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Tuesday Evening

MISSOULA, MONTANA. (AP) … Three men who apparently burglarized the Forest Products Laboratory near here burned to death this evening in the crash of their automobile that ran off the road during a high speed chase by a Montana Highway Patrol unit.

“The bodies were burned beyond immediate recognition,” the Missoula County coroner said. But one of the men was believed to be an employee of the FPL.

Both men wore nondescript clothing: jackets but no ties, aging raincoats still wet from outside, and tired hats with brims pushed back and misshapen.

They sat at a small table near the front window at the Crystal Cafe across Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The five-piece band that had been on a break for the past twenty minutes began to play again, making any kind of normal conversation all but impossible.

The club, which was quite famous in Moscow, was full for a Tuesday evening, and the room was dark and smoky and smelled of wet clothes, cheap Russian cigarettes, and cabbage soup—the specialty of the house.

“I thought you would feel safe here,” Zamyatin said, leaning forward. He nodded toward the band across the dance floor. “They are not very good, but they are loud. Impossible to filter out completely.”

“I find it difficult to believe you’re here on your own,” Mahoney said.

Zamyatin just looked at him but said nothing. After awhile Mahoney turned to watch the several couples gyrating on the small dance floor. They looked as if they were having fun. But it was too hot in here for him. He longed for a breath of fresh, cool air.

*   *   *

Marge had called from the apartment at about six o’clock, her voice bright and cheerful over the line.

“An old friend of yours stopped by just a little while ago,” she bubbled, and Mahoney’s breath caught in his throat.

“Who was it?”

“He wouldn’t give me his name. He was a Russian. Said you were friends from the war.”

“A small man? About fifty?”

“That’s him.”

“You let him in the apartment?” Mahoney said incredulously.

“No … no,” Marge continued brightly, unconcerned. “He refused to come in. Just said he wanted to get a message to you.”

Mahoney looked up at his office door, closed, and he felt an itch between his shoulder blades. “What was the message, Marge?”

“You’re to meet him at the Crystal Cafe at eight o’clock.”

He was being used. He could feel the signs all around him, and he didn’t like it, especially when it came to involving Marge.

“Listen to me, darling,” he said.

Marge started to say something but then hesitated. Evidently she had detected the note of seriousness in her husband’s voice.

“I want you to lock the apartment door and let no one in tonight. Do you understand me? No one.”

“Yes…” she said uncertainly.

“I’ll probably be late, so don’t wait up for me.”

“Is there something wrong, Wallace? Something I should know about?”

Mahoney continued staring at the door. In all the years they had been married she had never once asked him that kind of a question. There was trouble and it hung thick in the air.

“It’s nothing. Just routine. But I will be busy and I don’t like leaving you alone, especially since you’ve developed the habit of leaving the apartment door wide open for anyone to come in.”

She laughed. “Piffle! Who’d want an old lady like me?”

Mahoney cut her off savagely. “Goddammit, Margery, do as I say!”

“The door will be locked, Wallace,” she snapped. “And don’t ever swear at me again.”

“I’m sorry,” Mahoney said, the itch between his shoulder blades intensifying. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Take care, old man,” she said and hung up.

Mahoney held the phone to his ear for a moment, holding his breath, and then he heard an almost inaudible click, after which the dial tone buzzing in his ear increased slightly in volume.

He hung up the telephone, sat back in his chair, took out a cigar and went through the routine of lighting it, savoring for the moment his solitude, the quiet of his office and the rich aroma of the smoke.

The door opened, and Carlisle came into the room. There was a look of triumph on his face.

“Two and a half minutes from your office,” Mahoney said, his voice flat. “You must have taken the back stairs.”

Carlisle smiled, came across to the desk, removed some file folders from a chair, laid them on the floor, and sat down. “Actually, the elevator happened to be there and waiting. I was downstairs in communications.”

“Is Munson in on this?”

“No,” Carlisle said, staring directly into Mahoney’s eyes. “I had one of the technicians set it up for me.”

“Is my apartment bugged as well?”

Carlisle nodded.

It was time to bail out, Mahoney thought, the decision sour in his gut. Or at least back off a few paces to get a better look.

“Don’t worry, Wallace, we’re watching your place. Marge will in no way become involved in this.”

Mahoney snapped forward in his chair. “So help me God, Carlisle, if she is … if for one minute you think that she’ll be used in any fashion … as bait, as the front-runner … for any reason.…” He let it trail off.

“Despite what you think of me, I would not do anything like that. Never.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mahoney said, the anger that had suddenly boiled up inside of him subsiding. “You are an expedient man, Carlisle. Nothing is sacred to you.”

Carlisle said nothing for a long time, and Mahoney was aware of the rain beating against the window behind him. He was cold.

“This is the big one,” Carlisle finally spoke, his voice soft. “LOOK SEE, starts to pay off.”

“Not me,” Mahoney said. He had done a lot of thinking this afternoon, and since Marge’s call his brain had gone into high gear. Each time his thoughts seemed to be turned around in a circle he came back to one name. Congdon. Somehow the man was a key. Something had changed in Congdon over the past few days and Mahoney was certain that Carlisle had had something to do with it.

But why? Why? Why had Carlisle bothered to sit on Congdon? What did Congdon know or suspect that made Carlisle take that action?

Mahoney thumbed through a stack of file folders on his desk, coming up with the originating officer’s copy of the Real Time Action folder he had initiated earlier today. He flipped it across to Carlisle.

“I’m canceling this,” he said, and Carlisle looked genuinely startled for just a moment.

“You evidently thought this over carefully and have come up with a good reason.”

Mahoney had to turn away momentarily. In fact, there was no good reason for withdrawing the RTA jacket against Zamyatin’s children except one. He turned back to Carlisle.

“Decency. But I don’t expect you to understand that.”

Carlisle smiled, this time almost sadly. “For a man of your age, Wallace, you are terribly naive. We’re the good guys with the white hats, and they’re the bad guys with the black outfits. Right?” He leaned forward, and Mahoney felt a flutter in his gut.

“Let’s just step back a way, Mahoney. Let’s say up to an orbiting space station. Just far enough so that we can see the entire earth spread out below us.” Carlisle shook his head. “No lines down there indicating borders. Minnesota isn’t colored green to distinguish it from the blue that is Wisconsin or the orange that is Canada.

“You can’t even see the people down there, just the land and the water and the clouds. There are no bad guys. Just as there are no good guys. Just people who believe in slightly different things. We are talking here about nothing more than a difference of ideological opinion.

“Push a button and something happens. Push another button and something else happens. But before you start pushing buttons all over the place you first make sure you know exactly what you want to happen.”

Mahoney leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as he pulled deeply on the cigar, drawing the warm, sweet smoke into his mouth.

Carlisle continued.

“The early Romans killed the Christians because they were threatening a way of life. The Huns killed the Romans because they felt civilization was threatening their way of life. The Germans killed Jews partly because Hitler was a madman, but also partly because the German nation needed some kind of a rallying point to mobilize for world domination. It was a national fever. If Hitler could have laid the blame for the defeat in World War I and the terrible depression that followed on the Poles, or on the Armenians, or on the black man, he would have done so.”

“You’re a sick man, Carlisle,” Mahoney said softly.

Carlisle continued unperturbed.

“The German people did not stop Hitler. The Russians did not stop Stalin. The American people did not stop the slavery of the 1700s and 1800s, or the exploitation of the Irish and Chinese laborers who made the railroads, or the black man’s plight in the ’50s in the south, or the killings at Kent State. At least not until the time was ready. Not until whatever advantage that had to be gained had been accomplished.”

Mahoney opened his eyes. Carlisle was staring at him, a slight sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He looked agitated.

“I’m not a sick man, Mahoney. I am a realist. Without the persecution of the Christians, the Catholic Church would not be alive today. Without the murder of the Jews, Israel would not have become a nation. And without the exploitation of cheap slave labor in the United States, we still would be an uncleared, underdeveloped nation. Those are facts, Mahoney, not diseases.”

“And now LOOK SEE,” Mahoney said.

“It’s nothing more than that. An operation to look and see what the Russians are up to. If it’s assassination, then we stop it. If it’s an information gathering drive, we feed them a little false information. But hard-won false information, and gather a little data of our own.”

“What else?” Mahoney said, his voice a monotone.

“There’s a lot more,” Carlisle said. The light that had been in his eyes earlier was gone, and he had reverted back to his old, inscrutable self. “But first I want your gun.”

“Why?” Mahoney asked, but he realized he did not really care.

“It is a factor I don’t want introduced into this operation. There will be no shooting. No front line troops. No heroics. Just information gathering.”

Mahoney reached beneath his jacket and pulled the .45 out of its shoulder holster and handed it across to Carlisle, butt first. Carlisle took the gun and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

“Zamyatin’s three children have already been picked up. Switt set it up and it went without a hitch. They’re here right now in the embassy, a little frightened, but they’re calming down.”

Mahoney’s gut tightened.

“We picked up Michael in Missoula, and John, his wife, and the three kids in Los Angeles. Everything was explained to them. They’re safe.”

It was as if a volcano had gone off inside of Mahoney and all he could see was Carlisle’s face which seemed to be leering at him from down a long tunnel. Mahoney leaped forward across his file-laden desk, knocking his chair over behind him, reaching for Carlisle’s throat. The man had pulled back, however, just outside of Mahoney’s reach.

“They’re all right!” Carlisle shouted.

Mahoney regained his balance and came around the desk as Carlisle, who looked definitely worried, backed toward the door.

“Jesus Christ, man, listen to reason! The Russians were about to grab them! We got to them first! They’re all right, I tell you! They’re safe!”

Mahoney stopped short. Carlisle had his right hand in his jacket pocket.

“What did you say?” Mahoney asked, his voice soft but very even and controlled.

Carlisle was shook. “I said they are safe.”

“I mean about the Russians.”

A little color began to return to Carlisle’s cheeks. “We’ve had your children under surveillance ever since you were assigned to Moscow.”

Mahoney advanced a step farther. He could see Carlisle’s hand in his right coat pocket tighten on the .45.

“We figure if the KGB tumbled to you they might make a try for your kids.”

Mahoney said nothing, his mind whirling in a hundred different directions. He would not be able to tell Marge, and yet he knew it would be next to impossible to keep his emotions from her.

“It paid off,” Carlisle said, definitely more in control of himself. “It is my understanding that John and Michael were both staked out and were on the verge of being grabbed. We got to them first, that’s all.”

“Zamyatin?” Mahoney asked through clenched teeth.

Carlisle shrugged. “We have no way of knowing that, but it would be logical. Zamyatin is evidently trying to convert you. He’d use your children as a lever.”

“Where are they being held?”

“The Presidio in San Diego.”

“I want to talk to them. Now.”

Carlisle was shaking his head. “No way. We couldn’t set up a secure channel. They’d know they had failed.”

Mahoney’s eyes narrowed. Was the man lying?

“We captured their agents before they could report back and forced them to send the affirmative signal. As far as anyone knows the Russians have your children. I want to keep it that way.”

“I have no way of knowing if what you are telling me is true,” Mahoney said. He took another step forward.

“For God’s sake, Wallace, what do you take me for? I am on your side, you know.”

Mahoney was shaking his head. “You’re on Carlisle’s side. How do I know you are telling me the truth?”

“You don’t,” Carlisle said. “But we have Zamyatin’s children. You can go take a look at them for yourself if you want. They’re in Congdon’s apartment. So even if the Russians did have your children—which they don’t—we have Zamyatin’s. The lever is neutralized. They wouldn’t hurt your children for fear of retaliation.”

Mahoney could barely believe what he was hearing. The man was sick. But he also was holding all the trump cards. The Russians or Carlisle. What difference did it make? The lever was there, but Zamyatin was not wielding it, Carlisle was.

“What are we looking for?” Mahoney finally said. He felt physically ill with the thought of Marge. Dear sweet Marge. This would kill her if she knew.

Carlisle managed a thin smile, and he slowly withdrew his hand from his coat pocket. “Their organizational chart with all the names, specific duty assignments, budget codes, and actual office locations for starters.”

“Zamyatin?”

“I’ll leave that up to you. If he is still viable, if he hasn’t compromised his own position by playing games with you, then I want him defected. I can’t make that judgment sitting here. You’ll have to figure it out.”

“How about the operation? Sakharov? The president’s trip?”

“The operation is still LOOK SEE, and you are still the kingpin, only now Zamyatin is the variable.”

Mahoney just stared at the man.

“The president’s trip is still on. It’s too damned important to cancel. But I’ve got him to agree to a go-no-go decision point at ETA minus two hours. That would put Air Force One far enough outside Soviet air space for us to effectively defend him.”

“And Sakharov?”

“You’ve seen the file,” Carlisle said impatiently.

Mahoney had been given the file, but one all-important document had been missing. “I don’t know who is running him.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Again Mahoney got the distinct impression that the man was lying. But why? Something was missing. The thought kept hammering at the back of his mind.

The music had stopped, and several couples from the dance floor were crowded around the bandstand talking and waiting for the next set.

Mahoney looked up out of his thoughts at Zamyatin who was staring at him. The man had a haunted look in his eyes, as if what he was doing was as distasteful to him as it was to Mahoney.

First of all find out what information Zamyatin was after so that he could be fed false data. And secondly, inform him that his children were being held and begin extracting real information from him.

It was sick.

“It’s too damn bad we couldn’t all go on vacation. Permanently,” Zamyatin said, suddenly breaking the silence.

“What would you do?”

“I’d be a veterinarian. Outside of Moscow. Definitely outside of Moscow.”

“Dogs and cats and all that?”

Zamyatin shook his head. “We don’t do that sort of thing here. No, it’d be cows and sheep. Farm animals.”

“How about presidents?” Mahoney said. The music had started again and he had to shout to be heard.

“He is still coming then? No change of plans?”

“We have a fail-safe for him,” Mahoney said.

“At least there’s that.” Zamyatin looked away. When he turned back he seemed frightened. “The situation in the Middle East is heating up from what I understand.”

“The Israelis will win again. It’ll be another Six Day War or maybe even quicker.” Zamyatin was fishing. Or was he?

“I don’t know this time. No one might win. Or rather we might all lose. Your Strategic Air Command is on alert. DEFCON TWO, I’m told.”

Mahoney shook his head irritably. “What is it, Zamyatin? Why’d you go to my wife? Why’d you set up this meeting?”

“Our Missile Defense Service is on alert, too,” Zamyatin said, ignoring Mahoney’s questions for the moment. “Which is why there must be no incident on Soviet soil. You understand that.”

“I understand a lot of things, Zamyatin. But not what you want.”

The waiter finally came, and Zamyatin ordered a bottle of vodka and a bowl of pitted cherries. “Pushkins,” he said, turning to Mahoney. “The fruit of your sweet tooth and the alcohol to warm your insides.”

The band was playing mostly American rock-and-roll tunes from the fifties, and they listened for a while until the waiter came back with two stemmed glasses, a bottle of vodka, and a large bowl of pitted cherries.

“Like this,” Zamyatin said, smiling. He poured half a glass of vodka, put a cherry in his mouth, bit half through it and still holding the cherry between his teeth, sucked down the vodka, swilling it around in his mouth before swallowing. “The cherry absorbs some of the vodka,” he said, smacking his lips. “It tastes good. Try it.”

Mahoney poured himself some of the vodka. “Are you still working alone on this?”

“As alone as any man in our position can work,” Zamyatin said, staring at Mahoney’s glass. “Try it with a cherry.”

Mahoney sipped the vodka which was mild and quite good. “I’ll need more information if I’m to help out on this.”

Zamyatin looked up. “Sometime early Monday morning a guard at Lubyanka Prison II just outside the city was murdered. We found his body early today in a shallow grave. Whoever killed him stole his uniform, his papers, and his weapon.”

Mahoney poured more vodka for Zamyatin. “Have you come up with a connection?”

“Sakharov and the laser are still missing. We think he is still somewhere in Moscow, but beyond that there have been no leads except for one.”

Mahoney stared at the man and wondered about his children. He had not looked in on them as Carlisle had suggested he should. He did not think he could face them. What did you say to a child who wanted to be with his father?

“There is a dissident group that operates mostly here in Moscow and to a lesser extent in Leningrad. It’s an intellectual group. Mostly writers and artists and a few minor scientists who up until now have been considered a nuisance but quite harmless.”

“They grabbed Sakharov and the laser?”

Zamyatin shrugged and went through the routine of the pushkin again. When he was finished he seemed almost angry. “The Democratic Movement, they call themselves. Human rights, whatever that is. That’s what they are arguing about. Most of them are parasites. They prefer talking to working. Most of them aren’t even any good at what they profess are their occupations.”

“I’ve heard of the group,” Mahoney said. “One of them is—”

Zamyatin cut him off. “The one exception,” he said. “The man won the Nobel Prize for literature, if it can be called that. His claim to the prize was not that he could write, but that he was ‘oppressed’ and yet brave enough to write about what he considered intolerable conditions.”

“Sounds like a Party line to me,” Mahoney said sharply.

Zamyatin laughed lightly. “Yes it does. But when we compare this man to Tolstoy or Dostoevski, or even your Faulkner or Steinbeck, he comes out a very poor distant cousin.” He shook his head. “No, it was merely the circumstances that won him the Nobel Prize. A political expediency, nothing more.”

“You are saying that the Democratic Movement kidnaped Sakharov?”

“We think it is a possibility.”

“And the Lubyanka guard?”

Zamyatin leaned forward. “President Forsythe will be arriving at Vnukovo Official Airport at 1100 hours Thursday morning. From there he will come by motorcade into the city. If a man in civilian clothes carrying the laser is accompanied by another man in a Soviet army uniform, carrying authentic papers and toting an AK7 automatic rifle, they may not be challenged.”

What Zamyatin was saying was suddenly beginning to make a terrible kind of sense. It was plausible. And where there is a plausibility of action, guard against that contingency. It was in the handbook.

“Then it is a Soviet internal matter after all,” Mahoney said.

Zamyatin looked startled, as if Mahoney had said something totally unexpected. “I sincerely wish that were the case, my old friend. But it is not.”

It was Mahoney’s turn to be startled. What was the man trying to tell him?

“The Democratic Movement has been linked to the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“You’re nuts,” Mahoney said.

“Nuts?” Zamyatin asked.

Despite himself Mahoney laughed out loud. “Nuts. Crazy. Insane. Off your rocker.”

Zamyatin smiled. “Curious,” he said softly, and then his expression darkened again. “I wish I was nuts, as you say. But it is true. Your Nobel Prize winner, Nikolai Gamov, has been seen on more than one occasion in contact with a known American intelligence officer. Until this moment we let the situation lie. We were curious about the relationship. But since Gamov was of no intelligence value—no hard intelligence value—we merely watched.”

“When was the last time this American intelligence officer had contact with the Democratic Movement?”

Zamyatin fidgeted slightly. “I only just learned of the relationship this afternoon.”

“How long ago, Zamyatin?”

“Six months.”

Mahoney smiled sardonically. “And yet you are trying to convince me that the CIA has set the Democratic Movement up to assassinate President Forsythe?” He shook his head. “I won’t buy it, Zamyatin. It doesn’t wash. In the first place, six months ago the president didn’t even know he’d be coming to Moscow now. No one did. And in the second place, an operation like that takes planning. Big planning. Detailed time tables. Gamov would have had to have lived at the embassy for a week or more to learn all that would be necessary—considering, even for a moment, that such planning could have gone on under my nose without me knowing about it.” He shook his head again and started to rise. Zamyatin’s children would have to be released. This operation was at a dead end.

“Aren’t you curious about who Gamov’s contact is?”

“The word you mean to say is was. And, frankly, no—I’m not interested in learning the name of some low-ranking embassy staffer who likes literature and who had the misfortune to run into Gamov at some party one night six months ago. Some poor hapless son of a bitch who is listed now on your files as a CIA officer.”

“Carlisle,” Zamyatin said softly.

Mahoney just stared at him from where he stood over the table. The music no longer seemed loud, the room no longer smoky and stiflingly hot. Zamyatin was the only other person in the room. “What did you say?”

“Carlisle,” Zamyatin repeated no louder than before.

Mahoney sunk back down into his chair, took out a cigar and, never taking his eyes from Zamyatin’s, managed nevertheless to open the package, withdraw the cigar, and light it.

“I was assigned to watch Carlisle from the moment he came here to Moscow,” Zamyatin said evenly. “I and one other man, whom I’m sure you know runs what you call the factory—Major Balachov—were assigned to watch Carlisle and make sure he got into no other mischief.”

“This one got by you?” Mahoney heard himself asking.

Zamyatin nodded. “I received a Fifth Chief Directorate package on the situation only this afternoon. Complete with photographs.”

Mahoney apparently still appeared doubtful to Zamyatin.

“It is no use, my old friend. We may lie to you and to others, but we do not lie to each other. Carlisle has had contact on more than one occasion with Nikolai Gamov, head of the Democratic Movement of dissidents.”

“You are telling me that Carlisle is engineering the Democratic Movement in an attempt to assassinate the president of the United States?”

“It would appear so.”

Despite his dislike of Carlisle he found himself unwilling to believe what Zamyatin was telling him. And yet much of what had gone on over the past few days fell into place now. Carlisle’s insistence that the chief military attaché be present at the conference, for one. If Forsythe were to be assassinated there would have to be a quick and very solid link from the embassy to the Pentagon.

Then there was the business with Congdon. Had the man tumbled to Carlisle’s connection with the Democratic Movement, not knowing that the dissident group may have kidnaped Sakharov and the laser? And did Carlisle know that if Congdon mentioned it out loud someone would put two and two together? If that was the case, what did Carlisle have on Congdon to assure his silence?

And the bug on his own office telephone, and the guards watching Marge and their apartment, and his children back in the States. Was Carlisle going to hold his own children’s lives over his head?

Mahoney shook his head. Question everything. Especially that which seems most clear.

“It’s a neat operation, Zamyatin,” he said. “One that does you credit.”

“What?”

“I’ll admit you had me going for a minute there. You have tumbled to Carlisle, and now you want him out of Moscow. Permanently. Let a senior CIA officer charge Carlisle with an attempt to assassinate President Forsythe, and whether or not it can be proved, Carlisle is out. Neat.”

Zamyatin was shaking his head. “No, no, it is not like that—I swear it.”

“It didn’t work. And it is going to backfire on you.”

“Don’t be a fool. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

“You’re damned right…” Mahoney started, but Zamyatin waved him off.

“Let’s say you are right in what you are saying. Then you have simply to do nothing about it. Don’t blow the whistle on Carlisle. Say nothing to no one. You have already got plenty of hard intelligence about me and about the Komitet. Certainly enough to get rid of me.”

Mahoney started to laugh, but bit it off. Zamyatin was disturbing him.

“But let’s say for the moment that I am correct, Mahoney. Think, man … think! SAC is on alert. Our Missile Defense Service is on alert. Shooting in the Mideast is imminent. What would happen if President Forsythe were assassinated?”

“It’s frightening, but it’s not going to happen that way,” Mahoney said, not as sure of himself as he was making it sound. “What is going to happen is that I will go through the motions of checking out your story. I’ll check on Carlisle. But meanwhile, you and I are going to discuss a number of other things. Among them your organizational chart, your personnel and budget lines, and…”

Mahoney stopped in mid-sentence. A look of infinite sadness had come over Zamyatin’s features.

“No,” he said, his voice barely audible over the loud music. “I need your help, but that does not make me a traitor.”

“I can force it,” Mahoney said. The thought of using Zamyatin’s children this way was making him sick to his stomach.

Zamyatin shook his head. “The only point of weakness I have, Mahoney, is my children. I have them in protective custody.”

Mahoney just stared at him, too shocked to say anything.

“It is you who are going to help me. I am saddened to have to inform you that your two sons, your daughter-in-law and your three children in the United States have been placed in custody by my people there. They will be held until Thursday.”