Ten minutes later the meeting was in closed session. It was only in her car on her way back to her apartment in Alexandria that Sam spotted the flaw in their beautiful solution. How did the KGB know to copy a Harrods-bought crocodile-skin handbag?
Philip Kelly and Kevin Brown shared a car back to the Hoover Building.
“That young lady got closer to Quinn, a lot closer, than I had intended,” said Kelly.
“I smelled that in London, all through the negotiations,” Brown agreed. “She fought in his corner all the way, and in my book we still want to talk to Quinn himself—I mean, really talk. Have the French or the British traced him yet?”
“No. I was going to tell you. The French tagged him out of Ajaccio airport on a London-bound plane. He abandoned his car, full of bullet holes, in the parking lot. The Brits traced him in London to a hotel, but when they got there he had vanished—never even checked in.”
“Damn, that man’s like an eel,” Brown swore.
“Exactly,” said Kelly. “But if you’re right, there could be one person he’ll contact. Somerville; the only one. I don’t like doing this to one of our own people, but I want her apartment bugged, her phone tapped, and mail intercepted. As of tonight.”
“Right away,” said Brown.
When they were alone, the Vice President and the inner five members of the Cabinet again raised the issue of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
It was the Attorney General who brought it up. Quietly and regretfully. Odell was on the defensive. He saw more of their reclusive President than the others. He had to admit John Cormack appeared as lackluster as ever.
“Not yet,” he said. “Give him time.”
“How much?” asked Morton Stannard. “It’s been three weeks since the funeral.”
“Next year is election year,” Bill Walters pointed out. “If it’s to be you, Michael, you will need a clear run from January.”
“Jesus,” exploded Odell. “That man in the White House is stricken and you talk of elections.”
“Just being practical, Michael,” said Donaldson.
“We all know that after Irangate, Ronald Reagan was so badly confused for a while that the Twenty-fifth was almost invoked then,” Walters pointed out. “The Cannon Report at the time makes plain it was touch-and-go. But this crisis is worse.”
“President Reagan recovered,” pointed out Hubert Reed. “He resumed his functions.”
“Yes, just in time,” said Stannard.
“That’s the issue,” suggested Donaldson. “How much time do we have?”
“Not a lot,” admitted Odell. “The media have been patient so far. He’s a damn popular man. But it’s cracking, fast.”
“Deadline?” asked Walters quietly.
They held a vote. Odell abstained. Walters raised his silver pencil. Stannard nodded. Brad Johnson shook his head. Walters agreed. Jim Donaldson reflected and joined Johnson in refusing. It was locked, two and two. Hubert Reed looked around at the other five men with a worried frown. Then he shrugged.
“I’m sorry, but if it must be, it must.”
He joined the ayes. Odell exhaled noisily.
“All right,” he said. “We agree by a majority. By Christmas Eve, without a major turnaround, I’ll have to go and tell him we’re invoking the Twenty-fifth on New Year’s Day.”
He had only risen halfway when the others reached their feet in deference. He found he enjoyed it.
“I don’t believe you,” said Quinn.
“Please,” said the man in the Savile Row suit. He gestured toward the curtained windows. Quinn glanced around the room. Above the mantel shelf, Lenin addressed the masses. Quinn walked to the window and peered out.
Across the gardens of bare trees and over the wall, the top section of a red London double-decker bus ran along Bayswater Road. Quinn resumed his seat.
“Well, if you’re lying, it’s a hell of a film set,” he said.
“No film set,” replied the KGB general. “I prefer to leave that to your people in Hollywood.”
“So what brings me here?”
“You interest us, Mr. Quinn. Please don’t be so defensive. Strange though it may sound, I believe we are for the moment on the same side.”
“It does sound strange,” said Quinn. “Too damn strange.”
“All right, so let me talk it through. For some time we have known that you were the man chosen to negotiate the release of Simon Cormack from his abductors. We also know that after his death you have spent a month in Europe trying to track them down—with some success, it would appear.”
“That puts us on the same side?”
“Maybe, Mr. Quinn, maybe. My job isn’t to protect young Americans who insist on going for country runs with inadequate protection. But it is to try to protect my country from hostile conspiracies that do her huge damage. And this ... this Cormack business ... is a conspiracy by persons unknown to damage and discredit my country in the eyes of the entire world. We don’t like it, Mr. Quinn. We don’t like it at all. So let me, as you Americans say, level with you.
“The abduction and murder of Simon Cormack was not a Soviet conspiracy. But we are getting the blame for it. Ever since that belt was analyzed, we have been in the dock of world opinion. Relations with your country, which our leader was genuinely trying to improve, have been poisoned; a treaty to reduce weapons levels, on which we placed great store, is in ruins.”
“It looks as though you don’t appreciate disinformation when it works against the U.S.S.R., even though you’re pretty good at it yourselves,” said Quinn.
The general had the grace to shrug in acceptance of the barb.
“All right, we indulge in disinformatsya from time to time. So does the CIA. It goes with the territory. And I admit it’s bad enough to get the blame for something we have done. But it is intolerable for us to be blamed for this affair, which we did not instigate.”
“If I were a more generous man I might feel sorry for you,” said Quinn. “But the fact is, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Not anymore.”
“Possibly.” The general nodded. “Let us see. I happen to believe you are smart enough to have worked out already that this conspiracy is not ours. If I had put this together, why the hell would I have Cormack killed by a device so provably Soviet?”
Quinn nodded. “All right. I happen to think you were not behind it.”
“Thank you. Now, have you any ideas as to who might have been?”
“I think it came out of America. Maybe the ultra-right. If the aim was to kill off the Nantucket Treaty’s chance of Senate ratification, it certainly succeeded.”
“Precisely.”
General Kirpichenko went behind the desk and returned with five enlarged photographs. He put them in front of Quinn.
“Have you ever seen these men before, Mr. Quinn?”
Quinn studied the passport photographs of Cyrus Miller, Melville Scanlon, Lionel Moir, Peter Cobb, and Ben Salkind. He shook his head.
“No, never seen them.”
“Pity. Their names are on the reverse side. They visited my country several months ago. The man they conferred with—the man I believe they conferred with—would have been in a position to supply that belt. He happens to be a marshal.”
“Have you arrested him? Interrogated him?”
General Kirpichenko smiled for the first time.
“Mr. Quinn, your Western novelists and journalists are happy to suggest that the organization I work for has limitless powers. Not quite. Even for us, to arrest a Soviet marshal without a shred of proof is way off base. Now, I’ve been frank with you. Would you return the compliment? Would you tell me what you managed to discover these past thirty days?”
Quinn considered the request. He could see no reason not to; the affair was over so far as any trail he would ever be able to follow was concerned. He told the general the story from the moment he ran out of the Kensington apartment to make his private rendezvous with Zack. Kirpichenko listened attenti
vely, nodding several times, as if what he heard coincided with something he already knew. Quinn ended his tale with the death of Orsini.
“By the way,” he added, “may I ask how you tracked me to Ajaccio airport?”
“Oh, I see. Well, my department has obviously been keenly interested in this whole affair from the start. After the boy’s death and the deliberate leak of the details of the belt, we went into overdrive. You weren’t exactly low-profile as you went through the Low Countries. The shoot-out in Paris made all the evening papers. The description of the man the barman described as fleeing the scene matched yours.
“A check on airline departure and passenger lists—yes, we do have assets working for us in Paris—showed your FBI lady friend heading for Spain, but nothing on you. I assumed you might be armed, would wish to avoid airport security procedures, and checked ferry bookings. My man in Marseilles got lucky, tagged you on the ferry to Corsica. The man you saw at the airport flew in the same morning you arrived, but missed you. Now I knew you had gone up into the mountains. He took up station at the point where the airport road and the road to the docks meet each other, saw your car take the airport road just after sunup. By the way, did you know four men with guns came into the terminal while you were in the men’s room?”
“No, I never saw them.”
“Mmmm. They didn’t seem to like you. From what you have just told me about Orsini, I can understand why. No matter. My colleague ... took care of them.”
“Your tame Englishman?”
“Andrei? He’s not English. As a matter of fact, he’s not even Russian. Ethnically, he’s a Cossack. I don’t underestimate your ability to handle yourself, Mr. Quinn, but please don’t ever try to mix with Andrei. He really is one of my best men.”
“Thank him for me,” said Quinn. “Look, General, it’s been a nice chat. But that’s it. There’s nowhere for me to go but back to my vineyard in Spain and try to start over.”
“I disagree, Mr. Quinn. I think you should go back to America. The key lies there, somewhere in America. You should return.”
“I’d be picked up within the hour,” said Quinn. “The FBI doesn’t like me—some of them think I was involved.”
General Kirpichenko went back to his desk and beckoned Quinn across. He handed him a passport, a Canadian passport, not new, suitably thumbed, with a dozen exit and entry stamps. His own face, hardly recognizable with its different haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, and stubble of beard, stared at him.
“I’m afraid it was taken while you were drugged,” said the general. “But then, aren’t they all? The passport is quite genuine, one of our better efforts. You will need clothes with Canadian maker’s labels, luggage—that sort of thing. Andrei has them all ready for you. And, of course, these.”
He put three credit cards, a valid Canadian driver’s license, and a wad of 20,000 Canadian dollars on the desk top. The passport, license, and credit cards were all in the name of Roger Lefevre. A French-Canadian; the accent for an American who spoke French would be no problem.
“I suggest Andrei drive you to Birmingham for the first morning flight to Dublin. From there you can connect to Toronto. In a rented car the border crossing into America should present no problem. Are you ready to go, Mr. Quinn?”
“General, I don’t seem to be making myself clear. Orsini never said a word before he died. If he knew who the fat man was, and I think he did, he never let it out. I don’t know where to start. The trail’s cold. The fat man is safe, and the paymasters behind him, and the renegade I believe is somewhere high in the Establishment—the information source. They’re all safe because Orsini stayed silent. I have no aces, no kings, queens, or jacks. I have nothing in my hand.”
“Ah, the analogy of cards. Always you Americans refer to aces of spades. Do you play chess, Mr. Quinn?”
“A bit, not well,” said Quinn. The Soviet general walked to a shelf of books on one wall and ran his finger along the row, as if looking for a particular one.
“You should,” he said. “Like my profession, it is a game of cunning and guile, not brute force. All the pieces are visible, and yet ... there is more deception in chess than in poker. Ah, here we are.”
He offered the book to Quinn. The author was Russian, the text in English. A translation, private edition. The Great Grand Masters: A Study.
“You are in check, Mr. Quinn, but perhaps not yet checkmate. Go back to America, Mr. Quinn. Read the book on the flight. May I recommend you pay particular attention to the chapter on Tigran Petrosian. An Armenian, long dead now, but perhaps the greatest chess tactician who ever lived. Good luck, Mr. Quinn.”
General Kirpichenko summoned his operative Andrei and issued a stream of orders in Russian. Then Andrei took Quinn to another room and fitted him out with a suitcase of new clothes, all Canadian; plus luggage and airline tickets. They drove together to Birmingham and Quinn caught the first British Midland flight of the day to Dublin. Andrei saw him off, then drove back to London.
Quinn connected out of Dublin to Shannon, waited several hours, and caught the Air Canada flight to Toronto.
As promised, he read the book in the departure lounge in Shannon and again on the flight across the Atlantic. He read the chapter on Petrosian six times. Before he touched down at Toronto he realized why so many rueful opponents had dubbed the wily Armenian grandmaster the Great Deceiver.
At Toronto his passport was no more queried than it had been at Birmingham or Dublin or Shannon. He took his luggage off the carrousel in the customs hall and passed through with a cursory check. There was no reason why he should notice the quiet man who observed him emerge from the customs hall, followed him to the main railway station, and joined him on the train northeast to Montreal.
At a used-car lot in Quebec’s first city, Quinn bought a used Jeep Renegade with heavy-duty winter tires and, from a camping store nearby, the boots, trousers, and down parka needed for the time of year in that climate. When the Jeep was tanked up he drove southeast, through St. Jean to Bedford, then due south for the American border.
At the border post on the shores of Lake Champlain, where State Highway 89 passes from Canada into Vermont, Quinn crossed into the United States.
There is a land in the northern fringes of the state of Vermont known to locals simply as the Northeast Kingdom. It takes in most of Essex County, with pieces of Orleans and Caledonia, a wild, mountainous place of lakes and rivers, hills and gorges, with here and there a bumpy track and a small village. In winter a cold descends on the Northeast Kingdom so terrible it is as if the land had been subjected to a state of freeze-frame—literally. The lakes become ice, the trees rigid with frost; the ground crackles beneath the feet. In winter nothing lives up there, save in hibernation, apart from the occasional lonely elk moving through the creaking forest. Wits from the South say there are only two seasons in the Kingdom—August and winter. Those who know the place say this is nonsense; it is August 15th and winter.
Quinn drove his Jeep south past Swanton and St. Albans to the town of Burlington, then turned away from Lake Champlain to follow Route 89 to the state capital, Montpelier. Here he quit the main highway to take Route 2 up through East Montpelier, following the valley of the Winooski past Plainfield and Marshfield to West Danville.
Winter had come early to the Northeast Kingdom and the hills closed in, huddled against the cold; the occasional vehicle coming the other way was another anonymous bubble of warmth, with heater full on, containing a human being surviving with technology a cold that would kill the unprotected body in minutes.
The road narrowed again after West Danville, banked high with snow on both sides. After passing through the shuttered community of Danville itself, Quinn put the Jeep in four-wheel drive for the final stage to St. Johnsbury.
The little town on the Passumpsic River was like an oasis in the freezing mountains, with shops and bars and lights and warmth. Quinn found a real estate agent on Main Street and put his request. It was not the man’s busiest ti
me of year. He considered the request with puzzlement.
“A cabin? Well, sure, we rent out cabins in the summer. Mostly the owners want to spend a month, maybe six weeks in their cabins, then rent out for the rest of the season. But now?”
“Now,” said Quinn.
“Anywhere special?” asked the man.
“In the Kingdom.”
“You really want to get lost, mister.”
But the man checked his list and scratched his head.
“There might be a place,” he said. “Belongs to a dentist from Barre, down in the warm country.”
The warm country was at that time of year only fifteen below zero, as opposed to twenty. The realtor rang the dentist, who agreed to a one-month rental. He peered out at the Jeep.
“You got snow chains on that Renegade, mister?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll need ’em.”
Quinn bought and attached the chains, and they set off together. It was fifteen miles but the drive took more than an hour.
“It’s on Lost Ridge,” said the agent. “The owner only uses it in high summer for fishing and walking. You trying to avoid the wife’s lawyers or something?”
“I need the peace and quiet to write a book,” said Quinn.
“Oh, a writer,” said the agent, satisfied. People make allowances for writers, as for all other lunatics.
They headed back toward Danville, then branched north up an even smaller road. At North Danville the agent guided Quinn west into the wilderness. Ahead the Kittredge Hills reared up to the sky, impenetrable. The track led to the right of the range, toward Bear Mountain. On the slopes of the mountain the agent gestured to a snow-choked track. Quinn needed all the power of the engine, the four-wheel drive, and the chains to get there.