Windmills of the Gods (26 page)

In the American embassy, Mary was in the Bubble Room telephoning Stanton Rogers’s office on the secure line. It was one o’clock in the morning in Bucharest, and six
P.M.
in Washington, D.C.

“Mr. Rogers’s office.”

“This is Ambassador Ashley. I know that Mr. Rogers is in China with the President, but it’s urgent that I speak to him as soon as possible. Is there any way I can reach him there?”

“I’m sorry, Madam Ambassador. His itinerary is very flexible. I have no telephone number for him.”

Mary felt her heart plummet. “When will you hear from him?”

“It’s difficult to say. He and the President have a very busy schedule. Perhaps someone in the State Department could help you.”

“No,” Mary said dully. “No one else can help me. Thank you.”

She sat in the room alone, staring at nothing, surrounded by the most sophisticated electronic equipment in the world, and none of it of any use to her. Mike Slade was trying to murder her. She
had
to let someone know. But who? Whom could she trust? The only one who knew what Slade was trying to do was Louis Desforges.

Mary tried the number at his residence again, but there still was no answer. She remembered what Stanton Rogers had told her:
“If you want to send me any messages you don’t want anyone else to read, the code at the top of the cable is three x’s.”

Mary hurried back to her office and wrote out an urgent message addressed to Stanton Rogers. She placed three
x
’s at the top. She took out the black code book from a locked drawer in her desk and carefully encoded what she had written. At least if anything happened to her now, Stanton Rogers would know who was responsible.

Mary walked down the corridor to the communications room.

Eddie Maltz, the CIA agent, happened to be behind the cage.

“Good evening, Madam Ambassador. You’re working late tonight.”

“Yes,” Mary said. “There’s a message I’d like sent off. I want it to go out right away.”

“I’ll take care of it, personally.”

“Thank you.” She handed him the message and headed for the front door. She desperately wanted to be close to her children.

In the communications room, Eddie Maltz was decoding the message Mary had handed him. When he was finished, he read it through twice, frowning. He walked over to the shredder, threw the message in, and watched it turn into confetti.

Then he placed a call to Floyd Baker, the secretary of state, in Washington. Code name:
Thor.

It took Lev Pasternak two months to follow the circuitous trail that led to Buenos Aires. SIS and half a dozen other security agencies around the world had helped identify Angel as the killer. Mossad had given him the name of Neusa Muñez, Angel’s mistress. They all wanted to eliminate Angel. To Lev Pasternak, Angel had become an obsession. Because of Pasternak’s failure, Marin Groza had died, and Pasternak could never forgive himself for that. He could, however, make atonement. And he intended to.

He did not get in touch with Neusa Muñez directly. He located the apartment building where she lived and kept watch on it, waiting for Angel to appear. After five days, when there was no sign of him, Pasternak made his move. He waited until the woman left, and after fifteen minutes walked upstairs, picked the lock on her door, and entered the apartment. He searched it swiftly and thoroughly. There were no photographs, memos, or addresses that could lead him to Angel. Pasternak discovered the suits in the closet. He examined the Herrera labels, took one of the jackets off the hanger, and tucked it under his arm. A minute later he was gone, as quietly as he had entered.

The following morning Lev Pasternak walked into Herrera’s. His hair was disheveled and his clothes were wrin-kled, and he smelled of whiskey.

The manager of the men’s shop came up to him and said, disapprovingly, “May I help you,
señor
?”

Lev Pasternak grinned sheepishly. “Yeah,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I got as drunk as a skunk last night. I got in a card game with some South American dudes in my hotel room. I think we all got a little drunk, pal. Anyway, one of the
guys—I don’t remember his name—left his jacket in my room.” Lev held up the jacket, his hand unsteady. “It had your label in it, so I figured you could tell me where to return it to him.”

The manager examined the jacket. “Yes, we tailored this. I would have to look up our records. Where can I reach you?”

“You can’t,” Lev Pasternak mumbled. “I’m on my way to ‘nother poker game. Got a card? I’ll call you.”

“Yes.” The manager handed him his card.

“You’re not gonna steal that jacket, are you?” Lev asked drunkenly.

“Certainly not,” the manager said indignantly.

Lev Pasternak slapped him on the back and said, “Good. I’ll call you later this afternoon.”

That afternoon when Lev called from his hotel room, the manager said, “The name of the gentleman we made the jacket for is Señor H. R. de Mendoza. He has a suite at the Aurora Hotel, suite four-seventeen.”

Lev Pasternak checked to make sure that his door was locked. He took a suitcase out of the closet, carried it to the bed, and opened it. Inside was a .45 caliber SIG Sauer pistol with a silencer, courtesy of a friend in the Argentine secret service. Pasternak checked again to make sure the gun was loaded and the silencer was secure. He put the suitcase back in the closet and went to sleep.

At four
A.M.
Lev Pasternak was silently moving down the deserted fourth-floor corridor of the Aurora Hotel. When he reached 417, he looked around to make sure no one was in sight. He reached down to the lock and quietly inserted a wire. When he heard the door click open, he pulled out the pistol.

He sensed a draft as the door across the hall opened, and
before Pasternak could swing around, he felt something hard and cold pressing against the back of his neck.

“I don’t like being followed,” Angel said.

Lev Pasternak heard the click of the trigger a second before his brain was torn apart.

Angel was not sure whether Pasternak was alone or working with someone, but it was always wise to take extra precautions. The telephone call had come, and it was time to move. First Angel had some shopping to do. There was a good lingerie shop on Pueyrredón, expensive, but Neusa deserved the best. The inside of the shop was cool and quiet.

“I would like to see a negligee, something very frilly,” Angel said.

The female clerk stared.

“And a pair of panties with a split in the crotch.”

Fifteen minutes later, Angel walked into Frenkel’s. The shelves were filled with leather purses, gloves, and brief-cases.

“I would like a briefcase, please. Black.”

The El Aljibe in the Sheraton Hotel was one of the finest restaurants in Buenos Aires. Angel sat down at a table in the corner and placed the new briefcase on the table. The waiter came up to the table.

“Good afternoon.”

“I’ll start with the
pargo,
and after that the
parrillado
with
poroto
and
verduras.
I’ll decide on my dessert later.”

“Certainly.”

“Where are the rest rooms?”

“In the rear, through the far door and to your left.”

Angel got up from the table and walked toward the rear of the restaurant, leaving the briefcase in sight on the table. There was a narrow corridor with two small doors, one marked
Caballeros
and the other marked
Damas.
At the end
of the corridor were double doors leading to the noisy, steamy kitchen. Angel pushed one of the doors open and stepped inside. It was a scene of frantic activity, with chefs and sous chefs bustling around, trying to keep up with the urgent demands of the lunch hour. Waiters moved in and out of the kitchen with loaded trays. The chefs were screaming at the waiters, and the waiters were screaming at the busboys.

Angel moved, threading across the room, and stepped out through a back door leading to an alley. A five-minute wait to make sure that no one had followed.

There was a taxi at the corner. Angel gave the driver an address on Humberto, alighted a block away, and hailed another taxi.

“¿Adónde, por favor?”

“Aeropuerto.”

There would be a ticket for London waiting there. Tourist. First class was too conspicuous.

Two hours later, Angel watched the city of Buenos Aires disappear beneath the clouds like some celestial magician’s trick, and concentrated on the assignment ahead, thinking about the instructions that had been given.

Make sure the children die with her. Their deaths must be spectacular.

Angel did not like to be told how to fulfill a contract. Only amateurs were stupid enough to give advice to professionals. Angel smiled.
They will all die, and it will be more spectacular than anyone bargained for.

Angel slept, a deep, dreamless sleep.

London’s Heathrow Airport was crowded with summer tourists, and the taxi ride into Mayfair took more than an hour. The lobby of the Churchill was busy with guests checking in and out.

A bellboy took charge of Angel’s three pieces of luggage.

“Take these up to my room. I have some errands to do.”

The tip was modest, nothing that the bellboy would remember later. Angel walked over to the bank of hotel elevators, waited until a car was empty, then stepped inside.

When the elevator was on its way, Angel pressed the fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth floors, and got off at the fifth floor. Anyone who might be watching from the lobby would be confused.

A rear-service staircase led to an alley, and five minutes after checking into the Churchill, Angel was in a taxi and on the way back to Heathrow.

The passport read H. R. de Mendoza. The ticket was on Tarom Airlines to Bucharest. Angel sent a telegram from the airport:

ARRIVING WEDNESDAY
.

                  
H. R. DE MENDOZA

It was addressed to Eddie Maltz.

Early the following morning, Dorothy Stone said, “Stanton Rogers’s office is on the line.”

“I’ll take it,” Mary said eagerly. She snatched up the phone. “Stan?”

She heard his secretary’s voice, and wanted to weep in frustration. “Mr. Rogers asked me to call you, Madam Ambassador. He’s with the President and unable to get to a telephone, but he asked me to see that you get anything you need. If you’ll tell me what the problem is—?”

“No,” Mary said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “I—I have to speak to him myself.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be until tomorrow. He said he would call you as soon as he was able to.”

“Thank you. I’ll be waiting for his call.” She replaced the receiver. There was nothing to do but wait.

Mary kept trying to telephone Louis at his home. No answer. She tried the French embassy. They had no idea where he was.

“Please have him call me as soon as you hear from him.”

Dorothy Stone said, “There’s a call for you, but she refuses to give her name.”

“I’ll take it.” Mary picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Ambassador Ashley.”

A soft female voice with a Romanian accent said, “This is Corina Socoli.”

The name registered instantly. She was a beautiful young girl in her early twenties, Romania’s prima ballerina.

“I need your help,” the girl said. “I have decided to defect.”

I can’t handle this today,
Mary thought.
Not now.
She said, “I—I don’t know if I can help you.” Her mind was racing. She tried to remember what she had been told about defectors.

“Many of them are Soviet plants. We bring them over, they feed us a few innocuous bits of information or misinformation. Some of them become moles. The real catches are the high-level intelligence officers or scientists. We can always use those. But otherwise, we don’t grant political asylum unless there’s a damned good reason.”

Corina Socoli was sobbing now. “Please, I am not safe staying where I am. You must send someone to get me.”

“Communist governments set some cute traps. Someone posing as a defector asks for help. You bring them into the embassy, and then they scream that they’ve been kidnapped. It gives them an excuse to take measures against targets in the United States.”

“Where are you?” Mary asked.

There was a pause. Then, “I suppose I must trust you. I am at the Roscow Inn in Moldavia. Will you come for me?”

“I can’t,” Mary said. “But I’ll send someone to get you. Don’t call on this phone again. Just wait where you are. I—”

The door opened, and Mike Slade walked in. Mary looked up in shock. He was moving toward her.

The voice at the other end of the phone was saying, “Hello? Hello?”

“Who are you talking to?” Mike asked.

“To—to Dr. Desforges.” It was the first name that came to her mind. She replaced the receiver, terrified.

Don’t be ridiculous,
she told herself.
You’re in the embassy. He wouldn’t dare do anything to you here.

“Dr. Desforges?” Mike repeated slowly.

“Yes. He’s—he’s on his way over to see me.”

How she wished it were true!

There was a strange look in Mike Slade’s eyes. Mary’s desk lamp was on, and it threw Mike’s shadow against the wall, making him grotesquely large and menacing.

“Are you sure you’re well enough to be back at work?”

The cold-blooded nerve of the man. “Yes. I’m fine.”

She desperately wanted him to leave, so that she could escape.
I must not show him I’m frightened.

He was moving closer to her. “You look tense. Maybe you should take the kids and go out to the lake district for a few days.”

Where I’ll be an easier target.

Just looking at him filled her with such a fear that she found it hard to breathe. Her intercom phone rang. It was a life-saver.

“If you’ll excuse me…”

“Sure.” Mike Slade stood there a moment staring at her, then turned and left, taking his shadow with him.

Almost sobbing with relief, Mary picked up the telephone. “Hello?”

It was Jerry Davis, the public affairs consular. “Madam Ambassador, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m afraid I have
some terrible news for you. We just received a police report that Dr. Louis Desforges has been murdered.”