The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  Lenya preached with such ardor that his words gave Melko a chill. Sensing his friend’s uneasiness, Lenya took his arm. “I’ve made arrangements for you and your comrade,” he said. “The monastery has a truck that delivers mail between churches in the city. We’re faster than the government and there are fewer eyes to see what passes between us. The government takes three days to do what we do in three hours.”

  “They allow this?” Melko asked.

  “They tolerate it. Our Patriarch keeps our flock outwardly calm, and in return we get to keep a few churches open, have our own mail service and so forth.”

  “But they must know you’re trying to bring down the system.”

  “They see what they want to see. In a prison camp there are two chains of command. One is open, declared and led by a senior official—in our case the Patriarch. This hierarchy deals exclusively in the present and with the obvious. The second chain of command is private, secret, looks at the long term, does all it can to advance the cause and operates with neither the blessing nor even the knowledge of the leader of the first chain. The Patriarch plays for balance, the second chain foments change. If nothing else, the Church is rich in the art of surviving; for most of our history we have had to operate under the scrutiny of one enemy or another. Sometimes I fear that legitimacy might destroy us. Do you have any idea how many of our priests are KGB stooges?”

  “Who are you?” Melko asked again.

  “One believer among a million.”

  “And I’m Czar Nicholas’s hemophiliac grandson,” Melko said sarcastically.

  “Out there I am Lenya; down here I am not. All men have several existences, but few have either the conviction or courage to act on their secret thoughts.”

  “How can a thief be a priest?”

  Lenya laughed. “Perhaps it’s the priest who is the thief. We all steal in one way or the another. What matters is intent.” Then he was gone.

  When he returned in a few minutes his cassock had been replaced by one of his peculiar costumes and he was once again Lenya of the street. The route out was different from the way they had come, and when they eventually reached a cellar Lenya told them to go on alone.

  Melko had begun to walk away when he remembered the papers Talia had given him. He gave one of them to Lenya.

  “What’s this?”

  “There are boxes in the upper corner. Each of them has been initialed.”

  “So?”

  “Look at them. Are they written by three different hands?”

  The sometime forger and counterfeiter took a metal case from his pocket, fastened his wire-rimmed spectacles around his ears, adjusted their placement on the bridge of his nose, took the paper, tilted it toward better light, seemed barely to glance at it, refolded it, pushed it back to Melko, removed his glasses, returned them to the case and put it back in his pocket. “Two, not three.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Lenya grinned. “Child’s play.”

  Melko looked him hard in the eyes. “It’s necessary that you be certain.”

  “If I asked Melko about a safe, could I rely on his answer?”

  Point made. “Which two?”

  “The first and the second were initialed by your friend Velak. See, he has signed a notation on the bottom.”

  Melko looked at Ezdovo, who said, “Show him the other one.”

  Lenya studied the second sheet. “This is not Khrushchev’s signature.”

  “How do you know?”

  “To be Russian and not know the General Secretary’s signature is to be blind, or else stupid. Let me have that first one again,” Lenya said. He laid the documents side by side and pursed his lips. “Now this is interesting,” he said after a few moments. “Same hand.”

  “Velak?”

  “It’s amateurish, but an experienced eye can see that it’s Velak.”

  Melko refolded the papers, slapped them against his open hand and stared at the gaunt face of the mysterious Leonid Sarnov. “Now the debt is paid,” he said.

  “That’s for me to decide,” Lenya answered firmly.

  “Best you stay clear of us,” Melko said softly as he extended his hand.

  “Have it your way,” Lenya said, “but if you have need of my magic again you know how to reach me.”

  95TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1961, 3:00 P.M.Zurich

  Sylvia telephoned Arizona from the Swiss border and again when they reached Zurich. During their first contact he was elated that Frash had finally shown himself, and angry that he had disappeared again, then irritated when she pressed him with questions about Frash’s finances. Did she think he was a goddamned fool? He had already put a stop on his known bank accounts and assets, which meant they couldn’t be released unless the Company was notified first. Sylvia persisted. What about paychecks? Since he was officially missing, his checks were still being cut and forwarded to his bank. Was there any way that Frash could draw on the funds set aside for Lumbas? This seemed to stump Arizona. Probably not, he said, but he would double-check. “What’s your point?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Sylvia admitted. “I just want to cover all the bases.” She had in mind some kind of trap, but she had not worked out the details. Frash had access to at least a dozen new identities now, and this might leave him feeling safer than he was. They knew the numbers of the stolen passports and Frash didn’t know they knew, which was for now the only advantage they had. “What’s the name and address of the banker we deal with in Zurich?”

  “Jesus,” Arizona said. “I can’t give you that.”

  “Do you want Frash or not?” she asked.

  There was a pause. “This is going to take a little time,” Arizona said finally. “Check back with me when you get to Zurich.”

  When they arrived she called again and Arizona gave her the information she had asked for. Horst Schiller was the CIA contact at the Zurich bank handling payments to REBUS. The money went from a Company front in Memphis to Brussels to Munich to Zurich, where it went into a numbered account. At each stop the money’s apparent source changed, which made backtracking nearly impossible unless you knew the players and the route.

  The bank was in the old city, in a tidy, venerable building that bespoke tradition and trust. Sylvia entered when the bank first opened at 10:00 A.M., asked to see Schiller and made no mention of her connection to the Company. Instead she passed herself off as an American looking for a place to salt away a substantial sum of cash, source unspecified; she mentioned something in excess of a quarter of a million, but was deliberately vague beyond this. Schiller was businesslike and obviously eager to please; it would take twenty-four hours to make the paperwork ready. Could he deliver it to her hotel? No, she was staying with friends at Lake Como in Italy, but she would be back in three days to complete the transaction. If she was satisfied she hinted that there would be additional deposits later. He clicked his heels together and bowed when she left.

  They watched the bank for the rest of the day. Schiller emerged at 7:45 P.M., lit a long, narrow cigar, walked to the river, bought a newspaper and crossed a bridge to a park that sat on a peninsula between the swift-running Limmat and Sihl rivers, which split the city roughly in half and looked like quicksilver in the evening light.

  Schiller checked his watch as he walked but showed no interest in reading.

  “Looks like he’s in a hurry,” Sylvia said.

  “Now’s the time,” Valentine said, moving toward Schiller. When he reached him he pushed him backward toward a bench, then sat down uncomfortably close to him as Sylvia slid in from the other side, trapping the banker between them. When he tried to get up Valentine pinned him against the backrest with a beefy arm. “You’ve obviously got some sort of hot date, so let’s skip the foreplay,” Valentine said with a smile that belied his tone of voice. “You’ve been handling dirty money, podnah, and if that were known, it might not be so good for business, especially yours.”

  “Who are you?” Schiller asked, his head swiveling.
He wore a dark suit and dark tie, black shoes and French cuffs. The rims of his glasses were colorless, his eyes gray, his skin pink.

  “We’re a very troublesome pair,” Valentine said. “No ethics, you could say, which should put us at even par with you. You’re nursemaid to certain funds routed by the CIA to you via Memphis, Tennessee, Brussels and Munich.” Valentine gave him the account number. “Now, before you get to thinking we’re common thieves, we want to make it clear that all we want is information, and to show you that we’re not barbarians, we’re going to reward you for your trouble.”

  Schiller was frozen. “Why should I listen to you?”

  “If you don’t, the newspapers will. Either we get what we want and you earn your fee, or tomorrow every newspaper in Switzerland will receive documented evidence of your dealings with the CIA. Of course it will come as no surprise to anyone that an august Swiss bank is handling dirty money; that’s a given. What will interest newsmen is your name and your exact connections. Your dealings with the CIA will destroy your anonymity, and that will more or less finish your career. You’ll be hounded for details, especially when American journalists get onto the story—and I assure you they will. Your employers may keep you on, but whatever assets you’ve attracted to the business will dry up. Anonymity is all you have to sell. Am I right?”

  “Your logic has some merit,” Schiller admitted. He fished a pressed handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed delicately at his forehead.

  “Good,” Valentine said brightly, slapping the man heavily on the back. “We want to look at the account. Our interest is in knowing if any of the funds have moved. If it will ease your pain, think of us as auditors.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if I retrieved the information for you and brought it back.”

  Valentine laughed. “We insist on seeing for ourselves.”

  “When?”

  Valentine made a show of checking his watch, then grinned. “Let’s say right now.”

  “I have a previous engagement,” Schiller said.

  “Had,” Valentine said, lifting the man to his feet and walking him through the park.

  An hour later they were back on the street. Frash’s asset had drawn nothing from the account; neither had Frash, and Schiller assured them that if Frash were in the city there was no way he could get the money, especially with a stop-order issued, unless he came to the bank. As they parted company, they warned him that if any movement took place in the account they were to be notified. If he failed they would blow his cover.

  The two Americans walked on a tree-lined street near the bank. “Maybe we’re ahead of the bastard,” Valentine said. “For once.”

  “And maybe he’s not headed here at all. That’s the problem with hunches.”

  “I don’t think so. Let your feminine intuition focus on this: Arizona says the asset worked strictly for cash, but I’ve never known a man with that orientation to squirrel it away. Yet Lumbas never touched the money, which I’d bet is no accident. Conclusion: the money wasn’t the point. But if not the money, what?”

  Valentine was vaulting a huge chasm of missing facts, but Sylvia got what he was driving at. If the asset was cash-motivated, why hadn’t he withdrawn the money? Was it possible that Lumbas had never been interested in payment at all, and that his interest in feeding Frash information had another motivation? “All right, I see it,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean Frash is going to show up here. He knows how the Company works.”

  “If he needs money, he knows that there’s a nice little nest egg right here.”

  “You agree with me?”

  He didn’t answer the question directly. “When a scientist doesn’t have all the facts, what does he do?”

  Sylvia gave him a funny look. His mind was unlike any she had ever encountered, and despite her irritation with his brooding, she knew that she was strongly attracted to him. “He looks at what he knows, pieces proven facts together to form a hypothesis, then backtracks to fill in theories as a way of testing his hypothesis.”

  “Bingo,” he said, and before she could react, much less defend herself, he swept her into his arms and crushed her with a powerful hug. Later she admitted to herself that she had not wanted to push him away, though at the time she nearly knocked him down getting loose.

  “You’re a loose cannon,” she said, “but you handled Schiller pretty smoothly.”

  “And you thought I was just a pretty face.”

  Why did he always have to bring everything back to some sort of personal reference point? He had handled Schiller well enough, but bankers were gamblers if nothing else, and money was a disease with them. The successful ones knew how to hedge their bets. Maybe they had caught Schiller unawares, but she was not convinced that he would simply roll over. They had gone right to his professional core and it was unlikely that he would meekly accede. He was no fool; in one way his cooperation put him in their power, but it also put his back to the wall, and people like Schiller, no matter how soft they looked, would not tolerate loss of control without a fight. “You want first watch?” she asked.

  Valentine seemed disappointed. “No problem. Call Arizona and tell him what’s going on. If Frash shows, I’ve got a hunch we’re going to need help.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “You mean on my own?” he asked. “It’s more or less my natural state.” He sounded sad.

  96TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1961, 6:50 P.M.Moscow

  Petrov was seated on the edge of the bed retching into a stainless steel pan held by Talia, who sat beside him and used her other arm to keep him from falling forward. Their leader’s skin was the color of an onion, his eyes red and sunken, his chin dripping pale green sputum. Talia held him as steadily and tenderly as she had her sons when they were young.

  “Annochka never showed,” Ezdovo said.

  “Bailov found the bodies of his men,” Talia said as another spasm wracked Petrov and doubled him over. She waited until he recovered, then turned to Melko. “Your Georgian comrades also paid the ultimate price,” she said, “but they bought you time. When we couldn’t find you or the attackers we hoped that you had gotten safely away.”

  “Wolf tickets,” Melko said as Bailov came into the room with a tray heaped with warm hand towels.

  “What about wolf tickets?” Bailov asked as he passed the tray to Talia.

  “Our attackers,” Melko said with a nod to Ezdovo, who handed the identity cards to the soldier.

  After a brief look Bailov passed the cards to Talia. “They’re useless,” he said. “It’s standard practice to use nonexistent names—usually the names of prominent czarists long dead. A man with a wolf ticket is already dead, so it doesn’t matter what name he goes by. If he’s lucky he’ll get his real identity back after a time, and if he’s smart he’ll toe the line from then on. A wolf ticket is a preview of purgatory, and when a man’s in such a state there’s no way to trace him.”

  “Perhaps the cards themselves tell us something,” Talia said. The others waited for an explanation. “Who uses such things?” It suddenly struck her that the Special Operations Group could be carrying wolf tickets as easily as the dead men.

  “The KGB,” Bailov said.

  “Which tells us all we need to know for the moment,” she said. “Either Melko’s girlfriend has engineered this through her husband and father, or she and her family are in grave danger.” She slid off the bed and waited for Gnedin to take her place.

  “Too late,” Petrov suddenly croaked. He had pulled loose from Gnedin and now steadied himself, his long, thin toes sticking out of the bottom of his dressing gown like withered talons. “Diversion,” he gasped. “Diversion,” he repeated, and then he began to gag and collapsed on the floor.

  “Go,” Gnedin said, waving them out. “I’ve got him.”

  97TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 1961, 8:50 P.M.Zurich

  At 7:45 P.M. Frash saw a man and a woman intercept Schiller in the park and push him roughly to a bench under some trees. A
fter a while the three walked back to the bank and the woman went inside with Schiller while her companion remained on the sidewalk. He was tall and large-framed, an obvious lookout, but he seemed to know how to move around just enough to blend into the scenery. Still, he didn’t seem to be the type favored by the Company. She was; he wasn’t. What did it mean?

  When the banker emerged an hour later he headed back through the park and Frash followed at a safe interval, timing his intercept for a point several blocks from their agreed-upon rendevous. “You’re late,” he growled at Schiller when he caught up.

  “I came as quickly as I could. It couldn’t be helped.”

  “You had unexpected visitors,” Frash said.

  “Some of your lot,” the banker complained, then explained what had happened. “Did you send them?”

  Albert needed to ask questions, not answer them, and Schiller’s arrogance irked him. “Did you tell them I was here?”

  “I’m not stupid. I gave them only what was necessary. I knew that if there was a problem I could count on you for the appropriate solution.”

  Frash grinned. “You want me to clean your dirty laundry?”

  “I would not characterize it so crudely. Their threats necessitated my fulfilling certain obligations, but not so as to jeopardize our arrangement. In banking one must learn how to balance conflicting demands.”

  Not to mention greed, Frash thought. “Where do we stand?”

  “It is arranged, of course, as we agreed,” Schiller said with a self-important bow. “The account is like a cabinet that can be opened from two sides. Different numbers, different access codes, but against the same funds. It’s possible because of accounting practices and the relative freedom that banks enjoy here.”