“Shut up and listen,” Mock said. “Zakharov has had extensive contact over recent months with an East German named Honecker, and a source close to him claims that the Soviets and East Germans have been gathering blueprints of buildings in all sectors of Berlin—street maps, sewer routes, all sorts of things that seem to point to something extraordinary.”
“I’m missing the point.” Which was not exactly true. Obviously the Soviets and East Germans were up to something. Lumbas had said several times that the Kremlin was concerned about the flow of educated East Germans to the West. Perhaps a decision had been made, and he wondered if the Company had any inkling of it.
“The Reuters people believe that the Soviets are preparing to seal off East Berlin this summer,” she said. “What do you think of that?”
There was some logic to this; Khrushchev had shown the Hungarians how the Soviets handled perceived threats to their national interest; Frash had no doubt that if the Soviets thought that isolating Berlin would be in their interest, they’d do it. He decided that his life as an Italian photographer was going to be useful. Whatever information Mock gathered, he would have access to it. “What you’ve got is worthless.” Especially if she was going to get him close to Kennedy.
“It won’t be when I confront the Russians with it publicly.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“You get paid to take pictures,” she snapped, “not to think.”
166SUNDAY, MAY 14, 1961, 8:15 P.M.Vienna
The flat was in a gray building on a short, narrow street off Linzerstrasse, nine blocks east of Auer Welsbach Park and ten blocks west of the city’s western rail terminus. The park sat at the foot of the 1,441-room Schönbrunn Palace, which had once housed a brooding Napoleon and would soon host the American and Soviet leaders. Canvas-top green trucks filled with Austrian security troops raced past the end of the street several times, but Kasi paid no attention. The Austrians were toy soldiers, better suited to gassing Jews than fighting man to man, a country of clerks and chocolate eaters with rotten teeth.
Kasi had been over the plan with Shehu so many times that it was now a part of his unconscious. It was daring and simple in concept but would require him to make countless on-the-spot decisions. His entire life had been a preparation for this moment, the key being to get the girl in so close that she could do her job, then eliminate her when she had served her purpose. They counted on the sheer size of the security force to guarantee access and success. The Austrians would be stepping on one another’s feet, a two-legged Maginot line. Hitler had already proven that fixed offensive positions were easily breached. In Vienna history would repeat itself. It would be no great feat to get the girl inside, but could he maneuver her face-to-face with the target?
“The girl can’t survive,” Shehu warned before they left. Kasi needed no reminder. She would die, even at the cost of his own life; he was comfortable with his own expendability, his entire career having been based on this assumption.
Since 1951 Shehu’s agents had been acquiring Viennese real estate under the cover of a Belgian company. They had thirty properties now, five of them in the city itself, all intended to be used briefly, then abandoned. This particular flat apparently belonged to a French-born architect named Shank; the contract provided not only the purchase price, but an extra clause paid the owner of record a handsome bonus to abandon the place on twenty-four hours’ notice. Large and well furnished, it was on the second floor and had two bedrooms and a small balcony that overlooked the street. In an emergency they could jump to the street or go down the stairs to an inner courtyard, from which there were ample escape routes in either direction. Of the Viennese sites this one was the best suited for their needs.
The girl seemed serene. How could she be anything else? He had stripped away her illusions. She had no idea what lay ahead, but he supposed she assumed that this would be a repeat of the Paris mission. If she knew the truth too soon she might balk. He had seen such reactions before in less momentous circumstances, and had learned that it was better to keep people in the dark. In Paris she had performed with near perfection, but eliminating soft-bellied expatriates was not the same as killing someone whose face was recognized the world over. The sheer magnitude of the act would give pause even to a seasoned assassin.
The girl came out of the bathroom dripping water, sat at a dressing table and dried her hair. She was so accustomed to having him around that she no longer paid any attention to him. When she bathed, she left the door open and sometimes went around without clothes. He saw that the scar on her leg was dark but cleanly healed. He had been surprised and pleased at how easily she had handled the dogs, and felt bad about the scar. When her hair was dry, she began brushing it. It had grown out now and reached down to her neck.
“Tomorrow you’ll have new clothes,” Kasi told her. Lejla glanced at him in the mirror and kept brushing methodically. She had a tiny waist, too small for the rest of her body, and a long torso. “A manicure, perhaps,” he added. “Would you like that?”
He saw her look at her left hand. “Whatever you say,” she said.
She was a remarkably handsome woman. Kasi had been close to her for months now and had sometimes felt desire, but he had pushed it away with tricks of self-discipline. Before there had always been a tomorrow, another test for her, intensified training, continuous monitoring of her attitude. But now they were at the end, and what went on between them was their secret.
He was shaking as he undressed. He arranged his clothes on the floor and got into bed, sliding his automatic under his pillow. “Turn off the light,” he said.
The girl got up and walked soundlessly to a switch along the wall. “You want to sleep now?” she asked. “I’ll finish in the other room.”
Kasi thought of Shehu. If something went wrong and Shehu learned . . . “Yes,” he said. “You do the same. We need to be rested.”
Lejla Llarja went into the other bedroom and sat down on the bed. Her father’s voice still said, “You can’t save me,” but she still had to try.
167MONDAY, MAY 15, 1961, 4:50 A.M.Klosterneuburg, Austria
The newest Russian was named Ezdovo and seemed to the two Americans to be on a par with Bailov and Melko rather than with the others, who seemed to be soldiers of lesser rank. The three conferred for some time before asking the Americans to join them.
“In Switzerland you told us about several murders among Albanian expatriates in Paris,” Bailov said.
“Why are we going back to this? They were officially classified as political infighting, but we also heard that they could have been the work of Albanian execution teams,” Sylvia said.
“One of the victims was shot by a young woman. Have I remembered correctly?”
“What are you getting at?”
“We have information indicating that an important Albanian named Kasi flew to Vienna last week. He was accompanied by a young woman.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
Bailov cut her off. “Kasi is a senior officer in the Sigurimi, but more important he’s close to Shehu, closer than Hoxha himself. Shehu is Hoxha’s iron first and Kasi is Shehu’s. It’s unlikely he’s here on holiday.”
“In other words, he’s here on business,” Valentine said.
“That’s the guess, but your Western logic won’t explain it. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin five years ago, the Albanians were miffed. Stalin had sent them arms during the war with Germany. A fallout began with the denunciation, and it has worsened since. Now the General Secretary has also fallen out with the Chinese, and Chairman Mao is attempting to maneuver our country into a position where we would have to support him.” It had been Petrov who explained the nuances and intricacies of the Sino-Soviet problem to the team.
“Even the Chinese can’t make the Soviet Union do what it doesn’t want to do,” Sylvia said.
“You don’t understand,” Bailov said. “Mao wants Khrushchev and the Soviet Union to accept the role of leadership of
the world socialist movement. If Nikita Sergeievich allows this to happen, then we must regard the movement as a single entity, and therefore must support whatever our brothers do.”
“If China goes to war, the Soviet Union goes to war,” Sylvia said. “Like that?”
“That’s the extreme,” Bailov said, “but it is also precisely the concern. Khrushchev had to reject the Chinese initiative because he knows that they are headstrong. We can’t afford to support their adventures.”
“Which means that Khrushchev is allowing the socialist movement to become fragmented,” Sylvia said.
“Let’s stick to facts and forget geopolitics,” Valentine said. “You don’t know that this Kasi character had anything to do with the events in Paris. With Frash here we can’t afford to divert our attention.”
“Hear me out,” Bailov said. “The trouble between Khrushchev and Hoxha is deadly serious.”
“A rip in the Iron Curtain,” Valentine said, but the Russians didn’t laugh at his joke.
“The rip, as you put it, is ideological,” Bailov answered. “Attempts have been made to smooth it over, but the Albanians are recalcitrant.”
Valentine didn’t get it. “A big old dog doesn’t fear the fleas on his back.”
“Khrushchev is simply acknowledging reality. No less than democracy, Communism works differently in different parts of the world. It’s incredible to us that the West has never seemed to grasp this. Khrushchev seeks reform, but change isn’t possible if we have to stand on ideology.”
“Let’s say for the moment that we buy this,” Valentine said. “We still don’t see how this links up to what happened in Paris.”
“We’re relatively sure that Kasi was in France when the killings took place,” Ezdovo said. “We think it’s possible that the Albanians believe that the Frash-Lumbas plan was a Soviet response to the ideological rift.”
“But you’re saying that it isn’t?” Sylvia asked.
Bailov nodded. “We accept that your CIA wasn’t engaged in a special operation, and we hope you’ll believe that Lumbas wasn’t part of an official Soviet action.”
“Do your sources in Moscow offer an explanation for the Albanians being here?” Sylvia asked.
Ezdovo opened his hands to express futility. “We have to assume that he’s here, that the girl is with him, and that whatever else they have in mind, they won’t stray far from the Lek.”
“The Lek?” Valentine asked.
“That is the name of the Albanians’ old tribal law whose central tenet is revenge. Under the Lek virtually every insult requires death as a response. Kasi made his reputation as an assassin.”
“Nice. So if you know they’re here you must have some idea where they are.”
Bailov laid a piece of paper on the table. “This may help us.”
Valentine saw that there were five addresses on the page. “You wouldn’t happen to have one for Frash, would you?”
168MONDAY, MAY 15, 1961, 8:30 P.M.Vienna
It was irritating how the echo of telephone scramblers seemed to stack words on top of each other. “Where are you now?” Arizona asked as he heard the echo that seemed to repeat his question. Where I am is in purgatory, he told himself, awaiting direction from forces beyond my control. “What the hell has taken so long?”
“Frash is in Austria,” Sylvia said wearily. “He crossed under the radar.”
“Confirmed?”
“Good enough to act on it,” she said. “We think he’s headed for Vienna.”
Naturally, Arizona thought. The bread was about to land peanut-butter side down. “Why?”
“Nothing else makes sense. He’s stuck to Europe for a reason.”
She was right on that count. He pictured Frash as a missile on course to a target. Somehow they had to intercept him and worry about his motives later. “Who else knows?” he asked.
“The Russians,” she said.
Which complicates matters, Arizona told himself, but without the Russians they could never have confirmed the Frash-Lumbas connection. What was important now was how they dealt with the future, rather than the past.
“Do you want us to alert the Secret Service team?” Sylvia asked.
This was the last thing Arizona wanted, but he warned himself to go easy so that she wouldn’t catch on. “Good idea,” he said. Then after a pause, “Wait . . . it’s probably better that I do it. You two are out of the loop and liable to get tied up if you walk in cold turkey.” Give her support, then withdraw it gently. Let her believe that it was a fifty-fifty call on who would make the contact. “I’ll take care of it. Leave the details to me and I’ll be on the next plane. I want you two to stick close to the Russians, and I don’t want our people to know about that relationship. It may give us a bit more room to act.” Their independence meant leverage; at least he hoped so.
Sylvia was quiet after she hung up the phone.
“Burr under your saddle?” Valentine asked.
“More like systemic skepticism.”
“That’s my line,” he said with a laugh. “But it ain’t paranoia when somebody’s really out to get you. What’s the word from our mountain?”
“He’s coming to Mohammed.”
“Should we be comforted by that?”
She patted his hand. Technically Arizona was correct; if they made contact with the Secret Service it might raise too many questions. But if it was so logical, why was she so antsy?
169MONDAY, MAY 15, 1961, 11:00 P.M.Klosterneuburg, Austria
The main task was organizing the team to check the five addresses. Maybe the Albanians were at one of the five locations, maybe not; in any event, they would soon know. Frash was a different matter. Thus far he had slipped through every net; this time they would have to use a finer mesh.
“We have time,” Bailov told the others. “We have more than two weeks to find them.” He had already subdivided his men and assigned them to watch embassies and other public places where the leaders would meet. Concentrate on adjacent areas, he had instructed. Overlook nothing. Watch who comes and goes and when they’re there. Write it down. Take photographs. Look for patterns but avoid them yourselves. See but don’t be seen, which he helped ensure by assigning only a few men to a given area. When the leaders arrived his men would serve as an inner screen, the line behind the security the rest of the world would see; because of this he wanted them to know as much as possible about the terrain where they would operate. However, the immediate problem was the five addresses.
“We don’t have enough people to move against all five at once,” Sylvia reminded the Russians. “We have to assume that the five are linked—safe houses, perhaps, or offering short-term travelers’ aid. If we concentrate on one and it’s the wrong choice, we risk alerting the Albanians. We have some time, but we need to use it constructively. Who owns the properties? Who lives in them? Any recent changes or new residents? We need phone numbers, tax records, anything that will give us more information and help us narrow the search.”
“We’re looking at everything,” Bailov said. “Moscow wants us to examine the same ground being covered by security.” Sylvia had a feeling that when these Russians referred to Moscow it wasn’t the same Moscow the CIA tried to track. “The key is access. Who will be close to the General Secretary? Security, police, embassy employees, government employees, reporters. All of these people and others will have more access than the public at large.”
“With a rifle and a telescopic sight, a sniper could be a threat from a long way off,” Sylvia pointed out.
Bailov rubbed his forehead. “Security forces will have to take care of threats from the street. All routes will be swept ahead of time and monitored. Automobiles with armor will be used, and there will be tight crowd control at all entry and departure points. A moving target presents too many uncontrollable factors for a sniper, so security will concentrate on the areas that present stationary opportunities.”
“Back home,” Valentine said, “ranchers shoot the ea
rs off jackrabbits running thirty miles an hour.”
“I’m not arguing it can’t be done,” Bailov answered. “Only that if you’re a sniper, you try to pick a shot at a stationary target from the best possible angle and a maximum distance of sixty meters. A professional plans for two rounds, no more, and we can assume that amateurs are not a concern here.”
Valentine nodded.
“What are your people monitoring specifically?” Sylvia asked.
“The Austrians have vetted everyone who will or may get involved. The backgrounds of janitors, dishwashers, electricians, caterers, plumbers and so forth have been investigated. If there is a need for emergency services of any kind, only those people who have been cleared ahead of time will be allowed into any of the sites,” Bailov said. “As a safeguard, all these names have been sent to Moscow to be checked against our own lists.”
“Tidy,” Valentine said. But Frash had shown an uncanny ability to go where he wanted, and the Albanians might be better prepared and less wild-eyed than the Russians made them out to be. He had a feeling that everything was going to get even more complicated than it already was.
170TUESDAY, MAY 16, 1961, NOONPurkersdorf, Austria
Vladimir Rakimov had been installed on the first floor of the Soviet embassy, a stone’s throw from the Belvedere Palace complex. While his cover was second deputy director of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Propaganda, he held a second and more important position as U.S. sector chief of Section K of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. In this role Brigadier General Rakimov was responsible for penetrating foreign intelligence services and for monitoring Soviets living outside the U.S.S.R. But now he was in Vienna as part of the tripartite security apparatus, his job being to review press credentials. Technically it was the Austrians who gave authorization to reporters wanting to cover the summit, but in practice all requests were reviewed by Soviet and American officials at their respective embassies. Any of the three could blackball any request, which meant that every journalist who passed muster had been cleared by all three intelligence services.
The Domino Conspiracy Page 58
