Triple Trap

by William H Hallahan

  As they drank the last of the wine, Gogol asked, “Viktor, how did you like that wine?”

  “Fine. It seemed fine. Although I have no taste for wine.”

  “You have no taste for anything. You’re a worker ant. You never lift your eyes up. A bowl of peasant soup or a rack of lamb—it’s all the same to you. Do you know this wine costs one hundred dollars a bottle? And to you it could be cold tea.”

  Gogol looked at him and shook his head slowly. “Nothing is worth a hundred dollars a bottle.”

  “Can you name the two leading importing countries for that wine, Viktor?”

  “I can’t say that I care.”

  “The United States and Japan. But the third country, Viktor, that should interest you. It’s Russia. I can hear the corks popping all over the homeland right now, at the tables of the party faithful. Hundred-dollar bottles of wine, wrung from the peasants a penny at a time.”

  “Why are you telling me this now? What is your motive?”

  “The human heart is not what Marx said it was,” Gogol replied. “The worker is not the noble creature he pictured, corrupted by capitalism. The human heart is very very flawed, my friend, even in Russia. Man can’t measure up to Marx. Our own party leaders don’t believe in the earthly communist paradise. Man can never be that good. Controlled environments and psychological conditioning cannot create a new man.”

  “Somehow, Emil, you’ve missed the point.”

  “Have I?” Gogol laughed. “You walked the Bahnhofstrasse with me. You saw all the bright and shiny things people have their hearts set on. Monkey hearts. Look where you are in the communist hierarchy, Viktor. Where is your career? While you are working for the common man, your friends in Moscow are drinking expensive wines behind closed doors.”

  Revin’s face flushed.

  “Your career is stalled,” Gogol said. “Just like mine was. And all you do is brood about it. Viktor, you know what your problem is? You care. And that makes you odd man out. Look at Moscow. It’s every man for himself.”

  “Enough.”

  “Viktor. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about making you rich along with me. Quietly rich. I can make you as rich as an emperor. Right here in Zurich.” He pointed at the floor. “Serve your country Viktor, but serve yourself too. The two things are not incompatible. You agree?”

  “I don’t want to hear such talk.”

  “Grandson of one of the founders of the Revolution and son-in-law to a general, and what have you got to show for it?”

  “Enough,” Revin said.

  “How is your sweet wife, Viktor? Lovely girl. Much too good for you. And you treat her terribly. Here, Viktor. For her. Your wife. With my deep affection.” Gogol put the purple velvet jeweler’s case on the tablecloth and pushed it slowly over the table with a forefinger to Revin.

  Revin opened the jeweler’s case and gazed at the contents. He looked at the price tag. Stunned, he looked at Gogol. “Are you insane? You spent nineteen thousand dollars for this? My wife can’t wear it.”

  “Oh yes, she can. You know how such things are managed. You put that in your pocket, Viktor. And take it to her. Take it to her. You tell your superiors that I personally bought it for her and expect to see her wearing it next time we meet. They will not permit me to be offended, Viktor. I am their little goose that lays the golden eggs. And you are the official goose tender. You are entitled to rewards and perks. Don’t ask, Viktor. Don’t petition. Demand. They will understand that.”

  “Demand what?”

  “Demand your place in the sun.”

  “Why? For what reason?”

  “For saving the Soviet Union from destruction. After tonight you will have plenty of reasons. After tonight they will all fall all over themselves to give you what you want.”

  “I fail to see—”

  “Viktor. Viktor. Viktor. Listen to me. Every little bureaucrat in Moscow tucks himself into his bed at night secure and warm because of the air defense technology I smuggled into Russia. Do any of them write me a note and express gratitude? Where are my medals? I’m worth twenty divisions in the field. Who says so? Zeitzov says I am worth twenty divisions in the field. Me. Me, Viktor. Me.”

  Revin nodded reluctantly. “That’s true,” he said.

  “Of course it is. Everytime the MiG Foxbat flies with its American look-down/shoot-down system, you have to think of me. Everytime your computers skip happily through ABACUS, you have to think of me. Every really crucial piece of high-tech equipment in Zeleenograd came through me.”

  “Emil, I concede all this.”

  Gogol pushed on. “After Arnoski botched it three times, and lost millions and millions of rubles in the process, didn’t I deliver to you an entire microchip factory? One hundred percent built from spare parts which I painstakingly assembled from all over the world and shipped into Russia personally. Is that not right? Brilliant, wasn’t it?”

  Revin waved a dismissing hand. “Yes yes. Brilliant. We all agree.”

  “And after those idiots in Directorate T fumbled and fumbled and failed to get that ABACUS software, getting three of our best agents kicked out of the U.S. in the bargain, who was it that got it in one weekend?”

  “Yes yes, Emil. I have already conceded all this. What has it got to do with this necklace?”

  But Gogol wouldn’t be placated. Using his fingers, he continued to toll off other smuggling coups. The list was long, and Revin knew Gogol could extend it endlessly. “And just recently, Viktor, who conceived and operated that Vienna job, leaving the American agents watching a bunch of empty cartons?”

  Revin sighed. “So—come to the point.”

  “When your wife goes to another function, I want her to wear this little bauble. I want those people in Directorate T to know where it came from, and I want them biting the rug with frustration and envy. This little bauble will be like a beam in the eye to them.”

  “I still fail to see,” Revin said. “We have made you rich beyond your dreams. You have villas all over the world. For all I know you gargle every morning with hundred-dollar wine. If you wish, you could encrust your potty with diamonds. We paid you four million American dollars for that Foxbat radar system alone.”

  “A bargain! An incredible bargain. You know it cost the Americans fifty-two million to develop it.”

  “You charged the Poles a million dollars for that computer system you sold them.”

  “They were eager to pay it. How much do you think it was really worth? You Moscow bureaucrats have a stupid streak, Viktor. You’re so used to stealing what you want, you resent paying even a dollar for a device that could change the course of world history. Huge egos. You decorate yourself with others’ feathers.”

  Revin’s face flushed. “Don’t denigrate your own country, Emil. Russian technology has created wonders. In just forty years we took our nation from the ashes of war to one of the leading powers in the world. I could list all night what we’re doing. And we now have our own computer. The Ryad Two—”

  “Oh come, Viktor. It’s a bad copy of the IBM.”

  “There are thousands of them in use.”

  “Are there, Viktor? Where? The Ryad Two is good enough to sell to the Bulgarians and the Poles. But do we use the Ryad Two to operate our military defense systems? What computer guards Moscow? And Leningrad? And all the other vital centers of Russia? Is it our Ryad Two? No, Viktor. IBMs, many of which I smuggled. Big Blue protects Russia.”

  Revin raised his head. “We could defeat the West now if we went to war.”

  “Only if it’s a short war, Viktor. We can’t even maintain our equipment. I have to smuggle the IBMs back into the West so that Western technicians can get them operating again. We don’t have the spare parts for a long war. What would we do if our Moscow air defense computer went down? Call IBM in New York for a repairman? A two-month war would wipe us out. No. What’s going to wipe us out is your Russian capacity for self-delusion. If you want to prevail, you’d best start telling yourse
lves the truth. Self-criticism from your internal critics. You’d best learn to listen to those voices. The nation that silences criticism commits suicide.”

  “You are mistaken, Emil. Russia will prevail. Remember what Lenin said: the West will sell us the rope we need to hang them with. We are not only acquiring Western technology. The West is lending us the money to buy it with. And now our technology is catching up. And soon will surpass the West. I tell you one thing: we put Sputnik up first, and we did it with lesser technology than the Americans had then. We make do with what we have. And that’s our secret. That’s how we’ll win. You’ll see.” Revin touched Gogol’s arm. “You may be Eric Marten, the great European computer expert and wheeler-dealer. But back in Moscow you are still Emil Gogol, a member of the Directorate T team.”

  “Am I, Viktor? Am I just another Arnoski? A Tolenko? A Bronowski?”

  “Directorate T has a long memory, Emil. And a long arm.”

  “Then let them remember all I’ve done for Russia—more than that entire pack of incompetents could do in ten lifetimes.”

  “This is not the time or place to—” Revin looked down at Gogol’s extended hand. “What’s this?”

  “The necklace, Viktor. For your wife. I want her to wear it.” Gogol leaned over and gripped Revin’s cuff with his fist. “And Viktor, that’s nothing compared to what else I want.”

  “And what else do you want?”

  In reply Gogol held up the tape cassette. “It’s time to talk, Viktor.”

  “No no,” Revin said. “I want first to hear what you want. If it isn’t great wealth, what is it?”

  “Power.”

  Chapter 14

  Gogol opened the door to the apartment with a great flourish. “Now,” Revin said, “we’ll see what this momentous event is.”

  “Patience, Viktor,” Gogol said.

  Revin stepped into the apartment, sallow-faced, his exhausted eyes looking out from under bristling brows at the furnishings. All this odd miscellany of furniture, much of it here from the old days. It had been the setting for countless crises over the years, as Directorate T had fumbled for ways to get its hands on desperately needed American technology—until they found Gogol, a born thief and confidence man, an inspired dissembler and intriguer, right there in his little cubby in Moscow. If the furniture could talk—the thought made him sigh. Was there no end to these crises?

  “Tea,” he said to Gogol. “I want a cup of tea.” And he went familiarly to the kitchen. “This week,” he called from the kitchen, “I flew to Moscow to report to the committee.”

  “And …” Gogol searched the shelf of the hall closet for the tape deck. He found it where he’d put it—under a pillow, enwrapped with wires.

  “I was grilled for two hours,” Revin said.

  “So …”

  “They think that you’re playing.” Revin stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked pointedly at Gogol. “They think that you should have found Cassandra by now.”

  “Ha!” Gogol looked to the ceiling for mercy. “Half of Russia is looking for Cassandra. And they think I should have found it by now.”

  Gogol plugged the tape-deck wire into an outlet. Then he slipped the cassette into the tray.

  “It was only a few days ago,” he said loud enough for Revin to hear, “that I stole that desperately needed microchip-manufacturing equipment. It gives them a capability they never had before. They haven’t even gotten it all out of the crates and cartons yet. Do I get phone calls of congratulation, medals, a posh dacha in the woods? No. I get a complaint that I haven’t found Cassandra yet.”

  “That’s always been the way,” Revin said. “Since we all climbed down from the trees. A bureaucratic system is never grateful.”

  “When I get Cassandra, they’re going to be grateful,” Gogol replied. “The whole committee will file past me and each will plant a resounding kiss on my bare ass.”

  “I will bring a camera,” Revin said.

  “Here,” Gogol said. “I want you to listen to something.”

  “What?” Revin walked up to the tape deck and watched Gogol push the play button.

  “So what did they get?” Charlie Brewer’s voice asked.

  “Who?”

  “The Moscow smugglers. In Vienna.”

  “Who am I listening to?” Revin asked.

  “Two American agents,” Gogol said, “one named Sauer and the other named Brewer.”

  “Brewer? Charlie Brewer?” Revin sat down in a chair. He listened with the fingers of both hands on his lips. Periodically he grunted.

  “You know how bad this is?” Brewer’s voice asked.

  “You’re the computer expert, Brewer. You tell me.”

  “This is state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line computer technology,” Brewer’s voice said. “The latest computer-operated soldering station. A prototype unit for disk drives. Vital parts for two central processing units.”

  “So?”

  “So this helps the Russians make state-of-the-art electronic components for space weapons—Star Wars stuff. It’s just the kind of capability we don’t want them to have.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “If they’ve managed to swipe the software to go with this, they’re in production right now, making military hardware to use against us.”

  Revin cleared his throat. “Brewer is a very dangerous agent,” he said. “The committee will be very unhappy about this.” His face seemed even grayer.

  They listened for several minutes in silence, then Gogol held up a finger to call Revin’s attention to what was to come.

  “Something’s coming down,” Sauer said. “And they don’t want those Rooskie pickpockets swiping it.”

  “What’s coming down?” Brewer’s voice asked.

  “I don’t know. Something. All I have is a word I overheard …‘Cassandra,’ whatever the hell that is.”

  “Cassandra,” Brewer echoed.

  Gogol stopped the tape. He pointed at Revin, “Cassandra,” he said. “I want you to remember two things, Viktor. With every intelligence service in Russia looking for this brain and not finding it, I want you to remember that I was the person who found the first clue that Cassandra exists. I found it. And also, the price tag this time is my price tag. Money’s not going to do it.”

  “Oh? What is?”

  “First of all I want you to have the status of a general who commands twenty divisions in the field.”

  “Do you really think they’ll do that?”

  “Do they want Cassandra?”

  “They don’t want trouble,” Revin said. “Brewer is the last man we want to face. He knows as much about stealing and smuggling as you do. We’ve had great trouble with this man before. Arnoski considers him one of the most dangerous men in American intelligence.”

  “Arnoski either overrates or underrates everybody, Viktor.”

  “Tolenko agrees with Arnoski. He tried to have Brewer assassinated a few years ago.”

  “Tolenko wants to assassinate everyone,” Gogol said.

  “Emil, you mustn’t minimize this man. He’s a bone in our throats.”

  “Perhaps I’ll be a bone in his throat.”

  Revin looked away with smoldering irritation. “Your ego has become enormous.”

  Revin often found Gogol’s preening self-confidence annoying. But time and again in the past when the committee’s projects had collapsed, when desperately needed American technology had been stopped at some border or other, huge sums of money lost, discouragement and weariness at hand, Gogol—with that driving self-confidence and his brilliant stratagems—had galloped in, snatched up the banner, and carried the field.

  Time and again, at the committee table, faces of chagrin and fury had been pasted over with paper smiles. Hands that wanted to kill were forced to applaud. How they envied Gogol and his successes, how they needed him, how they feared his failure and yet how fervently wished for it. Their little goose that lays the golden eggs had gotten completely out of
control.

  The proof of his enormous success was in the Gogol Express—that network of European roadways over which capitalist trucks and trains and vans carried vital Western war matériel to the very gates of Russia—a flow of smuggled goods that flooded unabated even as they sat talking. Emil Gogol—as Eric Marten, the quintessential capitalist—had created the greatest shell game in espionage history. And it was powered by the boundless self-assurance of his brilliant and irritating ego. But Gogol had never faced a Charlie Brewer before.

  “I think you should understand the threat that this Brewer poses,” Revin said. “I will give you one illustration. A few years ago Brewer was free-lancing around the world. You may remember the arms dealer, Mann.”

  “Oh yes,” Gogol said. “He was a Swiss. Right here in Zurich.”

  “Yes. Mann was sick and old, and the people in the arms business had taken advantage of that. Several dozen independent arms sellers owed him great sums of money. Mann hired Charlie Brewer to collect the money for him.” Revin looked closely at Gogol. “Are you listening, Emil?”

  “To every word.”

  “When the word got out that Brewer was collecting, many of those men paid up on the spot. Others ran for their lives. They went into hiding. But Brewer found every one of them, Emil. In Cape Town, Buenos Aires. Hong Kong. New Delhi. And he collected every penny. One of those men was never heard of again.”

  “Good for Brewer,” Gogol said.

  “But not good for you, Emil. Have you ever seen a ferret go after a rat, Emil? Have you?”

  Gogol smiled. “No. I don’t think I have.”

  “Well, go see for yourself. Then you’ll know how Brewer works, and you’ll know why so many men are terrified of him. It will remove that smirk from your face.”

  “And maybe Brewer will end up terrified of me.”

  “I wish you good luck, Emil.”

  Gogol laughed. “Viktor, shall I ever return to Russia?” he asked.

  Gogol’s self-image was accurate: Revin felt he was watching a mischievous genie escaped from his bottle, on the loose in the land—and about to cause a catastrophe. How do you get a genie back into the bottle? How do you get the toothpaste back into the tube?