The Red Eagles

by David Downing

  She closed the door and stood with her back against it, her arms crossed over her breasts, a half-questioning, half-accusatory look on her face. One part of Kuznetsky’s mind took note of how desirable she looked, sleepy-eyed, her dark hair falling across her face. The other part took charge.

  “It’s all right, I’m not here for your body,” he said with a thin smile.

  “What is it then?” she asked, inadvertently acknowledging her suspicions.

  “Do you know a Richard Lee?”

  She felt as if she’d just taken off in a high-speed elevator, leaving her stomach behind. “What about him?”

  “Who is he?”

  She shrugged. “My boyfriend, I suppose. Or I’m his mistress. Call it what you like. He knows nothing—”

  “I’d call it incompetence,” he said flatly, sitting down on the sofa.

  Her eyes flared. “I’ve been working ten years in this city. You’ve been here less than a week. How the hell—”

  “You were followed this evening,” he interrupted without raising his voice.

  “I thought that was the idea.”

  “By someone other than me.”

  “What?” She was astonished. “But Richard’s in New Hampshire …”

  “He hired a private detective to make sure you weren’t cheating on him.”

  “Oh Christ,” she muttered, sitting down and pulling the dressing gown across her legs.

  Kuznetsky offered her a cigarette and lit one himself. Would she accept the obvious? For some reason, he wanted to share this decision. She looked at him silently, a bleak expression etched on her face.

  “When is he coming back from New Hampshire?” he asked.

  “Friday, probably. He calls me up most evenings. To check up on me, I suppose,” she added bitterly. “But the detective may call him there.”

  “He won’t.”

  She looked at him again, an expression on her face that he couldn’t read. “Faulkner said you’d be thorough.”

  “I do what has to be done,” he said calmly. “There’s no pride in it. No shame either.” In his mind’s eye he saw Duncarry’s body plummeting down into the dark.

  She didn’t seem to hear. “So Richard will come back, go to collect his report, and find out the detective’s been killed.”

  “There’s a chance the police will think it’s suicide. A thin chance.”

  “Is that a chance we can take?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye. Her voice was hard, her eyes bewildered.

  “No,” he said gently, replying to the eyes rather than the voice. “How long have you and he …?”

  “Two years, more …”

  “A long time.” He’d known Nadezhda for half that.

  “He’s married. We met only once a week. He’s not …”

  “Ah.” He lit another cigarette, wishing it was Russian. These American ones were like smoking thin air.

  “He might not go to the police,” she said. “I don’t think his pride would let him admit that he’d had a woman followed. And there’s his wife as well – she might find out.”

  “Can he risk not going? He won’t know what the police have found in the detective’s office.”

  “And Richard is suspicious,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I’ve been away so often recently. He kept thinking it was another man, but this will make him consider other things. He’s not a fool.” She looked down at her bare feet. “There’s no alternative, is there?” she whispered.

  “If he’s eliminated” – the word seemed curiously out of place here – “will the police come to you? How secret is your …?”

  “Probably,” she said. She seemed calmer now that the issue was out in the open. “No one really knows, but people at work, they guessed long ago.” She gave him a wintry smile. “This is the point in the movie where someone says it’ll have to look like an accident,” she said, taking another cigarette from his package, her hand visibly shaking. “I’m sorry,” she said between puffs, “but I’ve never killed anyone. I think I should tell you that.”

  “I will do it. Do you accept that it has to be done?”

  “Yes.” She did. It surprised her how easy it was.

  “I’ll need his address. A photograph if you have one. And you’ll have to find out the details of his return trip. He’ll be flying, I suppose?”

  “No, he hates flying. He’s taking the train. He was going to call me from Union Station.” She rummaged through a pile of books. “Here’s a photograph. That’s him,” she said, pointing out a tall man in his late thirties standing at the back of the group.

  “Who are the others?”

  “Colleagues. It was a State Department picnic, last summer. He gave me the picture.” She was businesslike now, her hands steady, her eyes devoid of expression.

  He got up, feeling sorry for her, wondering why. She stood by the door, hugging herself tightly while he let himself out.

  Rafael Soto threw the remains of his lunch into the water and started to make his way along the dockside to the empty berth. He’d spent the last hour watching the Swedish freighter inch its way through the San Carlos narrows toward Maracaibo; now it was so close that he could make out the captain’s face on the bridge. Gustav Torstensson. Soto’s comrade at the post office had let him see the cable, and Torstensson would soon be learning that he had an extra week for loading the mountains of coffee beans. Doubtless the Swedish crew would be pleased to discover that a fresh consignment of virgins from the interior had just been delivered to the whorehouses on the Ramblas.

  Soto took up position some fifty yards from the gangplank and waited for his quarry. He’d been given a description of Sjoberg, but it seemed to fit every seaman he could see. It didn’t matter though. There wasn’t a customs official in Maracaibo who wasn’t willing to help for an extra peso or two.

  It was several hours before the crew came ashore, and as they went through the customs shed Soto received the nod he needed. His Swedish comrade was in a group of four men, and he followed them into the town, to a restaurant in the Cathedral Square. After an hour of drinking, the visits to the lavatory began, and Soto introduced himself to Sjoberg as they stood side by side above the stagnant trough. A proper meeting was arranged for the next day.

  Kuznetsky watched the passengers from the Boston train stream out into the Penn Station concourse, recognized Richard Lee, and followed him into one of the bars. Richard ordered a whiskey, and from his gestures and the slight slur in his voice, Kuznetsky knew that it wasn’t his first drink of the evening. He ordered one himself but didn’t touch it, smoking a cigarette and taking occasional glances in the bar mirror at his intended victim. He had as yet no idea of how he was going to do it, but that didn’t worry him. It’s for nothing that I seek something more sure than the throw of the dice. That was one thing he hadn’t needed Joszef to teach him.

  Richard ordered another, looked at the clock, and swigged it down in one gulp. Good, it was the 9:30 train to Washington. Kuznetsky followed him out, across the concourse and onto the platform. As expected, Richard headed straight for the club car. He ordered another whiskey, took a seat, and picked up a used copy of The Washington Post. It was the previous day’s copy, the one with the short report of Duncarry’s demise. “Detectives investigating the case would neither confirm nor deny foul play.” How conscientious of them, Kuznetsky thought, as he watched Lee turn the pages.

  Lee found the piece about Duncarry just as the train eased its way out of the station. His hands gripped the newspaper, crumpling the edges; his eyes were wide with the shock. Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty, Kuznetsky thought.

  Richard quickly ordered another drink, and once he returned to his seat seemed to stare blankly out of the window, perhaps at his own reflection. Judging from what the woman had said, Kuznetsky could guess what was going through the man’s mind. The detectives were “looking into the dead investigator’s recent cases.” That must have given him a jolt.


  The train emerged from the tunnel under the Hudson into the New Jersey night and gathered speed. Richard still sat motionless, the half-empty glass in his hand, the newspaper spread across his knees. The train rushed through Newark, its whistle shrieking, on to Philadelphia, and then out into flat open country.

  Midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, Kuznetsky went to the bar himself, less for a drink than for a look at Richard’s face. The man’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping, for one hand was beating an invisible tattoo on the arm rest. Kuznetsky wondered what Amy had seen in him. He was good-looking enough, but the mouth was weak, and there was something vain about the neatly trimmed mustache. He looked younger than his age, but not in a good way.

  The clink of Kuznetsky’s glass on the bar seemed to rouse Richard from his trance. He gulped down the rest of his drink, rose from his seat, and walked down the car toward the toilet. Kuznetsky followed, stood outside the door listening to the sounds coming out and watching the doors for other passengers. He heard the toilet flush, saw the latch begin to move, and threw his full weight against the door, the Walther in his hand.

  There was no need for it. The impact had thrown Richard back, hitting his head against something, probably the washbasin. He was out cold.

  Kuznetsky examined the window. It was large enough but he couldn’t get it open. It would have to be the door outside. He eased the toilet door open, found the vestibule empty, and dragged Richard out and into an upright position. Just in time. Someone passed by on his way to the club car, taking only a cursory glance at the two men standing in apparent conversation by the door.

  Kuznetsky let Richard slide to the floor and jerked open the outside door. The force of the train’s passage blew it back, but he managed to push the folding steps out and down, jamming it open, and then, with both arms and a leg, to scoop Richard out. For a few moments Richard’s feet were trapped in the steps, his head bouncing on the rushing tracks, but then the body was gone, sucked into darkness. Kuznetsky pulled back the stairs, let the wind close the door, and stood there, his pulse racing, his mind a jumble of deaths.

  Eight

  The church emptied its flock as Joe and Amy drove into Scottsboro, the men in their best string ties, the women in their pastel frocks. If the coattails and the hem lines had been longer it could have been a scene from Gone With the Wind. There were even a few horse-drawn buggies mingling with the farm pickups and rusty Cadillacs.

  Joe pulled the car up outside the realtor’s house, climbed out, and walked up to the door. An elderly black woman ushered him inside. Amy examined her face in the rearview mirror; she looked as tired as she felt. This time the drive had seemed longer and felt different; this time she was leaving Washington, her family, the few friends she had forever. Soon she would be leaving America, her adopted home for more than twenty years. She would miss her uncle. James too, if he survived.

  She wondered if Kuznetsky – she must remember to call him Smith – if he had such feelings. She couldn’t make him out. He seemed a reflection of the world rather than one of its inhabitants, like a force of nature – no, like a force of the opposite, of human order …

  She had once read a novel, an awful novel called Orphans of the Storm, and, being a fourteen-year-old orphan at the time, had romantically identified herself with its title. But Kuznetsky really did seem to fit the words, he seemed to carry the storm within him, to live in it, to deal it out in controlled bursts. And that was why, she realized, she felt no fear of him. There was nothing irrational in his actions, nothing at all. He would succeed in this operation or die trying, would kill or die without hesitation.

  She could see Joe through the window talking to the realtor. Why was he taking so long? He’d hardly spoken during the long journey and seemed to have lost his cockiness. She guessed that he’d suddenly realized that it wasn’t a game, that the master plan might go wrong, that the Feds he so despised might strap him into an electric chair. But he would come through, she was sure. His pride wouldn’t let him back out. It was a pity that such determination should be wasted on such a twisted morality.

  And you? she asked the mirror. Where are you going? What would the Soviet Union be like? Once she had longed to see Moscow, Leningrad, the other side, her side, but now she felt almost indifferent. The thought of a new life seemed unreal, anticlimatic, not so much a beginning as an end.

  Joe came out of the house, keys in hand, and climbed back behind the wheel.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “He wouldn’t stop talking. Nothing important.”

  An hour later they reached the lodge, and while he unloaded the supplies they’d brought from Washington, she lit the wood stove and made coffee. But by the time it was ready she found him fast asleep on one of the bunks. She drank her own cup, smoked a cigarette, and stared at the three shiny tommy guns leaning against a wall. She felt more tired than sleepy, and after concealing the guns under a bunk, went outside.

  It wasn’t so hot under the trees, and she found herself walking farther and farther along the side of the ridge, taking a sensual pleasure in the play of colors, the panoramic views, and the feel of the forest floor. After half a mile or so she spotted a clear green pool in a hollow below and walked down to it through the pines. Looking at the water made her feel twice as sticky. “Why not?” she murmured to herself, looking around to make sure that the silent pines were the only witnesses. She stripped off her clothes, piled them on a rock, and waded into the water. It was only a few feet deep at the pool’s center, and for several minutes she floated on her back, wallowing in the delicious coolness.

  Lying on the rock to dry herself, she felt a sexual tremble run through her body. She touched herself, at first tentatively, then with a pleasure she had not known for years. His face was clear in her mind, the ivory light shining in through the porthole, the feeling of not knowing where the one ended and the other began.

  She opened her eyes. Physically satisfied, she had never felt so alone. The trees towered over her, both graceful and threatening. She sat up, feeling suddenly cold, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

  Joe was awake when she got back to the lodge, seeming more like his normal self. Perhaps he’d just been tired.

  “Where are the guns?” he asked. “Found a swimming pool, I see,” he added, noticing her wet hair.

  “Under the bed in the middle room, and yes,” she said, brushing past him. “I’m going to try and sleep now.”

  “If you hear gunfire, it’ll be me testing them,” he called after her.

  She took the room farthest from his and lay down, feeling tired and confused. The tiredness triumphed, and when he woke her the light had gone and the lodge was full of the smell of cooking. “Just some canned goods,” he said as she entered the kitchen. “I didn’t find anything to shoot.”

  “The guns are okay?”

  “Yep.”

  They ate in silence, and washed down the meal with strong coffee. “Do you play checkers?” he asked. She nodded and got up to wash the dishes while he set up the board. They played several games, and he won all but the last. She was convinced he’d lost it on purpose, a thought that almost brought back the tears. What was the matter with her? She suddenly had a picture of jailers playing such a game with the man in the condemned cell, the man feeling sorry for the jailers. It was too much. She had to be alone, physically alone.

  He watched her leave the room and felt slightly worried. The whole business was obviously getting to her. He’d hated the idea of working with a woman from the beginning, but had reluctantly conceded to himself that in her case he’d been wrong. She knew what she was doing, and until now she’d shown no trace of nerves at all. Perhaps she needed some comforting, physical comforting. She wasn’t his type – he preferred women with more flesh on them – but …

  He knocked softly on her door, put his head around it. “Don’t suppose you want some company?” he asked softly.

  “No,” she replie
d coldly. “Thank you,” she added more gently, “but no.”

  “Just thought I’d ask,” he said cheerfully. “Sleep well.”

  He lit a cigarette and went outside. Her part was almost over in any case. He and the Germans would do the rest – give all those fucking Yankee liberals a jolt they’d never forget. Two more days.

  And then, as I stand up, the stars and the Great Bear glimmer up there like bars above a silent cell. The poem was beginning to haunt him, to follow him around like a running commentary on his life. In the goods station yard I flattened myself against the foot of the tree like a slice of silence … Well, that had been a Hungarian goods station yard, not this one. There were no trees in this one, no gray weeds … lustrous, dew-laden coal lumps.

  Kuznetsky had checked into the hotel in Bridgeport late that evening and been given, without knowing it, the same room Joe and Amy had used for their earlier vigil. He’d walked down to the station, awakened the sleeping clerk to inquire about the next day’s trains, and familiarized himself with the layout of the yard. A tree would have been useful, but the decrepit boxcar in the siding adjoining the main line would serve the same purpose. Everything seemed as Amy had reported it.

  Now, back in his room, he sat by the window, staring across at the darkened yard, wishing he had a Russian cigarette. He thought he could detect the first hint of moonlight; five days hence it would be earlier, making this end of the operation harder, but the other end easier. The cat can’t catch mice inside and outside at the same time. True. And somewhat facile in this context. It was time he got some sleep.

  Next morning he took his car in for a final checkup, arranged to collect it that evening, and walked down to the station. Waiting for his train, he again checked the layout of the yard, measuring distances in his mind, calculating the safest angle of approach.

  The train was on time, a good omen, and almost empty. A group of boys in uniform, presumably on their last leave before going overseas, were good-naturedly pestering a solitary young woman. She seemed to be enjoying the attention. Kuznetsky took a window seat and set out to memorize the route. For half an hour they chugged down the valley, mountains to the right, the river occasionally visible several miles away to the left. The train stopped at every country junction, though no one seemed to get on or off. The conductor inspected his ticket, tried in vain to start up a conversation about some circus fire in Connecticut, and took out his irritation on one of the young soldiers who’d had the temerity to soil the upholstery with a dirty boot.