The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  When he laughed at the description she smiled back. “I didn’t choose the task; it was given to me. A soldier takes orders.”

  Her mood suddenly seemed more relaxed. “Could you come back this evening, Comrade Colonel? At six? I cannot get to this immediately, but perhaps there will be some time this afternoon. I will try, that’s all I can promise. Meanwhile, you can visit some bookstores. The government publishes a variety of excellent field guides; I have edited several myself, though my specialties lie beyond southern Russia.”

  When Bailov returned he found her at her desk, which was still covered with piles of papers. “Any luck?” she asked.

  He showed her the palms of his hands. “Shopping for books is like shopping for meat: long lines and sad tales of ‘You should have been here last week.’ ”

  “I’m not surprised, but there is an alternative,” she offered, her voice taking on a sudden edge.

  “What would that be?”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Tell me the alternative and let me assess the degree of inconvenience.”

  “I have a collection in my flat.”

  “Won’t your husband mind?” A contrived question, but he needed to know; he didn’t involve himself with married women, which was more a reflection of his pragmatism than a moral stand.

  “I have no husband. Under other circumstances you could pick them up tomorrow, but I have classes to teach in the morning at the university and it would not be possible for me to come here first and arrive at my class on time.”

  He agreed to go with her, thinking that his bird search had taken an odd twist.

  Her flat was on the edge of the Zemlyanoi Gorod, in a seven-story apartment building, one of hundreds of characterless tenements built by Khrushchev, and still so new that there was no stench. A walk-up, naturally, and she lived on the top floor, but he noticed that she was not winded by the climb. She was more fit than he would have guessed, and this piqued his interest, though he was not sure why. Certainly not because she was his type; she was too scholarly, too accustomed to control.

  The size of the flat stunned Bailov. As a brigade commander, his own quarters were generous, five meters by six, but her flat was at least twice that, a space that ordinarily would be occupied by two or three families. There was a shallow balcony across the front and a kitchen, parlor and bedroom. There was even a private bath; most of Moscow’s buildings had community latrines. The furniture was of modern Finnish design, and there were thick throw rugs everywhere. Two walls of bookcases were stuffed with volumes, and more books and journals were stacked on the floor. Scores of potted plants filled the room and balcony—the effect was that of a dense, flowering jungle seven stories above the polluted city air.

  “You live alone?”

  “Of course.” She seemed amused. “I am a candidate member of the Academy of Sciences. You are a colonel; surely you understand perquisites. I’ve always understood that high military rank carries many privileges.”

  “It does, but not like this.”

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “There is champagne in the refrigerator—French, not Armenian. And vodka, of course.”

  The refrigerator was nearly as tall as he was, and it was full! What sort of perverse system enabled a professor of birds to live in such luxury? And a woman at that!

  If all this was not enough, Bailov was stunned when his professor reappeared. Gone were the harsh clothes of a curator; standing before him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She wore a white silk blouse with puffed sleeves, a triple strand of large pearls and a full red silk skirt, hemmed at the knees. Her lips were painted red, and a gold brooch in the shape of a peacock nestled at the base of her neck.

  “Metamorphosis complete,” she declared. “In the avian world females generally lack the flamboyance of males. Much better to be Homo sapiens, where the contrary holds true.” She made eye contact with him and grinned. “I assume by your silence that you approve, Colonel.”

  They drank Stolichnaya vodka, the brand reserved ordinarily for export to the West and with none of the odor of cheaper brands, which clung to your breath for days. Then she filled his lap with books, pivoted so sharply that her skirt floated briefly up to her thighs and went off to the kitchen.

  The meal she served was unusual, like everything else about her: steamed carrots with morels, paper-thin slices of dark bread, small medallions of venison sautéed in real butter, a French Burgundy, Georgian cashews covered with clear, fruity dressing and brandy that scoured his tongue. It was more food and drink than he had taken at one sitting in years, yet he felt neither bloated nor stuffed. Afterward she stacked the dishes in the sink, then led him onto the balcony, where they watched the sun set in a pink sky.

  They did not talk until it was dark. At last she rose from her canvas chair and moved to the doorway. “Are you married?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you visit Moscow often?”

  “At least once a month.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom. “Brief trips?” she called out. Her voice had taken on an entirely different tone.

  “A few days at a time.”

  “Do you mind all of these questions?”

  “No.”

  There was a long silence. “Colonel, do you have a name?”

  “I am Taras Ivanovich Bailov.”

  “A sturdy name, Taras Ivanovich. Your age?”

  “Forty-three this year.”

  “Ah,” her voice said. “Lucky for me: men don’t become interesting until they’re at least forty.”

  Then she was in the doorway, barefoot and clad only in black underwear, her figure much fuller than he had envisioned. “Raya Yermolaevna Orlava, age thirty-four. Where do you stay in Moscow?”

  “A barracks for senior officers.”

  “Will you be missed if you don’t return tonight?”

  “No.”

  She moved to him and gnawed lightly on his upper arm, her tongue hot. “Good,” she said, imitating his guttural manner of speaking.

  They had been together eight times since that night, nearly eight weeks of living as husband and wife, which is how he had come to think of it. Raya never said how she viewed it, but it didn’t matter. She never met him at the airport when he arrived and never accompanied him there when he departed. When he was in Moscow they usually spent most evenings in her flat listening to jazz, dancing, eating, talking, making love. She had a wide range of knowledge and interests and had lived an entirely different life than he had.

  With Raya’s help Bailov finished his report on edible birds and in the process earned a written commendation from the chief of the GRU’s Fifth Directorate.

  Now he was approaching her building on a Monday, her day off. He ran up the stairs and used his key to let himself inside. He was six hours behind schedule because the plane had encountered an engine problem; he knew she’d already be in bed. He undressed quickly and got under the covers with her. As her arms slid around his neck and pulled him toward her, she licked his chest and shoved her pelvis toward him. He tried immediately to enter her, but she pushed him away. “Slowly, Taras Ivanovich, always slowly. Only Homo sapiens is capable of prolonging pleasure.”

  29 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1961, 2:00 A.M.Frankfurt

  The Kaiserhaus hostel was ideal; situated across the river from what remained of the old city, it was full of students with wrinkled shirts and canvas trousers, as well as a motley assortment of other drifters traveling more on wits than on financial resources. To check in all you needed was a name, not even your own. Frash paid extra for a room to himself; this momentarily seemed to raise the clerk’s suspicions, but he quickly explained that he was a travel writer working on a book about low-budget travel in Germany and wanted privacy to work.

  “Sebr gut,” the clerk said, “but if you entertain in your room, will you please inform me; I will be obliged to charge double occupancy.”

  “I need privac
y,” Frash repeated.

  “Privacy serves many needs,” the clerk said with a straight face.

  The room was on the corner of the fourth floor and overlooked a busy boulevard strung with Apfelwein taverns. A routine asserted itself. He awoke early and walked the streets before the Germans were up. He read several newspapers each morning and evening in different taverns, listening to the Germans debate politics—not Hitler because all the Nazis had evaporated in 1945, but modern politics, their fear of the Russians, and especially their concerns about the ability of the new American president to effectively counter the unpredictable Khrushchev. Their skepticism about Kennedy was strong; who better than Germans would know the insidiousness of Rome and its puppets? His mother knew it too.

  Frash slept a lot and dreamed intermittently. He was six when Ali had killed for the first time. The dreams had a full ration of passion, including the fear of being discovered, but this had never happened. Sometimes the dreams seemed too real to be mere dreams; they were more like memories, full ones lacking no details. The fear of killing was worse than its actual doing; the act itself was quite simple. In some dreams he buried stained underwear in soup cans. His mother was naked, standing with her hands flat against a white marble wall, a red hood over her head, legs apart, rump presented. A long line of strangers took turns with her; he was way back in the line and never seemed to get closer, but he tried to be patient. A priest said a Mass from a pulpit built of human skulls with the initials J.F.K. painted on them. God’s will, the priest intoned. Will what? Frash asked the dream, but there was no answer. He sweated through his sheets every night. Why had Myslim forsaken him? A half-brother is no brother at all, he reminded himself.

  30 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1961, 7:45 P.M.Falls Church, Virginia

  Arizona held a cocktail party at his farm in Falls Church every Sunday at 5:00 P.M. A small herd of Asian spotted deer wandered the grounds like delicate ghosts, begging handouts. The guests represented a wide assortment of friends and acquaintances from diverse backgrounds; what they all had in common was that each represented some degree of power and influence, which meant that each had information to be traded or stolen outright. At these gatherings Arizona wore a string tie, western-cut suit, a shirt with turquoise and silver buttons, a Stetson hat and rattlesnake-skin boots with genuine western toes and heels. He worked his parties like a pickpocket, snatching bits and pieces of information he would later lace together.

  It was no secret that Arizona was CIA, but his title was vague and suggested that he was some sort of mid-level personnel administrator. In truth he was the number three man in the Directorate of Operations, or DO, and was tied to virtually every covert action undertaken by the Company. Specifically he was charged with coordinating operations that required the resources of more than one of the directorate’s geographic divisions—the sort of missions he called “mixers.” He was a man with the most lethal form of power: that which is unknown.

  Arizona had two things to accomplish tonight. The first he took care of almost immediately. Richard Warwick was fifty-eight, bald, thin, with feline features; he looked more like a high-school physics teacher than the Washington Post reporter responsible for intelligence reporting, a new beat established in the wake of the U-2 disaster. Warwick had an impressive academic background: a B.A. in history from Dartmouth, Harvard Law, a master’s in journalism from Columbia. He had been a war correspondent for Life in Europe, and had been with the troops that liberated Dachau. After Korea he had written a series of articles for the Post on brainwashing, which was based on interviews with dozens of former prisoners of war. The pieces were later expanded into a book that won him a Pulitzer and rode the bestseller lists for nearly a year. He was also an ardent liberal, which meant that the new administration could exploit him.

  When the Russians had shot down the U-2 a year before, Warwick had assailed the Eisenhower administration with an acrimonious eight-part series on the CIA. Until then the Company had enjoyed virtual anonymity. Because of Warwick, the agency’s initials were said to stand for “Caught In the Act.” With Kennedy in office Warwick’s attitude toward the Company had softened, though Arizona suspected that the reporter might be reserving judgment only until he was convinced that Kennedy could handle his new responsibility. Warwick had even made noises about a “partnership” between the press and the government in matters of national security. He and the president’s press secretary were buddies from way back; Pierre Salinger had been instructed to keep his lines of communications open so that when the need arose they could funnel information to Warwick. They had arranged to have him invited to one of Kennedy’s private White House soirees. For now the reporter was playing along, but if he suddenly tried to revert to his predatory ways Arizona was certain that Kennedy could easily corral him. If nothing else, the president could charm people, especially women, but he was no slouch with men either, and in particular he could work journalists like a maestro.

  Arizona took a fresh martini to Warwick, who was in a corner of the den scanning the other guests. “Fresh fuel, Richard.”

  “Nice party. Appreciate the invite.”

  “No problem, pard. Lots of good folks here.”

  Warwick looked tense. “Is there someplace where we can talk privately?” he asked.

  Arizona led him to a side patio. Warwick held the martini glass but did not drink from it. “I have it from good sources that you people are training Cuban expats in some sort of brigade. Word is that they’re going against Castro soon. Code name’s Operation Zapata.” The reporter watched for a reaction.

  Arizona grinned. “Lots of rumors in this town.” Warwick had a solid source, but the information was dated, which meant his source was outside the stream. The operation’s name had been changed to Trinidad several weeks before and would soon be changed again to Pluto. The man was fishing.

  “Infantry training in Guatemala, a squadron of B-26s in Nicaragua and a radio station on Swan Island, which is in Castro’s backyard,” Warwick said. “Will there be air support for the invasion?”

  Shit. He had most of it right. Where had he gotten this information? “I just push paper, Richard. I’m an accountant, actually. It’s donkey work but somebody’s gotta do it. If you’ve got questions you ought to direct them to the White House or the agency’s public information people.”

  “You can count on it,” Warwick said. As an afterthought, “Off the record I’m opposed in principle to such interventions, but not if Jack thinks it’s essential and if it’s not some half-ass Robin Hood operation. I say do it right or don’t bother.”

  Warwick was a pompous ass, hooked without even knowing it. “Talk to the White House,” Arizona repeated. He’d have to get word to the president’s people right away. When Warwick swooped in, it would be up to Kennedy to deflect him.

  “We ought not to involve ourselves in other people’s wars,” Warwick continued. “Korea should have taught us that. The difference here is that we’re talking about a situation much closer to home, so there are extenuating circumstances.”

  “You write it the way you see it, Richard. That’s your job.” Reporters made the intelligence game a lot harder than it needed to be. He grabbed the arm of a woman who lived up the road and pushed her at Warwick. “Ask him about brainwashing,” he told her. Though it was cool, she was dressed in pink pedal pushers, black pumps and a strapless top designed to display maximum cleavage. If Warwick showed the slightest inclination she’d drag him into the nearest bush and bang his brains out, her proclivities for such sorties having been well established in the neighborhood.

  Warwick was jabbering with animation when Arizona looked back, and his martini was nearly gone. He made a mental note: when Warwick is fishing he doesn’t drink. He had a catalog of such behaviors in his head. Kennedy tapped his teeth when he was angry; Hoover looked people in the eye when he lied, which was as often as he told the truth. The Dulles brothers tugged on their earlobes when they wanted presentations speeded up. When you lear
ned to read them, such behavior spoke louder and more clearly than words.

  So Warwick was digging into the Cuban operation. Depending on how insistent he was, Dulles could suggest to Kennedy that he pull the reporter inside and offer an exclusive in return for holding the story. One way to neutralize a journalist was to make him part of the game. You could always count on the greed to get a big fat story.

  Arizona checked his watch, then walked out to the stable behind the house. The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 P.M. in the tack room. Several of the horses nickered as he passed their stalls. The man in the tack room was blond, fit, an even six feet and 160 pounds, built like a swimmer, his physique flat rather than angular. At thirty-nine Dr. Lewis Venema looked like an advertising executive or the leading man in a soap opera. He wore a charcoal-gray three-piece suit, and his black shoes gleamed. He was the sort of man cursed with the kind of sheer physical beauty that made it difficult for others to take him seriously.

  “Lew,” Arizona greeted him. “Glad you could make it.”

  Venema raised his glass of champagne in mock salute. “Couldn’t miss one of your legendary parties,” he said. “Fascinating social dynamics. Like predators sizing up each other at a water hole. A gathering of mind-fucks.”

  “I’m not interested in that shit,” Arizona snapped.

  “Insight is where one finds it,” Venema answered pleasantly.

  “We’ve got a problem with Frash.”

  Venema was a psychiatrist who taught at Georgetown, maintained a private practice and, most important, was a special consultant for a handful of high-ranking officials at the Company. It had been Venema who had developed the so-called instruments used to assess the suitability of candidates for CIA employment. More and more these written and oral tests were seen as key tools in hiring decisions, and in one case, that of Frash, had been the only basis.

  Arizona had found Frash and seen potential, but it had been Venema’s idea to do only a minimal background investigation and to rely almost exclusively on the psychological instruments he had created. These tests focused on various situations designed to predict the behavior of candidates in certain situations. Venema’s professional opinion was that past behavior counted for more than motivation did. Most people couldn’t articulate why they acted in certain ways, only that they had, so why waste time groping for motives? If the agency could hire on psychological testing alone, it could save millions of dollars now dedicated to background investigations. This would enable them to apply the saved resources to operations, and to bring new blood into the Company without touching base with the FBI and various police agencies. This approach, Venema argued convincingly, could give the Company added insulation for its personnel, which in turn meant increased security. It had been too tempting to pass up, and Arizona had agreed reluctantly to hiring Frash as the test case for this unorthodox hypothesis.