“Exactly. I’ll bet that makes you happy.”
“Gives me the warm fuzzies all over. What have you got in mind, son?”
“You never used to ask me that before.”
“Maybe I just can’t believe my good luck.”
“I want to ask you some questions. You too, Rines.”
Rines had a sour look on his face. Probably facing the fact that again there was nobody between him and the top of the Agency if anything happened to the old man. “Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”
“Why do you think Borzov is being so blatant? I mean, we all agree why he’s here—he’s got something so big coming to a head he doesn’t trust it to anyone else. But why go to parties, for God’s sake? Why use the cover name he used with you during the War? Why was he so obvious with me? Okay, fine, he had to know my name from the Azrael business, but why so up-front about it? He’s a pro—”
“Son, he practically invented the game,” the Congressman said.
“My point, exactly. Yet here he is, almost like he’s toying with you and me. Like he’s sleeping with our wives or something. If we had wives.”
“Well, you seem to be planning to have one, son,” the Congressman said,
“If his plan is to get next to Regina, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I think,” Rines said. He cleared his throat. “I think he’s dying.”
“We’re all dying, Rines,” the Congressman said. “Besides, he’s an old man. Older than me.”
“I mean I think he’s dying soon, and ugly. I think he’s got lung cancer too bad to do anything about. The coughing, the phlegm you mentioned ort the way over here—I remember my grandfather going through the same thing. The operation may be as big as you say, I think it probably is, but I bet the real reason Borzov is over here is to make sure you realize, when whatever it is happens, that he’s the one who did it to you.”
Trotter and the Congressman exchanged skeptical looks. “I’d think, Trotter said, “that the moving genius of the KGB would be past that kind of thing.”
“You two don’t realize the effect you have on people. What do they call it? Charisma? Star quality?”
The Congressman rapped his cane on the floor. “Don’t be an ass, Rines. We both would have been dead long since.”
“Oh, you can be inconspicuous when you want to. At least, Trotter here, can. I’ve never seen you inconspicuous, Congressman, with all respect. But when Trotter’s doing it, it takes an effort on his part. When he lets up, he gets ... noticed. Like you, Congressman. Or, from what I hear, like Borzov himself. You’ve all got enormous egos—” Rines held up a hand. “I know, we couldn’t do this sort of work without it. I’ve got an ego myself. And I can tell you that if I were supposed to be a genius, and I could outsmart everybody in the world but one or two men, and I wanted to beat them if it turned out to be the last thing I ever did, and I was convinced that I was about to beat them, and it would be the last thing I ever did, I don’t think I’d be able to resist the opportunity to show up in person to rub it in. If it could be managed, of course, without jeopardizing the operation. I don’t know about the jeopardizing; it does seem to have been managed.”
Trotter scratched his head. “That’s something else I’ve wondered about. Visitors like ‘General Dudakov’ have to be approved by the State Department. Even if the State Department doesn’t know the Agency exists, the CIA must have let them know that Dudakov is Borzov. That cover is practically transparent to anyone in the business.”
“I arranged it so that he would be let in,” the Congressman said.
Trotter had taken off his tie; now he was removing the cuff links from his shirt. He smiled across at Rines. “You see, Rines, this is the sort of thing that makes me decide I’m not cut out to head the Agency. Not only would it never occur to me to let Borzov into the country, any more than it would occur to me to let a weasel into a henhouse, but the Congressman here didn’t even feel it necessary to tell me Borzov was going to be in the country at all. Until this afternoon, when he kindly called and told me I was going to meet the man face to face. Come to think of it, neither did you, Rines. Maybe I ought to walk out of here.”
“I ... ah ... I arranged for you not to be told. Don’t blame Rines.”
Trotter’s voice was calm, but he could feel himself seething. “Why?” he said.
“Why did I have them let Borzov in, or why did I not tell you?”
“Either,” Trotter said. “Both.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you might talk me out of it. Or worse yet, forbid it altogether. After all, you are—were head of the Agency.”
“Not so’s you’d notice. Go on. You didn’t tell me because you were champing at the bit to be back in charge, and were starting to undercut me already.”
The Congressman scowled. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Worse,” Rines assured him. Trotter didn’t know Rines had it in him.”
“Okay. Now tell me why you cleared the way for Borzov to come here.”
The Congressman mumbled.
“What?”
“I said, I’m getting old, too! I wanted that bastard where I could get my hands on him, all right? He’s murdered millions, son. No exaggeration. Millions. Whatever you think of me, I’ve never done that. As screwed up as this country gets sometimes, we’ve never done that.
“But as long as he stayed in Moscow, what could I do about him? Just wait for him to have another bright idea like the Cronus project, and try to fight off the effects.
“But then he wanted to come to America! My territory. And it was for damned sure that bastard wasn’t coming to look at the Statue of Liberty. So he had something on, something dirty and nasty, and I thought, if I could only catch him at it, I could die happy.
“Of course, I knew no matter how tightly I had him sewn up, I could never put him on trial. Even if he didn’t have diplomatic immunity (which he does), the government and the press have poured so many glasses of nost down the public’s throat that the whole goddam country is Russia-drunk. They’d hush this up for the greater good, and I hate to say it, but it would probably be the right thing to do. They’d ship him back to Russia, and maybe pull a few tonnes of wheat off the Russians’ table.
“But Borzov would be through. Maybe they’d do a wet job on him right near his office. Maybe they’d just put him out to pasture. Wouldn’t matter. He’d be through and America would be a lot safer.”
The Congressman looked at his son. “That’s why,” he said.
“Sounds good to me,” Trotter said. “Let’s do it.”
“Oh, terrific,” Rines said. “How? We don’t know what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with, or when it’s supposed to happen. All we have to do is catch him at it.”
“I’ve got a couple of ideas about that,” Trotter said.
Rines shut up, and the skeptical expression left his face. He leaned forward in his chair.
“It’s a pretty good guess,” Trotter said, “that this has something to do with the election, right?”
Rines nodded. The Congressman said he’d be willing to bet on it.
“Fine. Let’s take the candidates to the cleaners. I’m talking wiretaps, surveillance, background checks up the kazoo, everything illegal and effective we can think of.”
“We have a man we can trust in the Secret Service,” said Fenton Rines, who had once been the “man we could trust” in the FBI.
“Still, put the best people on it. They’ll have the best chance to turn something up without stepping on anyone’s toes.”
“First thing in the morning,” Rines said.
“Good.”
“What are you going to do, son?” the Congressman asked. There was a gleam of pride in his eye. It made Trotter furious at himself to be so happy to see it there.
“I’m going to try to induce General Borzov to let us know what he’s up to, or at least who he’s working with.”
“How are you going
to do that?”
“Well, the first thing I’m going to do is try to kill him.”
Chapter Twelve
Stamford, Connecticut
BY THE TIME GRIGORY Illyich Bulanin got around to making the bomb, he had stopped complaining, even to himself, about the unfairness of it all. He was property; he had to work for the good of the State. It had always been that way—just because he had defected, he had no right to expect his fate to change. So the Americans—well, some of them; fewer and fewer all the time, as far as Bulanin could see—some Americans professed to believe that the individual should not be compelled to labor for the good of the State. What of it? Bulanin had spent his entire adult life in Intelligence. He knew as well as anyone that what a government did had precious little to do with what it professed to believe. Every Soviet citizen, for example, was promised in the Soviet Constitution a job and freedom of religion.
One of Bulanin’s first jobs for Borzov had been harassing Jews in their workplaces, making the job intolerable for them. As soon as they ceased to tolerate it, they were through. If they attempted to end Bulanin’s taunts and tortures through force, they were known as “hooligans,” and sent to jail—after a good beating by Bulanin, of course. If they simply stayed away, they became parasites or refuseniks, and were sent to mental hospitals, until their appreciation of socialism returned to full flower.
Some, of course, were eventually allowed to leave the Soviet Union, but not before they were made to realize that they were the property of the Motherland until such time as it was the pleasure of the Motherland to let them go.
The only way around that, of course, was to defect, which Bulanin had done. Unfortunately, he was not a musician or a ballet dancer, free to use his talent to grab huge handfuls of the unimaginable wealth that was America. He was (or had been) a spy, and his talents were useful only to a select few.
The Congressman, for instance. Trotter. He belonged to them; he would do what they said, or die. They didn’t even have to kill him. They could just abandon him. Without the shield of false identity and false background that the Congressman’s Agency provided for him and kept in repair, the KGB would find him soon enough. They weren’t about to give up; Bulanin had been an important man. The unfortunate thing about defecting was that it was a move that could only be made once. There was nowhere else to go.
Bulanin spread newspapers carefully on his kitchen table, then carefully split open one of the shotgun shells he had bought yesterday. He had driven up Route 8, to the northern part of Connecticut, to buy them. It was a different world up there. He had driven above Water bury, then picked an exit at random. He drove along a country road for about fifteen minutes, then, just as Trotter had told him he would, he had come to a place where he could buy what he needed. He had smiled at the sign above the door—GUNS/Sandwiches/Coffee/AMMO. Bulanin had purchased three out of four. The coffee and the sandwich were standard American fare—they did what they were designed to do without being especially notable.
The same was true of the shotgun shells. Twelve-gauge, from a national manufacturer, one of many headquartered right here in Connecticut.
Bulanin peeled back the stiff paper covering and the plastic collar, removed the wadding, and spilled the black powder and shiny pellets onto the newspaper. He repeated the process with every shell in the box.
It was messy, smelly work. Plastique was so much more pleasant, and, since it didn’t move with a stray breath, you could smoke while you worked with it, if you felt adventurous. Bulanin had smoked for years. He had not cared for the habit, but had embraced it as a way to gain time while he thought things over. He found the action of smoking, though not the tobacco itself, calming. He had quit the habit soon after his defection, but he’d begun to feel the urge once again.
He opened another box of shells, slit and emptied them. Then, with a piece of cardboard, he swept the powder and pellets into a small plastic bag. He rolled it up until it was as round and tight as a sausage, sealed it with cellophane tape, and put it aside.
He repeated the process until he had enough small sausages to fill a child’s lunchbox. The lunchbox he had bought at a CVS pharmacy in Bridgeport on his way back from buying the shells. It had a bad painting of a movie actor on the side of it, with the word RAMBO appearing in the middle of an explosion. Appropriate, Bulanin supposed.
The bomb was to be set off by a simple sparking mechanism that would be activated when the paper wrapping was taken off the cardboard carton Bulanin planned to send it in. Not that it ever would be unwrapped, Bulanin thought.
He sighed as he finished the job. Using his left hand, he addressed the parcel in sloppy, American-style block letters. Tomorrow morning, he would take it to a busy post office in another town and mail it, carrying his part of the charade through to the end.
Chapter Thirteen
Kirkester, New York
IT WAS EXACTLY THE kind of headache, Sean Murphy knew, that a couple of quick shots of bourbon would fix right up. Well, maybe not fix. Maybe “delay” was a better word. The bourbon would push the headache into a corner of his head too remote to be felt, where it would stay until the bourbon wore off.
Then a few more shots would banish it again. This was a process that could go on for days, even weeks—Murphy knew that from experience. Drinking for him was like a ride in a fast car on a mountain road. There was always a crash somewhere ahead, but the trip leading up to it could be exhilarating.
He caught himself licking his lips. You goddam idiot, he thought, and bit his tongue, hard. Tears came to his eyes; he tasted blood. It was his own home-grown brand of aversion therapy, and so far it had been working. He hadn’t had a drink since he’d braced Trotter about his past.
Not that this wouldn’t be a good time for a drink. Celebrating a triumph and all that. Because he had him. He had Trotter dead to rights. Right here on the screen in front of him. Murphy could almost take pride in this particular headache. It had nothing to do with alcohol; it had to do with staring into the bright lights of a microfilm projector every spare minute since he’d started the project. Why couldn’t microfilm stay in focus? More than once, Murphy had walked out of the Hudson Group’s microfilm morgue seeing double and too tired to drive home. He’d been sleeping on the couch in his office. His clothes were rumpled, he needed a shave, he smelled bad—Christ, he thought, I might as well be drunk.
But it was worth it. Here was the picture, in a late-summer issue of Worldwatch magazine from a few years ago. Elizabeth Fane, the daughter of a defense contractor, had been kidnapped by terrorists. There was a picture of the officials in charge of trying to get her back.
One of them was Trotter. He was heavier in the picture, his hair was lighter, he wore different glasses. The caption identified him as “State Department Official Clifford Driscoll.” But it was Trotter. Anybody could see it.
Now Murphy knew why Trotter had bothered him from the start. Murphy had been National Affairs editor at Worldwatch at the time of the Liz Fane case. He had undoubtedly selected this very photograph. Subconsciously, he must have recognized the man when he’d turned up as Regina’s lover. (That hurt. Even thinking the phrase “Regina’s lover” hurt).
Murphy had thought it was simply logic on his part to look for Trotter (or Driscoll or whatever) in accounts of tragedies involving rich young women. He was afraid for Regina; he wanted evidence that would scare Regina away from Trotter—it seemed like the best way to go. Now he realized that his subconscious had been steering his logic.
It didn’t matter. The question was, what was he going to do now?
Should he take it to Regina? She was back in town; she and Trotter had returned from Washington a couple of days ago.
No. She was in love with Trotter, and by now Trotter had undoubtedly told her the way Murphy felt about her. What an idiot he was to have admitted he loved her. He didn’t dare say anything against Trotter. She wouldn’t believe it. Worse, she would lose whatever affection she felt for him.
<
br /> He’d have to take it to Trotter.
No! Trotter was not a normal man. Trotter, Murphy was sure, was not a man you could threaten. He was a blade with a brain. Murphy ran the tape back and reread the story of the Liz Fane case. People died when Trotter was around. People died nasty.
What else could he do with it?
Causing it to be printed in Worldwatch or any other organ of the Hudson Group would be worse than bringing it to Regina. Not only would he have attacked Trotter, but he would have gone behind her back and expropriated her own property to do so.
The police? The FBI? Some other part of the government? They’d laugh in his face. Or lock him up or have him committed. The theory was that Trotter was already working for the government, remember?
So he’d have to take it to Trotter. God help him.
But not naked. Not without something to back him up.
Murphy had the microfilm librarian pull him some copies of the photograph. He didn’t like the first batch—not clear enough. He ignored the technician’s mutterings as he tried again. Much better, this time.
Murphy clutched the photos to his chest as he returned to his office. He ignored the terminal on his desk and pulled an old Smith-Corona Silent Super portable out of the bottom drawer. What he was about to type would go into nobody’s memory banks. He sandwiched paper to make an original and two carbons. He rolled the paper in and hit the keys.
An hour later, he was finished. He put a picture and one copy of the document in each of three manila envelopes. He addressed two of the envelopes, left the third blank. He told his secretary he’d be gone for the day. He took the elevator to the parking-lot entrance. He got to his car and delivered the two addressed envelopes in person. He kept the blank one on the seat beside him. As he drove, he touched it lightly from time to time, as though he expected it to scorch him. Maybe it would.
He tried to think of what he would say to Trotter.
God, he wanted a drink.
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