The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “I only installed the device.”

  “Who was your client for that one?”

  “Perevertkin, which was a surprise. As I said earlier, I usually dealt with Gaponov. They were my only customers. This is a KGB installation dedicated solely to manufacturing devices for them.”

  Bailov evaluated what he had heard and told Ezdovo, “Call Talia. Tell her we need to know Perevertkin’s movements from early evening April 24 to daybreak April 25. We also need to know if Shelepin knows about this place.”

  “I have work to do,” Chelitnikov said, making no effort to hide his growing irritation.

  Melko said, “We have two of Perevertkin’s security people at the proving ground. Lucky bastards. There wasn’t enough room for them on the flight. Two others were killed in the crash. The survivors may be able to help us pin down his movements that day.”

  Ezdovo returned soon after. “Talia says she can’t get that information right away.”

  Chelitnikov clapped his hands together, brushed away ashes, seated the artifical leg in its housing and began buckling the straps. “So, that’s it?”

  “Yes,” Bailov said, “that’s it.”

  “Excellent,” the demolition expert said. “Excellent.”

  Bailov stopped at the door of the laboratory.

  “What do we do about this place?” Ezdovo asked softly. “Blow it?”

  “Too dangerous,” Bailov said. “We’ve got no idea what’s here. We’ll leave people here to keep it secured and send in demolition teams later to remove the explosives a few at a time.”

  “What about him?” Ezdovo asked.

  Bailov opened the door and called two of his men inside. “That’s Comrade Chelitnikov over there. Take him outside the perimeter and shoot him.”

  144THURSDAY, MAY 4, 1961, 8:40 A.M.Rome

  It had been ten days since the discovery of Sultana Fregosi’s body and four days since they had learned that despite the trap they had set in Zurich, Frash had gotten his money through a complicated banking arrangement with a partner institution in Italy. Zurich had no way of knowing this until auditors caught it in a debit report that was traced to Genoa. Sylvia and Valentine had moved to Rome and checked into a hotel near the American embassy a block from the Tiber. The city would give them better flight possibilities if and when Frash surfaced again. The Italian police had issued a national alert that had triggered an onslaught of alleged sightings, but so far none of them had checked out, and they did not have a lot of faith in the Italians’ motivation to stay the course.

  Valentine was sitting on the balcony nursing a cup of espresso. “He has to know now that his passports are worthless,” he said. “He’ll drop even further under our radar from now on, same as he did coming out of Zurich.”

  “We don’t know that,” Sylvia said.

  If Frash didn’t know, he soon would. They had talked the authorities into sending a photograph to Italian newspapers. It was appearing every other day and would keep running until the news organizations were told to stop, or until the CIA money stopped flowing. Nothing was free in Italy; it was good to know that its people had not changed much since the war. “He’ll know it when he sees his face in the funny papers.”

  “All it will do is spook him,” she said. “I’d rather have him thinking he’s in the clear. This way he’ll keep looking over his shoulder. We’re not a posse,” she added, “and you’re not some Texas Ranger reading tracks in the badlands.”

  “Be a lot easier out there.”

  “There’s got to be a pattern,” Sylvia said. “We know that at least part of the time he’s not moving randomly. He got passports from the Dutch woman, arranged for money in Zurich, picked it up in Genoa and went to ground in Venice.”

  Valentine got up, went back into their room, took a map of Europe out of Sylvia’s bag, spread it on the bed and pulled a chair over. “All right. Let’s try it your way. We know he started out in Belgrade.”

  “We assume.”

  “All right, but we know he was in France.” He pawed through her purse looking for a pen but found only an eyeliner pencil. He circled Lamoura, then Amsterdam, drew a heavy line between the two and added lines to Zurich, Genoa and Venice.

  “Add Paris,” Sylvia added. “Before Lamoura. Gabler said he thought he’d made some flights to Paris, and we know that this all started there. When you build an escape plan you use a familiar route, then break off it unexpectedly.”

  “That makes you predictable.” Valentine’s training had been different.

  “If the other side knows that you’re moving. If not, familiarity provides control, which in turn assures security. If you use regular patterns you understand where the opportunities are. In any event, the whole thing began in Paris, and when it fell apart in Belgrade he would have headed back. It’s logical.”

  Valentine nodded, drew a line from Paris to Lamoura and stood up to get a better perspective. “Nothing,” he said after a while.

  “The lines don’t cross,” she said after studying the map. “If Paris was the starting point, he went south, north, south again to Zurich, then farther south to Genoa, then north to Venice.” After another pause she asked, “Does that mean he’ll go north again?”

  “We can’t predict on the basis of this pattern.”

  “He’s not wandering aimlessly,” Sylvia said slowly. “Credentials, money, asylum. The money wasn’t the objective; it’s just a tool, like the passports. He went to Venice to hide. He goes only where he has a reason to. Intent,” she added.

  Valentine tried to humor her. “Maybe he wants to go back to Yugoslavia.”

  “He’d need a visa to get in. His passports wouldn’t help.”

  Valentine prowled around the room. “He’s crazy. How do we apply logic to that?”

  “He’s schizoid, which means that part of the time he’s perfectly logical, maybe even obsessively logical. Since Holland he’s moved steadily east, and every step has had a purpose. He’s not moving aimlessly.”

  “Without visas he’s gone about as far east as he can go. And he can’t cross red borders the way he can in the West,” Valentine pointed out.

  “If he’d planned to leave Europe he could have gotten out from Venice. He had plenty of time and the means; instead he chose to hunker down there. His next move has to be to the east.”

  “All that’s left is Austria.”

  “I have a feeling,” Sylvia said.

  145FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1961, 11:50 A.M.En Route to Moscow

  Most of his men were sleeping as the plane droned northward, but Bailov couldn’t join them. Perevertkin’s surviving security men said they had driven him to a special airport north of the city on a night that might have been the twenty-fourth of April. He had gone into a hangar, stayed a short time, and then they had returned him to his residence. Bailov thought about the long, bloody trail that seemed to point to Perevertkin, but if this was the end, why did it feel unfinished? What was Perevertkin’s link to Lumbas and the American named Frash? Until this loose end was tied it wasn’t over, he told himself.

  Melko broke his concentration. “Whatever you’re thinking about,” he said with a smile, “I hope it doesn’t include parachutes.”

  146FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1961, 5:30 P.M.Milan

  Kenya appeared frazzled when she climbed into the trailer after dark and threw her purse and a newspaper on the couch. “You look tired,” Frash said.

  She sat down, kicked off her shoes and let her head flop backward. “Cops,” she said. “They grabbed me this morning and put me in a truck. Four of them, led by a Fascist lieutenant who says they’re thinking about charging me with kidnapping. I said, ‘It’s my sister’s baby. Fie likes crowds.’ It’s an old routine; they threaten charges and I counter with alibis. In the end it comes down to money. The pig wanted fifty thousand lire. I told him I had thirty thousand, and if they’d only let me do my work I’d have the rest. The swine says, ‘Okay, thirty thousand and a blow job.’ I say, ‘Fine, pull it out and let’s g
et on with it.’ He says, ‘For all of us.’ I need a swim,” she said disgustedly as she stomped out of the trailer.

  Frash followed her down to the clear creek behind her place and watched her undress. She had the lean, hard muscles of a swimmer and small buttocks shaped like an inverted heart. He sat on the moss-covered rock and scanned the newspaper while she splashed around. On the bottom of the front page there was a short article with a headline that read SUMMIT IMMINENT? Several Italian diplomats were quoted as saying that Khrushchev and Kennedy had agreed to a meeting in Europe, but as yet no time or location had been announced. The reporter ended the piece with a speculation; his sources had reported that Austrian security forces had been notified of leave cancellations during the last week of May and the first week of June. His stomach tightened when he read the report and felt himself drawing nearer to Kennedy.

  Deeper in the front section Frash stared at himself in a one-column photo captioned, “Wanted for Questioning.” The brief piece below described a multiple homicide. There was a physical description, but no name or nationality was mentioned, and there was nothing about a reward. He should have taken the bodies farther out to sea and weighted them with chains, but he had been spooked by the Americans’ appearance and had not been thinking clearly. The piece listed a local telephone number to call with information. The photos had to be the Company’s work, which meant they had lost his trail and were trying to flush him out. He knew that they would keep running the photograph and that eventually the woman would see it. “Goddammit,” he cursed softly.

  “What?” Kenya asked. She was directly in front of him, brushing her hair.

  “Nothing. Seems like there’s nothing but bad news in the paper these days.”

  “That’s why I never read them. Only gadji need somebody else to tell them life is hard. You should do what I do.”

  She’s a risk, he told himself. The police will harass her again and she might betray me to get them off her back. He would have to move on. Whoever had placed the photograph was counting on his connecting with someone, and understood how he worked.

  “I need help crossing the border,” he said. “Undetected.”

  “Which one?”

  “Into Austria.”

  “I thought you were happy here.”

  He saw that she was upset. “You knew it couldn’t be permanent.”

  She draped the towel over her shoulder and gave him her hand so that he could help her up the bank. “I didn’t think it would be so short.”

  “Some things are beyond our control.”

  She laughed. “Do you care how much it costs to get across?”

  “No.” He folded the newspaper and flicked it into the stream, then fell into step beside her.

  “It’s risky,” she said.

  “There’s danger everywhere. Most people don’t recognize it for what it is.”

  There was no more conversation while she made dinner. Afterward they went to bed. She was on her knees and bent forward, pushing her hips backward to receive his thrusts, gasping, reaching back to claw his legs with her long fingers. “Do it hard, gadjo. Use me,” she said between moans.

  Later she sat in a chair in the corner and smoked a dark cheroot whose ember glowed. “If you want to go,” she said, “there’s only one condition. You’ll have to take me with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You smell dangerous to me, gadjo, and I like how that feels.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  She laughed. “As much as any Gypsy can be Catholic. I’ve learned to appreciate more earthy idols.”

  Catholic and pagan. He liked that. “Shall we shake to close the deal?”

  The ember disappeared and she crawled back into bed. “I have a better idea.”

  147SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1961, 8:45 A.M.Moscow

  “Eat,” Khrushchev told his unexpected visitors. He was clad in a faded flannel robe and scuffed leather slippers and looked groggy, but Talia knew from experience that this was one of his many guises. Like peasants everywhere, he awoke alert and ready for the day’s work. The table was covered with sliced meat, cheeses, pickled vegetables, hard-boiled eggs and loaves of bread. A samovar hissed at the end of the table. Talia, Petrov and Gnedin had no interest in eating, but when Khrushchev got something in his head it was impossible to dislodge it.

  The General Secretary smeared a layer of lard on a thick slice of black bread and picked through a pile of tomato wedges with his fork. He had listened to Talia’s briefing without interrupting, but he seemed to be more interested in his breakfast than in what she had to tell him. Even Petrov, who had insisted on coming along, looked more intent on the back of one of his bony hands than on her report. “The lesson seems to be that you can never tell where a threat will come from,” Khrushchev said finally. “Who would have imagined Perevertkin at the center of anything other than his own farts?”

  Talia glanced at her leader. Having dealt alone with Khrushchev for the past few weeks, she was suddenly unsure about how to proceed in Petrov’s presence. Bailov had insisted that while Perevertkin seemed to be at the center of something, they still didn’t know what it was. Now Petrov was gazing at a wall. “Everything began with Lumbas,” she said. It was impossible to tell where Petrov had drifted off to, but there was no time to wait for his return.

  “He’s dead,” Khrushchev said with his mouth full. “Or did I hear incorrectly?”

  “That’s not the point,” Talia said.

  “Perevertkin took him out of Tyuratam, and now both of them are dead.”

  “But why did he pull him out?” Gnedin always looked past the disease to its manifestations. “Until we know that, nothing is settled.”

  Unexpectedly, Petrov stirred to life beside Talia. “A conspiracy is contagious,” he said. “When winter comes, malaria abates and no more cases are reported. But is it finished? Spring comes, the ice melts, the air warms, the mosquitoes rise and the epidemic resumes. To end it you must eliminate the conditions that gave rise to it.”

  “The Russian soul encourages conspiracy,” Khrushchev said. “It’s our true religion, but it can’t be sustained without leaders. Perevertkin is dead, and with him any potential conspiracy.”

  “Certainty is a trap of small minds,” Petrov said.

  “A fox has an instinct for traps.”

  “Old foxes and old men indulge themselves.”

  Khrushchev sat back and crossed his short arms. “Age is more than an accumulation of birthdays. Old men know where they want to go and how to get there.”

  Petrov nodded solemnly. “Conditions and men change. Consider Stalin and yourself. Who were his advisers? Whom did he trust?”

  A weak laugh issued from the General Secretary. “That bastard trusted no one. He was his own man, and his word was law. What’s your point?”

  “Is your hold on power as absolute?” Khrushchev stared at Petrov but did not answer. “If Stalin wanted the Winter Palace painted in zebra stripes the scaffolds would have been up and the ground floor done before he had finished talking.”

  “That time is gone.”

  “Precisely,” Petrov said. “You can’t drive the counry alone. You took Stalin’s seat but not his power, and now you are forced to create alliances with this faction or that individual, and with every issue you face the alliances change, depending on who gains or loses.”

  “It’s no longer the thirties,” Khrushchev muttered.

  Petrov’s voice was barely audible, but his listeners were mesmerized. “You are to be congratulated for what you have accomplished. The gulags are empty, you’ve opened windows to the West, the people are with you for now, and all this by virtue of your wits rather than the strong arm of the apparat. Better than anyone else, you understand that power here is no longer absolute; yet there’s security in the delicacy of a balancing act. Just as you rule by shifting alliances, those who would unseat you must seek the same equilibrium. It follows that Perevertkin, given his level and assuming he was what he appear
ed to be, could not have operated without ties to those above him. Only when we understand his alliances can we know for certain that our work is finished. To ignore such realities is to encourage conspirators to adjust to their losses and renew their efforts.”

  Khrushchev leaned toward the small dark man. “Let’s assume for the moment that your assumptions are correct. Would you then agree that if Perevertkin represents a broader threat, his death diminishes that threat in the near term?”

  “I never said that the threat was broad,” Petrov said. “In fact it’s likely to be narrowly focused.”

  “There’s no evidence pointing to me as the focus.”

  “True, but your instincts launched our investigation. You felt threatened enough to turn to me, someone outside the power structure and therefore not beholden to anyone.”

  “Everything you’ve done points to Perevertkin, and now he’s dead.” The General Secretary was losing patience.

  “We don’t yet understand the architecture of the conspiracy. What were his intentions? While everything points to him, it’s possible to see all the events from Lumbas and Trubkin onward as a kind of covering action. Trubkin intervened and was murdered. We intervened, so there were attempts directed at us, and when these failed, everyone in our path was destroyed before we could interrogate them.”

  “We want to take it to the finish,” Talia said.

  Khrushchev pushed his hands into the pockets of his robe. “You can continue for now,” he said over his shoulder as he left the room, but Talia sensed that change was in the wind.

  148SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1961, 7:20 P.M.Melago, Italy

  “Let me do the talking, gadjo,” Kenya warned. On the tree line Frash saw several wagons and three large fires burning, their embers rising in the dusk. “Stay here,” Kenya whispered, and kissed him lingeringly before slipping away.