The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  I got out of bed to see about some grub. And a shower, I stunk to high heaven. Getting up exposed a problem, however. Ilinca had taken all my clothes. I poked my nose into the small closet. Empty save for a couple blankets and a long wool coat. I squeezed into it and buttoned up. The sleeves barely covered my elbows.

  An oval mirror hung on the back of the closet door. I took a look. My face was swole up like a black and blue bullfrog. And me with a hot date.

  The bedroom door, to my surprise, was unlocked. I padded up the hall to the kitchen whistling “Swanee River,” not wanting to startle anyone. The wool coat itched like a sonofabitch.

  No one intervened and the kitchen was empty. Some security. Okay, I wasn’t likely to flee barefoot over snow-capped mountains. But what was to stop me from grabbing a kitchen knife and committing hari kari before they could wheedle highly classified intel out of me?

  Well, the bounty piled high on the kitchen counters and chopping block for one. Roasted game birds, candied fruits, pickled vegetables, pink salmon in mayonnaise, sesame cakes, two kinds of pâté and three kinds of caviar.

  I glanced out a kitchen window that overlooked a back courtyard framed with chestnut trees, and saw reason number two.

  The Princess had been skinny dipping in the lake. I knew this because her hair was wet and she was shivering most fetchingly. And she was nude when she shed her silk robe, stood gloriously still for a moment, stretching her back, then stepped down into some sort of hot spring steaming away in the courtyard.

  I had never seen a woman so perfectly naked before, perfect as a marble statue in the Louvre. So perfect as to be almost beyond carnal desire.

  Almost. Did I dare join her? I needed a good soak. And we could have candid conversation. There didn’t figure to be a hidden mike on the patio. It would be rude and presumptuous of me of course but when had that ever stopped me?

  I let myself out the side door to see Ilinca the maid sitting on a stone bench, smoking a cigarette. Damn. She shot to her feet, a pugnacious look on her mug. I raised my hands in surrender and summoned my best please don’t hurt me smile.

  It worked. Try as she might Ilinca couldn’t squelch a laugh at the half-naked bullfrog that stood before her, bundled into an ill-fitting coat.

  Princess Stela called to her from around the corner to my left, saying the Romanian equivalent of ‘What’s so damn funny?’

  I turned the corner and answered her question.

  Princess Stela, sunk up to her neck in a stone pit of steaming water that smelled of sulfur, was not amused. Or shy. She stood up, put her hands on her hips and rattled off some rapid fire Romanian

  Ilinca led me back into the house. I was still hungry and smelly but in a better mood. It had to do with what I saw below Princess Stela’s perfect breasts. The silvery stretch marks across her belly. She had been pregnant, presumably given birth.

  I had done my homework on the Romanian royals. Stela had been married but there was no mention of offspring. She wasn’t tending to a precious bundle in Paris, Bill Harvey would have mentioned it. But those stretch marks might explain why Princess Stela had returned to her family’s ancestral cottage in Romania. She wanted to search for her child.

  Ilinca took me into Stela’s gauzy boudoir with its four-poster bed. She opened a standing closet in the corner. Judging by the jumble of styles and sizes crammed into the wardrobe Princess Stela had entertained a number of gentlemen visitors here over the years.

  Unfortunately there was only one set of duds suitable for a big galoot like me. A pair of moleskin pants, a flannel shirt and a tan hunting jacket with a corduroy collar and deep pockets for dead game.

  I tried them on and looked at myself in the full-length mirror and wondered why this getup bothered me so much. I didn’t want to look like a bumpkin of course but it wasn’t that. The trousers were a tad short, yet the jacket sleeves met my wrists because the shoulders were so broad. Could be I was wearing the hunting outfit of a gentleman visitor by the name of Frank Wisner.

  Weird.

  Ilinca marched me outside to a wood frame bathhouse where guests washed off the smell of sulfur from the hot springs. I took a cold shower under her watchful eye, which annoyed me no end and which was, I suppose, the point. To make me feel like a small boy.

  Ilinca gave me a rough towel to dry off with and wrap around my waist. My grooming was not complete, however. She snatched at my chin spinach and shook her head. A scraggly beard was not acceptable at milady’s table. Or, presumably, in her bed.

  Ilinca pointed me toward a cold water basin with a pockmarked tin mirror and handed me a rusty Blue Blade. No hot water, no shave cream. Nope, ain’t no days like that.

  I handed her back the razor. “No dice, Ilinca.”

  She blinked at me, confused. Was I refusing a direct order?

  I was. I picked up my borrowed duds and marched back to the house in search of some socks and underwear.

  -----

  The dinner bell rang about an hour later. Yes, there was an actual dinner bell and I was Pavlov’s dog. The dining room table was covered with a lace tablecloth and set with enough china, silver and crystal to make Marie Antoinette blush.

  The NKVD chef, in a crisp white tunic, seated me at the side of the table. The chair at the head of the table was empty, as were all the plates, bowls and goblets. There was a pot of soup simmering on the stove and something dark and meaty in the oven, spitting and crackling.

  I sat and waited for the lady of the manor to make an appearance. I sat and waited and listened to my stomach growl.

  The night got started once Princess Stela, wearing a dark red dress with a cinched waist and a full skirt, took her chair. Her shoulders were bare. Were they ever. Wine was poured and food was served, course after delicious course.

  I was surprised at how much I enjoyed caviar, though I learned it’s best to spread it lightly on a cracker. Spooning it directly into your mouth is frowned upon.

  Polite conversation was had. I enjoyed myself completely, but a thought nagged. Why the half-ass security? I wasn’t a lust-drunk government functionary, I was an experienced agent trained to kill people. Where was Ilinca to keep an eye on me while the chef was busy? Where were the armed guards patrolling the perimeter?

  I had noticed an old carriage house behind the cottage when I was out in the courtyard. Presumably it housed a car or truck. Escape was not impossible.

  I couldn’t figure it. It sure as hell wasn’t going the way Lavrenty Beria would’ve drawn it up. Or Frank Wisner for that matter. It was rinkydink.

  Princess Stela got up to powder her nose. The NKVD chef slid a frosty look my way. I raised my glass to him. Hell of a cook for a skinny guy.

  Then it struck me. Lavrenty Beria would never have signed off on this cozy arrangement in the first place. Perhaps a superior had counseled patience. All capital cities run on gossip and rumor.

  We don’t want to transport this American to Moscow where his presence will be quickly known. It is better to deal with him in the hinterlands.

  Beria had only one superior that I was aware of. Holy shit. Could be it was the Chateau Lafite ’33 talking but it was possible that I was enjoying a candlelit feast with a Romanian princess thanks to political interference from on high. Thanks to Joe Stalin.

  I gnawed on the tiny drumstick of a pheasant or squab or quail. We were rapidly approaching the third act of this production. The prospect was daunting. I was drunk on food more than wine, in no condition to spew semi-believable bullshit to a hidden mike while nestled in Stela Varadja’s four-poster. Not without a walk through.

  I needed to get Stela someplace where we could talk. A cup of mud on the veranda maybe. What was the drill? Was I supposed to moan and groan and whisper sweet nothings to the light fixture? It seemed so silly, and dispiriting. Making fake love to a beautiful woman.

  Princess Stela returned to her seat at the head of the table, smiling pleasantly. “You are enjoying the repast, Monsieur?”

 
“Not sure,” I said. “But the food’s great!”

  No laugh from the Princess. I titled my head toward the courtyard, mimed holding a coffee cup. But Stela was watching the chef in the kitchen. She reached over and took my hand. Hers was warm, silken. Mine clammy. She gave me a squeeze, whispering, “Crepes Suzette.”

  The NKVD chef wheeled a cart to the head of the table. The cart held a sauté pan heated by a can of Sterno, inside the pan were thin folded-over pancakes. He poured in a glug of brandy which he ignited with a long-snouted lighter apparently invented for the purpose of serving Crepes Suzette en flambé.

  Communism, it seemed to me, was rife with contradictions.

  After dessert we sat and drank coffee. The chef remained in the kitchen, stacking dishes for the maid. We drank more coffee.

  Stela excused herself once more to freshen up. I thought this odd so I titled my chair back and watched her. She didn’t duck into her bedroom. She slipped into the bedroom across the hall. She returned a minute later, her face a mask of grim purpose.

  Princess Stela resumed her seat. “And what is news of your American election for President?” she said apropos of nothing.

  I told her what little I knew about the Truman-Dewey race. Governor Dewey had a good lead heading into the home stretch. President Truman was banging on about a ‘Do Nothing’ Congress.

  Stela reached into her beaded purse while I was talking and removed something you don’t expect to find in a beaded purse. A leather sap. She slid it to me under the table and looked at me, meaningfully.

  “Dmitri is busy. Please to fetch me fresh cup.”

  I slipped the blackjack into the game pocket of my hunting jacket. “My pleasure.”

  I ambled over to the coffee urn on the kitchen counter. Dmitri, to my right, cranked his pale face in my direction, eyes narrowed.

  Perhaps he noticed I was carrying the cup and saucer in my left hand. So I used both mitts to set the cup down and said, “Excellent meal, Dmitri, best I’ve had.”

  Dmitri grunted and turned away. I filled the cup with my left hand, dug out the sap with my right, stepped back and crowned him a good one.

  He was out on his feet. His forehead would have smacked the counter on the way down so I grabbed him from behind and laid him out on the floor, face up. I owed him that for the good eats.

  I opened his eyelids. His pupils were rolled up and blank. I patted his pockets. No gun to steal.

  I stood up. Stela was gone.

  Then she was back, lugging a suitcase. She hurried to the side door, opened it and snapped, “Are you coming?”

  No, your highness, I think I’ll remain behind, take long, moonlit walks around the lake, work on my memoirs.

  “Gimme a second.” I inspected the carving knives tucked in a wooden block. I selected one with a five inch blade, wrapped it in a linen napkin and put it in my pocket with the leaded sap. “Let’s go.”

  We crunched across gravel to a sturdy old carriage house made of planed and varnished tree trunks. Behind the garage stood a newer, smaller stucco building with narrow pillbox windows and a flat roof sprouting a six-foot antenna. The radio room. The comm center. The transcribing-Stela’s-nocturnal-adventures general HQ.

  The slotted windows were dark. I pointed. “Anyone in there?”

  Stela shook her head, and opened the swinging doors of the old carriage house to reveal an amazing sight. A groundbreaking automobile I first read about in the pages of AutoCar. A Soviet-made GAZ-61, the very first four-wheel-drive passenger vehicle that wasn’t a Jeep.

  I prowled around her with a low wolf whistle. The four-door body sat jacked up half a foot above the chassis and the rugged cross country tires. The 61 was designed to scale mountain passes and ford streams and was the favored Command Car of Red Army brass during World War Two and beyond. She was, to put it bluntly, a two hundred and twenty cubic inch, four stroke, six cylinder piece of ass.

  “You can drive this?” said Princess Stela, a question she should have asked before now.

  I knew that GAZ manufacturing had begun as a joint venture with the Ford Motor Company in the early 30s, when the Yanks and Reds were on better terms. Ford had since been shown the door. But motor vehicles don’t give a shit about politics.

  “Sure,” I said, “I can drive it.”

  “Make yourself acquainted,” she said. “I am needing to change for our journey.”

  Journey to where, I wondered as she hurried back to the cottage in her full-skirted red dress. I put her suitcase in the back seat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stela returned to the carriage house in traveling garb – black slacks, sheepskin boots, a dark gray greatcoat over a white blouse, her black hair piled up under a woolen cap. She looked like a very cute boy.

  I had checked the fluid levels and inspected the tires while she was gone. We were gassed up and ready to rumble up the gravel drive.

  The GAZ-61 was light on its feet for a car stuck atop a truck bed. When we reached the road I asked Stela which way to turn, thinking she would say ‘right,’ the opposite direction from whence we came.

  She pointed left.

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “Drive the car,” she said, “and I will answer.”

  I turned left. The night was clear and moonless. It figured to be about eleven. The stone cottage, like me, was clockless.

  I drove a while, getting the feel of the stiff gearbox, enjoying the car’s surefootedness on the twisty road, waiting for Princess Stela to say her piece.

  “Sorin Dragomir was Captain of Palace Guard in the time of King Mihai,” said Stela. She sounded weary, not keyed up as I was at our daring escape.

  The manila envelope handed her by the Securitate would have briefed Stela on my Captain Dragomir connection. Her news about Dragomir’s job didn’t surprise me. He was a spit and polish kinda guy.

  “I have a son,” she said. “He was stolen away.”

  I drove on as the road climbed, jouncing over potholes.

  “He was stolen away when Red Army deposed our king, as the tanks they come along Calea Victoriei.”

  “To the Royal Palace?”

  “Of course. At that time I am supposing some member of staff has taken him, to keep him far from Sovietici.”

  “Okay. And then what happened?”

  “Nothing then happened!”

  “No ransom note? No indication that your son had been kidnapped?”

  “No!”

  Stela Varadja fell silent. I filled in the blanks best I could. She figured her son had been kidnapped by some member of the royal staff who planned to use him as a political pawn. When she learned that Captain Dragomir and Frank Wisner had big plans, the tumblers clicked. She knew who the kidnapper was.

  Frank Wisner told me his contact in Romania had a ‘secret ally’ who was integral to his plot to overthrow the government. Sorin Dragomir said he was a monarchist who didn’t care if King Michael returned, since he was a Hohenzollern descendant with a Greek mother. It looked like Dragomir had a better, purer candidate for King of all Romania. It looked like his secret ally was the three-year-old direct male heir of Vlad the Impaler.

  It occurred to me somewhere after the second harrowing mountain switchback that I didn’t have to do this.

  “I was not sent here to rescue your son, Stela. I was sent here to assess Captain Dragomir’s operational readiness.”

  “And kidnap of young boy is part of this…readiness?”

  “I don’t know. Where I come from kidnapping is as bad as murder.”

  “But you are not, now, where you are from,” said Stela, tartly.

  “No, ma’am. Not by a long shot.”

  My statement was punctuated a short minute later by a sphincter-puckering wolf howl. And not one of those Gene Autry movie wolves neither, keening mournfully from a distant ravine. This sucker was close.

  I gave the car some gas and leaned into the curve. It was better driving these mountain roads after dark I decide
d. You couldn’t see the jagged tombs awaiting you below every turn.

  “What is it you expect to happen here?” I said.

  “We will go to Secaria, to Sorin Dragomir.”

  “Secaria?”

  “To the south.”

  “How do you know that Dragomir lives there?” She flicked her hand at me, silly question. “Okay, and then what?”

  “You will tell Sorin Dragomir to return to me my son.”

  “Okay, and then what?”

  “You will have some plans, plans to return to USA. We will join you so far as Paris.”

  Provided I had a flight out. Plan A was contact the flyboys with my J/E radio. I counted Dragomir as my plan B since he had a back channel to Wisner. If the Captain had headed for the hills after my capture, however, and taken my J/E with him, I was screwed, blued and tattooed.

  I had assumed Princess Stela had an escape plan up her sleeve when we piled into the GAZ-61, some romantic anti-Commie underground railroad that smuggled fugitives to freedom across the Balkans to the Adriatic Sea.

  Guess not, kinda pissed me off. I kept my eyes on the road and asked PS a rude question.

  “Why did you go into Ilinca’s bedroom?”

  “I am sorry?” she said, deep in thought.

  “You went into Ilinca’s bedroom after dinner. Why?”

  “I went to make certain she was passed away.”

  “Passed out?”

  “Da. I had given to her soup dose of Nembutal.”

  “And how did that work?”

  “Ilinca was, how you say in States, a gone goose.”

  This was one cold chiquita. I waited until we reached a straight stretch of road to turn and ask another, ruder, question. One that William King Harvey would approve of.

  “Stela, do you know anything about the arrest and execution of a large number Romanian expatriates in Bucharest earlier this year?”

  “Everyone in Romania is knowing about it.”

  “Did you have anything to do with it?”

  Princess Stela gave me a stare worthy of her murderous ancestor. “What…are you saying?”

  I stopped the car and met her look. “You have been working with the Securitate and the NKVD. You have high-level contacts in U.S. intelligence. It’s a logical question.”