"Could you leave out the history lesson and get to the point?"
"Don't push me; I don't find this easy to tell. In those days the CIA was plugged in tight with the Spanish authorities, and the man who ran the show over here was an American everybody called the Chessmaster. It was a fitting name for him. Aside from intelligence work, chess was his major passion. He was good at it, a life master. There were some who said that if he had devoted himself exclusively to chess he could have played on the international level, but the Chessmaster was content to be a very big fish in a small pond. That pond was the Sociedad de Ajedrez, the Barcelona chess club, and he played there every night from early evening until they put out the lights. Within the confines of that small club he was virtually unbeatable, and every year he won the club championship easily. Then Martin Carillo came along."
Vasily paused for a sip of wine. "Am I boring you?"
"Chess isn't one of my favorite games."
"A massive understatement. At any rate, there was
Martin Carillo ten years ago, a natural chess genius at twenty-three. Untrained, untutored, but he was on the way up. For the last two years he had faced the Chessmaster in the finals of the tournament and had lost. This was the year he was expected to win. What else can I tell you about Martin? He was a fine young man, a dockworker who drove his body hard all day and drove his brain just as hard at the chessboard. He was also a Socialist, a member of a small discussion group that met once a month. Highly illegal, of course, but hardly a threat to the stability of the state."
"I'm beginning to see it."
"I doubt it. Martin had a sister."
"Now I see it."
"You'd have to have known Josefina Carillo to see it all. She was seventeen that year and . . . Eddie, do you know what I mean when I say that she had a sultry innocence?"
"Sexy, but untouchable?"
"That's another way of putting it. She was also blind."
Eddie grunted. It was hard to tell if he was affected by the story or simply impatient to get to the end of it. "How did you fit into all of this?"
"I was passing through Barcelona at the time."
"Bullshit. You must have been working."
Vasily shrugged. "Some people needed some instruction, and Moscow Center thought I might be able to help. I met Martin through those people, and through Martin I met his sister."
"And there went the innocence."
"Strangely enough, no." Vasily's eyes had a faraway look. "Actually. I never touched her except to take her arm when we walked in the streets. She affected people that way. She and her brother lived together in the barrio chino. their parents were long dead, and I would take her to the club when Martin was playing in tournaments. We would walk along the Ramblas and I would describe the colors of the flowers in the stalls and the antics of the monkeys in their cages, and then we would go to the club and I would tell her what was happening on the board. She was very proud of her brother. It was just before the tournament finals, and everyone was saying that this was the year that Martin would finally beat the Chessmaster. But the Chessmaster was obsessed with that championship. It was his private property, and nobody was going to take it away from him. And he knew that Martin had reached the top of his form."
"So he blows the whistle on the kid. A true sportsman."
"It was easy for him. He was CIA. All it took was one telephone call to the right man in the policia secreta. Just the name, the address, and the fact that he was a Socialist. That's all they needed in those days. The policia came for the boy in the middle of the night, three days before he was due to face the Chessmaster. Unfortunately, they took the girl as well. No reason. They didn't need a reason. They just took her."
"What happened?" The question came softly.
"The inevitable. The Chessmaster won his tournament."
"And Martin? The girl?"
"They kept him for over a month. Routine questioning. They broke both his legs and most of the bones in both hands. They did a pretty good job on his mind, too. He wasn't much good for chess after that. As for Josefina, they made Martin watch. That's what blew some of his fuses. Sometimes they didn't bother to rape her. Sometimes they used sticks, or bottles, or— "
"That's enough."
"Yes, you're right - quite enough. It was enough then, and it's enough now. They let her go after a week, and she made her way back to the pathetic little apartment in the barrio chino. She dragged herself up the stairs, locked herself in her bedroom, and hung herself from a steampipe. I was there when they cut her down."
Eddie waited for more, and when nothing more came there was a question that had to be asked. "Why didn't you kill him?"
"I was on assignment. Under discipline from Moscow Centre. I couldn't."
"Screw discipline. You should have dropped him."
"No doubt you're right, but I was younger then. I was a great one for following the rules in those days. I missed my chance, and I never thought I'd get another one. But now I have it. I want him, Eddie. Joseph Wolfe, the Chessmaster."
"Yeah, you've waited long enough. He's all yours."
On Monday afternoon, Eddie drove from Dulles International Airport on his way into Washington, looking for a motel. He passed several Ramadas and Great Westerns and Holiday Inns, without stopping. He wasn't looking for that kind of motel. He was looking for one called Happy Hours, or Fun and Games, or something similar. A motel where every room had a circular water bed, a television equipped with video games and X-rated movies, and black satin sheets that had been scrubbed to a rusty purple. He found one halfway into the city. It was called the Cinq a Sept, and the room he was given smelled heavily of antiseptic. It was just what he wanted.
As he unpacked his few belongings, Eddie reviewed all that Emerson had told him about Swan's personal habits. The pattern was that of a meticulous man who lived on a rigid schedule and demanded satisfaction for all of his creature comforts. He had eaten the same breakfast for twenty years, left his suite at the Hotel Coolidge at the same time every morning, and returned there promptly to dress for the evening. He conducted the rest of his life on an equally organized basis. He was an ideal target.
It was midafternoon when he drove the rental car into downtown Washington and parked it in a garage several blocks from the Coolidge. The delivery entrance to the hotel was on a narrow side street lined with parked cars. He picked a spot opposite the entrance and lounged against a car, waiting. During the next half hour three trucks pulled up to make deliveries to the hotel. He let a bakery wagon and a butcher's van go by. The sign on the third truck read G. MARTINELLI, FANCY FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, and Eddie moved quickly to be at the curb-side when it double-parked in front of the entrance. When the driver got out to open the back of the truck, Eddie was right beside him. He reached inside and grabbed the first box his hands touched, a crate of celery. He hoisted it onto his shoulder.
The driver stared at him in surprise. He was wide- shouldered and heavy through the chest. He had a belly of solid suet. He said flatly, "Put it the fuck down."
"Sure thing," said Eddie. He set the crate on the pavement. "It's too fuckin' hot to work anyways."
"Who the fuck are you?"
''Chef sent me out to help with the fuckin' crates."
"No shit!" Now the driver looked truly surprised. "It's a fuckin' miracle."
"It's a fuckin' pain in the ass, that's what it is."
"You new here?"
"First fuckin' day," said Eddie, his bona fides established. "How do you wanna handle it?"
"We'll split it up even," said the driver after a judicious moment. "I'll stack the crates on the sidewalk. You haul 'em inside."
"Some fuckin' even," said Eddie, but he bend down and hoisted the crate back on his shoulder.
He spent the next twenty minutes lugging crates of celery, lettuce, and tomatoes into the hotel and down a flight of clanging iron steps to the kitchen. On his first trip he came through the kitchen doors yelling, "Delivery from Martinel
li. Where do you want it?" A shocked aristrocrat in faultless whites, his chef's toque stiff and starched, looked up from the sauce he was stirring and silently pointed a ladle at the door to the refrigerator room. After that it was easy. He used each trip through the kitchen to familiarize himself with the physical plant, the layout of the kitchen, pantries, elevators, and halls. He noted the traffic of the uniformed waiters, where they placed their orders, where they picked up the food, where they submitted their slips to the checker. His eyes searched for the inevitable time clock and found it just inside the employees' locker room. By the time he had hauled his last crate, he was satisfied with what he had found. When he was finished, the truck driver handed him a receipt to be signed by the chef. Eddie scrawled some initials on it.
"You work too hard, friend," Eddie told him. "You could get a fuckin' hernia that way."
Downstairs once again, he picked up the first crate he saw, put it on his shoulder, and paraded through the kitchen with the familiarity of experience. When he came to the locker room, he looked around quickly and ducked in. The room was empty. He checked the time cards in the slots and found the one for Swan's personal waiter, Bernard Randall. Then he found a place to rest behind the last row of lockers and settled down to wait for the shift to end.
Mama, he thought, grinning to himself, I'll never say that nasty word again, I promise.
The shift at the Coolidge changed at five fifteen. When the first of the outgoing waiters came into the locker room, Eddie was standing in front of a washbasin lovingly combing and recombing his hair. No one paid any attention to him. He kept his eyes fixed on the mirror that reflected the time clock, watching the waiters punch out. Bernard Randall turned out to be a mousy man in his fifties whose maroon and gold livery hung on him loosely. Eddie fixed the man's features in his mind, gave a final lick of the comb to his hair, and left the Coolidge. Half an hour later he was back in his sleazy motel room talking to Rusty at the Hotel Princesa in Mexico City.
"You're the second one to call in," she told him. "The man with one eye was the first."
"Does he have any problems?"
"He says he's in place and ready to move on the day. But I haven't heard from the other two. My two."
"They're still traveling. You'll hear from them in the morning."
"I know, but I can't help worrying."
"You've got the toughest job of all, sitting it out down there. Just hang in until we get this circus operating. Then you'll be able to relax."
"Yes." There was a silence on the line. "You and I have never gotten along very well." It was a statement.
"No, we haven't."
"Basically, I don't like you. I don't like your style, I don't like what you do, and I don't like the fact that you're much too old for my daughter. But you're a good man to have around. I should have said that before, but I never got the chance. When all this is over ..."
"Yeah. I know, but we've still got a long way to go."
"All right, but I thought I should say it."
"I'm glad you did. When the others call in, you tell them that the balloon goes up right on schedule."
"You're set then?"
"Ready to roll. Seven o'clock Wednesday morning, local time. No changes in plan."
"I'll tell them."
"Good. And hang loose. Mom, you hear?"
"Don't you dare call me that," she said, suddenly furious.
"Why not?" he asked, laughing. "When all this is over, you're going to be my mother-in-law, aren't you?"
"I'm exactly six years older than you, and you know it. Don't you ever call me that again."
"You're the one who started getting sentimental. I'll check in tomorrow, same time." He was still laughing when he hung up.
Rusty put down the telephone and shivered. Outside her hotel room, Mexico City throbbed with its particular brand of night-time vibrancy, but she got no pleasure from the rhythm. Outside, the night was hot and sticky, but inside the room the air conditioner hummed, and she felt a chill. She also felt very much alone. In all the years of her marriage she could not recall more than a dozen nights that she and her husband had spent apart. In retrospect, the statistic seemed incredible, given the nature of the times in which they lived and Jimbo's occupation. Still, it was true, and what she felt was less a sense of loneliness than of being incomplete. She wandered aimlessly about the room, trying to think of something to do. She knew that she should take two Valium and a glass of warm milk and try to get some sleep, but there was still a chance that Jim or Ginger might call. In the end she decided on a long bourbon and water, and stretched out on the couch near the telephone.
After all these years it's come down to this, she thought. Kill or be killed. And my family is out there doing the killing.
She closed her eyes, as if closing them could shut out her thoughts. The air conditioner hummed, and she shivered again.
Sasha Ignatiev arrived in Mexico City on Monday evening aboard Pan American flight #67 out of Washington. His step was jaunty and his eyes were bright as he cleared the formalities of immigration and customs, and came out into the rotunda. Waiting for him was the personal limousine of the Russian ambassador, and he was driven at once to the embassy. There he was taken to a drab room on the second floor of the building, where he was met by the embassy's military attache, a KGB officer named Dorenkin, who handed him a sealed envelope. Inside the envelope was a teleprinted message.
FROM: A. Petrovich
TO: S. Ignatiev
RE: Operation Homefire/Backfire
1. Current phase of this operation is now code-named Seafire.
2. Soviet submarine E434 will arrive off reference point -2683/Grid 43/Pacific Plate 11-No. Calif, night of 19/20.
3. Beach rendezvous with motor launch from E434 at 0200 PDT plus/minus 20 minutes. Fallback rendezvous plus 25 hours 10 minutes.
4. At time of rendezvous you are instructed to deliver Colonel Yuri Volanov, aka James Emerson, aka Homefire, to the launchmaster for transportation to the USSR.
5. On board E434 to welcome Colonel Volanov and accompany him on his voyage home will be Colonel Andrei Petrovich, Major Boris Radichek, and Captain Pavel Kolodny.
6. Upon receipt of this message you will at once communicate with me aboard E434 through embassy facilities.
Sasha's eyes narrowed as he read the message. The presence on board the submarine of the original team that had launched Operation Homefire all those many years ago came as a surprise to him.
Christ, they must be edgy, he thought - to come all the way out to escort him home. And I don't blame them. If this works, and if I get him, they're going to have one hell of a reluctant hero on their hands, and I'd hate to be him on that sea voyage back to Vladivostok. They'll work on him with everything they've got to make him cooperate. First the old buddy routine, then the appeal to his socialist conscience, and if that doesn't work they'll apply the persuaders. That's going to be one bitch of an ocean cruise for my dear old daddy. By the time they get him on Russian soil either he'll be brainwashed into the ideal Hero of the Soviet Union, or he'll be so lit up on drugs that he'll say anything they tell him to. They're not taking any chances with all three of them on board. The only card they aren't playing is the grand old harlot, mother mine.
Sasha raised his eyes from the paper and said to Dorenkin, the KGB man, "You've read this, I trust. Can you get through to Colonel Petrovich on board the sub?"
"It will take time, but yes."
The two men went up a flight of stairs to the embassy code room where Sasha consumed a pot of tea and two sandwiches while he waited for the connection to be made. Finally, at Dorenkin's signal, he picked up the handset and spoke his name. In reply he heard Petrovich's voice, distorted by static, in his ear.
"Fraternal greetings, Sasha," said the colonel. "And greetings from your mother as well. I've been advised that she returned safely to the Soviet Union the day after we sailed. Otherwise, she would be with the rest of us on this journey."
&nb
sp; That explains that, Sasha thought as he returned the greeting mechanically, then said, "How does it look to you? Do you confirm your ETA at the rendezvous?"
"Affirmative. What about your end?"
"It all depends on Backfire," Sasha said cautiously. "If we get full cooperation, I'll have Colonel Volanov waiting for you on the beach the night of the nineteenth."
"Listen, Sashinka - I know you since you were a baby, and I'm trusting you to pull this off. No slip-ups like the one in Virginia. Don't fail me, Sasha."
Petrovich broke the connection abruptly. Sasha grinned at this breach of procedure and thought: Christ, the old man must really be nervous. As he gave the handset back to Dorenkin he glanced at the clock on the wall and decided that he had time for a few hours' sleep before the wheels began to turn.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On Tuesday, July 15, the day before the scheduled assault on the Gang of Four, Eddie Mancuso and his colleagues prepared themselves for Wednesday in varying fashions. Ginger Emerson went sailing, her father went dancing, Vasily played chess, and Eddie sucked eggs. These were not recreational exercises. All four of them were working.
Ginger reclined in the cockpit of a twenty-two-foot Luchesi sloop, her body displayed in the briefest of bikinis for the pleasure of Gerard Krause, who lounged against the transom with his arm hooked over the tiller. The transition of invitations from the cafe on the Via Cantonale to luncheon at the marina to a sail on the lake in his boat had been made smoothly enough. That was the word, she decided, for Krause. He was smooth in every way, from his light line of patter to his slick mustache to the easy way with which he handled the boat in the capricious breezes that swirled around the bowl of Lago Maggiore. They had run before the wind over to the Verbania side, then downlake into Italian waters as far as Luino before pointing up into the prevailing northwest winds to complete the triangular course. Ginger, who had done her share of sailing on Chesapeake Bay during college days, had to give the chubby little man full marks in seamanship. In fact, she had to give him top marks in all of the social graces, which bothered her somewhat. She would have preferred to have found a less charming victim.
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