Tool of the Trade

  “I know. Americans swim in a sea of credit.”

  “Yes. And you are an American. If you forget that, you may die.” He stared at Shilkov, as still as a stalking bird. “That is not a joke.”

  Shilkov stared back. “I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy,” he chanted in a monotone. “Yankee Doodle do or die. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam. Born on the Fourth of July.”

  “Very good.” He looked at Leusner. “May I go?” She nodded and he slipped out, looking carefully neutral.

  Leusner opened a drawer and took out two fat letter-sized envelopes. “This is your walking-around money for Indianapolis. Twenty thousand dollars in fifties and twenties, in each,. You get one when we catch Foley. The other, you can earn today.”

  “I’m at your service.”

  From the same drawer, she produced a yellow pad and a mechanical pencil. Standing, she pushed them over toward him. “Names. All those names you claim to have. Name, function, location, cover. Addresses would be nice.”

  He picked up the pencil and clicked it a few times. “With forty names, that's only five hundred dollars per name. Surely I’m saving you—”

  “We’re saving your life. Any more complaints and I’ll just send you downstairs to the torture chamber.”

  “Come now. You don’t—”

  “We built it just for you.”

  “Yes, of course.” He picked up the pad. “Is there a room where I can be alone?”

  She nodded and stood up. “Follow me.” They walked out, and Stratton and I sat in silence for a few seconds.

  “I don’t like this at all,” I said. “We shouldn’t give that man anything but the electric chair.”

  “Not to worry,” Stratton said. “Harriet will fill you in.”

  “What is it?”

  He chuckled. “It’s Harriet’s game. It’s sweet. She’ll want to tell you herself.”

  Leusner came back in, looking satisfied. “So what is it?” I said.

  “That guy Eric.” She sat down and spun around in her chair. “We’ve known for three years that he was working for the KGB. Feeding him stuff that’s neutral or false. Sometimes important stuff that’s true, when we know it was compromised by someone else, or it’s about to go public.

  “The timing is great. He really has outlived his usefulness; we know from another double agent that the KGB has tumbled to the pattern. So the last thing he does will be a favor to both of his employers. Finger that bastard.”

  “So we’d better find out all we can before he goes to Indianapolis.”

  “That’s right,” she said, smiling broadly. “Cab drivers have accidents.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: VALERIE

  It would be good to visit Leningrad when I didn’t have so much to worry about. They had put together a sort of “wives’ tour” with an unrelentingly cheerful Intourist woman and a kamikaze bus driver. So we learned all about the Aurora and the October Revolution and the Summer Palace and we saw the mammoth in the deep freeze and tried to absorb all the art in the Hermitage in three hours, paintings flickering by like the frames of a Saturday-morning cartoon.

  It’s hitting Nick hard. Not the tension of the upcoming confrontation. He lives for that kind of stress, though he’d never admit it. It’s this country or this city, his childhood memories. Well, nine hundred days of absolute terror and deprivation. After almost ninety days of it myself, I had some inkling of how they feel. Everyone you meet over fifty seems to radiate memories, the permanent existential bruise of having survived the war. Everyone under thirty radiates impatience.

  Sometimes it feels like the whole country is a monument to the Great Patriotic War, and the old men in charge use it as a guilt trip on the young. Waiting in line at a cafeteria, I met a woman who was studying English at the university, who was bitterly sarcastic, whispering, about the new war memorial being constructed out in the suburbs. She and her boyfriend had been trying to get an apartment for three years, so that they could get married and not have to live with parents. But no, there had to be another granite slab of Socialist Realism, in the middle of dignified acres that should be holding up apartment buildings.

  It’s like a person who survived having a cancer cut out and keeps the damned thing in a jar, showing it constantly to his children and neighbors. Don’t smoke. Eat lots of fiber. This could happen to you.

  And yet you can’t criticize it, not from the outside, no more than you can tell a widow to stop grieving. We went to the Piskarevsky Cemetery, on the out-skirts of the city, where most of the people who died in the Siege are buried. Symbolic gravestones and marble plaques on the ground, not identifying individuals. No one knows how many lie there. More than a million. Acres of rolling fields with carefully spaced trees. A memorial building full of terrible photographs: piles of bodies, buildings exploding, fires and ice. A crying woman pulling a child’s sled with the child lying on top, rigid in death. When we left, it was raining and the sky was almost black.

  Back at the hotel, Nick was sitting at the window, staring out over the Neva. He asked me where I’d been, and I told him, and he burst into tears, silent tears.

  He tried to laugh it off, through the tears, saying he’d had too much vodka with lunch, and the sadness of the city was getting to him. Maybe that was for the benefit of the microphones. Maybe it was for me. But he should know that after twenty-five years a woman can tell when her man has had a drink.

  Something is gnawing away at him, and we can’t talk about it. Not just because of microphones.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: NICK

  I had tested the watch against President Fitzpatrick while we were “alone,” carefully; asking him direct questions that would normally generate indirect answers, and it had worked. It also worked well with the translator, Menenkov, and his two KGB men. Today I would find out whether Vardanyan was hard of hearing.

  We were taking over the swank Petrovksy Restaurant on the tenth floor of the hotel, all of the apparat-chiki from both countries who had to make their importance known by bending elbows with the most powerful. Premier Dr. Vardanyan would be there, since he happened to be in the neighborhood, on his way back from meeting Fitzpatrick for their symbolic reunion in Germany. Fitzpatrick couldn’t make it, of course, but Vice President Aldrich appeared as if by magic.

  I was beginning to recognize in myself an unreasoning prejudice against people in rumpled dark suits with thin black ties and smirks. They were much in evidence. There was always one in the elevator. Always one in the men’s room. Always in the bar, in the lobby, in the tearoom. Somebody hand me the Raid.

  When the vice president and his entourage showed up, I was waiting in the lobby, as requested; I was to be his translator. It was surprisingly easy to get him alone; his Secret Service guard had to go upstairs to report to someone. (You could tell that Aldrich was miffed at that. I could have been a dangerous spy.)

  It was easy to test the watch on Aldrich because he was a smoker. With smokers, I’d just say, “Give me a cigarette,”—not “please do you have…”—and when they held it out, I’d say, “No, take it back.” If they did both without reaction, I could be pretty sure the watch was working; if they did react, I could cover myself by saying, “Sorry, I’m trying to quit. Not quite myself.” Aldrich handed me a cigarette out of a tooled leather case and put it back without comment.

  “Who’s minding the store?” I said. “You here and the president in France.”

  “Spain. Actually, Fitz is still running things. Wonders of modern science. Briefing by satellite every morning, Cabinet meeting before dinner. All unclassified, of course; walls have ears. After lunch he usually gets in touch with me and Seales.” Peter Seales was the press secretary.

  That he called the president Fitz was revealing. That was his “political” nickname, I’d found out with the watch; his friends called him Gid.

  Valerie was waiting for us at the head table, along with Menenkov and a few Special Assistants for This and That, American and Russian. I introduced he
r, my Linda, and Menenkov, and we joined everybody else in waiting for Vardanyan.

  A formal Russian dinner is more fun than an American one, though to appreciate it fully requires more tolerance for alcohol than I have. A long trough set in the center of the table was filled with shaved ice, cooling three different kinds of vodka, two varieties of Soviet champagne, and, incongruously, many long-neck botdes of Pepsi-Cola, legacy of Armand Hammer. Most of the Russians were drinking Pepsi, and most of the Americans champagne.

  Menenkov greeted me warmly and poured me a glass of champagne. “I’m afraid it’s not Mumm’s, Anson.”

  “I know.” I took a small sip. Sort of like carbonated Thunderbird. “When do you expect Vardanyan?”

  He spread his hands. “His plane came in three hours ago.” I knew that, of course. “He may be resting.”

  “What if he rests till midnight?”

  “—Hunger is the best sauce,” he said in French. I couldn’t remember whether I, as Anson Rafferty, spoke that language. I smiled noncommittally.

  “In America, the guest of honor usually shows up late,” Aldrich said. “Is it that way here?”

  “Sometimes,” Menenkov said softly, comically slewing his eyes from left to right. “Sometimes he doesn’t show up… at all.”

  I laughed, and so did Aldrich, uncomfortably. “Your friend Ivanov is conspicuous by his absence.” The Ukrainian KGB man.

  “Only so much room at the table.” He poured himself some more champagne. “I assure you he is here in spirit. So to speak.”

  I raised my glass to him. “—As some of my friends must be.”

  “What was that?” Aldrich asked.

  “Old Russian toast,” I said. “Absent friends.”

  A festive Russian meal would normally be many hours of eating and drinking. You start out with what would be considered appetizers in other countries’ culinary traditions—bits of smoked fish, small boiled potatoes in sour cream, pickled vegetables, caviar rolled in small pancakes—and you follow each tidbit with a shot of icecold vodka. The vodka’s less than seventy proof, but a lot of it goes down in the course of a couple of hours’ nibbling. Then the main course comes out, perhaps a stroganoff or baked stuffed fish or fowl, along with wine. Then a sweet and brandy. Then more brandy and whatever vodka’s left. Then you try to remember whose flat you’re in and what your own name is, just in case.

  Our banquet was going to be more Western style, but they did bring out token plates of traditional appetizers. Menenkov was demonstrating to me the correct way to roll up caviar in a pancake when everyone got to their feet. Coming through the door, Vardanyan told everyone to sit and strode toward our table, trailing a quartet of bodyguards.

  He greeted Menenkov by his first name and shook hands with the vice president, speaking rapid-fire Russian. “The premier welcomes you,” Menenkov translated, “and thanks you for having been able to grace us with your presence on such short notice.” Vardanyan had taken three years of English in school, according to the CIA, but didn’t speak it well. There had been periods in his life when it wouldn’t have been safe to speak English well.

  For a long second he studied me, focusing the considerable force of his personality. He was a small man, with features invariably described as “hawk-like”: sharp beak nose, sloping forehead with a sharply defined ridge of bone under eyebrows that looked like stiff filaments of white wire, curling. He was almost completely bald, his skin was wrinkled and spotted with age and work, but his eyes were cool, clear gray. I translated Aldrich’s polite response, and he nodded, looking abstracted for a moment Then he turned his attention back to me.

  “—They tell me you used to work for the CIA.”

  “—Yes. In Germany, back in 1962 and—”

  “—Do you work for them now?”

  “—No. Nor any other intelligence agency.” Unless you count the KGB, technically.

  “—And you are independently wealthy.”

  “—My wife is.”

  He smiled, almost wan. “—Then can you tell me why you took General Lamberts job?”

  “—He was sick, he asked me. Also, I’ve never been to Russia.” I turned on the watch. This had to be done delicately, with all these people listening who knew Vardanyan more or less well.

  “What’s the premier talking about?” Aldrich asked, breaking my concentration.

  “Small talk, sir. He’s asking about my… qualifications.” Menenkov whispered a translation to Vardanyan.

  “—Yes, qualifications,” Vardanyan said, putting the tips of his fingers together. “—I find it remarkable that the president would choose an ex-CIA man, however skilled an interpreter he might be.”

  “—I never was a CIA man, actually. I was a private citizen working in Germany, and the State Department asked me to dig up some information. I only later found out that the CIA was involved.” By pushing my wrist along the tablecloth a few inches, I could turn the gain all the way up. “—I assure you that you can trust me completely. I’m a good American but not political. My primary allegiance is to mankind in general. You must believe this if we are to work well together.”

  He rubbed one finger up and down his long nose, staring. “—For some reason I do trust you. You are a most persuasive man.” I turned the gain down. It might be suspicious if everybody at the long table went along with what anybody else said.

  Vardanyan spilled some caviar on a pancake and rolled it up one-handed, John Wayne style. He smiled at Aldrich and said, “Now to the serious business of eating,” with an accent as thick as the Neva outside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: JACOB

  We had to go into Washington to find a store that carried Shilkov’s vile French cigarettes. He was going to have a hell of a time getting them in Indianapolis. Maybe he’d live long enough to kick the habit.

  We had him sequestered under discreet but heavily armed guard in a condo in Vienna, Virginia. The Agency owned the top three floors; the doorman and the elevator operator were GS-8 muscle.

  In two days, we rounded up more than forty of the agents he’d named. I was dying to interrogate him about Foley, but Leusner asked us to hold off. She had to go to Berlin for a series of meetings, and wanted us to wait so that she could be in on it. I think she also wanted at least some of the leads not to pan out, to give us some leverage on him.

  So for most of a week, Jefferson and I sat in the room next to his and read, watched television, played cards for matches. Each match was worth a million dollars, and Jefferson won not quite enough to pay off the national debt. We shouldn’t have been wasting time, though. Shilkov did know where Foley was, or rather, he guessed right, and it was no place obvious. Except now, in retrospect.

  Four days. What would the world be like now if we’d traced him down and stopped him?

  Leusner went straight from the plane to Langley, and straight from Langley to the Vienna condo, and walked in unannounced on our game of million-dollar whist. Her face was puffy with jet lag. She was holding the envelope of “walking-around” money, the bribe.

  She slapped the heavy envelope against her palm, twice, smiling wearily. “Shall we?” We tossed down the cards, and Jefferson put on his coat.

  Ironically, Shilkov was watching The Price is Right, peihaps in the spirit of trying to understand his newly adopted country. He was engrossed and looked up, startled, when we came in through the connecting door. Leusner turned off the television and sat stiffly on the edge of an easy chair.

  “Most of the leads you gave us have been successful.’ She took a slip of paper out of her breast pocket and glanced at it. “Except two here in Washington. Can you tell us anything more about James Edward Wentworth or Suzanne Lin?”

  “You didn’t find them?”

  “No. Wentworth flew the coop; his apartment’s clean. Lin went out to a movie and never came back.”

  He shrugged. “Washington’s a small town. When you started picking people up, the word must have spread.”

  “I suppose. H
ave you found the look-alike?”

  “None exact, of course. I narrowed it down to three.” We’d given him some photo albums the FBI supplied. They weren’t criminals, just people with various facial characteristics, photographed from the front and side. Shilkov had MALE CAUC BLOND 50-60, MALE CAUC WHITE 50-60, AND MALE CAUC BALD 50-60. All three were in the blond volume; Jefferson and I had seen them two days before.

  She looked at the nondescript pictures and shrugged. “Okay. So where is he?”

  He leaned back on the couch and laced his fingers together. “I thought that you would never ask. He is in Russia. Leningrad, or headed there.”

  We all stiffened. “The summit,” Leusner said. That was the next day.

  “You could have told us earlier,” I said.

  Shilkov smiled sweetly. “As I say, you never asked. I think you made a point of not asking.”

  “How do you know he’s going to the summit?” Leusner said.

  “The woman. Valerie Foley. She doesn’t know she told me anything.”

  “So you didn’t force it out of her,” Leusner said.

  “Oh no, not in the sense of torture. In fact, I never hurt her at all—though I did threaten to; that’s part of the technique.”

  “Go on.”

  “We gave her only water for a couple of days. I… worked on her resistance with various psychological devices. Finally we gave her water that contained a hypnotic. When she fell asleep, I injected her with a compound the KGB’s Special Services technicians made up, called Batch Seven. It lowers one’s antagonism toward interrogation.”

  “Like Pentothal?” I asked.

  “Somewhat. People don’t babble so with it. It’s almost like normal conversation.”