A Very Private Plot (27 page)

An attempt has been made on the life of the General Secretary. The device intended to kill the Soviet leader has instead killed an aide. Two suspects are being pursued by the security police
.

Pavel picked up the telephone and dialed Viktor, who was anxiously awaiting the call.

“It didn't work,” Pavel whispered, hoarsely. “Someone else sat down at the desk. Go immediately to your contact and tell him. He must leave the city. Goodbye, Viktor.”

“Goodbye, Pavel.”

Pavel's mother was ready. She had been ready since four in the afternoon. This was a most exciting moment for her. She understood completely why her son must dress up like an old, bearded man of holy orders. Security above all, Pavel had told her. The great moment was approaching when the Restoration would come about. And they must both be in Leningrad—in St. Petersburg—when it came about. It was vital that Pavel, the Czarevitch, should be thoroughly and safely disguised. He was now transformed into a retired priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, escorting his younger sister on the eight o'clock train to Leningrad, where they would spend a few days with a cousin. Deep inside her large suitcase was the jewel box. “Very important, Mother, the jewels. For when you are first publicly identified, you must be appropriately dressed.” Pavel's mother agreed. They climbed into the farmer's truck Pavel had arranged for and made their way to the Leningrad station.

As they filed into the line of passengers headed for the railroad cars, a policeman, inspecting Pavel's papers, asked the holy man kindly to step aside. The policeman wished to ask a few questions. Pavel said that he was anxious to oblige, but might he first deposit his sister in the carriage, two cars ahead? The policeman accompanied them, the bags were stowed, the sister seated. “I'll be right back, Ilsa.”

The policeman led Pavel to the guardroom opposite the walkway to the train. “I just need to check your identification number with headquarters, Father. There has been a singular disturbance in the Kremlin.” He took Pavel's I.D. card and began to dial a number.

The call was never completed. The old priest yanked the telephone wire from the wall and administered a severe karate chop on the policeman's throat, dropping him to the ground. Pavel's necktie served as a noose. Pavel applied a commando strangle to choke life away from the inert body. In less than five minutes, the necktie hidden around his own neck, beneath his clerical collar, he opened the constabulary door and rejoined his mother in the train.

Viktor took the metro to a station three blocks from Dimitrova Street. He was breathing heavily when he knocked on the door of 1012. There was no answer. He doubted that Boris would leave his room on this tumultuous day. He looked about the long dark hallway, smelling of garlic and old tobacco. There were no signs of life. He moved back to the opposite side of the hall, raised his leg, and with all his force smashed his heavy workman's shoe directly above the door handle. The panel splintered. He reached in with his hand, unlocked the door, and burst into the little salon.

Boris was there. Sprawled over the table, a bottle of vodka, half empty, a few inches to one side.

Viktor grabbed him by the head and chin, saw the blood, looked down on the floor, saw the pistol. He paused only long enough to utter a silent prayer for eternal peace for this brave old man.

He went down to the street and back to the metro, headed this time for the locker in the far corner of the university gymnasium. A half hour later he emerged from the building wearing a goatee and glasses and carrying a briefcase with his papers, a biologist with the University of Novosibirsk, to which he was now returning with handbag and books after several weeks' research at the university.

He took the bus for the airport, looked at his watch. Plenty of time, though he didn't want to idle anywhere. It was almost an hour later that the flight to Novosibirsk was called. Like most flights within the Soviet Union it was crowded and late. There were two buses outside to take the passengers from the terminal to the aircraft, two hundred meters away. Individual tickets were being carefully checked, and the passengers in front of him directed to the first bus. When it came Viktor's turn, he showed his ticket to the agent who examined it.

“Please go to the second bus, we will begin filling it up,” he was told. Viktor walked with his bag and briefcase to the bus. Only two other passengers were in it, both standing, holding on to the handrails. The door was open and he stepped up, lugging his two pieces of hand baggage with him. He set them down on the rack and suddenly the bus lurched forward. The two men wheeled and dived at him. He was pinned prostrate on the floor, a foot on his neck, as his wrists were handcuffed. A shout from the driver's section roared back. “Pin his mouth open! Stick that wood between his teeth! Pull out his tongue. Don't let him get at any cyanide pill!”

When Nikolai opened the door to their apartment, Andrei was standing, flicking the dials of the television set. The radio was also on.

“Any news?”

“Nothing. No mention. It's after six; he must have finished with the Politburo meeting.”

“It's always possible, Andrei, that he won't return to his desk. Perhaps not even until tomorrow morning. The way the wiring is rigged, no cleaning lady could set it off by merely dusting his desk, no matter how vigorously. Somebody would have to actually sit down and yank the drawer open. Only then.”

Andrei said, “I
know
.”

He paced up and down the little room. But he had made up his mind. “Nikolai, I don't think we should take any chances. I think we should go ahead with our escape plans. If they decide to track you down, the accommodating electrical engineer, they'd find this address in—minutes.”

Andrei acted without further talk, and brought down from the closet the carefully prepared small traveling bag, the special papers tied together by an elastic band, and the crutch. He went into the bathroom and emerged in fifteen minutes without a hair on his head. He wore an old uniform, including a faded decoration awarded to disabled soldiers. Nikolai signaled to wait, then put a hat on his friend to hide the newly nude scalp. Andrei extended his arm to Nikolai, who took it, and there was a tight embrace.

“Goodbye, Nikolai. You don't know where I am going. I don't know where you are going. But I think you should go quickly.”

Yes, go quickly
. Go to the large and anonymous city he knew so well. If it worked out, he would arrive in time to meet Tatyana's train, scheduled to arrive two days later, permitting her to compete in a university-sponsored English composition tournament for intermediate teachers. Nikolai had surprised her with the news of the competition, which he had entirely improvised, and surprised her with the round-trip ticket; she could comfortably stay the few days of the competition at his Aunt Titka's. He did not doubt that if he survived the trip to Kiev, he could persuade Tatyana to go with him to the Crimea, and thence to Turkey. If he did not show up, Aunt Titka had been instructed to meet the train, take Tatyana home, and wait for Nikolai.… What if he never showed up? It mattered only that neither Tatyana or Titka knew anything of the Narodniki.

Twenty minutes later an elderly man left Nikolai's apartment carrying a modest-sized bag. He took the room key from his pocket, stared at it for a moment, then walked to the hollow elevator shaft and dropped it down. He heard a tinny scratch a few seconds later. He went down the stairs and across the crowded yard to the entrance of 2 Kutuzovsky Prospekt. He had walked only a step or two when he heard the sirens behind him. He turned. Three cars stopped and what seemed like eight men, some of them conspicuously armed, poured out. Four of them went racing into the courtyard. Four others moved to surround the building. One of them brushed by him. “Move along, old man. There is likely to be action here.”

The old man obligingly crossed the street, and walked slowly toward his destination, even as he wondered whether fate would permit him to go much farther, and whether he would ever be an old man.

CHAPTER 35

DECEMBER 1987

President Reagan sat alone in the Oval Office. Soon he would climb up the staircase for a private dinner with his wife. He thought about the certain-to-be-hectic events of the next few days.

There would be opposition to ratifying the INF treaty he'd be signing tomorrow with Gorbachev.
I love my conservative friends and they've been good and faithful to me, but dammit sometimes they don't see the important things, and some of the important things I can't very well remind them of, at least not publicly. It isn't going to help to pull Gorbachev in the direction we're trying to pull him to say, Look, gang! What that fool is giving up is five times as many missiles as
…

Five
?

Four
.

Or is it three times? Doesn't matter. But more missiles than we're giving up. Well it would be just great for him in the Kremlin if I were to say, “Look what a bad bargainer this guy is
.”

As far as I'm concerned, the direction he's heading is the direction we want him to head, and if he reverses? So he reverses, and so do we
. National Review
said we'd never succeed in getting the Pershings and cruise missiles back into Europe once we pulled them out. Well, we got 'em in in 1982 and 1983. And anyway, we have plenty of submarines in case Gorbachev or some successor goes crazy and starts to threaten Europe. It ain't going to happen
.

And anyway, Gorbachev isn't giving away anything he isn't prepared to give away. He doesn't know how much I know about how much he's hurting. Wasteland, the Soviet economy. He'll give his usual eighteen speeches about how I should give up Star Wars, and I'll simply say No. And maybe have one more shot at reminding him that if we make progress in an anti-missile system, we'll share that progress with him, then both of us would be safe against Qaddafi types. I wonder if I should tell him Ken Adelman's crack, that the Soviet Union is the only country in the world entirely surrounded by hostile communist states? I love that one. But no, probably not. Not unless he gets into a joke-telling mood, like he did for an hour or so at Reykjavik
.

First time a Soviet chief of state has come to Washington since Brezhnev in, when the hell was it? Nixon was President. I remember, he gave Brezhnev a Cadillac or something. Wonder what I could give Gorbachev, apart from the usual things? Maybe a prototype of a Brilliant Pebbles missile! For fun I'll suggest that. Maybe. I might check with Nancy. George would say No
.

It was probably a good idea that we pulled away from the idea of having him address both houses of Congress. Hell, what would people like Bob Dornan do? Probably not show up, but if they did, they'd look for an opportunity to boo or
—
well, no, they'd behave. But it would be a pretty cold greeting, and you can't be all that surprised
—
the son of a bitch still heads up the biggest tyranny in the world. Well, I suppose China's is bigger. But in terms of a threat, the Soviet Union has been number one and still is
.

And yes, I keep promising myself, no matter what, absolutely no matter what, I'm going to give him a list of those political prisoners we want to try to get some relief for, and once again the petition on the Russian Jews. Gorbachev
—
Mikhail, I got to remember to call him
—
sort of lets you know, at least I think I know, whether he's listening just to go through the motions of listening, or whether he's actually taking it in. I think I can tell the difference at this point
.

Well, tomorrow we sign the treaty, and the day after that is the state dinner. And then before he goes off to New York we have a scheduled meeting here, and a farewell lunch. Oh God, I hope he brings another interpreter. If it's that same guy with five syllables to his name, he'll shout at me every time Gorbachev raises his voice. Maybe I can just ask him this time please not to feel he's got to interpret what Mikhail says in hi-fi
.

—The house buzzer. He picked up the phone. “Yes, dear. Be right up.”

The President turned off the desk light, and then the overhead light. He thought for a moment about what he was doing.
Probably most of my predecessors
—
except for Lyndon
—
left it to somebody else to put out the lights in the Oval Office. Well, that wasn't the way Ronald Reagan was raised
.

Everything had gone off as scheduled. The people who were against the Intermediate Nuclear Force treaty simply said that they would fight against its ratification, and that didn't surprise the President. He was confident it would be ratified, and told Gorbachev it would be. Now for the farewell session, then lunch, and off he goes to New York, first stop.

The President looked at his watch. He pushed a button on his desk. “What time was Gorbachev supposed to be here?”

“Twelve, Mr. President,” the voice came in through the little amplifier.

“Well, it's twelve-fifteen.”

“He's pressing the flesh on Pennsylvania Avenue. Do you want me to put on the television for you, Mr. President?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

In thirty seconds he was viewing Gorbachev. He wore his fur-lined coat and hat and was smiling broadly and shaking hands at the rate of one every two or three seconds. The President enjoyed the paradoxical sight, the leader of the most powerful tyranny on earth exchanging affectionate greetings with the men and women who stoked the defensive machine designed to frustrate his designs, but got progressively irritated. “Hal, I'm not going to upset the whole schedule on account of this. Lunch was called for one o'clock. At exactly one o'clock you open that door and announce that it's ready. I don't care if we've just been together for five minutes. A schedule is a schedule.”

“Yes, sir.”