Deep Cover

by Brian Garfield

  The fat woman said, “I have complete trust in him.”

  “That’s fine. You may have tested his trust. I have not. Do you mind?”

  The huge formless shoulders moved. “Go, then, Berdi.”

  Berdachev blinked owlishly, nodded, and backed out of the room. Rykov watched until he disappeared around the corridor bend, then he closed the door and returned to the chair. The fat woman laughed. All of her.

  In the gray building in the Arbat were cabinets filled with dossiers on every agent, and Valentia’s was a thick file because her sexual proclivities had on occasion created risks. She was a voyeur and that was why the myopic young Berdachev had been with them—to couple with the stunning Anya for Valentia’s amusement. But Valentia was an agent without peer and Anya was her eyes and ears.

  Valentia was wedged into an armchair with her hips squeezing out under its arms. She had waxy yellow skin and the flat-cheeked, eye-folded face of her Chinese ancestors. It was no longer possible to detect any similarity between her features and Anya’s but the lovely Anya was in fact her daughter.

  “I want you both to go to Peking,” Rykov said.

  The fat face stirred. “Must we?”

  He made no answer and she said, “It is such a distressing town, Peking. I despise it.”

  “Is it so much worse than this?”

  “At least here we are among friends. I’m getting old—I no longer take the pleasure I once did from adventures.”

  “Your mission will be suitably sedentary. If acrobatics are required Anya can execute them.”

  “Is there no one else who could be sent? There must be others.”

  “There are no others.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’re disagreeable and you don’t want the job. That’s precisely why it must be your job, Valentia. You will not be eager to please me and therefore you won’t tell me lies that you think will please me. You are the only agent I can trust not to color things subjectively—not to ask the wrong questions and thus get answers different from what is before you.” He added, “You have a choice, of course. You can refuse the mission and be shot. Or you can bungle the mission and be shot.”

  “Yes, of course, there’s always that choice.”

  “Papers for both of you are waiting in Ussuriysk. You’ll go in by the Chinese Eastern Railway, change at Harbin and entrain for Yingkow. From there you’ll find your own transportation to Peking. You’ve done it before, you know the ropes. You’re a Chinese from Mukden trying to drum up machinery for a voluntary farm-labor project and Anya is your daughter whom you have brought with you to charm the proper officials into parting with the necessary machinery. Her function in life is to be thrust at men by her domineering mother. I trust you won’t find the role too hard to play.”

  “Your sarcasm is always entertaining, Ivan.”

  “If you cross paths with any of our people tell them that you’re swimming to avoid an illness. That’s your legend, don’t deviate from it; we don’t want our people knowing what you’re doing. You understand? Particularly you’re to avoid contact with neighbor GRU and Fourth Bureau agents. Your mission is private and you will report to no one except me, directly.”

  “Report how? And on what?”

  “Patience, Valentia. You will collect your things from the cobbler in Ussuriysk, and when you reach Peking you will make contact with Chug Li and obtain from him a music box.” A music box was a microwave wireless transceiver; a cobbler was a provider of false documentation.

  He added, “Chug will complain, he’ll try to find out what you’re up to. Don’t let him learn anything.”

  “Isn’t he trusted?”

  “As much as anyone out there is trusted. Nothing is certain.”

  “Not even Anya and me.” She smiled slightly and the little eyes disappeared into folds. “Go on, then.”

  “Behind the Amergrad dascha there is an incinerator for human bodies. You may recall it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be trustworthy, Valentia. There’s a lot of meat on you and it would stink a great deal. Let’s have no more complaining.”

  “I complain to pass the time, dear Ivan, until you see fit to tell us what it is we are to do in Peking.”

  “You’re vexing tonight.”

  “Such flattery,” she said.

  “About the music box. Chug has instructions to equip you with a high-speed recorder-player and a transmitter of sufficient power to reach Moscow at night. You know the frequency. You’ll code your reports according to the command manual, not the field manual, and you’ll put them on tape and broadcast them in ultra-high-speed bursts at thirteen minutes past the hour and thirty-seven minutes past the hour. Are you getting all this?”

  “I shall memorize it all and throw my head away.”

  “Long-range direct communication is a risk but I must have it. The China data coming from the field pass through channels and intermediaries before reaching me. At each step it is reinterpreted and abridged. An error at any point can be magnified enormously before it gets to me and I can’t have any more of that, things are too taut now.”

  “What things?”

  She was bemused; a little smile hovered on the bloated lips.

  He shocked her out of it: “I think they’re ready to attack us with their missiles.”

  With the corner of his eye he saw Anya sit up straighter. Valentia watched him from the depths of her clever eyes and said, “I should have known you wouldn’t have flown all this way for anything trivial.”

  “Now I have your attention, do I?”

  “Go on, Ivan.”

  “Everything points to it. They’ve whipped up a war psychosis and they’re planning in terms of a preemptive first strike. They may be ready to launch it at any time. I need confirmation or denial and, in the case of confirmation, date and time and primary targets.”

  The huge engorged body lifted and fell with breath.

  He said, “The reports I’ve been receiving have filtered through intermediaries who know my feelings about the Maoists—it’s possible the intermediaries have been telling me what they think I want to hear, not what is actually true. Obviously I must be certain. That’s your job.”

  “To get this kind of information I will have to take many risks.”

  “You mean Anya will.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “Our profession isn’t noted for its longevity.” He made an impatient gesture, like a short judo chop against the air. “Valentia, don’t spar with me, there’s no time for it. You must be on your way. I came here personally to impress on you the gravity of this thing. The lives of millions of Russians may depend on you.”

  “Rhetoric doesn’t impress me, Ivan, you know that. Tell me precisely what you want so that we can get on with it.”

  “I want you to bug them, of course.”

  “Them?”

  “Fei, Shen, Jiou, Chug Po, An Tu, Lo Kai-teh, Yuan, Sun Shih—the Cabinet delegates to the Congress in Peking. They’re already gathering now. The meeting was called hastily which means there should be larger gaps in security than usual. Your specialty is electronic surveillance and that’s what you’re going into Peking for. I want their quarters bugged, their aides, their meeting places, their persons—I want every word from every pair of lips monitored twenty-four hours a day until further notice.”

  “You know that’s impossible. They’ll equip the meetings with radio jammers and tape demagnetizers. But we’ll do what we can. They can’t install jammers everywhere. Trouser buttons can be replaced with micro-transmitters, bugs can be implanted in bedposts and telephones and toilets. We’ll get what we can get, that’s all. How much of a team will I have?”

  “Every deep-cover agent in Peking has been alerted to put himself under your orders. Naturally we’ve excluded all of our agents who are known by the Chinese. Your work crew will be big enough but you will have to monitor everything yourself.”

  “Then I shan’t get much s
leep, shall I?”

  “Jiou Ssu-kuan will be Anya’s primary target. He has a weakness for anything that wiggles and as Defense Minister he warrants the highest priority.”

  “He’ll be wired, then.”

  “Get every word,” he said. He got up and put his arm into the sleeve of his coat.

  Valentia put both hands on the arms of her chair and levered herself upright. Immediately she dwarfed the room. “If you intended to stun me you’ve succeeded. But if we assume you’re right and they do plan to attack—what then?”

  “Then let’s hope we shall react in time.”

  “You’ll forgive my impertinence, Ivan, but what if the Kremlin refuses to act?”

  “Your job,” he replied, “is to supply me with such evidence as will make it impossible for them to refuse.”

  “If the evidence is there we’ll find it.”

  He buttoned up his coat and picked up the hat. “That’s right. You will.” He pulled out his snap-lid pocket watch. “My plane returns shortly. You’ll get further details from the cobbler; he has coded instructions waiting for you. Anya?” He took the stunning girl’s hand; she bowed slightly; Rykov nodded without changing expression and turned and opened the door.

  Valentia said, “Do svidaniya, Ivan.”

  The corridor was freezing cold. Up at the corner the young Berdachev stood with his breath steaming gently from his nostrils. Rykov walked past him without remark and went half a dozen paces down the main hall before he stopped and retraced his steps silently to the corner.

  Berdachev’s voice: “Does he never relax?”

  “Not in public,” the woman said. “I stood watch with him once when we were breaking down a Japanese agent in Shimizu. Five days, and I saw him sleep two hours the entire time.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “The Kremlin’s hatchet man.”

  There was more; Rykov did not stay to listen. He went back toward the terminal.

  The Moskvitch needed valve work. It met Leon Belsky at the Vladivostok airport, driven by a hulking flat-faced Man-churian, and transported him to the waterfront. The car chugged and coughed the whole way. Belsky left the car without a word and the Manchurian drove away. A cold salt wind swept across the docks. It was almost midnight. Belsky plodded through the snow toward the lights of the crew shack on the landward end of a small industrial dock. The lights of the city vaguely outlined the big harbor and foghorns hooted continuously while lighthouse beacons stabbed the dark. Vladivostok was a closed city and there were no pedestrians or vehicles abroad except official ones.

  Migachev was waiting for him in the crew shack. The room was overheated by a large coal stove and Migachev was stripped down to the trousers, no shoes, no shirt. His chest and shoulders were covered with a thick black pelt. “You belong behind a butcher’s counter,” Belsky told him.

  “Well, I hate the cold. I was born in Sochi where it’s warm. I wish I was there now.”

  “I know where you were born,” Belsky said. “Get your clothes on—I’m in a hurry, we want to make landfall before daylight.”

  “Daylight tomorrow, you mean. Not today, unless you want my boat to sprout wings. If you’re in such a hurry why don’t you fly?”

  “Too many people watch the incoming flights over there. Japan Defense Agency, CIA, Chinese—the whole world lives in Japanese airports. In this part of the world there are too many people who’d recognize me.”

  “Yet you’re going over there. ”

  “Japan’s the hot spot. A Caucasian like me sticks out. In America I’m just another middle-aged businessman. Come on, hurry up.”

  Migachev sàt down to lace his boots. “We’ve plenty of time. Help yourself to the food.”

  Belsky ate standing up—black bread, herring, a cup of koumiss. “Aren’t you ready yet?”

  “I’m ready. Let’s go.” Migachev had put on a heavy turt-leneck sweater over his undershirt, a topcoat over that, a heavy greatcoat over that, and a flowing oilskin slicker on top. He wore fleece-lined gloves inside his mittens and three pairs of socks inside his oversize waterproof boots.

  “We’re not going to the North Pole,” Belsky said.

  “The bridge on my boat is open.”

  Belsky grunted. “Let’s go. Are my things aboard?”

  “Yes, of course.” Migachev warmed his mittens over the stove and turned off the lamp. Belsky followed him through the door by ear until he was beyond the end of the dockhouse and could orient himself by the city lights. Migachev’s boots crunched the snow with loud hollow whacks. It was low tide; the water was six meters below, and Belsky moved with care—it would have been easy to slip off the dock. Migachev went down the ladder first and lighted a kerosene lamp on the boat. Belsky climbed down, testing each rung before he put his weight on it. The boat was a twenty-meter fisherman—sixty-five-footer, he corrected himself doggedly. It had twin diesels, too much engine for such a boat, specially installed for Migachev’s clandestine runs across the Sea of Japan. In outward appearance she was clumsy, disreputable, an old-fashioned fishing boat in need of paint, but beneath the waterline her hull was sleek over a deep-ocean keel, shaped for speed.

  They went out of harbor on one engine. It growled sonorously; the boat’s movement was sluggish until they cleared the last channel buoy and moved beyond earshot of land. Then Migachev cut in the second engine and opened them up. The fisherman jumped forward, riding high on her keel, making twenty-seven knots. The linesman came astern from his lookout post in the bow and took the wheel from Migachev, who turned and said, “We can go below now.”

  Belsky was enjoying the cold salt wind but Migachev was wet and miserable and went below without waiting an answer. Belsky followed him into the cramped cabin. He had to stoop to clear the transom when he entered. There was a tart chop to the sea and he had to keep hold of the bulkhead to avoid being pitched off his feet.

  Migachev sat down on the lower bunk, nearest the heat of the engines. “Those are your things.” Migachev pointed to the suitcase and the objects laid out on the opposite bunk. The suitcase was Samsonite, the clothing American with San Francisco and Fresno shop labels. Belsky already had with him the English tweed suit and overcoat he would wear on the Japanese leg of the journey.

  Migachev said, “It will take about twenty-six hours to Komatsu. We should arrive about three o’clock tomorrow morning. You can catch a bus into Fukui, it’s only seventy kilometers, and the train to Kyoto arriving at eight-fifteen. You have a reservation on the ten-o’clock flight out of Kyoto for Honolulu and Los Angeles.”

  Belsky examined the documents. There were three passports, all bearing different names. Two were American, the third Swiss. The Swiss passport in the name of Heinrich Wiedemann, textile merchant, he would use to board the JAL plane at Kyoto and to clear American customs and immigration at Los Angeles—because, curiously, the Americans tended to inspect foreign visitors from friendly European countries with less care than they exercised in inspecting their own people.

  Belsky had a look at the rest—visa, Social Security card, Fresno voter’s registration, California driver’s license, birth and baptismal certificates, school and university diplomas, an Air Force discharge, the lot—and then he climbed into the upper bunk and went promptly to sleep.

  By the local calendar and clock it was early Tuesday afternoon by the time Belsky cleared Customs at Los Angeles International Airport and made his way to a telephone booth. Migachev had given him the number.

  “Westlake Publishers, may I help you?”

  “My name is Dangerfield,” Belsky said. “I believe you have a message for me.”

  “Hold on a moment, please?”

  The girl’s voice was replaced by a man’s. “Mr. Dangerfield? Right on schedule, sir. Have a good trip?”

  “I think you’ve got something for me.”

  “Where are you calling from, Mr. Dangerfield?”

  “Los Angeles airport.”

  “Then it’s an open line. We might mee
t for lunch—do you know Flagg’s? The taxi driver can find it, near the Beverly Wilshire. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. There’ll be a table in my name—Tucker Stark. Satisfactory?”

  “No. Meet me at American Airlines here at the airport. The front entrance.”

  “Ah, that’s somewhat irregular, Mr. Dangerfield. I’d prefer not to—”

  “I have a plane to catch, Mr. Stark.” Belsky hung up and went outside.

  He confirmed his ticket and checked his bag and by the time he was finished standing in lines the contact was there at the front door. Belsky recognized the man from the photos in his dossier: Tidsov, cover name Tucker Stark, chief of the Los Angeles rezidentsia. As soon as he knew he had been spotted Tidsov walked into the building and turned toward the concession area carrying a leather suitcase, one of those squat soft bags designed to fit under an airplane seat. Tidsov put it into a twenty-four-hour storage locker, deposited a coin and locked it, and came away with the key in his pocket. Belsky watched him without actually looking at him more than once; he followed with the corners of his vision while Tidsov went into a telephone booth and closed the door. Three minutes later a blond man wandered past the phone booth and Tidsov stepped out of it and left the building without glancing at Belsky; meanwhile the blond man stepped into the phone booth Tidsov had just vacated, emerged momentarily, walked directly to the bank of lockers, inserted a key and withdrew the leather flight bag from the locker. The blond man carried the bag out through the glass-doored entrance and Belsky turned to watch covertly while the blond man exchanged glances with Tidsov. Then the two men separated and walked away in opposite directions.

  A simple charade, probably unnecessary. The rezidentsia had a safe line but there was no telling who had a tap on the airport public phones; it wasn’t as if Los Angeles International were an obscure filling station. The FBI might have had a routine tap and the phone call from Belsky just might have stirred up enough interest for them to send someone to observe the meeting place. If so, they would have witnessed, to all observable intents, a drop. If the FBI followed the blond man and grabbed the suitcase to find out what was in it, they would probably find old clothes.