The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 253

  behind a large desk, in back of which was an expanse of floor-to-ceiling window.

  The older man, a colonel general, was a white-haired man who carried himself with the aristocratic bearing of an old White Russian, his uniform a fruit salad of medals.

  No sooner had the explosives expert seated himself than the older man slid a small square note across the highly burnished surface.

  The Spetsnaz man took it and felt the blood rush to his head.

  There was only one word: “Sekretariat.”

  The younger man had been secretly recruited to the Sekretariat two years before, after his impressive tour of duty in Afghanistan.

  He nodded.

  Then he watched the colonel general bend down and dial a knob in front of his desk: a safe. When it was open, his superior withdrew a manila folder and then slid that across the desk.

  “Your most important assignment,” the chief murmured.

  The explosives expert picked up the folder, opened it, and saw that it contained blueprints. He glanced at them, and then paled.

  “No,” he gasped.

  “This is a historic moment,” the colonel general said. “For all of us. I am pleased you will be a part of it.”

  35

  Washington

  At shortly after ten o’clock in the morning, Roger Bayliss entered the lobby of one of Washington’s finest old hotels, the Hope-Stanford and strode across the sumptuous Oriental carpet, past marble Corinthian columns and eighteenth-century silk tapestries, to the registration desk. He spoke briefly to the clerk, then walked over to the elevator bank.

  He looked around the lobby impatiently, visibly the sort of man who did not like to be kept waiting, and when the first elevator came, he took it to the fifth floor. There he turned left until he found Room 547. Taped to the door was an envelope with his name on it. Wrinkling his brow in annoyance, he turned and returned to the elevators, where he pressed the “down” button.

  Watching him from the stairwell at the end of the corridor was Charlie Stone.

  Ever'thing was going well so far. Stone reflected. He was alone: Good; perhaps I’m being overly suspicious.

  An hour and a half earlier, Stone had called Bayliss. Roger Bayliss had been one of Alfred Stone’s prize students, and even though the NSC official hardly knew the son of his old graduate-school mentor, Alfred Stone had obviously trusted him. Trusted him enough to have asked for his help.

  “Of course I heard what happened to you,” Bayliss had exclaimed over the phone. “Jesus Christ. And your father …” There was a long silence for a moment, as if Bayliss had had difficulty gaining control of his emotions, and then he continued. “Charlie, I’ve heard quite a

  bit about your situation. More than you’d probably believe. I think it’s important we talk.”

  “Good. As soon as possible.”

  “Look, Charlie. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want to be seen with you. You understand, being on the NSC, I can hardly risk—”

  “All right,” Stone cut him off. “I’ll call you soon with a place to meet.”

  Of course. Stone had figured it out already. Conventional logic dictated that they meet in a public place; public places, the theory went, are the safest harbor. But Stone was a fugitive from the law. For him, nowhere was safe. And Bayliss—Bayliss was a question mark. Who knew if he could really be trusted?

  At quarter of ten. Stone had called Bayliss back and told him to come to the Hope-Stanford and ask for his room number at the registration desk.

  The front-desk clerk had been, with a little financial suasion, quite compliant. As requested, he gave Bayliss a room number—of an unoccupied room. After watching Bayliss walk toward the elevators, and waiting a minute to make sure no one had followed him, the clerk called up to the room of the man he knew as Mr. Taylor and left a message that Bayliss had arrived in the hotel unaccompanied.

  The clerk, a recent college graduate who was trying to make it as an actor, enjoyed the intrigue of it all: Mr. Taylor had explained only that he was a mergers-and-acquisitions attorney in town to conduct some sensitive negotiations in absolute secrecy. One couldn’t be too careful, Taylor had said. Greed, the attorney had explained to the clerk while invisibly slipping him a fifty-dollar bill, knows no bounds.

  The envelope Bayliss had taken from the door of room 547 had contained another room number, 320, two floors below, along with Stone’s apologies for the inconvenience. A necessary inconvenience, Stone had decided: it gave him more time to observe Bayliss, make sure he was neither followed nor accompanied.

  Naturally, Bayliss had taken the elevator, not the stairs, down two flights; most hotel guests tend to avoid the stairs. Stone made it to 320 more than thirty seconds before Bayliss did.

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  As soon as he entered the suite, Stone saw the red message Hght on the phone glowing. He picked it up, got the message, and hung up, relieved. A double-check: Bayliss didn’t have anyone waiting for him in the lobby.

  The coast was clear.

  Relax.

  He glanced around the room, taking in the surroundings, glad to be enjoying this brief luxury after the rooming house, the desperate running of the last few days. It was pleasant to be in a place with antique oak furnishings, mahogany walls, plush monogrammed towels.

  There was a knock, and Stone opened the door, tense once again.

  “Hello, Roger.”

  “Charlie,” Bayliss said, extending two hands and grasping Stone’s hand in both of his. “Good to meet you, and I’m so sorry it’s in such awful circumstances. I was surprised to see that note in there telling me to go to 320.” He laughed briefly. “Very thorough of you. Don’t worry; I probably outdid you. I made damn sure no one saw me coming here. Last thing I need.”

  “Come on in.”

  Stone led Bayliss to a cluster of overstuffed chairs, feeling the cold, hard revolver he had placed under his waistband at the small of his back. A gun would protect him. Stone knew, but in many ways he would be even safer not revealing he had one. He watched Bayliss, taking in the NSC official’s expensive, perhaps bespoke, charcoal-gray suit and highly polished shoes.

  “You’re not a murderer,” Bayliss said, exhaling, settling into an armchair. “I know it. The question is, what can I do to help you?”

  Stone took the chair opposite his. “Let’s start this way: what did you mean when you said you’d heard more about my situation than I’d believe?”

  Bayliss nodded, then exhaled slowly. “I may be violating the National Securit' Act by telling you this,” he began. “I know I’m violating a lot of other secrets. I think you know your father’s death wasn’t the result of a random act of violence.”

  Stone nodded.

  “There’s something going on. A convulsion. Something very big.”

  Something going on: Armitage’s words. “What do you mean ex-acdy, Roger?”

  “This is difficult for me, Charlie. I don’t know where to start.” He paused a long time. “You’re one of the stars of Parnassus. So you’ve heard, of course, of the Big Mole theory?”

  What the hell was he talking about? Stone replied slowly, “It’s been wholly discredited, Roger.”

  Bayliss was. Stone knew, referring to the theory that for the last several decades an agent—a Soviet agent—has slowly and methodically worked his way up the CIA’s hierarchy, performing well but not too well, making friends but not too many. Probably, the theory went, married to an American woman, with American children, an all-American kind of PTA-and-Kiwanis Club dad, who has been siphoning the most classified American intelligence back to Moscow. It was the great suspicion of the late James Jesus Angleton, the longtime CIA counterintelligence chief, who nearly tore the Central Intelligence Agency apart in the 1970s in his crusade to find the mole, until Angleton was fired by William Colby in 1974.

  Bayliss shrugged.

  “The confection of a paranoid genius,” Stone
said.

  Bayliss leaned forward, speaking with great intensity. “To all outward appearances, the ravings of a man who’d been in the sick world of counterintelligence so long his mind bent. When in reality the most inviolable stronghold of American intelligence is rotten to the core.”

  Stone felt as if his stomach had turned suddenly to ice. “You’re saying it’s for real,” he whispered, shaking his head. “What the hell does it have to do with my father?”

  “Listen, Charlie—I told you before I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, and I meant it. I need your word on this.”

  “You have it.”

  “If you so much as breathe a word, I’ll deny it. We believe your father may have been killed to protect this asset’s identity—”

  “By Russians?” Stone shot back.

  “Not so simple. Certain Russians. People who are intent on seeing that the identity of this mole remain absolutely secret.”

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  “But my father couldn’t possibly have known anything,” Stone whispered.

  “Your father knew some things he wasn’t supposed to. Things that were clearly dangerous to these people.”

  “Oh, come on,” Stone snapped, getting to his feet. He began pacing around the room, trying to think, trying to make sense of everything he’d learned in the last several days, things that no longer seemed to make any sense at all. “Why you? Why do you happen to know so much about this?”

  “Why?” Bayliss said, turning in his chair to face Stone. “I don’t know. Maybe because I happened to be at a certain party one night. Maybe because I happen to know a certain Russian diplomat.”

  “I don’t understand.” Stone sat on the edge of a writing table, suddenly too tired to stand.

  “That I can’t go into. But I need you to think for me. Think, Charlie. They weren’t just after your father. They were after you as well. What do you know? What did you find out that might hae anything to do with your father’s 1953 trip to Moscow? For that matter, anything, no matter how inconsequential it might seem to you.”

  Stone shook his head, his lips tight, as he tried to think.

  Bayliss now spoke with a gendeness that surprised Stone. “Your father would have wanted you to help me,” he said. “Alfred Stone loved his country deeply. Served in the White House, suffered smears on his loyalt}’, and loved this countr', goddamn it. And I think he would have wanted his son to do everything in his power to help. Our national securit' may be jeopardized. Hundreds may die, Charlie. Perhaps thousands. I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that peace between the superpowers may well be at stake.”

  Stone got up from the writing desk and walked toward the far corner of the room, folding his arms contemplatively. It made sense, everything Bayliss said; it fit.

  “If I could go into more detail, Charlie, I would. It’s not just the U.S. that’s threatened. It’s Moscow as well. There must be something, some shred of information you garnered, perhaps some document, some phone call,” Bayliss insisted. “Anything.”

  Stone simply sighed, furrowing his brow. He shook his head.

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  “I need you to come in, talk to some of our people. Tell them what you know, everything. It’s vital, Charlie.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Roger,” Stone said, watching Bayliss from across the room. “I need your help, your protection. But you yourself don t know who’s involved in this and who isn’t. You could be betrayed the way I’ve been betrayed. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not safe out here, on the run, hiding.”

  “I’ve survived so far. With your help, I won’t have to hide much longer.”

  “It would be a good idea for you to come in. Let our people take care of you. Protect you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For your own good, Charlie. I’m going to have to insist on it.”

  Stone gave a quick, derisory laugh. “Insist on it?” he repeated.

  “It’s too dangerous for you, knowing whatever you know, exposed like this. You’ve got to come with me.”

  Stone massaged the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes wearily. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

  “You can trust me, Charlie. You know that. Your father knew that.”

  “I’ll contact you in a few days, Roger,” Stone said.

  “Don’t leave this room, Charlie,” Bayliss said, a peculiar edge to his voice. “You don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, really.” He got to his feet and moved slowly to the door; he seemed to block it. “We’re going to take you in.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” Stone said levelly, maneuvering toward where Bayliss was standing, toward the door.

  “I don’t think you understand,” Bayliss said coldly. “You’re endangering things you have no idea about. Our goddamned national security. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to resort to compulsion. You’re not walking out that door. Let’s do this quiedy. Stone.”

  “Why are you treading so softly, Roger? You could have stormed this hotel, had me surrounded.”

  “I’d much rather have had you come along voluntarily. And besides—” Bayliss reached his left hand around under his suit jacket.

  Stone instinctively reached for his gun, then saw what Bayliss had

  260 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  produced: a small square metal object. Stone smiled, his composure unruffled. “A transmitter.”

  “Our entire conversation,” Bayliss said, “has been broadcast on a hundred and forty megaherz. Our people are right outside the door, waiting for my signal.

  “You’re an impressive, clever man, but an amateur, Stone.” All pretense at civility had vanished. “Give it up. You’re in way over your head. I’m sorry you preferred not to cooperate.” He spoke mournfully now. “1 wish it hadn’t come to this.”

  From behind the hotel-room door came a whisper-quiet scrape of metal against metal, and then the door swung open. The three men from the American Flag Foundation entered, their pistols drawn.

  “Jesus,” one of them began.

  The room was empty. Utterly silent, except for a low, almost inaudible groaning.

  They’d waited for Bayliss’s signal to enter, but then the signal unaccountably went dead. Perhaps Bayliss had shut it off. Ten minutes later, the men had taken it upon themselves to move in.

  They split up professionally, one of the men heading toward the closed bathroom door. The sounds seemed to be coming from inside. He sidled up to the doorjamb and flung the door open with a sudden motion.

  There, in the bathtub, bound with strips of toweling, was Roger Bayliss, unconscious or semiconscious, gagged with a monogrammed washcloth. He was restrained by the long snakelike cord of the handheld shower looped around his neck.

  Stone could hear the sounds of traffic from the street below. He stood now on the broad granite ledge, which was protected by a parapet, outside the hotel’s fourth floor. For a few seconds—there was no time to spare—he inspected the window of a hotel room that appeared to be empty. Then he figured out how to force the window, and he was inside. Within two minutes, he got to the hotel’s parking garage and was home free.

  Escaping Bayliss had not been especially difficult. He had disabled

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 261

  the transmitter, knocked Bayliss unconscious, then tied him up; Stone was far stronger. But he could not leave the hotel room by the door, behind which were Bayliss’s backups. There was no choice: he had to leave through the window. Since it was the third floor, he would have to climb—up, which was easier and safer than down.

  There was an instant’s apprehension, and then he felt a calm wash over him, the same wonderful calm he felt when he began a particularly tricky climb. This was nothing, a ledge that had to be three feet wide, and a parapet. A snap.

  He spotted a section of the edifice where the ornamentation— the gargoyles and gingerbread, stained dark with automobile exhaust— seemed sturdy enough. And then
he hoisted himself up to the floor above, gripping on to the granite protrusions.

  A little over an hour later. Stone pulled his stolen yellow VW into a parking space at Washington’s National Airport, his head still reeling. He glanced apprehensively in the rearview mirror, satisfied that he looked presentable. He did not appear to be a man on the run for his life, with the exception of his abraded hands.

  Now, carrying his small valise, he heard the final boarding call for a Pan Am flight to Chicago echoing in the terminal building. If he hurried, he could just make this one; no sense in waiting. He strode urgently, eyes watchful, trying to make sense of the lies Bayliss had told. A convulsion in the American government to cover up a highly placed mole in the CIA. Was Bayliss telling the truth, even a small part of it? Something is going on, Armitage had told him.

  Could it be true?

  Quickly Stone removed a small bag from his carry-on bag and placed it in a locker. It contained only his gun, and, as much as he disliked being without it, there was no way to get it through the metal detectors. There were ways to get some guns through. Stone knew, but not this one. He could always pick one up if he needed it.

  And, he reflected as he put down the cash for a ticket under an assumed name, he would probably need one soon.

  36

  Moscow

  Charlotte Harper eased herself into an almost unbearably hot bath. The steam gave off the pungent smell of eucalyptus, from mineral bath-salts that were supposed to replicate the hot springs at European spas, relieve muscular tensions, reduce fatigue. At least the stuff cleared her head.

  There were times when living alone was simply great, and this was one of them. A bath at two o’clock in the morning wasn’t possible when you were living with someone, at least not with music playing on the stereo, as it was now: a soothing Bach oboe sonata.

  She’d worked late because she had to keep pace with the hours in the U.S., which was eight hours earlier. She was exhausted from doing the tedious and largely poindess stories that the network wanted about how Moscow was preparing for the summit. Especially when the real story was the wave of terrorism that had struck Moscow.