Atropos

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Come on,” Trotter said. “The sooner we get you sobered up, the sooner you can start shafting me.”

  “You’ll see, you bastard. Just wait.”

  Trotter paid the check, left a good tip, and led him from the bar.

  Chapter Four

  Moscow, USSR

  BORZOV DIDN’T REALLY FEEL like it, but he went to Troylev’s liquidation anyway. Borzov’s presence at events like this had been a matter of ritual since before the Hitler war. If he were to start skipping them now, the young wolves would scent weakness. They would say Borzov was old, and losing his stomach for duty.

  The worst part of that was that it was true. Borzov was old, and he was losing not only his stomach, but every organ in his body. There remained only his will, and his love of the Motherland. He knew this was no time to allow even the possibility of dissention in his department. The Chairman was in the midst of bold and hazardous plans for the future of the Soviet Union. The plans held the potential to lull the West into a sense of security. They also held the potential for destroying the Soviet State.

  There was a time when Borzov would have been content to wait and see, then act when action seemed advisable. Now, he feared he would not live to see whether glasnost and perestroika led to the ultimate victory of the workers, or to chaos. He might not even live long enough to notice the first indications of one or the other.

  So Borzov, as his last gift to his beloved country, would do what he could to ensure its survival no matter what might happen. He would deliver America to Russia. Or more precisely, he would deliver the White House to the Kremlin. The plan had been building for years. It had begun building even before it existed, ever since a certain young man of obvious qualifications and sincere devotion to the Soviet cause had been recruited and told to keep his sympathies absolutely secret. The young man had been guided into politics, carefully advised and financed, and led from success to success until now he had a good chance to become President of the United States.

  The plan—with his love of mythology, Borzov called it Project Atropos—was designed to make that chance a certainty.

  Senator Henry Van Horn was essential to the plan. When Borzov had heard the tape of that corrupt weakling murdering his concubine, Project Atropos had sprung to his mind. Not in detail, of course, but in general outline. It was Destiny. Borzov had only ordered the bugging of the places the Senator frequented because he’d wanted to know what this influential man was going to do in committee about a pending trade bill.

  Now the influential man belonged body and soul to Borzov, though he himself wouldn’t admit it. Van Horn was allowed to maintain the fiction that he had “agreed” to consultations with the General’s representatives in the interests of “World Peace.”

  It didn’t matter. The man was a coward and a hypocrite and a fool. But he knew who the boss was. He’d jump for the Devil himself if that was who had the goods on him.

  No less essential to the plan, though, was Troylev. Because for the trap to be properly sprung, there were certain things the Americans had to believe. Troylev would die to convince them of the truth.

  The Americans had thought for the past ten years that Vladimir Petrovich Troylev was working for them. What they didn’t know was that Borzov had planted him on them, on the theory that if Borzov gave the CIA a mole in the particular branch of the foreign office in which Troylev worked, they would not try to recruit one of their own.

  Through Troylev, Borzov had fed the Americans a steady diet of valuable, if unspectacular, information, all to build up the man’s credibility to them, so that they would believe when Borzov had him feed them a lie.

  It was ironic, Borzov reflected, that that time had never come. To the end, Troylev had told them the truth. Borzov had decided to capture the White House for the Motherland with a truth. The truth was this: One of the two contenders for the Presidential nomination from Senator Van Horn’s party was an agent of the Soviet Union.

  At Borzov’s orders, Troylev had fed it to them. He would die to make sure they swallowed it.

  This room, down the hall from Borzov’s office in the cellar of Lubyanka, the old KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square, had seen hundreds of liquidations. It was windowless, square and gray in the light of the bare bulbs that dotted the ceiling. It smelled of old fear.

  Radowsky was waiting for him. Colonel Radowsky was one of the wolves, an ambitious man, a child of the War, who, as he closed in on his fiftieth birthday, was beginning to see General Borzov not as a leader, but as a cork who was keeping men like Radowsky from bubbling to the top of the Komitet.

  “The traitor Troylev is prepared for execution, Comrade General,” Radowsky said.

  He looks like a wolf, Borzov thought. A blond, blue-eyed wolf. Borzov had always wondered if the Aryan-looking colonel had been fathered by one of Hitler’s soldiers.

  Borzov put it from his mind. What did it matter? He was only speculating about Radowsky to avoid the necessity of looking at Troylev.

  The false American agent wore white shirt and black pants. He was gagged, and tied with stout rope to a plain wooden chair. The chair was placed in the middle of a galvanized tub some two meters in diameter. Troylev’s eyes were wild. When Borzov appeared, he began straining against the ropes and the gag. The chair made clanging sounds as Troylev’s desperate wigglings caused it to move slightly against the metal floor of the tub.

  Borzov met Radowsky’s eyes. He didn’t know if he could meet Troylev’s.

  “Proceed,” he said.

  Radowsky drew his gun and stepped into the tub. “Vladimir Petrovich Troylev. You have been found to be a traitor; I am now about to execute sentence as ordered by my superiors.”

  He raised the gun to the bound man’s temple. Troylev’s eyes screamed.

  Radowsky looked blandly at Borzov. “Unless you’d rather do the honors, Comrade General? It is within regulations.”

  Borzov had to do it. He must show no weakness, none. As he took the gun, he made a vow that before he died, he would see Colonel Radowsky sitting in the galvanized tub. It was the only way to keep himself from shooting the wolf right now.

  Borzov put the gun to the innocent Troylev’s head. The man was whimpering behind the gag now. Tears squeezed from tight-shut eyes.

  Borzov pulled the trigger. The shot echoed sharply in the room. He handed the gun back to Radowsky and without a word walked to the door.

  Behind him, Radowsky barked orders to his men. The men would untie Troylev and lay him in the tub. With knives and bone saws, they would dismember him. The tub would catch the blood and viscera, as it had caught the spray that followed the bullet from the far side of the man’s skull. The pieces would then be burned, along with the chair. The tub would be washed and put away for its next use. (Radowsky, Borzov hoped.) It would be as if Troylev had never been.

  But the Americans would know he was gone. They might even find out what had happened to him. Borzov was not naive enough to believe that the only sources of information the Americans had were ones he had planted on them.

  It didn’t matter. The Americans would know that Troylev had ceased to be after he’d told them that last bit of information. They’d believe it. They’d go frantic trying to discover who.

  Before they could make any significant progress toward finding out, however, Borzov would tell them.

  And America would be his.

  Chapter Five

  Kirkester, New York

  RINES FELT IT NECESSARY to come to Kirkester to confer with Trotter.

  “The CIA is having kittens,” Rines said. “He gave them the news and disappeared. Some of their sources say Borzov shot him, in person.”

  “You said all this on the scrambler.”

  “I didn’t say which one. Neither did Troylev.”

  “What if it’s neither?”

  “They shot him to death.”

  “Uh-huh. Or maybe they gave him plastic surgery and a new job in a new town. Maybe he was dying of cancer or so
mething, and was glad to be shot to put one over on the old USA.”

  Before he had met Trotter, Rines had thought himself cynical. “And maybe not,” he said. He was beginning to get exasperated.

  “Maybe not,” Trotter conceded. “Maybe they just took this guy and executed him in cold blood. But do you think the mind that conceived of having women bear children expressly so they could be sacrificed in the Cold War is going to hesitate to waste one innocent man in order to put an operation across?”

  Rines made a face. He always looked like a small-town banker. Now he looked like a small-town banker with an ulcer. “We can’t shrug this off, Trotter.”

  “Of course we can’t.”

  “Well, heck, it’s nice to hear you say so.”

  “But we can’t panic, either.”

  “Trotter, I think the idea of a Russian agent in the White House is cause enough for panic.”

  “We need more than an idea before we do anything drastic.”

  Rines looked at him. “I wish I could figure you out.”

  “It’s simple,” Trotter told him. “Easy to lose sight of in the craziness we live in.”

  “The craziness you dragged me into,” Rines corrected.

  Trotter smiled. “You were begging for it. But listen. We lie, spy, cheat, kill, manipulate and do whatever we can think of to protect this country.”

  “I know that well enough.”

  “We’ve sold our souls.”

  “Feels like it, sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Well, if we’re going to get anything out of the deal, there are certain things we don’t dare mess with without being sure we’re doing the right thing. And elections are one of them. If we start arranging who gets voted into office, what’s the difference between us and Borzov?”

  “If a Russian puppet winds up in the White House, what’s the difference between us and Bulgaria?” Rines could hear himself starting to shout.

  Trotter stepped in while he was catching his breath. “All right, all right. Maybe we’re arguing about nothing. What do you want to do about this?”

  “I’ve got everyone available digging like mad to try to find out which one.”

  “Keep at it.”

  “Of course we’ll keep at it. We’ve only got until the convention.” Rines scratched his head. “What I want to know is, what are we going to do if we don’t find out before then.”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “What? Short of having them both assassinated, what can you do?”

  Trotter showed him an innocent face. “We’ll think of something,” he said again.

  Rines looked at him. Finally, he said, “Jesus Christ,” and stormed from the room.

  Chapter Six

  April—Washington, D.C.

  AINLEY MASTERS LEFT THE OFFICE early in order to get home in time to change for the party. The Senator was throwing a party. That was remarkable. A Van Horn did not have to throw parties. Washington parties were given by rich women who enjoyed meeting and feeding the powerful, or by lobbyists interested in influencing them. They were practically never given by the powerful themselves. It had been known to happen, of course—President Johnson’s famous barbecues were an example—but only when the powerful had some jawboning to do, some heavy-duty convincing in order to get backing for a pet program.

  But Hank Van Horn didn’t work that way. He got by on looks and his family’s previous martyrdoms. Hank’s father, “a hero in war and peace.” Hank’s brother Roger, the astronaut, who died “pushing back the barriers of human knowledge.” That was how the Senator’s publicity releases usually put it. Roger, of course, was also attempting to make himself unbeatable for his own projected political career while he was at it. Still, Roger’s death had been tragic. God knew he would have run the family (and a Senatorial career) much better than Hank did.

  So Hank was not throwing this party to convince anybody of anything. A Hudson Group reporter named Sean Murphy once said after a session with Hank that he felt like a Philistine—he’d spent two hours being smitten with the jawbone of an ass.

  Even more remarkable, the Senator was throwing his party without Ainley’s help. Not, of course, that it was especially difficult to throw a party in Washington, where politicians and bureaucrats and journalists streamed to free food and liquor like lemmings to the sea, especially if your name was social magic in and of itself. It was just that for so many years the Senator had shown signs of being unable to undo his own zipper without dampening his pants that the sudden change was disconcerting.

  Ainley had at least been allowed to see the guest list. That had been a surprise, too. It was perfect. The right mix of friendly and unfriendly diplomats, politicians from both parties, both major Presidential candidates from his own party, visiting dignitaries, opera singers, artists, and journalists.

  Apparently, Mark had been consulted as well, because his little friend Regina Hudson was coming. For a while, Ainley had thought that the possibility of the Great Dynastic Marriage he had envisioned so fondly when the children were in college was alive again. Regina had come to Washington for a few days, and spent most of the time with Mark. They’d gone to the Kennedy Center together, and a couple of parties. They had started tongues moving, and had set typewriters warming up. Then Regina had flown off back to that godforsaken town she kept her printing presses in, and announced her engagement to one of her reporters. He was coming, too, it seemed. Ainley couldn’t wait to get a look at the young man without a name who could beat Mark Van Horn’s time with an heiress.

  Still, if Mark were to become involved with a woman, it would upset things, and Ainley was quite happy with the arrangement as it was. Mark had settled in with him as a long-term house guest, his return to law school on an indefinite hold. It didn’t matter. What Mark was learning now would be vastly more important than anything a law degree could give him.

  Ainley put his briefcase down on the welcome mat and reached in his pocket for his keys. Before he had them, though, the lock clicked, and the door to his apartment opened a crack.

  One of Mark’s blue eyes and a lock of damp hair appeared in the crack. “I heard you jingling,” Mark said. “This may be a high-security building, but the soundproofing is terrible.”

  “Maybe you just have sharp ears.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “That must be it.” He swung the door wide and let Ainley in. “I figured you’d probably want to take a shower, so I took mine just now.”

  “I would have guessed,” Ainley said.

  Mark looked down at himself and grinned. He had a chicken leg in one hand and a pale-green towel in the other. In between, he was naked. Drops of water gleamed in the blond hair of his body.

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  Ainley did not smile. “Suppose we close the door, all right?”

  “What? Oh, sure.” He promptly closed the door.

  “I wish,” Ainley said, “you wouldn’t do that. Parade around with no clothes on the way you do.”

  “I just stepped out of the shower when the munchies hit, so I dashed to the refrigerator.” He bit into the chicken leg. “That’s where I was when I heard you outside and thought I’d save you the trouble of digging out your keys.”

  “I understand, Mark, and I appreciate your consideration. But instead of carrying the towel around, you might have at least wrapped yourself in it.”

  Mark gave him an embarrassed grin. He held the drumstick in his teeth and quickly wrapped the towel around his waist.

  “I’ve been living alone too much,” he said. “Sorry. I had a roommate at one of my colleges who used to be bothered by it, too. I’ll try to remember.”

  “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” Ainley said, suddenly feeling enormously bothered. “I just don’t think it’s necessary for anyone to get any ideas.”

  “Most people in Washington never had an idea in their lives,” Mark said. Ainley couldn’t help joining him in a smile. The boy had charm; he would carry the Van Ho
rn empire to new heights.

  “True,” Ainley said. “But the thoughts they do have are all too frequently put there by journalists. That’s a process we want to keep under control.”

  “Right, Ainley. As usual. Well, it’s way too early to put on my tux. I’ll tell you what—my mother gave me this hideous silk robe for Christmas last year. I’ll go get it and give it its maiden voyage.”

  “Thanks, Mark. When you come back, we can talk about what your father ought to do when the farm bill comes out of committee.”

  “Good. I can bowl him over at the party with my mature wisdom.”

  If he can recognize it, Ainley thought.

  Mark came back in a robe so red it could be found in the dark. They had a laugh over it, then sat and talked about the farm bill. When they were done, Ainley looked at his watch and said, “Well, I think I’ll take that shower you mentioned.”

  “Good,” Mark said. “I’ll start getting dressed.” He started walking toward the room Ainley had given him.

  “Oh, Mark,” Ainley said.

  Mark looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

  “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, it’s just curiosity on my part.”

  Mark was amiable. “Okay,” he said.

  “Why did you have your father invite Regina Hudson and her fiancé?”

  “Trotter,” Mark said. “His name is Allan Trotter. Boy, did I get an earful of him. But I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t ?”

  “Didn’t get Dad to invite them. It was strictly his own idea. Maybe he’s a member of the same club as you and my mother.”

  “Club?”

  Mark grinned. “The ‘It’s a Shame You Two Broke Up Club.’” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked out, in any case. Regina could never have loved me as much as she loves this Trotter. In a way, I’m kind of eager to get a look at him.”

  “I had the same idea.”

  “Besides, Regina is a terrific girl, but the older I get, the more I see she’s not my type.”