The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “Consumed by his interest in the new American president.”

  “Describe his security arrangements.”

  She had expected the question and was prepared. “Everything is orchestrated by the Operod, which technically reports to the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, but in fact takes its orders from Khrushchev and the Politburo. General Nalepin heads the Operod.”

  “Nalepin was appointed by Stalin,” Petrov said. So he was not the only one of Stalin’s intimates to survive.

  “There are nearly two hundred men and women on Khrushchev’s staff, and they manage every detail of his life. He’s virtually surrounded,” Talia went on. “The chief of this detachment is a Colonel Litovchenko, who takes orders only from Khrushchev. The guards are well trained, alert, suspicious, attentive to detail and handpicked. I detect strong loyalty for him among them. Dr. Bizzubik is his personal physician. General Tsybin handles the General Secretary’s flights and always flies with him; he’s a perfectionist. Tsybin and Litovchenko work well together and seem to know what their man requires at all times. He has many secretaries and personal assistants, but Shuisky and Lebedev are the main ones. Shuisky is a cold fish, with no opinions of his own, while Lebedev seems to genuinely care, not in a fawning way but attentive and considerate beyond simple professionalism.”

  Petrov glowered at her. “Replace them all.”

  She looked at the team for help, but the others, including her husband, were all staring at the floor. She was on her own. “Who?” she asked.

  Petrov’s lips tightened. “Get rid of Litovchenko if you like, but definitely get rid of his men. It’s one thing for his security chief to form a personal attachment, but fondness among the guards invites sloppiness. You should have seen this on your own and taken action,” he added. After a pause for effect, he added, “And don’t replace them with more of their kind.” He looked at Bailov. “Bring in your people.”

  Bailov glanced at Talia, then back at Petrov. “They’re not trained for such duty.”

  “Good,” Petrov said. “That will make them all the more vigilant. Fear of failure and punishment are reliable motivators.”

  Bailov nodded. “As you wish,” Talia said meekly.

  “Not as I wish, but as the mission requires and circumstances dictate,” Petrov corrected her. “You were sent here to take control of Nikita Sergeievich’s security,” he said with obvious irritation.

  Why was he criticizing her? She had done exactly what he asked. He had told her only to assess the situation. Had the authority to act been implicit? She felt her neck redden.

  “What have we got on Trubkin?” Petrov asked next.

  “Nothing,” Bailov said too quickly. “Yet,” he added as a hedge.

  Petrov stared daggers at the Spetsnaz colonel. “Don’t lie to me!” he roared. “I’m not one of your GRU stooges.” He paused. “What do we have on Lumbas?”

  Talia felt her stomach tighten; their leader was on the attack now and angry beyond anything they had seen in the old days. Was the cancer affecting his thinking? This was entirely out of character.

  “Nothing,” Gnedin said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  The leader of the Special Operations Group sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I expect action,” he said. “Understand that there is nothing personal in this. This is not a reunion to relive a glorious past. What’s done is done, over and finished. The past counts only for its predictive value. Your strength is in each other, not in independent action. Lumbas and Trubkin are mere men, which means that they have pasts. Every life produces tracks, and you must find them together by cooperating, by sharing. The Chinese say that one and one make three. Each alone is one thing for a sum of two, and the two together make a third. Look for connections. Our country is a web of transparent strands. Find the ones that lead to these men. I have no patience with incompetence and self-service, and our country has no need for them either. I feared this sort of performance, and now my fears have been realized.” His eyes opened and he looked at each of them. “Those who do not produce will be discarded,” he said, his black eyes hard. Then, turning to Melko, he asked, “What about the girl?”

  “Exactly as you anticipated,” Melko said. “She still has an itch for the old game. Her husband is a lieutenant colonel in the KGB’s Third Directorate; he’s involved in some sort of low-level liaison work with the military and is ambitious. He’s recently stumbled across some special funds linked to the Odessa Military District. The funds are called skeletons.”

  Petrov nodded. “A term as archaic as the concept. Money is appropriated without a written plan and can be used by whoever has the key. What will our colonel do with his discovery?”

  “Annochka says he’s evaluating his options. Apparently the KGB is not what it used to be. Shelepin holds the office and the power, but his predecessor Serov retains informants inside Dzerzhinsky Square.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Petrov told them. “Serov was often Beria’s stalking horse, so he knows how to hedge his bets. You’re sure the girl is willing to cooperate?”

  “Yes,” Melko said.

  “Good,” Petrov said. “That’s a start. The girl’s husband will help us evaluate the security apparatus. You’ve done well,” he added. He turned to the others. “Take Melko’s lead. He brings something to the table, while you’re all empty-handed.” He stared at the fire. “Petrov does not fail,” he said after a long time. “You’ve wasted two weeks that we can never recoup. Now you have ten days to do something constructive. Ten days,” he repeated as he rose and shuffled out of the room.

  When they heard the bedroom door slam Bailov said, “Shit,” and wiped the sweat off his forehead. In the old days the price of failure had been death. What was the price now?

  “We have a lot to discuss,” Talia said, determined never to give Petrov another reason to criticize her or the team again.

  63SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1961, 8:50 A.M.Moscow

  Khrushchev didn’t bat an eye when Talia told him that Petrov wanted his bodyguard changed. Within minutes the chief of the General Secretary’s personal security detachment came into the office and stood at attention. Guard Colonel Litovchenko was tall and broad-shouldered, with a massive head, a flat Slavic face and the unblinking eyes of a reptile. When Khrushchev told him that all personnel were to be replaced, Litovchenko’s crooked smile evaporated and his head drooped like a scolded dog’s. If the General Secretary sympathized he didn’t show it, and Talia was suddenly overwhelmed with dread. Litovchenko was obviously fond of his master and loyal to a fault, yet in an instant none of this counted for anything.

  “Nalepin will protest,” Khrushchev told his chief bodyguard,” but the Operod serves me, not vice versa.” The organization’s sole function was the protection of key personnel.

  “My people will be replaced by Operod personnel?” Litovchenko’s gray eyes pleaded for answers to soften his professional shame.

  Talia interceded. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Colonel. The decision in no way reflects badly on you, and neither does the selection of replacements. It’s precautionary, not disciplinary.”

  “But only Operod troops are properly trained for this work,” Litovchenko protested mildly.

  “Granted,” Khrushchev said, “but the decision has been made and that’s the end of it. Inform Nalepin and tell him not to come whining to me.”

  Litovchenko knew that his dismissal would mean an end to his career; in the Operod one served a senior official until his death or dismissal, and reported solely to him. He had been with Khrushchev for a long time and was not a favorite of Nalepin, so the Operod chief would not be sympathetic. When Litovchenko turned to leave, Talia stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “This order applies only to your people; you will be retained.”

  “Is this true?” the colonel asked the General Secretary, who was watching Talia with what appeared to be amusement.

  “Of course,” Khrushchev said. “Tell Nalepin and then report back to Pogrebeno
i. Take your orders from her.”

  When Litovchenko was gone Khrushchev popped up from his desk. “If security must be changed, why does he remain?”

  “Because he knows the routines better than anybody else.”

  The General Secretary’s eyes were intense. “Petrov said to keep him?”

  “That decision was mine.”

  “Sympathy is a sign of weakness,” he reminded her.

  It’s also a sign of humanity, she thought.

  64SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1961, 2:30 P.M.Paris

  The church was old, small and cramped, its high-back pews worn by decades of pious buttocks, the kneelers padless, stone floors scratched. The pallbearers were forced to raise the wood coffin chest-high in order to get it down the center aisle. There were a dozen elderly mourners, all packed together up front. After placing the coffin on its stand, the pallbearers went outside to smoke and pass around a bottle of red wine. Smoke from a nearby factory hung over the street. An old woman in a cane-back wheelchair sat in the center aisle, listening to the priest say Mass in a monotone; the mourners dipped and bobbed on cue, but their genuflections were more approximate than precise. The old woman in the wheelchair did not cry; Sylvia supposed that she had used up her sorrow simply by living so long.

  When the Mass ended, the people shuffled out, leaving the old woman at the front of the church. A young nurse in a navy-blue cape adjusted a blanket on her lap. Sylvia made her way to the front, blocking the aisle.

  “Madame Celiku?”

  The woman stared up with alert eyes. “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m a reporter,” Sylvia said. “For a newspaper.”

  “You’re not French.”

  “American.”

  The woman nodded sharply as if her suspicions had been confirmed.

  “I’m writing about Albanians forced out of their own country.”

  “I wasn’t forced out.”

  “But you would like to return?”

  The old woman shook her head. “I’m French now, and I have the papers to prove it,” she croaked defiantly.

  “I want to write about what it’s like to be uprooted from your country.”

  “It was my choice,” the woman said defiantly. “Take me outside,” she snapped at the nurse. “Churches make me ill.”

  A priest appeared and tried to console the old woman, but she waved him off. “You should be ashamed,” she said with a wagging finger, and the priest retreated. “Production-line funerals,” she muttered to herself.

  Outside there was a hearse with dented fenders. The mourners and pallbearers were gone—to the cemetery, Sylvia supposed.

  “I only need a few moments of your time.”

  “When you’re my age you have all the time in the world and none at all. Funerals become the center of social life. It’s pathetic.”

  “There is a generation of Albanians in France who know nothing about their country.”

  “Lucky for them,” the woman said. “Leave me alone.”

  Sylvia considered her situation. Since arriving in Paris, Beau had been guilt-ridden over Harry’s death; if anything was to be done, she had decided, it was up to her. Last night he had gotten so drunk that he had spent the night on the bathroom floor. This morning he tried to apologize, but she was in no mood to forgive. “You’ve lost whatever you had in the old days,” she had told him. No rancor, no anger, just a statement of simple fact.

  “Right,” he had answered, not bothering to defend himself. “Maybe I ought to move on.”

  “Your choice,” she had said coolly before departing for the church. Now she regretted it and didn’t understand why. Beau was one of the walking wounded, a type she had never been able to resist. She had abandoned her medical career because she couldn’t let go of the most helpless cases, and now it seemed she had another one on her hands. Dead or alive, Frash had turned into a ghost, and Valentine was not much better. For now, however, she put her personal problem aside and concentrated on the task at hand. Madame Celiku was reputedly well connected in the Albanian community; the funeral today was for a man who had once been some sort of consultant to King Zog. Sylvia hoped that the old woman would be her window into their world. Stay focused, she reminded herself.

  The Farm, the Company’s training facility in Virginia, had been a frustrating experience, with tradecraft taught as a science when it was more an art, and a vague one at that. One instructor, a man twice her age, had finally given her the right perspective when he had likened investigative work to collecting butterflies. Most of the time you ran and ran, with nothing to show for the effort, but if you were in the right area, and when you least expected it, a fine specimen would land within arm’s reach and wait obediently to be netted. Sylvia hoped that the old woman in the wheelchair would prove to be just such a specimen.

  Paris had been neither a random choice nor a product of panic. This had been Frash’s last post before Belgrade and it had a large Albanian expatriate community. Also, Gabler had suspected that after he arrived in Belgrade Frash had made some flights to Paris. What this meant was unclear, but with Harry and Peresic dead it made no sense to remain in Yugoslavia.

  Sylvia was using every avenue she could think of to infiltrate the royalist community. At the Farm they taught you to dissect a problem with the thoroughness of a surgeon. She recalled in particular one tenet: An enemy often knows more about you than an ally. Everybody she had talked to had pointed her to Maria Celiku.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Sylvia apologized. Cats were drawn to people who showed no interest in them. Some people were like that as well.

  The old woman twisted her head at an angle and watched her walk away.

  There was a small park down the street. Sylvia sat down on a low wall and tried to think. When she looked up, the nurse was holding out a piece of paper folded once. “Next Thursday at ten,” she said. “In the morning.” Inside was an address.

  65SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 1961, 11:00 A.M.Moscow

  Bailov stood on a sidewalk above a bend in the Moscow River where it looped suddenly from southwest to northeast to meander past Gorky Park and the red walls of the Kremlin. Though the European Nordic skiing competitions were finished for the year, the Soviet national team was hard at work on the steep Lenin Hills; as he watched, Yepishev struggled up the birch-covered slope among the athletes, his breath coming in visible bursts, a gray hood pulled tightly over his head, his upper body drenched in sweat. Bailov trotted down a series of wooden steps and angled into the woods to intercept him.

  “In wartime a general is tied to a desk and in peacetime it’s the same,” Yepishev panted. “It’s no way for a real soldier to live.” The Goat had not been a true field soldier for many years, and though he was fit Bailov doubted that he could measure up to current Spetsnaz standards. They began a long, slow descent to the river while skiers with teammates on their backs chugged up the steep incline. When they reached a small clearing halfway down the hill, Yepishev collapsed on a log and wiped his neck with a black kerchief. “There’s a rumor going around that Khrushchev has replaced his personal guard detachment.”

  “It’s true,” Bailov said.

  “And the guards will be replaced by Spetsnaz?” Yepishev asked, eyeing the young colonel closely.

  “Have been.”

  Yepishev stared at his colleague for a long while. “Your men?”

  Bailov grinned. “The General Secretary deserves the best.”

  “Don’t get me started on what that one deserves,” Yepishev said. “You wanted information on Lumbas. It seems that there was an official request from Khrushchev to all ministries and agencies for information on him.” Yepishev dug into the elastic in the back of his sweatpants and pushed an envelope at Bailov. “A wire photograph of your man. He’s Foreign Ministry property, a technician of some kind.”

  “Source?”

  “How I obtained the information is my concern, comrade. It was risky enough to get this much.”

  “And
his whereabouts now?”

  Yepishev shook his head. “A request from Khrushchev himself got no answer to that.”

  Bailov guessed how Yepishev had probably interpreted this lack of response, silence sometimes being as much an answer as a flood of words. It was not possible to be an unknown in the U.S.S.R. Births were as carefully recorded as marriages, divorces and deaths. All citizens were required to carry an internal passport identifying them by nationality, plus another document that reflected their complete work history. Soldiers carried a separate set of credentials, and all of these were duplicated by various government bureaus and agencies, which had their own requirements. The request for information about Lumbas should have brought several responses, but there had been nothing. If so, Lumbas did not exist in the Soviet bureaucracy, which made him unique and suggested the hand of the KGB. Who else had the wherewithal to make somebody disappear without a trace? Yet if Yepishev’s information was correct, the man was attached to the Foreign Ministry. Probably he was KGB and had been assigned there; every ministry was filled with KGB operatives who served as its eyes and ears.

  “No response from the Foreign Ministry either?”

  “None.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Quite.”

  Bailov reflected on this, then pursued another line of questioning. “Which ministries would not be required to respond?”

  “Each one has some kind of security apparatus, so all would receive it and none would be immune.”

  “But some might not have enough information to respond,” Bailov said, thinking out loud. “Some security units are strictly perfunctory. Health, for example, or Education.”

  “Security for such operations is under the umbrella of the KGB.”

  “But perhaps there are records held by some who would never have heard of the request?”

  “Possibly,” Yepishev said, “but it’s hardly likely. The KGB’s tentacles are everywhere. Begin with what you know, but keep me out of it. I’ve done all I can for you, comrade. This is shitty business for soldiers.”