Atropos

by William L. DeAndrea

  Trotter had arranged for him to learn all this so he might get out of his father’s clutches. Which he had, until he’d voluntarily walked back into them. Apparently, the Congressman had been right. The spy business was bred into every cell of Trotter’s body. To use the Congressman’s homey phrase, “That boy can no more walk away from this business than a buzzard can walk away from meat.”

  But while Trotter had been freed to make up his own mind, Rines had found himself trapped. Since the old man no longer had any secrets from him, he trusted Rines with everything, told him things it scared the FBI man to know.

  And he’d started using him. The Congressman would get messages to him suggesting that he assign a few Special Agents to investigate this building or that person, and let him know what turned up. Before long, Rines was doing more work for the Agency than he was for the Bureau.

  Then the old man had had his stroke. It was obvious that Trotter should take over top position. No one else had the training, experience, and brilliantly twisted brain necessary for the job. For a few mad moments, Trotter had tried to duck the job and wish it onto Rines, but the fall that had smashed up his body had apparently also knocked some sense into his head, and he’d taken the job.

  But that had meant a restructuring. It was a radical change, but at the same time it was a perfect demonstration of the Agency’s use-everything philosophy. Trotter now had the resources of a huge national and international news-gathering operation to put at the Agency’s disposal. Rines, who because of the decentralization would be needed full-time on Agency business, had “retired” from the Bureau and gotten a Private Investigator’s license. “Investors” (the Agency) had put up money for him to hire a staff and open these sumptuous offices in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon. Nobody who worked in these offices—except Rines, the top computer people, and the communications technicians who sent Trotter and the Congressman their thrice-daily reports—knew whom they were really working for.

  This had a few advantages. For one thing, for an outfit like the Agency, recruiting was always a problem. The Congressman had started with men and women he’d known from OSS days, but they were dead now, or too old to cut it in the field. He’d bred one operative; for the rest, he had to depend on recommendations from the few people he trusted. But with the PI business, Rines hired likely candidates (he paid top money to get top prospects) and actually got to see how they did at the work before trusting them with information they might find too heavy a burden.

  Fenton Rines Investigations also put all the information gathered from the straight business (and business was excellent) at the disposal of the Agency. It might not be especially gentlemanly, concerning yourself with the extramarital and/or financial peccadillos of the kind of people in the D.C. area who could afford Rines’s rates, but it was of inestimable value in spotting potential security risks, or for putting pressure on when you needed someone to do something.

  And the Agency hadn’t lost touch with the Bureau when Rines had retired, either. The Azrael operation had made it necessary for a young Special Agent named Joe Albright to be brought in on some of the Agency’s secrets. That included the big one—that it existed. He’d shown an aptitude for this extra-special kind of Special Agentry that working for the Congressman—for Trotter, rather—required. Albright also had a girlfriend in Kirkester, someone he’d met during the Azrael thing, so it was perfectly natural to use him as a courier whenever they needed to send anything to Trotter.

  The door opened. Rines rose to meet the Congressman and his son.

  “Where have you got Jake?” the Congressman asked.

  “Not here yet,” Rines told him. “How’s the President?”

  “Seems like a nice guy. At least he’s a known quantity. Who knows what the next one’s going to be like?”

  “Sit down,” Rines said. “Claudette will buzz me when Feder gets here.”

  “As long as we’re here, we might as well get a little work done,” Trotter said.

  “Sure, you want to go over the afternoon report? I was going to suggest that you do that first even if Feder had been here already.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I think it might tell you what he’s got on his mind.”

  Norman Jones keyed the door of the next car open and backed in, sweeping the platform behind him as he did so. He wasn’t in any hurry, but he wasn’t dawdling, either. His job was to clean up the Metro cars when they came into the yard every night, and in the morning, when he went home, all the cars would be clean.

  He liked it better here, at the downtown yards outside Union Station. He’d built up enough seniority now so his wishes counted for something, and his first big wish was to get transferred from Shady Grove, which was way out in Maryland. There, if he finished doing all his work early, wasn’t anything to do but sit around and twiddle his thumbs. There wasn’t much to do here, either, but Norman liked to walk around and look at the city lights when he had the time. Another thing was, he lived nearby. If an emergency came up, he could run home. From Shady Grove, he’d be lucky if he could send a telegram.

  Norman finished the platform, pulled back his broom like a matador with a sword, and turned around.

  And there was someone in the car.

  “Damn,” Norman said. “Second one this week.”

  Some weeks, it happened more than that. Weren’t any conductors on the Metro, see, so when the line shut down each midnight, anybody who slept through the loudspeaker announcement wound up here with Norman.

  Norman walked down to him, keeping his broom handy. He didn’t look bad, a small old white man with gray hair. He was a white man, even though his skin was darker than Norman’s—he just had one of those tropical tans. Maybe he was a Congressman back from one of those junkets or something.

  He didn’t look like one of the dope fiends who sometimes nodded out on the Metro, and sometimes died there. The suburbanites who came into the city and tied one on a little too big usually were a lot younger than this guy. And you never got winos and derelicts on the Metro. The phrase for them now was “the homeless,” but Norman Jones, who had worked very, very hard for the last thirty-nine of his forty-nine years to keep a roof over his head and the rest of the heads he was responsible for, still thought “bum” was the word that said it best. Anyway, whatever you called them, you didn’t get them on the Metro. Not in the cars, anyway. Sometimes in those big barns of stations, but not in the cars. It cost too much. This wasn’t like New York, where one dollar let you ride as long as you wanted. There were fancy computer tickets here, and the longer you rode, the more it cost.

  Anyway, this guy didn’t look like any of those, but Norman didn’t take any chances. He walked up the aisle to a distance of about eight feet from the sleeper.

  “Yo. Mister, wake up. Hey, wake up.”

  No answer. He didn’t even stir.

  “Come on, I’ll show you where to get a cab. You’re lucky. You could have wound up way the hell out in Shady Grove.”

  Still no answer. Norman prodded him gently with the broom handle.

  “Dammit, Mister, I’ve got work to do. If I have to get the guard, you’ll be in no end of trouble, wait till you see the fare they’re gonna hit you with—”

  Norman stopped because the prodding had caused the old white man to move at last. He moved right out of the seat and slumped to the floor. That was when Norman saw the ice-pick handle sticking up from the man’s back.

  Chapter Eight

  Stamford, Connecticut

  THE DOOR TO APARTMENT 6B looked different from the others on this floor; it was cold when Trotter touched it. Metal. His old friend must be having a hard time adjusting to freedom.

  Trotter rang the doorbell and waited. A peephole in the door opened, then clicked shut. Then followed a series of gliding, grating, and clicking noises as various locks and bolts were undone. Finally the door swung open.

  The man in the doorway had aged since Trotter had seen him last. Age, whi
ch it had seemed would never touch him, had begun to caress him gently. There were lines around the eyes, now, and a touch of gray in his hair. He was still the handsomest man Trotter had ever seen.

  “Come in, my friend. This is a surprise.” The man was smiling broadly. He seemed almost too happy over some unexpected company on a Wednesday afternoon. Then Trotter realized that a lot of the smile must be from relief. When a man is constantly expecting unknown dangers, a known one can be almost a comfort.

  Trotter looked around while his host locked the door back up. A nice place, modern and roomy. There wasn’t a lot of personality to it, but Bulanin hadn’t been here very long yet. The only personal touches Trotter could see were the metal shutters on the insides of the windows, and the big gray desk with a word processor on it and papers scattered all over.

  “Sit down, sit down,” he said. “Are you still Trotter?”

  Trotter smiled in spite of himself. Bulanin had built a career on that charm. What the hell, he thought. “Call me Allan, Grigory Illyich.”

  “Can I get you something to drink, Allan?”

  “No, thanks. You seem to be settled in.”

  “The work helps.” Bulanin had built himself some kind of clear drink in a very large glass. He sat down, pulled at it as if it were lemonade, and looked at Trotter as if daring him to make something of it.

  This was new. Bulanin was an atypical Russian in many ways, and one of them was (or had been) that he had never been much of a drinker. He had had ambitions of someday ruling the Soviet Union. Maybe, Trotter thought, he no longer had any reason to keep his head clear.

  Trotter had encountered Bulanin a few years ago in London. The Russian was the top KGB man there at the time, and in an attempt to score a coup that would boost his career, had backed a terrorist’s plan to kidnap the Congressman’s British counterpart. That had ended badly for Bulanin—if he hadn’t defected, his own people would have killed him. Painfully, as an example to others.

  So Bulanin had come to the United States. He had been an invaluable source of information, so valuable that the Congressman had taken no chances on Bulanin’s former comrades finding him and taking him back home as a show monkey, or simply killing him. Bulanin had been interned in a compound in the Maryland mountains not far from Camp David. He’d all the comforts he could ask for, but he’d also had a cadre of grim Israelis for guards and a deadly electrified fence between him and any place the old man didn’t want him to go.

  Bulanin had taken it calmly for a while, but then he started going stir-crazy. He began agitating for his release.

  The way Trotter looked at it, they had already received full value from the man. Furthermore, during his confinement, he had learned nothing that could really hurt the Agency. And he did not dare go back to the Russians no matter how much he might have learned, because sooner or later, they would kill him. So when Trotter took over the Agency, the first thing he’d done was tell Bulanin he was free, as long as he let the Agency know where he was.

  He’d sent Joe Albright to him with the news. As Joe reported it, there had been ten seconds of unbridled elation, followed by a growing concern. Bulanin hadn’t gone so far as to change his mind about being set loose, but he asked a few questions about how he was going to keep the KGB from liquidating him.

  Trotter had passed word along that Bulanin was to make up a security plan for himself, and if it cost less than maintaining him for one year at the Maryland compound (which cost a fortune), the Agency would spring for it.

  Bulanin had done that, and here he was. He had a new name, his first. That was an oddity in Trotter’s world, where names were like placemats—only good as long as they have nothing dripped on them. He had chosen to live in a small city in the shadow of a huge city. He had taken an apartment and turned it into a fortress.

  He had even found a job for himself. He was a translator, Russian and French. The reports Trotter had checked before coming here said he was doing very well at it, almost doubling the subsidy the Agency paid him.

  And he had started to drink heavily. Well, Trotter thought, he’s still wound up a lot better than most people in this business do.

  Bulanin took another pull on his drink and smiled the charming smile again. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked.

  Trotter took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Bulanin. “Do you recognize any of these names?”

  Bulanin looked it over quickly, then again more slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I do. Three of them.”

  “All right,” Trotter said. “Don’t make me beg for it. Who? And in what connection.”

  “Samuel Currus, Arnold Gillick, and Jacob Feder.”

  “Gillick and Feder,” Trotter said.

  “And Currus. They are all buggers.”

  “I assume,” Trotter said, “that you are not using British slang.”

  Bulanin laughed. “My friend, I sometimes think that if you had been Russian, or I American, we might have ruled the world together.”

  “If that’s your idea of a good time,” Trotter said.

  “It might be nice to try for a month or so,” Bulanin said. “But to answer your question, no, I was not using British slang. Though for all I know, any or all of these gentlemen might be buggers in that sense as well. No, what I was talking about was electronic surveillance and all that implies. When I was in the Washington KGB office, Currus, who lived in San Francisco, and Gillick, who lived in New York, I believe, were on a list of people who would do good work for the proper money, without asking from whom the money came. I myself never used them, but some of our people did.”

  Trotter nodded. It made sense to use nationals of the target country for things like bugging, if you could find them, and save your own people for the absolutely most delicate cases. You never knew when one of your experts had been made by the opposition until you ran a lengthy and strenuous security check. And your own people were in for a tougher time if they were caught. They could do you more damage in that case, too.

  “What about Feder?” Trotter wanted to know.

  “He was—what is the phrase?—a must to avoid. He works for you people. Doesn’t he? At least for the U.S. government in some regard.”

  “Do tell,” Trotter said dryly. His father was going to love hearing about this. You spend years congratulating yourself on how well a cover works, then you find out the opposition has been laying off your boy because they know he’s yours and they don’t want to make complications.

  “Oh, yes,” Bulanin said. “The word was that he was the best in the business, too. He even had an open reputation in the private sector, and an enormous private income from it. That was another reason to leave him be, of course. If he was doing the espionage work for something other than money, he had to be a true patriot.”

  “Patriot enough to be killed?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Feder’s dead. All the men on that list are dead.”

  “Under suspicious circumstances, I presume. Or—”

  “Or I wouldn’t be here, right. I had the research department up all night on this. Somebody is murdering electronic-surveillance experts. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Bulanin frowned. “Not really. It would seem to me that the tape, or whatever else technology has come up with recently, could be expected to outlive the person who made it.”

  “It seemed that way to me, too,” Trotter admitted. “But I thought I’d ask if your old firm had any plans along these lines.”

  “No. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I was about to say that I respect your brain and ask you if you could make any sense out of it.”

  Bulanin scowled. He looked at the glass of vodka in his hand as if he didn’t know how it got there. He raised it to his mouth and took a long pull, then scowled again.

  “The only thing ...” he said. “But that doesn’t make any sense, either.”

  “Let’s hear it.”


  “Well, if one of the names on that list had learned something he shouldn’t, or had betrayed the KGB in some way, they might well correct his manners. That was Borzov’s, you know. Borzov would never say ‘kill.’ Yes. They might correct his manners, and it occurred to me that it might occur to the KGB as a good idea to leave a few other bodies around as a smoke screen, but doing it this way would only draw an investigator’s attention to the skill that led to his association with my old firm in the first place.”

  “It would be a much better smoke screen to sup a bomb on the guy’s bus and surround him with stiffs of a bunch of civilians.”

  “Precisely,” Bulanin said.

  Trotter rose. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, think about it, will you? You know how to get a message to me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What would you do, Grigory Illyich?”

  “I would find a few such specialists as were still alive, question them closely, and provide protection, if I felt it necessary.”

  Trotter looked at him and smiled. “Maybe we could have ruled the world, at that. I’ll let myself out. Take care of yourself.”

  The Russian rose and shook his hand. “You too, my friend,” he said. “You, too.”

  Chapter Nine

  Moscow, USSR

  GENERAL BORZOV REACHED FOR a fresh handkerchief from the stack on the upper right-hand corner of his desk. He brought it to his mouth and coughed into it. Then he opened it and looked at it. Disgusting. Truly. But he was under orders.

  Borzov was not used to taking orders. This desk, this simple scarred piece of wood, had been the site of origin for some of the most important directives in the history of the Motherland. Borzov would never say such a thing himself, of course, but the trait that more than any other had made him who he was was his ability to accept facts. And the fact was, he was one of the most important men in the history of the Soviet Union, and therefore, of the world.