The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

“There isn’t a town on the lake that doesn’t. Sure. Capp’s.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll just check in and maybe even go out for a spin tonight. See if I can get a boat.”

  Capp’s Boat Rental was located in a small shack on a small wooden pier. The owner, a rough-hewn, large, red-faced man, seemed to be closing up for the day. Stone, toting the backpack, introduced himself, also by his real name, and told him what he wanted.

  “Sure, we got fishing boats,” the owner said. “Look, what do you want? We got everything from a sixteen-foot skiff to a one-hundred-eleven-foot boat. Fifty-three-foot Weejack, holds twelve guys. Thirty-six-foot Nauti-Buoy.”

  “Just something small, for myself. Motorized, of course.”

  “How about a Hawk?”

  “How big is it?”

  “Twenty-six-foot. Sport fisherman. Holds six; nice and comfortable for one. Just you?”

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  “Right. How much?”

  “Fifty bucks a day.” The price seemed to have been set on the spot. He added hastily, “Of course, we supply everything. Rod and reel, bait, even lures. I mean, you probably got your own equipment, but we supply it anyway.”

  “Sounds just fine. I’ll take it out now. Is that all right?”

  “Tonight? No way, Jose. You gotta be out of your mind. It’s dark already.”

  “I know that.” Stone explained about what a difficult past few weeks he’d had, how he desperately needed to go out for a spin, even if a brief one. A hundred dollars an hour wasn’t so bad, now, vvas it?

  Reluctantly, the owner took Stone down to the pier. The Hawk was old and not in the best repair, but it would do. Stone checked to make sure there was an inflatable life raft and life jacket, then examined the rusty metal tackle-box. “Everything’s here,” Stone observed.

  “I don’t like to rent at night,” the owner said truculently.

  “I thought we discussed that.”

  “I don’t know you from Adam. These boats belong to friends of mine. I got a responsibility to make sure they don’t get stolen.”

  “But they’re all insured. They have to be.”

  “I want a deposit.”

  Stone pulled another hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s gas in the tank?”

  “Three-quarters full, I think.”

  Stone unscrewed the gas cap to look inside.

  “Hey,” the owner said suddenly. “Careful with that butt, guy. Gas is flammable, you know.”

  “Sorry,” Stone said, tossing the cigarette into the water. “Boy, you got enough gas in there to get to Canada and back,” he joked. He slipped the rope off the steel post at the end of the jetty, got on board, and turned the ignition switch. It started right up. The boat rumbled beneath his feet. He removed his backpack and put on the orange life jacket.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Stone yelled to the owner as he lit another cigarette.

  302 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  He ran the boat at top speed, bouncing over swells on the lake’s surface, and made several large circles, enjoying the powerful little boat’s speed. In a few minutes, he was out of sight of shore. He steered the wheel to the right, moving parallel with the shoreline until he approached a dark patch of woods looming perhaps five hundred feet off, and then he shut off the engine.

  The sudden quiet was almost palpable. He could hear the distant croak of a few bullfrogs. The water here was deep. Stone noted, and not stagnant, yet the shore was quite close. He could not be seen from any point on the shore.

  He threw the life raft onto the water and watched it drift about, tethered to the boat by a thin rope. After grabbing the oars and setting them by the stern, near the floating life raft, he unzipped his canvas backpack and took out the roll of toilet paper and the matches. He unscrewed the gas cap and began unrolling the toilet paper into the tank, then jammed the rest of the roll into the tank’s opening. It fit snugly. He took a cigarette from the pack and lodged it into the roll so that it stuck out like an accusing finger, tobacco end out.

  Then he pulled the cigarette out and, with one of the matches, lit the cigarette, drawing on it until it glowed bright red in the darkness. He wedged it back into the toilet-paper roll with the burning end away from the gas tank.

  Leaving the backpack on board, he climbed over the edge while holding the oars, lowered himself into the icy water, and got onto the raft. His wounded arm made him nearly scream out in pain. After a shaky start, during which he almost landed head first in the water, he managed to row the raft quickly, and quietly, away from the boat. Because he was favoring his left arm, this proved to be more difficult than he’d anticipated. A few minutes later, he felt the scrape of sand; he had reached shore.

  He pulled himself up, shivering from the cold in his soaked jeans and sweatshirt, and pulled the stopper from the raft to let the air out. If his calculations were accurate, he had only about ten or fifteen minutes to walk, during which he would probably catch a bad cold. His left arm throbbed.

  Suddenly there was a terrific explosion, a low boom, and a great

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  flash of light. He glanced around quickly and saw that the Hawk was now a ball of flame, illuminating the surface of the lake in bright, festive orange.

  He accelerated his pace, trudging through the woods with the oars and the deflating rubber raft all clutched beneath his right arm. Even running did not warm him; he could feel himself shivering, the discomfort of the cold battling with the throbbing of his left arm in the pain centers in his brain.

  Two hundred feet ahead or so, he saw Paula’s white Audi under a highway arc lamp, parked next to a picnic table. The dome light was on, and Paula was reading. He ran as fast as he could for the warmth of the car.

  Weakly, Stone opened the door, startling Paula. She stared at him in disbelief.

  “I need to put some stuff in the trunk,” Stone said.

  “What the hell—?”

  I no longer exist, he thought. But he said nothing.

  42

  Langley, Virginia

  From the window of the Director’s seventh-floor office at CIA headquarters in Langley, all you could see was forest, miles of the rolling Virginia woods. A splendid view, Roger Bayliss thought. It was marred only by a small round plastic device resembling a hockey puck, affixed to many windows in the CIA, which emits an ultra-high-pitched sound to foil laser surveillance of room conversations.

  Director Templeton sat at his large contemporary white-marble-topped desk. Roger Bayliss stood, pacing nervously back and forth before the window. In front of Templeton’s desk was the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Ronald Sanders.

  Next to him sat the senior agency psychiatrist, a sixty-two-year-old man named Marvin Kittelson. Kittelson, who knew everything about Charles Stone except why he was being pursued, was small and wiry with a deeply lined face. He had a gruff, coarse manner, which was somewhat muted in the director’s presence. A former navy lieutenant, he had received his psychiatric training at the University of California at Berkeley, and later made a name for himself at the Agency as head of the Technical Services Staff’s behavioral-sciences division. His expertise was in personality assessment; during times of crisis, Templeton—and the President—had called upon Kittelson to provide assessments of various world leaders, from Gorbachev to Castro to Qaddafi. Within the Agency, Kittelson was widely considered a genius.

  “Our initial strategy failed miserably,” Templeton said. “It’s obvious now, with hindsight, that we should have moved in on him sooner, rather than using him to lead us to others.”

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  His three listeners nodded agreement, and Templeton continued. “Now the trail’s gone cold.” He addressed Bayliss directly. “Your strategy to abduct him was clearly misconceived.”

  Bayliss looked suitably chastened. “The man’s far more agile, far more clever
than we’d anticipated.”

  “Stone’s a goddamned wild card,” Tempeton barked. “Some kind of fucking lunatic. Instead of turning himself in, giving it up, he’s persisting.” He shook his head and scowled. “I just don’t understand it.”

  “Ted, don’t forget how long Edwin Wilson eluded us,” Sanders put in. Edwin P. Wilson was by now a legendary case in CIA annals: a renegade CIA agent, con man, and illegal arms dealer to Muammar Qaddafi, who had managed to escape a CIA manhunt for four years.

  “But Stone’s a goddamned amateurl” the Director said. “I don’t care if he’s the smartest analyst we have, he’s just not trained as a field operative!”

  “He’s an amateur, yes,” said Sanders, “and he’s alone and outnumbered. But he’s resourceful and as strong as a goddamned ox. And he’s desperate.”

  Unlike Templeton and Sanders, the Agency psychiatrist knew nothing of Bayliss’s attempt to entrap Stone, and he was savvy enough not to probe things that weren’t his affair. He smiled neutrally.

  “Our people are plugged into every domestic and just about every foreign airline’s computers,” the Director said, exasperated. “If his name appears on any airline anywhere in the Western world, we’ll nab him in a second. And we’ve got his name on TECS.” The Treasury Enforcement Communications System is the national computerized system for tracking all persons who pass through U.S. ports of entry and departure.

  Templeton turned to Kittelson. “Marvin, let’s hear from you. The man has managed to elude not just our field personnel but the Russians’ as well. It just doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

  “It makes a good deal of sense, Mr. Director,” Kittelson replied, pulling several sheets of notes from a manila file folder. “May I say, you folks, with your computers and your fancy software and your high-tech surveillance devices, you forget one thing.”

  306 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  Templeton’s scowl lengthened. “Such as?”

  ‘The human factor. I’ve gone through everything he’s written, every analysis of Soviet politics he’s ever done for Parnassus and before, and it’s clear he has a chess-player’s mind. It’s brilliant stuff. Really shrewd.”

  “We know that,” Sanders interjected. “But that hardly explains—”

  “You have professionals following this man,” Kittelson persisted with a shrug. “But, precisely because he’s an amateur, he doesn’t observe the laws that professionals do. He doesn’t follow predictable behavior patterns. Unlike most amateurs, though, he persists, as you say, with a vehemence that’s striking. You might say he’s ruthless.”

  Bayliss nodded.

  Kittelson continued: “I’ve put together a full profile on the man, and everything in his makeup, everything in his personal history, suggests that he’s become extremely dangerous.”

  Ronald Sanders, the former Notre Dame quarterback, expressed his derision by sighing noisily. “Marvin,” the Director cut in, but Kittelson kept speaking.

  “What I’m suggesting is this. He’s something of a loner with a strong drive for perfection, an abhorrence for self-pity. It’s logical that his coping mechanism to defend against the traumas he’s recently suffered was, in effect, to decompensate.”

  “Explain,” Templeton said.

  “I believe Stone’s exhibiting a ‘pathological grief reaction.’ I see this quite often among our Clandestine Services personnel. It’s an occupational hazard; it presents in those who tend to enter such lines of work.”

  “All right,” the Director prompted.

  “What you’re really saying,” Sanders remarked with a dismissive shake of his head, “is that this guy’s a nasty piece of work.”

  “He’s become highly unpredictable and therefore dangerous,” Kittelson said with some irritation. “Rather than succumbing to grief, he calculates and exacts revenge. He may have trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy, and so he masters his considerable resources to fight. Only by acting out his rage can he cope with his grief. Look,

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  I’ll tell you this. If 1 were to make up a textbook profile of the genesis of a human killing machine, 1 couldn’t do any better.”

  One of the three telephones on Templeton’s desk rang, and Tem-pleton picked it up at once. He listened, grunted, and hung up.

  “Well, Marv, you’re right. Stone is out of control.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bayliss demanded.

  “They just found one of our people dead in Chicago, in the Rogers Park area.”

  Bayliss whirled around, suddenly understanding. “The files Ar-mitage tried to get!” So Stone actually had gone to visit this retired FBI agent.

  “Roger,” Templeton ordered, “contact Malarek. I want maximum force on this. Stone’s obviously in the vicinity.” He got up from his chair, looked at the two men, and then murmured: “1 think the trail has finally gotten warm.”

  43

  Toronto

  Wrapped in a blanket, Stone fell asleep almost immediately. Paula put the heat up full blast, and gradually Stone’s chills melted away. They took 196 north to Grand Rapids; there they got on 96 and took it across Michigan, skirting Lansing, and into Detroit, where Paula stopped briefly at a Ramada Inn for coffee. It was close to midnight when they arrived at the border crossing at Windsor, Ontario.

  “Wake up, Charlie,” Paula said. “Time to become Patrick Bart-lett.” She had borrowed some credit cards and a birth certificate from one of her neighbors, identification enough for the lax Canadian border guards. Stone knew it would be foolish to use his own, and he wanted to avoid showing his forged passport until it was absolutely necessary.

  The passing was brief and perfunctory. The immigration agent glanced at Paula’s and Stone’s IDs and asked what the purpose of their visit was.

  “We’re visiting my mother,” Paula explained. That was that, and they were over the border.

  “Do you think they’d really have put your name on some kind of computer?” Paula asked when they were safely down 401.

  “Yes,” Stone said groggily. “By now I’m almost certain they’re watching every border crossing.”

  Within a day, his “death” would undoubtedly be reported to the Haskell town police. The owner of Capp’s Boat Rental would probably remember the man named Charles Stone, would remember most of all that he had told the fellow not to smoke around gasoline. The innkeeper would remember Stone, too. The accidental death would

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  be quickly investigated, and just as quickly set down in the police logs. But would it be believed by his pursuers? Probably not forever. Stone would know soon enough, but for the time being he considered that he had some breathing space.

  “Charlie,” Paula said, an hour after they had crossed the border.

  “Yes?”

  “Listen, I wanted to tell you something. About our—making love and all that.” She was visibly embarrassed, and she spoke slowly. “I know we shouldn’t have done it, so don’t think I’ve got the wrong idea, okay?”

  Stone nodded.

  A long moment passed; then Paula continued: “But I just wanted to tell you. I haven’t made love with anyone in, like, a year.”

  Stone nodded again.

  “This isn’t easy for me to talk about, okay?”

  “Take your time,” Stone said gently.

  There was another lull, and then: “You know how I went after that rapist, that case I told you about? I mean, the guy was guilty as hell, and I guess anyone would be mad, especially a woman. But— Jesus, Charlie, I was attacked last year.”

  “What do you mean, attacked?”

  “I mean, nothing happened. Thank God. But it was close. I was coming home from work really late one night, in that shitty neighborhood.” She fell silent, and then continued. “The guy was scared off by a passerby, thank God.”

  “Paula—”

  “You know, I took a martial-arts class after that, so I could defend myself, but that was the
easy part. The hard part was, you know, dealing with sex.”

  “I understand—”

  “No, listen. I just wanted to say …” She didn’t finish the thought, but Stone understood, touched by this rare display of Paula’s tenderness.

  They arrived in Toronto when the sun was just beginning to rise, at around five o’clock Sunday morning. They had made very good time; Paula had stopped for coffee only twice.

  310 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  Paula Singer’s mother lived in a spacious old brick house in the Rosedale area of Toronto. She was asleep when they arrived, but she was expecting them, and had left a key for them under a mat.

  “My bedroom is clear on the other side of the house from my mother’s room,” Paula whispered as they walked through the garage into the house. “We’ll have privacy.”

  “To sleep,” Stone said.

  They fell asleep quickly in Paula’s large and comfortable bed, and in the late morning they woke up and made love. Then each of them showered and came down to the kitchen, where Paula kissed her mother. Stone said hello, and they ravenously consumed the large breakfast that Eleanor Singer had prepared for them.

  Stone took Paula’s car into the center of the city to buy a new set of clothes in Eaton Centre. He returned a few hours later utterly transformed.

  Paula gave a little shriek when she saw him. “What have you done to yourself? Your curls!”

  “You don’t like it?” Stone had gone to a barber shop and had his hair shorn so that he now had a buzz-cut. A pair of heavy black-framed eyeglasses made him look like someone else entirely. To complete the outfit, he wore a worker’s uniform of dark-blue shirt and pants.

  “You look like a janitor. Like a deinstitutionalized janitor, I mean.”

  “Anything but a guy on the lam. Although, I have to say, people do get the wrong impression—on the way over here, I passed a park where a bunch of skinhead punks were hanging out. One of them shouted out to me, ‘Hey, skinheads live forever, man!’ “