i didn’t say i wanted a private detective i want you as a friend you were my friend want you everything’s all right, mongo coming to see you was the smartest thing i ever did she asked me to forgive her forgive her i love her love her
I could feel laughter bubbling in my throat, frothing on my lips like specks of foam. I swallowed it and tensed, suddenly knowing that I was no longer alone. Raskolnikov was moving somewhere out in the darkness. I also knew that it would be Raskolnikov who would be alone if I didn’t find some new source of strength to tap. I was slumping forward, slipping off the girder.
I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth and slapped my side. Strength returned to my legs and I wrapped them securely around the girder.
Raskolnikov was moving laterally, from my right to my left. He had to have spotted me on the way up, and I guessed he was angling for an attack. Talk was the only weapon left in my arsenal. I knew it was not so much what I said as how I said it that was important. The other man had to come past me to get to the windows, and I had to convince him I was strong enough to stop him.
“You’re a long way from home, Vladimir Denosovitch.” I listened to the echo of my voice in the empty vault of the ceiling. It was all right, much stronger than I had any right to expect, and Raskolnikov had stopped moving. I imagined I could hear the sound of heavy breathing, but I was not sure whether it was the other man or my fever. “The trip ends here.”
Finally his voice came, almost indistinguishable from the whispers in my mind. He’d been trained to the height of perfection; a Russian, he spoke English with just the slightest trace of an accent.
“I have to get out, Frederickson. You know that. I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to.”
“You already tried that once, and your man couldn’t handle the job. And you ordered the Jessums killed. Are you telling me you’ve had a sudden change of heart?”
There was a long silence, and I wondered whether he had detected the weakness in my voice or knew I was simply playing word games.
“I’m a professional, Frederickson. Surely you realize that. I do what I have to do, but I don’t kill when there’s no reason.”
“There wasn’t any reason before. You didn’t have to kill the Jessums. The chances are I would never have recognized you, not after all these years. I remembered and made the connections because you forced me to. You panicked. That was hack work, Vladimir Denosovitch. Second-rate.”
“That was a mistake,” Raskolnikov said after a long pause. There was an edge to his voice. “Now the situation has changed. It’s no longer necessary to kill you; it would serve no purpose. It is necessary that I escape.”
“You’re that valuable?”
“I am that valuable. What has happened thus far should have convinced you of that.”
“Then you’re as good an agent as you are a high-wire walker?”
“I leave such judgments to my superiors. I’m coming now, Frederickson. Get out of my way.”
“No!” My own voice sounded detached from me. I could only hope it carried the force I’d intended. “You come close enough for me to see you and you’ll look like Bruno Jessum.”
“You’ve been investigated. I know you rarely carry a gun.”
He was right, and my only chance was that he was as much a professional as he said he was. “Wrong again, Vladimir Denosovitch. Your men couldn’t have had more than five or six hours to do their checking, the time between your talk with Bethel and my show at the circus.”
“What are you talking about?” For a moment, Raskolnikov sounded almost as confused as I was scared. “We checked you after you killed our operative.”
“Patchwork job, Vladimir Denosovitch.” I said lightly. “You probably used local talent. If you want to stake your life on that report, go ahead. Personally, I’d rather keep you alive.”
He was thinking about it, exactly what I wanted him to do. But not too much. Talk. I had to talk.
“You know, I remember the first time I saw you, Vladimir Denosovitch. You were good then, but I must admit you’re even better now …”
My tongue kept going but, in my mind, I was suddenly back in Russia.
There were sounds behind me. Raskolnikov was moving.
“The Moscow Circus is the best in the world, Vladimir Denosovitch,” I said quickly. “Too bad you never made it.”
The shuffling stopped. I’d hit pay dirt, his pride.
“My country needed me elsewhere.”
“As a spymaster setting up and coordinating a nationwide intelligence-gathering net. Beautiful. Everybody’s watching everybody else at the U.N. and the embassies while the big boss himself is off performing for the kiddies at a Saturday matinee. Beautiful, Vladimir Denosovitch! Was that your idea?”
“You’re guessing,” Raskolnikov said softly. “Most of this is your imagination.” I had a feeling our conversation was rapidly drawing to a close.
Hot flashes: Russia, city after city, command performance after command performance. Then, in the central city of Chelyabinsk, where my guide said: “This one will be great. This one walks the wire.”
Afterward, Vladimir Denosovitch Raskolnikov and I had drunk vodka together.
“But I’m right, aren’t I, Vladimir Denosovitch? You’re big. As big as they come. They trained you, set you up with false residency papers and smuggled you into Florida. Your assignment was to establish an intelligence drop route corresponding to the stop route of whichever circus picked you up. That circus happened to be Statler’s.”
“You’re thinking out loud.” His voice seemed much closer to me now, but I couldn’t turn even if I wanted to. My head and shoulders seemed part of a single granite block. It was all I could do to keep talking.
“You couldn’t have begun to put all this together before a few minutes ago,” Raskolnikov continued. “Not before you called my name.”
Which was why, now, he did have to kill me. As long as the secret of the route was safe, it could continue to expand and operate. Raskolnikov would disappear back into the vastness of Russia and somebody else would be sent to take his place. I was the only one left, besides Raskolnikov, with all the pieces to the puzzle.
“You’re badly hurt, Frederickson. Very badly hurt.”
Time had run out. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Raskolnikov standing beside me, his arms wrapped around the girder on which I was leaning. There was almost a trace of sympathy in the other man’s voice—sympathy and chagrin at being held up for so long by a man who couldn’t even stand.
He braced himself with his legs and placed his hands on my shoulders, pushing me forward and to the side. My arms and legs were now hanging limp and useless. I could see my blood flowing out onto the girder, dripping down into the darkness.
“My brother knows,” I whispered hoarsely. “We’ve been talking about this for days. He’ll make the same connections and backtrack along the circus route. The ring is smashed.”
“No,” Raskolnikov said. “There was no time. I’m sorry, Frederickson. I truly am. You are a very brave man.”
I didn’t find the sincerity in his voice any comfort. It was almost over now, and I vaguely wondered whether or not I would faint before I hit the sharp wooden and steel angles of the seats below.
Then Garth’s shot caught Raskolnikov in the throat. It was a good shot, considering the fact that Garth had a bad angle leaning into a half-opened window and was firing into the shadows.
Raskolnikov gargled on his way down. There was the ugly sound of a body breaking on the seats, screams, then silence. I could see Garth in front of me, struggling to get his body through the window.
Good show; but considering the fact that I was already most of the way off the girder, I didn’t think he was going to get to me in time.
It was the first time I’d been wrong all day.
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Copyright © by George C. Chesbro
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-0831-0
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