The Zurich Numbers

by Bill Granger

  “You think he used someone off the payroll?”

  “Sure. This is all set up by that clown Hanley.” O’Brien’s voice spit contempt, for R Section, for its personnel. In the next congressional budget he was going to turn R Section into a paper army, shuffling divisions of spies who counted crop yields in Upper Volta. The time for NSA to move on was at hand, and R Section was going to be blown out of the water.

  “Hanley must have pulled a fast one out of his slush fund. He’s a jag.”

  “It means they’re onto the network.”

  “Not if November had to go to Zurich to find out what’s going on. KGB can waste him and the stooge there and we take care of the girls at this end.”

  “Kill them?”

  “No, Morgan. We’re not barbarians.” O’Brien paused. “KGB has been on Macklin’s case. Now they want Teresa Kolaki. All they need is an address. Something laying around on a matchbook.”

  “How long is it going to take? To find them?”

  “A couple of days. This is all going to be wrapped up in a couple of days.”

  25

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Mrs. Neumann slapped a thick sheaf of computer printout sheets on Hanley’s desk.

  He looked up, mildly. Mrs. Neumann’s face was set, her eyes were glittering. Hanley sighed, felt his stomach rebelling already at the coming unpleasantness.

  “What you have here are names, backgrounds. On our agents. Retired agents.”

  Hanley placed the tips of his fingers together. “Is there some reason you’re showing them to me? Are we taking up a collection?”

  “Dammit, man, we were raided.”

  “By whom?”

  “NSA.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’m your goddam computer expert,” Mrs. Neumann bellowed in her raspy voice. “Yes, I’m certain. They leave fingerprints. They broke through the computer’s defenses, picked up our names, and left the same way they came in. The whole thing took less than ten minutes because they knew what they were looking for. Why do you suppose they knew what they were looking for?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The probe I did. On your orders. Remember the names? Kolaki, Krakowski, Krueger? They finally found my footprints in their file. So they decided to do the same thing to us.”

  “Levy Solomon,” Hanley said slowly.

  “That’s one of the names they picked up. All of them in California. Why?”

  “They’re after Teresa Kolaki. And maybe Rita Macklin.” Hanley shook his head. “They finger Devereaux in Chicago, now this. Why would this involve NSA? We’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

  “Everyone’s on his own side,” Mrs. Neumann said.

  “What could they possibly want with information like this?” But he knew the answer. He knew Levy Solomon’s name would be on the list of retired agents scanned by computer probers from the Puzzle Factory. Nothing was secret for long; you just hoped you kept things secret long enough to get a head start.

  “Are you certain it was NSA?” Hanley said.

  “Pretty sure,” she said. “They left tracks, I told you.”

  “Could it be… the Opposition?”

  “Anything is possible,” Mrs. Neumann said. “We live in miraculous times.”

  Hanley made a face and decided. “How long have they had this information?”

  “Nine hours at least.”

  He reached for the red scrambler phone and punched in ten numbers. The phone rang five times. Then he heard Levy Solomon’s cautious voice ask, “Hello?”

  “Abort,” Hanley said. He replaced the receiver.

  Mrs. Neumann said, “The women?”

  “If it was the Puzzle Factory, they’re doing dirty work for someone. They fingered Devereaux in Chicago. Fingered him for the Opposition.” Hanley spoke bitterly. “Maybe that’s what they’re going to do with the women.”

  “Where can they hide?”

  “It’s not a matter of hiding now,” Hanley said. “They’re just going to have to run. Teresa Kolaki had a brother-in-law in Chicago. It was the fallback in case… in case what has just happened happened. But it’s pretty thin and there’s nothing we can do. Until… until he gets back from Zurich. If he gets back from Zurich.”

  26

  CHICAGO

  The second man opened the door of the Schwaben Stube restaurant and tavern, on a corner of Lincoln Avenue in the still-German section of the North Side. For a moment he stood in the door frame, holding the door, looking from table to bar to the dining room beyond. The walls were decorated with wood paneling and faded murals of the Germany that had vanished in the blood-soaked fields of Europe after August 1914. Fat maidens with breasts spilling from their blouses cavorted with fat men in lederhosen and Bavarian caps. Gemütlichkeit.

  “Is cold,” a small woman near the piano said. Alexander Vishinsky frowned a moment and then realized the open door was chilling the inside of the bright tavern. He smiled an apology, closed the door firmly behind him, and walked to the bar and took a stool.

  Vishinsky was an accredited journalist with the Soviet news agency, Tass. He had an apartment in Georgetown in which he sometimes gave parties and slept with beautiful women. He was a charming man of middle height who spoke excellent English, particularly when he defended the Soviet international position to Ted Koppel on Nightline. His eyes were cobalt, his firm chin line suggested purpose and an ordered existence. Vishinsky had been the target of at least four investigations by the FBI in the past three years. He was, of course, an agent of the KGB. The FBI knew it and the Soviets knew they knew it; but no one could do anything with the knowledge except to watch Vishinsky carefully. This had made it difficult for Vishinsky to slip his traces for the matter in Chicago.

  Vishinsky ordered a dry martini at the copper-plated bar. When the drink arrived, he said something to the barmaid and pushed a five-dollar bill across to her. She made change and he pushed the change in the trough of the bar and the woman rewarded him again with a smile. And a blush.

  The first man, the one who had been waiting for Vishinsky, got up from his table in the corner and went to the bar. Mikhail Korsoff, one of the permanent stationmasters in Chicago, had dreaded the visit.

  Korsoff was a thick man with dark complexion and gray, bristle-thick hair that grew in clumps on his round head. He smoked Parliament cigarettes and the index and second fingers of his right hand were yellow from nicotine.

  At the piano, a melancholy man of middle years in a shiny blue suit played softly, his fingers remembering Mozart until someone reminded him that “Edelweiss” had been ordered up again.

  “Hello,” Mikhail Korsoff said.

  He slipped onto the stool next to Vishinsky and tried a tentative smile. Vishinsky did not look at him, but sipped the first icy breath of the martini. His face took on color. “What bitter cold,” he said. “Moscow.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “I couldn’t. Not anymore. But you, you’re built for it. Do you eat here often?”

  “Sometimes. Are you hungry?”

  “No. Rather, not for the food here. Couldn’t you have chosen a French restaurant? I suppose they have them in this city.” His voice matched the temperature of the drink.

  Korsoff raised a finger to the barmaid and ordered a glass of DAB beer. She filled a stein and placed it in front of him.

  “So. She has come home.”

  Korsoff saluted with his glass and took a swallow. “Yes. The information was good. NSA was useful. They put enough pressure on them, wherever they were hiding, that they had to come out. That and the pressure we applied. Teresa Kolaki is with her brother-in-law. The complication is the Macklin woman. She’s there as well.”

  “There are other complications.” Vishinsky still would not look at the other man. His eyes were fixed on the change in the trough. His voice was clipped, cool, as though he were reciting something so obvious that it sho
uld not have needed saying. “Kolaki had a guarantee. If she can’t get the money, sign it over—five hundred thousand Swiss francs—we have to reimburse our middleman in Zurich. The same thing happened with Mary Krakowski. A million Swiss francs in less than two weeks, in addition to the usual middleman fee.”

  “Refuse to pay—”

  “Are you a fool?” Vishinsky turned for the first time to face Korsoff. His eyes made judgments. “The man in Zurich would refuse to bargain with us again. He’s the best in Europe; he could do it. A lot of cells are involved, a lot is based on the trust these wretched people have in him.”

  Vishinsky turned away again. His voice was brittle. “You’ve been out of the active game too long. If you had been more persuasive with that old woman in the beginning, we would have located this… November. Now we have to close down our cell and start a new one. And mollify the middleman in Zurich. And we have to get Teresa Kolaki back inside.”

  “Besides the money—”

  “Besides? This is hard currency, my friend, not rubles, not dreams. Teresa Kolaki needs reeducation. She needs to be reunited with her son. She needs to promulgate… the cause.”

  “How?”

  “Guarantees,” said Vishinsky, surprised that something so obvious escaped Korsoff. “In time, she’ll work for the government. She will help our middleman and our agents to convince these… traitors who choose exile that we will keep our word. She is a proof, a bit of living proof. As Mary Krakowski would have been.”

  “What does the Directorate want?” Mikhail Korsoff said with sudden humility. He sighed, picked up his stein, and tasted the beer. He felt very tired, even a little afraid.

  He worked as a printing company executive in Chicago and had access to a number of people in high-tech industries developing along the mini-Silicon Valley strip in the western suburbs. His life had become low key, comfortable. At fifty-seven he hoped to end his years with KGB at this assignment in Chicago, where he had been for five years. He had a daughter who devoted herself to the Cubs just as his wife devoted herself to Marshall Field’s department store. He had not expected such trouble from a routine assignment to question an old woman about her nephew.

  He had misjudged his assignment badly, from the first; he should have forced the matter with the old woman. Now he was being blamed for some of what happened afterward.

  “The Warsaw Circus,” Vishinsky said softly.

  Mikhail Korsoff just stared at him.

  “The Directorate assumed that it would be impossible to find Teresa Kolaki in time to keep her… silent,” he began slowly. He held up his glass to the barmaid, dazzled her with a television smile, and resumed when he had his second drink.

  “Malenkov went to see the old woman about Devereaux. He has not been seen since. In our surveillance, we discover the house is practically under guard. There is a Rocca person who has vague underworld ties. Also a blackie who lives with the woman.”

  “Peter,” Mikhail began.

  “Yes. The Directorate said the two matters had become entangled. November is one matter; protecting the network is another. We are no longer concerned with Macklin or November. They will be taken care of by others. We are concerned only with Teresa Kolaki and her return to Poland as quickly and as quietly as possible. Which means there must be a certain… willingness to her actions. We have stirred up enough trouble—”

  “Why will she return willingly?”

  “The Warsaw Circus,” Vishinsky said again and smiled oddly at Korsoff. “It arrives tonight, after midnight. It opens tomorrow for one week. After the Chicago engagement, the circus and its personnel return directly to Poland, a special arrangement with LOT for this single engagement.”

  “You are confusing me.”

  “Not a difficult thing, I think,” Vishinsky said. “How do we make contact with Teresa Kolaki?”

  “We—”

  “No. I tell you. We knew about her brother-in-law, of course. It was all part of the… research on her before she was permitted to leave Poland. After she disappeared, after our troubles started, we placed John Stolmac in charge of surveying the brother-in-law. You understand?”

  “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Because it did not concern you,” Vishinsky said. “Another.” He held up his glass and the barmaid came down to refill it.

  Korsoff still nurtured his single beer. He glanced slyly at Vishinsky. Except for a certain puffiness around the eyes and broken blood vessels at the base of his nose, Vishinsky didn’t have the face of a drinker. Did the Directorate know this?

  “Teresa Kolaki called her brother-in-law two nights ago, when our friends at NSA put pressure on her. It was enough. We had to be cautious, in case NSA was putting together a trap for us. But it wasn’t that. They fingered the Macklin woman and, apparently, accidentally flushed Kolaki out of her hiding place.”

  “What about the telephone call?”

  Vishinsky smiled at the third martini. Or perhaps at the question. He enjoyed centering attention on himself. One of the members of the Directorate in New York had praised him for presenting the Soviet position so “charmingly and forthrightly” on Nightline during a debate over cruise missiles.

  “Stolmac had a portable monitor. Her brother-in-law told her about the advertisement in the local Polish daily paper—”

  “The Zgoda,” Korsoff said.

  “For the Warsaw Circus. You see, we took her son out of Poland six days ago to join the circus, after she disappeared.”

  Mikhail Korsoff laughed. Out loud.

  Vishinsky turned to look at him.

  “I don’t believe it. It’s ludicrous.”

  “Tell that to the Directorate, Mikhail Vladimir,” Vishinsky said slowly. “This is a vast country. There was not much time. We needed to contact Teresa and we did not need to involve ourselves in further, clumsy actions such as you and Malenkov—I am certain, the late Georgi Malenkov—used. Used to obtain exactly nothing.”

  “It was not me, citizen. It was the Bulgarian. He insisted on carrying a pistol.”

  “Recriminations. He is already back in Sofia. The Bulgarians failed twice in the business of November. A simple matter of elimination and they have failed, you have failed.”

  Korsoff bit his lip. He must say nothing.

  “It is a vast country but we knew that Stefan Kolaki, Teresa’s brother-in-law, was in Chicago. And she knew he was here. At first, we thought she had gone to him, which would have made the matter somewhat easier. Now she is definitely with him but too many agents from America have been stirred up over this matter. We do not wish to attract any more attention. So when Stefan Kolaki purchased the Zgoda three days ago, as he always does, every day, he could not miss this advertisement for the Warsaw Circus.” Vishinsky took a copy of the advertisement from his pocket and unfolded it.

  The advertisement, in Polish, featured the usual circus pictures of clowns and acrobats and high-wire performers.

  Korsoff could see nothing in the ad that indicated the boy was with the circus.

  “Is it a code?”

  “No,” Alexander Vishinsky said coyly. He was smiling.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The star is Wojo the Clown. There. He is an interesting case,” Vishinsky said. “He is forty inches tall—or perhaps I should say short. This makes him too tall to be unique as a midget, and yet that is what he is. So he has become a clown. This is the first time we have permitted him in America. You see, there are problems with him—”

  Mikhail Korsoff frowned. He stared at the photograph of the clown reprinted in the Polish-language paper. What was he supposed to see in this?

  “He is an alcoholic for one thing,” Vishinsky said.

  Korsoff waited.

  “And he is a sexual pervert. This is well known in Poland. In certain circles.”

  “Why do you make this a mystery?”

  “There is no mystery. Who stands next to Wojo? In the photograph where he wears a wedding suit and stands atop
a wedding cake?”

  Korsoff was tired; his eyes were tired. He squinted and stared.

  “Another clown,” he said.

  “A midget?”

  “Yes. By her size.”

  “Not her, Mikhail Vladimir,” Vishinsky said.

  God. He understood in that moment. He could not look at the photograph. He turned away. And then, fascinated, turned back to it.

  “Stefan. The boy,” he said in a dull voice.

  Vishinsky smiled.

  Mikhail Korsoff’s hands shook.

  Wojo was dressed in top hat and morning suit. The boy named Stefan Kolaki, whom Korsoff had mistaken for a woman, was not smiling. He was dressed as a bride, in wedding gown and veil and bouquet.

  Teresa Kolaki knew now; knew there was something so terrible that she would have to agree to any terms they offered to her.

  John Stolmac had watched the house on Ellis Avenue for two hours. He had a 9-millimeter pistol in his coat. He stood in the entry of an apartment building across the street and stamped his feet to stay warm. It had been light when he began his vigil but the gray afternoon had long faded to black.

  John Stolmac was frightened.

  He was blamed for the death of Mary Krakowski and the disappearance of Teresa Kolaki. He was told he should have known that Teresa Kolaki would disappear when she learned that Mary was dead. Stolmac argued at first but they were relentless, and he saw, finally, that there was no point in resisting. They had to have someone to blame; it was part of the bureaucratic housecleaning. All files had to be closed finally, all blame apportioned, all cases finished neatly. He was part of the solution.

  He had tapped the telephone line at Stefan Kolaki’s apartment. His luck turned when Teresa called her brother-in-law and then got better when Teresa and the journalist came to the apartment two days ago. They—the bureaucrats from the embassy in Washington—had merely grunted when he offered his information. It was not enough. The cell in Chicago had been broken, the whole network had been put in danger. Stolmac knew he was not forgiven. Not yet.