One more day in a strange city, Zaitzev thought, as the sun began to rise in the east, two hours earlier than in Moscow. At home he'd still be sleeping, Oleg Ivan'ch told himself. In due course, he hoped, he'd be waking up somewhere else, in an altogether different time zone yet again. But for now he just lay still, savoring the moment. There was virtually no sound outside, perhaps a few delivery trucks on the streets. The sun was not quite yet above the horizon. It was dark, but no longer night; brightening up, but not yet morning; the middle part of the early day. It could be a pleasant moment. It was a time children could like, a magical time when the world belonged only to those few who were awake, and all others were still unseen in their beds, and the kids could walk around like little kings, until their mothers caught them and dragged them back into their beds.
But Zaitzev just lay there, hearing the slow breathing of his wife and daughter, while he was now fully awake, free to think entirely alone.
When would they contact him? What would they say? Would they change their minds? Would they betray his trust?
Why was he so goddamned uneasy about everything? Wasn't it time to trust the CIA just a little bit? Wasn't he going to be a huge asset to them?
Would he not be valuable to them? Even KGB, as stingy as a child with the best toys, gave comfort and prestige to its defectors. All the alcohol Kim Philby could drink. All the zhopniki Burgess could ass-fuck, or so the stories went. In both cases, the stories went, the appetites were fairy large. But such stories always grew with the telling, and they depended at least partly on the Soviet antipathy for homosexuals.
He wasn't one of those. He was a man of principle, wasn't he? Zaitzev asked himself. Of course he was. For principle he was taking his own life in his hands and juggling it. Like knives in the circus. And like that juggler, only he would be hurt by a misjudgment. Oleg lit his first smoke of the day, trying to think things through for the hundredth time, looking for another viable course of action.
He could just go to the concerts, continue his shopping, take the train back to Kiev Station, and be a hero to his workmates for getting them their tape machines and pornographic movies, and the pantyhose for their wives, and probably a few things for himself. And KGB would never be the wiser.
But then the Polish priest will die, at Soviet hands… hands you have the power to forestall, and then what sort of man will you see in the mirror, Oleg Ivan'ch?
It always came back to the same thing, didn't it?
But there was little point in going back to sleep, so he smoked his cigarette and lay there, watching the sky brighten outside his hotel window.
Cathy Ryan didn't really wake up until her hand found empty bed where it ought to have found her husband. That automatically, somehow, caused her to come fully awake in an instant and just as quickly to remember that he was out of town and out of the country-theirs and this one-and that as a result she was alone, effectively a single mother, which was not something she'd bargained for when she'd married John Patrick Ryan, Sr. She wasn't the only woman in the world whose husband traveled on business-her father did it often enough, and she'd grown up with that. But this was the first time for Jack, and she didn't like it at all.
It wasn't that she was unable to cope. She had to cope on a daily basis with worse tribulations than this one. Nor was she concerned that Jack might be getting a little on the side while he was away. She'd often enough wondered that about her father on his trips-her parents' marriage had occasionally been a rocky one-and didn't know what her mother (now deceased) had wondered about. But with Jack, no, that ought not to be a problem. But she loved him, and she knew that he loved her, and people in love were supposed to be together. Had they met while he was still an officer in the Marine Corps, it would have been a problem with which she would have had to deal-and worse, she might someday have had to deal with a husband who'd gone in harm's way, and that, she was sure, was the purest form of hell to live with. But no, she'd not met him until after all that. Her own father had taken her to dinner, bringing Jack along as an afterthought, a bright young broker with keen instincts, ready to move from the Baltimore office up to New York, only to be surprised-pleasantly at first-by the interest they'd instantly found in each other, and then had come the revelation that Jack wanted to take his money and go back to teaching history, of all things. It was something she had to deal with more than Jack, who barely tolerated Joseph Muller, Senior Vice President of Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith, plus whatever acquisitions they'd made in the past five years. Joe was still "Daddy" to her and "him" (which translated to "that pain in the ass") to Jack.
What the hell is he working on? she wondered. Bonn? Germany? NATO stuff? The goddamned intelligence business, looking at secret stuff and making equally secret observations on it that went to other people who might or might not read it and think about it. She, at least, was in an honest line of work, making sick people well, or at least helping them to see better. But not Jack.
It wasn't that he did useless things. He'd explained it to her earlier in the year. There were bad people out there, and somebody had to fight against them. Fortunately, he didn't do that with a loaded gun-Cathy hated guns, even the ones that had prevented her kidnapping and murder at their home in Maryland on the night that had ended blessedly with Little Jack's birth. She'd treated her share of gunshot wounds in the emergency room during her internship, enough to see the harm they inflicted, though not the harm they might have prevented in other places. Her world was somewhat circumscribed in that respect, a fact she appreciated, which was why she allowed Jack to keep a few of the damned things close by, where the kids could not reach them, even standing on a chair. He'd once tried to teach her how to use them, but she'd refused even to touch the things. Part of her thought that she was overreacting, but she was a woman, and that was that… And Jack didn't seem to mind that very much.
But why isn't he here? Cathy asked herself in the darkness. What could be so damned important as to take her husband away from his wife and children?
He couldn't tell her. And that really made her angry. But there was no fighting it, and it wasn't as if she were dealing with a terminal cancer patient. And it wasn't as if he were boffing some German chippie on the side. But… damn. She just wanted her husband back.
Eight hundred miles away, Ryan was already awake, out of the shower, shaved, brushed, and ready to face the day. Something about travel made it easy for him to wake up in the morning. But now he had nothing to do until the embassy canteen opened. He looked at the phone by his bed and thought about calling home, but he didn't know how to dial out on this phone system, and he probably needed Hudson's permission-and assistance-to accomplish the mission. Damn. He'd awakened at three in the morning, thinking to roll over and give Cathy a kiss on the cheek-it was something Jack liked to do, even though she never had any memory of it. The good news was that she always kissed back. She really did love him. Otherwise, the return kiss would not have come. People can't dissimulate while asleep. It was an important fact in Ryan's personal universe.
There was no use turning on the bedside radio. Hungarian-actually Magyar-was a language probably found on the planet Mars. For damned sure, it didn't belong on Planet Earth. He'd not heard one, not even one, word that he recognized from English, German, or Latin, the three languages he'd studied at one time or another in his life. The locals also spoke as quickly as a machine gun, adding to the difficulty on his part. Had Hudson dropped him off anywhere in this city, he would have been unable to find his way back to the British Embassy, and that was a feeling of vulnerability he hadn't had since he was four years old. He might as well have been on an alien planet, and having a diplomatic passport wouldn't help, since he was accredited by the wrong country to this alien world. Somehow he'd not fully considered that on the way in. Like most Americans, he figured that with a passport and an American Express card he could safely travel the entire world in his shorts, but that world was only the capitalist world, where somebody would speak enough English to point him to a building with the American flag on the roof and U.S. Marines in the lobby. Not in this alien city. He didn't know enough to find the men's room-well, he'd found one in a bar the previous day, Ryan admitted to himself. The feeling of helplessness was hovering at the border of his consciousness like the proverbial monster under the bed, but he was a grown-up American male citizen, over thirty, formerly a commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. It wasn't the way he usually felt about things. And so he watched the numbers change on his digital clock radio, bringing him closer to his personal date with destiny, whatever the hell that was going to be, one red-lit number at a time.
Andy Hudson was already up and about. Istvan Kovacs was preparing for one of his normal smuggling runs, this time bringing Reebok running shoes into Budapest from Yugoslavia. His hard cash was in a steel box under his bed, and he was drinking his morning coffee and listening to music on the radio when a knock on the door made him look up. He walked to answer it in his underwear.
"Andy!" he said in surprise.
"Did I wake you, Istvan?"
Kovacs waved him inside. "No, I've been up for half an hour. What brings you here?"
"We need to move our package tonight," Hudson replied.
"When, exactly?"
"Oh, about two in the morning."
Hudson reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of banknotes. "Here is half of the agreed sum." There was no point in paying this Hungarian what they were really worth. It would alter the whole equation.
"Excellent. Can I get you some coffee, Andy?"
"Yes, thank you."
Kovacs waved him to the kitchen table and poured a cup. "How do you want to go about it?"
"I will drive our package to near the border, and you will take them across. I presume you know the border guards at the crossing point."
"Yes, it will be Captain Budai Laszlo. I've done business with him for years. And Sergeant Kerekes Mihaly, good lad, wants to go to university and be an engineer. They do twelve-hour shifts at the crossing point, midnight to noon. They will already be bored, Andy, and open to negotiation." He held up his hand and rubbed a thumb over his forefinger.
"What is the usual rate?"
"For four people?"
"Do they need to know our package is people?" Hudson asked in return.
Kovacs shrugged. "No, I suppose not. Then some pairs of shoes. The Reeboks are very popular, you know, and some Western movie tapes. They already have all the tape-player machines they need," Kovacs explained.
"Be generous," Hudson suggested, "but not too generous." Mustn't make them suspicious, he didn't have to add. "If they are married, perhaps something for their wives and children…"
"I know Budai's family well, Andy. That will not be a problem." Budai had a young daughter, and giving something for little Zsoka would cause no problems for the smuggler.
Hudson made a calculation for distance. Two and a half hours to the Yugoslav border should be about right at that time of night. They'd be using a small truck for the first part of the journey. Istvan would handle the rest in his larger truck. And if anything went wrong, Istvan would expect to be shot by the British Secret Service officer. That was one benefit of the world-famous James Bond movies. But, more to the point, five thousand d-mark went a very long way in Hungary.
"I will be driving to what destination?"
"I will tell you tonight," Hudson answered.
"Very well. I shall meet you at Csurgo at two tomorrow morning without fail."
"That is very good, Istvan." Hudson finished his coffee and stood. "It is good to have such a reliable friend."
"You pay me well," Kovacs observed, defining their relationship.
Hudson was tempted to say how much he trusted his agent, but that wasn't strictly true. Like most field spooks, he didn't trust anybody-not until after the job was completed. Might Istvan be in the pay of the AVH? Probably not. No way they could afford five thousand West German marks on anything approaching a regular basis, and Kovacs liked the good life too much. If the communist government of this country ever fell, he'd be among the first to become a millionaire, with a nice house in the hills of Pest on the other side of the Danube, overlooking Buda.
Twenty minutes later, Hudson found Ryan at the front of the line in the embassy canteen.
"Like your eggs, I see," the COS observed.
"Local, or do you truck it in from Austria?"
"The eggs are local. The farm products here are actually quite good. But we like our English bacon."
"Developed a taste for it myself," Jack reported. "What's happening?" he asked. Andy's eyes had a certain excitement in them.
"It's tonight. First we go to the concert hall, and then we make our pickup."
"Giving him a heads-up?"
Hudson shook his head. "No. He might act differently. I prefer to avoid that complication."
"What if he's not ready? What if he has second thoughts?" Jack worried.
"In that case, it's a blown mission. And we disappear into the mists of Budapest, and come tomorrow morning many faces will be red in London, Washington, and Moscow."
"You're pretty cool about this, buddy."
"In this job, you take things as they come. Getting excited about them doesn't help at all." He managed a smile. "So long as I take the Queen's shilling and eat the Queen's biscuit, I shall do the Queen's work."
"Semper fi, man," Jack observed. He added cream to his coffee and took a sip. Not great, but good enough for the moment.
So was the food in the state-run cafeteria next door to the Hotel Astoria. Svetlana had chosen and positively inhaled a cherry Danish pastry, along with a glass of whole milk.
"The concert is tonight," Oleg told his wife. "Excited?"
"You know how long it has been since I've been to a proper concert?" she retorted. "Oleg, I shall never forget this kindness on your part." She was surprised by the look on his face, but made no comment on it.
"Well, my dear, today we have more shopping to do. Ladies' things. You will have to handle that for me."
"Anything for myself?"
"To that end, we have eight hundred and fifty Comecon rubles, just for you to spend," Oleg Ivan'ch told her, with a beaming smile, wondering if anything she bought would be in use by the end of the week.
"Your husband still off on business?" Beaverton asked.
"Unfortunately," Cathy confirmed.
Too bad, the former Para didn't say. He'd become a good student of human behavior over the years, and her unhappiness with the current situation was plain. Well, Sir John was doubtless off doing something interesting. He'd taken the time to do a little research on the Ryans. She, the papers said, was a surgeon, just as she'd told him weeks before. Her husband, on the other hand, despite his claim to be a junior official at the American Embassy, was probably CIA. It had been hinted at by the London papers back when he'd had that run-in with the ULS terrorists, but that supposition had never been repeated. Probably because someone had asked Fleet Street-politely-not to say such a thing ever again. That told Eddie Beaverton everything he needed to know. The papers had also said he was, if not rich, certainly comfortably set, and that was confirmed by the expensive Jaguar in their driveway. So, Sir John was away on secret business of some sort or other. There was no sense in wondering what, the cabdriver thought, pulling up to the miniature Chatham train station. "Have a good day, mum," he told her when she got out.
"Thanks, Eddie." The usual tip. It was good to have such a generous steady customer.
For Cathy it was the usual train ride into London, with the company of a medical journal, but without the comfort of having her husband close by, reading his Daily Telegraph or dozing. It was funny how you could miss even a sleeping man next to you.
"That's the concert hall."
Like Ryan's old Volkswagen Rabbit, the Budapest Concert Hall was well made in every detail, but little, hardly filling the city block it sat upon, its architecture hinting at the Imperial style found in better and larger form in Vienna, two hundred miles away. Andy and Ryan went inside to collect the tickets arranged by the embassy through the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. The foyer was disappointingly small. Hudson asked for permission to see where the box was, and, by virtue of his diplomatic status, an usher took them upstairs and down the side corridor to the box.
Inside, it struck Ryan as similar to a Broadway theater-the Majestic, for example-not large, but elegant, with its red-velvet seating and gilt plaster, a place for the king to come when he deigned to visit the subject city far from his imperial palace up the river in Vienna. A place for the local big shots to greet their king and pretend they were in the big leagues, when they and their sovereign knew differently. But for all that, it was an earnest effort, and a good orchestra would cover for the shortcomings. The acoustics were probably excellent, and that was what really mattered. Ryan had never been to Carnegie Hall in New York, but this would be the local equivalent, just smaller and humbler-though grudgingly so.
Ryan looked around. The box was admirably suited for that. You could scan just about every seat in the theater.
"Our friends' seats-where are they?" he asked quietly.
"Not sure. Tom will follow them in and see where they sit before he joins us."
"Then what?" Jack asked next.
But Hudson cut him off with a single word: "Later."
Back at the embassy, tom Trent had his own work to do. First of all, he got two gallons of pure grain alcohol, 190 proof, or 95 percent pure. It was technically drinkable, but only for one who wanted a very fast and deep drunk. He sampled it, just a taste to make sure it was what the label said. This was not a time to take chances. One millimetric taste was enough for that. This was as pure as alcohol ever got, with no discernible smell, and only enough taste to let you know that it wasn't distilled water. Trent had heard that some people used this stuff to spike the punch at weddings and other formal functions to… liven things up a bit. Surely this would accomplish that task to a fare-thee-well.
The next part was rather more distasteful. It was time to inspect the boxes. The embassy basement was now off-limits to everyone. Trent cut loose the sealing tape and lifted off the cardboard to reveal…
The bodies "were in translucent plastic bags, the sort with handles, used by morticians to transport bodies. The bags even came in more than one size, he saw, probably to accommodate the bodies of children and adults of various dimensions. The first body he uncovered was that of a little girl. Blessedly, the plastic obscured the face, or what had once been a face. All he could really see was a blackened smudge, and for the moment, that was good. He didn't need to open the bag, and that, too, was good.
The next boxes were heavier but somehow easier. At least these bodies were adults. He manhandled them onto the concrete floor of the cellar and left them there, then moved the dry ice to the opposite corner, where the frozen CO2 would evaporate on its own without causing harm or distraction to anyone. The bodies would have about fourteen hours to thaw out, and that, he hoped, would be enough. Trent left the basement, being careful to lock the door.
Then he went to the embassy's security office. The British legation had its own security detail of three men, all of them former enlisted servicemen. He'd need two of them tonight. Both were former sergeants in the British army, Rodney Truelove and Bob Small, and both were physically fit.
"Lads, I need your help tonight with something."
"What's that, Tom?" Truelove asked.
"We'll just need to move some objects, and do it rather covertly," Trent semi-explained. He didn't bother telling them it would be something of great importance. These were men for whom everything was treated as a matter of some importance.
"Sneak in and sneak out?" Small asked.
"Correct," Trent confirmed to the former color sergeant in the Royal Engineers. Small was from the Royal Regiment of Wales, the men of Harlech.
"What time?" Truelove inquired next.
"We'll leave here about oh-two-hundred. Ought not to take more than an hour overall."
"Dress?" This was Bob Small.
And that was a good question. To wear coats and ties didn't feel right, but to wear coveralls would be something a casual observer might notice. They'd have to dress in such a way as to be invisible.
"Casual," Trent decided. "Jackets but no coats. Like a local. Shirts and pants, that should be sufficient. Gloves, too." Yeah, they'll surely want to wear gloves, the spook thought.
"No problem with us," Truelove concluded. As soldiers, they were accustomed to doing things that made no sense and taking life as it came. Trent hoped they'd feel that way the following morning.
Fogal pantyhose were French in origin. The packaging proclaimed that. Irina nearly fainted, holding the package in her hand. The contents were real but seemed not to be, so sheer as to be a manufactured shadow and no more substantial than that. She'd heard about these things, but she'd never held them in her hand, much less worn any. And to think that any woman in the West could own as many as she needed. The wives of Oleg's Russian colleagues would swoon wearing them, and how envious her own friends at GUM would be! And how careful they'd be putting them on, afraid to create a run, careful not to blunder into things with their legs, like children who bruised every single day. These hose were far too precious to endanger. She had to get the right size for the women on Oleg's list… plus six pairs for herself.
But what size? To buy any article of clothing that was too large was a deadly insult to a woman in any culture, even Russia, where women tended more to the Rubenesque than to a starving waif in the Third World… or Hollywood. The sizes shown on the packages were A, B, C, and D. This was an additional complication, since in Cyrillic, "B" corresponded to the Roman "V" and "C" to "S," but she took a deep breath and bought a total of twenty pairs of size C, including the six for herself. They were hideously expensive, but the Comecon rubles in her purse were not all hers, and so with another deep breath she paid cash for the collection, to the smile of the female salesclerk, who could guess what was going on. Walking out of the store with such luxuries made her feel like a czarist princess, a good sensation for any female in the world. She now had 489 rubles left to spend on herself, and that almost produced a panic. So many nice things. So little money. So little closet space at home.
Shoes? A new coat? A new handbag?
She left out jewelry, since that was Oleg's job, but, like most men, he didn't know a thing about what women wore.
What about foundation garments? Irina wondered next. A Chantarelle brassiere? Did she dare purchase something that elegant? That was at least a hundred rubles, even at this favorable exchange rate… And it would be something only she knew she had on. Such a brassiere would feel like… hands. Like the hands of your lover. Yes, she had to get one of those.
And cosmetics. She had to get cosmetics. It was the one thing Russian women always paid attention to. She was in the right city for that. Hungarian women cared about skin care as well. She'd go to a good store and ask, comrade to comrade. Hungarian women-their faces proclaimed to the world that they cared about their skin. In this the Hungarians were most kulturniy.
It took another two hours of utter bliss, so pleasant that she didn't even notice her husband and daughter waiting about. She was living every Soviet woman's dream, spending money in-well, if not the West, then the next best thing. And it was wonderful. She'd wear the Chantarelle to the concert tonight, listen to Bach, and pretend she was in another time and another place, where everyone was kulturniy and it was a good thing to be a woman. It was a pity that no such place existed in the Soviet Union.
Outside the succession of women's stores, Oleg just stood around and smoked his cigarettes like any other man in the world, intensely bored by the details of women's shopping. How they could enjoy the process of picking and comparing, picking and comparing, never making a decision, just sucking in the ambience of being surrounded by things they couldn't wear and didn't really like? They always took the dress and held it up to their necks and looked in a mirror and decided nyet, not this one. On and on and on, past the sunset and into the night, as though their very souls depended on it. Oleg had learned patience with his current life-threatening adventure, but one thing he'd never learned, and never expected to learn, was how to watch a woman shop… without wishing to throttle her. Just standing there like a fucking beast of burden, holding the things she'd finally decided to purchase-then waiting while she decided to change her mind or not. Well, it couldn't last forever. They did have tickets to the concert that night. They had to go back to the hotel, try to get a sitter for zaichik, get dressed, and go to the concert hall. Even Irina would appreciate that.
Probably, Oleg Ivan'ch thought bleakly. As though he didn't have enough to worry about. But his little girl wasn't concerned about a thing, Oleg saw. She ate her ice cream and looked around at this different place with its different sights. There was much to be said for a child's innocence. A pity one lost it-and why, then, did children try so hard to grow up and leave their innocence behind? Didn't they know how wonderful the world was for them alone? Didn't they know that, with understanding, the wonders of the world only became burdens? And pain.
And doubts, Zaitzev thought. So many doubts.
But no, zaichik didn't know that, and by the time she found out, it would be too late.
Finally, Irina walked outside, with a beaming smile such as she'd not had since delivering their daughter. Then she really surprised him-she came up to him for a hug and a kiss.
"Oh, Oleg, you are so good to me!" And another passionate kiss of a woman sated by shopping. Even better than one sated by sex, her husband suddenly thought.
"Back to the hotel, my dear. We must dress for the concert." The easy part was the ride on the metro, then into the Astoria and up to Room 307. Once there, they decided more or less by default to take Svetlana with them. Getting a sitter would have been an inconvenience-Oleg had thought about a female KGB officer from the Culture and Friendship House across the street, but neither he nor his wife felt comfortable with such arrangements, and so zaichik would have to behave herself during the concert. His tickets were in the room, Orchestra Row 6, seats A, B, and C, which put him right on the aisle, where he preferred to be. Svetlana would wear her new clothes this evening, which, he hoped, would make her happy. It usually did, and these were the best clothes she'd ever had.
The bathroom was crowded in their room. Irina worked hard and long to get her face right. It was easier for her husband, and easier still for their daughter, for whom a wet washcloth across her grimacing face was enough. Then they all got dressed in their best clothing. Oleg buckled his little girl's shiny black shoes over the white tights to which she'd taken an immediate love. Then she put on the red coat with the black collar, and the little Bunny was all ready for the adventures of the evening. They took the elevator down to the lobby and caught a cab outside.
For Trent it was a little awkward. Staking out the lobby ought to have been difficult, but the hotel staff seemed not to notice him, and so when the package left, it was a simple matter of walking out to his car and following their cab to the concert hall, just a mile down the street. Once there, he found a parking place close by and walked quickly to the entrance. Drinks were being served there, and the Zaitzevs availed themselves of what looked like Tokaji before heading in. Their little girl was as radiant as ever. Lovely child, Trent thought. He hoped she'd like life in the West. He watched them head into the theater to their seats, and then he turned to go up the stairs to his box.
Ryan and Hudson were already there, sitting on the old chairs with their velvet cushions.
"Andy, Jack," Trent said in greeting. "Sixth row, left side of center, just on the aisle."
Then the houselights started flickering. The curtain drew back, the meandering tones of musicians tuning their various instruments trailed off, and the conductor, Jozsef Rozsa, appeared from stage right. The initial applause was little more than polite. It was his first concert in the series, and he was new to this audience. That struck Ryan as odd-he was a Hungarian, a graduate of their own Franz Liszt Academy. Why wasn't their greeting more enthusiastic? He was a tall and thin guy with black hair and the face of an aesthete. He bowed politely to the audience and turned back to the orchestra. His little baton stick-whatever it was called, Ryan didn't know-was there on the little stand, and when he lifted it, the room went dead still, and then his right arm shot out to the string section of the Hungarian State Railroad Orchestra #1.
Ryan was not the student of music that his wife was, but Bach was Bach, and the concerto built in majesty almost from the first instant. Music, like poetry or painting, Jack told himself, was a means of communication, but he'd never quite figured out what composers were trying to say. It was easier with a John Williams movie score, where the music so perfectly accompanied the action, but Bach hadn't known about moving pictures, and so he must have been "talking about" things that his original audiences would have recognized. But Ryan wasn't one of those, and so he just had to appreciate the wonderful harmonies. It struck him that the piano wasn't right, and only when he looked did he see that it wasn't a piano at all, but rather an ancient harpsichord, played, it seemed, by an equally ancient virtuoso with flowing white hair and the elegant hands of… a surgeon, Jack thought. Jack did know piano music. Their friend Sissy Jackson, a solo player with the Washington Symphony, said Cathy was too mechanical in her playing, but Ryan only noted that she never missed a key-you could always tell-and to him that was sufficient. This guy, he thought, watching his hands and catching the notes through the wonderful cacophony, didn't miss a single note, and every one, it seemed, was precisely as loud or soft as the concert required, and so precisely timed as to define perfection. The rest of the orchestra seemed about as well practiced as the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team, everything as precise as a series of laser beams.
The one thing Ryan couldn't tell was what the conductor was doing. Wasn't the concerto written down? Wasn't conducting just a matter of making sure-beforehand-that everybody knew his part and did it on time? He'd have to ask Cathy about it, and she'd roll her eyes and remark that he really was a Philistine. But Sissy Jackson said that Cathy was a mechanic on the keyboard, lacking in soul. So there, Lady Caroline!
The string section was also superb, and Ryan wondered how the hell you ran a bow along a string and made the exact noise you wanted to. Probably because they do it for a living, he told himself, and he sat back to enjoy the music. It was only then that he watched Andy Hudson, whose eyes were on the package. He took the moment to look that way as well.
The little girl was squirming, doing her best to be good, and maybe taking note of the music, but it couldn't be as good as a tape of The Wizard of Oz and that couldn't be helped. Still and all, she was behaving well, the little Bunny sitting between Ma and Pa Rabbit.
Mama Rabbit was watching the concert with rapt attention. Papa Rabbit was being politely attentive. Maybe they should call ahead to London and get Irina a Walkman, Jack thought, along with some Christopher Hogwood tapes… Cathy seemed to like him a lot, along with Nevile Marriner.
In any case, after about twenty minutes, they finished the Menuetto, the orchestra went quiet, and when Conductor Rozsa turned to face the audience…
The concert hall went berserk with cheering and shouts of "Bravo!" Jack didn't know what he'd done differently, but evidently the Hungarians did. Rozsa bowed deeply to the audience and waited for the noise to subside before turning back and commanding quiet again as he raised his little white stick to start Brandenberg #2.
This one started with a brass and strings, and Ryan found himself entranced by the individual musicians more than whatever the conductor had done with them. How long do you have to study to get that good? he wondered. Cathy played two or three times a week at home in Maryland-their Chatham house wasn't big enough for a proper grand piano, rather to her disappointment. He'd offered to get an upright, but she'd declined, saying that it just wasn't the same. Sissy Jackson said that she played three hours or more every single day. But Sissy did it for a living, while Cathy had another and somewhat more immediate passion in her professional life.
The second Brandenberg concerto was shorter than the first, ending in about twelve minutes, and the third followed at once. Bach must have loved the violins more than any other instrument, and the local string section was pretty good. In any other setting Jack might have given himself over to the moment and just drunk in the music, but he did have something more important planned for this evening. Every few seconds, his eyes drifted left to see the Rabbit family…
BRANDENBERG #3 ended roughly an hour after #1 had begun. The house-lights came on, and it was time for the intermission. Ryan watched Papa Rabbit and Mrs. Rabbit leave their seats. The reason was plain. The Bunny needed a trip to the little girls' room, and probably Papa would avail himself of the local plumbing as well. Hudson saw that and leapt to his feet, back out of the box, into the private corridor, closely followed by Tom Trent, and down the steps to the lobby and into the men's room, while Ryan stayed in the box and tried to relax. The mission was now fully under way.
Not fifty yards away, Oleg Ivan'ch was standing in the line to use the men's room. Hudson managed to get right behind him. The lobby was filled with the usual buzz of small talk. Some people went to the portable bar for more drinks. Others were puffing on cigarettes, while twenty men or so were waiting to relieve their bladders. The line moved fairly rapidly-men are more efficient at this than women are-and soon they were in the tiled room.
The urinals were as elegant as everything else, seemingly carved from Carerra marble for this noble purpose. Hudson stood like everyone else, hoping that his clothing did not mark him as a foreigner. Just inside the wood-and-glass door, he took a breath and, leaning forward, called on his Russian.
"Good evening, Oleg Ivanovich," Hudson said quietly. "Do not turn around."
"Who are you?" Zaitzev whispered back.
"I am your travel agent. I understand you wish to take a little trip."
"Where might that be?"
"Oh, in a westerly direction. You are concerned for the safety of someone, are you not?"
"You are CIA?" Zaitzev could not utter the acronym in anything but a hiss.
"I am in an unusual line of work," Hudson confirmed. No sense confusing the chap at the moment.
"So, what will you do with me?"
"This night you will sleep in another country, my friend," Hudson told him, adding, "along with your wife and your lovely little daughter." Hudson watched his shoulders slump-with relief or fear, the British spook wondered. Probably both.
Zaitzev cleared his throat before whispering again. "What must I do?"
"First, you must tell me that you wish to go forward with your plan."
Only the briefest hesitation before: "Da. We will proceed."
"In that case, just do your business in here-" they were approaching the head of the line "-and then enjoy the rest of the concert, and return to your hotel. We shall speak again there at one-thirty or so. Can you do that?"
Just a curt nod and a gasping single syllable: "Da" Oleg Ivan'ch really needed to use the urinal now.
"Be at ease, my friend. All is planned. All will go well," Hudson said to him. The man would need assurance and confidence now. This had to be the most frightening moment of his life.
There was no further reply. Zaitzev took the next three steps to the marble urinal, unzipped, and relieved himself in more than one way. He turned to leave without seeing Hudson's face.
But Trent saw his, as he stood there and sipped a glass of white wine. If he'd made any signal to a fellow KGB spook in the room, the British officer hadn't seen it. No rubbing the nose or adjusting his tie, no physical sign at all. He just walked back through the swinging door and back to his seat. BEATRIX was looking better and better.
The audience was back in its seats. Ryan was doing his best to look like just one more classical music fan. Then Hudson and Trent reentered the box.
"Well?" Ryan rasped.
"Bloody good music, isn't it?" Hudson replied casually. "This Rozsa chap is first-rate. Amazing that a communist country can turn out anything better than a reprise of the Internationale. Oh, after it's over," Hudson added, "how about a drink with some new friends?"
Jack let out a very long breath. "Yeah, Andy, I'd like that." Son of a bitch, Ryan thought. It's really going to happen. He had lots of doubts, but they'd just subsided half a step or so. It wasn't really very much, but it was a damned sight better than it could have been.
The second half of the concert started with more Bach, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Instead of strings, this one was a celebration of brass, and the lead cornet here might have taught Louis Armstrong himself something about the higher notes. This was as much Bach as Ryan had ever heard at one time, and that old German composer had really had his shit wired, the former Marine thought, for the first time relaxing enough to enjoy it somewhat. Hungary was a country that respected its music, or so it seemed. If there was anything wrong with this orchestra, he didn't notice it, and the conductor looked as though he were in bed with the love of his life, so transfixed he was by the joy of the moment. Jack wondered idly if Hungarian women were any good at that. There was an earthy look to them, but not much smiling… Maybe that was the communist government. Russians were not known for smiling, either.
"So, any news? "Judge Moore asked.
Mike Bostock handed over the brief dispatch from London. "Basil says his COS Budapest is going to make his move tonight. Oh, you'll love this part. The Rabbit is staying in a hotel right across the street from the KGB rezidentura."
Moore's eyes flared a bit. "You have to be kidding."
"Judge, do you think I'd say that for the fun of it?"
"When does Ritter get back?"
"Later today, flying back on Pan Am. From what he sent to us from Seoul, everything went pretty well with the KCIA meetings."
"He'll have a heart attack when he finds out about BEATRIX," the DCI predicted.
"It will get his eyes opened," the Deputy DDO agreed.
"Especially when he finds out that this Ryan boy is in on it?"
"On that, sir, you can bet the ranch, the cattle, and the big house."
Judge Moore had himself a good chuckle at that one. "Well, I guess the Agency is bigger than any one individual, right?"
"So they tell me, sir."
"When will we know?"
"I expect Basil will let us know when the plane takes off from Yugoslavia. It's going to be a long day for our new friends, though."
The next selection was Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." Ryan recognized it as the tune played in a Navy recruiting commercial. It was a gentle piece, very different from that which had preceded it. He wasn't sure if this evening's performance was a showcase for Johann Sebastian or for the conductor. In either case, it was pleasant enough, and the audience was wildly appreciative, noisier than for the concert selection. One more piece. Ryan had a program, but hadn't bothered looking at it, since it was printed in Magyar, and he couldn't read Martian any better than he could decipher the spoken form.
The last selection was Pachelbel's Canon, a justly famous piece, one that had always struck Ryan like a movie of a pretty girl saying her prayers back in the seventeenth century, trying to concentrate on her devotions instead of thinking about the handsome boy down the lane from her farmhouse-and not quite succeeding.
With the end, Jozsef Rozsa turned to the audience, which leapt again to its feet and howled its approval for endless minutes. Yeah, Jack thought, the local boy had gone away, but he'd come home to make good, and the home boys from the old days were glad to have him back. The conductor hardly smiled, as though exhausted from running the marathon. And he was sweating, Jack saw. Was conducting that hard? If you were that far into it, maybe it was. He and his Brit companions were standing and applauding as much as everyone else-no sense standing out-before, finally, the noise stopped. Rozsa waved to the orchestra, which caused the cheering to continue, and then to the concertmaster of the orchestra, the first fiddle. It seemed gracious of Rozsa, but probably the thing you had to do if you wanted the musicians to put out their best for you. And then, at long last, it was time for the crowd to break up.
"Enjoy the music, Sir John?" Hudson asked with a sly grin.
"It beats what they play on the radio at home," Ryan observed. "Now what?"
"Now we get a nice drink in a quiet place." Hudson nodded to Trent, who made his own way off, and took Ryan in tow.
The air was cool outside. Ryan immediately lit a cigarette, along with every other man in view and most of the women. Hungarians didn't plan to live all that long, or so it seemed. He felt as tied to Hudson as a child to his mother, but that wouldn't last too much longer. The street had mostly apartment-type buildings. In a Western city, it would have been condos, but those probably didn't exist here. Hudson waved for Ryan to follow and they walked two blocks to a bar, ending up following about thirty people leaving the concert. Andy got a corner booth from which he could scan the room, and a waiter came with a couple glasses of wine.
"So, we go?" Jack asked.
Hudson nodded. "We go. I told him we'd be to the hotel about one-thirty."
"And then?"
"And then we drive to the Yugoslav border."
Ryan didn't ask further. He didn't have to.
"The security to the south is trivial. Different the other way," Andy explained. "Near the Austrian border, it's fairly serious, but Yugoslavia, remember, is a sister communist state-that's the local fiction in any case. I'm no longer sure what Yugoslavia is, politically speaking. The border guards on the Hungarian side do well for themselves-many friendly arrangements with the smugglers. That is a growth industry, but the smart ones don't grow too much. Do that and the Belugyminiszterium, their Interior Ministry, might take notice. Better to avoid that," Hudson reminded him.
"But if this is the back door into the Warsaw Pact-hell, KGB's gotta know, right?"
Hudson completed the question. "So, why don't they shut things down? I suppose they could, but the local economy would suffer, and the Sovs get a lot of the things they like here, too. Trent tells me that our friend has made some major purchases here. Tape machines and pantyhose-bloody pantyhose, their women kill for the things. Probably most are overtly intended for friends and colleagues back in Moscow. So, if KGB intervened, or forced the AVH to do so, then they would lose a source of things they themselves want. So a little corruption doesn't do any major damage, and it supplies the greed of the other side. Never forget that they have their weaknesses, too. Probably more than we do, in fact, much as people argue to the contrary. They want the things we have. Official channels can't work very well, but the unofficial ones do. There's a saying in Hungarian that I like: A nagy kapu mellett, mindig van egy kis kapu. Next to the big gate, there is always a little door. That little door is what makes things work over here."
"And I'm going through it."
"Correct." Andy finished his wine and decided against another. He had a ways to drive tonight, in the dark, over inferior roads. Instead, he lit one of his cigars.
Ryan lit a smoke of his own. "I've never done this before, Andy."
"Frightened?"
"Yeah," Jack admitted freely. "Yeah, I am."
"First time is never easy. I've never had people with machine guns come into my home."
"I don't recommend it as after-dinner entertainment," Jack replied, with a twisted smile. "But we managed to luck our way out of it."
"I don't really believe in luck-well, sometimes, perhaps. Luck does not go about in search of a fool, Sir John."
"Maybe so. Kinda hard to notice from the inside." Ryan thought back, again, to that dreadful night. The feel of the Uzi in his hands. Having to get that one shot right. No second chance in that ballgame. And he'd dropped to one knee, taken aim, and gotten it right. He'd never learned the name of the guy in the boat he'd stitched up. Strange, he reflected. If you kill a man right by your home, you should at least know his name.
But, yeah, if he could do that, he could damned well do this. He checked his watch. It would be a while still, and he wasn't driving tonight, and another glass of wine seemed a good idea. But he'd stop it there.
Back at the Astoria, the Zaitzevs got their little Bunny to bed, and Oleg ordered some vodka to be brought up. It was the generic Russian vodka brand that the working class drank, a half-liter bottle with a foil closure at the top that essentially forced you to drink it all in one sitting. Not an altogether bad idea for this night. The bottle arrived in five minutes, and by then zaichik was asleep. He sat on the bed. His wife sat in the one upholstered chair. They drank from tumblers out of the bathroom.
Oleg Ivan'ch had one task yet to perform. His wife didn't know his plan. He didn't know how she'd react to it. He knew she was unhappy. He knew that this trip was the high point of their marriage. He knew she hated her job at GUM, that she wanted to enjoy the finer things in life. But would she willingly leave her motherland behind?
On the plus side of the ledger, Russian women did not enjoy much in the way of freedom, within their marriages or without. They usually did what their husbands told them to do-the husband might pay for it later, but only later. And she loved him and trusted him, and he'd shown her the best of good times in the past few days, and so, yes, she'd go along.
But he'd wait before telling her. Why spoil things by taking a risk right now? Right across the street was the KGB's Budapest rezidentura. And if they got word of what he had planned, then he was surely a dead man.
Back at the British Embassy, sergeants Bob Small and Rod Truelove lifted the plastic bags and carried them to the embassy's nondescript truck-the license tags had already been switched. Both tried to ignore the contents, then went back to get the alcohol containers, plus a candle and a cardboard milk carton. Then they were ready. Neither had so much as a glass of beer that night, though both wished otherwise. They drove off just after midnight, planning to take their time to scout the objective before committing to a course of action. The hard part would be getting the right parking place, but, with more than hour to pick it, they were confident that one would appear in due course.
The bar was emptying out, and Hudson didn't wish to be the last one in there. The bar bill was fifty forints, which he paid, not leaving a tip, because it wasn't the local custom, and it wouldn't do to be remembered. He motioned to Ryan and headed out but, on second thought, made his way to the loo. The thought struck Ryan as very practical, too.
Outside, Ryan asked what came next.
"We take a stroll up the street, Sir John," Hudson answered, using the knightly title as an unfair barb. "Thirty-minute stroll to the hotel, I think, will be about right." The exercise would also give them a chance to make sure they weren't being followed. If the opposition were onto their operation, they'd be unable to resist the temptation to shadow the two intelligence officers, and, on mainly empty city streets, it wouldn't be too difficult to "make" them along the way… unless the opposition consisted of KGB. They were cleverer than the locals by a sizable margin.
Zaitzev and his wife had the comfortable glow of three very stiff drinks each. Oddly, his wife showed little sign of approaching sleep, however. Too excited by the night's fine entertainment, Oleg thought. Maybe it was for the better. Just that one more worry to go-except for how the CIA planned to get them out of Hungary. What would it be? A helicopter near the border, flying them under Hungarian radar coverage? That was what he would have chosen. Would CIA be able to hop them from inside Hungary to Austria? Just how clever were they? Would they let him know? Might it be something really clever and daring? And frightening? he wondered.
Would it succeed? If not… well, the consequences of failure did not bear much contemplation.
But neither would they go entirely away. Not for the first time, Oleg considered that his own death might result from this adventure, and prolonged misery for his wife and child. The Soviets would not kill them, but it would mark them forever as pariahs, doomed to a life of misery. And so they were hostages to his conscience as well. How many Soviets had stopped short of defection just on that basis? Treason, he reminded himself, was the blackest of crimes, and the penalties for it were equally forbidding.
Zaitzev poured out the remainder of the vodka and gunned it down, waiting the last half hour before the CIA arrived to save his life…
Or whatever they planned to do with him and his family. He kept checking his watch while his wife finally dozed off and back, smiling and humming the Bach concert with a head that lolled back and forth. At least he'd given her as fine a night as he'd ever managed to do…
There was a parking place just by the hotel's side door. Small drove up to it and backed in neatly. Parallel parking is an art form in England that he still remembered how to perform. Then they sat, Small with a cigarette and Truelove with his favorite briar pipe, looking out at empty streets, just a few pedestrians in the distance, with Small keeping an eye on the rearview mirror for activity at the KGB residency. There were some lights on up on the second floor, but nothing moving that he could see. Probably some KGB chap had just forgotten to flip the switch on the way out.
There it was, Ryan saw, just three blocks, on the right-hand side of the street.
Showtime.
The remaining walk passed seemingly in an instant. Tom Trent, he saw, was by the corner of the building. People were coming out of the building, probably from the basement bar Hudson had shown him, about right for closing time, just in twos and threes, nobody leaving alone. Must be a saloon for the local singles crowd, Jack thought, setting up one-night stands for the terminally lonely. So, they had them in communist countries too, eh?
As they approached, Hudson flicked a finger across his nose. That was the sign for Trent to go inside and distract the desk clerk. How he did that, Ryan would never know, but minutes later when they walked in the door, the lobby was totally empty.
"Come on." Hudson hurried over to the stairs, which wrapped around the elevator shaft. Getting to the third floor took less than a minute. And there was Room 307. Hudson turned the knob. The Rabbit had not locked it. Hudson opened it slowly.
Zaitzev saw the door open. Irina was mostly asleep now. He looked at her to be sure, then stood.
"Hello," Hudson said in quiet greeting. He extended his hand.
"Hello," Zaitzev said, in English. "You are travel agent?"
"Yes, we both are. This is Mr. Ryan."
"Ryan?" Zaitzev asked. "There is KGB operation by that name."
"Really?" Jack asked, surprised. He hadn't heard about that one yet.
"We can discuss that later, Comrade Zaitzev. We must leave now."
"Da." He turned to shake his wife awake. She started violently when she saw the two unexpected men in her room.
"Irina Bogdanova," Oleg said with a touch of sternness in his voice. "We are taking an unexpected trip. We are leaving right now. Get Svetlana ready."
Her eyes came fully open in surprise. "Oleg, what is this? What are we doing?"
"We are leaving right now for a new destination. You must get moving now."
Ryan didn't understand the words, but the content was pretty clear. Then the woman surprised him by coming to her feet and moving like an automaton. The daughter was on a small children's bed. Mother Rabbit lifted the sleeping child to semi-wakefulness and got her clothes organized.
"What are we doing exactly?" the Rabbit asked.
"We are taking you to England-tonight," Hudson emphasized.
"Not America?"
"England first," Ryan told him. "Then I will take you to America."
"Ah." He was in a very tense state, Ryan saw, but that was to be expected. This guy had laid his life on the craps table, and the dice were still in the air. It was Ryan's job to make sure they didn't come up snake eyes. "What do I bring?"
"Nothing," Hudson said. "Not a bloody thing. Leave all your papers here. We have new ones for you." He held up three passports with a lot of faked stamps on the inside pages. "For now I will hold these for you."
"You are CIA?"
"No, I am British. Ryan here is CIA."
"But-why?"
"It's a long story, Mr. Zaitzev," Ryan said. "But right now we must leave."
The little girl was dressed now, but still sleepy, as Sally had been on that horrible night at Peregrine Cliff, Jack saw.
Hudson looked around, suddenly delighted to see the empty vodka bottle on the night table. Bloody good luck that was. Mother Rabbit was still confused, by the combination of three or four drinks and the post-midnight earthquake that had exploded around her. It had taken less than five minutes and everyone looked ready to leave. Then she saw her pantyhose bag, and moved toward it.
"Nyet," Hudson said in Russian. "Leave them. There are many of those where we are taking you."
"But-but-but…"
"Do what he says, Irina!" Oleg snarled, his equilibrium upset by the drink and the tension of the moment.
"Everyone ready?" Hudson asked. Next, Irina scooped her daughter up, her face a mass of utter confusion, and they all went to the door. Hudson looked out into the corridor, then waved for the others to follow. Ryan took the rear, closing the door, after making sure it was unlocked.
The lobby was still vacant. They didn't know what Tom Trent had done, but whatever it was, it had worked. Hudson led the others out the side door and onto the street. There was the embassy car Trent had brought over, and Hudson had the spare set of keys. On the way, he waved at the truck for Small and Truelove. The car was a Jaguar, painted a dark blue, with left-hand drive. Ryan loaded them into the backseat, closed the door, and hopped in the front. The big V-8 started instantly-the Jag was lovingly maintained for purposes like this one-and Hudson started driving.
Their taillights were still visible as Small and Truelove stepped out of their truck, hustling to the back. Each took one of the adult bags and headed in the side door. The lobby was still empty, and they raced up the stairs, each with a heavy and limp burden. The upstairs corridor was also empty. The two retired soldiers moved as stealthily as possible into the room. There they unzipped the bags, and with gloved hands removed the bodies. That was a hard moment on each of them. Professional soldiers that they were, both with combat experience, the immediate sight of a burned human body was hard to take without a deep breath and an inner command to take charge of their feelings. They laid the man's and the woman's bodies from different countries and continents side by side on the double bed. Then they left the room to return to the truck, taking the empty body bags with them. Small got the smallest of the bags out of the truck, while Truelove got the rest of the necessary gear, and back in they went.
Small's job proved the hardest; removing the little girl's body from the plastic bag was something he'd work hard to erase from his memory. She went on the cot, as he thought of it, in her nearly incinerated nightgown. He might have patted her little head had her hair not been entirely burned off with a blowtorch, and all he could do was whisper a prayer for her innocent little soul before his stomach nearly lost control, and to prevent that he turned abruptly away.
The former Royal Engineer was already into his own task. He made sure they'd left nothing. The last of the plastic bags was folded and tucked into his belt. They both still had their work gloves, and so there was nothing they'd brought to be left in the room. He took his time looking around, and then waved Small out into the corridor.
Then he tore the top off the milk carton-it had been washed clean and dried beforehand. He lit the candle with his butane lighter and dripped a dollop of hot wax into the bottom of the carton, to make sure it would have a good place to stand. Then he blew out the candle and made sure it was secure in its place.
Then came the dangerous part Truelove opened the top of me alcohol container, first pouring nearly a quart into the carton, to within just less than an inch of the top of the candle. Next he poured the alcohol on the adult bed, and more onto the child's cot. The remainder went on the floor, much of it around the milk carton. Finished, he tossed the empty alcohol container to Bob Small.
Okay, Truelove thought, fully a gallon of pure grain alcohol soaked into the bedclothes and another on the cheap rug on the floor. A demolitions expert-in fact, he had many fields of technical expertise, like most military engineers-he knew to be careful for the next part. Bending down, he flicked his lighter again and lit the candle wick with the same care a heart surgeon might have exercised in a valve replacement. He didn't waste a second leaving the room, except to make sure the door was properly locked and the do-not-disturb card hung on the knob.
"Time to leave, Robert," Rodney said to his colleague, and in thirty seconds they were out the side door and off to the street. "How long on the candle?" Small asked by the truck.
"Thirty minutes at most," the Royal Engineer sergeant answered.
"That poor little girl-you suppose?" he almost asked.
"People die in house fires every day, mate. They didn't do it special for this lot."
Small nodded to himself. "I reckon."
Just then Tom Trent appeared in the lobby. They'd never found the camera he lost in an upstairs room, but he tipped the desk clerk for his effort. It turned out that he was the only employee on duty until five in the morning.
Or so the chap thinks, Trent told himself, getting into the truck.
"Back to the embassy, lads," the spook told the security men. "There's a good bottle of single-malt Scotch whiskey waiting for us all."
"Good. I could use a dram," Small observed, thinking of the little girl. "Or two."
"Can you say what this adventure is all about?"
"Not tonight. Perhaps later," Trent replied.