Atropos (19 page)

“Well, you seem to be planning to have one, son,” the Congressman said,

“If his plan is to get next to Regina, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I think,” Rines said. He cleared his throat. “I think he’s dying.”

“We’re all dying, Rines,” the Congressman said. “Besides, he’s an old man. Older than me.”

“I mean I think he’s dying soon, and ugly. I think he’s got lung cancer too bad to do anything about. The coughing, the phlegm you mentioned ort the way over here—I remember my grandfather going through the same thing. The operation may be as big as you say, I think it probably is, but I bet the real reason Borzov is over here is to make sure you realize, when whatever it is happens, that he’s the one who did it to you.”

Trotter and the Congressman exchanged skeptical looks. “I’d think, Trotter said, “that the moving genius of the KGB would be past that kind of thing.”

“You two don’t realize the effect you have on people. What do they call it? Charisma? Star quality?”

The Congressman rapped his cane on the floor. “Don’t be an ass, Rines. We both would have been dead long since.”

“Oh, you can be inconspicuous when you want to. At least, Trotter here, can. I’ve never seen you inconspicuous, Congressman, with all respect. But when Trotter’s doing it, it takes an effort on his part. When he lets up, he gets ...
noticed.
Like you, Congressman. Or, from what I hear, like Borzov himself. You’ve all got enormous egos—” Rines held up a hand. “I know, we couldn’t do this sort of work without it. I’ve got an ego myself. And I can tell you that if I were supposed to be a genius, and I could outsmart everybody in the world but one or two men, and I wanted to beat them if it turned out to be the last thing I ever did, and I was convinced that I was
about
to beat them, and it
would
be the last thing I ever did, I don’t think I’d be able to resist the opportunity to show up in person to rub it in. If it could be managed, of course, without jeopardizing the operation. I don’t know about the jeopardizing; it does seem to have been managed.”

Trotter scratched his head. “That’s something else I’ve wondered about. Visitors like ‘General Dudakov’ have to be approved by the State Department. Even if the State Department doesn’t know the Agency exists, the CIA must have let them know that Dudakov is Borzov. That cover is practically transparent to anyone in the business.”

“I arranged it so that he would be let in,” the Congressman said.

Trotter had taken off his tie; now he was removing the cuff links from his shirt. He smiled across at Rines. “You see, Rines, this is the sort of thing that makes me decide I’m not cut out to head the Agency. Not only would it never occur to me to let Borzov into the country, any more than it would occur to me to let a weasel into a henhouse, but the Congressman here didn’t even feel it necessary to tell me Borzov was going to be in the country at all. Until this afternoon, when he kindly called and told me I was going to meet the man face to face. Come to think of it, neither did you, Rines. Maybe I
ought
to walk out of here.”

“I ... ah ... I arranged for you not to be told. Don’t blame Rines.”

Trotter’s voice was calm, but he could feel himself seething. “Why?” he said.

“Why did I have them let Borzov in, or why did I not tell you?”

“Either,” Trotter said. “Both.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you might talk me out of it. Or worse yet, forbid it altogether. After all, you are—were head of the Agency.”

“Not so’s you’d notice. Go on. You didn’t tell me because you were champing at the bit to be back in charge, and were starting to undercut me already.”

The Congressman scowled. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“Worse,” Rines assured him. Trotter didn’t know Rines had it in him.”

“Okay. Now tell me why you cleared the way for Borzov to come here.”

The Congressman mumbled.

“What?”

“I said, I’m getting old, too! I wanted that bastard where I could get my hands on him, all right? He’s murdered millions, son. No exaggeration.
Millions.
Whatever you think of me, I’ve never done that. As screwed up as this country gets sometimes, we’ve never done that.

“But as long as he stayed in Moscow, what could I do about him? Just wait for him to have another bright idea like the Cronus project, and try to fight off the effects.

“But then he wanted to come to America!
My
territory. And it was for damned sure that bastard wasn’t coming to look at the Statue of Liberty. So he had something on, something dirty and nasty, and I thought, if I could only
catch
him at it, I could die happy.

“Of course, I knew no matter how tightly I had him sewn up, I could never put him on trial. Even if he didn’t have diplomatic immunity (which he does), the government and the press have poured so many
glasses
of
nost
down the public’s throat that the whole goddam country is Russia-drunk. They’d hush this up for the greater good, and I hate to say it, but it would probably be the right thing to do. They’d ship him back to Russia, and maybe pull a few tonnes of wheat off the Russians’ table.

“But Borzov would be through. Maybe they’d do a wet job on him right near his office. Maybe they’d just put him out to pasture. Wouldn’t matter. He’d be through and America would be a lot safer.”

The Congressman looked at his son. “That’s why,” he said.

“Sounds good to me,” Trotter said. “Let’s do it.”

“Oh, terrific,” Rines said. “How? We don’t know what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with, or when it’s supposed to happen. All we have to do is catch him at it.”

“I’ve got a couple of ideas about that,” Trotter said.

Rines shut up, and the skeptical expression left his face. He leaned forward in his chair.

“It’s a pretty good guess,” Trotter said, “that this has something to do with the election, right?”

Rines nodded. The Congressman said he’d be willing to bet on it.

“Fine. Let’s take the candidates to the cleaners. I’m talking wiretaps, surveillance, background checks up the kazoo, everything illegal and effective we can think of.”

“We have a man we can trust in the Secret Service,” said Fenton Rines, who had once been the “man we could trust” in the FBI.

“Still, put the best people on it. They’ll have the best chance to turn something up without stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“First thing in the morning,” Rines said.

“Good.”

“What are you going to do, son?” the Congressman asked. There was a gleam of pride in his eye. It made Trotter furious at himself to be so happy to see it there.

“I’m going to try to induce General Borzov to let us know what he’s up to, or at least who he’s working with.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Well, the first thing I’m going to do is try to kill him.”

B
Y THE TIME GRIGORY
Illyich Bulanin got around to making the bomb, he had stopped complaining, even to himself, about the unfairness of it all. He was property; he had to work for the good of the State. It had always been that way—just because he had defected, he had no right to expect his fate to change. So the Americans—well, some of them; fewer and fewer all the time, as far as Bulanin could see—
some
Americans professed to believe that the individual should
not
be compelled to labor for the good of the State. What of it? Bulanin had spent his entire adult life in Intelligence. He knew as well as anyone that what a government did had precious little to do with what it professed to believe. Every Soviet citizen, for example, was promised in the Soviet Constitution a job and freedom of religion.

One of Bulanin’s first jobs for Borzov had been harassing Jews in their workplaces, making the job intolerable for them. As soon as they ceased to tolerate it, they were through. If they attempted to end Bulanin’s taunts and tortures through force, they were known as “hooligans,” and sent to jail—after a good beating by Bulanin, of course. If they simply stayed away, they became parasites or refuseniks, and were sent to mental hospitals, until their appreciation of socialism returned to full flower.

Some, of course, were eventually allowed to leave the Soviet Union, but not before they were made to realize that they were the property of the Motherland until such time as it was the pleasure of the Motherland to let them go.

The only way around that, of course, was to defect, which Bulanin had done. Unfortunately, he was not a musician or a ballet dancer, free to use his talent to grab huge handfuls of the unimaginable wealth that was America. He was (or had been) a spy, and his talents were useful only to a select few.

The Congressman, for instance. Trotter. He belonged to them; he would do what they said, or die. They didn’t even have to kill him. They could just abandon him. Without the shield of false identity and false background that the Congressman’s Agency provided for him and kept in repair, the KGB would find him soon enough. They weren’t about to give up; Bulanin had been an important man. The unfortunate thing about defecting was that it was a move that could only be made once. There was nowhere else to go.

Bulanin spread newspapers carefully on his kitchen table, then carefully split open one of the shotgun shells he had bought yesterday. He had driven up Route 8, to the northern part of Connecticut, to buy them. It was a different world up there. He had driven above Water bury, then picked an exit at random. He drove along a country road for about fifteen minutes, then, just as Trotter had told him he would, he had come to a place where he could buy what he needed. He had smiled at the sign above the door—
GUNS
/Sandwiches/Coffee/
AMMO
. Bulanin had purchased three out of four. The coffee and the sandwich were standard American fare—they did what they were designed to do without being especially notable.

The same was true of the shotgun shells. Twelve-gauge, from a national manufacturer, one of many headquartered right here in Connecticut.

Bulanin peeled back the stiff paper covering and the plastic collar, removed the wadding, and spilled the black powder and shiny pellets onto the newspaper. He repeated the process with every shell in the box.

It was messy, smelly work. Plastique was so much more pleasant, and, since it didn’t move with a stray breath, you could smoke while you worked with it, if you felt adventurous. Bulanin had smoked for years. He had not cared for the habit, but had embraced it as a way to gain time while he thought things over. He found the action of smoking, though not the tobacco itself, calming. He had quit the habit soon after his defection, but he’d begun to feel the urge once again.

He opened another box of shells, slit and emptied them. Then, with a piece of cardboard, he swept the powder and pellets into a small plastic bag. He rolled it up until it was as round and tight as a sausage, sealed it with cellophane tape, and put it aside.

He repeated the process until he had enough small sausages to fill a child’s lunchbox. The lunchbox he had bought at a CVS pharmacy in Bridgeport on his way back from buying the shells. It had a bad painting of a movie actor on the side of it, with the word
RAMBO
appearing in the middle of an explosion. Appropriate, Bulanin supposed.

The bomb was to be set off by a simple sparking mechanism that would be activated when the paper wrapping was taken off the cardboard carton Bulanin planned to send it in. Not that it ever would be unwrapped, Bulanin thought.

He sighed as he finished the job. Using his left hand, he addressed the parcel in sloppy, American-style block letters. Tomorrow morning, he would take it to a busy post office in another town and mail it, carrying his part of the charade through to the end.

I
T WAS EXACTLY THE
kind of headache, Sean Murphy knew, that a couple of quick shots of bourbon would fix right up. Well, maybe not
fix.
Maybe “delay” was a better word. The bourbon would push the headache into a corner of his head too remote to be felt, where it would stay until the bourbon wore off.

Then a few more shots would banish it again. This was a process that could go on for days, even weeks—Murphy knew that from experience. Drinking for him was like a ride in a fast car on a mountain road. There was always a crash somewhere ahead, but the trip leading up to it could be exhilarating.

He caught himself licking his lips. You goddam idiot, he thought, and bit his tongue, hard. Tears came to his eyes; he tasted blood. It was his own home-grown brand of aversion therapy, and so far it had been working. He hadn’t had a drink since he’d braced Trotter about his past.

Not that this wouldn’t be a good time for a drink. Celebrating a triumph and all that. Because he had him. He had Trotter dead to rights. Right here on the screen in front of him. Murphy could almost take pride in this particular headache. It had nothing to do with alcohol; it had to do with staring into the bright lights of a microfilm projector every spare minute since he’d started the project. Why couldn’t microfilm stay in focus? More than once, Murphy had walked out of the Hudson Group’s microfilm morgue seeing double and too tired to drive home. He’d been sleeping on the couch in his office. His clothes were rumpled, he needed a shave, he smelled bad—Christ, he thought, I might as well
be
drunk.

But it was worth it. Here was the picture, in a late-summer issue of
Worldwatch
magazine from a few years ago. Elizabeth Fane, the daughter of a defense contractor, had been kidnapped by terrorists. There was a picture of the officials in charge of trying to get her back.

One of them was Trotter. He was heavier in the picture, his hair was lighter, he wore different glasses. The caption identified him as “State Department Official Clifford Driscoll.” But it was Trotter. Anybody could see it.

Now Murphy knew why Trotter had bothered him from the start. Murphy had been National Affairs editor at
Worldwatch
at the time of the Liz Fane case. He had undoubtedly selected this very photograph. Subconsciously, he must have recognized the man when he’d turned up as Regina’s lover. (That hurt. Even thinking the phrase “Regina’s lover” hurt).