“It is too much,” he said.
“It was just enough,” said Kodakov. “I was buying drinks and food for these conventioneers. They were having a good time. I had to have a good time. I maintained my cover.”
He didn’t mention the two-hundred-dollar call girl, whom he had put down as a car rental.
“What about Bolshinin?”
“It is my opinion that the arrangement for the contract was made here in Washington,” Kodakov said. “Our Cuban amigos inform me that Bolshinin arrived in Miami on a direct flight from Washington. Very stupid, obvious, and clumsy, but so was Bolshinin. At any rate, it is so. This Trench flew to Washington on a direct flight from Miami. The Cubans were able to obtain a description. According to our computer data, he is a common American criminal. No government service outside of Vietnam War. No identifiable CIA connection. It’s what they call ‘a hit,’ a common, ordinary hit, but then there is Bolshinin.”
“It is too stupid, obvious, and clumsy,” said the ambassador. “Is it possible Langley is arranging this for some political purpose?”
“Possible,” said Kodakov, “though there is no indication of this. If they wanted this man Showers killed, they have a thousand tidy ways of doing it themselves.”
“Not a thousand tidy ways that would implicate us,” said the ambassador.
“I don’t know,” Kodakov said, pausing to brush a smudge from the toe of his white shoe. “All I know for certain is that Florida was merely the meeting place. Everything else is here in Washington.”
“Was there anything indicating a Canada connection?” asked Yerofeyev. “We want nothing like that. Not now. Can you find Trench?”
“Yes. I think so. But it may take time. It will have to be a wet job. I shall need considerable assistance.”
“It is yours,” said the ambassador. “Is it possible another nationality is behind this?”
Kodakov shurgged. “Canadians?” he said, smiling. “In retaliation for acid rain?”
“Be serious.”
“I will find out what can be found out.”
A few minutes later, he left the building by embassy car, was dropped off at the Metro Center subway station on Thirteenth Street, took it to Union Station, got off and walked up the hill to the United States Capitol. He rode one of the public elevators to the third floor, remained in the elevator as it went down to the Capitol basement again, then forever lost whatever tail he might have picked up in that labyrinthian network of corridors down there. This was another wonderful thing about America. CIA agents in Moscow never dared try to lose a tail in the basement of the Kremlin.
Making his careful way to the House end of the Capitol, Kodakov took the subway to the Rayburn House Office Building, found an unobserved public phone booth, and made his call. That was another wonderful thing about America. You could simply pick up the telephone and call the CIA.
Possibly more insufferable than watching the rich indulge themselves at play is watching them indulge themselves at charity. Showers was the only member of the board of the American Wildlife Committee who was not rich. He and Marie-Claire would occasionally write the committee a check for a hundred dollars or so at times when there weren’t too many bills to pay, but the others seated with him around the old mahogany conference table were good for several thousand in contributions a year—which is why they were on the board. Showers had at first naïvely thought his own selection as a director had something to do with his work on behalf of animals abroad and the letters and articles about the industrial threat to wildlife that he had published in newspapers like the Washington Post. But after several meetings it had become obvious that his chief value to the committee was the cachet of the State Department.
The three-story Victorian town house near Scott Circle, which housed the committee’s national offices, was abysmally air-conditioned and everyone in the room was perspiring, the sweat greatly diminishing the elegance of their expensive clothes. Most of the board members were women, some still on the beautiful side of middle age, some on the elderly side of middle age fighting for beauty with all the money at their disposal. Showers suspected that some of them secretly went about in fur coats when in New York or some other place where they were unlikely to be seen by anyone connected with the committee. They all wore cosmetics, despite the fact that the committee had unsuccessfully undertaken a campaign to compel cosmetics manufacturers to stop using rabbits’ eyes for testing their products for safety. One of the women was married to a Nevada mining millionaire whose Western Enterprise Foundation was lobbying in Washington for repeal of the Federal Endangered Species Act. In what was probably “conscience money,” he allowed her to contribute $25,000 a year to the committee. Because of that, the aging ex-actress who was chairman of the committee, in her parting embrace of the woman at the conclusion of every meeting, always said: “Give my love to your husband.”
Hurray for the committee. The hell with the wildlife. At times Showers seethed at the very sight of some of these people. Yet he remained a director. There was the social cachet it provided him. And didn’t it look swell in his Who’s Who listing?
The aging ex-actress, blond gone to gray, too-fashionable sunglasses masking facial wrinkles, stood at the end of the table, in fits and starts shifting from right to left, abruptly moving to the window, or to the bookcase, and once even circumnavigating the table in a voluble, gesturing monologue about her latest pet project—a refuge for wolves in Minnesota. Her audience reacted typically, sitting rapt and nodding approval. As with so many charity board members, their only true function was to have their names appear on the committee letterhead. And to keep contributing the thousands. And to feel less guilty.
The subject changed to an animal-protection bill the ex-actress wanted the committee to support in Congress. She asked the board members for their opinions. Two of the men on the board, both lawyers, wheezed legalistically for several minutes, and then recommended that the committee study the legislation more carefully. A woman member tearfully recounted a dog cruelty case she had witnessed. Showers, prohibited as a foreign service officer from engaging in any political activity, was reluctant to comment at all, but ventured the remark that the administration was so ill-disposed toward environmentalists and conservationists that the committee would be lucky if the White House didn’t propose a bill establishing a 365-day open season on all fur-bearing mammals including kittens.
A woman, whose husband headed a major brokerage firm and who had twice been a guest at White House state dinners, reared back her head and snapped: “Conservatives like animals, too!”
Showers sighed and said nothing more. One evening, over brandy in Brussels, his Canadian friend Porique had gone on at great length about violence being the only alternative left to those who would save the creatures of the wild and the wilderness. Showers still deeply disagreed with that, but he had come to understand how Porique could believe it.
Washington possesses all manner of discreet rendezvous for spies, lovers, and curious businessmen with a need for privacy. One is particularly ideal—a heavily wooded island lying in the Potomac just downstream from Georgetown. Named for President Theodore Roosevelt, it is crossed by a major highway but accessible only by a narrow footbridge from the Virginia shore. The center of the island is given over to a memorial, a circle of walkways and fountains dominated by a massive statue of Roosevelt. The rest of the island is a restored natural wilderness, threaded by paths and containing myriad secret bowers. Which is why Pavl Kodakov, knowing full well the CIA had it criss-crossed with listening devices, never used it. He preferred less likely, more public locations—the Pentagon parking lot, the Georgetown nightclub district on crowded evenings, the lobby of the Kennedy Center during intermissions. Today, he chose Arlington Cemetery.
Dressed in a T-shirt, plaid walking shorts, black socks, and white loafers, wearing prescription aviator sunglasses and carrying an Instamatic camera, he took a taxi to National Airport, then rode back two stops on the Metr
o subway to Arlington. Mingling with the tourists, he accompanied a large group of them on an open-sided sightseeing train up to the Kennedy gravesites, where he nosed about reading the inscriptions until he was sure the area was clean. Then he ambled up the long stone walk that led to the top of the hill and the Grecian-style mansion from which General Robert E. Lee had ridden off to war. It was a house which, as Lee had once written, “anyone with half an eye can see,” and from it, anyone could see half or more of Washington across the river, a landscape of greensward and white monuments and stately buildings rising from the trees. Kodakov gazed a long moment at the Lincoln Memorial, his favorite. The Americans, like the Czars, were much better at monuments than the Soviets. Sometime Kodakov would gather with an intelligent and discreet friend or two and consider why that was. Is all art decadent, and the most decadent the best art? Was Lincoln decadent? Nonsense. Every inch of that structure was a political statement.
Rubbing his chin, Kodakov joined another group of tourists milling about on the mansion’s huge veranda. At length, a woman guide in a cotton nineteenth-century gown came to the huge entrance door and beckoned them inside. As they passed the parlor in which Lee and his wife were married, Kodakov fell back toward the rear, next to a short man with neatly combed white hair and a light blue seersucker suit.
“Hello, Hugh Laidlaw,” he said, quietly.
“Hello, Gospodin Kodakov.”
“You are well?”
“Yes, and you?”
“A little run down. I was at a tractor dealers’ convention in Miami.”
“Someone has to steal our tractor secrets.”
“Is a living.”
They paused with the others at the door to a new room. The guide, speaking in a surprisingly harsh Southern voice, began explaining the connections of Lee’s wife to George Washington.
“It has been a long time since we have had such a meeting as this, Pavl.”
“Yes. I’ve missed you.”
Laidlaw stared at a painting on the wall, saying nothing. These famous pauses of his were often infuriating, but always effective.
“There is something you should know, Hugh. One of our people was murdered in Florida.”
“I know. Gospodin Bolshinin. It was in an intelligence summary. You have our condolences.”
Kodakov smiled.
“Before he was killed, Bolshinin hired a professional murderer, what you call ‘a hit man,’ to eliminate an American foreign service officer here in Washington. It has nothing to do with us, Hugh. Not the ‘wet’ section. We are baffled. It was the hit man who killed Bolshinin. We know his name is Frank Trench, a former Vietnam War soldier. We have a small dossier on him, but it is insufficient.”
“Who is the American foreign service officer?”
“Someone you have been meeting with. His name is Dennis Tobias Showers. I believe he is a French-language specialist and an expert on Canada.”
Laidlaw shifted his stare to Kodakov’s face, then looked away. The guide was leading the group up a staircase to bedrooms above. Laidlaw and Kodakov climbed slowly, hanging back.
“You are certain about this, Pavl?” Laidlaw said, when they reached the upstairs hall.
“Yes. I thought it something you should need to know. That this has happened. That we have nothing to do with it.”
“I’m appreciative.”
The guide, talking about bed canopies, moved them down the hall to look at one.
“There is something I need to know, Hugh. Is this a Langley gambit? Bolshinin worked for others, including you. Are you using him now in this way to cause us trouble, to discredit us?”
“I doubt that very much. But, even if it were so, it would not be very seemly for me to confide in you on the subject.”
“Hugh, you are obligated to me.”
“Oslo.”
“Oslo. You are an honorable man, Hugh.”
“No man is that honorable.”
“I need an answer to my question. I wish to collect for the obligation.”
Another tour group was coming noisily up the stairs behind them. The guide took them past a final bedroom, then down two flights of stairs to a dark corridor that led to the mansion’s kitchens.
“Are you people now looking for Frank Trench?” Laidlaw asked, when it was convenient to speak again.
“Sure.”
“I’ll get you an answer to your question. As soon as possible. Then you and I shall be quits on this.”
“Yes, of course,” said Kodakov, smiling again. “Fair enough.”
The tour had ended. The group was ushered outside into the bright sunlight behind the house. Kodakov and Laidlaw walked together a few paces more as the group began to disperse.
“Good-bye, Pavl. For now.”
Laidlaw moved on, with a slight backward wave of his hand.
“Hugh.”
Laidlaw hesitated, then glanced back. Kodakov was taking his picture with the Instamatic.
“For old time’s sake,” he said, lowering the camera after clicking the shutter. “Something to remember you by.”
Laidlaw hurried away, unhappy at the heaviness of his perspiration. At times, Pavl Petrovich Kodakov unnerved him more than any man he knew.
The train was traveling at close to full speed, well out of the mountains and screaming along the plains toward Winnipeg. Inspector Beckett, dressed in a rumpled civilian suit, was in the club car, where he had spent much of the journey from Regina, seated in a comfortable chair at the far end, sipping rye over ice and chatting with whatever fellow passenger took the chair next to him. It was several conversations before the right passenger took the seat.
“Have you a newspaper?” said the passenger, a western type with a large beer belly and a scruffy beard. “I’m looking for the soccer scores.”
“Yes,” said Beckett, reaching for his briefcase. “What team do you follow?”
“Not Ottawa.”
“Indeed,” said Beckett. “Not Ottawa.”
He opened the old leather case and pulled a one-day-old Regina paper from a side pocket, handing it to the other without revealing the briefcase’s other contents, which included a small .22-caliber Remington revolver. The bearded man, whose sports jacket pockets bulged sufficiently to enclose a pistol or two, paid no attention in any event, turning through the pages of the paper with a great deal of noise and bother until he came to the sports section. He read through it carefully, then reassembled the newspaper with even more confusion, at one point dropping it to the floor. When he returned it at last to Beckett, it was much thicker than before—in the center.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Beckett said, when the newspaper and its additional contents were back in the briefcase.
“A pleasure, Inspector.”
The bearded man asked for American bourbon. Neither spoke again until it came. And Beckett waited until he was sure no one else in the car was paying any attention to them.
“You’ve given me everything?” he asked.
“Everything. The entire works. It’s all there, and we’re all ready. You won’t have to worry about Winnipeg.”
“I always worry,” Beckett said.
“Don’t. If they try to move hard against us, we’ll make the Red River really run red.”
He laughed, too loudly. Beckett smiled politely, while frowning slightly at the same time. He wondered what these few people might possess that could cause carnage in a place like Winnipeg. The contents of his briefcase would make for interesting reading now. With this latest addition, he now had the details of every action planned for west of Lake of the Woods. He had had a successful few days.
“Have you had any problems with security?” he asked.
“The RCMP’s been looking around. No one as high-ranking as you, though. They didn’t get close to anything.”
“Is there anything more I can do for you?”
“Well,” said the other, emptying his glass, “you could always shoot the prime minister.”
&nb
sp; Laidlaw arrived at the safe house in Langley after five o’clock, finding everyone not in the secure room but on the rear terrace. Thatcher and Mendelsohn were wearing suits, but Madeleine had changed into tennis shorts and an expensive looking T-shirt. Uncrossing her long, tanned legs, she jumped up as soon as she saw Laidlaw and proceeded into the house to prepare his martini, unasked.
“We need a better place to talk,” he said.
Thatcher shook his head, gesturing with his thumb at a small device on the lawn that was gyrating in spasmodic circles much like a lawn sprinkler, though instead of water it emitted radio signals. There was another just like it at the other end of the terrace. Both made an irritating noise, but it was drowned out by the Mantovani flooding forth from the open windows of the house.
“I’ve got ’em for a week,” Thatcher said. “Don’t sweat a word.”
Laidlaw settled wearily into a lawn chair. A more normal man would have loosened his tie.
“‘Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace,’” said Mendelsohn, “‘the day’s disasters in his morning face.’”
“How can you recite Oliver Goldsmith amidst this Mantovani?” Laidlaw said.
“I have recited Goldsmith in the midst of battle on Cyprus,” Mendelsohn said. “But never in the midst of battle did I look as downcast as you, Hugh.”
The idea of Freddy Mendelsohn in the midst of battle was as comical as the idea of Freddy Mendelsohn in the midst of fornication. But it was true. He had actually killed several people.
“What’s amiss, Hugh?” said Thatcher.
“It’s quite incredible. A professional murder contract has been taken out on Dennis Showers.”
“What the hell?”
“Mr. Bolshinin of the Russian embassy is the client. Or was, until he died his homosexual death in Key West.”
Northern Exposure Page 13
