Granted the identical opportunity with the identical lady, deducting the shock of her direct approach and adding a few hours of continence, Lockington might have performed considerably better, or a great deal less poorly, depending on how Natasha Gorky saw it. A recuperation period of less than half a day had been inadequate for a man of Lockington’s years. Still, he’d managed to get it done, the spirit willing, the flesh faltering, and she’d appeared to enjoy their hour. Appearances meant nothing, of course—Lockington knew that a clever woman will convince a man that he’s done very well when he hasn’t done very well at all. He figured that she’d registered him between a zero and a five, which was fair because he’d never been a ten, and eight was beyond him now—thirty years beyond him.
Her auburn pixie-cut was snuggled into his shoulder and she was murmuring, “Thank you—I was in need.”
Lockington said, “So was I.” It was a lie, but a noble lie.
She said, “May I call you Lacey?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“After—well, after this, Lacey would seem in order, don’t you agree?”
Lockington agreed and he said so.
“I felt so foolish saying, ‘Oh, my God, Mr. Lockington, I’m coming!’ when ‘Oh, my God, Lacey, I’m coming!’ would have been more apropos. Did I sound foolish?”
“Not at all, but Communists shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, my God,’ should they?”
“That would depend on the Communist, I suppose.” She wiggled closer to him.“Uhh-h-h, Lacey, not to be talking shop after so pleasant a dalliance, but—well, about Devereaux—just what are you looking for?”
“I didn’t know that I was looking for anything, I’d tried to throw it out of my mind, but the why of it seems most important. Whys usually lead to whos.”
“The why appears obvious.”
“To shut him up?”
“Can you think of a better reason?”
Lockington pushed it around in his mind, trying to sight it from another angle. He said, “Rufe was with a woman when he got into Chicago—he’d had a relationship with another. One has disappeared, the other is dead.”
“I know. What do you see in that?”
“Not a great deal. I suppose that one of them could have shot him.”
“Farfetched. We’ve heard that he was killed with a heavy-caliber, high-velocity weapon—possibly a Magnum three fifty-seven with a silencer. How many women carry three fifty-seven Magnums with silencers?”
“Probably less than fifty percent. Could Devereaux have been killed with his own gun?”
“Definitely not. Devereaux carried a bone-handled Smith & Wesson thirty-eight.”
“How would you know that?”
“Firearms identification is a KGB requisite.”
“Who identified Rufe’s gun as a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight?”
“A KGB woman—one of our best.”
“When and where?”
“June third of last year—here in Chicago.”
“Rufe wasn’t in Chicago in June of last year—if he’d been here I’d have heard from him.”
“He was here briefly, staying at the home of an out-of-town friend in the unincorporated area of Leyden Township.”
“The address?”
“Three thousand North Onines Avenue.”
“Why was he here?”
“She doesn’t know. He was leaving for Miami the next day. Now it would appear that he was attempting to catch up with the Copperhead and head off the assassination of Wallace Vernon.”
“How would Rufe have known that Vernon was to be assassinated?”
“It was CIA information, apparently.”
“How did your operative wangle a contact with Devereaux?”
“Easily—she let him pick her up at a country music honky-tonk. The KGB maintains dossiers on known CIA people—Devereaux’s dossier was being updated.”
“She took him to bed, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Who was your operative?”
“Natasha Gorky, if you must know.”
“Doggone, woman, you do get around!”
“Lacey, that’s my job.”
“Your job—like taking me to bed?”
Natasha lifted her head from Lockington’s shoulder, turning to peer at him. “All right, let’s call a spade a spade—the KGB can use you in this matter, that’s the way this started and I have no idea how it’ll end, but in the last couple of hours I—you—let it pass, please. Where were we?”
“I was right here—you were in bed with Rufe Devereaux.”
“And that disturbs you?”
“You’re goddamned right that disturbs me!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but it does.”
“I’m glad.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I am.”
Lockington sat up in bed, groping for his cigarettes on the nightstand, lighting two, passing one to her. She accepted it, thanking him, her smile contented, the smile of the cat that’s just polished off the canary. He said, “Let’s swap corners. What does the KGB want from this?”
“The same thing the others want—silence and lots of it. At one time or another we’ve all gotten egg on our faces, we’ve all stepped in manure, we’ve been compromised, bought, sold, and bartered. Even God can’t change the past, but silence can preserve the future.”
“Silence won’t flush LAON and the Copperhead into the open.”
“LAON and the Copperhead are America’s problem—so is the Mafia, so is the CIA. But Rufus Devereaux has become a problem for the Soviet Union.”
“Rufe’s gone—dead men tell no tales.”
“What if he’d told tales prior to his death? What was in his missing attaché case—where is it?”
“Are you acquainted with the theory that he delivered its contents to me?”
“I’ve heard it, considered it, and dismissed it. If you knew the answers why would you be asking questions?” Natasha rose to a cross-legged sitting position, a sight to behold, her breasts full, firm, her belly flat and tight, her pixie hairdo tousled, her face lovely despite its perplexed expression. “Look, Lacey—why can’t we work together on this? You know Devereaux personally, you know things that you don’t know you know, and I have virtually immediate access to a wealth of information. We could get to the bottom of this, you and I!”
Lockington shrugged. He’d have joined this one in a wild turkey chase. She was straightforward, there was a blunt trustworthiness about her, he liked her—it was a chemical thing, a matter of instinct. She was as beautiful, as keen-witted, as glib-tongued, as poised and polished as they came, but he sensed a vulnerability. She had a faint aura of insecurity—she could have been the girl next door instead of a highly trained KGB agent. He said, “I call the shots?”
“You call the shots.”
Lockington said, “All right.”
She kissed him. He’d expected that, but it wasn’t a brusque, businesslike kiss—it was soft, clinging, and it spun his senses. They looked at each other in the ensuing silence, probing with their eyes, a Martian and a Venusian stranded on Jupiter. After a while she said, “What—what if Rufe Devereaux wrote a book?”
Lockington said, “There’d be blood on the moon.”
The silence returned.
Lockington put out his hand.
Natasha Gorky gripped it.
Lockington said, “Odessa?”
“That’s right—Odessa.”
He pulled her to him.
He kissed the hell out of her.
She bit his lower lip.
Hard.
She said, “Sorry!”
Lockington said, “It’s all right—some do and some don’t.”