In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  “Am I supposed to be proud of that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The chances are that it just doesn’t matter what state I do and do not see you in, thought Rust. Once we get off the moon … “What happened in Kiev?” He knew it had something to do with her dead husband. But she said nothing. When he tried to kiss her again, she wriggled free and retreated to a safer distance.

  “Time isn’t on our side.” Her objective tone could have sliced ice cubes when she added: “Pity.” She stood up and ran her hands down the shirt as it followed the curves of her body, from her breasts to halfway down her thighs. “It would be nice to keep it. I’d never wash it. Perhaps it would always smell of you.”

  “Keep it.”

  “Not worth the risk.” She took it off and dropped it on the bed. He followed her to the bathroom, but she asked him not to touch her. “We must run through the plan once more before Florian gets here.”

  He watched her showering, and rattled off the simple sequence. “Finally, at five to six, I enter the airport shop. I select some souvenirs, but not chocolates or dictionaries. I pay and do not open the sealed bag the girl at the counter hands over. Where will you and Florian be?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “How much does he know about the plan?”

  “Enough.” She did not ask him to turn away but kept covering herself as much as she could. Rust had a feeling she had begun to enjoy being watched.

  “Don’t you trust Florian?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Would he confess everything if he was caught?”

  “Of course. Like anybody else.”

  “Would I tell about you?”

  “Yes. You’d have no choice. But luckily, you know nothing about me. Except my face.”

  “And your body. I won’t forget that.”

  She faced him, let the soap slip away, and dropped her hands. “That’s nice. I’ll remember that.” Again that sincere voice, no trace of flirtation. “Just don’t describe me to anyone.”

  “If I was caught and forced to tell as much as I knew, what chances would you have?”

  “Not much.”

  “Could you get away? I mean, out of the country?”

  “Perhaps. But unlikely.”

  “You could try Odessa. With my father. All you’d have to do — ”

  “Don’t tell me.” She turned off the tap and let him wrap her in one of the thin, well-worn towels. For a second, he could visualize her rolled into one of his soft, luxurious bath towels at the Upstairs. He wondered how she would fit in there. How long she would last with no danger, no dependence, no surplus adrenalin flow except that induced by the occasional trip to Cuba and the frequent arrival of vacationers.

  Despite her protests, he told her about the Odessa arrangements. It made him feel better. And less dependent on her. He tried to convince himself that she had to know the escape route for the sake of his father and not because he felt desperate to do something for her. “Hotel Tsentralnaya. Don’t forget. The man in charge of the crocodile tank will arrange everything. And once you’re in Cuba, you’ll be looked after.” Morales would help her, he felt sure.

  “How would I get out of Cuba?”

  “They’ll let me know you’re on your way. Then I’ll meet you there and get you out.”

  “And take me to the Upstairs?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Nice dream. I’ll remember it.”

  *

  The door opened and Bobby Kennedy swung around in his red leather chair. “Come in, Anna, come on in.”

  Anna Repson walked up to his desk and deposited a thick buff file. “It’s the stuff you wanted on the Mob.” She opened the file and pointed at some markings at the top. “It’s all under separate headings for their deals with the CIA, Castro and Hoffa. The last section lists their own operations in Cuba.”

  “Good. That was quick. Thank you.”

  “You said you wanted it urgently.”

  “That’s why I asked you and nobody else to chase it. How’s Ell?”

  “Fine, thanks. Always busy. Too busy.”

  “I understand and I don’t envy you. It can’t be easy to live with him.” He noticed her eyebrows rising resentfully. With embarrassment, he hurriedly clarified himself: no, he was not referring to Repson’s wheelchair and disability. “I mean some of these guys in intelligence seem to be married to their work, and it’s not easy on outsiders like wives and families.”

  His eyes were riveted to her alluring gait until the door closed behind her — the Attorney General was not alone in Justice to envy the luck of Elliott Repson. He then turned to the file and examined a few pages — slapdash CIA schemes in Ike’s last Presidential year to kill Castro or at least make his charismatic beard fall out; Castro’s attitude to Cuban trade in narcotics, the arrest of Trafficante, a Mafia smuggler in Havana. They let him live in a luxurious jail, Kennedy thought, obviously because they have plans for using him. But who the hell is this Jack Ruby who visited him? Is he Castro’s contact to the Mob? Is he preparing the reopening of the drug-routes to the United States? No matter how tempting and juicy the file promised to be, it had to wait. But the Attorney General looked forward to yet another long night’s reading that should provide further inducement and motivation for Mongoose.

  *

  The squad working on the Moscow exit logs delivered the details of a “departure of yellow-flag case.” Boychenko was convinced that Rust, accompanied by “a woman doctor” and the driver (described as “big, ugly and muscular”) must have made his getaway in that ambulance. The KGB officer in charge of that roadblock was summoned to his office for questioning. When he implied the possible negligence of one of his men, the corporal, too, was brought in for “intensive interrogation.” Fifty minutes later, it appeared certain that the man was not an accomplice and he was transferred to the prison hospital.

  The officer remembered that the “doctor” had seemed vaguely familiar to him. The log proved that he had alerted the road patrol service as well as the Ivanovo roadblock for a second check. What puzzled Boychenko was that the ambulance had simply disappeared: nobody had seen it on the road or at the Ivanovo checkpoint, and it had never arrived at the isolation unit.

  He made his report to the Spetsburo as well as the First Chief Directorate, and it was decided that the kolkhozi — several of which were known to be harboring passively hostile elements — would have to be searched. Everybody would be required to account for his movements from September 20 onward, and everybody whose alibi appeared suspect would be brought in for further questioning. Boychenko expected at least forty or fifty suspects. He knew that the large number might be a disadvantage, but there was no other way — that was how the system worked.

  There was no joy in the report about the women cabbies. There were only a few known to be interested in football at all. Irrespective of what team they supported, all were to be brought in for preliminary interviews. Boychenko assigned the KGB officer of the roadblock to this task. He hoped that the man might identify one of the cabbies as the “woman doctor” in the ambulance.

  *

  “A wee bit early to start on vodka,” McGregor protested, but he found it difficult to say no to Yelena. She was hiding behind dark glasses, complaining about conjunctivitis and claiming that light would make her condition much worse. She wore a totally nondescript gray skirt and white blouse, and beyond giving the overall impression of being a pretty woman, she provided Mac with nothing he could eventually recall and usefully confess about her.

  Florian kept out of sight. Rust went to talk to him in the kitchen. He wanted reassurance that Mac would not be hurt. “He’s a powerfully built man,” Rust said. “How do you propose to hold him down while you give him the injection?”

  “We don’t hold him down. It’s just a pinprick, then four seconds to wait,” Florian said with a proud smile and produced a slim metal
tube, not larger than half a pencil. “It fires a tiny pellet which might carry poison — or fast-acting sedative. Would you like to bet which it will be?”

  “You’d better make sure that it’s a sedative.”

  “And if not? What do you intend to do about it?”

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “You won’t be here — with any luck. Or will you come back to us?”

  Rust pushed him out of the way and slammed the door as he returned to the room. Yelena looked up, but Mac was too busy watching her. Another drink, then one more. It seemed to have no effect on Yelena, but Mac’s eyes were glittering dangerously.

  Florian entered almost noiselessly. The pinprick on Mac’s neck lasted only a fraction of a second. Florian pulled back at once and turned away so that he would not be recognized later on.

  “What was that?” Mac was on his feet.

  Two … three … Rust counted silently.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  Four … five … Mac did not seem to react to the drug at all. Six … seven …

  In fear and fury Mac moved toward Florian but collapsed in midstep as if all his muscles had snapped simultaneously.

  They carried Mac to the bedroom and laid him on the bed. “He should be out cold for at least twenty-four hours,” said Florian. “But there was a moment when I thought he’d never drop.”

  Rust took Mac’s clothes and began to study his passport. He would have a few hours to memorize all the particulars. He went through the Scotsman’s luggage to weed out anything that might delay him at customs. There were a couple of novels by Graham Greene, and Yelena advised him to take them out, mainly because one was Our Man in Havana. Mac’s Bible also had to be left behind.

  “This place; he may remember this place,” said Rust. “Why didn’t I think about this before?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Yelena. “You brought him here by cab — it’s unlikely that he’d remember the number of the house.”

  “You told me to get out of the cab a couple of streets farther down so that the driver would not see us at this place. We got out somewhere off Sadovoye and walked.”

  “That’s all right then.”

  “But if he’s interrogated, he might remember the building. The lovely colors, the courtyard, this room.”

  “It doesn’t matter. By then this room will look entirely different, I promise you. Nobody will believe him.”

  Rust did not want to press it any further. But it remained a frightening thought: Mac might give away Yelena — or sign his own death sentence by trying too hard to prove that he remembered the place correctly. Rust forced himself to stop thinking about the vicious circle in which the life of the innocent had to be risked to protect the guilty only because Schramm’s rules of pragmatism were inescapable. He began to feel a peculiar hatred against the Scotsman. We love those we’ve helped, not those who’ve helped us, and hate the ones against whom we’ve sinned, he thought. But he felt no guilt. Just shame. For there was nothing he could do for Mac except pray — and pray he could not.

  Florian brought in a plastic carrier bag containing some jars, a few bottles and a full beard. Yelena started mixing colors to match Rust’s hair to the grayness of the beard.

  *

  Major General Yemelin stared at the mountain of papers his orderly had brought in to him. He was disgusted. Ever since he had taken over the First Chief Directorate he had tried and tried to cut down the paperwork, but there was no way to succeed. He could not even introduce a system to mark the documents demanding his most urgent attention. Classification was no guide, because everything had to be either secret or top secret, and the latter alone demanded a man and a half if he did nothing but read all day. He spotted a red-and-green folder and pulled it out of the middle. He had to break the red seal on it and would have to reseal it after reading and signing it. Within the First Directorate he was the only one entitled to open that folder: it contained titbits from GRU personnel who were also KGB informers.

  He looked at the first slip of paper, and he would not have been surprised if he had suffered a stroke there and then. Signed by the code number of the informer, the note merely told him that a GRU forger had supplied a complete “shoe” (Arthur Foster, American citizen) to an unnamed GRU superior. Yemelin picked up his phone marked No. 1, which was a direct line to the head of the KGB, but the call was answered by Semichastny’s duty officer.

  “Where’s the chief?”

  “On his way back from Yalta.”

  “Do we have any further details on the report about that American shoe the military neighbors had ordered?”

  The officer checked and came back with a no.

  “Has Comrade Semichastny seen it yet?”

  “No, it only came in last night.”

  “Take a note, will you? His attention should be directed to this report on his return immediately.”

  There was nothing else he could do. The existence of informers could not be revealed or acknowledged under any circumstances. If further information was required, only the head of KGB could obtain it, and only through the head of GRU. Yemelin was furious, but there was nothing to do for the time being apart from swearing at his GRU colleagues, who, apparently, were about to break the recent ruling that they would not place any of their own illegals into the United States, where only the First Directorate was to operate. He could have requested immediate radio contact with Semichastny, but it seemed pointless: if the shoe had been supplied only within the last couple of days, the GRU would still be busy training that “Arthur Foster,” whose full preparation might take several months.

  Yemelin hung up and read the rest of the brief reports in the folder. That was when he almost suffered his second stroke.

  There was a follow-up from the same code-numbered informer saying that the shoe had been delivered via a taynik in Leningrad. Even when Semichastny was back in Moscow, it would take at least a couple of days to discover the full details, who was running that GRU operation, who had ordered and received the shoe. “Come!” he shouted when he heard knocking at the door. He closed the folder and nodded to a Spetsburo colonel who entered with Major Boychenko in tow.

  Yemelin listened to Boychenko’s report and hoped that the major would slip up in some way. He loathed the small, fat loudmouth, who was skillfully extricating himself from all possible responsibility for his suspect’s death.

  *

  Mac’s clothes turned out to be a little too roomy for Rust, but otherwise he felt he had a fighting chance to get through passport control without trouble. What infuriated him was that he could not find an opportunity to say goodbye to Yelena in private, because Florian would be away for only a few seconds at a time to check Mac’s condition. The beard had worried him at first — he had kept catching it in everything — but by the time he had learned his new identity, he began to grow fonder of his hairy face. Sadly, he handed the Tula-Korovin to Florian. Carrying a gun would be an unacceptable risk.

  Yelena looked at her watch. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. “Get the syringe,” she said to Florian. As soon as the door closed behind him, she kissed Rust in a hurry. “You’ll look devastating with real white hair,” she whispered. Rust tried to hold her, but she slipped away. “Mind your beard,” she said. “Our spacecraft are fantastic, but we’re yet to produce a decent glue.”

  Alarmed, Rust touched the beard, but it felt reasonably secure.

  Florian returned and prepared the syringe gleefully. “Open your mouth.”

  Rust tried to look indifferent. Florian stabbed his gum hard. The throbbing began at once and got worse and worse. Rust hoped that the pain did not show.

  “Looks good,” she said and touched his face as the flesh began to swell.

  A few minutes later, Rust could hardly see out of his left eye. He took a look at himself in a mirror and compared his face with the passport photo. “It’ll do,” he said. “I hope.”

  Yelena touche
d his face once more. She was about to say something, but her voice faltered. She cleared her throat and tried to sound very objective. “Yes, I’m sure it’ll do. Don’t worry. And take care. And don’t buy chocolates or dictionaries.”

  Florian watched them. Rust started toward the door. “Thanks for everything. See you later,” he said finally and walked out. He was to take the subway to the Finland railway station. Florian would deliver his suitcase there by car.

  At four o’clock, Rust stood in the crowd milling around a huge glass cage. It contained the engine that had brought Lenin back from exile. He felt a light touch on his back. It was Florian, who put down the suitcase next to him, then disappeared. Rust stayed on for a couple of minutes, picked up the case and walked out to look for a cab.

  Yelena checked Mac’s sleep and Rust’s clothes once more. She put his papers and some money in the pockets. When Florian returned, she left in a hurry.

  Florian poured himself a drink. He did not like the arrangements. What if Mac remembered him or Yelena or the apartment or all three after all? It would be much better not to take chances with him. But if Yelena thought it would be all right, well … He shrugged his shoulders. He downed his drink and began to dress Mac. It was not easy. Rust’s clothes would not quite fit. Dammit. The unconscious man felt heavy, as if resisting everything that was done to him. Florian swore and knelt on Mac to hold him steady while pulling the shirt on. He had never thought the worst parts would be the buttons and the tie. He walked to the mirror, took off his tie, experimented with the knot on himself, then returned to Mac and tried it again, leaning closer and closer.

  It might have been the pressure on the throat or a jerky pull on the reluctant body — Florian never knew what made the Scotsman come to. It was just that suddenly the eyes were open and the body moved. All Florian could do quickly was to kneel on Mac and head-butt him. Fear, despair and recognition mingled in the eyes still glazed by the drug. The mouth opened and bared a fine set of strong teeth.

  The head butt must have dazed Florian as much as the Scotsman. That was why he broke his own well-tried rule to hit hard, draw back fast, and hit again. The hesitation cost him dearly. The Scotsman was gasping for air. His jaw convulsed with a powerful, jerky reflex that threatened to crack his own teeth. But his teeth caught flesh. Florian screamed. The pain was excruciating. Blood spurted and sprayed them both. Still screaming, he battered Mac’s face. He never knew which blow had killed the Scotsman. He staggered back and ran to the bathroom. Blood was gushing from his nose so fast that he could not see the damage in the mirror. But his frantically searching fingers felt out the picture. Mac had bitten off the tip of his nose.