Snow Wolf (16 page)

The Assistant Director smiled.
"We've been thinking about that. He'll need help. Someone to act as his
wife on the journey until he reaches Moscow and help him get his bearings.
There's a woman named Anna Khorev. Border-crosser. I believe you met her in
Helsinki. She's been in America almost three months."

Massey frowned. "She's a
Russian."

The Assistant Director smiled again.
"I would have thought that was perfect for what we had in mind. She seems
just the type we need and besides, she's about the only suitable candidate we
have. She knows Moscow. For the purpose of the mission she won't even know what
Stanski is after. And once she helps him get to Moscow we take her back. But I
have to ask you a question, Jake. Are you still certain about her? I read in
her file that even though we accepted her story, one of the senior Finnish
officers who interrogated her claimed we'd been sold down the river. He didn't
trust the lady one bit."

"I trusted her then, and I'd still
trust her now." Massey hesitated, doubt clouding his face. "But
you're assuming she'll help you in the first place. Why should she? She's
already been to hell and back."

"So I read. But I guess we'll have
to take your word about her being trustworthy-I trust your judgment, Jake. In
regard to why she'd do it, she'll have a motive. Or at least we'll give her
one."

"What motive?"

The Assistant Director smiled broadly and
turned to Branigan. "Karl, why don't you go get us all a drink while I
explain to Jake. I think we're going to need one after this."

It was two hours later when Massey
reached his house east of Georgetown.

He called the boarding school in Richmond
and made arrangements to see his son the next day. He was looking forward to
seeing the boy and he knew he had been less of a father than he should but he
felt that somehow the boy understood.

Then he went into the bathroom and ran
the cold-water tap and splashed the icy liquid on his face.

He seldom looked at himself in the mirror
but that evening he was aware that he looked older than his forty-one years. He
had seen a lot of unpleasant things in his life, but the image of the frozen
bodies that came into his mind, white, lying in the morgue, the holes drilled
in their heads, their flesh chewed away by rats, disturbed him.

He had known and respected Max Simon for
many years. They had grown up together, joined OSS together, been friends all
their lives. A Jewish kid who lost his father to the Reds and had made it to
America on a tough winter crossing like Massey and his father.

Massey looked down as he rolled up his
sleeve.

There was a small tattoo on his wrist, of
a white dove. Two urchin kids up in Coney Island for a day's fun and chasing
girls, and Max had wanted the tattoos to cement their friendship. He had been a
gentle soul, Max, who only wanted to do his best for his adopted country, and
the little girl had been the only family he had. Massey shook his head and felt
the anger rise inside him again, then toweled his face dry and went into his
study.

He made the phone calls he needed to make
and then he poured himself a large Scotch and took a pad and pen and went over
the plan again, looking for flaws.

The Assistant Director was right about
one thing; the plan was something Massey could work with. But there were
innumerable dangers. For starters, Stalin's Moscow was an alien place and few
Westerners were allowed to enter the city.

He thought of Anna Khorev as he sat there
sipping the Scotch and making notes. The details of the plan would be up . to
him, and even though her background was ideal for the mission he disliked
having to use her. According to Branigan, the latest report by her case officer
had been favorable and she had settled into her new life and was making good
progress. But Massey really wondered if she would be up to such a mission
mentally and physically after barely three months since her escape. He also
knew he was sending her to certain death if it failed.

And something worried him about sending
her in with Stanski.

He had the file Branigan had given him
and although Massey knew Alex Stanski's background it still made interesting
reading.

He was a naturalized American citizen,
but Russian-born, aged thirty-five. They had worked together during the war
when Stanski was one of a small group of highly trained assassins OSS ran into
occupied France and Yugoslavia to help the resistance groups operating against
the Germans. Stanski had worked under the code name Wolf. If a German commander
or Nazi official in the occupied countries became particularly unpleasant to
the resistance, OSS sometimes sent in an assassin to kill him. But it had to
appear like an accident so the Germans wouldn't suspect partisan involvement
and exact reprisals against the civilian population. Stanski was one of their
top agents and expert at making the deaths look a mishap.

Concerning his past, Massey knew there
would be very little in the file, except to indicate a determined but lone
character.

As a boy, Alex Stanski had escaped from a
state orphanage in Moscow, He had managed to get aboard a train for Riga and
eventually stowed away on a Norwegian frigate bound for Boston.

When the American authorities were landed
with him they didn't quite know what to do with an obviously disturbed
twelve-year-old. They guessed something distressing had happened to the child
because of his psychological state-he was withdrawn and rebellious and behaved
like a wildcat-and he told them virtually nothing about his past, despite the
best efforts of the psychologists.

Eventually, someone had the idea to send
him to stay with a Russian-speaking imigrant living in New Hampshire, a trapper
and hunter, who agreed to take the boy for a time. The forests up near the
Canadian border had once teemed with Russian immigrants. It was remote, wild
territory where the long cold winters and the snow made their exile seem less
alien.

Somehow the boy settled in and everyone
gladly washed their hands of the matter. There he remained until he joined OSS
in 1941.

No one ever learned what happened to his
family and parents but everyone who worked with Stanski in OSS guessed it was
something pretty bad. One look at those cold blue eyes of his told you that
something disturbing had once happened to him.

Long ago Massey thought he had guessed
the truth. There was a sick joke Stalin had devised. If anyone opposed him, he
as often as not had them killed. If the victim was a man with a family, his
wife and any children above the age of twelve were also put to death. But if
the children were younger than twelve they were sent to a state orphanage and
brought up like good communists, turned into the one thing their parents
probably despised.

He guessed that had been Alex Stanski's
fate.

Another thing-the KGB had the pick of the
orphanage crop. They ran every state orphanage in Russia, and many of their
recruits came from those same institutions. Massey always reckoned they
probably lost the best killer they ever could have had in Stanski.

He spoke fluent German and Russian and
could kill ruthlessly and in cold blood. The most recent assassination had been
of a senior KGB officer visiting East Berlin, which Stanski had carried out for
the CIA at the request of the immigrant group, NTS.

Massey removed an envelope from the file
and slid out a photograph of the colonel named Grenady Kraskin. It showed a
hard-faced man with thin lips and small, evil eyes.

Assassinated was too nice a word. Kraskin
had his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth. It wasn't a calling card
Stanski inflicted on his prey, but according to the file Kraskin had liked to
perform that particular kind of brutal mutilation on his male victims. Stanski
liked to make the punishment fit the crime, ignoring orders to desist from such
behavior. But Branigan and Wallace had been right; there was no one more
suitable Massey could think of to carry out the mission.

He slid the photograph back into the
envelope. He had a 7 A.M, start and it was a long drive to Kingdom Lake in New
Hampshire.

The grim sight of the bodies of Max and
Nina lying in the morgue kept coming into his mind, and Massey knew that no
matter what Branigan had said, he personally couldn't let the matter rest
there. Whoever was responsible for what had happened to Max Simon was going to
pay the price, even if it meant stepping outside the bounds, something Massey
rarely if ever did.

But this was personal.

It was almost an hour later when he
looked up and heard distant bells chime in the church of the Holy Trinity. He
stood and went down to the basement and selected the key from the ring in his
pocket and unlocked the door.

The two loose firebricks were above the
cellar door, a safe hiding place he used whenever he was working at home,
rather than leave any notes or files lying around or in locked drawers or a
safe that could be broken into. He placed the yellow pad with his notes and the
manila folder inside the recess and replaced the bricks. Stanski's file he
would return to Branigan.

It was just after 5 P.m. on the afternoon
of Thursday, 22 January, two days after the inauguration of Dwight D.
Eisenhower as President of the United States.

New Hampshire. January 23rd The New
England towns and villages with their brightly painted clapboard houses looked
pretty in the light dusting of snow.

Jake Massey crossed the Massachusetts
state line into New Hampshire in the late afternoon and took the road northwest
to Concord. There was hardly any traffic on the road and half an hour later he
drove the Buick down through a thickly forested track that led to Kingdom Lake.
He saw the snow-capped mountains in the distance and a signboard at the track
entrance proclaimed, "Trespassers Keep Out!"

Massey switched off the engine and
climbed out of the Buick. There was a narrow wooden veranda at the front of the
cabin and he went up the steps. The front door was unlocked and the room he
stepped into was empty.

Massey called out "Anybody
home?" but there was no reply.

The room looked neat and tidy but he
thought the place could have done with a woman's touch. It was barely furnished
with a scratched pinewood table and two chairs set in the center, and several
pairs of deer antlers hung on the Walls. There was a tiny kitchen in the back,
the utensils and plates neatly stored on the spotless wooden shelves. Massey
noticed a rifle storage rack in a corner. Two of the weapons were missing.

There were some books on a shelf and a
photograph in a wooden frame on the wall over the fireplace. A very old family photograph,
the image cracked and worn, of a man and a woman and three small children; two
boys and a blond little girl.

Massey guessed Stanski and the old man
had probably gone hunting. He decided to walk down to the lake.

The water was choppy and rain clouds were
gathering overhead. A razor-sharp icy wind suddenly whipped across the lake,
and as Massey stood beside the boat he said aloud, "Jesus, that's cold. He
heard the barely audible click of a weapon behind him and the voice a split
second later.

"You'll be a damned sight colder,
mister, if you don't take those hands out of your pockets. Keep them in the air
and turn around very slowly. Otherwise you're going to be crawling around on
stumps."

Massey turned and saw the man. There was
a thin crazy smile on his unshaven face and he looked thoroughly dangerous and
unpredictable. He was of medium height, blond, and carried a canvas bag slung
over his shoulder. He wore a heavily padded windbreaker over his sweater, and
his corduroy trousers were tucked into knee-length Russian boots. He held the
butt of a Browning shotgun lightly against his waist, the barrel pointed at
Massey.

The man's face creased in a grin.
"Jake Massey. For a second there I thought you were a trespasser up to no
good. You almost got yourself peppered."

"I guess I got here earlier than
expected." Massey smiled and nodded to the shotgun. "You planning on
using that thing, Alex?"

The man grinned and lowered the shotgun
as he stepped forward and shook Massey's hand. "Good to see you, Jake. No problem
finding us, then?"

"I saw the sign at the entrance
road. Talk about wanting privacy. Who in the hell's going to bother coming up
to this godforsaken place?"

Stanski smiled. "Poachers, for one.
The land and water all around here belong to Vassily and he doesn't take warmly
to strangers stealing from his traps."

"Then one man's meat must be another
man's poison. Me, I'd go crazy up here."

"If you've got time later I'll give
you the guided tour. We've even got bears in the woods."

There was a brief look of alarm on
Massey's face.

Stanski laughed. "Relax, Jake. It's
still a lot safer than New York."

Massey suddenly noticed the old man
standing in the woods fifty yards away, a deer carcass slung over his
shoulders.

He carried a Winchester rifle and his
long black hair was tied back from a weathered face that looked as brown and
deeply wrinkled as a walnut. He looked like an Indian from a distance, but
Massey recognized something familiar in the features. It was a face that had
the same look as the Russians who live north of the Arctic Circle; dark hair
and features not unlike the Laplanders.