by David Wind
“What?” Steven said, Savak’s answer rocking him so much that the word slipped from his mouth before he could stop it. Now he understood why the CIA agent had been following him.
Then his mind sped up. “Jesus, Arnie, how in the hell could you have told the CIA about Entente?”
“You amaze me Steven. After all we’ve been through. After...how can you still think in terms of black and white? A simple action requires a simple reaction. No, damn it all, the world doesn’t work that way. When you want something, you take it, or you make things happen, so you get what you want. There is no perfectly defined good or bad, no right way or wrong way. There is a middle ground, and it’s a very big area. That’s how I was able to use the CIA.
“But the CIA knows nothing about Entente except the usual rumors,” Savak said before he paused to take a deep breath. “Remember Nam?”
Steven didn’t answer; he just stared hard into Savak’s eyes and waited. Savak smiled. “Before we met up for that shit of a mission, I’d been assigned as a CIA liaison. I worked with the CIA in Nam. After we came home from the war, I stayed in contact with the people I’d known there.”
Steven searched Savak’s face, looking for the friend he’d known almost all his life. What had happened to the boy whom he’d grown up with, and to the man he’d loved like a brother? In his place was a stranger who dedicated his life to the death and destruction of everything he had once cherished.
“You had everything worked out from the very beginning, didn’t you? Even before you enlisted me, you’d already made contact with the Soviets. Of course they never knew who you were. Clandestine meetings over the phone. How did you get it going? With a letter?”
Savak nodded thoughtfully. “You’re close. When I finished school, and went to work for Pritman, I kept in contact with my friends at The Company. Every once in a while, I would feed them a tidbit to help with budget allocations, and the like. Everything I gave them, I got back with interest. I learned who the important operatives were for the Soviets, and for the Chinese. I spent years developing a deep cover for myself. A cover that could not be broken.”
“Which is how you were able to borrow Anton from the Soviets.”
“Good, Steven, you’re catching on,” Savak said with a sharp nod. “Anton never met me. He took orders over the phone.”
“But there were at least two people in the lake house with Ellie,” Steven stated.
“Anton and his partner. When they were there, I wasn’t. I was alone with Ellie—that was my rule. They were there to watch her while I was in Washington. I didn’t spend a lot of time with her—just enough to acquire what I needed.”
“How did you get the Soviets to go along with you? How could they not suspect you as a double, if you wouldn’t meet them face to face?”
The crazed smile twisted his face again. “Easy. I gave them good information. I never once fed them anything false. Some was very important. After a while, they accepted and believed. When staffs changed, it became a habit, or even perhaps a tradition never to ask me to come in. I was a valuable resource; one they would not risk losing.”
The madness grew in Savak’s eyes. Steven saw his hand tremble slightly, and strove to keep Savak’s mind occupied. “Did you work the Chinese the same way?”
Savak gave one jerky bob of his head. “To a degree.”
“To what purpose? Was this some weird game to see how much chaos you could cause?”
“Chaos? You can’t imagine the upheaval that is coming. No, what I’m doing is because I want them destroyed. Nixon opened diplomatic channels with China. The bastard wanted them to be our friends! Well they aren’t our friends! They never have been and they never will, no more than the fucking Soviets are our friends!”
Steven looked at Chuck Latham’s body, hanging five feet behind him. A shiver raced along his back. He shifted on his feet. Savak tensed at Steven’s movement. His right hand jutted forward, the pistol rising toward Steven’s face.
“Arnie,” Steven pleaded. “Think about what you’ve told me. Think about what your actions mean.”
“Think about it? That’s all I’ve been doing since nineteen seventy-one! I’m finished thinking now. I have no intention of proselytizing. This is my project. I don’t need anyone else to believe in it but me.”
Steven’s blood raced. Time was running out, and he sensed Savak’s words were about finished. Yet, from somewhere deep within him, he found the strength to wrap a mantle of calmness around himself and find a way to keep Savak’s mind on the story. “So you fed information to the Chinese and the Soviets in order to gain their trust. And then you gave them Entente.”
“Not right away,” Savak said proudly. “I couldn’t begin that phase of my plan until I was certain I had Pritman ready to make a successful run for the Presidency. When we decided—all of us Steven, you, me, Simon Clarke, Pritman, and the rest of the team—that Pritman was ready, I started giving both sides information about our current administration’s foreign policy plans. It was a necessary maneuver to make sure that whatever the administration attempted would be countered by the Soviets and the Chinese.”
“Arnie,” Steven whispered, his voice so choked with emotions that he could barely say his name.
Savak laughed at Steven’s abhorrence. “Then, as our not so great President’s star began to tarnish, I leaked hints of Pritman’s foreign policy plans. I told the Chinese that Pritman would want to sign a mutual protection treaty with them. Of course, I told the Soviets the exact same thing.”
“You told them Pritman wanted to sign a treaty with the Soviets?”
Savak shook his head. His sandy hair whipped about. “No. That was the decisive factor. I told the Soviets Pritman was planning to sign a treaty with the Chinese. Hence the reason they began to mobilize.”
Savak laughed. “When Pritman wins the election, the Soviets will start a full scale war with the Chinese. The Chinese think we’ll come to their aid. But we won’t, because I will make sure the treaties are stalled in congressional red tape, and we won’t be able to commit ourselves to action without them.”
Steven nodded. “But even with all your intricate planning, Ellie was the unexpected. She found you out, and she made you push your timetable up. You didn’t know she was Secret Service, did you?”
“No. Not at first. She was a lot like you Steven. She never broke. I worked on her the same way Lin worked on me. She held fast. But there came a point when she told me who she was.” Savak paused to laugh. “She even had the gall to tell me she’d reported in about me—I knew she was bluffing.”
Savak fell suddenly silent. He stared at Steven for several long seconds. “And now you’ll have to die. Ellie will too, of course…Ellie’s sister too. It will appear you killed her after you killed Chuck and Helene. You went crazy. A PTSD induced schizophrenia sent your mind back to the prison camp. When you realized what you’d done, you killed yourself.”
“It won’t work, Amie. Too many people know.”
Savak’s eyes went wild. The corners of his mouth turned white. “There’s still a way. It will be harder now, but it can be done.”
“I don’t understand,” Steven said, stalling again. “If you hate the Chinese and the Soviets so damned much, how could you have worked with them?”
“I told you I wasn’t working with them!” Savak shouted. Spittle sprayed outward with each word. “I was setting them up. When Pritman wins the election, Russia and China will destroy each other and we’ll be the better for it. Entente will assure that.”
“Entente? You’re not talking about Entente. You’re talking about using treason to gain political power! You corrupted our dream, Arnie, and turned it into some sort of a twisted scheme to get revenge for what happened to us. The shame of it is, that the way we had originally envisioned Entente, it would have worked. We could have given the world something to grow on, to become better. But all you saw it for was a way to become powerful enough to hurt the people whose only crime was in
the way they had been trained to think and act.”
Savak drew in a sharp and ragged breath. The hand holding the pistol began to shake. Unable to stop himself this time, Steven watched Savak’s hand. He saw Savak’s finger tighten on the trigger. It held steady for a heartbeat, and then relaxed.
“Corrupted our dream?” he said. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Entente, as it is today, is exactly what I planned. Not your way, and certainly not the way those other asses who worked on it see it. What I’ve done is to implement what I set out to do from the moment you told me the truth about our mission. It was then, in The Nam, that I promised myself I would never be used again.”
“Really?” Steven snapped angrily, unable to contain his rage. “But it’s all right to do to other people what they did to us.”
“Yes,” Savak stated.
“You stupid bastard,” Steven spat from between clenched teeth. He took a half step forward, but froze when Savak’s hand jerked.
“Who’s the stupid one, Steven? I’ve been planning this for years. Now it’s within my grasp. After the election, I’m going to be Pritman’s Chief of Staff. I’m going to be the second most important man in this country—perhaps in the world! When I reach that position, I’ll have accomplished exactly what I’ve spent years working and planning for. And I’ll have my revenge on the government that betrayed me during the war.”
“Never.”
“Absolutely!” Savak glanced at his watch. “Steven, in two hours, Pritman will sit with the committee, and put Entente on the table. They’ll accept it, and they will accept him. In two months he’ll win the first primary, and next January, I’ll put Entente into action.”
Savak stared past Steven to where Chuck Latham’s body hung in bloody silence. Then he focused on Steven again. “When Pritman is elected, America will never be in a war again, because there won’t be any countries strong enough to challenge us, once Russia and China have destroyed each other.
“Then the American government will slowly be changed. The new government will remove people like Colonel Botlin, along with the rest of the old-line military leaders. The government will once again be a government of the people and for the people, not for the armies and old thinkers.”
Listening to Savak’s narrow sighted philosophy, Steven knew logic would not penetrate his sickened thoughts. He had to get him angry enough to make him careless—just long enough for him to make a move.
Steven took a half step back, and said, “You’re going to do nothing. The government will not be changed, at least not the way you foresee it.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Steven,” Savak said in an all too calm manner, seemingly undisturbed by Steven’s movement. “But, since you’ll be dead, you’ll never know, will you?”
Steven saw a telltale flicker cross his eyes and sensed Savak was about to pull the trigger. “Arnie, think! They’ll know it was you.”
Savak shook his head as if to rid himself of a bug on his face. “No. Everyone will think you went crazy. You failed when you tried to kill Ellie, but you were successful with Chuck, Helene, Lomax and Londrigan. The FBI agents were closing in on you, so you killed them before ending your own haunted existence. Everyone will read the tragic story of your life, and some will even feel sorry for another deplorable example caused by our stupidity in Vietnam.”
“Xzi Tao is still alive, and so is Carla. They know.”
Savak laughed loudly. The sound grated on Steven’s ears. “Xzi Tao knows nothing, because you knew nothing when you met with him. No, actually, the only thing Xzi Tao knows is that you saved his life. I still find it hard to believe I missed both of you that night.”
“How did you know I was meeting with him? The CIA agent?” Steven asked as he began to turn sideways.
Savak nodded. “He traced the call you made. Then I called my contact at the Chinese Embassy. They’re just like the Soviets. They monitor every incoming call. He told me Xzi Tao had a meeting arranged for that night, and the location as well.”
“But—”
Savak straightened his arm, pointing the pistol at Steven’s head. “No buts. Ellie’s sister won’t be alive much longer. If you’re expecting her to come to your aid, don’t bother. I blew the telephone grid junction box. The phones are out for a three-mile radius. I smashed up the FBI car. No, Steven, she’ll still be at Latham’s when I’m finished with you.”
“It won’t work. Carla isn’t Ellie’s sister; she’s a Secret Service agent.”
“I’m not surprised. When there was no fallout from Treasury over Ellie, I knew they had placed someone inside. It just makes it better for me,” Savak said, his eyes glazed, as he nodded forcefully. “She was watching you, Steven. Not only did the FBI suspect you of espionage, but the Secret Service did too.”
“They know it wasn’t me.”
“They only think it wasn’t you. In a few days more evidence pointing to you will surface. A note to Anton, instructing him to come after you and get you out of the agency safe house. I planned the scenario very carefully.”
“But none of this was supposed to happen until the spring,” Steven said as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Isn’t that the way you set it up. They’d find Ellie’s body when the lake thawed. Naturally, they would arrest me and prove me a spy. Of course, I wouldn’t still be working for Pritman. No, with Ellie missing, and my being—supposedly—the last person she was with, I’d have had to resign under a cloud of suspicion, long before spring.
“And Pritman would be heading for the first primary about then, assured of a victory because of his brilliant new foreign policy program ideas and the anxiety that Russia and China would soon be at war. No, you couldn’t risk having me around. It would ruin your plans. But those plans are gone now, Arnie. It truly is over. You’re supposed to be in California. If you’re not there, then someone is going to wonder why.”
“All taken care of. I called my friend at Langley. I told him you’d called me, and you were in Greyton. He said he’d notify Blayne. I told him I was coming too, to help talk you into giving up.”
“Awfully thin, Arnie,” Steven said sarcastically.
“It’s good enough,” Savak said. Taking a step forward, Savak raised the pistol to Steven’s temple.
Now! Swinging his arm up, he threw himself sideways across Savak’s tall frame, spilling them both to the ground.
They landed hard. Savak spun, twisting Steven under him. Steven screamed in fury and agony when the burns on his back tore open on the rough wooden floor.
Using the barrel of his pistol, Savak slammed him in the injured cheek, and then raked the barrel across the barely healing gash, ripping it open. Agony burst through him. Blood splattered upward, blinding him in one eye.
Then Savak’s weight was off him. He saw a blurry vision of Savak gaining his feet and arcing the pistol toward his head.
Ignoring the pain, he rolled and grabbed at the Colt in his waistband. When his fingers gripped the handle, he pulled it free.
They fired at the same moment. Steven felt a hot brand of pain slice across the back of his hand. His fingers opened in reflex and the pistol fell to the floor.
He scrambled backward, but stopped when he saw Savak on his knees. Savak was holding his thigh. Blood spurted from under his hand. Steven had hit the artery in his thigh.
Then he saw that Savak’s pistol was still in his hand. He threw himself forward, scrambling madly toward the Colt.
Savak raised his gun again, just as Steven’s fingertips reached the handle. Even as he grasped the gun, he knew he was too late.
The shot came, loud. Steven jerked involuntarily. There was no pain. Then he saw Savak’s eyes fill with surprise. Savak opened his mouth, closed it, and fell face forward.
Savak’s pistol hit the floor at the same time as his face. The gun went off, the bullet digging through the wooden floor.
Steven scrambled to his feet as Carla and Blayne rushed in. Blayne had a hastily
wrapped bandage around his head, his hand tucked into the front of his jacket to support the useless arm. Carla’s Browning was in her hand. Behind them, another group of men led by Banacek entered the cabin.
Steven went over to Carla. “You have to call in. He didn’t stop Pritman. Pritman must be stopped.”
An unfamiliar man pushed through the group. Steven made him for one of the various government service branches. The newcorner, tall, thin, and prematurely bald, came to a stop in front of Steven. “Ryan. Ken Ryan, I’m Paul Grange’s replacement. Mr. Morrisy, we confiscated the Entente papers from Senator Pritman earlier today. As of right now, he’s in the White House, meeting with the President. The threat to our government is over.”
Steven looked at Carla, who shrugged. He turned to Blayne face and locked on the agent’s eyes. “Do you understand it now?”
Blayne nodded. “Not all of it. But I will. Miss Statler has been explaining things to me.”
“Steven, your hand,” Carla said, coming closer and reaching for him.
He turned from her and looked down at Savak. He bent and rolled Savak’s body over. The look of surprise was still on Arnie’s face. Steven thought that in death, Arnie looked more like himself.
“At least we got the traitorous bastard before he could do any more harm,” Ken Ryan said as he came up behind Steven. “He won’t be selling us out any more.”
Steven whirled. The anger and hatred he’d felt for Savak, only moments before, had disappeared with Savak’s death. The man lying dead on the floor was no longer an insane stranger who had tried to kill him; the dead man was his lifelong friend.
Grabbing Ryan by the lapel, Steven pulled him close. “You ignorant bastard! You have no idea of who this man was! He wasn’t a traitor. He wasn’t selling out our country. He thought he was helping it. He thought he was saving this country from people like you!”
Steven abruptly released the Secret Service agent, and went to where Chuck was hanging from the ceiling. “Someone give me a knife.”
One of Banacek’s deputies started forward. Banacek stopped him and handed Steven his own knife. Steven pulled a chair over, stepped up on it, and cut his friend down.
