by James Philip
Thus, any sign of backsliding, or of a visible loss of enthusiasm, or of second thoughts could prompt betrayal because they all knew that the only one who had an exit plan, would be their esteemed commanding officer.
“Olga?” The man asked, his face a mask of surprise.
“Don’t just stand there,” she hissed, a little peeved that he had recognised her instantly, despite the thick make up and the hair which must cover most of her face. “Let me in before somebody sees me!”
The man was in shirtsleeves, his top four or five buttons undone baring his hair-matted torso in the humid summer night. A sheen of perspiration shone off his brow in the light of the dacha’s front room lamps.
The first thing Olga did once she was inside was to draw the blinds and tear off her borrowed wig, under which her hair was slick with sweat. Her make-up was starting to run; she knew she must look like a witch. And as for the threadbare, distinctly slutty dress she had ‘hired’ from the owner of the wig with every rouble she and the others could scrap together, she felt dirty just standing in it.
“We put the word out that you’re a rough guy but that you pay well,” Olga informed the man. “And that you like slim chicks with small tits, like me. Somebody is bound to question the woman whose ID I used to get into this part of the compound; so, I told her what rings your bell.”
“My bell?”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Olga pouted.
“You don’t want to carry on where we left off before you went back to Vladivostok then?”
“Not right now, no!”
She shrugged.
“It was that bastard Zakharov who set you up. Not me. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Oh, yes.” Olga was thinking on her feet, trying to read the KGB man. “You probably won’t believe a word of what I say to you tonight. That doesn’t matter. We won’t see each other again for a while. I’ll leave it up to you to make the next move. But that won’t be until you’ve worked out whose side you are on.”
When she said nothing more Andrei Kirov, suppressing a moan of existential anguish, shook his head.
“You risked coming here tonight to tell me that?” He asked acidly.
“Yes, mainly.” Men could be unbelievably slow on the uptake. “Well, are you going to fuck me on the floor or do I get invited into your bedroom?”
Andrei Kirov scowled, his face flushed, angry.
“What did you come here to tell me? And why won’t I believe it?”
Olga looked around, saw the open Vodka bottle on the small wooden table by the room’s larger window. She fixed her attention on it and the man found a tumbler, poured her a heavy measure that half-filled it.
She drank deep, and handed the glass back to him.
“That’s better. You have to understand that Zakharov and Dmitry Akimov go back a long way.” That was her explanation for why her fatherly, mild-mannered veteran aircraft commander had brought her to meet Zakharov that fateful day in January. The day she had sold a large piece of what was left of her soul to the cruel gods of retribution; they had caught her at the very apogee of her rage, lately, if not silenced, then diluted. Ironically, in part, possibly, because she had expended so much nervous energy in recent months trying to lay the ground work to make the ‘great plan’ happen.
In truth, she could not say when she had realised her mistake. There had been no moment of revelation, or exculpation, not that she could put her finger on, even had her feet been held in the fire. Rage was an unreasoning blur, she had been in a trance of remorse, self-loathing and needed to lash out, and the two men had picked their timing perfectly.
Dmitry Akimov had been the first to recant; but only to her, afraid one of the others might go straight to Zakharov. They were both trapped, as was Andrei Kirov in another, equally invidious fashion. As to whether what she planned to tell him that night would help any of them, was unknowable.
There was a chair, she sat down.
The man started pacing, brow furrowed.
“We plan to fly one last war mission,” she said, her voice suddenly dull. “That’s why we’ve started work on one of the Raduga Kh-20s. There are several big warheads on the base. We intend to install the biggest of them, one of the three-megaton fuckers…”
The KGB man stared at her.
No, I did not just hear her say that…
She went on: “If we can get the Amerikanskaya Mechta into good enough shape we plan to bomb either San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego. San Francisco most likely. Los Angeles is over eight-and-a-half thousand kilometres from here, a lot farther in reality because we’ll need to fly evasive patterns at both ends of the mission, so fuel will be nominal even if one of the fucking Kuznetsovs doesn’t play up…”
Andrei Kirov was spluttering, his cheeks beetroot red and his eyes as wide as dish plates.
“Are you fucking insane?”
“No, it all seemed to make sense the first time I was briefed.” She sighed. “Actually, I didn’t think going for one of the East Coast cities was ever a good idea. A strike against the Hawaiian Archipelago was always going to be a more practical proposition. Range isn’t an issue and if we flew well to the north of the islands, mimicking the new Pan Am and American Airlines civilian routes between North America and the Far East, we’d have a good chance – say, fifty-fifty – of reaching the closest possible stand-off launch point range, about two to three hundred kilometres from Honolulu, approaching from the north, or the north east without being detected or challenged. Obviously, we’d get shot down whichever plan we adopted but the idea of initiating a three-megaton warhead over San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or San Diego, or Pearl Harbour, was, well…seductive. Right up until one started to think about it, of course…”
“Madness!” Kirov growled. “Absolute, fucking madness!”
“Yes, I know that!” Olga retorted. “Why the fuck, do you think I’m talking to you about it?”
“What am I supposed to do?” The man snarled. “I’m a marked man. I can hardly march into my boss’s office and claim the man whose allegations have probably fucked what was left of my career, is about to start World War Four! I’d be laughed all the way to the fucking Gulags!”
Kirov halted, arms cross, glaring at Olga.
“Even if I did believe you. Which I don’t!”
The woman shrugged, spread her hands wide.
“Like I said. It is a lot to take in all at once. You need to think about it.” She reached for the Vodka, took a long swig from the bottle, wrinkling her nose. “This stuff is shit; can’t the KGB get hold of better stuff than this?”
Bottle in hand she rose to her feet.
“That’s enough talking for now,” she decided, moving towards the bedroom door. “I came here to offer you a way out. No hurry, we’ve probably got a few more weeks before they come for us. In the meantime, what I really need is a good, hard fuck. Do you think you can help me with that, at least, Comrade Major Kirov?”
Chapter 47
Saturday 6th July, 1968
Oak Hill, Wethersfield, Connecticut
There had been a public service at the Washington National Cathedral three days ago, attended by the great and good – and the not so good – of the Republic. The three Kennedy brothers, JFK, Bobby and Edward had escorted the casket into the church, followed by the over-large Betancourt cortège. Right up until the eve of the ceremony the family had jostled for prestige and position; in the end Gretchen and her two elder brothers had led their five attending siblings, step-siblings and the patriarch’s two surviving ex-wives down the nave of the great, twentieth century Neo-Gothic Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at the corner of Wisconsin and Massachusetts Avenues.
The President and Vice President’s party had arrived last, surrounded by a crowd of secret servicemen who spread out around the inside of the cathedral, a looming, disquieting presence throu
ghout the eighty-minute service.
Afterwards, the Nixons had hurried along the family line and raced away in one convoy of armoured Lincolns; while Nelson and Happy Rockefeller had lingered to talk to, and to comfort the brothers and sisters.
It was the 4th July weekend and both the anti-war protestors and the Washington PD seemed to have agreed an uneasy truce; mainly, so that they could regroup. There were still hundreds of demonstrators in jail, clogging up the courts and police houses, and every lock-up, and last weekend the Mayor of DC had asked for, and got National Guard reinforcements for his exhausted, battered and distinctly shell-shocked police force. Guardsmen now patrolled many streets, ready to form cordons to deny access to the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. Moreover, there were contingency arrangements in place to bus Marines into the city.
Understandably, the President had not felt safe on the streets of his capital.
Today’s interment at the small family plot behind the old Wesleyan Chapel in Wethersfield was a private affair, the only photographers two Betancourt Foundation staffers, and the handful of reporters present by invitation only, were all from local Connecticut papers.
The old man had made meticulous preparations for this day, entrusting sole executorship of his affairs to his old friend and legal partner, Bill Sallis and as the mourners gathered that morning Claude Otto de Betancourt’s Last Will and Testament had still not been read.
William Henry ‘Bill’ Sallis, a large, avuncular, grey-haired man in his sixties had taken Walter Brenckmann into his confidence – that went without saying – and listened attentively to his counsel before they determined, together, what was the least-worst way of dealing with the bank vault full of primed delayed-action bombshells they had inherited.
Bill Sallis had been Claude Betancourt’s ‘first’ protégé and been the ‘Sallis’ in the powerhouse legal empire of Sallis, Betancourt and latterly Brenckmann, since the 1930s.
Several family members had bridled at the summons to the ‘family interment’ at Wethersfield; and raised suspicious eyebrows that Gretchen had been accompanied in Washington, and now at Oak Hill by the two older Brenckmann sons, her husband Dan obviously had a right to be there but what was his brother, Walter junior doing so obviously comforting his sister-in-law? As for their sister and daughter’s father, and mother-in-law, well, that was different because Uncle Walter had been around most of their younger lives and at one time or another materialised out of nowhere to save many of them from the error of their youthful ways, arbitrating this or that college-excess, or defusing a disruptive spat between their estranged parents, and sometimes literally, getting them out of jail.
Reduced as the funeral party was, its members spilled out of the church and walked through the woods, where they had gathered in cliques on the front porch, or admired the immaculate ‘English’ gardens of the old house where in times past Claude Betancourt had brought senior Democrats and Republicans, and several times, foreign diplomats together to discuss the fate of American political life, and to apply a sticking plaster to the ills of the world.
The caretakers of Claude Betancourt’s favourite summer retreat and clandestine meeting place, were an elderly couple, Karl and Kathleen Nordstrom.
Karl had been a junior officer in the Kaiser’s Navy at the outbreak of the First World War, on board the light cruiser Breslau, which in company with the battlecruiser Goeben – which renamed the Yavuz, serving under Soviet-Turkish colours had been crippled by one of HMS Talavera’s torpedoes and shot to pieces by the big guns of the USS Iowa at the Battle of Malta in April 1964 - trapped in the Mediterranean by the outbreak of war in August 1914, had fled from the British Fleet and sought sanctuary at Istanbul. As fate would have it, the treaty which saw Turkey enter that war on the German side specified that both the Goeben and the Breslau should be handed over to the Turks, and their crews should be transferred to serve under the Turkish flag for the rest of that war. Afterwards, Karl – a gunnery officer – had stayed on in Turkey as the two ships were handed over to wholly Turkish crews; by the conclusion of his extended tour of duty Germany was in chaos, there was rioting in the streets, starvation in some cities and he, a Lutheran secular Jew had determined that – at the age of twenty-six – there was no future for him in the post-war Weimar Republic.
Travelling via Denmark and England he had sailed to America in 1920. Having learned English as a naval cadet – most officers in the Kaiser’s Navy spoke English – and with many years practical engineering and ordnance experience behind him he had had no trouble finding work; and when, eventually, he had looked to find a wife soon fallen into the waiting arms of Kathleen Steinmeier, the twenty-one year-old daughter of Silesian-born parents who had come to New York as children in the 1890s.
It happened that, at the time, Kathleen had been working as an assistant housekeeper at the Betancourt’s mansion on Brooklyn Heights; and that a vacancy for an accountant and steward had become available within the household and the rest, as Hollywood would have its gullible adherents claim, was history. The Nordstrom’s had taken over Oak Hill, the Wethersfield ‘retreat’ as long ago as the fall of 1928.
It was no surprise that when Bill Sallis invited all those ‘with an interest in the last Will and Testament’ to join him in the long, crowded dining hall of the old house, that the Nordstroms were present.
Gretchen took a seat next to the older woman, who reached over and took her hand for a moment. There had been numerous times in Gretchen’s young life when Kathleen, whose forthright, fearless persona often mistakenly gave the impression that she was the one who wore the trousers in her marriage to Karl, a kindly, mild-mannered and infinitely patient man, had been the nearest thing she had ever had to a real mother.
Well, until she had met Joanne Brenckmann…
The surviving wives had wanted to bring their attorneys to the reading of the will; Bill Sallis had politely, implacably explained that this would not be possible for reasons which would become apparent later.
Forty-eight-year old James Maxwell ‘Jay’ Betancourt was a Boston banker, a man who styled himself as some latter-day merchant adventurer. He was the sort of man who had no trouble ignoring the fact that had it not been for his family’s control of fifty-seven percent of the stock in Boston Pilgrim Mutual, little else qualified him to be one of, if not the leading Massachusetts banker. He was married – presently to spouse number three, a younger, blonder model of wife number one and two – with five children from his various unions, and was far more interested in sailing his racing yacht than he was turning up at his desk in downtown Boston most mornings. It went without saying that Jay was convinced he was going to inherit…everything.
Forty-four-year-old Martin Washington ‘Marty’ Betancourt was a playboy who had dabbled, now and then, in Democrat politics but focused the lion’s share of his energies running a string of expensive mistresses. His Manhattan apartment, in the Rockefeller Center had been destroyed in the New Year’s Eve bombing at the start of the Civil War; but, fortunately for him, he had been ‘out of town’ partying with two showgirls at the time. He was a lush who had been badly banged up in an auto wreck a year ago and still walked with a stick. He was divorced: only the once but his ex-wife had taken him to the cleaners and at the time, Gretchen’s father had refused to bail him out. Today, he looked fifty-four, not forty-four and seemed to be carrying around one of those hangovers where a man was afraid to open his eyes in case he bled to death. He just thought he ought to get…everything.
Another son, Thomas Jefferson ‘Jeff’ Betancourt, an artillery captain in the Army – and at the time viewed as the black sheep of the brood – had been killed in action in Korea in 1951.
Stanford, ‘Stan’, would be thirty-five in a week’s time, was quite unlike either of his brothers either in looks or stature. He was the fourth of the four sons of the patriarch’s first marriage to Magdalena. Stan was dapper, sparsely built like Walter Junior, and a major in the US Army. Like Junior,
he was obviously a man never more comfortable than when he was in uniform; just one of many very visible traits that wholly distinguished him from his two surviving elder siblings. He was under the impression that he was entitled to a sizable slice of…everything.
Magdalena had been a ‘complete harlot’ according to Gretchen’s mother.
Like she was one to talk!
Gretchen’s half-brother, thirty-three-year-old Tobias Longstaff ‘Toby’ Harrison, the bastard issue of a rare miscalculated indiscretion – her father’s single acknowledged illegitimate offspring, according to legend – had gone off the rails before the October War; these days he bummed around Los Angeles pretending to be a wannabee movie producer. He naturally assumed that the money tap was not about to be turned off just because the old guy was dead.
None of Gretchen’s ‘big’ brothers had had a lot to say to her that day, each in their own way beginning, she suspected, to get a nasty feeling that the reading of the will was not likely to go exactly as they expected. But then, they each had very, very high hopes and expensive life styles to finance.
When the door closed there were twenty people in the room: Bill Sallis and his faithful, very long-suffering secretary, Hilda; the Nordstroms, Gretchen and her husband, Dan, Walter and Joanne Brenckmann, Gretchen’s mother Harriet, and another ex-wife, ‘number three’, Celeste – both of whom were women now in their late fifties and desperately fighting the onset of anno domini with the aid of the best medical interventions money could buy – and the current, fourth Mrs Betancourt, Emily, a homely woman half the old man’s age who had been too distraught to attend the ceremony at the National Cathedral and was an irksome, lonely, sniffling irritation to the older wives; then, in addition to Gretchen’s older sister, Rachel, elder half-siblings, Jay, Marty, Stan and Toby, her younger sister May Rose, and half-sister, Claudia, and much younger step-brothers George and Jack, both looking confused; and finally, last but by no means least, and looking as uncomfortable as he was ever going to be, Walter Brenckmann junior, who had no idea why he was in the room.