4 December 1945
Shakhtyorsk Air Base, Sakhalin Oblast, USSR
Dezhnev and six Russian soldiers escorted Ingram to the camouflaged entrance of the Japanese command bunker. Dezhnev stopped. “He’s inside.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“No. I’m to wait out here.” Dezhnev lit a cigarette, something he did when he was nervous.
“What’s going on, Ed?”
“Todd, just go in there. Be nice and keep your mouth shut.”
“My orders are to return him to the United States.”
“That won’t happen.”
Ingram’s eyes swept over Dezhnev and his NKVD soldiers. They were tall and intelligent looking, and one or two looked as if they understood English. He was outnumbered in more ways than one. “All right.” He turned and went inside.
Three portable lanterns provided the only light in the room. It was barely recognizable from the last time he had been there. Furniture was tipped over, cabinet drawers left open, papers strewn about. The large map table was tipped on end and lay against the far wall.
A figure was bent over a desk examining something. Ingram couldn’t see who it was in the dim light. The man raised his head as Ingram started across the room. He turned. It was Colin Blinde.
“Come on in, Todd.”
Ingram sniffed and said, “Your Aqua Velva and the rest of your gear went out on the C-54.”
“I’ll get by.”
Something rustled behind Ingram. He looked behind him to see two Russians in leather jackets. One wore a slouch hat. The other had a blond crewcut. Both men were large, but the blond was enormous—at least 6 feet 5 inches and 250 pounds.
“In case you develop a bad temper.”
“That could happen. You might say treason aggravates it.”
“Todd, look. I’m leaving now. You’re staying here. I wanted to tell you what this is all about.”
“Finally, someone is giving me the dope.”
“It’s simple. I’m claiming what was mine in the first place.”
“You have a funny way of claiming things. Walt Hodges was about to become a father.”
“Who is Walt Hodges?”
“The man you killed—excuse me, the man you had killed.”
Blinde stood straight and rubbed his chin. “What do you mean ‘had killed’?”
Ingram said, “The torpedo you had do the job for you with that poison. Ricin. Is that what you call it? It seems your boy was a foreign national who got caught. And now he’s dead, by the way.”
Blinde sat heavily. “I . . . I can’t go back.”
“What made you think you could?”
“I didn’t know until you just told me.”
It hit Ingram that Blinde had been planning to return to OSS after this and pick up right where he left off. But Ingram had just told Blinde the essence of Toliver’s message that he’d received on landing here. Blinde realized the game was completely up. He could not return. Then came the horrible realization that Ingram had overplayed his hand. He’d popped off like loud-mouthed Jerry Landa. Instead, he should have acted stupid, like Dezhnev said. I just signed my own death warrant.
A chair squeaked in a far corner. Someone was over there in the shadows sitting on a crate. Seeing Ingram’s stare, he stood and approached, pulling on gray gloves. He walked a complete circle around Ingram, trailing a faint odor of garlic. It was Kulibin, the captain who had agreed to release the Marines. He barked several Russian phrases at Blinde.
Blinde said, “He’s impressed with you and compliments you for your tenacity, Todd.”
Ingram demanded, “Just tell him to let us go.”
“May I introduce Captain First Rank Gennady Kulibin, commanding officer of the Admiral Volshkov?”
Ingram stood still. “We’ve already met.”
“Oh, I see. Well, isn’t it military courtesy to acknowledge his presence? After all, he outranks you.”
Ingram looked over to the two goons in leather. The shorter man covered him with a pistol. “Tell him, Mr. Blinde, that military courtesy went out the window when he refused to honor an agreement between our two governments. And courtesy is certainly not called for when one of your thugs is pointing a pistol at me.”
“Easy, Todd,” said Blinde.
Ingram was worked up. “And what would you know about military courtesy, Mr. Blinde? How much military service did you give to your country? What uniform did you wear?”
“I had a deferment.”
“Well, why doesn’t that surprise me? What kind of deferment, Mr. Blinde?”
“Flat feet.”
Ingram slapped his knee. “My, oh, my! Flat feet. I’m so sorry. But you ran pretty fast right after the plane landed yesterday—flat feet and all. Out the door and down the runway like an Olympic sprinter. I was really amazed when—oof!”
A lightning bolt of pain raced up Ingram’s back. Someone had hit him in the left kidney. He half-turned and saw the larger of the goons behind him with a doubled fist. He sank to his knees before the man could deliver another blow. He squeezed his eyes closed and braced himself from falling all the way. But then a boot was planted in his back. It pushed and he was flat on his belly. He whiffed garlic and looked around to see Kulibin, a corner of his mouth rising, shoving him down with his boot. Quietly, he asked Blinde a question.
Blinde replied in Russian. To Ingram he hissed, “Todd, you must answer if you know what’s good for you.”
“Well, what the hell does he want to know?”
“He wants to know about Karol Dudek and the life raft inflator.”
“Who? Life raft what? What in the hell is he—eyaaaaagh!” He screamed as another boot stomped his left kidney. Everything went dark.
Ingram awoke lying on his back. Water was pouring over his face. He looked up into four shadowy outlines. Blinde leaned in close. “You claim you don’t know who Karol Dudek is?”
Ingram smacked his lips. “You can kick all you want, but I have no idea who that is.”
Blinde spoke to Kulibin in Russian. Then he leaned back and stood. The two goons bent over and hoisted Ingram into a chair. He gritted his teeth as they jounced him down.
“Relax, Todd,” said Blinde.
“Relax? You and your thugs are beating me up. I’m going to be pissing blood for weeks.”
Blinde nodded to the big goon. The man lifted Ingram’s chin and poured water in his mouth. It tasted wonderful. “Why are we here?”
Blinde asked, “You’re sure you don’t know who Dudek is?”
“I’ve been sitting in damned airplanes for nearly four days. Who the hell is Dudek?”
“How did you learn about ricin?”
“It was in a message I got just before we landed. By the way, you’re under arrest and are ordered to return with me on charges of treason.”
Blinde paid no attention to Ingram’s gallows humor. He stared at the wall, his eyes unfocused. “They know. Now what can I do?”
“Who knows what, Colin?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“My dad was a Texas wildcatter. He did all right, but then came the depression. We lost everything. Everything except six copper mines in Mongolia that came down to us through my grandfather. Then the Japs seized the mines and we were left with nothing. Now Dad sponges off my mother’s small inheritance, living in a two-story walkup in Brooklyn. They do nothing but argue all day. Dad drinks a lot. Mom sits in a corner and looks out a window.” Blinde looked into the distance.
“After Pearl Harbor we were in the thick of it. Like Dad, I had thought everything was lost until I met Walter Boring. Boring was shrewd. He knew Mao Tse-tung; he knew Chiang Kai-shek; and he was on close personal terms with Hideki Tojo. How could we lose?”
Ingram was beginning to see. “He got them together.”
“Well, no. He simply brokered a deal.”
“With whom?”
“Tojo, basically. Boring was playing Mao against Chiang Kai-shek. So Boring got Prime Minister Tojo to turn the mines over to Mao after watching the two drive up the price. Our cut was paltry. Five million in rough diamonds. And Walter’s share was half.”
“And the diamonds are . . .”
Blinde pointed. “There. That’s the second crate we came to retrieve in the name of an outraged free world. The Japanese unwittingly used it as one of the four legs to support that map table. Walter didn’t realize it until he saw the crate as he was being carried out by your men.” He pointed to the upended table against the wall. “Five bags in the bottom.”
Ingram felt sick standing near this man. Blinde had killed Walt Hodges and who knows how many others. And all this ghoul could think about was his diamonds lying beneath a stack of grisly photographs. “So you tortured it out of him.”
Blinde stared into the distance.
“It wasn’t a mercy killing. You killed Walter Boring to find out where the crate was and steal his share.”
“Um.”
“Except now, of course, you’re going to split it with your captain there and those two goons. Who else?”
“Nobody else. And those two are very capable NKVD agents. Please say hello to Oleg Lepechn,” he gestured toward the blond giant, “and Matvie Borzakov.” Lepechn glanced at Ingram and brushed dust off his leather coat; Borzakov stepped under a naked lightbulb, revealing a thin, pockmarked face.
Ingram waved, “So pleased to meet you all.”
Kulibin went back to the crate and sat.
Ingram asked, “Please tell me one thing?”
Blinde checked his watch. “Time to go.”
“Where does Eduard Dezhnev fit in all this?”
Kulibin chuckled from the corner.
Blinde said something to him in Russian.
Kulibin laughed again.
“What?” asked Ingram.
Blinde said, “Oh, it’s a little joke.”
“Okay. You want to tell me?” asked Ingram.
“It depends on what his mother does.”
“Whose mother?”
“Dezhnev’s mother, of course. Anoushka. Comrade Kulibin has been trying to get her into bed for months.”
It hit Ingram. “Anoushka. Anoushka Dezhnev. The actress?”
“That’s her,” said Blinde. “Very sexy. She’s in Hollywood right now making movies. Do you know her?”
“I met her at Jerry Landa’s wedding. But if . . .”
“If she doesn’t come around, then her little boy goes to Lubyanka sooner rather than later.”
“Where’s Lubyanka?”
Blinde said, “Political prison in Moscow run by the NKVD. Prisoners rarely come out alive.” He said it with a finality that seemed to make the whole room black. Even Kulibin across the room faded from view.
“I don’t understand. Dezhnev is a highly regarded officer, is he not?”
Blinde said, “Not anymore. He’s working for you, the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what, damn it?”
“You should ask your buddy Toliver.”
“Speak English.”
“Except I don’t think that will be possible now.”
“Why not?”
Kulibin sauntered over and tapped Blinde on the shoulder.
Blinde said, “We must leave, Commander. I wish we had met under different circumstances.”
“Not me.”
Kulibin clapped his hands and called, “Oleg.”
“Da.” The big blond thug walked up and slapped Ingram hard. His leather jacket squeaked while he tied Ingram’s hands with telephone cord. Then he pulled a pistol from the small of his back, a German Walther 7.65-mm PPK. Oleg’s enormous hand made the pistol look like a toy. He ran his hand over the action and cocked it.
“Nyet,” Blinde shouted. “Podozhdi poka my uidyom.” (Wait until we leave.)
“Hokay.” Oleg lowered the pistol, set the safety, and stuffed it back in his waistband. Then he wrapped tape around Ingram’s mouth.
Ingram’s nose was swollen from the fighting, and it was already hard to breath. He squirmed and kicked his feet and growled.
Again the Russian backhanded him.
It was all Ingram could do to will himself to be quiet, to stop breathing hard, to quell the panic rising in his throat.
Blinde and Borzakov each took an end of the crate and picked it up. Kulibin stood by passively, his hands behind his back, watching Ingram as if he were a bug on a microscope slide.
Blinde said, “I’m sorry, truly I am.” He nodded to Borzakov and the two men carried the crate out the door. Kulibin lingered for a moment, then tipped two fingers to his forehead and followed.
Is this it? Ingram’s heart must have been pumping at 220 beats a minute. His head throbbed, and he sensed Oleg moving around like a caged animal. What the hell was he doing? Cigarette butts! The idiot was picking up Japanese cigarette butts and stuffing them in his pocket. Then he opened desk drawers, peering at documents. Some drawers he dumped on the hard-packed clay; a few papers he stuffed into a leather briefcase. Seconds turned into minutes as the man quietly canvassed the room, then the bunkrooms off to the side, one of which was where Ingram had originally met Walter Boring.
Oleg emerged from the bunkroom, walked over, and patted Ingram down, removing everything from his pockets. Nothing seemed to interest him, and he pitched it all on the ground: he didn’t take Ingram’s watch or his Naval Academy ring.
The Russian swept the room for a long moment with steel-gray eyes. Finally, he looked down at Ingram and smiled. He reached back and pulled the Walther PPK from the small of his back as if he were tugging out a handkerchief.
Lightning bolts danced in Ingram’s head. He felt cold and hot at the same time, and jerked against his bindings. Like a wild-eyed cow in a slaughterhouse, he knew his time had come. His breath came in short gasps. He couldn’t sweat enough; he couldn’t cry out. The realization hit that he had just seconds to live. All he could think of was how cruel life had been to him and how short it was. Helen swirled in his mind, and he thanked God for her. She was the best thing that ever—
“Goodbye, Yank.” The Russian raised his pistol and pointed right it between Ingram’s eyes. His thumb traveled to the safety.
There was a blast. Ingram, waiting for death, wondered, Shouldn’t I be dead? But it was Oleg Lepechn’s forehead with a neat hole in it, not his. Blood and gray matter spewed out the back of his skull. With his eyes wide open and knees locked, the giant fell straight back to crash among rolled-up charts and a pair of overturned chairs.
A man was at the entrance. Ingram’s heart jumped. It was a Russian dressed in a fur cap and heavy overcoat; a PPSh submachine gun was slung over one shoulder, an M-1 carbine hung over the other. He was in a two-handed stance, and a wisp of smoke rose from the muzzle of his .45. He quickly swept the pistol over the rest of the room. Vapor puffed from his mouth as he walked into the bunkrooms and checked them carefully. Looking from side to side, the man walked up to Oleg, stooped, and put two fingers on the corpse’s carotid artery, making sure Oleg really was a corpse.
Satisfied, he looked up at Ingram, stood, and walked over.
Ingram squeezed his eyes shut.