XIII

Wednesday

A176BULLETIN

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) … In a joint communiqué this morning Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin informed the White House that nuclear weapons are being stockpiled in Syria.

The communiqué, released to the press in Washington by members of Sadat’s and Begin’s staffs, said intelligence sources had uncovered the weapons, which are of a tactical nuclear class.

“Tactical nuclear weapons have and are being stockpiled outside the Syrian capital city of Damascus,” the message said in part.

It seemed as if he had never slept. His mouth was foul from the vodka he had drank all morning with Zamyatin. And his mind seethed with everything they had talked about.

There were two final hurdles for him to face this morning. The first was Marge. Dear sweet Marge.

He would not be able to hide from her the fact that Michael, John, and the children had been dragged into this mess. Nor would he be able to hide from her his worry about it.

Marge, for all her apparent dowdiness, was a bright and highly perceptive woman. Combined with the fact that they had been married for nearly forty years, it made her almost clairvoyant when it came to what was on her husband’s mind.

He had walked from the embassy to Zamyatin’s apartment what seemed like a million years ago, but shortly after eight o’clock he had taken a bus from Kutuzovsky Prospekt to within half a block of his apartment building.

Moscow was a city of the day, and now it had come alive. The sidewalks were filled with pedestrians hurrying to work, the subways were crammed, and there was even a moderately heavy amount of automobile and truck traffic along the streets and broad thoroughfares.

The second hurdle he would have to face this morning was the situation at the embassy between Carlisle and Congdon and this operation. There were too many incongruities. Too many loose ends that had to be tied up.

As he walked up from the bus stop he was deep in thought and did not notice the black Ford Cortina embassy car waiting outside his apartment building.

Finch, the night O.D., was behind the wheel and he rolled down the window. “Mr. Mahoney,” he called out.

Mahoney stopped and looked up. Finch had a worried expression on his face.

“Mr. Carlisle sent me here for you. Said you’re needed.”

Mahoney approached the car. “How long have you been here?”

“About half an hour, sir.”

Mahoney turned. The Soviet guard by the front door was watching them.

“I knocked on your door, but there was no answer,” Finch was saying. “We were getting worried. We didn’t know where you were.”

“I was out…” Mahoney started to say turning back, but then his blood ran cold. “What did you say?”

Finch looked up at him confused. “Sir…?”

Mahoney reached through the open window and grabbed the man by the coat collar and pulled him forward so that his head banged on the doorframe. “What did you say about no one being home?”

“Please … Mr. Mahoney … you’re hurting me.”

Mahoney let the man go, turned and ran up the stairs into his apartment building, then took the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding and his breath ragged.

He would not let himself think it. He forced his mind blank. But his insides felt as if someone had kicked him.

On the third floor he rushed to the rear of the building, taking out his keys as he ran. The door was unlocked.

He entered his apartment and stopped short in the middle of the living room. It was deathly still. He could hear someone coming up the stairs at a run, probably Finch, as he strained to hear a sound, anything from the kitchen or the bedroom.

“Marge?” he called out as he moved slowly into the bedroom.

The bed was neatly made, and Mahoney could not tell if it had been slept in last night or not. The bathroom was empty and the kitchen was cleaned, the dishes stacked in the drain.

Finch came into the apartment as Mahoney went back out into the living room and threw open the closet door. Marge’s coat and her umbrella were still there.

He stood for a moment holding onto the doorframe with one hand and the closet door with the other staring at Marge’s coat and umbrella. She would not leave without them. Not on a day like this. She would not have left, that is, voluntarily.

Mahoney turned slowly to look at Finch who was staring at him. “Where is she?” he asked, his voice low and menacing.

Finch backed up a step. “Your wife, sir?”

“Where is she, Finch?” Mahoney said, closing the closet door and advancing a step.

“I don’t know, Mr. Mahoney. There was no one here when I arrived,” he said as he backed out the front door and into the corridor.

Mahoney followed him relentlessly, almost like an animal stalking its prey. “Carlisle said nothing to you?”

Finch was shaking his head. “Nothing, Mr. Mahoney. He just told me to come and pick you up, and bring you back to the embassy immediately. He said it was urgent. For your own safety.”

“Zamyatin,” Mahoney said half under his breath. He slammed the apartment door behind him, grabbed the obviously frightened O.D. by the arm and hustled him down the stairs.

The Soviet guard stepped out of his box as Mahoney and Finch emerged from the door. Without breaking his stride, Mahoney just glanced at the guard and said, “Don’t,” in Russian and continued down the stairs and across the sidewalk to the car.

He released Finch. “You drive.”

Finch just stood there confused. “Back to the embassy, sir?” he asked.

Mahoney shook his head. “Get in, goddammit,” he shouted, and he opened the door and climbed in the passenger side.

A moment later Finch came around the car and slipped in behind the wheel. He started the engine, put the car in gear, and then turned to Mahoney.

“Mr. Carlisle was upset. He gave me specific orders…”

“Screw Carlisle,” Mahoney said savagely. He pulled out his .45, yanked the slide back and pointed the gun toward Finch, keeping it below the level of the window so that the Russian guard who was watching them could not see. “Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Number eighteen. Now!”

Finch’s eyes had grown wide. “Yessir,” he said, and he pulled away from the curb.

The entire fucking thing had been a setup. The thought burned deeply in Mahoney’s mind. He put his gun away. But why? They wanted something from him. But what?

It was not merely hard intelligence. Or at least it did not seem that way to Mahoney. At least not on the basis of what he and Zamyatin had talked about last night.

But it was some kind of Russian operation. Mahoney was almost certain of it. It was an operation that had been deliciously elegant, at least to this point. It was almost like some sort of vast chess game, a game at which the Russians were masters.

It had begun legitimately enough in the KGB, Mahoney thought, and he held on to that premise almost like a drowning man holds onto a life preserver. Or was it a straw?

*   *   *

“The kidnaping happened around midnight Saturday,” Zamyatin had said looking up from where he sat on the couch.

Mahoney had taken a small glass of the vodka and he sipped at it thoughtfully. “Why are you telling me this?”

Zamyatin looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. A picture of George Congdon looking similarly distressed popped into Mahoney’s mind, and he wondered at the similarity between the two men.

“Something is going to happen tomorrow morning,” Zamyatin said. “Can’t you see that? We’ve got to stop it. You and I.”

“Why us? Why have we been dragged into this?”

Zamyatin shook his head in despair. “Why is anyone dragged into anything? We’re in the business, that’s why. We were handy.”

“It doesn’t wash, Yurianovich,” Mahoney said. “We have your children.”

“Almost better you than us…” Zamyatin said under his breath. Mahoney did not quite catch the words.

“What did you say?

Again Zamyatin shook his head. “Nothing,” he said and stared at Mahoney, then took a deep swallow from his glass. “You have my children?”

“No. But they are in the embassy. I am sure of it.”

“And your children? Michael and John and his wife and your three grandchildren?”

Mahoney’s gut tightened. “My own people picked them up just as your agents were about to grab them. We forced your men to send the affirmative signal.”

“Who told you that?”

“Carlisle.”

Zamyatin smiled. “And you believed him? You have spoken with your children?”

Again Mahoney’s gut tightened. “I spoke to them on the telephone,” he lied. “Carlisle was telling me the truth.”

Zamyatin looked away. “I proposed the order to have them picked up. We needed a lever against you.”

Mahoney said nothing, thinking of his own order against Zamyatin’s children. An order that had successfully been carried out.

“I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to do it, you must understand that. I withdrew the order, but it was too late. You were to be converted. They wanted you as a double. You are in a good position. You could have proved very useful.”

“What was I to you?” Mahoney asked, feeling a sense of pity for the man.

“If your president is assassinated tomorrow there will very likely be a war. No matter whose plot it was. Your government could not sit still.”

“And your government would have to make a preemptive strike.”

Zamyatin shrugged. “It would be a moot point. Once the shots were fired there would be no end to it.” He looked into Mahoney’s eyes with a strange intensity. “That cannot be allowed to happen. We must stop it. You and I.”

Mahoney’s right eyebrow arched. “Spell it out.”

Zamyatin smiled, but the gesture was not a happy one. “Communications, Mahoney. That is what you and I need before it is too late for even us to do anything.”

Mahoney inclined his head slightly. “The Center was lit up like a Christmas tree all day Sunday. Why?”

“Sakharov and the laser device were kidnaped. General Barynin himself called the Komitet’s officer corps together for a meeting.”

“Unusual.”

“Unprecedented. The budget was unlimited. All standard operations were suspended for the duration, and each duty chief, each section head, each division commander, and each directorate administrator was instructed to operate as if someone in his area of expertise, some organization internal or external to the Soviet Union, had kidnaped the scientist and his deadly machine.”

“Did Barynin tell you why Sakharov had been kidnaped?”

“No. He only told us that two men identifying themselves as Fifth Chief Directorate officers came for the professor and took him away. We were given composite drawings of the two men based on the university guards’ descriptions.”

“And?”

Zamyatin shrugged. “They are Russian, but beyond that I do not know.”

“Anyone else in the Center recognize them?”

“We do not have interdepartmental communications at my level.”

“No,” Mahoney said, sighing. “Neither do we.” He was thinking of Congdon’s and Carlisle’s relationship. “So you went on a full Center alert to find Sakharov and the laser.”

“Yes,” Zamyatin said. “But with one curious provision. That the operation, which has been labeled CLEAN SWEEP, be completed no later than 1100 hours Thursday.”

Mahoney’s breath caught in his throat. “That is the president’s ETA at Vnukovo.”

Zamyatin ignored the conclusion. “My department concerns itself with every foreign embassy in this town except for the Chinese. The completion time and date General Barynin imposed on us made me think of the American embassy.”

“I don’t follow you.”

Zamyatin laughed sardonically. “Kennedy’s assassination was a CIA plot.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Mahoney snapped. “Some of the best investigators in the world have been over that theory a hundred times. It doesn’t hold up. Oswald killed Kennedy. If anything, the man had connections with your people.”

“Let us not argue the point. It is meaningless at this late date. Suffice it to say my feelings about the matter—my beliefs—caused me to take a look at operations in your embassy.”

“Our surveillance told us that the Center was on full alert, so we geared up an operation, labeled LOOK SEE to see what you people were up to. We were using the preparations for our president’s arrival as a cover.”

“The presidential preparations were a cover, all right,” Zamyatin agreed. “But for what?”

Mahoney said nothing, his thoughts once again going back to Congdon and to Carlisle. What was going on under his nose in the embassy? Stewart Anderson was not in on it, Mahoney was certain of it, although this mess had come up when the ambassador himself was conveniently out of the country.

Zamyatin had gotten up from the couch, and had gone to the window and was peering out at the falling snow. “Whoever is pulling the strings is doing so on two levels,” he said, not turning around. “Either that or someone is taking advantage of an existing situation.”

He turned around finally and came slowly back to the couch. Before he sat down he poured himself and Mahoney more vodka from the bottle which was now nearly empty.

“To life,” he said, holding up his glass.

Mahoney toasted with him, and they both drank. Then Zamyatin sat down.

“We went on full Center alert, and your people found out about it. You in turn went on embassy alert and my people found out about that.”

“The opening moves,” Mahoney said, putting his glass down.

“Yes, my old friend, but you must understand those were the opening moves for only one of the games. There are two operations going on at the same time. I’m convinced of it.”

“Go on,” Mahoney said.

“Whoever was calling the shots for this operation was looking for a contact. We’re busy, you’re busy—what better time for tendrils to snake out? We wanted to know what your people were up to and you wanted to know what was going on with us.”

“You’re saying some kind of a contact had to be made?”

“Exactly. Sooner or later there had to be a point of contact between our two services. It just happened to be between us.”

“You mean you,” Mahoney said. “It was you who contacted me, remember?”

“Yes, but it had to happen sooner or later. If not between you and me, then between your cook from Tennessee and one of my people.”

“Zeta-one, I believe he was called,” Mahoney said. The class six review of personnel had uncovered the man’s regular contacts with the Soviets. Last night he had been shipped back to the States to stand trial.

“Congratulations,” Zamyatin said.

“He couldn’t have been much help.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Zamyatin admitted. “But he was better than nothing until you and I came along.”

“We did,” Mahoney said after a moment’s hesitation. “And the game moved into high gear.”

“I had to be sure of your cooperation,” Zamyatin said, obviously with much distaste. “And you had to be sure of mine. I ordered the kidnaping of your children and you ordered the kidnaping of mine.”

“Two minds working along the same path. I didn’t like it any better than you did, Yurianovich,” Mahoney said. “I, too, withdrew my recommended order.”

“Carlisle?”

Mahoney nodded. “He wouldn’t leave it alone.”

“Neither would my people.”

“It would appear, however, that the weapons we were to use against each other have been neutralized.”

Zamyatin looked startled.

“My people picked up your children as planned, and in addition they picked up my kids and placed them in protective custody. But you don’t believe that.”

“No,” Zamyatin said. “I have it on the highest authority that my children are in protective custody in the Center, and that yours are being held someplace in Montana.”

“You have spoken with your children?”

Zamyatin nodded. “It is a holiday for them—no school. And I promised to take them on a regular holiday as soon as this is over with.”

Zamyatin was lying, of course, but Mahoney derived no pleasure from that knowledge, because it was very possible that Carlisle had lied to him about his children being in protective custody in San Diego.

“So,” Mahoney said. “As it turns out we have no levers to use against each other. The operation is neutralized.”

“So it would appear.”

“Then why are we talking with each other?”

“Because there still is the problem of Sakharov and the laser and your president.”

*   *   *

Mahoney looked up out of his reflections at Finch who was glancing at him from time to time as he drove. The rain was falling so hard that the windshield wipers were nearly useless, and Finch had slowed the car to a crawl.

“Mr. Carlisle is going to raise hell when we get back,” Finch said.

“You’re a good man,” Mahoney said. “Don’t get yourself involved in this. You’ll get mauled.”

The man flinched. “Yes, sir. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t,” Mahoney mumbled, and he went back to his thoughts.

*   *   *

“I found no connection between Carlisle and Nikolai Gamov.” Mahoney said, telling another lie.

“Nevertheless it is documented,” Zamyatin said. “But there is more now, much more. Some of it puzzling.”

Mahoney had not smoked since he had arrived, but he pulled out a cigar now and began unwrapping it. “Are you still on the idea that the president is going to be assassinated.”

“That’s the second part of the operation,” Zamyatin said with feeling. “It will happen, I am sure of it now.”

Mahoney stopped what he was doing, the lit match held in mid-air several inches from the end of his cigar. The clock in the vestibule chimed five times, and Mahoney shook out the match. “What have you learned?”

Zamyatin jumped up and began pacing the room. “I’ll tell you everything. But you’re going to have to help now. There is no way around it. Both of us are in it.”

“Go on,” Mahoney said, stuffing the unlit cigar back in his breast pocket.

Zamyatin continued his pacing. “First of all there is no disputing the fact that Nikolai Gamov, the Nobel Prize winning writer, is nominally a CIA agent. More specifically we believe that Gamov has and is supplying Carlisle with information about prisons throughout the Soviet Union. Additionally, Gamov is the leader of at least one faction of the Democratic Movement.”

“Therefore, Carlisle may be pulling some of the Democratic Movement’s strings.”

“Exactly.”

Mahoney no longer felt the idea was ridiculous. Carlisle was a highly capable man. If indeed he was in partial control of the Soviet dissident group, he would use them to his own best advantage, whatever that might be.

“A Volvo station wagon was found yesterday eight miles from Lubyanka II prison. Inside was found a very small blood stain—the same blood type as the murdered guard—and one clip of automatic rifle ammunition.”

Mahoney just watched Zamyatin pace.

“The station wagon has been identified. It belongs to a close personal friend of Nikolai Gamov’s. A fellow member of the Democratic Movement. He is missing at the moment.”

Mahoney spoke up. “Carlisle is connected with Gamov. Gamov is connected with the murder of a prison guard. Therefore, Carlisle needed the prison guard’s uniform, papers, and weapon for some reason.”

Zamyatin had stopped and he was looking across the room at Mahoney. “Don’t toy with this, Wallace,” he said earnestly. “Please.”

“I am not, Yurianovich,” Mahoney said. “I promise.”

“Something else came up … last night,” Zamyatin said. Now he seemed agitated although he had stopped his pacing and was still staring at Mahoney. “One of my own people—Major Boris Balachov—chief of the department that is charged with watching your Embassy—I saw him with Nikolai Gamov last night.”

*   *   *

“We’re here, Mr. Mahoney,” Finch was saying. “This is eighteen Kutuzovsky Prospekt.”

Mahoney looked at the man hunched over the wheel peering through the windshield at the apartment building across the street.

Carlisle, Gamov, and Balachov. The American, the dissident, and the Russian.

Did Carlisle maneuver Gamov and the Democratic Movement into planning the assassination of President Forsythe tomorrow morning?

Did Major Balachov maneuver Gamov and the Democratic Movement into planning the assassination of President Forsythe tomorrow morning?

Or did Gamov himself for some reason or reasons unknown plan the assassination of President Forsythe tomorrow morning?

Mahoney wanted to be convinced that if Carlisle was behind the plan it was not intended to lead to the president’s death, that it was some kind of an operation designed to upset the Russians—cause a flap and therefore cause someone, somewhere some embarrassment.

Mahoney shook his head.

That was too thin. Too weak. There was something else. Something missing.

He focused on Finch and then looked out the window. Zamyatin’s apartment building was across the street.

“Wait here,” he said and reached for the door handle, but Finch pulled his arm back.

“I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Mr. Mahoney, but I hope you have thought it out.”

Mahoney looked at him, but the image of Marge in his mind’s eye was overwhelming. “Just be here; I’ll need some quick transportation.”

Finch looked alarmed. “Sir,” he said. “What … I mean you aren’t…?”

“Just be here,” Mahoney said. “And keep the car running.” He got out of the car, crossed the street in the heavy rain and entered Zamyatin’s apartment building.

Zamyatin had apparently known that his children were at the American embassy, and he had also known that Mahoney’s children were safe. The only point of weakness left was Marge. And for that, the sonofabitch would die.

Heedless of the odd looks he had gotten from a number of people in the lobby of the building, Mahoney took the stairs up to Zamyatin’s fifth floor apartment where he stopped at the door to listen. He could hear someone moving around inside.

Evidently Zamyatin had not yet gone to the Center. When they had parted less than an hour before, they had agreed to return to their respective offices and dig for more answers. If there indeed was a plot against President Forsythe’s life, it would have to be stopped.

Mahoney pulled his .45 from beneath his coat and tried the door. It was unlocked. He cocked the hammer of the gun, took a deep breath, threw open the door and leaped inside.

The apartment was in a mess. Furniture was overturned and cut apart, stuffing strewn everywhere. Drawers were out of cabinets, picture frames broken apart, and even the walls and ceilings had been broken into; gaping holes in the plaster exposed the studs and joists.

A wet overcoat and hat were flung carelessly atop the overturned couch.

Mahoney advanced a step, his mind racing to a dozen different possibilities, his heart hammering nearly out of his chest, and, curiously, Marge’s soft, womanly smell of soap and perfume and shampoo sharp in his mind.

A large man, obviously Russian, appeared at the doorway from one of the back rooms.

For an instant he stood frozen, but then he grunted, dropped to one knee and fumbled beneath his coat.

Mahoney extended his right arm, almost in slow motion, and pulled the trigger of the .45. The gun bucked in his hand, the roar so loud it felt as if the entire room would collapse on his head, and the man in the doorway seemed to leap backward.

And then everything speeded up. Mahoney raced across the room, flattening himself against the wall next to the doorway: He cautiously peered around the doorframe into a bedroom that was in the same state of total disarray as the living room. No one was there except for the man at his feet whose legs were jerking spasmodically. Half the man’s forehead was gone, the white matter of his brain mixed with bits of bone and frothy blood.

Mahoney bent down and quickly went through the man’s pockets until he found his wallet. He straightened up and opened it. The man’s photograph on a KGB identification card stared out at him.

Mahoney pocketed the wallet, went back to the front door and opened it a crack. The corridor was deserted, but for how long it would remain that way was anyone’s guess, although Mahoney was fairly certain it would not be for long.

He slipped out of the apartment, carefully closing the door behind him, and with the .45 in his coat pocket, his finger on the trigger, he forced himself to walk at a normal pace to the stairwell, and then down the stairs to the ground floor.

The lobby was deserted when he came through the stairwell door, but as he went out the front door he could hear sirens in the distance.

Finch was still across the street in the embassy car, the motor running, and within a few seconds Mahoney was piling into the front seat beside the man.

“I want you to drive to the embassy now,” Mahoney said. “But normally. Not too slow, not too fast. I don’t want to attract any attention.”

Finch put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. He rolled up the window. “What happened up there? It sounded almost like a gunshot.”

“It was,” Mahoney said absently. He was thinking about Marge … dear sweet Marge … so he did not see the color drain from Finch’s face.