In the Company of Spies Read online

  “Can you give me a little hint as to what it’s all about?” Rust hesitated. Why trust the phone? “We must discuss the finest ways of consuming large quantities of golden Bacardi, what else?” He hung up, translated the notes in full, and judged them to be of no great value.

  *

  Policemen were swarming all over the bar when Rust arrived. Not a unique occasion in the streets around the mouth of the Miami River. Schramm was already on his second Bacardi. “Don’t mind the cops,” he assured Rust. “Some bargirl got herself battered to death.”

  “Julia-Rosa?”

  “How did you guess?”

  Rust downed his drink in one long gulp and ordered another. “She’s the one who wanted to … show you something.”

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “I wanted to introduce you. She thought what she had was too important to show anyone she knew.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not a clue?”

  “No.” That sheet of paper felt like a malignant lump pressing his chest.

  “Let’s go and see her.”

  Schramm had a quiet word with the officer in charge, and they were allowed into the little back room the bargirls used in rotation. It had four walls, a curtained window, a single bed and a washstand. El Paraíso customers were not very particular. The owner of the bar had already told the police that after hours of telephoning, Julia-Rosa had obtained his permission to use the room from closing time with an all-night john.

  “She’s in a bad state,” said a detective, who was restating the obvious. “Must have been some goddam maniac.”

  Or someone going a long, long way to find out what she had for sale, thought Rust and Schramm, but neither of them said anything. Nobody knew who her client had been. Nobody knew the numbers she had called for hours. It was anybody’s guess whether she had revealed the whereabouts of the “shopping list.”

  “Be in touch if you can suddenly remember what she tried to trade,” said Schramm as they were about to part. “For if that maniac thinks that you knew something, I might have to drink alone all that firewater the Upstairs floats on.” He laughed. It was a good joke. “And say no more — I’ll keep warm.”

  Rust drove south, across the river, along S.W. 8th Street, up to the Orange Bowl and back. As far as he could tell, nobody followed him. He went into a store and looked at some electric typewriters. He tried out one, typing a few lines, then a few more, studied the result, and absentmindedly slipped the paper into his pocket. He examined the typewriter, and with exceptional clumsiness he tore the ribbon. He pulled it all out, apologized, dirtied his hands, apologized more, offered to pay for the ribbon, promised to think about his choice, and retreated in great embarrassment.

  He bought some glue and two envelopes. Returning to his car, he tore the two typing tests out of the sheet. The first test said only: THIS COMES FROM FIDEL’S DESK; ABOUT TEN DAYS OLDER THAN DATE OF POSTMARK. CHECK IF DATE COINCIDES WITH VISIT OF SOME RUSSIAN TOP-LEVEL DELEGATION. He slipped it into the envelope with the “shopping list,” then glued the second test — a Mr. Elliott Repson’s fashionable Georgetown, Washington, address — to the outside. The second envelope he used for mailing $500 in cash to Julia-Rosa’s eldest younger brother. Although he didn’t even know how old the boy was, Rust hated him at that moment. Brothers. He wondered if the kid had ever blackmailed Julia-Rosa with his own helplessness and the shameless display of his dependence on her.

  *

  If only it had been made of fine brass, the curved horn could have adorned a turn-of-the-century Daimler. The shape would have been just right. But as it was a tinny contraption in the boring field gray of German World War I infantry, it was doomed to obscurity nailed to the corner of Moscow’s Kalinin Prospekt and Granovsky ulitsa. Yet this afternoon, when it croaked and rattled, it might have signalled the arrival of one of those historical moments that would hardly be recognized and even less recorded at the time. To the unwieldy militiaman on point duty the wound was routine. He knew he had plenty of time: the convoy of at least four Zils, black and haughty hand-tooled limousines, would only be rolling through the Kremlin’s Kutafya Gate where the KGB guard would keep his finger on the button that operated the horns and buzzers along the route.

  The militiaman’s tongue shifted the long, burned-out butt of his papiros from the corner of his mouth. He tasted the foul residue left on his lip and spat out the nicotine-gooey cardboard. A man of awakening authority, he then swaggered some seventy yards down the Granovsky to block all the one-way traffic indefinitely. Behind him, his colleague cleared the corner of pedestrians.

  Both sides of the narrow street were lined bumper to bumper with black cars that ignored and obliterated the No Parking signs. Their drivers, soldiers and civilians, acknowledged the sound of the horn with almost imperceptible reflexes. Some took a respectful step or two backward. Others touched their caps, hair or ties for reassurance, as before asking a girl for the next dance on gala night at the Slavyansky Bazaar. It was not often that citizens of the capital might catch a glimpse of their leader in the flesh, and these select servants of the elite knew that Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had a town home in the red-brick block of that street.

  In the back seat of a parked Chaika, the penultimate status symbol rated only one rung below the Zil, a massive man with a sweaty baby face listened intently. Nature seemed to have tried to compensate him for his ugliness with a magnificently full head of wavy blond hair, but somehow it only emphasized the hog nose that filled the precious little space between his baby-blue eyes. He heard the death rattle of the horn. It slowly expired. He glanced toward the first floor of No. 2 Granovsky that bore the obscure BUREAU OF PASSES sign opposite the redbrick building, then raised some papers to his eyes only to lower and raise them once more. It was a signal that would be noted behind one of the ostensibly blind one-way windows in No. 2. If anybody guessed his reason, the death rattle would soon rise from his throat instead of the gray horn. He wondered why he had risked being there at all. Could he still back out of it?

  In the wide beam of Kalinin Prospekt, police motorcycles swept down from the Kremlin, past the Lenin Library. Intersections were blocked. Traffic in the avenue itself, never even adequate to justify the majestic expanse, would flow freely, ignoring red lights.

  The convoy of Zils zoomed into view, using the narrow no-man’s-land between continuous white lines in the middle which was out of bounds for ordinary citizens at all times. Such central reservations used to be the preserve of the czar’s carriage. Now they were known as “Chaika lanes,” where nothing and nobody must obstruct the progress of the mighty few riding in their Chaikas and Zils.

  The convoy, oblivious of No Right Turn and One Way Street signs, turned into Granovsky ulitsa and soon stopped. There was a hush, commotion and slamming of car doors — and Khrushchev was already inside the red-brick.

  The Zils backed out of the street, and the militiamen freed the traffic. The hognosed man spat one word toward his driver: “Wait.” He then walked to the entrance of No. 2, where he flashed his pass toward the guard. It was the best of Moscow’s secret stores, where access was controlled by a strict grading of the political and military hierarchy. When he had gained his first pass to this building, he knew he had arrived at the peak region and was entitled to “Kremlin rations”: a wide range of ordinary but scarce and luxury goods, never seen in shops or even lower-grade secret stores, for which he would pay with vouchers that cost him a tenth or less of their market value. Above him, at the very tip of the summit, were the few who would get anything and everything offered and delivered free of charge from all corners of the globe. He glanced back toward the red-brick building. He knew that the elevator in there that carried Nikita Sergeyevich would not have stopped on the second floor, where his apartment was. It would have gone on, another two stories up, to where Frunze and other notables had once lived, a spacious apartment now occupied b
y bulky Ekaterina Furtseva, Minister of Culture.

  The Zils, the croaky horn, the upheaval in the streets — what a lot of fuss for a bad fuck, thought hognose as he arrived at the door of the room set aside for a private “whiskey-tasting party.” He entered without knocking.

  There were a few armchairs and a large table packed with Scotch and bourbon, each bottle a different brand. There were a few malts, too, and crystal shot glasses, but no waiters. Three generals and a civilian greeted the new arrival with nervous nods — a cool reception by Russian standards. There was a long moment of silence. “We’d better take a drink,” said the rotund marshal of the artillery, and opened a bottle. All drained their glasses in single gulps. The bottle was pushed aside, another was opened, and a second round was poured.

  “Let’s take it easy, shall we?” the most heavily decorated general warned them. He walked to the window and stared at the red-brick building. The thought of Nikita Sergeyevich in the arms of Catherine the Third, as Madame Furtseva was known, disgusted him. He felt nothing but contempt for the pair. Khrushchev was an upstart. All right, Stalin had been a killer and all that, but the tyrant had had stature and you knew where you stood with him. The whole country knew. Now Atyushka had gone. His people might be freed from paternal authority, but orphans they were nevertheless. His generals might have been shot or sent to the camps, but those who were permitted to serve would not have suffered the indignity of having their pay and pensions cut. And this, this Minister of Culture, relatively out of favor in the party, but worming her way back to the top, was just as despicable as her ally and lover. When she had become the first woman member of the Presidium, she used to campaign for the abolition of bonuses paid to army officers according to rank. Bitch.

  The general fingered his Order of Lenin, then dusted, absentmindedly, his Stalingrad memorial medal (“Yes, call it Volgograd if you wish, but I earned it at Stalingrad!”) and listened to the men clinking their glasses behind him. He turned to face them. You all despise her, he thought, but this time we ought to be grateful to her; it’s because of her that he’s returned to Moscow, leaving Nina Petrovna still holidaying with the rest of his family in Crimea — because of her that we know exactly where he’ll spend the next couple of hours, and that we, all of us in this room, can be sure that by no freak coincidence will he summon all of us at the same time. The thought of somebody’s asking questions, not to mention discovering some sort of special connection among these men, made him shiver. The stakes were high. Even if this was only their second meeting, even if nothing had ever been actually spelled out, even if each of them was present only to represent a mightier patron who would not wish to contribute more to these proceedings than a nod of approval by proxy.

  The general viewed each man in turn. One or the other might already be reporting on them to some authority. Perhaps he himself ought to submit a report. But even then, uncomfortable questions would be asked. Why only now? Why not after the first meeting? Why not before the first meeting?

  All of them waited for hognose to speak. He drank up. “My friend’s approved. It’s up to us now to stop this harebrained scheme of gambling. If it misfires, it could ruin our country. And I mean ruin it completely.”

  Drinks were poured. The manager of the store would have to be convinced that serious tasting had taken place.

  “What if the gamble pays off?” asked the general, still polishing his medals.

  “Even worse. For then we could be stuck with the gambler forever.”

  They all turned to face the window and the lovenest in the red-brick building beyond it. Then hognose spoke about a minor military reorganization plan and its instigator. This was the agreed cover topic to be discussed at length as if the opening remarks had referred to that — for the room might be bugged. Any place might be bugged.

  The general touched his combat decorations one after another. The defence of Odessa, the dash to the Vistula, Berlin. He felt that all eyes were on him. Now it was up to him to make the move. He had already selected a colonel for the task. They would not want to know the name or anything else. It was safer not to know. Damn them. And their whiskey. “I want some Starka.” He knew he could rely on the marshal of the artillery, who always carried a leather-clad hip flask containing the best matured vodka. He was not to be disappointed. While he drank, the others let the conversation drift toward the safer ground of differences between Scotch and Irish.

  Autumn

  1962

  Thursday, August 30

  Lord Russell’s nuclear disarmament campaigners return beaten from Red Square demo. USSR denies creating “Fortress Cuba.” Marilyn Monroe mourned; Lolita and Dr. No hailed. U-2s photograph SAM sites in Cuba.

  *

  RUST CUT THE ENGINE AND LET HIS BOAT, THE HALF PINT, drift gently to the jetty. He paused and listened to the silence of the mangroves. After a few seconds he was able to distinguish between the sounds that made up the silence. The humming of the wind. Birds tiptoeing. Leaves pushed. Something running? Mice? The discreet yattering of the water. And something else. The cluck-cluck of a tied-up boat flirting with waves. Except that there was no boat in sight. Must be hidden somewhere. He looked up. The Upstairs was in complete darkness. If he had unexpected visitors, they would leave their boat at the jetty, turn on all the lights, help themselves to cold beer and pass the time with hunting mosquitoes as big as roaches.

  He walked to the bottom of the stairs, where he could not be seen from the house. After a pause, he kicked to loosen a wedge under the first stair — he really ought to fix it more permanently one of these days. The whole structure began to creak in the wind. As if someone was climbing it. He quietly ran up the concrete ramp some twenty yards farther on and, hidden by the flowers and lush leathery leaves of oleanders, reached the back of the house. As the Upstairs was built leaning onto the steep bank, it had two stories on the waterfront, and its second floor was ground level at the back. He stepped in through a window and moved noiselessly along the tiled corridor to the living-dining room. The visitor, if there was one, would be listening to the creaking stairs. Rust kicked in the door, hit the light switch and pulled back in a single move. A young man with a crewcut, gun in hand, jumped up from Rust’s rocking chair. His face showed confusion: the sudden light and the sources of sounds did not tally. And Rust’s voice, coming from yet another direction, mystified him even more.

  “Do me a favor, Junior, put that gun away. Because I also have one.”

  Junior stood still. Only his eyes searched for the speaker. He noticed the serving hatch and moved slowly to pocket his gun. “Okay?”

  “I’d prefer it if you threw it out of the window.”

  “I’m CIA. Miami station.”

  “Oh really?”

  “No, O’Connor.” He looked stunned when Rust laughed. “You want me to ident?”

  “After you get rid of the artillery.”

  Reluctantly, O’Connor pushed the gun out of the window. Rust came in the room. He carried no gun. Only a banana. O’Connor blushed. In close-up he looked even younger. “Sorry about the surprise visit,” said Junior.

  “Next time maybe you’ll phone first, okay? And switch on the light if you drop in and wait for me.”

  “It’s just that I fell asleep while I was waiting.”

  “And got out your gun and hid your boat in your dreams? Or did you try to impress me?” And before O’Connor could think of another excuse: “Just tell me what you want.” O’Connor pulled out a notebook, cleared his throat, smacked his lips and gave the appearance of a man trying to revive the mood of a well-rehearsed act after some rude interruption by the audience. “Well, yes … er … does the name,” he read, “the name … Mat-vey Sem-yonovich … “ He pronounced it with difficulty, and repeated it now, remembering to watch Rust’s face for signs of fright, pleasure, recognition: “Matvey Semyonovich. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “Not for me to say.�
�� He had now regained his rhythm. “It may well be a mistake.”

  “What?”

  “The message.”

  “For me?”

  “That’s what I was told. But then, as I understand it, the man was dying and probably confused.”

  “And so am I. Confused, I mean.”

  “Sorry, sir, my fault. And probably not important at all. It’s only that there was this Russki sailor who jumped ship in Havana, got himself fixed up with some refugees and tried to slip across to Key West. Their boat was picked up adrift and full of bullet holes by our Coast Guard, who towed it in to … er, us, if you know what I mean. They said the tovarish had died on the way.”

  “But not before he could say that he had a message for me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he had my address?”

  “Yes.” O’Connor checked his notes. “Here we are. Mr. Helmut Rust, the Upstairs, near Key Largo, Florida.” Because he was reading it, he never had a chance to notice the tightening of Rust’s face. “And the message ran: ‘Matvey Semyonovich was very ill but he’s much better now.’ That’s all.” He looked up. “And you say it means nothing to you, sir?”

  “Nothing.” Rust tried to think of the quickest way to get rid of the young bungler. “Wasn’t worth your trip, let alone risking your life, was it?”

  *

  Schramm was raving, and Rust listened patiently. “They’re crazy! We’re doomed. They’re fucking crazy!”

  “Who’s crazy?”

  “Fucking crazy, my son, fucking crazy. All of them. The entire Congress of the U.S. of A. ought to have its collective head examined.”

  “I’m too drunk to follow you.”

  “Liar. I’ve seen you flake out but never getting drunk. Not once, not twice, so don’t gimme that shit. They’ve just defeated JFK. Medicare for old folks? Out! School-aid program? Out! Foreign aid? Cut it! They’re traitors. All of them.”