1 Oct 90—DENVER
Pendleton met him in room 569 at precisely four in the afternoon. It was that important to both of them, to make sure there was no misunderstanding and no telephone contact. Pendleton came alone into Stapleton on a regular commercial flight and he took a cab to two other hotels before transferring to a third cab and ending up at the airport Hilton. Heinemann had been just as circumspect.
Pendleton grinned at Heinemann when he entered the room. The German agent was as pale as ever, his white scar etched in an unnatural shade of white against his skin, a speck of paint on the skin.
Pendleton’s shirt was soaked with sweat. He always sweated on airplanes, always adjusted the overhead fan, always felt used up by a trip at thirty thousand feet. He was the born man in control and it unnerved him to think that someone else might have control over his safety and destiny, even for three hours of his life.
“Did you have a good flight?” The question was asked with irony.
“They’re all good,” Pendleton said, annoyed. He carried a single case and flopped it on the bed and began to take off his jacket. And then stopped. He looked at Heinemann. “Hungry.” He walked to the phone. “Never eat airplane food and you live to be a hundred.”
Heinemann stared at him and Pendleton smiled. He was the center of attention again.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “Room 569. Want something to eat. Lemme see. A cheeseburger medium. Fries. Some beer. You got some Heineken?” Covered the phone. “You want a beer?”
Heinemann shook his head.
“Four Heineken and I want them in an ice bucket, I don’t want beer just sitting there on a tray. Cold Heineken. That’s right.” He was enjoying himself because Kurt Heinemann was standing there, waiting for a man in shirtsleeves to order lunch. Pendleton wanted to make the other man wait and it was one of the small, annoying tricks of his trade. He annoyed people over trivialities and this allowed him to take advantage of them. At least, Pendleton believed this about himself.
It was only their third meeting in less than a year, from the moment when Kurt Heinemann had become the agent—the personal agent—of the director of operations for R Section.
When Kurt began his fill-in, Pendleton held up his hand. “I want to wash up and change my shirt. I hate to wear a shirt that’s been on an airplane for three hours.”
Another petty thing and Kurt understood this about Pendleton and had observed it first fifteen years before when he had sold out a Soviet spy network to Pendleton. When it came down to it, Pendleton held up his end of the bargain but that wouldn’t be the case here. No, Pendleton was going to have this blow up in his face and he would know it, even if he never had to tell a soul about it.
Pendleton came out of the washroom and was buttoning his clean shirt. He dumped the other shirt in the wastebasket under the desk. He was smiling at the German.
“How’s it going in Denver? Dull town. Pretty but dull. You like it okay?”
“Maybe I like dull,” Heinemann said. “There’s enough excitement in the world.”
“Is there enough excitement?”
They stared at each other.
“The business comes down in two days. I will buy the code machine from Denisov.”
“Two days.”
“Ja.”
Pendleton shook his head and smiled. “Two days. Can’t believe it, coming down to the end, all these months. Tell you the truth, when you first came to me with this shit about Denisov, I couldn’t believe it.”
Heinemann stared at the large man. His eyes were cold, reflecting no curiosity, only a dull patience.
“You wanted out of East Germany so bad, I thought maybe you made it up. Then I did my own snooping. There were rumors about a machine, even back last year. We deal in rumors, don’t we? I mean, you shopped me some tidbit and I bit on it. I thought you just wanted out.”
“I wanted a safe haven. And we did business, Herr Direktor. In Zurich a long time ago. We kept the… bargain.”
“That’s what I thought, took a chance on. Took a chance on you, Kurt.”
Kurt made a sallow smile. He nodded. “Danke, Herr Direktor.”
“You better danke,” Pendleton said. Stopped. The cold thing came over his blue eyes. He was a bastard all right, Heinemann thought. He enjoyed the role.
The food came. Cheeseburgers dripping with grease and French fries that were soggy and cold. And bottles of Heineken in an ice bucket.
“You want a beer first, Kurt?”
“I don’t drink beer.”
“Must be some strange kraut not to drink beer. Cheers.” Pendleton was in a good mood.
“You want the fill now, Herr Direktor?” he said with sarcasm and Pendleton caught it but the little smile on his lips made it all right. He liked to annoy Kurt Heinemann because it meant Kurt Heinemann was in his power. They all were, even the difficult ones like Devereaux who thought they had their own law inside Section. Pendleton was changing all that, changing the way things were done and the way thinking was done inside R Section.
Pendleton nodded.
The fill was nearly all true. There was the matter of Miss Browning first.
Kurt Heinemann stated it cleanly: “I determined how much she knew and who she gave this to. Then I eliminated her.”
“How’d you do that?”
“It was done.”
“I like the gory details.”
Kurt stared at the hamburger, at the soggy French fries. Yes. The gory details.
“She was frightened, not much more than an amateur. She worked for Mickey Connors in New York. She didn’t get to pass along much, just the rumors about a machine, a code machine that Consortium wanted. She kept calling me Mr. Dodge, even when I hurt her. She had no idea of what I was.”
“How’d you hurt her?”
“The most efficient way.”
“How’s that?”
He took no pleasure in this but he saw that Pendleton did. Another matter of control. He made a face and walked to the window. He looked down at the sunbathed streets clogged with traffic. Interstate 70 was backed up for at least a mile, every car containing some frustrated driver who was eating up the minutes of his life trapped in metal and the vagaries of the afternoon rush hour.
“I cut her wrist. It doesn’t hurt very much but there is a lot of blood and it frightens them. They realize it is their blood. They tell you everything very quickly or they’ll never tell you anything. She wanted to save her life.”
“But she didn’t.”
“I shot her, very close, there was no pain.”
“That’s too bad,” Pendleton said. He was smiling at Kurt. “And what about the toy, this machine?”
“Denisov. He wants to see me in two days, it is that close.”
“Two days. The third.”
“At three. We make the transfer. Gandolph is collecting the money.”
“Gandolph is gonna be a good man for Section.”
“What do I do?”
“Friday. Then what?”
“Ja, then what, Herr Direktor? What do I do?”
“You bury the code machine when you get it from Denisov and you go to Mr. Gandolph and you tell him that he is now going to sell it to R Section for exactly fifteen million dollars and if he thinks he can double-cross you, you tell him that you’re my agent and we can blow Consortium International to kingdom come, is what you tell him. You got that Kurt?”
“Ja.” It was along the lines of what he thought.
“Gandolph is not a dumb man,” Pendleton said, chewing loudly. “I set you up with him in the first place. He was willing to take a flyer on you and he thinks he might be able to have it both ways, deal with R Section, keep his hand in dealing with Langley. All he could see was that code machine, he really wants it. The brilliant thing you brought to this was knowing how to find the man who was going to steal. Finding Denisov. When you told me it was Denisov last summer, I about shit. Denisov was a name out of the past. Gandolph may think he can string me along until you get the machine from Denisov. Then maybe he’ll revert to type and sell it to Langley. He isn’t going to do that, is he, Kurt?”
Kurt shook his head. It was what Pendleton wanted, physical punctuation marks for his pronouncements.
“No sir, Kurt. Langley’s got no piece of this. They buzz around and they can smell the horseshit but they can’t get near it. Denisov was defected by us, he’s our asset, and they can’t touch him. Even if Langley thinks Denisov is going to deal in something. You got to convince Gandolph that he only deals with us or I’ll go after Consortium International with a pitchfork. Make a lot of holes.”
“Gandolph will be handled,” Kurt said, thinking of something else.
“I want Consortium in my camp. Working for me, same as you. Give him the code machine when you get it from Denisov and then make him give it to me.”
It was boring, Kurt thought. The same message said in different ways. He went to the window and looked out so that he would not have to look at the man eating his cheeseburger.
“Another thing now. Just so you don’t think you’re out there alone, Kurt.”
Waited, his back turned to Pendleton.
“Gandolph has a rival he knows about. An Irish fellow, a crook out of New York. A bastard named Mickey Connors. I been setting him up since you told me it was Denisov. Our defected Russian agent living a life of retirement in sunny Santa Barbara.”
He had not heard of this.
“Mickey Connors got himself another one of my special… employees. You know him.”
Kurt had to turn. Pendleton was grinning at him with a mouthful of food. He chewed it down and the grin never varied.
“Devereaux.”
Kurt shook his head.
“Yeah. You know him. The man you shot in Zurich that one time. I bet he hasn’t forgot you, Kurt. He’s working for Mickey Connors and they’re working on the same thing. Mickey Connors is another middleman. Does jobs for CIA all over. Sells arms. Probably runs guns to the rebels in Ireland. Devereaux came along at the right time for Mickey Connors because Mickey heard about Denisov making a purchase. I don’t know if they know all about a code machine but they know it’s something.”
“Where is Devereaux?” Kurt Heinemann said.
“In Santa Barbara. He’s watching Denisov. That gives you a problem.”
Kurt stared at the large man as Pendleton opened another green bottle of beer. He watched the beer fill a glass.
“It gives me a problem,” Kurt said.
“He could complicate things, couldn’t he?”
“You know this? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because Devereaux is no problem. He’s right where I want him.”
“He can interfere—”
“He will be left holding the bag, Kurt. Our man in California, working for an arms trader, making a deal with the agent he defected for us ten years ago. Devereaux and Denisov are two peas and I got them right in the pod. Denisov was Devereaux’s property, his big catch in all his years as an agent. Natural that Devereaux is working now for Mickey Connors’s gang and since they’re business rivals of Consortium, Mickey is using Devereaux.” Tasted the beer. “We’re going to use him, too.”
“How?”
“Kill him. When the deal is ready to go down in two days, you kill him. I’ll put the fear on Gandolph with him. Give you a club to use. You kill Devereaux and you show Gandolph how close it was, how a renegade agent from Section was working for Mickey Connors against you. It’ll be enough to tip him if you need it. Mickey Connors works for Langley, too, and Gandolph is going to figure that Langley bypassed its usual channels with CI to get the code machine that Denisov is selling. That Langley put Mickey Connors on the trail to outfox you.”
“But did they?”
“In a funny way. Mickey Connors knows some things and Langley knows other things. They keep a casual eye from time to time on all our… assets. They want to know what we’re doing as much as we want to know what they’re doing. Denisov is no secret to Langley but they won’t go near him. That’s the rules. We don’t poach on each other’s territory. Denisov belongs to us. That’s why you’re a wild card. No one except Gandolph knows you have connections to me and Gandolph isn’t advertising it. You’re just a German ex-agent and the last person in the world that Langley would expect to be making the deal with Denisov. See how neat it is?”
“Devereaux knows me.” And didn’t say that Devereaux knew Ruth as well.
“Devereaux is tied up in knots. I put him in deep cover to infiltrate the Connors gang. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he keeps doing it because he has to. He called me. I got his location. I’m going to give it to you, Kurt, right down to his room number in Santa Barbara. You can fix him when you make your deal with Denisov.”
“Why do this thing? This complicates everything.”
“It gets me two birds with one stone. Maybe four. One, I get rid of a pain in the ass named Devereaux. He doesn’t trust me, never has since Zurich, and I don’t like to look over my shoulder and see him. Second, I cripple up Mickey Connors because when Langley finds out—and they’ll find out—that Connors was using a Section agent and got nothing to show for it, they’ll start wondering how far to trust him. I got no use for Connors. Irish crooks, renegades.”
“You said four things,” Kurt said.
“Third: Consortium. I build a new relationship with a useful organization. And last, I get the code machine. I want the code machine.”
“You said it wasn’t that important.”
“When I picked you up at the airport last Christmas. Sure it’s important. Just like you’re important to me, Kurt.”
“You’re too devious, there are too many things that can go wrong. You complicate too much.”
“Don’t tell me my job. Don’t ever do that—”
“And me, boss. What about me?”
“You stay as you are. A guest of the nation. Work for Consortium. Work with Gandolph. Make money and have a good life. Do your dirty tricks for profit and for me. I need someone who needs me.” Smiled. “You need me in the worst way, Kurt, that’s why I can trust you. You need every protection I can give you. The world thinks Kurt Heinemann went to Moscow when East Germany collapsed but we know different.”
There it was. His future. Pendleton’s puppet.
He wanted to kill him in that moment.
The anger passed. There was no time for anger. He would not be a puppet too much longer. He would kill Denisov and now he would kill Devereaux as well. And Gandolph, that was important. And then he would be gone with fifteen million dollars to set up a new network in Germany and a code machine that would fetch at least that much more. Not for himself, not for riches, but for a new order of things that would not depend on the stupidity of the Russians. Made in Germany with German hands.
“Why are you smiling, Kurt?”
Soft question.
Kurt didn’t realize he was smiling. He looked at the director of Operations of R Section, the man who had brought him in from the cold.
And left him in a different kind of cold.
“I was thinking of Devereaux,” Kurt lied.
“You like the idea of taking him out.”
“Ja, ja,” Kurt said. “I like that you had to save him once in Zurich to take the blame of that… trade we made. And the dead Mossad agents. I liked that then and now you are doing the same thing, letting him mislead Langley this time into a setup against this Connors man.”
“Only now we kill him,” Pendleton said.
“Ja. The only difference is that now he dies.”