The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  Ezdovo used a small flashlight to search the place. There was a huge color photograph of a redhead stretched out on the same sofa over which it hung. Too thin for his taste, he thought. Talia was muscular and curved. The redhead was covered with freckles. The photo was an odd decoration for a woman’s flat. There was no sign of a man anywhere, now or in the past, and nothing in the bathroom but a woman’s things.

  There was a locked desk in what appeared to be a study. He picked it easily, but examined it cautiously and was glad he had when he found two slivers of mica on either end of the edge of the drawer; she was as suspicious as she was organized. There were no notes in the desk, no records, no addresses—nothing. Paper clips were sorted by size and in separate containers. Was she as compulsive in her work as she was in her tidiness?

  Where was her private cubbyhole? He went through the flat again, this time concentrating on those places that were not meant to be found, coming finally to the bathroom, which had a toilet, bidet and a tub on claw feet, all of them surrounded by red-and-white tile and terrazo, installed by somebody who knew his craft. Talia said that a woman felt most like a woman in the refuge of her own bath. There was a new diaphragm in the medicine cabinet, its box still sealed. If a new one was here, there must be a used one elsewhere—with her, he guessed. But there was no hiding place. A woman who took no chances. She had another place, he decided, but not her own; she would be too careful for that. It would be borrowed, transient, a moving target, and the American was with her, posing as a photographer. The woman at the hotel had identified Frash as Sirini. Why? Credentials would get them close to the main players, but just how close would be determined by security. Surveillance here would be a waste of time; she would not return here until her work was complete.

  181FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1961, 11:35 P.M.Vienna

  Richard Wehrmann lived in an impressive neighborhood in the hills above the city. Ezdovo guessed that the mousy woman who came to the door was his wife. She seemed confused by his presence, but when he told her he was from Soviet security she led him into a study where he found a coatless Wehrmann bent over a pile of paper, writing with a silver fountain pen.

  “Comrade Rakimov sends his regards,” Ezdovo said in Russian from the doorway.

  “Have we met?” Wehrmann replied in perfect Russian.

  “I’ve come about the Italian,’ Ezdovo said. “Sirini.”

  “It’s after hours,” Wehrmann said, setting his pen aside. “Is there a problem?”

  Ezdovo saw beads of sweat on the man’s forehead. “Comrade Rakimov said he explained it to you. It’s a question of procedure.”

  “Serious enough to bring you to my home.”

  “Please,” the Siberian said. “I must apologize, but I only follow orders. We would like very much to talk to Miss Mock. It’s important that we talk to her now; otherwise this could get blown out of proportion. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I see,” the Austrian said. “But you already have her address.”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  So that was it. They had lost her, which was not really a surprise. Mignonne tended to flit from one friend to another, gathering gossip and information under the guise of fellowship. “I have only the one address,” Wehrmann said apologetically. “In any event, she was properly vetted through the agreed-upon system. Rakimov himself cleared her for your side.”

  “Actually it’s the Italian who interests us,” Ezdovo admitted. “We need her in order to reach him.”

  “He was also vetted. I spoke personally to Rakimov about this.”

  “Comrade Rakimov was not thinking clearly.” Like twenty million of their countrymen at any given moment, he had been blind drunk. The Austrian was off balance now; it was time to shift gears. “Please,” Ezdovo said. “Don’t take offense. I don’t mean to be argumentative; we both want the same thing. We all have an interest in seeing that the summit goes smoothly.”

  Wehrmann exhaled and said quickly, “I’m happy to cooperate with my Soviet colleagues.”

  “The Italian is not at the hotel listed on his application. It’s some distance from the city, so perhaps he’s moved to the center for convenience. We simply want to talk to him.”

  Were the Russians checking the addresses of all reporters? Damned odd. “I don’t see how I can help you.”

  “You’ve met Sirini?”

  Wehrmann eyed the Russian. “Actually, I haven’t.”

  “If Miss Mock calls, could you ask her to get in touch with us?”

  “I doubt she will, but I will of course ask her.”

  “How well do you know the woman?”

  “Superficially.”

  Ezdovo studied the small room; two sides were filled with bookshelves and there were three framed photographs on the paneled wall. One of the photographs was of Wehrmann holding a huge, gleaming trophy. A redhead with a microphone stood beside him, the same woman as in the photo at Mock’s flat. “You were a skier,” Ezdovo said.

  “A long time ago.” The Russian was staring at the photograph. Did he know it was Mignonne holding the microphone? If so and I don’t say something he’ll think I’m covering up. If I confirm it’s her and he doesn’t know, will it hurt her? God, what a pain in the ass. What did the Russians want? The bastards never told the truth. She’s anti-Communist, but they already know that. It’s the Italian, then, which figures. She’s gotten herself mixed up with an unsavory character. Probably she’s sleeping with him. It was her pattern; colleagues became lovers, and she dominated them until they were smothered. How many men had she enticed away from their wives, then cut loose because the challenge was ended? She really was a barbarian. Combativeness was the essence of her nature, and she vented it in every way possible, one of those people hated in life who would be mourned heavily in death as an original free spirit. “That’s Mignonne in the photograph,” Wehrmann said after considerable deliberation. “She was interviewing me after a downhill in Switzerland.”

  “She’s quite stunning,” Ezdovo said. It had taken the man a long time to identify her but he was smooth.

  “I suppose,” the Austrian said. The other photographs were of gondoliers in Venice. “She shot the other pictures herself.”

  The photos looked as if they had been shot through gauze. In one of them a woman with a scarf sat with a gondolier. Her blouse had been pulled back to reveal a perfect breast. Ezdovo stepped closer. “That’s her as well, isn’t it?”

  Wehrmann laughed nervously. Even those who knew her rarely could identify her in that shot, which was the whole point, she had told him. People see the breast and the gondola and not much more, and she had been right. The Russian, however, had zeroed directly on her. “Yes. She’s an accomplished photographer, but a bit narcissistic.”

  “Taken with a timer?”

  “I have no idea. She processes her work as well, but all that business is too technical for me.”

  A very self-centered woman, and technically adept, so why does she use another photographer when she could do it herself? “Why does she work with Sirini?”

  Wehrmann had anticipated this question. “Photography is her hobby and journalism her profession. It’s an important distinction. When she works, she insists on having an equally professional photographer along. To do her own photography, she says, would be as stupid as a doctor diagnosing his own medical problems. At least that’s what she says.” Wehrmann didn’t tell the Russian that Mignonne had said that the Italian had no journalistic experience; it would simply raise more suspicions. When he talked to Mignonne again they would get it all sorted out and that would be the end of it. He chastised himself for letting her use him, then reminded himself that it was not the first time, and not likely to be the last either.

  “It’s necessary for us to talk to both of them,” Ezdovo said as he made his way toward the door.

  “Of course I’ll do what I can, but as I’ve explained I have only the one number. She uses her flat for an office.”

  “Where
’s her laboratory?”

  “Somewhere in the cellar, I think. Below the coffee house. She used to have it in the flat, but she said the chemical fumes ruined her clothes.”

  “Call Rakimov if you hear from her or Sirini.”

  “You may count on Austria’s full cooperation.”

  “We are,” Ezdovo said as he backed out, nodded politely to the woman who had let him in and slipped back into the night.

  182SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961, 3:20 A.M.Vienna

  Melko cursed the drizzle as he made one sweep down the short street to look for the American woman and saw her huddled in the entrance of a soot-blackened building adjacent to the target address. She motioned for him to cross at the end of the block, then double back. He didn’t hurry.

  “Anyone in there?” he asked, bounding up the steps in two leaps.

  “I haven’t seen anybody, and there are too many ways out to cover them all,” she told him. “Street, courtyard, roof. It’s a maze.”

  “Go stand in their doorway,” Melko said. “You look like you belong; even if you don’t, nobody will question your wanting to escape the rain. People aren’t suspicious of the obvious. I’ll be on the roof.” He handed her a thermos. “Tea. You look like you can use it.”

  183SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961, 6:45 A.M.Vienna

  Just before first light Ezdovo made his way back to the storage shed behind the coffee shop under Mock’s flat, picked the lock quickly, then closed the door behind him and relocked it. The shed was filled with crates and boxes of supplies, and blue smocks hung on a row of hooks along one wall. He took a smock, put it on and set to work springing the next lock.

  The coffee-house kitchen was dark and sterile. There were stairs to the cellar next to a huge refrigeration unit. The cellar had two levels, the first one consisting of an office and several supply rooms, the second considerably deeper, with old brick and mortar walls, including a bricked-over arch at the end of the corridor. At the end of the second level he found the darkroom, which was small and well equipped, with stainless steel basins, an enlarger and a clothesline to hang freshly processed film and prints to dry. A huge metal wastebasket was empty.

  A small refrigerator was in one corner. Inside he found twenty rolls of 35 mm film, but there was no indication of where it came from. If she bought so much, she probably used a single supplier. In the Soviet Union there was no such thing as a discount, but here every shop seemed to advertise a reduced price for quantity purchases. If her flat served as her office and the darkroom was here, wouldn’t it make sense that she made purchases nearby? There was not a lot of hope in this, but it gave him an angle to work on. Petrov had always taught them to follow every possibility, no matter how insignificant it seemed.

  When he got back to the storage room the back door was open and a truck was backed up to it. Two men stared down at him from the tailgate as he hung his smock on a hook. “Who are you?” one of them asked. He was bald, with salt-and-pepper mutton chops.

  “Electrical inspector. Had a power failure last night.”

  “Shit,” the man said. “We’d better check the cooler before we unload this stuff.”

  184SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961, 9:50 A.M.Vienna

  Kasi sat at the front window, watching sheets of drizzle undulate along the street in graceful waves. The rain had continued unabated since yesterday and he had a stiff neck from sitting at the window—a sign of age, he reminded himself. In his youth there were no sore muscles, no strains, no lingering aches, but now his body seemed to resist him at every turn; he accepted this as inevitable and tried to compensate by working harder to maintain fitness, but it seemed more difficult every day. Despite the soreness in his neck, he liked watching the rain; it made the dust disappear and washed the streets. And if the stiffness in his neck was a sign of aging, the stiffness in another part reaffirmed that at least one essential fire still burned hot. Lejla’s sinewy body had been on his mind all night. Now she was nearby and he wanted her. He stood. “Come over here.” When she got to him he began to undress her; there was no resistance. When she was undressed he pushed her to the wall beside the window and pulled her hips back. Instinct made him look out the window. As soon as he saw the man on the far side of the street he knew that he was a Russian and that they had been discovered. He was tall and strong, with curly brown hair and dark, sinister eyes, reflecting the darkness all Russians carried in their souls. Kasi had worked with all sorts of Russians in his life, from White émigrés in Paris to military advisers in his own country, all of them swaggering like conquerors. They were competent soldiers but unimaginative, like musk oxen plodding forward, single-minded creatures, thinking alike and feeling little. They even seemed to walk identically, and it was precisely this peculiar gait that gave the man away. Kasi quickly guessed that this was a surveillance, not an assault. How had they found them? This place was supposed to be untraceable. He regretted now that they had traveled light, with no weapons, but he realized quickly that this was also an advantage; without weapons there could be no temptation to stand and fight. He pushed the girl away. “Get dressed,” he said.

  “What is it?” Lejla Llarja asked; what had he seen?

  “Dress,” he snapped. “We’re leaving.”

  She did as she was told.

  On the first floor they had a glimpse of a woman leaning against a wall by the front steps. She looked vaguely Asian, Kasi thought; it was possible that she was with the Russian, who was still on the far side of the street. How many others were there? He nudged the girl down the steps to the interior courtyard; they walked to the far side and into the facing building, raced up several flights of stairs to the rooftop, crossed several roofs until they were near a corner, then went down into the street, catercorner into another building, up to a roof again, and used streets and roofs in this way until they were four blocks away. Along the way he snatched an umbrella from an elephant-foot holder in a hallway and held it over her, not out of sympathy but because appearances were important.

  As they crossed the street he was tingling with the adrenaline surge that came with action and the fresh memory of what had almost been. Suddenly the wind whipped up, causing the girl’s skirt to flutter, and he saw the firm white flesh underneath. When they reached the far side of the street he pulled her into an alley and pushed her down a series of steps into a recessed entry. From here they could monitor passersby and not be seen.

  Later he hailed a cab at a stand. The Russians only complicated matters; they made it a contest, after all. The cabdriver wore a stained red fez. “Allah be praised for the rain,” he said as the American-made Checker pulled away from the curb. “Where to?”

  “Just drive,” Kasi said. He needed time to think. Get your mind off the girl, he chastised himself.

  185SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961, 1:00 P.M.Vienna

  There were a dozen places near Mock’s flat that sold film, and Ezdovo visited them all. “I met a woman last night,” he told the clerks. “Red hair, beautiful. She lives nearby and asked me to pick up some film for her from the usual place, only she forgot to tell me the address. Do you know her?” There had been negative replies or blank stares at every shop, and now only one remained, on the corner of a square opposite a huge church. A sign in the window read PROFESSIONAL DISCOUNTS. The door tripped a bell when he entered.

  A man with crooked yellow teeth emerged through a set of black curtains and bowed. “Terrible weather,” he said, “but good for the flowers.”

  Ezdovo was barely into his story before the man nodded and said, “Mignonne.”

  “Yes, Mignonne Mock.”

  “You’re a lucky fellow. Do you work with her?”

  “No, it’s a personal favor.”

  The man grinned and raised his eyebrows. “Lucky dog.”

  “She said I should pick up the film and handle it the usual way, but she didn’t say what that meant.”

  “It’s not like her to be so imprecise.”

  Defuse his suspicions. “It was actually a request m
ade in passing. We were engaged in other activities at the time. I thought it would be nice to surprise her.”

  “Other activities. Lucky dog,” the man said again.

  “You know how it is when there’s good chemistry.”

  “I can imagine.” He leered. “You want the customary order?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to pay, or shall I handle it the normal way?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I bill her.”

  Ezdovo opened his wallet. “How much?” The clerk named a figure. “I don’t have that much,” he said apologetically.

  “Not a problem,” the clerk said. “I always bill her. Which address this time?”

  This was what he had hoped for. “Where do you usually send it?”

  The clerk leafed through a box of invoices and read off one of the addresses.

  “Send it there.”

  “The film’s out back,” the man said as he slid through the curtain. When he returned several minutes later, he saw that the shop was empty and laughed. “I’d run to that, too, if she were mine.” He didn’t notice that the box of invoices was not where he had left it.

  186SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1961, 3:45 P.M.Vienna

  Bailov found Melko on the edge of the roof between puddles of standing water. “We’re going in,” he said.