Checkpoint Charlie

Challenge for Charlie

This took place several years ago; I must make that clear.

Normally Helsinki is one of my favorite towns but this time I was reluctant to return there because the job was the toughest one Myerson had yet put into my ample lap and the adversary was Mikhail Yaskov, who was — bar one — the best in the business.

Yaskov and I had crossed paths obliquely several times down through the Cold War desades but I had never been sent head-to-head against him before and the truth is I was not eager to face this assignment, although — vanity being what it is — I believed I probably could best him. “Probably” is not a word that gets much of a workout in my lexicon; usually I know I can win before I start playing the game; but with Yaskov I’d be dead if I became overconfident.

The job was simple on the face of it: straightforward. As usual the assignment had come to our section because of the odd politics of international espionage which sometimes can cause simple jobs to become sensitive ones. If it’s a job that would embarrass anybody then it usually gets shoveled into our department.

In this case I was America’s friendly right hand, extended to a country that needed assistance not because of any lack of skill or courage (the Finns excel in cleverness and toughness) but because of a fine delicacy of politics.

Finland is virtually the only country to have fought a war with Russia in modern times and not lost it. Finland is the only country in Europe that fought against the Red Army in World War II and did not get occupied by the Russians as a result. Finland is the only country in Europe that has repaid, to the penny, the postwar reconstruction loans proffered by the Western powers. Yes, I like the Finns.

They share a border with the Soviet Union. The world being what it is, they make a few concessions to the Russians by way of trade agreements and the like. Soviet-made cars are sold in Finland, for example, although few Finns choose to drive them; the Finns don’t admit it loudly in public but they loathe the Russians and if you want a clout in the face a good way to earn one is to state within a Finn’s earshot that Finland is within the Soviet sphere of influence. It emphatically is not; Finland is neither a Communist country nor an intimidated one. It is, however, a nation of realists and while it does not bow obsequiously to the Soviets, neither does it go out of its way rudely to offend them. It treads a middle ground between hostility and friendship, the object being the preservation of Finnish independence rather than the influencing of power blocs. Finland practices true and admirable neutrality.

Mikhail Yaskov was an old fashioned master spy. He had run strings of agents everywhere in the West — usually with brilliant success. The only American agents I knew of who’d come level against him were Miles Kendig, who was said to be dead now, and my colleague Joe Cutter, who by then was running our operations out in the Far East. I was the only one left in Langley who had a prayer of besting Yaskov so I was the one picked to fly to Finland.

The KGB had sent Yaskov into Helsinki because of chronic failures in the Soviet espionage network there. The Finns were too shrewd for most of the Russian colonels who showed up at the Soviet Embassy in ill-fitting Moscow serge disguised as chauffeurs of Second Secretaries or Trade Mission delegates. The apparatus was a shambles and the Organs in Moscow had dispatched Yaskov to take charge in Helsinki, as if the KGB network were a musical comedy having trouble in New Haven and Yaskov were Abe Burrows sent in to doctor it up.

Yaskov was too sharp to put his foot in anything and there was no likelihood of his giving the Finns sufficient legitimate reason to deport him. If they declared him persona non grata in the absence of clear evidence of his perfidy, it would provoke Moscow’s wrath: this Helsinki preferred to avoid.

Therefore as a gesture of good will I was flown to Helsinki to find a way to get Yaskov out of the country and keep him out — without involving the Finnish government.

It was a bloody impossible job against a bloody brilliant opponent. But I wasn’t really worried. I’m the best, bar none.

In my time I have pulled off a number of cute and sometimes complicated capers and I suppose, given my physique and age, I could aptly be called a confidence man rather than a man of action. But Yaskov was not susceptible to confidence games. He wasn’t a man to be fooled by elaborate tricks — he knew them all; in fact he’d invented most of them.

There really was only one way to attack him: head-on and straight up. And I had only two weapons to employ against him — his own vanity and his awareness of mortality.

I made the call from a public coin phone in the cavernous Stockmann department store.

Comrade Yaskov could not come to the telephone immediately. Could the caller please leave a number to be called back?

No, I could not. I would call again in an hour. Please tell Comrade Mikhail Aleksandrovitch to expect my call. Thank you.

When I called again Yaskov came to the phone and chuckled at me in his suave avuncular fashion. He had a rich deep voice and spoke excellent English with an Oxford inflection. “How good to hear your voice, Charlie. I do hope we can get together and exchange notes about the Lapland scenery. Two foreigners in a strange land and all that. Perhaps we can meet informally.”

“By all means.”

It was elementary code, designed to set up a meeting without witnesses or seconds.

I said, “Do you happen to know a fellow named Tower?”

“The Senator from Texas?”

“No. Here in Finland.”

“I see. Yes, I know of him.”

“Perhaps we could meet him tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“I don’t mind, Mikhail. You pick a spot.”

“Would Tavern Number Four suit you?”

“Fine, I’ll see you there.” I smiled and cradled the phone.

There was a place called the Tavern #4 but we wouldn’t be there. The conversation had been designed to mislead anyone who might be eavesdropping on the call — one could depend on the Soviet Embassy’s lines being tapped, possibly by several different organizations. The fellow named Tower was in fact a place — the town of Lahti, within fair commuting distance of Helsinki; the town was known for its landmark, a great high water tower that loomed on stilts above the piney landscape. The number four established the time for the meeting.

I was there at three, an hour ahead of schedule, to inspect the area and insure it hadn’t been primed with spies or ambushers. My eyes don’t miss much; after forty minutes I felt secure and awaited Yaskov openly in the parking lot.

It was a pleasant sunny day with a touch of autumn chill creeping south from Lapland: Lahti is hardly 100 kilometres north of Helsinki and the forest cools the air.

Precisely at four Yaskov arrived. It might have been seemly and sensible for him to drive himself, in a Soviet-built Moskvitch or Pobeda, but Yaskov was fond of his comforts and he sailed elegantly into view in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes limousine. Like me he was a man who stood out in crowds anyway — he was not the sort of executive who dwelt in anonymity — and I believe The Organs must have put up with his ostentatious eccentricities on account of the excellence of his performances.

The chauffeur was, so far as I could tell, simply a chauffeur; his face did not flash any mug photos against the screen of my mind. He could have been a recent recruit or an agent whose face had not been put on file in the West but I doubted it because if the man were of any importance Yaskov would not have exposed his face to me. The chauffeur trotted around to open the limousine’s back door and Yaskov emerged smiling, uncoiling himself joint by joint, a very tall lean handsome figure in Saville Row pinstripes, a Homburg tipped askew across his silver hair. His pale intense blue eyes, illuminated from within, were at once the shrewdest and kindest eyes I’d ever known and I had always attributed part of his success to those extraordinary sighted organs: I suspected they had inspired more candor from his victims than had all the drugs and torture apparatus in the Arbat and Lubianka. Yaskov could charm the Sphinx out of its secrets.

As always he carried a cane. He owned an extensive collection of them. This one was a Malacca, suitably gnarled and gleaming. The excuse was an old leg injury of some kind but he walked as gracefully as an athlete and the cane was a prop, an affectation and I suppose if necessary a weapon.

He transferred it to his left hand and gave me his quick firm handshake. “Such a pleasure to see you again. When was our last meeting, do you recall?”

“Paris, two years ago. When we were all chasing Kendig.” He remembered it as well as I did but it was a harmless amenity and we both smiled. I said, “Why don’t we take my car?” — drawling it with grave insouciance: I didn’t want the chauffeur around.

“Why not indeed,” Yaskov said carelessly. He made a vague sign to the grey-uniformed man, instructing him to wait by the limo, and followed me to my hired Volvo.

We drove out of town along a country road that curled gently through the forest. I made a right here, a left there. After twenty minutes — small talk between us — I pulled onto the verge and we walked across a carpet of pine needles to the edge of a crystal blue lake. Central Finland has thousands of such lakes, each as postcard beautiful as the next; with a suitable net you can scoop up your supper from the bottom — fresh-water crayfish.

There was a log, strategically placed, and I sat down on one end of it. “I’m not bugged.”

“Nor am I. Shall we go through the wretched tedium of searching each other?”

“We’re both a bit long in the tooth for that kind of nonsense.”

“I agree.”

We trusted each other to that extent mainly because we were such fossils. We antedated the computer boys with their electronic gadgetry; we were the last of the tool-making men: we’d had to polish our wits rather than our mathematical aptitudes. In our decrepitude we still preferred to walk without the crutches of microphones and long lenses and calculator-cyphers. To do so would have been a confession of weakness.

He said, “You seem heavier than you were.”

“Maybe. I rarely weigh myself.”

“Don’t they have physical requirements in Myerson’s section?”

“For everybody but me.” I said it with a measure of pride and he picked it up; his warm eyes laughed at me.

Then he said, “I too. You know I have a serious heart condition.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“I’d have been astonished if you didn’t. It is a secret only from some of my own superiors.” He laughed again, silently, and settled on the log next to me, prodding the earth with his cane.

I studied the toes of his polished cordovan shoes. “This is a bit dicey, Mikhail. You may have guessed why I’ve been posted here.”

“May I assume the Company wishes me out of the Finn’s hair?”

“You may.”

“Well then.” He smiled gently.

I said, “You’ve got a villa on the Black Sea, I hear.”

“For my retirement.”

“Nice place?”

“One of the largest of them. Magnificent view. Every room is wired with quadriphonic speakers for my collection of concert recordings. It’s quite an imposing place. It belonged to a Romanov.”

“It’s a wonder to me how your bourgeois conceits haven’t got you in trouble with your superiors in the classless state.”

“A man is rewarded for his worth, I suppose.”

“You should have been born to an aristocracy.”

“I was. My father was a duke.”

“Oh yes. I’d forgotten.” I hadn’t forgotten, of course; I was simply endeavoring to prime the pump.”

On the far side of the lake a rowboat appeared from an inlet and proceeded slowly right to left, a young couple laughing. I heard the faint slap of the oars. I said, “I hope you’ll be able to enjoy the villa.”

“Why shouldn’t I, Charlie?”

“You might die in harness.”

He chuckled avuncularly.

I said, “It would be a waste of all those quadriphonic speakers.”

“I’ve often thought it would,” he agreed with grave humor.

“I don’t have a villa,” I said.

“No. I suppose you don’t.”

“I’ve got nothing squirreled away. I spend everything I earn. I have four-star tastes. If they retired me right now I’d be out in the street with a tin cup.”

“What, no pension?”

“Sure. Enough to live on if you can survive in a mobile home in Florida.”

“Of course that wouldn’t do.” He squinted at me suspiciously. “Are you asking me for money? Are you proposing to sell out?”

“I guess not.”

“I’m relieved. I would accept your defection, of course, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I prefer to see my judgments vindicated — I’ve always respected you. It would be an awful blow if you were to disappoint me. In any case,” and he smiled beautifully, “I wouldn’t have believed it for a moment.”

“The trouble with Charlie Dark,” I said, “I have champagne tastes and a beer income. I’m way past retirement age. I can’t fend them off forever. I’m older than you are, you know—”

“Only by a year or two.”

“— and they’re eager to put me out to pasture. I’m an eyesore. My presence embarrasses them. They think we all should look like Robert Redford.”

“How boring that would be.”

I said, “This time they’re offering me an inducement. A whopping bonus if I pull this last job off.”

“Am I to be your last job?”

“Charlie’s last case. A fitting climax to a brilliant career.” He laughed. “How much am I worth, then?”

“If I told you it would only inflate your conceit even more. Let’s just say I’ll be able to put up at Brown’s and the Ritz for the rest of my life if I take a notion to.”

“I don’t believe very much of this, Charlie.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping you would. It would have made this easier for both of us.” I took the pistol out of my pocket.

Yaskov regarded it without fear. One side of his lip bent upward and his eyebrow lifted. Across the lake the young couple in the rowboat had disappeared past a forested tongue of land; we were alone in the world.

I said, “It’s only a twenty-five caliber and I don’t know much about these things but at this range it hardly matters. With your heart condition your system won’t withstand the shock.”

“It’s a tiresome bluff, Charlie.”

“That’s the problem, don’t you see? I don’t want to shoot you. But you’re not going to leave me any choice. I can’t think of any way short of shooting you to convince you that I’m not bluffing.”

He poked at the pine needles with his cane. I gave him a look. “Can you think of any?”

“Not offhand.” He gestured toward my pistol with the head of the Malacca. “You’d better go ahead.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. Maybe if we put our heads together we can think of an alternative.”

“I doubt it. You’re quite right, Charlie — I don’t believe you’ll do it. I believe it’s an empty threat.”

I studied the pistol, an unfamiliar object in my hand. “At least I know where the safety catch is. I think of this thing as a nuclear arsenal — a deterrent force. If you ever actually have to use it, it’s too late.”

“Yes, quite.”

“But that doesn’t make it impotent. The nukes are real, you know. This thing’s loaded.”

“I’m sure it is. But a loaded gun is no danger to anyone until there’s a finger willing to pull the trigger.”

I said, “It’s a fascinating dilemma. I guess it comes down to a comparison of relative values. Which is more important to you — your life or your self-respect? Which is more important to me — the conceit of never resorting to violence or the promise of luxury for the rest of my life?”

“It’s no good, Charlie. You’ll have to kill me. There’s no alternative at all. Look here, suppose I agreed to leave Finland and never return. Would that satisfy you?”

“Yes.”

He said, “It would be easy for me to agree to that. Here: I promise you I’ll leave Finland tomorrow and never return. How’s that?”

“Fine. We can go now.” I smiled but didn’t stir.

“You see it’s no good. I have only to break my word. My people would begin the hunt for you immediately. And it would be you, not I, who would end with a bullet in him.”

“Ah, but if you kill me then they’ll send the whole Langley Agency after you and they won’t sleep until they’ve nailed you. They’ve got their pride too. No, Mikhail, you can’t do it that way.”

“Not to be terribly rude, old boy, but I really doubt they’d care that much. They’re trying to get rid of you anyway. I might be doing them a favor.” He spread his hands to the sides, the cane against one palm. “Charlie, it’s no good, that’s all. You’ve never killed a man in cold blood. In fact you’ve never killed a man at all, have you?”

“No. But obviously I’m not a pacifist or I’d be in some other line of work. I believe in protecting oneself and one’s interests.”

The rowboat reappeared, heading home. I put the gun away in my pocket to hide its telltale gleam from the young lovers but I kept my hand on it and kept the muzzle pointed in Mikahil’s direction. I said, “Your running dogs aren’t good enough to sniff me out. You know that. While they were looking for me I’d be looking for you. Sooner or later I’d reach you. You know as well as I do that there’s no way on earth to prevent a determined adversary from killing a man.”

“There’s one. Kill the adversary first. Unlike you I have no compunctions about that.”

“Thing is, Mikhail, right now I’m the one with the gun. There’s also the fact that I’m only a replaceable component. If I’m taken out they’ll just send someone else to finish the job.”

“Joe Cutter, no doubt?”

“Probably. And Joe isn’t as peaceable as I am.”

“On the other hand he’s not quite as good as you are, Charlie. I could best him. I’m not sure I could best you — not if you were actually determined to kill me.”

“And the next one after him, and the next after that?”

“Oh, they’d grow weary of it; they’d cut their losses.”

“If nothing else, I think your heart wouldn’t stand the strain.”

The smile drifted from his gaunt handsome face; he regarded me gloomily. “Do you know what I’m thinking about?”

“I guess so. You’re thinking about the comforts of those quadriphonic rooms and the untidiness of trying to operate in a country where the enemy superpower wants you out. You’re thinking I’m never going to give you any peace. You’re thinking how you like me as much as I like you, and you don’t want to kill me any more than I want to kill you. You’re thinking there’s got to be a way out of this impasse.”

“Quite.”

The rowboat was gone again. I heard the lazy buzz of a light plane in the distance. Yaskov drew doodles in the earth with his cane.

I said, “You can leave any time you want. You write your own ticket. You volunteered for this post, I imagine, and you can volunteer our. No loss of face. The climate doesn’t agree with your heart condition.”

He smiled again, shaking his head, and I took the pistol out of my pocket. “I want that bonus. I want it a lot, Mikhail. It’s my last chance at it.”

He only brooded at me, shaking his head a bit, and I lifted the pistol. I aimed it just past his face. I said, “If I pulled the trigger it won’t hit you. You’ll get a powder burn maybe. The first time I shoot you’ll flinch but you’ll sit there and smile bravely. The second time my hand will start to tremble because I’m not used to this kind of thing. I’ll get nervous and that’ll make you get nervous. I’ll shoot again and you’ll have a harder time hanging onto that cute defiant smile. And so on until your heart can’t stand it any more. When they find your body of course they’ll do an autopsy and they’ll find out you died from a heart attack. My conscience will be a bit stained but I’ll live with it. I want that bonus.”

He sighed, studying my face with an impassive scrutiny; after a long time he made up his mind. “Then I suppose you shall get it,” he said, and I knew I’d won.

Yaskov left Finland at the end of the week and I returned to Virginia to other assignments. As I said, these events took place several years ago. Recently I had a call from an acquaintance in the Soviet trade delegation in Washington and I met her for drinks at a bar in Georgetown.

She said, “Comrade Yaskov sends his regards.”

“Tell Mikhail Aleksandrovitch I hope he’s enjoying his villa.”

“He’s dying, Mr. Dark.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“I’m instructed to ask you a question in his behalf.”

“I know the question. Tell him the answer is no — I was not bluffing.”

I thought of it as a last gift from me to Mikhail. In truth the whole play had been a bluff; I would not have killed him under any circumstances. I lied to him at the end because it would have been churlish and petty to puncture his self-esteem on his deathbed. Far better to let him die believing he had sized me up correctly. It meant he would think less of me, for compromising my principles. But I guessed I could live with that. It was a small enough price to pay. You see, I really did like him.

Still, I suspect he may have had the last laugh. It has been several months since the lady and I had drinks in Georgetown. To the best of my knowledge Yaskov is still very much alive; now and then an evidence of his fine hand shows up in one operation or another. I suspect he’s still pulling strings from his Black Sea villa — directing operations from his concert-hall surroundings. It leads me to believe he was simply growing tired of field work, tired of pulling inept Soviet colonels’ chestnuts out of fires, tired of living in dilapidated embassies with enemies breathing down his collar. He was looking for an excuse to return home and I gave him an excellent one. As the years go by I become increasingly uncertain as to which of us was the real winner.