She was gone now, gone somewhere. Henderson didn’t know where, though he was sure that he’d never see her again. Which was sad, really. She’d been a great lay. One thing had led to another in a seemingly gradual and natural series of steps ending with his brief conversation at H.M. Tower of London, and now—now he had something the other side really needed. It was just that he didn’t have anyone to tell it to. Did the Russians really know what they had there at that damned-fool camp southwest of Haiphong? It was information which, if used properly, would make them feel far more comfortable about detente, would allow them to back off a little, in turn allowing America to back off a little. That was how it had to start. It was a shame Wally didn’t grasp that it had to start as little things, that you couldn’t change the world all at once. Peter knew that he had to get that message across. He couldn’t have Wally leave government service now, to become just one more goddamned financial puke, as though the world didn’t have enough of them already. He was valuable where he was. Wally just liked to talk too much. It went along with his emotional instability. And his drug use, Henderson thought, looking in the mirror as he shaved.
Breakfast was accompanied by a morning paper. There it was again, on the first page as it was almost every day. Some medium-sized battle for some hill that had been exchanged a dozen or more times, X number of Americans and Y number of Vietnamese, all dead. The implications for the peace talks of some air raid or other, another boring and predictable editorial. Plans for a demonstration. One, Two, Three, Four. We don’t want your fucking war. As
though something so puerile as that really meant anything. In a way, he knew, it did. It did put pressure on political figures, did catch media attention. There was a mass of politicians who wanted the war to end, as Henderson did, but not yet a critical mass. His own senator, Robert Donaldson, was still on the fence. He was called a reasonable and thoughtful man, but Henderson merely found him indecisive, always considering everything about an issue and then most often going with the crowd as though he hadn’t thought anything at all on his own. There had to be a better way, and Henderson was working on that, advising his senator carefully, shading things just a little bit, taking his time to become trusted so that he could learn things that Donaldson wasn’t supposed to tell anyone—but that was the problem with secrets. You just had to let others know, he thought on the way out the door.
Henderson rode the bus to work. Parking on The Hill was such a pain in the rump, and the bus went nearly from door to door. He found a seat in the back where he could finish reading the paper. Two blocks later he felt the bus stop, and immediately thereafter a man sat down next to him.
“How was London?” the man asked in a conversational voice, barely over the noise of the bus’s diesel. Henderson looked over briefly. It wasn’t someone he’d met before. Were they that efficient?
“I met someone there,” Peter said cautiously.
“I have a friend in London. His name is George.” Not a trace of an accent, and now that contact was established, the man was reading the sports page of the Washington Post. “I don’t think the Senators will make it this year. Do you?”
“George said he had a ... friend in town.”
The man smiled at the box score. “My name is Marvin; you can call me that.”
“How do we ... how do I ... ?”
“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Marvin asked.
“Nothing much. Want to come over—”
“No, Peter, that is not smart. Do you know a place called Alberto’s?”
“Wisconsin Avenue, yeah.”
“Seven-thirty,” Marvin said. He rose and got off at the next stop.
The final leg started at Yokota Air Base. After another programmed two-and-a-quarter-hour service wait, the Starlifter rotated off the runway, clawing its way back into the sky. That was when things started to get real for everyone. The Marines made a concerted effort to sleep now. It was the only way to deal with the tension that grew in inverse proportion to the distance from their final destination. Things were different now. It wasn’t just a training exercise, and their demeanor was adapting itself to a new reality. On a different sort of flight, a commercial airliner, perhaps, where conversation might have been possible, they’d trade jokes, stories of amorous conquests, talk about home and family and plans for the future, but the noise of the C-141 denied them that, and so they traded brave smiles that hung under guarded eyes, each man alone with his thoughts and fears, needing to share them and deflect them, but unable to in the noisy cargo compartment of the Starlifter. That was why many of them exercised, just to work off the stress, to tire themselves enough for the oblivion of sleep. Kelly watched it, having seen and done it himself, alone with his own thoughts even more complex than theirs.
It’s about rescue, Kelly told himself. What had started the whole adventure was saving Pam, and the fact of her death was his fault. Then he had killed, to get even, telling himself it was for her memory and for his love, but was that really true? What good things came from death? He’d tortured a man, and now he had to admit to himself that he’d taken satisfaction in Billy’s pain. If Sandy had learned that, then what? What would she think of him? It was suddenly important to consider what she thought about him. She who worked so hard to save that girl, who nurtured and protected, following through on his more simple act of rescue, what would she think of someone who’d torn Billy’s body apart one cell at a time? He could not, after all, stop all the evil in the world. He could not win the war to which he was now returning, and as skilled as this team of Recon Marines was, they would not win the war either. They were going for something else. Their purpose was rescue, for while there could be little real satisfaction in the taking of life, saving life was ever something to recall with the deepest pride. That was his mission now, and must be his mission on returning. There were four other girls in the control of the ring. He’d get them clear, somehow ... and maybe he could somehow let the cops know what Henry was up to, and then they could deal with him. Somehow. How exactly he wasn’t sure. But at least then he could do something that memory would not try to wash away.
And all he had to do was survive this mission. Kelly grunted to himself. No big deal, right?
Tough guy, he told himself with bravado that rang false even within the confines of his own skull. I can do this. I’ve done it before. Strange, he thought, how the mind doesn’t always remember the scary parts until it was too late. Maybe it was proximity. Maybe it was easier to consider dangers that were half a world away, but then when you started getting closer, things changed....
“Toughest part, Mr. Clark,” Irvin said loudly, sitting down beside him after doing his hundred push-ups.
“Ain’t it the truth?” Kelly half-shouted back.
“Something you oughta remember, squid—you got inside and took me out that night, right?” Irvin grinned. “And I’m pretty damned good.”
“They ought not to be all that alert, their home turf an’ all,” Kelly observed after a moment.
“Probably not, anyway, not as alert as we were that night. Hell, we knew you were coming in. You kinda expect home troops, like, go home to the ol’ lady every night, thinking about havin’ a piece after dinner. Not like us, man.”
“Not many like us,” Kelly agreed. He grinned. “Not many dumb as we are.”
Irvin slapped him on the shoulder. “You got that right, Clark.” The master gunnery sergeant moved off to encourage the next man, which was his way of dealing with it.
Thanks, Guns, Kelly thought, leaning back and forcing himself back into sleep.
Alberto’s was a place waiting to be fully discovered. A small and rather typical mom-and-pop Italian place where the veal was especially good. In fact, everything was good, and the couple who ran it waited patiently for the Post’s food critic to wander in, bringing prosperity with him. Until then they subsisted on the college crowd from nearby Georgetown University and a healthy local trade of neighborhood diners without whic
h no restaurant could really survive. The only disappointing note was the music, schmaltzy tapes of Italian opera that oozed out of substandard speakers. The mom and pop in question would have to work on that, he thought.
Henderson found a booth in the back. The waiter, probably an illegal Mexican who comically tried to mask his accent as Italian, lit the candle on the table with a match and went off for the gin-and-tonic the new customer wanted.
Marvin arrived a few minutes later, dressed casually and carrying the evening paper, which he sat on the table. He was of Henderson’s age, totally nondescript, not tall or short, portly or thin, his hair a neutral brown and of medium length, wearing glasses that might or might not have held prescription lenses. He wore a blue short-sleeve shirt without a tie, and looked like just another local resident who didn’t feel like doing his own dinner tonight.
“The Senators lost again,” he said when the waiter arrived with Henderson’s drink. “The house red for me,” Marvin told the Mexican.
“Sí,” the waiter said and moved off.
Marvin had to be an illegal, Peter thought, appraising the man. As a staffer for a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Henderson had been briefed in by serious members of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. “Legal” KGB officers had diplomatic covers, and if caught could only be PNG’d—declared persona non grata—and sent home. So they were secure from serious mishandling on the part of the American government, which was the good news; the bad news was that they were also more easily tracked, since their residences and automobiles were known. Illegals were just that, Soviet intelligence officers who came into the country with false papers and who if caught would end up in federal prison until the next exchange, which could take years. Those facts explained Marvin’s superb English. Any mistake he made would have serious consequences. That made his relaxed demeanor all the more remarkable.
“Baseball fan, eh?”
“I learned the game long ago. I was a pretty good shortstop, but I never learned to hit a curve ball.” The man grinned. Henderson smiled back. He’d seen satellite imagery of the very place where Marvin had learned his trade, that interesting little city northwest of Moscow.
“How will it work?”
“I like that. Good. Let’s get down to business. We won’t be doing this very often. You know why.”
Another smile. “Yeah, they say that winters at Leavenworth are a motherfucker.”
“Not a laughing matter, Peter,” the KGB officer said. “This is a very serious business.” Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.
“I know. Sorry,” Henderson apologized. “I’m new to this.”
“First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, Marvin.”
“For starters, Peter, we’ll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It’s a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don’t ever write it down.”
“HVR-309.”
“Put your messages in this.” He passed something under the table. It was small and metallic. “Don’t get it too close to your watch. There’s a powerful magnet in it. When you walk past my car, you can bend down to pick up a piece of litter, or rest your foot on the bumper and tie your shoe. Just stick the container on the inside surface of the bumper. The magnet will hold it in place.”
It seemed very sophisticated to Henderson, though everything he’d just heard was kindergarten-level spycraft. This was good for the summer. Winter weather would require something else. The dinner menu arrived, and both men selected veal.
“I have something now if you’re interested,” Henderson told the KGB officer. Might as well let them know how important I am.
Marvin, whose real name was Ivan Alekseyevich Yegorov, had a real job, and everything that went along with it. Employed by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company as a loss-control representative, he’d been through company training on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to the Washington regional office, and his job was to identify safety hazards at the many clients of the company, known in the trade as “risks.” Selected mainly for its mobility—the post even came with a company car—the job carried with it the unexpected bonus of visiting the offices of various government contractors whose employees were not always as careful covering up the papers on their desks as they ought to have been. His immediate boss was delighted with Marvin’s performance. His new man was highly observant and downright superb at documenting his business affairs. He’d already turned down promotion and transfer to Detroit—sorry, boss, but I just like the Washington area too much—which didn’t bother his supervisor at all. A guy with his skills, holding a fairly low-paying job, just made his part of the office look all the better. For Marvin, the job meant being out of the office four days out of five, which allowed him to meet people whenever and wherever he wished, along with a free car—Aetna even paid gas and maintenance—and a life so comfortable that had he believed in God he might have thought himself dead and in heaven. A genuine love for baseball took him to RFK Stadium, where the anonymity of the crowd was as perfect a place for brush-passes and other meets as the KGB Field Operations Manual dared to hope for. All in all, Captain Yegorov was a man on the way up, comfortable with his cover and his surroundings, doing his duty for his country. He’d even managed to arrive in America just in time to catch the sexual revolution. All he really missed was the vodka, something Americans did poorly.
Isn’t this interesting? Marvin asked himself in his Chevy Chase apartment. It was downright hilarious that he had learned about a high-level Russian intelligence operation from an American, and here was a chance to hurt his country’s Main Enemy through surrogates—if they could get things moving in time. He would also be able to inform his control officers of something the Soviet Air Force cretins had running that had significant implications for the Soviet Union’s defense. They’d probably try to take that operation over. You couldn’t trust pilots—it had to be a PVO Strany officer doing the questioning, he was sure—with something as important as national defense. He made his notes, photographed them, and rewound the film into the tiny cassette. His first appointment tomorrow was an early call at a local contractor. From there he would stop off to have breakfast at a Howard Johnson’s, where he’d make his transfer. The cassette would be in Moscow in two days, maybe three, by diplomatic pouch.
Captain Yegorov ended his work for the evening just in time to catch the end of the Senators game—despite a ninth-inning homer by Frank Howard they fell short again, losing to Cleveland 5-3. Wasn’t this something, he thought, sipping at his beer. Henderson was a plum all by himself, and nobody had bothered to tell him—probably hadn’t known—that he had his own source within the White House Office of National Security Affairs. Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?
Mission stress and all, it was a relief when the C-141 thumped down at Danang. They’d been in transit for a total of twenty-three noisy and mind-numbing hours, and that was quite long enough, they all thought, until reality struck them hard and fast. Scarcely had the cargo hatch opened when the smell hit them. It was what all veterans of this place came to think of as the Smell of Vietnam. The contents of various latrines were dumped into barrels and burned with diesel fuel.
“Smell o’ home!” one Marine joked, badly, evoking isolated barks of semiamusement.
“Saddle up!” Irvin shouted as the engine noise died. It took a little time. Reactions were slowed by fatigue and stiffness. Many shook their heads to clear off the dizziness induced by the earplugs, along with yawns and stretches which psychologists would have called typical nonverbal expressions of unease.
The flight crew came aft
just as the Marines left. Captain Albie went to them, thanking them for the ride, which had been smooth, if long. The Air Force crew looked forward to several days of enforced crew-rest after the marathon stint, not yet knowing that they would hold in this area until the team was ready to fly home, perhaps catching a few cargo hops back and forth to Clark. Then Albie led his men off the aircraft. Two trucks were waiting, and they drove to a different part of the air base, where two aircraft waited. These were Navy C-2A Greyhounds. With a few desultory moans, the Marines selected seats for the next part of their journey, a one-hour hop to USS Constellation. Once there, they boarded a pair of CH- 46 Sea Knight helicopters for a transfer to USS Ogden, where, disoriented and exhausted by travel, they were led to capacious and empty troop quarters—and bunks. Kelly watched them file off, wondering what came next for him.
“How was the trip?” He turned to see Admiral Podulski, dressed in wrinkled khakis and far too cheerful for the moment.
“Aviators gotta be crazy,” Kelly bitched.
“Does get kinda long. Follow me,” the Admiral ordered, leading him into the superstructure. Kelly looked around first. Constellation was on the eastern horizon, and he could see aircraft flying off one end while others circled to land on the other. Two cruisers were in close attendance, and destroyers ringed the formation. It was part of the Navy which Kelly had rarely seen, the Big Blue Team at work, commanding the ocean. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.