The Falstaff Enigma (29 page)

The lobby of the Hesperia Hotel was especially frantic this morning. Several businessmen in finely pressed pin-striped suits sat in the garden lounge area to the right as one entered through the heavy oak revolving doors. Each man was reading a different newspaper; two in Swedish, the language of Finland's upper class, and one European edition of the Wall Street Journal. A teenager in a tight white suit with black stripes running down the outside seams of his trousers carefully solicited business for the hotel's wet bar.

A group of Japanese tourists huddled together in the middle of the lobby, each trying to find
a spot to deposit his luggage. Several of the more adventurous were wandering around the lobby admiring the two hundred-year-old oak panels that covered the walls.

Robert Austin threaded his way through a sea of baggage to the counter. His breakfast had been uneve
ntful and typically continental. A European man with gray hair and a salt and pepper beard was in a heated discussion with the hotel manager behind the counter. The two were speaking Finnish and the gray-haired man kept pointing alternately to a small appointment book in his hand and to the group of Japanese tourists. The manager, however, was resolute. He stood erect and slowly shook his head from side to side, responding to the other man's arguments with what sounded like the same sentence over and over again. Finally the gray-haired man rattled off a lengthy sentence that sounded to Austin as if it were both threat and conciliation at the same time. He pulled out a 100 Finnish Markka note and slapped it into the now outstretched  palm of the manager, who maintained his cool demeanor. The manager turned around and plucked a set of room keys from the wall, tossing them onto a pile of about ten others that Austin hadn't noticed before. The gray-haired man scooped up the keys and walked to his group of tourists, muttering a few obscenities that didn’t need translation along the way.

The manager stepped to his right un
til he was opposite the analyst. Austin spoke first. "Do you speak English?"

“Yes, a little.”

“I am Mr. Simms in room 105. Is there a message for me?"

"Ah, one moment.” The manager suddenly seemed friendly, but Austin had no idea why he should be. The manager stooped down and looked around under the counter. He reached into a slot and rose to an erect position with a folded sheet of paper.

“It is Russian. This you understand, yes?"

“Yes, thank you." Austin reached for the paper, exchanging a ten ruble note for his message from Moscow.

"And thank you, sir."

The analyst put the paper in his pocket and returned to his room before reading it.

To: 
Mr. Simms

From:
Soviet State Petroleum Institute

Your contract is approved with one amendment. The drill bits from Ankara were destroyed in transit and the invoice will not be honored. Please advise from Canada. End.

A knock at the door. Austin jumped up from the bed, reaching for a pistol that wasn't there. The door creaked. It was swinging open!
My God, they tracked me down in Helsinki.

Austin bolted toward the door. It was opening inward, soon to reveal the deadly muzzle of an unseen murderer's weapon. The analyst's head throbbed as he raised his right leg upward and slammed the sole of his shoe into the wood just underneath the door handle. The door slammed shut, the energy of Austin's forward momentum being instantly translated into a thundering sound that reverberated down the hall of the venerable old hotel.

Robert reached out with his right hand and threw the lock while rolling to his left into the miniature bathroom. He winced as he waited for the bullets to explode through the door.

"Austin, it is me, your friend," came a whisper through the crack between the door and its frame.

"Oh my God." Austin dropped his forehead into his left palm and exhaled sharply, searching for calm. He stepped out of the bathroom and opened the door.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Nikolai
asked as he walked into the room and quickly closed the door. "We're in Helsinki, not Moscow. This is the one place you can feel safe in."

"I'm
..." The analyst sat down on the bed, embarrassed by his paranoia. "I'm sorry." He handed his KGB partner the note from Moscow. "It came while I was at breakfast."

Nikolai read the first sentence. "That's great. We can get a flight to London in two hours."

"Keep reading."

The agent finished the note. "Sorovin is dead, right?"

"That's right, and that's why I was so jumpy."

"I see." Nikolai pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the note. He dropped it into a metal waste basket in the bathroom. "No sense in worryin
g about it. Let's go get our man."

Colonel Anatoly Borskov waited impatiently as a hole was knocked through the wall next to the door of Sorovin's safe house. The curious who dared to step into the hall were quickly driven back into their flats by the mere waving of KGB identification.

The first man through the hole was an old friend of the colonel's and an expert in explosive devices. He was in the apartment for nearly twenty minutes before he spoke. "All clear. Come in." He opened the front door and emerged with a fist-sized chunk of plastic explosive in his hand, enough to lay waste to the Sorovin’s safe house plus a good portion of the building. "I think I found everything, Anatoly, but don't poke around too much."

Borskov set up shop with several men. He had drafted more help while at his office, including a tall, skinny young man who wore western jeans, stayed out of sight and said nothing. He walked in and sat down on a cot. David Margolis sat down on the other end.

The colonel made a quick survey of the flat. It contained only one room with no windows. A sink and a stove were in a corner along with enough food for one man to live on for a month. In another corner was a  table that held sophisticated communication equipment which included an encoding/decoding machine.

"You two," said Borskov to the pair of men who had found the carnage of the shootout two hours earlier. "There was a stand-up chest down the hall. I want you to move it to where it covers the hole in the wall."

"Yes, sir," came the terse reply. The pair was still visibly shaken from what they had seen.

The
colonel laid his briefcase on the table with the communications equipment. He opened it and removed a small tape recorder, handing it to the skinny man in the western jeans. Borskov pulled a cassette tape from his pocket and the man took it and popped it into the device.

He turned on the machine. There was silence, and then the voice of Leonid Sorovin. It was the recording of the killer's conversation with his commander.

The man listened to the entire monologue, rewound the tape and listened again. He repeated this several times without saying a word. Finally he turned off the machine and looked at the colonel. "No, sir. I will take care of 'blue-five' and our other problem within a short time." He spoke the line from Sorovin's telephone call, sounding exactly like the dead assassin.

“Perfect as always,” Borskov
said. He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and gave it to the impressionist. "This is the basic outline of the way I want the phone call to go. But if and when a call comes in, you will be on your own. I hope you can improvise as well as your reputation suggests." The skinny man nodded his agreement.

Borskov turned back to the table with the communications equipment. The same man who had successfully eavesdropped on this room the day before was busy examining the electronic apparatus, which looked to David like a very sophisticated stereo.

"How does it look?” Borskov asked.

"No problem, sir. I already have it figured out," replied the electronics expert, without looking up at his commander. “The only problem is that they may have some code words that are used at the beginning of each conversation."

"It's a possibility," said the KGB colonel flatly. "We will just have to take that chance."

"And now we wait,"
David interjected.

Anatoly Borskov smiled and searched for a place to sit. He settled for a wood crate that held fifty cans of beef and potato soup. "I can always tell an experienced intelligence
operative. He knows the reality of this lifestyle: waiting."

The sun's heat easily penetrated Robert Austin's white shirt. His shoulders ached under its relentless onslaught. It was a hot, cloudless day, the type that defined a northeastern summer. The breeze was light, almost imperceptible, allowing the reflecting pool to retain a mirror-like surface.

For more than an hour the analyst had been sitting on a bench a hundred feet from the base of the Washington Monument. He stood to stretch his legs, dreading the thought that someone might recognize him and stop to say hello. He wondered about his partner, Jim Welch, and whether he had come under suspicion because of the events of the past six weeks.
Six weeks! Has it been that long?
He began walking toward a taxi stand. It was time for this nightmare to end and this would be his only opportunity to end it. The thought that he could easily disappear kept running through his mind.

A taxi pulled up to the curb. The right rear door opened and a bewildered Russian stepped out. The man smiled broadly as Austin approached.

The analyst saw nobody who could have been following the KGB agent and therefore offered his hand. "Nikolai, you're late.” His brief thoughts of escape vanished as quickly as they arose.

"Yes. I’m sorry. The flight out of New York was late.” The pair began a walk around the monument.

"What do you think of my country?"

"I took a taxi from the first airport to the second," replied Nikolai. He had flown into Kennedy and gone to LaGuardia for his flight to Washington. "I have never seen a city so big. You hear that New York is big, but nothing prepares you for the actual sight." He made no attempt to conceal his awe.

"It's the world's largest. After this is all over, maybe I can give you a tour."

"And so many automobiles. It is far beyond Moscow. I wish I could see more of your country." The man was thirsty for knowledge of a country that was only ridiculed in the official Soviet press.

"Next time. Were you followed at all?"

"No, I'm sure I wasn't. What about you?"

"No," replied Austin as he shook his head. "Are you ready to make contact with this mole?"

"I'm ready to try."

"Good. I'm going to leave and check in at the Holiday Inn hotel in Chevy Chase. Repeat that back in English."

"
Hol-e-day Inn. Shev-ee Shase."

"This is going to be tough," Austin
said as the men shared a laugh. "But that's good enough to get you there. Check in, go to your room and then return to the lobby. There is a restaurantbar there and I will be inside at a table. Give me a twenty minute lead and keep your eyes open. If you can’t make it safely, then call the hotel and leave a message for 'Mr. Simms.'"

"I will be there soon."

Austin turned and walked to the taxi stand.

"Can I get you another beer?" The young waitress smiled and grabbed the almost empty bottle standing by the analyst's arm.

"Yes, please," replied Austin as he leaned back and moved his arms off the table, a reaction that would have been appropriate if he had been eating something.

"Okay, I'll be
right back." The waitress was nearing the end of a six-hour stretch and was moving with all the animation of an robot. Austin admired her figure as she returned to the bar.

The analyst had chosen a small booth tucked away in the corner opposite the bar’s entrance. The whole room was poorly
lit with no windows, and the resulting darkness was just how Austin had envisioned it when he had given his instructions to Nikolai two hours earlier. It was the level of darkness that seemed to be preferred by business travelers the world over, perfect for discreet meetings with clients – or hotel prostitutes. Robert lifted his wrist and experimented with several angles until he was able to read the hands of his watch. It was almost 6 p.m. and he was worried about his friend.

A tall man at the end of the bar closest to Austin stood and began to leave. He stopped after only two steps. Austin thought the man had looked at him and so he turned his head away. The room suddenly seemed to be blindingly bright. The man stepped closer to the analyst.

"Rob? Is that you?"

Austin felt both pa
nic and relief simultaneously. Someone had recognized him but he knew the voice instantly. It was an old colleague he had worked with at Merrill Lynch, and he was still calling the analyst by the shortened version of his name, which he loathed. He thought about denying his identity, but he knew that would be foolish.

"Mike Waxberg." Austin smiled and offered his hand. "Damn, it's been five years."

Waxberg sat down opposite the analyst. "Let me buy you a drink, Rob."

"No thanks, I've already got a beer on the way."

The man smiled, his cheeks lifting his glasses slightly. "You've really managed to stay in shape. How's Lynn?"

Austin winced. He knew this man had a good memory, but he was shocked that he would remember the name of the wife of a man he hadn't seen in years. Or could the man have been planted? He could only play along.
"She's doing fine. Your memory is incredible,” Austin said, meaning it.

Waxberg shrugged. "It's a
knack I'm thankful for. Well?"

Austin raised his eyebrows, not at all sure what Michael Waxberg was inquiring about.

Waxberg continued. “Did you ever have children?”

"No, not yet. Still thinking about it, though."

Waxberg seemed unaware of the intimacy of his query or the delicacy of Austin’s response. He didn’t skip a beat. "Hey, are you still working with that hush-hush intelligence organization?" The man's voice was very ebullient.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

The man exhaled loudly in what was a half-laugh. "You know, I still remember the day you resigned. Everyone was in shock. Rumors went around for the next few months that you had been working for the CIA all along. Why in hell did you leave?"

This time Austin shrugged and looked down into the glass of beer that the waitress had just poured. "I just needed a different environment. They even offered me a
big cash bonus to stay. They didn't understand. What I was really looking for was job satisfaction, pure and simple."

"Did you find it?"

"Yes, I sure did."

"Good. I'm happy for you."

Austin thought about ending the conversation, but he had to learn Waxberg's true intentions. "Well, how's Mother Merrill these days?"

"I left about a year ago. You remember Jim Farrell, don't you?" Austin nodded. "Well, it came time to pick a new Senior VP in charge of research and we were the two frontrunners. O
bviously, he won and I decided to move on. I called around, received a couple offers, and chose Pru-Bache here in Washington." He pulled out a gold business card case and removed one card, placing it on the table in front of his old friend. "I now manage their Washington office."

Austin's muscles relaxed and he smiled broadly. "You're a broker.” The man only wanted to pick up another client.

“What the hell. Half the work, twice the income. I got tired of doing all the research while the salesmen got all the glory.” He wore an insincere smile as he spoke.

"I doubt that you put
in only half the work, Michael. I know you too well to believe that." Austin's tremendous sense of relief reminded him of the extreme pressure of the job at hand. He renewed his determination to get his old friend to continue on his way.

"What brings you here?" Waxberg
asked, wanting the conversation to be lengthy and cozy before making his sales pitch.

"I'm expecting a guest any minute now."

"Well, how would the two of you like to be my guests for dinner?"

“No thanks, Michael.” Austin saw his opening. “I’ll tell you what, though. I’m out of town for the next few weeks, but I will give you a call when I’m back.” The analyst rudely looked at his watch to drive home his point.

"Okay, Rob, you've got a deal and I've got a wife who's expecting me soon. Listen, Prudential is offering annuity plans at an incredible nine percent yield. But that return won’t be around too long, so call as soon as you are back in town.” Waxberg stood and offered his hand. “It's really been a pleasure seeing you again after all these years. Do you have a card?"

Austin stood. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking that the 9% annuity yield seemed low with the Prime rate at 10½%. He shook off the thought as he shook the man's hand. "Michael, you're forgetting the business I'm in. Don't worry, I'll call you in a few weeks."

"Okay. Talk to you soon."

"Michael, there's one last thing." Austin hesitated for an instant before continuing. He chose his words carefully. "I'm involved in some very high level and very secret negotiations right now and I must insist that you not mention having met me to anyone – not even your wife – until after I call you. Okay?"

"Sure, Rob." Waxberg was happy to hear the last sentences because they gave Austin a reason to actually call. "Maybe someday you'll tell me what you really do for Uncle Sam. Take care."

"Goodbye, Michael."

The man walked out of the bar.

Robert Austin was into his second gulp of beer when the Russian moved silently into the seat across from him. The analyst had not noticed the KGB agent until that instant.

"Who was that?" asked Nikolai rudely. He made no attempt to hide his anger and sounded like a husband who had just found his wife walking with another man down a city street on a weekday afternoon.

"Calm down,"
Austin responded in a soothing voice. "That was just a friend I used to work with in New York. He recognized me while passing by and stopped to say hello. After all, this is the town I live in." As evidence, the analyst pulled Waxberg's card out of his shirt pocket and offered it for Nikolai's examination.

The Russian looked at the card and seemed to relax in spite of the fac
t that he could not understand a letter on it. "What is this?" he finally asked.

"It's the man's business card. Believe me, he just wanted to sell me some stock."

"Some what?"

Austin realized the mistake in mentioning something so alien to Soviet experience but continued anyway. "Stock. It means shares of ownership in a business company."

"Anyone can own these 'stocks'?"

"Yes. They are bought and sold in huge markets."

A look of revelation came over Nikolai's face. "Oh yes, the 'New York Stock Market,'" he said in broken English. "But you must be very rich to do this."

"No, Nikolai, you can own
small percentages of a company. Many people in our middle class own stock. It's very common." He laughed inside at his pun, to which the Russian was oblivious.

Austin decided to change the subject. "What took you so long to get here?" This time, he assumed a scolding voice.

"You didn't mention that the taxi ride took an hour."

"An hour.
Nikolai, you were taken for a ride."

"What do you mean?"

"The taxi driver took you on a long ride. It normally takes no more than fifteen or twenty minutes to get here from the Monument."

The Russian slapped h
is open palm down on the table. "I knew it! I remembered your taxi going off in a different direction." He shook his head in disgust.

"Forget it.
It happens everywhere. Tomorrow we go after a man that we are going to call 'Falstaff.'"