She lived on the east side of North Lake Shore Drive. The building was of recent vintage and well-kept—eight stories of white brick and smoked glass with parking at basement level, revolving doors, a uniformed armed guard in the snappy little foyer, a brace of silently swift elevators, and reproductions of Picasso paintings all over the place. Lockington didn’t understand Picasso and he didn’t trust people who claimed that they did. Lockington’s appreciation of art dimmed perceptibly when he was unable to determine whether the fucking picture was right side up or upside down.
Natasha Gorky’s apartment was on the seventh floor, its sliding glass doors and wrought-iron balcony facing Lake Michigan. It was a small place, cool, dim, tidy, modestly furnished—white sofa and overstuffed chair, dark blue Naugahyde recliner, smallish maple coffee and end tables, spindly white-shaded lamps, and a half-barrel magazine container circled by bright brass hoops and stuffed with copies of Newsweek. There was a stereo receiver with tape deck on an end table. When Lockington saw no television set he advanced Natasha’s intellectual stock several points in his ledger. He took off his hat, placing it on the back of the overstuffed chair before turning to seat himself at an end of the sofa, noting that a bottle of Smirnoff’s vodka, a bottle of Martell’s cognac, and a pair of double shot glasses had appeared on the coffee table as if by sleight of hand. Natasha poured Martell’s into Lockington’s glass, pushing it toward him, winking. “You’ve been thoroughly researched, Mr. Lockington.”
Lockington said, “Obviously.” He looked around the room. “Where’s Vladimir?”
Natasha squinted, “Vladimir?”
“Vladimir Lenin. Shouldn’t you have a picture of Vladimir Lenin?”
“Do you have a picture of George Washington?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t have a picture of Vladimir Lenin.” She offered him a cigarette. He didn’t like filters but he took it. She said, “Vladimir had wonderful ideas—the problem is they haven’t worked worth a damn.”
Lockington said, “Have you noticed that wonderful ideas never work worth a dam?”
She sat at the other end of the sofa, pouring vodka, raising her glass to him. She said, “To the memory of your good friend Rufus Devereaux.”
Lockington nodded approval of the toast and they drank. He said, “All right, Ms. Gorky, let’s have it.”
She leaned back on the sofa, blowing a smoke ring to the ceiling, watching it disintegrate like a wonderful idea. She said, “Devereaux—how well did you know him?”
“Not too well—we were baseball fans. That can do a lot for an association.”
She smiled, tongue in cheek. “You’d do nicely in Dzerzhinsky Square.”
“Is that where the nightingale sang?”
“No, the nightingale sang in Berkeley Square—KGB headquarters is in Dzerzhinsky Square. You know nothing of Rufus Devereaux’s mission, or his obsession, or whatever it may have been?”
“Yes, he wanted to lay every woman in America.” Lockington shrugged. “That didn’t make him a bad guy.”
She bowed her head into the palm of her left hand, laughing softly. It was a musical laugh, Lockington thought—like distant chimes. She said, “Oh, but aren’t we evasive? Mr. Lockington, your friend is dead, we can’t hurt him. He never spoke of the Copperhead?”
“The Copperhead—yes, on one occasion.”
“No more than that?”
“It was a casual reference—he gave no indication of involvement. The Copperhead’s a paid killer, they tell me.”
“The best—in your country, that is. In certain circles it’s believed that Devereaux was stalking the Copperhead. Beyond that, the Copperhead may have been stalking Devereaux. You knew Devereaux—was he good enough to mix in that sort of company?”
“I’d say yes.”
“Based on what?”
“On a gut feeling, on impressions I received—he’d have been a bad man to go up against.”
Natasha shrugged. “There’s no iron-clad guarantee that he was killed by the Copperhead, but it was a chess match that’d been going on for nearly four years.”
“Tell me about the Copperhead. Who is he—who does he work for?”
“His identity’s unknown, he’s used several names. He’s killed in Miami—a two-hundred-yard rifle shot from an apartment rented by a Samuel Sheckard. He’s killed in San Antonio—a point-blank pistol shot from an automobile rented by an Orval Overall. In Birmingham a man was knifed to death in a restaurant booth reserved by a Carl Lundgren—the Copperhead has no established pattern and he doesn’t use the same alias twice.”
“All right, if there’s no clear-cut M.O., why does it have to be the Copperhead?”
“In Miami the victim was Wallace Vernon, an ultraliberal publisher. In San Antonio it was Grady James, a leftist columnist. In Birmingham it was Gordon Sheetz, a union organizer with known Communist ties, a radical by American standards. All had been threatened by LAON and each killing carried the Copperhead’s trademark.”
“What’s his trademark?”
“Perfection—no loose ends. He leaves a trail of thin air. Our assumption is that he kills liberals for LAON and that he’s eliminated at least one Mafia man.”
“Our assumption?”
“The KGB’s.”
“How do you link him to the Mafia murder?”
“Wallace Vernon was killed in Miami on the night of June ninth, ’eighty-seven. A major cocaine transporter died there two hours later—a man by the name of Juarez. Juarez was Mafioso, a link between Colombia, Panama, and the United States. Wallace Vernon and Juarez were killed by the same weapon—Miami law enforcement recovered both slugs—the riflings were identical.”
Lockington whistled. “You’re well informed.”
Natasha Gorky’s smile was of the type usually reserved for the very young. “Mr. Lockington, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti employs some five hundred thousand people. More than half of these are in the United States. I should be well informed.”
Lockington said, “I see.” He really didn’t. The implied logistics were mind-boggling. He said, “And the Copperhead learned that Rufe was on his trail, so he doubled back on him?”
“A plausible theory.” She was refilling their glasses. “On the other hand, Rufus Devereaux knew too much—much too much.”
“About whom—what?”
“About the CIA, about the Mafia, about LAON.”
“And about the KGB?”
There was that pale-blue unflinching stare. “Yes, and about the KGB.”
“Which explains your interest.”
“Indeed it does. You see, Rufus Devereaux had considerable knowledge of collusion between opposing ideologies, about bargains made and better left unmentioned.”
“You’ve lost me—I fell off on the first turn.”
“Well, by way of example—you remember the so-called Cuban missile crisis of nineteen sixty-two, I’m sure.”
“Vaguely.”
“Vaguely? You were twenty-two years of age in 1962!”
“Yes, but I was in the Marines—those were foggy years.”
“Why foggy?”
“Because I was drunk.”
“Was that all the Marines did—drink?”
“No, there were whorehouses. Back to the Cuban missile crisis, if you will.”
“All right, what do you know of it?”
“Khrushchev installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy made him take ’em out.”
Natasha was shaking her head. “A half-truth at best. There were United States missiles in Turkey—they’d been there for years. Khrushchev countered by placing Soviet missiles in Cuba, agreeing to remove them if Kennedy would pull U.S. missiles out of Turkey. Kennedy jumped at it, using the alibi that the missiles in Turkey were obsolete. If I’m not mistaken, an obsolete nuclear missile will kill as many people as a state-of-the-art nuclear missile.”
Lockington said, “Hell, I didn’t know that we had missiles in Turkey.”
“At that time, how many Americans did? Rufus Devereaux was privy to such information. For instance, he knew that the United States Government had sponsored a half-dozen attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, and that every one of them was made by the Mafia at the request of the CIA.”
“That’s substantiated?”
“No, but Devereaux could have substantiated it. He’d occupied any number of key CIA posts—he could have supplied dates, times, places, names.”
“So could a lot of other people, undoubtedly.”
“Undoubtedly, but a lot of other people haven’t been willing to bring the facts to light.”
“And Rufe was willing?”
Natasha frowned. Lockington liked her frown, realizing that when a man likes a woman’s frown he may be getting into deep water. She was saying, “It’s possible—he may have become embittered.”
Lockington was studying her—studying Natasha Gorky was a pleasure. He said, “He was in the same game as you. Have you become embittered?”
After what seemed a very long time she put a hand to her throat. “Yes, Mr. Lockington, and I’m choking on it.”
Lockington joined in a silence that could have been chopped with an axe. In a while he said, “There are other cases too sensitive for public scrutiny?”
Her smile was frigidly tight. “Too numerous to mention. There’ve been no big winners, but all participants stand an excellent chance of losing.”
“Losing what?”
“Leadership, backing, prestige, secrecy, the ability to function effectively. I refer to the KGB, the CIA, the Mafia, LAON—we’re all in the same leaky canoe.”
“All deal in assassination?”
“All, but of the four, LAON is on the thinnest ice—by comparison it’s a fledgling organization.”
“But gaining strength?”
“Oh, yes—it’s established beachheads in government, it has highly influential supporters. At this stage in the game full exposure would prove catastrophic.”
“The KGB believes that LAON hired the Copperhead to kill Devereaux?”
“It sees that as a definite possibility.”
“Then who hired Devereaux to kill the Copperhead?”
“Perhaps no one—it could have been an ego trip for Devereaux. Had he spoken of retirement?”
“Several times.”
Natasha’s slow nod was a thoughtful thing. She said, “An excellent way to close an illustrious career, wouldn’t you think—the frosting on the cake?”
Lockington downed his Martell’s, grinding the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table. He gritted, “I’m out of my element—I don’t think I should know about such things.”
She’d gotten to her feet, stretching like a cat. She said, “Perhaps not, but if you stay on the Devereaux trail, you’ll learn.”
Lockington’s discouraged sigh was audible. He said, “Would you believe that I was making an honest effort to stay out of this mess?”
“I believe that you think you were.”
“But not that I—” He was staring in dismay. Natasha Gorky’s short dark-brown dress had been pulled up over her pixie hairdo, her beige half-slip had slithered to the floor. She stepped clear of it, walking toward him, turning her back to him, peering at him over a tawny shoulder. She said, “My brassiere clasp, if you will, please.”
Lockington unhooked the clasp, feeling her breasts spill out, watching her shrug free of the brassiere to catch it and toss it onto her overstuffed chair. She pivoted to face him, smiling her off-center smile, her paleblue eyes sparkling with challenge, her nipples jutting like pink flint. She said, “You’ll excuse my lack of panties?”
Lockington nodded, saying nothing.
She took his hand, tugging him from the sofa. “I’m from Odessa, Mr. Lockington. In Odessa the girls never bother.”
She was unbuttoning his shirt when he said, “I hardly ever get to Odessa.”