Red Rabbit

  WITH THE END, Jozsef Rozsa turned to the audience, which leapt again to its feet and howled its approval for endless minutes. Yeah, Jack thought, the local boy had gone away, but he’d come home to make good, and the home boys from the old days were glad to have him back. The conductor hardly smiled, as though exhausted from running the marathon. And he was sweating, Jack saw. Was conducting that hard? If you were that far into it, maybe it was. He and his Brit companions were standing and applauding as much as everyone else—no sense standing out—before, finally, the noise stopped. Rozsa waved to the orchestra, which caused the cheering to continue, and then to the concertmaster of the orchestra, the first fiddle. It seemed gracious of Rozsa, but probably the thing you had to do if you wanted the musicians to put out their best for you. And then, at long last, it was time for the crowd to break up.

  “Enjoy the music, Sir John?” Hudson asked with a sly grin.

  “It beats what they play on the radio at home,” Ryan observed. “Now what?”

  “Now we get a nice drink in a quiet place.” Hudson nodded to Trent, who made his own way off, and took Ryan in tow.

  The air was cool outside. Ryan immediately lit a cigarette, along with every other man in view and most of the women. Hungarians didn’t plan to live all that long, or so it seemed. He felt as tied to Hudson as a child to his mother, but that wouldn’t last too much longer. The street had mostly apartment-type buildings. In a Western city, it would have been condos, but those probably didn’t exist here. Hudson waved for Ryan to follow and they walked two blocks to a bar, ending up following about thirty people leaving the concert. Andy got a corner booth from which he could scan the room, and a waiter came with a couple glasses of wine.

  “SO, WE GO?” Jack asked.

  Hudson nodded. “We go. I told him we’d be to the hotel about one-thirty.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we drive to the Yugoslav border.”

  Ryan didn’t ask further. He didn’t have to.

  “The security to the south is trivial. Different the other way,” Andy explained. “Near the Austrian border, it’s fairly serious, but Yugoslavia, remember, is a sister communist state—that’s the local fiction in any case. I’m no longer sure what Yugoslavia is, politically speaking. The border guards on the Hungarian side do well for themselves—many friendly arrangements with the smugglers. That is a growth industry, but the smart ones don’t grow too much. Do that and the Belügyminisztérium, their Interior Ministry, might take notice. Better to avoid that,” Hudson reminded him.

  “But if this is the back door into the Warsaw Pact—hell, KGB’s gotta know, right?”

  Hudson completed the question. “So, why don’t they shut things down? I suppose they could, but the local economy would suffer, and the Sovs get a lot of the things they like here, too. Trent tells me that our friend has made some major purchases here. Tape machines and pantyhose—bloody pantyhose, their women kill for the things. Probably most are overtly intended for friends and colleagues back in Moscow. So, if KGB intervened, or forced the AVH to do so, then they would lose a source of things they themselves want. So a little corruption doesn’t do any major damage, and it supplies the greed of the other side. Never forget that they have their weaknesses, too. Probably more than we do, in fact, much as people argue to the contrary. They want the things we have. Official channels can’t work very well, but the unofficial ones do. There’s a saying in Hungarian that I like: A nagy kapu mellett, mindig van egy kis kapu. Next to the big gate, there is always a little door. That little door is what makes things work over here.”

  “And I’m going through it.”

  “Correct.” Andy finished his wine and decided against another. He had a ways to drive tonight, in the dark, over inferior roads. Instead, he lit one of his cigars.

  Ryan lit a smoke of his own. “I’ve never done this before, Andy.”

  “Frightened?”

  “Yeah,” Jack admitted freely. “Yeah, I am.”

  “First time is never easy. I’ve never had people with machine guns come into my home.”

  “I don’t recommend it as after-dinner entertainment,” Jack replied, with a twisted smile. “But we managed to luck our way out of it.”

  “I don’t really believe in luck—well, sometimes, perhaps. Luck does not go about in search of a fool, Sir John.”

  “Maybe so. Kinda hard to notice from the inside.” Ryan thought back, again, to that dreadful night. The feel of the Uzi in his hands. Having to get that one shot right. No second chance in that ballgame. And he’d dropped to one knee, taken aim, and gotten it right. He’d never learned the name of the guy in the boat he’d stitched up. Strange, he reflected. If you kill a man right by your home, you should at least know his name.

  But, yeah, if he could do that, he could damned well do this. He checked his watch. It would be a while still, and he wasn’t driving tonight, and another glass of wine seemed a good idea. But he’d stop it there.

  BACK AT THE ASTORIA, the Zaitzevs got their little Bunny to bed, and Oleg ordered some vodka to be brought up. It was the generic Russian vodka brand that the working class drank, a half-liter bottle with a foil closure at the top that essentially forced you to drink it all in one sitting. Not an altogether bad idea for this night. The bottle arrived in five minutes, and by then zaichik was asleep. He sat on the bed. His wife sat in the one upholstered chair. They drank from tumblers out of the bathroom.

  Oleg Ivan’ch had one task yet to perform. His wife didn’t know his plan. He didn’t know how she’d react to it. He knew she was unhappy. He knew that this trip was the high point of their marriage. He knew she hated her job at GUM, that she wanted to enjoy the finer things in life. But would she willingly leave her motherland behind?

  On the plus side of the ledger, Russian women did not enjoy much in the way of freedom, within their marriages or without. They usually did what their husbands told them to do—the husband might pay for it later, but only later. And she loved him and trusted him, and he’d shown her the best of good times in the past few days, and so, yes, she’d go along.

  But he’d wait before telling her. Why spoil things by taking a risk right now? Right across the street was the KGB’s Budapest rezidentura. And if they got word of what he had planned, then he was surely a dead man.

  BACK AT THE British Embassy, sergeants Bob Small and Rod Truelove lifted the plastic bags and carried them to the embassy’s nondescript truck—the license tags had already been switched. Both tried to ignore the contents, then went back to get the alcohol containers, plus a candle and a cardboard milk carton. Then they were ready. Neither had so much as a glass of beer that night, though both wished otherwise. They drove off just after midnight, planning to take their time to scout the objective before committing to a course of action. The hard part would be getting the right parking place, but, with more than hour to pick it, they were confident that one would appear in due course.

  THE BAR WAS emptying out, and Hudson didn’t wish to be the last one in there. The bar bill was fifty forints, which he paid, not leaving a tip, because it wasn’t the local custom, and it wouldn’t do to be remembered. He motioned to Ryan and headed out but, on second thought, made his way to the loo. The thought struck Ryan as very practical, too.

  Outside, Ryan asked what came next.

  “We take a stroll up the street, Sir John,” Hudson answered, using the knightly title as an unfair barb. “Thirty-minute stroll to the hotel, I think, will be about right.” The exercise would also give them a chance to make sure they weren’t being followed. If the opposition were onto their operation, they’d be unable to resist the temptation to shadow the two intelligence officers, and, on mainly empty city streets, it wouldn’t be too difficult to “make” them along the way . . . unless the opposition consisted of KGB. They were cleverer than the locals by a sizable margin.

  ZAITZEV AND HIS WIFE had the comfortable glow of three very stiff drinks each. Oddly, his wife showed little sign
of approaching sleep, however. Too excited by the night’s fine entertainment, Oleg thought. Maybe it was for the better. Just that one more worry to go—except for how the CIA planned to get them out of Hungary. What would it be? A helicopter near the border, flying them under Hungarian radar coverage? That was what he would have chosen. Would CIA be able to hop them from inside Hungary to Austria? Just how clever were they? Would they let him know? Might it be something really clever and daring? And frightening? he wondered.

  Would it succeed? If not . . . well, the consequences of failure did not bear much contemplation.

  But neither would they go entirely away. Not for the first time, Oleg considered that his own death might result from this adventure, and prolonged misery for his wife and child. The Soviets would not kill them, but it would mark them forever as pariahs, doomed to a life of misery. And so they were hostages to his conscience as well. How many Soviets had stopped short of defection just on that basis? Treason, he reminded himself, was the blackest of crimes, and the penalties for it were equally forbidding.

  Zaitzev poured out the remainder of the vodka and gunned it down, waiting the last half hour before the CIA arrived to save his life . . .

  Or whatever they planned to do with him and his family. He kept checking his watch while his wife finally dozed off and back, smiling and humming the Bach concert with a head that lolled back and forth. At least he’d given her as fine a night as he’d ever managed to do. . . .

  THERE WAS A parking place just by the hotel’s side door. Small drove up to it and backed in neatly. Parallel parking is an art form in England that he still remembered how to perform. Then they sat, Small with a cigarette and Truelove with his favorite briar pipe, looking out at empty streets, just a few pedestrians in the distance, with Small keeping an eye on the rearview mirror for activity at the KGB residency. There were some lights on up on the second floor, but nothing moving that he could see. Probably some KGB chap had just forgotten to flip the switch on the way out.

  THERE IT WAS, Ryan saw, just three blocks, on the right-hand side of the street.

  Showtime.

  The remaining walk passed seemingly in an instant. Tom Trent, he saw, was by the corner of the building. People were coming out of the building, probably from the basement bar Hudson had shown him, about right for closing time, just in twos and threes, nobody leaving alone. Must be a saloon for the local singles crowd, Jack thought, setting up one-night stands for the terminally lonely. So, they had them in communist countries too, eh?

  As they approached, Hudson flicked a finger across his nose. That was the sign for Trent to go inside and distract the desk clerk. How he did that, Ryan would never know, but minutes later when they walked in the door, the lobby was totally empty.

  “Come on.” Hudson hurried over to the stairs, which wrapped around the elevator shaft. Getting to the third floor took less than a minute. And there was Room 307. Hudson turned the knob. The Rabbit had not locked it. Hudson opened it slowly.

  Zaitzev saw the door open. Irina was mostly asleep now. He looked at her to be sure, then stood.

  “Hello,” Hudson said in quiet greeting. He extended his hand.

  “Hello,” Zaitzev said, in English. “You are travel agent?”

  “Yes, we both are. This is Mr. Ryan.”

  “Ryan?” Zaitzev asked. “There is KGB operation by that name.”

  “Really?” Jack asked, surprised. He hadn’t heard about that one yet.

  “We can discuss that later, Comrade Zaitzev. We must leave now.”

  “Da.” He turned to shake his wife awake. She started violently when she saw the two unexpected men in her room.

  “Irina Bogdanova,” Oleg said with a touch of sternness in his voice. “We are taking an unexpected trip. We are leaving right now. Get Svetlana ready.”

  Her eyes came fully open in surprise. “Oleg, what is this? What are we doing?”

  “We are leaving right now for a new destination. You must get moving now.”

  Ryan didn’t understand the words, but the content was pretty clear. Then the woman surprised him by coming to her feet and moving like an automaton. The daughter was on a small children’s bed. Mother Rabbit lifted the sleeping child to semi-wakefulness and got her clothes organized.

  “What are we doing exactly?” the Rabbit asked.

  “We are taking you to England—tonight,” Hudson emphasized.

  “Not America?”

  “England first,” Ryan told him. “Then I will take you to America.”

  “Ah.” He was in a very tense state, Ryan saw, but that was to be expected. This guy had laid his life on the craps table, and the dice were still in the air. It was Ryan’s job to make sure they didn’t come up snake eyes. “What do I bring?”

  “Nothing,” Hudson said. “Not a bloody thing. Leave all your papers here. We have new ones for you.” He held up three passports with a lot of faked stamps on the inside pages. “For now I will hold these for you.”

  “You are CIA?”

  “No, I am British. Ryan here is CIA.”

  “But—why?”

  “It’s a long story, Mr. Zaitzev,” Ryan said. “But right now we must leave.”

  The little girl was dressed now, but still sleepy, as Sally had been on that horrible night at Peregrine Cliff, Jack saw.

  Hudson looked around, suddenly delighted to see the empty vodka bottle on the night table. Bloody good luck that was. Mother Rabbit was still confused, by the combination of three or four drinks and the post-midnight earthquake that had exploded around her. It had taken less than five minutes and everyone looked ready to leave. Then she saw her pantyhose bag, and moved toward it.

  “Nyet,” Hudson said in Russian. “Leave them. There are many of those where we are taking you.”

  “But—but—but . . .”

  “Do what he says, Irina!” Oleg snarled, his equilibrium upset by the drink and the tension of the moment.

  “Everyone ready?” Hudson asked. Next, Irina scooped her daughter up, her face a mass of utter confusion, and they all went to the door. Hudson looked out into the corridor, then waved for the others to follow. Ryan took the rear, closing the door, after making sure it was unlocked.

  The lobby was still vacant. They didn’t know what Tom Trent had done, but whatever it was, it had worked. Hudson led the others out the side door and onto the street. There was the embassy car Trent had brought over, and Hudson had the spare set of keys. On the way, he waved at the truck for Small and Truelove. The car was a Jaguar, painted a dark blue, with left-hand drive. Ryan loaded them into the backseat, closed the door, and hopped in the front. The big V-8 started instantly—the Jag was lovingly maintained for purposes like this one—and Hudson started driving.

  THEIR TAILLIGHTS WERE still visible as Small and Truelove stepped out of their truck, hustling to the back. Each took one of the adult bags and headed in the side door. The lobby was still empty, and they raced up the stairs, each with a heavy and limp burden. The upstairs corridor was also empty. The two retired soldiers moved as stealthily as possible into the room. There they unzipped the bags, and with gloved hands removed the bodies. That was a hard moment on each of them. Professional soldiers that they were, both with combat experience, the immediate sight of a burned human body was hard to take without a deep breath and an inner command to take charge of their feelings. They laid the man’s and the woman’s bodies from different countries and continents side by side on the double bed. Then they left the room to return to the truck, taking the empty body bags with them. Small got the smallest of the bags out of the truck, while Truelove got the rest of the necessary gear, and back in they went.

  Small’s job proved the hardest; removing the little girl’s body from the plastic bag was something he’d work hard to erase from his memory. She went on the cot, as he thought of it, in her nearly incinerated nightgown. He might have patted her little head had her hair not been entirely burned off with a blowtorch, and all he could do was whispe
r a prayer for her innocent little soul before his stomach nearly lost control, and to prevent that he turned abruptly away.

  THE FORMER ROYAL Engineer was already into his own task. He made sure they’d left nothing. The last of the plastic bags was folded and tucked into his belt. They both still had their work gloves, and so there was nothing they’d brought to be left in the room. He took his time looking around, and then waved Small out into the corridor.

  Then he tore the top off the milk carton—it had been washed clean and dried beforehand. He lit the candle with his butane lighter and dripped a dollop of hot wax into the bottom of the carton, to make sure it would have a good place to stand. Then he blew out the candle and made sure it was secure in its place.

  THEN CAME THE dangerous part. Truelove opened the top of the alcohol container, first pouring nearly a quart into the carton, to within just less than an inch of the top of the candle. Next he poured the alcohol on the adult bed, and more onto the child’s cot. The remainder went on the floor, much of it around the milk carton. Finished, he tossed the empty alcohol container to Bob Small.

  Okay, Truelove thought, fully a gallon of pure grain alcohol soaked into the bedclothes and another on the cheap rug on the floor. A demolitions expert—in fact, he had many fields of technical expertise, like most military engineers—he knew to be careful for the next part. Bending down, he flicked his lighter again and lit the candle wick with the same care a heart surgeon might have exercised in a valve replacement. He didn’t waste a second leaving the room, except to make sure the door was properly locked and the do-not-disturb card hung on the knob.

  “TIME TO LEAVE, Robert,” Rodney said to his colleague, and in thirty seconds they were out the side door and off to the street.