There was only one small detail to take care of before the meeting. After lunch there was a punch bowl and a semblance of relaxed mingling. I kept my eye on the Secret Service men, waiting for one to isolate himself. Finally Jerry Kepperman, the second in command, drifted over to stare out the window. I sidled up next to him and turned on the watch.
“Do you have a second, Jerry?”
“Sure, Dr. Rafferty. What’s up?”
“I want you to find me a small pistol. Something I can stick in my belt or pocket without being obvious.”
“No problem. Little revolver in my ankle holster.” He started to reach for it.
“No, not now. In two minutes, I want you to go to the men’s room next door. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t remember any of this. Nothing I said to you. Just follow directions.”
“Okay.”
I went straight to the men’s room and waited. It was dirty, but not as noisome as most of the Soviet public bathrooms I’d been in, a concession to the hotel’s foreign guests. There was nobody there, but I had to assume there were listeners.
Kepperman came in, and I motioned him over to the urinal. I flushed it and whispered in his ear, “Go into the first stall and take off the pistol and ankle holster. Leave them on the floor.” He nodded and did it, muted rip of Velcro. When he came back, I flushed again: “You will remember having loaned the pistol to another agent You’ll get it back tonight”
“Okay.”
“Go back to the luncheon now.” He did. I went to the stall. I hoped that if there were hidden cameras or people peeping, they didn’t have the insides of the individual toilets covered. If they were being that thorough, I was done for anyhow.
Snub-nosed Colt.38 Special. Six shots; six more in a rubber loader taped onto the side of the holster. Not much protection against the Secret Service and KGB collections of Ingrams and Kalishnikovs, but I didn’t really plan to shoot it out with anybody. I just wanted an edge.
I strapped the pistol onto my ankle and came out of the stall. Still alone. For the hundredth time I looked, and the envelopes were still in my inside coat pocket, untouched. For the hundredth time my fingers found the throwaway plastic glove in the other pocket.
There would be no fingerprints. One envelope and its contents were authentic White House stationery, typed upon by a White House secretary. The other, which had been harder to arrange, was heavyweight Russian bond, transcribed from my handwriting by a secretary in the Soviet embassy in Washington
Perhaps we had been careful enough. If we hadn’t, well, at least I wasn’t unarmed.
Menenkov and I got there a few minutes before our charges. The room was bare, scrubbed too clean. There was something in the air that made my eyes hurt. “—Are you nervous?” he asked.
“Da. You’ve done things like this before?”
“Not this scale. I’ve worked with Dr. Vardanyan in French and Polish, and with some other people in English.” He shook his head slowly and continued in Russian. “—But nothing really like this. The importance of it makes me a little sick. What if I make a mistake?” He made a helpless fluttering gesture with his hands and switched back to English. “I can’t help thinking: This is my children’s future. Even though the meeting is largely symbolic.”
He stood up and walked three paces to the wall. “My own life is… has been… more than adequate; I have no complaints. But I have a boy who’s just started university, and a girl… who is still a girl. It’s their future. I worry.”
“No need to worry, not about language. We can backstop each other. You know the phrase?”
“I get the sense of it, yes. If one of us makes a mistake, the other can point it out; and there’s no harm.”
“That’s right.”
“True, and thank you. But I woke up this morning thinking I would much rather read about this in the newspaper than be part of it Don’t you feel that way?”
I didn’t have to lie. The door opened, and Vardanyan and Fitzpatrick came in, along with Kepperman and a Russian guard. We stood for the leaders. The guards waited until they both sat down and then backed out to rejoin the other guards outside.
Each of the four places at the table had a yellow tablet, pencil, pen, and an agenda typed in both languages. Fitzpatrick picked his up and scanned it “Most of this is pro forma. It’s only the last three we really have anything to argue about, right?” I translated.
“—That’s right,” Vardanyan said. “—I still have some reservations about Item Six, ‘Trade restrictions on potentially sensitive industrial products.’ My advisers are uncomfortable with the wording of that. But it’s something for specialists to work out; I think we agree on the sense of it.” He smiled thinly. “—If not the necessity.” Menenkov translated.
For about an hour the two men sparred politely, mostly over trade relations and human rights. Long enough. I took a deep breath.
I turned on the watch at its highest setting. Put on the plastic glove and took out the two envelopes. Vardanyan was starting to speak. “—Excuse me,” I broke in. “—I’m in charge now.”
The two Russians nodded. “What’s up?” Fitzpatrick said.
“Just a minute.” I handed Vardanyan his envelope. “—Please read this very carefully.”
“What’s the glove for?”
“Fingerprints.” I handed Fitzpatrick his envelope. “Read this carefully. You’re about to deliver it as a speech to a couple of billion people.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t take the envelope. He just looked at me. “What the blazing hell are you talking about?”
I’d never actually had my blood run cold before. It’s an accurate expression.
Fitzpatrick started to rise; half-turned toward the door. I dragged the.38 out and cocked it. “Don’t If you call out, I’ll kill you.”
He sat down slowly and looked at Vardanyan and Menenkov. Vardanyan was reading, and Menenkov was watching the scene with detached interest “So what’s the matter with them? It’s as if… oh, no.” He covered his eyes with a large hand. “You’re the guy the CIA’s after. Folly, Foley. How the hell could you get into this room?”
“That’s not important”
“You must have had control over me back in Washington. Why doesn’t it work here? Hearing, that’s it!”
God, would he have to die for deducing that? “What do you mean?”
“Ear infection, then the damned pressurization in Air Force One—I’ve got tinnitus real bad; loud, buzzing sounds and ringing. It must interfere with whatever you do.”
I motioned with the gun. “Read the speech.”
He picked it up. “I’ll read it, out of curiosity. I won’t deliver it for you.” He stared at me. “I don’t think you’ll kill me. But if you do, you do. I accepted that as a condition of employment years ago.”
He read through it carefully and set it down. “Vardanyan has the same?”
“Yes. I wrote Vardanyan’s and my… a person familiar with your style wrote yours. He will deliver his speech even if you don’t do yours. That would set up an interesting situation.”
“I would almost do it just to see what happens. But no. Vardanyan will deliver his, and… it will be explained away. He cracked under strain. He’s an old man.”
“We’ll see.” Keeping the gun trained on him, I went to the door and opened it partway. “Kepperman? Would you come in here for a moment?”
The big man came in, looking cautious. I told him to close the door behind him.
“You’re carrying that Ingram, right?”
“I am.”
“And guarding Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”
“That’s right.”
“The president is supposed to give a speech within an hour. If he doesn’t, I want you to kill Mrs. Fitzpatrick and then use the Ingram to kill as many other Americans as you can see.” “All right.”
“Do the same if anything unpleasant happens to me—if I am taken into custody or killed,
I mean.” “All right”
“You will forget that I gave you these orders. They will remain in force until I instruct you otherwise.” He agreed. “Leave.”
That had been a gamble. Fitzpatrick had watched in shocked silence. If he’d started giving conflicting orders, I don’t know what would have happened.
When the door clicked shut, I suddenly felt faint. I had jus arranged for the murder of a dozen or so innocent people. If Fitzpatrick stuck to his principles or the CIA or Secret Service found me out or if I had a heart attack, which right now didn’t seem too unlikely. I floated back to the table, not really feeling the floor under me.
“You’re a monster,” Fitzpatrick said.
“I think I know what I am.” Vardanyan was looking at me with a bleak expression, looking just like my stepfather, and as I sat down slowly, the dream rushed in, the first time it had invaded my conscious mind:
I was eight years old and starving, gone beyond hunger to dying, bloated weakness, so cold that my breath glazed into ice on the metal bedframe, and there was a candle in the kitchen, a small, wet noise, and I crawled along the cold floor to see, and watched for several minutes while my foster father carved a half-frozen bloody human arm into chunks of meat for the pot, a bloody soldiers sleeve on the floor with a red star on the shoulder, and we had “lamb stew” for the next two days, and it was good past belief, and nobody questioned where the lamb had come from.
Fitzpatrick was talking. “What was that again?” I said.
“You have to call him back in and cancel that order. Admit your plan has backfired. So far you haven’t done any harm. I can guarantee… the best of treatment for you.”
“Oh, I’ve done harm.”
“Even if I do give your speech, what makes you think I can implement it?”
“Two billion witnesses. And the fact that Vardanyan is saying the same thing.”
“But I know! Sooner or later the whole world will know where the speeches came from.”
I had an answer to that. I was trying to shake off the nightmare image, the memory of the taste. “I can… I can answer that.” The unspeakable guilt of cannibalism, repressed; was that behind everything?
“Sooner or later your hearing will recover. When that happens, I can change your recall of these events. Meanwhile, I’ll stay very close to you.”
“How close do you think you can stay? For how long?”
Inspiration: “Dr. Vardanyan is going to invite you to his dacha to the south of here, for a few days’ rest. You don’t want to fly for a while, after all, because of your ear infection. Of course most of your entourage will stay with you. Including me and Mr. Kepperman.”
“You have it all figured out, don’t you.”
“Except for a few details.” Like what to do with the memory of the taste.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: JACOB
Fodor's had warned me about how beautiful Leningrad was going to be. I’ll have to go back someday when I have the peace and clarity of mind to appreciate it. They say it reminds people of Amsterdam, so Amsterdam must be full of potholes and noisy construction—and yes, stately symmetry and impressive public parks and monuments. Nice bridges. But I spent a lot of time looking at my watch.
The bus driver parked in front of the Astoria and left the engine running, putting a much-handled cardboard sign on the dashboard. Knowing I spoke no Russian, he herded me into the hotel lobby and waited in line with me until he could get a clerk’s attention. He told the clerk that I was with the earlier group of American Tigers or whatever, and then stomped out the door to retrieve his bus.
In carefully weird English, the clerk explained what I was to do. I was sharing Room 364 with so-and-so, but they were all out on a tour I could leave my bag in the room and then I would be free to do whatever I wished, so long as I left my passport with him and my key with the “floor lady.” Better than I’d expected. In five minutes I was back on the street. There were four cabs waiting in front of the hotel; I got in the first and asked for the Hotel Leningrad, speaking no Russian.
I probably got a special non-Russian rate, since it was a short ride for twenty bucks, but I didn’t think it would be smart to argue with him.
The lobby was full of American and Russian security types. An American turned toward me; I took a chance and gestured imperiously, beckoning him to a quiet corner. I wished I’d had some of Jefferson’s physical presence and chutzpah. I did my best, though: “I don’t have time to discuss this much. I’m a CIA man and I’m supposed to make a contact here, an American woman. You want to help me?”
“You have any ID?”
“Come on.”
“Well, look. Things have been really complicated since they cut the meeting short. I’ve gotta—”
“Cut it short?”
“Yeah, Vardanyan left. Some press thing coming up—look, you can take the elevator there up to anything past the seventh floor and nobody’ll bother you. Below hat above here, you need credentials. I’ve gotta get my men together.” He turned and went back to his group.
That was all right. When the elevator came, it had the buttons for two through six removed, and a couple of armed guards, just in case you’d brought your own button. I pushed nine and tried to whistle. My mouth was too dry.
I asked the guards which way the tearoom was. The American shrugged, and the Russian stood impassive but pointed the left when the door opened.
It was more than an hour after our designated time, but Harriet Leusner was there, sitting alone at a table for two, seemingly engrossed in a paperback book. She saw me and waved.
“Jake, I thought you’d never come! Here’s your book.” She handed me a paperback that was slightly open at the last, blank page. There was writing on it: I don’t know what the hell is going on here, and I don’t think anybody really does. Vardanyan’s headed for the Summer Palace for a TV announcement, before six. Fitzpatrick’s going to do the same thing, here. You go catch V’s speech, and I’ll wait here.
No sign of anyone who looks like F. Keep your eyes open.
I scanned it fast. “Uh, fine. Look, I gotta run. Catch you here this evening?”
“Yes, in a couple of hours. Go on.”
I got back in the same cab, since he had gone to the back of the short line in front of the hotel. He took me back across the river and dropped me at the large crowd that was forming where Vardanyan was to speak. I pretended naïveté and told the driver I was running out of rubles—how much would that be in dollars? A thoroughly illegal transaction, but it saved me fifteen bucks.
I dove into the crowd and started working my way toward the front, looking for a blond, portly middle-aged American.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: NICK
I ushered Vardanyan and Menenkov out and told the press liaison woman that Fitzpatrick would be resting for a half hour before he delivered his statement, and that he might or might not talk to the press after that. I used the watch on White House Chief of Staff Froelich, to make sure no one on his own team would bother Fitzpatrick.
Then I went back in and sat with him, giving Vardanyan time to get to his press site across the river.
“I suppose you do mean well,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re aware of the potential for disaster in this… speech.”
“Why don’t you outline it for me?”
“I can’t give you an education in geopolitical realities in the space of thirty minutes.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve already spent thirty years thinking about it. Peace and war and what could be done. And spare me the old-soldier bit—I was in the war, too, and hurt a great deal worse than you were.”
“You can’t be old enough.”
I grabbed a pinch of the firm skin under my chin and! wiggled it “Plastic surgery. They can work wonders.”
“That’s why…”
“Yeah. I haven’t been myself lately.” He argued with me for about fifteen minutes, appealing variously to common sense and patriotism and arithmetic. Then h
e fell silent and read the speech through a few times. When he delivered it, he actually made some improvements.
This is what he said:
I am aware of having some few shortcomings, and one that doesn’t normally bother me much is a lack of oratory ability. I think the shorter the speech, the better, and don’t have much patience for politicians who go on and on just because they have the floor.
But this is one occasion where I could wish that I had the gift of eloquence. Nothing I will ever do or say as president of the United States of America can be as important as what I am going to say to you now. Forgive me for saying it plainly.
Everybody knows that the large and fairly equal nuclear stockpiles held by the United States and the Soviet Union have been for half a century rather a “mixed curse,” paradoxically threatening the survival of the entire world while apparently preventing a catastrophic world war from starting. The key phrases our politicians have traditionally used to describe this curious situation are the frightening ones “the balance of terror” and “mutually assured destruction.”
Its also well known that these stockpiles are, and have been ever since the sixties, much larger than they would need to be if their function were simply military. Grotesquely large. Both the Soviet Union and the United States possess more than a hundred times the megatonnage required to obliterate the other’s civilization totally. It’s hard to imagine: more than a hundred times.
Most of the presidents and premiers from Truman and Krushchev to Dr. Vardanyan and myself have agreed that these weapons must never be used, and pledged that we would not initiate the use of them. Pessimists in their turn, from the 1950s to the present day, have pointed out that this may be fine for the next week or year, or ten years or a thousand, but sooner or later there will be a man or woman in charge who will suffer a lapse of judgment, a lapse of sanity, and actually use the weapons. That will be the end of civilization, or at least all that we hold civilized. Perhaps, some of our scientists warn, it would be the end of all life on this planet.