“The question is,” Revin said, “will you find Cassandra before Brewer finds you?”
“Doubt, Viktor? Do I hear doubt in your voice?”
“This Cassandra affair could bring catastrophe,” Revin said. He went and stood by the window. If catastrophe came, it would come not with earth-shaking drums and rippling black pennants, full of rushing action and terrible noises, like a war or a volcano or a burst dam. No. That’s not the way things happened in the intelligence world. Cassandra would lug disaster onto the stage with no fanfare: the bubonic flea hopping onto the clothing of passersby, a drop of water between two hull plates, a lone rider cresting the horizon.
“What catastrophe, Viktor?”
“The murder of Charlie Brewer.”
Gogol frowned. “Who wants that?”
“The committee will,” Revin said. He looked down at the parking area. Snow was falling again. Swirling out of the blackness and into the streetlights. The cars in the parking area were rapidly being covered. It would snow all night.
Revin longed for sun and fields of flowers, far away from crises. He looked at Gogol. “You know what they’ll say. They’ll order Brewer’s death. And to tell the truth, that’s what’s needed.”
Gogol shook his head. “But it may be unnecessary. Do you understand how difficult it will be for this Brewer to find me? First he has to find Eric Marten. And that’s very unlikely. Then he has to discover that Eric Marten is Emil Gogol of Directorate T. And that’s even more unlikely. Even if he manages to do it, it will take him a very long time. We should have found Cassandra by then. Killing Brewer can cause worse problems than not killing him. It would be a war of spies.” Gogol unwrapped and dropped into his tea a lump of sugar as Revin watched. Then he unwrapped another and dropped it into the cup.
“You don’t want him killed?” Revin asked.
“As you said, killing Brewer would be a catastrophe,” Gogol answered.
“Ah,” Revin said. “But not killing him may be a grave mistake.”
Gogol chuckled. “The classic no-win situation.” He dropped a third lump into his tea and unwrapped a fourth. He smiled at Revin’s disapproving eyes. “When I get diabetes,” he said, “I will have nothing but twenty-four-carat-gold needles. Viktor, if the committee wants Brewer killed, I can’t stop them. But I have one request. See to it that the job is done properly. Don’t use the usual cut-rate killers. This has to be a first-class job. I can get you just the man, if you want. Shall I?”
“No no.” Revin was thoughtful.
Gogol took the tape out of the deck and pressed it into Revin’s palm, then carefully wrapped Revin’s fingers around it. “Play this for that absurd committee.”
“It’s almost like a joke,” Revin said. “It contains good news and bad news. Cassandra and Brewer.” Revin looked down at the tape in his hand. His face was very pale.
“What is it, Viktor?”
“For one of the few times in my life, I’m filled with foreboding.”
“You need a vacation.”
“We all need a vacation. The whole world needs a vacation from this cold war. It has gone on too long. It should have ended long ago. One way or the other.”
“I warn you again about Brewer,” Gogol said. “Don’t miss.”
Chapter 15
Brewer bought an attaché case at Shapiro’s the next afternoon. Woodcrest Model 1212-B. Buffalo brown. Then he took a cab to the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. In the embassy cloakroom he fitted the empty case on the lower hat shelf between two other attaché cases.
The reception room was crowded with a hodgepodge of Washington diplomatic people, mostly young, mostly lower rung—third secretaries from some twenty embassies smouching stale gossip from each other. The British were fishing for something. And there were a lot of East Bloc nosybodies in the crowd, come to see what it was the British were looking for.
The scotch was better than the standard level of bad booze usually served at these lesserling’s sessions. Already the murmuring voices were growing strident.
In his book, Krowbin, the Russian defector, stated that he picked up some of his most valuable leads from embassy gargles. The Russians rarely held them, and when they did, they loaded them with KGB.
The British military attaché strolled up to Brewer. “Your presence is noted, Brewer,” he said. “How are you?”
“Checking out the wastebaskets,” Brewer said.
“All you’ll find in mine are the rejects from other wastebaskets.”
“Lots of Bloc people here.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed. Poles and Russians, mainly. I think the Poles are here to watch the Russians, and the Russians are here to watch the Poles. They’re all very goosey lately.”
“What about?” Brewer asked.
“Who knows? I hear there’s been a lot of pushing and shoving behind closed doors. It all involves the Czechs somehow.”
At four-thirty Hesse arrived with a very pretty woman. A few moments later Brewer went to the cloakroom and looked about. His empty Woodcrest attaché case was where he had left it on the lower shelf. Directly above it was a duplicate Woodcrest. He pulled it down and walked out with it.
Hesse had been thorough. The packet of papers was over an inch thick, and most were classified documents. Some were secret. On top of the file was a handwritten note: “Khyber Pass, 7 p.m. Without fail.” Hesse had given him less than three hours.
He sat on a stool in his kitchen, put the papers on the counter and slowly went through them. There were pages of reports on specific acts of smuggling, mainly in Europe—all brief and lacking in details. If there was a Mr. X behind any of the dozens of cases, there was no hint of in these papers.
Most of the reports were useless—repackaging information cribbed from other reports that had been cribbed from previous reports. Most of the information was old. All the studies expressed great concern with the problem but were very short on specific information.
Several white papers recited old background material. One recounted the history of Directorate T and its formation by Andropov in 1974 specifically to acquire American technology, after Russia realized that it had fallen alarmingly far behind the United States.
Another paper described the beleaguered state of the Department of Commerce, which was assigned the task of stopping the outflow. Another reported on the administration’s determined efforts to stop the smuggling, efforts that ended in frustration. That paper predicted that the volume of Russian smuggling would not only continue, but increase.
There was nothing that would show Brewer a pattern or point toward an individual. After several hours Brewer put the papers back in their folders and put the entire file in the attaché case. At seven he drove to Khyber Pass.
There was something arrogant about Hesse. Making a pass involving two identical attaché cases in a pub frequented by professional spooks from many different branches of government—many of whom had made many similar passes on numerous occasions—was the height of smugness. The move was bound to be spotted by a number of knowing eyes.
Hesse sat at a bar stool talking to four or five others. Brewer sat next to him and joined in the conversation. A few minutes later Hesse bowed out, took his attaché case up and left, leaving Brewer’s new attaché case between the stools.
Later that evening, when he got home, Brewer opened the attaché case before pushing it up on a closet shelf. Inside he found a rabbit’s foot.
Part Four
Chapter 16
Margie watched Brewer’s preoccupation. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Something troubling and personal. One evening when he kissed her, she touched his lips with her fingertips. “Your kisses have sadness in them lately, Charlie,” she said.
Everytime she hung her coat up, she noticed the brown envelope up on the shelf where Brewer had put it. It looked abandoned. Forgotten.
Perhaps the answer lay there. She lifted the envelope down, carried it over to her couch, and pulled all
the documents out onto her lap. Writs. Interrogatories. Stipulations. Transcripts. Extracts. A fugitive arrest warrant for Bobby McCall. Proclamations. Copies countersigned. Official seals. A parade of papers generated by a parade of people. Clerks of the Court. Judges. Attorneys. Chief of Detectives. Warden. Register of Documents. It all should have made him happy. But it hadn’t. Humpty Dumpty was pushed, he said.
To her surprise, the check was still there, near the bottom of the pile, accompanied by a statement of account—columns of figures headed by code numbers, glossary on the back. It was a check for his lost time, his other perquisites and emoluments, restored pension time—a large sum of money which could have remained in the envelope for years. How casually Brewer had pushed it into the envelope and out of his mind. He had a total lack of interest in money.
When she restacked the papers to put them back, a white envelope fell out. It was addressed to Mr. Charles Brewer. “Personal & Confidential.” In the upper left-hand corner was the office address of Madeline Hale. The note itself had been only half pushed back into the envelope. Slipping it into the other papers, she put the pile back on the shelf.
Margie went into her bedroom, changed her clothes, changed her shoes, carried a load of wash to the washer in the bathroom, then crossed the living room back to the closet and lifted down the pile. Finding the white envelope, she sat down on the couch with it.
Without hesitation she unfolded Madeline Hale’s note and read it.
Charlie.
These are all the papers concerning your pardon. Every jot and tittle has been taken care of. I hope you can get all this behind you now and get on with your life. I’m sorry about us. We could have made it work. I wanted to. I put no conditions on our relationship. Take care of yourself, Charlie. I’ll always remember you.
Margie put the envelope back in the pile, shoved all the papers into the manila envelope and restored it to the hall closet. Then she went into the bathroom and loaded the laundry in the washer. A few moments later she returned to the closet, took down the letter once more, and reread it. And read it again. By the time she returned the note again, she had memorized it.
It was her practice, periodically, usually after a shower, to stand before her full-length bathroom mirror to take inventory of herself and analyze the way she fit into the world. She felt it was time to do it again, and now, while reloading the washing machine, she took off all her clothes and tossed them in too. Then she looked at her figure.
“A little cellulite there, doll,” she said, poking a finger at her thighs. She pinched the flesh around her waist. “Remove two inches.” She looked at her breasts. “Add two inches.” She twitched her mouth. “But then—he likes them.” She saw her face in the mirror: plain girl-next-door style. Not cover-girl material. Things never got better: lately, very faint lines around the mouth and eyes. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. She looked at herself from head to foot. “From nose to toes, doll, you’re no competition for Madeline Hale. So what makes him stick around?”
She looked at the woman in the mirror who looked back at her.
“Poacher,” she said.
She awoke one night and found him beside her wide awake, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Three o’clock.”
“You okay?”
“I always wake up at three o’clock.”
“Why?”
“In my head it’s always three o’clock in the morning and I’m still locked in that prison cell. And I still hear that kid’s heels kicking the wall next to me when he hung himself.”
“You have to get past what Bobby McCall did to you,” she said. “He framed you. He let you go to prison. And now you’re out with a full pardon. That’s that. It can’t always be three o’clock, Charlie.”
“Once upon a time,” he said, “I thought I was Archimedes.”
“Who’s Archimedes?”
“A Greek mathematician. He said, ‘Give me a place to stand, and I can move the earth.’ That was me. It was all cops and robbers. The good guys versus the bad guys. And all for fun. A meaningless game. I could move the earth.”
“And …?”
“And then I went to prison.”
Chapter 17
The next morning Revin sat in a coffeehouse in Cologne, reading a paper and periodically looking at his watch, waiting for ten o’clock. At last he paid his bill and carefully buttoned up against the cold. Then he walked toward the cathedral.
His head was pushed deeply into an astrakhan fur hat. Seldom, even in the coldest parts of Russia, had he felt a wind as fierce as this. Just as the snow seemed to be stopping, the wind pounced with another snow shower that for minutes on end could white out the whole city. He stood on the steps of the cathedral, grateful to be out of the wind and watching for the two of them to come across the cathedral square.
It would not be hard to see them. That numbing wind, whistling up the river, had swept the streets clear of all but the most stubborn pedestrians.
They came at last, the most improbable pair Revin had ever seen, their figures a grotesque contrast.
One was tall, nearly seven feet, limbs as thin as sticks, wearing a long black overcoat only partly buttoned, coat skirts billowing in the wind. A flapping wide-brimmed black hat sat on his head like a black halo. The ends of a long crimson scarf sailed like pennants behind him. A grimace exposed huge white teeth in an olive face. He was so tall and emaciated, he appeared even taller, a man striding on stilts. He seemed unaware of the cold.
The other, walking on massive legs in blue jeans that rubbed together with each step, wore an expensive sheepskin shortcoat buttoned up to his throat and tightly belted around his broad waist. His hands were like great paws in their sheepskin mittens. On his head, a sheepskin hat with earflaps tied under his chin. Yellowed teeth showed under a huge black Turkish moustache and a scimitar of a nose, very red. He shivered.
Revin had misgivings as soon as he saw them. He clicked his tongue in dismay. Where had Tolenko gotten them? Cut-rate cutthroats from a human bargain basement somewhere in the Middle East. Just what Gogol had warned him about. It must be a first-class job, Gogol had said.
Revin let them step up out of the wind. This was going to be a very quick meeting. He held the red bound book prominently on his chest as they crossed to meet him.
“We bring greetings from the sunny clime of the Bosphorus,” the heavy one recited in demotic French. His towering companion stared at Revin remorselessly with dilated pupils. Revin decided he was on something—a hard drug of some kind.
Revin held out an envelope, and it was taken by the tall one’s bare hand, grotesquely long and thin.
“In there,” Revin said, “you’ll find two passports. Yours is Syrian”—he glanced at the tall man, then at the other—“and yours is Algerian. You’ll also find two airline tickets—round trip, Cologne to London. You will wait in London at the hotel noted in that envelope until you get further orders. Other people are setting things up. Understand?”
The heavy one nodded, then shivered even more violently.
Revin tapped the envelope held by that impossibly long, phthisic brown hand. “You will receive airline tickets in London and further instructions. You have already discussed the job and all its details, is that not so?”
“That is so,” the heavy man said. “Including the man’s name, Charlie Brewer, and the city, Washington, and the agent who will meet us in Washington. We’ve been briefed a number of times.”
“Are you sure you understand it all?” Revin asked.
The heavy man nodded his enormous black moustache up and down. “I can walk and chew gum,” he said, and hooted a deep laugh.
Revin worried some more. “Change all your money into American,” he reminded them, and watched the stout man’s nodding face. “And carry nothing but the money, the two pass ports, and the two airline tickets. You are to cut all the labels from your clothing. Do you understand?”<
br />
The heavy man grinned broadly with chattering teeth. “I speak five languages,” he said. “And understand them all.” He looked at the desperately thin face of his companion, who stared down at Revin without expression. “And he understands what I tell him.”
Revin went on. “When you get to London, memorize the information in the envelope. When you leave for Washington, destroy everything but the airline tickets and passports,” he said. “Understood?”
The heavy man nodded. The tall one stared.
“When you meet our agent in Washington, he will give you the rest of the details.” He looked at their two faces. They seemed to be expecting him to say more.
“That’s all, then,” he said. The meeting was over. He watched them walk back the way they had come; the tall one swaying his stick limbs inside his fluttering trousers and coat, the ends of his crimson scarf fluttering before him; the other, a rolling tun bundled inside sheepskin. From his coat pocket protruded the cover of Playboy magazine. They disappeared in a sudden whiteout.
Revin hurried off to a warm fire and hot tea, filled with foreboding.
Chapter 18
The lastest episode in Eastern Bloc quarreling in Washington finally leaked into the newspapers. It was reported in Penny Pine’s column on embassy news.
The Russians are denying it, but last night a young diplomat attached to the Czechoslovakian Embassy blackened the eye of a Russian diplomat during a reception in the Polish Embassy. The Czechoslovakian was hurried onto the next flight home. Tis said that behind closed doors Mr. Karlov, the Russian ambassador, is still raising cain about the incident. Here in Washington lately there has been a considerable amount of quarreling going on among the East European nationals behind those firmly closed doors. No one will say what the quarreling is about. To be continued …
Brewer recalled what the British military attaché had told him. Goosey Russians following sullen Poles watching hostile Czechs. Brewer sent a message to a contact in the Czechoslovakian Embassy. Then he went to the National Gallery to wait.
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