The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

Why did the Russians want to provoke Albania? Myslim didn’t know; of this Frash was certain. It had been messy at the end, and he had been forced to burn the cabin to disguise the torture. Later he regretted not taking Myslim into the mountains, dismembering him and disposing of the pieces separately. Motion was safety and a whole night in the cabin had been nerve-racking, so he had used this shortcut. Ali’s hand had seen to everything, but he was sated now, which made it easier for Albert to think without interference.

  What was Khrushchev thinking? Where was the logic in all this? There would be no internal uprising, Myslim had admitted. The hill tribes were docile now, entirely broken by Shehu and the Sigurimi. Children were separated from their parents, wives from husbands, brothers from sisters, mountain people sent to cities and farms on the coast, city people to mountain villages, the old beliefs prosecuted and crushed, relatives set against relatives, suspicion and fear the driving forces of individual life, Communism and Marxist principles the cement of society, the government’s power paramount in all matters, the Albania that Frash had dreamed of lost forever, his father’s failure magnified. A stronger man than Zog might have resisted Mussolini and altered history, but his father had fled; now he could see truth in his mother’s words. His father could have turned history but he had failed. Why had justice forsaken him?

  Sleep came. When Albert awoke, he was disoriented, his heart pounding. There was a houndstooth sportcoat hung over a chairback, a man on his back by the bed, his left eye gone, the red-haired woman cowering on the bed.

  “No,” Albert called out to Ali, but he could not bring the man back. The woman on the bed was crying silently.

  “She’s mine,” Ali said. It was an old pattern and Albert let him go.

  When Ali finished with the woman, he made her dress and then they went downstairs. Madame was in her quarters behind the bar; Ali shot her once in the face, then tore two pages out of the registry, hung the CLOSED sign, locked the door and left in the dead man’s Mercedes, the woman driving.

  They made their way through the rain and darkness along winding, narrow roads amid pine forests. Before midnight they found a crèche at the intersection of two dirt roads. The lights of the Mercedes illuminated the stone structure built to protect the statuary. Ali took the woman inside and made her undress. Tendrils of fog snaked through the trees.

  “Do you believe in God?” Albert asked her.

  “Oui,” she whispered. “More than ever.”

  “Say your prayers,” Albert advised. There was no more he could do for her. It had to be.

  Ali took her in the long wet grass at the base of the crèche. When he had finished, Albert knelt beside her and began a prayer. “You know these words?”

  Her eyes were wide, her face streaked with mud, her hair matted. “Extreme unction,” she whispered. “Last rites.” When the words were finished, he pointed the 9 mm at her face. Ali wanted to pull the trigger, but Albert held him off. “You would steal her temporal life. I give her eternal life,” he said.

  “There’s only this,” Ali scoffed. The forest and heavy air swallowed the silencer’s cough.

  Beside the crèche Albert saw water tumbling into a stone basin from an oxidized copper pipe. The inside of the crèche was filled with wilted flowers and small cards with prayers to the spirits of Lourdes, the leavings of pilgrims. Below the water spigot was a sign: WATER UNPOTABLE. Albert studied the crèche, the cards, the dead woman’s face, the water. People sought miracles, but there were none left. There was only reality and it was obscene. Did the Kennedys’ money build shrines for the faithful and neglect greater needs? What sort of God would create such a world?

  52 FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1961, 1:50 P.M.Moscow

  Lieutenant General Igor Yepishev was a physical-culture enthusiast who exercised at least twice each day. One of these workouts always began at noon, the routine never varying. He warmed up with stretching exercises for fifteen minutes, then played handball for forty-five minutes, followed by a fifteen-minute torture session with a twelve-kilo medicine ball, and finished with thirty minutes with free weights. Afterward he toweled dry, put on his uniform and returned to his office, a twenty-minute walk, his body odor leaving a rancid trail.

  The Fifth Directorate’s physical-culture endeavors were concentrated in a warehouse that had been crudely remodeled into a sports club. It was common knowledge that Yepishev had used Directorate funds to refurbish the warehouse, but nobody challenged him. In Moscow individuals with power were expected to use it; if they didn’t, they were suspected of weakness, and where there was weakness the predators swarmed like sharks crazed by bloody water.

  When Bailov arrived, Yepishev was standing in front of a full-length mirror, grimacing as he did slow curls with six kilos of iron disks on a stainless steel bar.

  “You’re looking fit, Comrade General,” Bailov greeted him. And smelling as foul as ever, he thought.

  “Fitness requires commitment,” the chief of the Fifth Directorate grunted.

  “I would like a word with you,” Bailov said.

  “I’m listening,” Yepishev said.

  Bailov held up his Red Badge. When Yepishev saw it, he froze in mid-curl, exhaled slowly and then lowered the bar to the floor. “You were always capable of irrefutable logic,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “What we have to say to each other stays between us, do you understand?”

  Yepishev nodded.

  “I need information about a certain individual, but I don’t want anybody to know that an inquiry has been made.”

  “For most inquiries this is quite possible,” Yepishev said, “but for others it is quite impossible.”

  Bailov slid his arm around Yepishev’s shoulders and smiled. “Then you must do the impossible, Comrade General.”

  53 SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1961, 7:00 P.M.Belgrade

  Harry Gabler had been gone for nearly three days and Sylvia Charles was alternatingly angry and worried. For seventy-two hours she had been railing at her partner; they had been sent as a team to find Frash, but Valentine had gone his own way with the Yugoslavian detective. This was not the old days; the enemy often did not show itself openly. You had to move slowly, analyze, be certain. Who was this woman to bargain for asylum? Had they made a mistake in meeting her terms?

  “It doesn’t matter. She gave us Frash’s picture and Lumbas’s name,” Valentine said.

  “You don’t know that,” Sylvia said. Couldn’t he see that what looked like one thing could be something else entirely? “The woman may have used you to get to Gabler. You make a noise about hunches as if the world drew true north from you.”

  Valentine considered a comeback, but decided against it. “Harry introduced you to Peresic first. Don’t you trust him?”

  “You don’t get it,” Sylvia answered, her voice rising. “This isn’t a scavenger hunt at the country club. There’s no big prize waiting for the winner. All there is, is this, or more of it. You track carefully, examine all possibilities before you commit, and tie up every loose end you can find.”

  He held up the photographs of Lumbas and Frash. “But we’ve got these.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Those? Frash and somebody your Yugoslavian detective says is Russian.”

  “We know that Frash was working a Russian asset in Belgrade.”

  Sylvia’s temper seemed to recede, but her words were sharp. “An asset, but not necessarily our corpse or REBUS. We don’t know what or who he is. We don’t know anything.” Then she stalked out, slamming the door behind her. Valentine assumed she was going to walk it off and give herself time to cool down. That had been early afternoon. Now it was evening and he was beginning to worry. When the phone rang, he waited for the second ring to finish before picking it up. “Yo.”

  “Clear the nest,” Sylvia said. “Use four,” she added, referring to one of several escape routes they had worked out. Her voice was calm but forceful; he hung up immediately, grabbed his bag and hers and fled.

  54 MOND
AY, MARCH 20, 1961, 11:58 A.M.Moscow

  Marshal Rodion Malinovsky walked slowly around the triangle park that separated the Council of Ministers Building from the Arsenal. It was nearly noon and warm for this time of year, the sun reflecting off the pavement to bake fur-clad passersby, even though there were still piles of snow along the curbs and under the trees. The marshal wore a tailored greatcoat, unbuttoned, and walked with his hands clasped behind him, a pose his subordinates called his Napoleonic strut. Even without such posturing, he was an imposing figure. Groups of Russian tourists with box cameras scattered from his path and looked away, fearing eye contact with such an imposing old boar.

  Malinovsky was brooding. The populace still believed that the military held sway inside the Kremlin, but this was false and growing more so by the day. Most of his colleagues on the General Staff considered him Khrushchev’s yes man, which was not true, but this perception was the price for having gained the General Secretary’s trust. Nikita Sergeievich had given himself the title Supreme Commander in Chief, so there was no choice but to obey in public. As in America, Soviet soldiers were subordinate to civilians. However, the marshal’s private behavior was entirely different, and sometimes he wished his colleagues could see him give the Ukrainian toad some of his own medicine. But when responsibility sat square on your shoulders, the load had to be carried; if his colleagues didn’t understand, so be it. In time they would know the truth.

  Gubin was standing to the side of one of the arched entrances of the ocher-colored Arsenal, close to one of the cannons taken from Napoleon in 1812 and now displayed as reminders of the inevitable fate of invaders of the Motherland. Malinovsky often said that Napoleon’s mummy in a glass case would have been even more effective.

  “Andrei Semenovich,” Malinovsky called out. “It looks like an early spring. Perhaps we can get in some fishing. There are salmon in Siberia as long as a man’s leg.”

  How could the man be so nonchalant? “I apologize for interrupting,” Gubin said.

  “It’s a welcome diversion,” Malinovsky lied. He had been looking forward to a lunch at the Praga, across the street from the Ministry of Defense, where a shipment of American T-bone steaks had arrived from Germany. “I’ve spent my morning listening to a proposal to standardize the uniforms of the branches of the service. Some members of the Presidium believe that if we all wear the same costumes, interservice rivalry will be eliminated. If that precept holds, I told them, perhaps we should have all citizens walk about in the raw and trim their penises to a standard length.”

  Gubin smiled. The Marshal’s reputation for sarcasm was well deserved.

  “I believe some of those fools actually took me seriously. We are surrounded by idiots, Andrei Semenovich. It’s no wonder that nothing gets done. Khrushchev wants to put a man in space and struts for the Western press, but our enemies understand what such stunts cost.” Malinovsky glanced at the blue sky. “They will overtake us up there, but not at the expense of their growing arsenal down here.”

  “Our Ukrainian friend has a female visitor in his nest, and she’s not a relative,” Gubin said, tired of the small talk.

  “I know,” Malinovsky said.

  “Who is she? Perhaps we should take steps to protect ourselves,” Gubin said. Several teenaged girls stared at them, then giggled nervously and trotted on.

  “Tourists in the Kremlin,” Malinovsky grumbled. “Soon we will be giving them rides in our tanks so they can see how well their leaders spend their rubles.” The Marshal touched Gubin’s sleeve. “A thrown rock cannot be called back. In any event it’s not possible for an investigation to lead to us. You must learn to relax, comrade. Life’s too short to worry about things that can’t be controlled.”

  “I’ve been informed that Red Badges are in use,” Gubin said as they neared the Presidium.

  Malinovsky grunted, then smiled. “Next Nikita Sergeievich will try to resuscitate Beria,” he said, shaking his head. “The man sends rockets into space while reverting to antiquated practices. Stalin had a man who carried the Red Badge, and even Beria feared him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I would guess that he met the same fate as Stalin’s other lieutenants.” Malinovsky drew his finger across his throat.

  “All but Khrushchev,” Gubin reminded him.

  “Let us hope that this historical oversight will soon be rectified.” Khrushchev’s new baby-sitter, if that was what she was, was already under surveillance.

  55 MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1961, 12:10 P.M.Bakovka, Russia

  At the height of his criminal career Melko had thought of the white pine forests of Bakovka as his private hunting ground. The entire area was ringed by a high stone wall with black iron buttresses, stainless-steel teeth along the top and frequent road signs: AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY, TURN AROUND AND GO BACK. In six years the number of signs had multiplied like dandelions.

  The intersections of roads leading into the exclusive dacha community were manned around the clock by heavily armed militiamen who checked passes and turned back those who didn’t belong. Once inside there were additional checkpoints and, depending on the importance of a dacha’s current resident, private entry gates and security forces to each estate. The area looked idyllic, but to a practiced eye the trappings of power and security were obvious.

  Melko climbed over the wall at the same place and in the same way he had always gone in. He had regaled Petrov about Annochka during their days in Camp Nine, but in Odessa it had been Petrov who raised her name. “We need to get a window into the real politics of the Kremlin,” he said. “Unobtrusively. Perhaps your Annochka can help us, but only if she hasn’t changed. Rebellious children sometimes lose their fury. Be sure she has retained hers.”

  “She was nineteen,” Melko had said in his own defense. “Not a child.” She was certainly not a child now.

  Petrov had ignored him. “Test her. If she’s still an adventuress, we can use her. If not, then we must pursue other avenues.”

  Melko wondered how his former girlfriend would greet him. Less than enthusiastically, he imagined. Annochka’s father was Sergei Denisov, head of the small but important KGB Finance Department, a step up from the old days when he had been a high-level transportation expert with Sovintrans. Denisov now reported directly to Boris Shelepin, director general of the KGB.

  Melko had staked out Denisov’s estate for four days without luck, though he had seen Annochka’s father several times. Every morning his chauffeur drove off at eight-thirty sharp, and they returned each evening at eight. This pattern had held for three days and the man had left on time again this morning. Now it was midafternoon of the fourth day and a light drizzle was falling, the sky low and yellow-gray, with ragged wisps of black clouds passing overhead. More snow, Melko guessed. Russian winters were not known for an easy capitulation to spring. Just before 2:00 P.M. a small black Volga slowed on the road, turned into the driveway and accelerated quickly up the small hill toward the house, trailing clouds of blue-gray exhaust. There was a uniformed driver and somebody else in the backseat but he couldn’t see who. He crossed the road, climbed a small tree and jumped over the stone wall that protected the estate. Like all walls in the area, this one was painted dark green, the same color of the interrogation rooms in Lubyanka Prison, an unpleasant memory. Once over the wall, he raced quickly through the trees and reached the front of the house in time to see the back of a woman herding two small children up the steps into the open arms of an older woman. When the four were inside, the chauffeur returned to the Volga, unfolded a newspaper, spread it out on the steering wheel, put a foot up on the dash and hung his hat on the rearview mirror.

  As he had years before, Melko went into the house through the cellar. In one of the many rooms he found some dry rags, which he used to clean his shoes. There were four sets of stairs leading up; one set was very narrow and steep, and heavy dust showed that the route had not been used in a long time. The stairs terminated in a small room with no doors, but a ladder b
uilt into the wall led upward, exactly as it had years ago. Like many others in the area, the house had been built nearly a century before, and such structures invariably had several emergency escape routes, including a tunnel leading under the grounds from the southeast corner. The czarists had been paranoid with good reason, not from fear of their miserable serfs, whose resistance they had methodically crushed over the centuries, but from wariness of each other. At the top of the ladder was a small platform and the outline of two hatches cut into the walls. The second was the one he wanted. Several taps with the heel of his hand popped it open; he squeezed through the opening into a long closet filled with dark suits and cloth pockets filled with shoes. The closet opened into a sitting room; beyond that lay a bedroom. He paused briefly to listen but heard nothing and stepped out.

  He explored the upper floor one room at a time, eventually finding the one where he had first met Annochka. He was tempted to pause and remember, but pushed on. There would be time for memories later.

  In the center of the upper floor was a wide spiral staircase curling downward. He had just reached it when he heard voices below. “The children are asleep,” a woman said. “You should also take a nap. You are overdoing it these days. You must learn to pace yourself.”

  When a familiar voice said, “I’m capable of making my own decisions,” Melko felt a surge of desire. “You aren’t my mother, so don’t tell me what to do. We’re nearly the same age, and I don’t accept orders from my peers.” His Annochka still had fire in her voice.

  “I’m your stepmother.”

  “You’re a quarter century younger than my father,” Annochka shot back. “If he wants to call you his wife in order to legitimize fucking you, that’s his business, but don’t try the stepmother charade on me. I see you for what you are, a whore who got lucky.” She laughed and took several steps up the stairs.