The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “What would I do?”

  “What you do best.”

  “Which is?”

  “Follow orders.”

  Petrov paused for effect, but his decision had been made months ago when he suspected that there would be a moment such as this. “I would like to take one man with me.”

  Khrushchev studied Petrov and said nothing for several seconds. “Who?”

  “Melko, a comrade in misery.”

  “A criminal?”

  Petrov nodded.

  “For what purpose?”

  “He possesses certain skills.”

  Khrushchev grunted. “I can imagine.” He yanked his mask down and straightened it so that the eye holes were properly aligned. “Done. Fetch the bastard, then. This place is too cold for me.” He pushed open the door, stepped outside and stomped his boots on the porch. “Comrade Colonel,” he shouted. “You have a man in there.” He motioned toward the fence. “Name?” He looked back at Petrov.

  “Melko.”

  “A zek called Melko. Fetch him and be quick about it.” As Khrushchev started walking toward the helicopter its rotors began to turn slowly.

  Valinchuk ran toward the gate screaming for Melko, who had already moved toward it. A huge sign hanging over the fence read EXPECT NO JUSTICE HERE. Petrov walked toward the helicopter, then stopped to wait.

  “What’s going on?” Melko asked when he caught up.

  “I’m being released.”

  Melko grinned and shook his head. “You’re insane. Nobody gets released from this place.”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  Melko stopped and looked puzzled. “You mean they’d release me too, just like that?”

  Petrov nodded.

  Melko backed away. “What do they want?” There was fear in his voice.

  “There is work for us.”

  Melko acted as if he’d been poisoned. “Work! Melko does not work for government swine; this I have sworn.”

  “Words.”

  “No.”

  “Then remain and—”

  Melko lurched forward. “And what?”

  Petrov pointed at the camp. “Goners. Imagine a field of wildflowers here, no evidence that a camp ever existed.”

  Melko contemplated this briefly, then grabbed Petrov’s arm and began pulling him toward the helicopter. “Hurry.”

  When the helicopter lifted off, Melko peered through a square window in the door. Valinchuk and several guards were below, at attention, holding rigid salutes as the rotor-driven snow swirled over them. “Assholes,” Melko shouted, his words lost in the whine of the engine.

  A second helicopter accompanied them. When the two were a mile away, the other six spread out, flew a long arc on a downwind leg, turned, then swept over the camp trailing clouds of lethal gas that blanketed the area and killed quickly.

  33 SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1961, 8:50 P.M.Paris

  For more than a month Ramiz Kristo had lived in the darkness of the sewers of Paris. According to the newspapers Paula’s death had been attributed to an intruder; the police had no suspects and no substantial leads. Judging by the way she had been mutilated, a police psychologist told reporters he was of the opinion that there would be similar murders. Single women were warned to take care.

  The Café Cristobal was in the area near the avenue du Maine, a weatherbeaten, working-class district south of the boulevard du Montparnasse, an area filled with immigrant Arab laborers and their families, more like Marseilles in appearance than the parts of Paris that Kristo favored. At the café Kristo was to seek a red-haired bartender and ask him if there was a surgeon nearby. If the answer was yes, it would be safe to resume normal routines, the threat past; if negative, he was to go back into hiding without delay.

  Kristo had made two previous trips to the café; the first time the red-haired man had given a negative answer; a week ago he had not been there. Not knowing what to make of this, Kristo had immediately retreated to his hiding place in the sewers.

  There were nearly two thousand kilometers of tunnels under Paris, the product of six centuries of engineering, and though there were street signs at all major underground intersections, there were hundreds of narrow, uncharted waterways and rooms, some still in use, many abandoned for decades or even centuries. Ironically it was Paula who had introduced him to this obscure part of Paris. Her name still stuck in his throat. If he had kept quiet, perhaps she would still be alive, he told himself. But she had been a threat to the movement, hadn’t she? The Major had killed her because she was unstable, potentially a danger to them all. Would she have actually gone over to the Communists? He passed through alternating moods of depression about her death and self-righteous resignation about having reacted responsibly for the collective interests of the Albanian royalists. To do great things sometimes required great sacrifices. But mostly he was depressed and lonely.

  The café was narrow, with high ceilings and a bare cement floor. Once there had been paint, but traffic had worn it away. It was always packed with people, mostly men in dirty clothing; an acrid cloud of cigarette smoke floated in the air like smoke on a battlefield. There was no red-haired man; instead the bar was tended by a fat woman with a narrow mouth. “What do you want?” she asked when he approached.

  “The other bartender. He has red hair.” Kristo’s words came in bursts, betraying his frayed nerves.

  “I’ve seen you before,” she said, “but you’re not one of my regulars.” She had a mustache of fine black hairs and a scabbed fever blister at the corner of her mouth.

  “I’m new,” he said, compelled to answer her challenge.

  “What do you want with Thomas?”

  “Is that his name?”

  “Why do you want to see him if you don’t know his name? I know all of his friends and I don’t recognize you as one of them. You were in here once before but I don’t think you’re his friend. Are you police or another bum?”

  “I’m new to Paris. A friend asked me to see Thomas.”

  “You didn’t know his name.” She studied him with hard eyes.

  “I’m terrible with names. I was lucky to remember the name of this place.” The fat bitch. Others were watching them now. Perspiration made his shirt stick to his back. “When will Thomas be back?” He tried to smile; usually women softened at his smile, but not this time.

  “He comes on at nine,” she snapped. “But if you’re going to wait, you’ll have to order. There’s no room in here for people to loiter. Eat or move on. Maybe I should call the cops,” she added. “You have shifty eyes.”

  Kristo considered leaving, but stopped himself; to run now would draw more attention to himself. His heart was pounding. “I’ll eat.”

  She put her hands on the bar. “What will it be?”

  “Bread,” he said. “And some cheese.”

  “What kind?”

  “Surprise me,” he said, trying to make another joke.

  The fat woman suddenly smiled and shook her head as if she had just solved a complex puzzle. “Just like Thomas. Can’t even decide what kind of cheese you want. He’s exactly the same. I have only one nephew; you’d think a merciful God would have given me a smart one. Instead I have Thomas, who attracts shiftless fools like you. My brother’s dead, poor soul, and I had to pick his cheese, too. Want me to pick a wine as well?”

  “Please.”

  She grinned, showing a gold cap. “There’s only one,” she scolded. “This is not the Champs-Élysées. You take what we have and like it, understood?”

  “Yes,” Kristo said, wishing he had stayed in the sewer.

  She grunted and yelled at a waitress with a blue apron. Five minutes later he had white cheese and a loaf of stale bread. The Beaujolais was decent. He ate slowly, trying to decide whether to nurse the food until Thomas arrived or to leave now.

  “She’s a nasty old hag,” a voice said in English. It belonged to a girl with short black hair. She had dimples when she smiled. “How’s your cheese?”
/>   He held the plate out to her and she sniffed tentatively. “Better left in the goat.”

  When she laughed, he laughed with her. How long had it been since he had been with Paula? This girl was attractive and did not look like other women in the district.

  “Come here often?” he asked.

  “First time,” she admitted.

  “Student?”

  She laughed. “Does it show?”

  “I have an instinct for such things.” It made him feel better to know he had read her correctly. Kristo was certain that he had a gift for understanding women. Somehow he always knew what would motivate them even before they spoke. “Wine?” He caught the attention of the waitress and ordered. The girl slid her chair over to his table. When her wine came, she sipped it, then touched his arm. The warmth of her hand made him dizzy.

  “I’m Ramiz,” he said.

  “Not French,” she said. She looked into his eyes while she drank her wine.

  “Not French,” he echoed.

  “Lilly,” she said. “American.”

  “I guessed as much,” he lied. She looked French. American would have been his last guess.

  “Here on vacation,” she told him. “Taking some time off from the university. I had this idea that I could have some fun in Paris.”

  “You haven’t?” His voice betrayed his surprise.

  “French men push too hard, and that turns me off. I prefer the slow and easy approach. I can’t stand it when a man seems desperate. Or too sure of himself.”

  What was she trying to say? “Hmm,” he said.

  “I’d rather have a man who’s humble and not in such a hurry to get to it,” she said. It felt as if her eyes were burning holes in him. She touched the palm of her hand to the small of his back, causing it to arch with a sharp jerk.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she apologized. Her voice was soft and rich. Her hand stroked his back gently. “I like vulnerability in a man.”

  “Am I vulnerable?” For the first time in a long while he did not feel vulnerable. An erection pressed against his trousers.

  “Aren’t you?” Her hand found the back of his neck.

  “As much as any,” he answered, his voice betraying the truth.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.” Why did women always ask this?

  “Jilted?”

  He didn’t understand the word.

  “She found somebody else?”

  Kristo nodded. “She left me.” Technically this was true, but it was Paula’s own fault that she was dead.

  “Now you’re afraid you’ll find another woman and she’ll leave you too, is that it?”

  “It’s been difficult,” which was the truth.

  She squeezed his neck. “A woman would be a fool to leave a man such as you.”

  Kristo was inflamed by desire, nearly out of control, when he saw the red-haired bartender behind the counter.

  “Do you have a place?” she asked. “We can’t use mine.” Her hand kneaded the inside of his thigh.

  The bartender was smiling; he looked like the sort who never had worries. How could he behave like this when the whole movement was in trouble? Was he part of it? Why was everything so unclear?

  “Let’s get out of here,” the girl said. She squeezed his hand anxiously.

  The bartender put his arm around the fat woman, who pushed him away and wagged a finger at him while he laughed. Maybe everything was all right, Kristo thought. “Would a hotel be all right?” he asked, watching the bartender light a cigarette.

  “Don’t you have your own place?”

  “Mine wouldn’t do,” he told her. “It’s not a very proper place.”

  “You’re not married, are you?” She drew back slightly.

  “No,” he said, still watching the bartender.

  When Kristo got up from the table, the woman clung to his hand and followed. For a moment he considered abandoning her, but he needed her. Maybe Kryeziu and the others could live like monks, but he couldn’t.

  When Kristo reached the counter the bartender made eye contact with him but showed no recognition. “Can I help you?”

  The fat woman intervened. “He’s the one who says he knows one of your friends. Couldn’t select his own cheese.” She spat on the floor and grinned.

  “Is there a surgeon nearby?” Kristo asked.

  Thomas’s expression did not betray anything, but his eyes flashed. “No, not for a long time.” His voice was even, his smile unbroken.

  “Thank you,” he said, pulling the woman toward the door.

  “I hope there’s a hotel close by,” she said when they were outside. It was drizzling.

  “I have to go,” he told her, but when he tried to pull away she refused to let go of his hand. “My place isn’t suitable. You would be uncomfortable.”

  “You said we could go to a hotel.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  She laughed. “No money, is that it? Don’t worry, I have plenty of francs.”

  “It’s not a question of money.”

  “Then what?” She looked at the front of his trousers. “That part says ‘yes,’ but your voice says ‘no.’”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You can trust me.”

  When Kristo saw a police car parked several doors down, he led her in the opposite direction.

  There were several ways to enter the sewers, and over time he had learned the many routes in and out of his lair, but this time he took a long, circuitous way so that it would be difficult for her to retrace it. It took them two hours to reach the place, much of the journey in dim light or darkness, but she kept up easily, didn’t complain and asked no questions.

  The room had once been a storage depot for the tools of sewer workers. It was twenty steps above a three-meter-wide canal. Light came from two kerosene lanterns he had stolen, and there was a cot and a table made from wooden spools that had once held telephone cable. Several blankets were on the floor around the bed.

  When the lanterns hissed into life the woman examined her surroundings.

  “I’m sorry about this place,” he apologized.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “I’m a writer. Hugo found his muse down here. I thought I might too.”

  She laughed. “Sounds like a line, but it doesn’t matter.” She sat on the cot and began to undress. Her breasts were well shaped and firm and there was a nasty scar on her left thigh that looked fresh. She dropped her clothes in a small pile and placed her shoes on top. When she lay back on the cot, she held out her arms to him. It had been so long that he came after a few hard thrusts, then collapsed into her arms. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She patted his forehead. “It’s all right.” she said. “You’re too tense.”

  “I have reason to be,” he confessed.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  Her hand found his testicles. “I’ll take very good care of you,” she told him. “Share your troubles with me. Everyone needs a sympathetic ear.”

  A blow knocked him onto the floor. Instinctively he curled into a ball and held his hand in front of him while he shook his head, trying to clear the dizziness away. Then he saw the woman standing on the other side of the cot, a powerfully built man behind her. She had a small automatic pistol with a thick black tube on the front. He had never seen a silencer before, but he knew immediately what it was.

  “Do you have questions for him?” Her voice was cold, her face expressionless. She spoke Albanian.

  Kristo cowered and began to cry. “Don’t hurt me.”

  She cocked the weapon and locked her elbows, waiting for instructions.

  The man asked several questions about the movement; Kristo tried to answer him but couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “He doesn’t know shit,” the muscular man said. “Finish it.”

  Lejla Llarja shot Kristo once in the mouth. The sound was like a muted cough. The bullet passed t
hrough his skull and ricocheted against the wall with a sharp whack. She offered the pistol to Haxi Kasi and sat down on the cot, her legs shaking.

  “Keep it,” he told her. “This is only the beginning.”

  She dropped the pistol onto her clothes. The blood pooling under Ramiz Kristo’s head looked black. She felt like vomiting, but a voice inside said, You hold your father’s life in your hands.

  34 SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 1961, 7:30 A.M.Tanga, Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

  The light streaming through the windows was unexpectedly bright; last night it had snowed that familiar kind of heavy, wet snow that typically came in late winter to ravage the Yablonovy Mountains for several days, but this time the storm had quickly dumped its load and moved on. The fresh layer of snow reflected the morning sun and intensified its glare.

  Ezdovo had gotten out of bed at daybreak while Talia lay in bed listening to the distant ping of his sledge against a metal wedge. He split firewood at an even rhythm, seldom needing more than one blow to a piece; as she listened she closed her eyes and imagined him working. Whatever her husband did he did thoroughly and neatly. When the wood was split, he would stack the pieces in precise layers, his own order superimposed on minor and major chaos. Not at all like her. When he was near her she could see the compulsive urge eating at him; sometimes he ground his teeth when he saw the disarray in which she worked.

  After listening to him for a while, Talia got up, splashed cold water on her face, drifted into the kitchen and smiled. He had already heated water for tea. How had she been so lucky to find him?

  Ezdovo heard the helicopter as it cleared the jagged ridges north of the village, set the sledge on a stack of logs and hurried into the house. “Helicopter coming,” he said.

  Talia was slow to react, which was not unusual; mornings were difficult for her. She turned slowly and blinked several times, trying to return to the present from wherever it was she had been, but he could see in her eyes that she was preparing herself. “For us,” she said. “I can feel it.”

  Ezdovo nodded. “Ten minutes,” he said. “We can still get to the mountains. There’s enough time.”