The Kremlin Letter

by Behn, Noel;

  “You know I can’t be seen there.”

  “Oh, I forgot. Your position.” She moved to him again. “Well, if we can’t go to one of those places maybe you can get me some of those funny cigarettes, the kind that do silly things to you—the kind you gave me the night you first made love to me.”

  Kosnov sat up abruptly. He was a man who could cope with any situation that came his way. He was a master manipulator of people. For twenty years he had been in control of himself and of those around him. But with the girl he was lost. He hated her and loved her. The hate grew out of his inability to control her. His love grew out of the fear of losing her. He had jeopardized his career by bringing her to his home, by his steadfast refusal to give her up. He knew this. He knew he should get rid of her one way or another. He could murder her himself and no one in Moscow would know or care. He had entertained the thought quite often. At times he even felt that that was what she really wanted. He couldn’t. He knew she was feeding on him, trying to drag him down, trying to destroy him for what he had done to Polakov. Even so he didn’t care. He could not give her up.

  “I will take you to one of the clubs,” Kosnov said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  Erika smothered his face and neck with kisses and tried to pull him down on the bed again. He refused to move. He sat impassively as the girl continued to tease him. “You’re unhappy,” she said with a slight smile.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “I’ve made you angry, haven’t I? You don’t like me now. I know when you don’t like me.” She bounced further back on the bed and rested against the headboard with her knees drawn up under her chin. “Do you loathe me when I’m like this?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered.

  “Does it go beyond loathing? Do you hate me?”

  “That too at times.”

  “When I’m like this do I sicken you?” Erika took Kosnov’s silence as an answer. “I sicken you,” she sang happily. Then she’ slid prone on the bed, her hands between her legs, massaging herself.

  “Come to me. Be my lover at this very instant. When you’re sickened by me. Love is best when it sickens. At least our kind is.”

  “Stop that,” commanded Kosnov, “and keep your hands off yourself.”

  Erika caressed herself more fervently. “I’m thinking of a hundred men,” she told him with her eyes closed, “and none of them are you.”

  Kosnov rose abruptly and left the room. He went downstairs into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of beer. Then he threw the beer into the sink and stalked into the dining room. A full carafe of vodka sat on the table. He drank from it in long swallows until it was empty. He started to look for more. The telephone rang.

  Grodin said they still had not found the missing truck from Vorkuta.

  “Then send more men and planes,” Kosnov shouted into the phone. “But find that truck. It’s been missing for five days. Pull every agent out of Moscow, but find it.”

  “Men and planes do no good. It’s been snowing. They are having a blizzard.”

  “Of course there is a blizzard. Do you think they would pick a sunny afternoon to come into the country?”

  “I’ll do everything I can, Comrade Colonel,” Grodin replied.

  “Send up more men,” Kosnov repeated.

  “We already have sent two units. They can do nothing till the storm passes. More men won’t help. We don’t even know if the truck has anything to do with Potkin’s report. It may have simply been lost in the snow. Perhaps it had an accident.”

  “That truck may be the transportation for the two men being landed. That is our official attitude at this time. I don’t care if a hundred agents turn to ice—find me that truck.” Kosnov slammed down the receiver.

  He stormed about the downstairs searching for another bottle of vodka. He couldn’t find any. The affair with Erika would have to be resolved here and now. He was turning into a madman. Kosnov stamped up to her room and threw open the door. She was gone. So were her red dress and coat. He searched through the house frantically. He could not find her. Kosnov rushed out into the street. The limousine was also gone. He ran back inside and tried to get the driver on the radio-phone. The line was busy. Erika must have taken it off the hook. He called his office and dispatched five cars to locate his limousine. He wanted to call the police, but he couldn’t. It was bad enough for his own men to know what had happened; he would have a difficult enough time suppressing them.

  He paced the floor. He found another bottle of vodka and had drunk half of it before a phone call reported the car had been found. The driver had dropped her off at the Praga Restaurant on Arbatskaya Square. No, he saw nothing wrong in taking her there. He often drove her to restaurants when the colonel was busy—Kosnov himself had ordered him to do so. He wasn’t sure if she had gone in; he had dropped her across the street because she had said she wanted some air.

  When Kosnov arrived at the restaurant he was told Erika had not come in that evening. He returned to the street, where his driver and several of his agents were waiting. He ordered the chauffeur to stay and the others to go. It had all been a misunderstanding. Everything was in order.

  He did not care if they believed him. He must find the girl. He began searching the back streets, the restaurants and meeting places of Moscow’s “new youth,” places which did not exist officially.

  It was close to midnight when he finally found her. She was dancing with a young Cuban student in a “social discussion room” on a side street near the University. There was no orchestra, just a phonograph. The record which was playing was not Russian. The habitués kept rhythm with their hands and shouted “Yeah, yeah, yeah” in time to the thump and crash of the beat.

  Erika saw him standing at the door, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She continued dancing more fervently than before. She ground her hips and thrust her pelvis back and forth with arduous ecstasy. Her elbows were tight to her body and her fingers snapped beside her hips. As Kosnov approached she closed her eyes, opened her mouth and waggled her tongue at her partner who was at least a foot away from her. Kosnov stopped where he was. No one seemed to notice him. The phonograph record ended and Erika walked up to him.

  “Well?” she said with a bright smile.

  “Come home,” Kosnov said hesitantly. “It’s late and it’s time for you to come home.”

  “Whatever you say, my lover.”

  “This whole thing is insane,” Rone protested as Ward sat him in the middle of the room and slid the hood over his head.

  “You thought it up,” Ward reminded him, adjusting the eyeholes.

  “I gave you five approaches. This was the worst. We should have used the telephones.”

  “Now just be still like a good little Grand Mute so we can rehearse.” Ward took a chair opposite him, picked up a Luger, flicked off the safety and aimed it at him. “The code is eighteen-three,” he announced and snapped his fingers five times. Rone answered with four more snaps.

  “Nine snaps in series one,” announced Ward. “That leaves nine for the last two series.” He snapped his fingers twice. Rone added two more.

  “Thirteen down. Six to go in the last series,” said Ward and snapped four times. Rone snapped twice.

  “Just like silk,” beamed Ward, lowering the automatic.

  “It’s still the most maniacal thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Nephew Yorgi, it’s just a matter of percentages. Three out of five of our men have no idea who’s receiving the messages. If any one of them gets picked up they can only confess that section they know about—and they can’t finger who’s in on the whole story.”

  “What if you or I get caught?”

  “Do you always have to look down when you’re climbing a mountain?” asked Ward. “Now let’s get back to rehearsing. You miss one snap and you just might be catching a bullet in your nose.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rone interrupted. “There are supposed to be six of us
coming to Moscow—but you just said ‘Three out of five of our men.’”

  “Did I?”

  Erika went up to her room obediently. Kosnov remained downstairs. He had no idea what to say or what to do. He stood in front of his gun case and stared in at his hunting rifles. Should he kill her? Would he be happier if he did? Again the telephone rang.

  “We have just found the truck,” Grodin informed him. “It looks as if you were right. Two men are in it—or what is left of two men. Shall I have them removed?”

  “No,” said Kosnov quietly. “I want to examine them myself. Keep everything as it was found and order a plane. I’ll leave at once. You’ll accompany me.”

  “We may have trouble landing because of the snow.”

  “Fuck the snow.”

  “Is that all, sir?”

  “Yes—” Kosnov hesitated. “No, send a car for the German girl. I’m returning her to prison.”

  24

  The Trip to Kara

  By dawn their plane had reached Ustusa. The storm had ended. They flew north along the Ural Mountains past Vorkuta and on to Kara, where they landed. The town was on Baydarstskaya Bay in the Kara Sea.

  “They must have come across the Arctic Ocean from the Elizabeth Islands,” Grodin conjectured as their car headed back toward Vorkuta.

  “And they also could have come from Greenland or Alaska or Norway or Finland or Sweden,” Kosnov said without much enthusiasm.

  “If they came from Scandinavia they could have traveled by land. If they came by boat they would have used the Barents Sea.”

  “They still would have had to head for Kara.”

  “Why?” asked Grodin.

  “Because there is a railroad there. There are no railroads along the Barents Sea.”

  “What about Murmansk?”

  “Murmansk is next to Finland, and unless my geography fails me Finland stretches from Murmansk down to Leningrad. They wouldn’t travel by water just to land at Murmansk and take a train, when they could cross Finland by land and catch one at Leningrad. If they came by boat their only objective could be Kara—and the railroad.”

  “If they were planning to travel by train, why did they steal a truck?” asked Grodin.

  “If they weren’t planning to take a train, why did they overlook two thousand miles of coastline that is lightly patrolled and closer to Moscow?”

  “For that matter, why did they want to come in through Siberia at all? There are much easier routes.”

  “If you were planning to enter Russia,” asked Kosnov, “would you say that coming in through Kara was impractical?”

  “Very impractical.”

  “Perhaps that’s why they chose it. Anyway, it makes little difference now. Are you sure Erika is comfortable?”

  “Yes,” answered Grodin. “Her cell is furnished and meals are brought in from the outside.”

  “Maybe I should get her a television set,” Kosnov thought aloud.

  The car moved cautiously over the newly plowed road, doing no more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. The clouds were beginning to clear and from time to time the sun broke through. The blizzard had left almost two feet of fresh powder on top of the existing three-foot layer of old snow.

  “The Highwayman was associated with Sturdevant, wasn’t he?” Grodin asked.

  “Where did you hear about Sturdevant?”

  “I dug out the files on him after I read the dossiers on the Highwayman.”

  “Where did you find them? They’ve been closed for years.”

  “I went to the storage depot outside Moscow. I found information on their entire organization. They were very effective agents, weren’t they?”

  “They have had their day,” answered Kosnov sharply.

  It was eleven A.M. Rone stood in the pitch-black back bedroom and watched Janis through the peephole as he crossed the living room, took out a key and opened the top desk drawer. He withdrew a Luger, snapped in a bullet clip he took from his pocket and started for the “confession box.” Rone moved behind the blankets he and Ward had hung from the ceiling the night before and waited for Janis to enter. He heard the door open and close. There were several footsteps until Janis found the chair, sat in it and scratched around on the floor looking for the flashlight. Rone saw the beam scan the room. He adjusted his white Grand Mute hood and stepped around the curtain. The flashlight was trained on an empty chair. The Grand Mute walked over and sat down. He crossed his hands in his lap and waited. Rone knew the pistol was pointed directly at his head. The snap code was twenty-seven, the series code five.

  Janis snapped his fingers three times. Rone snapped his twice. One series down, four to go. Twenty-two snaps remained. Janis snapped once. Rone answered with four. Five more snaps used up. Three series to go. Another three snaps from Janis. Rone countered with one. Three series had been completed. Fourteen snaps used, thirteen to go. Janis snapped his fingers twice. Rone answered twice. Janis snapped again. Rone counted five snaps. It was the final series. He recounted quickly in his head. Five on the first, five on the second, four—or was it three? He knew it was four on the last, but was it three or four before that? He saw the flashlight waver slightly. He recounted in his head. Five, five … Janis’ chair creaked slightly. The beam slowly moved up and down Rone’s body. He felt the perspiration under his head. Five, five, four, four, plus five. Twenty-three out of twenty-seven. Four left. Rone snapped his fingers four times. The light remained on him. He could feel Janis thinking. It snapped off. He heard the clip snap out of the automatic. That goddam Ward and his ideas, he told himself with a breath of relief.

  “Last night I made contact with the Kitai,” Janis began in total darkness. “A friend of Madame Sophie’s set up the meeting. I went to the University Medical Center and walked down four steps to a basement door labeled Staff Clinic. There was a waiting room. There were two peasant women sitting there. The time was approximately ten-thirty last night. The man behind the desk looked Oriental. Most likely Chinese. I should have expected that. I gave him the code as I was instructed. I told him my doctor had told me to be there at ten and that I was twenty-two minutes late. He asked me who my doctor was. I told him it was Dr. Kitai. He said he had no one by that name. Then I handed him the piece of paper and said maybe I was mispronouncing it. The orderly got up and left. He was gone maybe five minutes. When he returned he told me to go down the hall to the third door on the left.

  “The Kitai looked more Mongolian than Chinese. His skin was more brown than yellow. He had a flat face and a broad, pushed-in nose. His eyes looked rather webbed at the corner. I couldn’t tell how old he was. He was wearing a bluish-gray hospital jacket. He didn’t talk much, but when he did you could see that two of his bottom front teeth were made of some metal. Not gold, but sort of a dull silver. Bottom right front teeth. He never stood up but he looked tall, maybe six feet. He spoke perfect Russian.

  “He said he had heard I was interested in buying some new medicine. I said that was wrong, that I was interested in selling. If he was surprised he didn’t seem to show it. I confessed I had made contact to him by saying I was a buyer, but that I really wanted to sell. He asked me where the medicine came from. ‘By way of Turkey,’ I told him. He asked when he could see some. I had the heroin in a small cigarette case. I gave it to him. He looked at it, rolled it in his fingers. He smelled his fingers. Then he tasted the stuff and asked me what I was interested in. “A distribution arrangement,” I told him. He asked me how much medicine I had. I told him as much as he needed. He closed the case and gave it back to me and said that he was not equipped to handle a large operation. I told him I had plenty of men. He said that wasn’t the point, that Moscow just wasn’t conducive to widespread activities. I asked if that was because of no customers. He said that it was because of the police. I asked if it had ever been tried on a large scale. He said it had, six or seven years ago. I asked why it had failed.

  “I noticed him freeze a little when I said that. He tried to size me up agai
n and asked me why I was concerned about that. I told him if I didn’t work out a deal with him I’d go elsewhere or do it on my own. I wanted to know everything I could about it. He said he still might be interested and I said I still wanted to know what broke up the first ring. He said it was a Russian officer from the Third Department, a Colonel Kosnov. He arrested a Chinese by the name of Chang who ran the operation. There was a Russian involved too, but he got away. He said nothing had worked since that time. I told him I was willing to take the risk. I asked him if he was going to come in with me or would I have to start on my own.

  “‘I am interested,’ he said, ‘but if you’re in a hurry begin by yourself. I will give you a few contacts. When I find out more about you then perhaps we will talk again.’”

  They reached the site of the accident in the midafternoon. The truck lay on its side in a gully some sixty yards below the road. It had missed a turn in the storm, crashed into the abyss, caught fire, and burned itself out before the snow covered it. Kosnov’s agents lowered him into the gully. Two bodies were frozen solid inside the cab. Both were burned beyond recognition. The corpse in the driver’s seat still clung to the steering wheel. The other one lay on its side against the door. Kosnov noticed that the left thumbnail of each cadaver was completely missing, while the other nine nails were only charred. They were closer to Vorkuta than Kara, so Kosnov ordered the bodies taken there for autopsies. They drove behind the ambulance until they reached the city.

  Vorkuta had been the site of Stalin’s most infamous prison camp. During his reign tens of thousands of prisoners had perished from cold and hunger alone in this northern wasteland. During the Khrushchev era the camp was disbanded and the area redeveloped for settlement. Although the hospital was primitive it was still modern by Vorkuta’s standards. The doctors were able to establish the age of the, man behind the wheel as about sixty. The dental work on his teeth was either British or American. His hands were too badly burned to take clear fingerprints. Preliminary specimens indicated that he may have been suffering from intestinal cancer. The interior walls of his heart showed definite signs of scar tissue. From a preliminary examination he appeared to fit the description of the Highwayman.