Harry's Rules

by Michael R. Davidson

  There was a lot of blood.

  With adrenalin shooting electricity into my veins I covered the half dozen steps to the two supine forms. The first lay still, but the second was moaning and trying to rise. My blood was up, and without thinking, I pumped a bullet into his brain. Two combat tours in Vietnam had imbedded certain reflexes to being under fire. Nothing ever made me quite so angry as having a weapon pointed in my direction.

  “That was for Stankov,” I snarled at the grisly mess on the floor.

  My knees suddenly felt like jelly as the adrenalin ebbed and the shock began to set in. My guts clenched and I found the sink and retched.

  But within seconds other sounds penetrated the fog in my brain. Beyond the wreckage of the door a woman screamed intermingled with other alarmed voices. There were several references to “polizei.”

  More heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. I had to get out in a hurry.

  Holding the pistol at my side, I ventured a peek into the hall. A bullet instantly cracked into the wall beside me. I ducked back inside just as the hall lights, controlled by one of those curious European timers usually found in cheap hotels, clicked off, and the narrow hallway was thrown into darkness. Without hesitation I dove through the ruined doorway and rolled against the opposite wall. The light from the stairway at the end of the corridor outlined a dark figure emerging from the top of the stairs.

  The fire escape was at the opposite end of the hallway. Keeping low, I turned and ran. The fire extinguisher hanging next to the fire escape door twanged as it was punctured by a bullet, and a cloud of white vapor escaped obscuring that end of the hallway. I spun, dropped to a knee and squeezed two quick shots in the direction of the figure on the stairs.

  Reaching the door, I crashed through onto a small metal landing appended to the outer wall of the hotel. I leaned back through the door, stretched an arm around the corner, fired twice more then turned and clambered down the rickety metal ladder, still slippery with snow. At the bottom I turned immediately toward Walfischgasse, sped around the corner and sprinted away.

  I was yet again bespattered with gore and wished I been able to grab my beloved Burberry. My passport was in its pocket. I also regretted having left Stankov’s leather valise in the room. It contained all of the CIA money.

  I shoved the pistol into my belt and pulled my sweater down over the grip, still on the move and not stopping until I reached a subway station entrance. Fifteen minutes later I alighted from the train at Nestroy Platz in north-eastern Vienna.

  This was crap! Less than 48 hours after Jake Liebowitz had briefed the brass at Langley three assassins had reached me before the CIA could get me to safety. There was no way they could have located me other than through a leak at the top!

  I needed to warn Jake and found a pay phone and placed a quick call to Maurice who said that Jake had not called Paris to leave a new contact number and time.

  I had to go black NOW and worry about reporting to Jake later. The death toll had risen to four, and I had very nearly lost my own life for the second time in as many days! My true name passport would soon be in police hands. Within days I would be wanted by the Viennese police, Interpol, and God knew who else. It would not take long for the European authorities to check with the Americans, and then all hell would break loose. There was only Jake to vouch for why I was in Vienna, and even then the CIA was likely to distance itself quickly from the potential scandal of yet another “rogue” officer.

  I had ignored my own rules by revealing my location, and Jake Liebowitz’s revelation that the Russia Section was penetrated had proven dramatically accurate.

  There was now only one choice - the Israelis. Sasha’s business card was still in my pocket.

  CHAPTER 37 – Morning After

  The next morning found me back in the Israeli Embassy nursing a fourth cup of strong black coffee after spending the night tossing on Sasha’s couch that was a foot too short. When sleep had come it bought kaleidoscopic dreams – CIA Headquarters, the hospital where my wife had died, Volodya’s apartment, Vienna and Stankov’s head exploding in front of me.

  I’d hidden hunkered under a blanket in the back seat of her Skoda for the ride to the Embassy. Even after a shower at her apartment, I was still in the same worse for wear clothing as the night before and felt bedraggled, a distasteful condition that seemed to coincide with Israeli company. I waited in the same sitting room as before with the portrait of Golda Meir whose gaze now seemed more reprimanding than grandmotherly. Sympathetic to my sartorial predicament, Sasha had taken my sizes and promised to find some new clothes.

  She had picked me up about forty minutes after my call and driven straight to her apartment. It was small and neat, but impersonal, like a safehouse. The impression was strong that everything about this woman was operational. I was grateful for the luxury of a hot shower

  I emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe that Sasha provided. The robe was plenty large enough to fit me comfortably, and I wondered if she often entertained male visitors. She waited on the sofa in the small living/dining room. She’d changed into a nightgown and a modest flannel robe. A long, shapely leg extended through the parted front of the robe. There was a chilled bottle of vodka and two water glasses on the coffee table, and she motioned for me sit beside her before pouring two generous portions of the clear, viscous spirit and lifting her glass to me.

  “Here’s to seeing you again, Harry Connolly.” There was a hint of triumph in her voice that put me into a peevish mood, but the vodka smoothed things out a bit.

  “Rescuing me is becoming a habit for you.”

  When I described the hotel attack, she was astonished.

  I held out my empty glass for more vodka.

  She sloshed more of the nearly frozen alcohol into my glass and, as I poured it down my throat, she said, “It seems you can take care of yourself even without Mossad assistance, but I’m glad you called nonetheless. I’ve notified Eitan.”

  “I’m sure he was overjoyed.”

  The peevishness retreated before the alcoholic assault, and I told her about the retrieval of the disk and the plan I had hatched with Jake to escape from Vienna. It really didn’t matter at this point. Langley was far away, and the Israelis were the only port in the storm. And sitting next to this woman somehow took some of the sting out of it.

  She assessed me with those fathomless hazel eyes, and I couldn’t decide whether they reflected compassion or whether she simply thought I was a hopeless case.

  “You should have stayed with us at the Embassy. You are now completely compromised.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know.” Peevish again.

  “How did this happen? It doesn’t make sense. Volodya did not explain why you are working alone.”

  Perhaps it was the intimate setting, the narrow escape, the alcohol, probably everything together, but mostly the vodka, heaped upon the misery of my recent existence, but I unburdened himself, and she listened intently until I lapsed into silence.

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, sending an unexpected spark of electricity through me. “He'll be pleased to learn about the disk. This would all have been much better handled, and the trouble at your hotel avoided, if you had only trusted us.”

  What else did I expect her to say? Her voice was soft, factual, with no hint of reprimand. “We sent a team to Stankov’s hotel room, by the way. It was a flophouse, and there was nothing there. He apparently did not plan to return.”

  “That makes sense. All his personal belongings were in the valise at the train station. The poor bastard thought I would take him straight to safety. He didn’t plan to return to his room.”

  “Well. It’s too late to worry about spilled milk.”

  “Cry.”

  “What? Why would I cry?”

  “Spilled milk. The correct phrase is ‘cry’ over spilled milk.”

  I don’t know why I pointed out the malapropism. My mind was mush, and the vodka was
not exactly a clarifying agent. Why had I told her all that stuff?

  She considered me curiously for a second before fetching a blanket. Most unexpectedly, she leant down and kissed my cheek before retiring quietly to her bedroom.

  It was the best thing that had happened to me for a long time.

  I slept very little as the evening’s events cycled through my thoughts. Sasha’s words of warning when she had dropped me a few nights ago had been spot on. No sooner had Jake Liebowitz attempted to arrange for safe passage back to Washington than I had been compromised. The Russians had mounted their attack before even the local CIA Station could act.

  As long as I had remained independent I had been invisible. But now my passport, along with two corpses would implicate me directly -- not some alias identity that I could shed, but me personally. Communication with the Agency could no longer be trusted, and undoubtedly others would follow the thugs who had attacked me. This decision was the right one -- the Israelis offered the only safe haven.

  These gloomy ruminations were interrupted when Eitan Ronan entered with an armful of the morning’s newspapers.

  “Now see the results of your lack of trust in us,” he growled, tossing one of the papers onto the coffee table. I couldn’t tell if he was gloating.

  The banner headline read, “DREIFACHEN MORD IN WAHLFISCHGASSE – Amerikanisch Bürger Gesucht” (TRIPLE MURDER IN WAHLFISCHGASSE - AMERICAN CITIZEN SOUGHT). Before the end of the second paragraph my name appeared, along with a description of the bloody state of the pension room and the two bodies. Even more dismaying, my photograph, obviously copied from the passport, also appeared. The picture had been taken four years earlier, and the newspaper reproduction wasn’t perfect, but it was clearly me. The front page stories in the other papers were dishearteningly similar. Having anticipated this eventuality in no way softened the pangs of desperation that lanced through my chest.

  The nasty surprise was that there had been a third death - that of the pension’s grumpy night clerk. His body had been found near the reception desk. He had been shot execution style through the forehead, another innocent caught up and murdered in the middle of this burgeoning mess. Counting Thackery that made five deaths since Stankov’s arrival in Vienna.

  The names of the two men whose bodies had been found in the pension room were not revealed, but the papers did report that according to the documents found on them, both were Russian citizens. The papers also reported that a large amount of American currency had been found in the room, and I again regretted not having grabbed Stankov’s valise. The combination of murder and money led to much speculation in the press, and none of it was helpful to my cause.

  Ronan was keen to hear my account of events, and I repeated what I had told Sasha the night before, including the fact that I had agreed to have the CIA bring me in. It no longer mattered that I had not intended to re-contact the Mossad. Circumstances had driven me back to them, and that was where I would have to stay.

  CHAPTER 38 – Taking Stock

  Ronan listened silently, legs crossed, chain smoking his Caporals. A wry expression crawled its way slowly across his broad, sunburned visage as he said, “Sasha should be back soon with new clothing for you, and you can clean yourself up. You must be quite uncomfortable.”

  The Israeli might have imagined he was emanating sympathy. The dried blood on my clothing was becoming a bad habit.

  Ronan glanced again at the newspapers spread across the table.

  “In the meantime, there are things I need to tell you and a decision you must make.”

  He raised a meaty hand into the air as though he were swearing an oath. “I understand your consternation and I understand your loyalties are with your own country and your own organization.”

  He was only half right about that. I was as finished with the CIA as it was with me. Neither had a choice.

  Ronan continued, “But for the time being you find yourself in extraordinary circumstances that require hard decisions. If, after you hear what I have to say, you wish me to do so, I can facilitate contact with the CIA, and you can let them bring you in.”

  He shot a doubtful glance across my bow. “Frankly, I know nothing of what's happening inside your Agency, but it's clear enough that you were betrayed and set up for a kill. Either the CIA itself betrayed you or you have a traitor in very high places with the ability to act quickly and decisively. In either case, I don’t think you'll want to go back to them now. It could be fatal.”

  I had operated solo countless times in the past, but could always count on the Agency’s capabilities. Now, the Agency, or at least someone in it, had become a mortal enemy. Who had Liebowitz briefed? Certainly Barney Morley. Could the Chief of the Russia Section be a spy? I found myself half-hoping it was true because the other possibility was really ugly.

  Ronan continued to lay out my predicament in dismaying detail.

  “Your true identity is now a matter of public record and there is a manhunt with you as the objective ongoing at this very moment by the Austrian authorities. There can be no doubt that you will in short order become the subject of an Interpol alert, as well. If you turn to the American authorities, including the CIA, you have no guarantees. You are in the middle of an operation that has gone terribly wrong -- fatally wrong -- and your organization, unfortunately, does not have a reputation for protecting its own. They may well toss you to the wolves, as they have done with others for much less. You say that there is only one person who can vouch for your role in this affair. Should you go back to them, you should be very certain that this person has the power to shield you.

  “Your involvement in a triple murder, indeed the official assumption that you are the murderer, true in the case of the two men who attacked you in your room, will be also reported to the American authorities. They will be hunting you too.”

  “Thanks, Ronan. That makes me feel all better.”

  Undaunted, he pressed on. I think he was enjoying it the way a sadist enjoys pulling the wings off a fly.

  “I can offer you protection, at least temporarily. I know your situation, and I know the truth, and I may eventually be able to clear you. But in exchange you must cooperate without reservation.”

  Ronan’s not unexpected analysis was dead-on. And the implicit threat was clear. I could have expected nothing else.

  I removed Stankov’s computer disk from my shirt pocket and tossed it like a poker chip onto the table where it landed with a click in front of the Israeli.

  “This is all I have to bargain with.”

  I was betting blind into a royal flush.

  Ronan stared at the blue floppy disk for a moment without reaching for it, then plucked it from the table and said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, “Whatever it contains justified several deaths and very nearly your own.”

  The burly Israeli gingerly replaced the disk on the table.

  “You will recall what I told you the other day about the billions of dollars missing from the former Soviet Government. It may interest you to know that your friend Stankov’s name appears in our files in this connection. He's mentioned only a few times and always as a minor character, but we don't doubt that he was in some way involved with the missing funds. He rose in Gosbank to mid-level management and only last year was transferred to the bank’s special section that handles financial administration for the Russian intelligence service. This comes directly from a trusted Mossad source in Moscow, and there is supporting information from your friend Smetanin’s sources.”

  My face must have betrayed surprise. Ronan continued, “I cannot believe that the CIA had no knowledge of this. Was there no communications plan for this agent?”

  “There was a plan, but only if he were able to travel to the West. Even so, his file had been retired. His meeting with our man here was intended to officially terminate the relationship. He had no internal commo capabilities.”

  What a waste it all had been. Stankov’s recruitment in Berlin, the way the Agency nurt
ured him in the beginning, the promises made to him. And the responsibility the Agency accepted for him upon his recruitment. When Stankov didn’t hand over the Crown Jewels, Headquarters lost interest and relegated him to the trash heap. And all the while the Russian had doggedly pursued the goals we had set for him, had continued to burrow his way up into the bureaucracy.

  Stankov’s last words had been: “You do not know what information I provided? That is not why you are here? I assumed you would recognize the value of this information immediately.”

  No. The CIA does not nurture its agents. There is no patience among the bureaucratic elite that run the place. If an agent does not “produce” immediately, if his dossier gathers dust for a while, he is deemed worthless. There is no room for humanity in the modern Intelligence “business,” no room for the nurturing patience the classic art of espionage demands.

  I looked up to find Ronan’s eyes still fixed on me.

  I said, “All I can tell you is that Stankov without a doubt believed that whatever is on this disk is valuable; so valuable he thought it would buy him a golden parachute."

  “Let’s hope he was right. The most logical explanation is that he was a courier for whatever information is on the disk, information too valuable to trust to electronic communications. Or, perhaps he simply stole it. In any case, he recognized its importance and tried to hand it over to the CIA.