter 13
Gogol couldn’t get to the Zurich airport fast enough. He smiled every time he thought of the expression he was going to put on Revin’s face. Yet road conditions frustrated him. The autobahn was clear and dry all the way to Zurich, but in the winter twilight, great clouds of wind-blown snow were spinning off the white fields and pouncing on the roadway, momentarily blinding the drivers.
Gogol had a sudden yearning for hot sun—for a few days in Greece or perhaps St. Kitts. He thought of Leah bathing topless at St. Kitts.
But first—Zurich.
During those young years in his clerk’s cubby in Moscow, quietly raging against the system that moved dull, plodding incompetents ahead of him—the son of an admiral, the grandson of an old Bolshevik, the daughter of a committee chairman—he dreamed of this moment. It was time at last to make his move against his enemies.
He touched the tape in his pocket again.
Like Ulysses, he was now barring the door, and inside the banquet hall, he was turning to confront his band of enemies with his bow and basketful of arrows. None would escape.
His price for this coup would be a basketful of Moscow heads. He would have them mounted on pikes and erected on the walls of the Kremlin. Particularly Arnoski, Tolenko, Bronowski.
He had learned that living well isn’t the best revenge. Revenge is.
Revin was standing at the pickup station when Gogol arrived at the airport. Gogol stepped eagerly out of his Porsche and came striding around to Revin with that remorseless gusto, en costume, fully dressed for the part in custom-made knee-high snow boots, a custom-made loden coat, the end of his merrily striped scarf sailing over his left shoulder, and his left hand holding his alpine hat on his head, dauntless as the figurehead on a stormbound ship.
Like Pan he was, invincible, inevitable, piping the spring no matter the weather. The spirit of fun. Was there ever a more improbable relationship than this one between Gogol the Merry and the grim-faced committee of Directorate T? As he watched Gogol approach, Revin was put in mind of catastrophe.
“Viktor,” Gogol said, clapping Revin on both shoulders. “We are going to have an historic visit.”
As usual the impeccable Swiss had cleared most of the new fallen snow from the city walkways and roads of Zurich. Gogol strolled with the impatient Revin along the Bahnhofstrasse. The evening was star-filled, still, and sharply cold—made for walking—and he led Revin from one decadent shop window to another.
Revin didn’t look well. He had dark patches below his eyes and his pale face had deep fatigue lines that Gogol hadn’t seen before. He looked older than his forty-five years. Officially, Viktor Revin was attached to the Moscow technical acquisitions company, Electronorg-Technika, but his primary job was working, through Mashproborintorg, with Gogol.
“We are walking over my gold, Viktor,” Gogol said. “Right under our feet in the bank vaults of Zurich.”
“Your money is Russian money,” Revin said. “Wrung from the peasants a penny at a time.”
“So? Isn’t that the same place our esteemed leaders in the Kremlin get theirs?”
“Emil,” Revin said. “Do you realize that it was in this city that Lenin conceived the Russian Revolution? He walked along these same sidewalks that we are, over the same obscene piles of gold, brooding over the slaughter of young men that was going on in the trenches all over Europe. Lenin sat in the Zurich library, studying the techniques of revolution in the history books, while all about him the First World War raged.”
“Hurrah for literacy.”
Revin assumed his paternal tone. “Would he be very proud of you, Emil, using your great gifts for self-aggrandizement?” Revin answered his own question with a shaking head.
“Well, I’m very proud of him,” Gogol said. “After all, if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”
Revin looked away. “You are trying to irritate me.” His eyes observed the parade of brilliantly lighted shop windows—the cascading diamonds, the lavishly dressed mannikins, the expensive cameras, the gilt-framed paintings, the magnificent Persian carpets—an endless array of enticements, all freshly tumbled from a giant cornucopia.
“Greed has made its masterpiece in Zurich,” he said.
Gogol stopped Revin, put his hands on both shoulders and turned him face to face.
“Do you remember my first trip to the West, Viktor? It was Vienna. It was a summer’s night on that marvelous promenade of Karntner Strasse. You’ve been there.”
“Yes, yes,” Revin said.
“All the outdoor cafés were open. And the shops. An abundance of things—a feast for the eyes. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Vienna. Lights everywhere. And out on the promenade was a group of American university students in red-s
triped blazers and straw hats playing New Orleans jazz. It had this driving beat and a pulse. Overjoyed music. Free! Right there on the promenade, playing for no reason except the fun of it. And all those happy faces, strolling up and down in the summer night, stuffed with food, wrapped in expensive clothing. And on either side of Karntner Strasse, expensive shops like these as far as the eye could see. And I stood there and knew I could never go back to Russia and my clerk’s job again. I didn’t see greed. I saw the good life.” He shook Revin. “Viktor. You can’t get the genie back into the bottle.”
Revin shook his head at Gogol. “How can we see things so differently? You see the bright and shiny toys, and I see the corruption and greed and selfishness. I see the sadness under all this trash.”
Gogol laughed. “Trash,” he said, “A good meal will cheer you up, Viktor. How about a rack of lamb at the Jockey Club? No? Not the place for a good communist. And certainly not the filet of veal flambéed in kirsch at the Kronenhalle. Some of your bosses eat there, Viktor, whenever they visit.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Not the Ermitage? And not the Eden au Lac? What would Lenin say? Then we shall go to the Alpiner Stube—it’s just a quiet small place, Viktor, with a cheery fire, justly celebrated for its wonderful fondue.” Gogol took Revin’s arm again to lead the way.
“Loosen up, Viktor,” he said. “Even communists are allowed to enjoy themselves.”
“What is this news you want me to be so excited about?” Revin demanded.
“Let’s eat and talk,” Gogol said. He felt for the tape cassette in his pocket. In his other pocket he touched the necklace. The nineteen-thousand-dollar necklace. Revenge.
Revin liked cheese. Sitting at the table with the fondue pot between them, he forked the squares of bread into the bubbling pot of melted cheese and ate them with pleasure. As he chewed, his eyes moved from the wavering flame under the fondue pot to the dancing flames in the fireplace. The Alpiner Stube was filled with the odor of burning applewood. There was frost in the corners of the windows, a murmur of contented voices in the air. The cheese was delicious.
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