Guess Who’s Coming to Kill You

Chapter 3

The ends of the wooden viga beams protruded from the thick walls like thumbs; the geometry of Navajo blankets was worked into the décor. It made the Albuquerque airport unique. Brook always enjoyed landing there.

At a travelers’ booth he worriedly asked where hotels and courts were listed. The girl in the booth had a skin like coffee, but there was no trace of Indian in her neat suit and horn glasses; she looked out of place. She flashed the automatic smile of service girls everywhere.

“I’m looking for a court not far from the university,” Brook said. “I’ll be doing some research for a few days.” He made his explanation sound necessary. He had thrown it in as part of his cover, a precaution against the farout possibility that he was being tailed. It was Standard Operating Procedure; wherever you went you carried a cover, and you uncovered it in a manner appropriate to what you were pretending to be whenever you got the chance, although not in an obvious way.

The girl produced her list. Brook chose the motor court he had had in mind all along. He thanked her bashfully, retrieved his luggage, and hailed a taxi.

In his motel room he went through the routine motions of refreshing himself. It was unnecessary; the jet trip had been clean and untiring. But you never knew. Researchers in the common view were absent-minded, fussy, obsessive personalities; their habits were usually ritual. So much for the probably nonexistent tail. Brook sat down in the plastic overstuffed chair, lit a cigarillo, and waited for the knock on his door.

He wondered why he had been upset by last night. He had been summoned to Holloway’s desk before in the midst of a passage at arms and legs, and it had never produced more than a momentary annoyance and regret. It was one of the minor drawbacks of his profession. He decided that what had bugged him was the summons coming so close to the beckoning carrot. Megan was a tasty one; it was the ones you never quite got around to who stuck in a man’s mind. Oh, well, she’d still be there when he got back from Japan.

Then suddenly Brook decided that it hadn’t been interrupted sex at all. It was Holloway. What had it been about Holloway? He had seemed his usual inhuman self, a man who had long since stopped asking why to concentrate on the hows. And yet Brook could not get over the feeling that there was something about this run that... he could not quite put the feeling into a word. Whatever it stemmed from, Holloway had given no hint of it. But like all good agents Brook had developed a highly sophisticated sense for wrongness — the thing that made a man turn around at the approach of danger when there was no physical reason to do so.

Brook glanced at the television set on the other side of the room and half decided to turn it on. Introspection in an agent could be lethal... then why had he chosen to be one? He almost laughed. He had always been a parodox — an inner-directed, outgoing man. He could not deny to himself that, in spite of its disciplines and restraints, he enjoyed his work. He had the talents for it, the linguistic skills, the reflexes, the ability to blend with the wallpaper. He liked the travel part of the job, the assortment of people it gave him the opportunity to meet and observe — his major at college, in fact, had been cultural anthropology, and if his life had worked out differently he might at this moment be jotting down notes on significant tribal rites on some Pacific island. Instead, he was in a profession where deceit was the way of life and moral values were ignored. He smiled, thinking about it. Pete Brook, the nondescript guy who sat here in an inexpensive suit and who, without makeup or change of costume, could pass for anything from a truck driver to a college professor, outwardly the mildest and most predictable of conformists, had in the regular course of his employment broken every law on the books, including murder. Maybe that was the nitty-gritty. He was able to do all the forbidden things that every man darkly wanted to do and, instead of being punished for them, was paid.

He heard the signal knock he had been waiting for and got up to let Benny in.

Benigno Lopez was far from inconspicuous, although he was dressed as inconspicuously as Brook. Lopez had the high chest and short legs of the Aztec ancestor who had, willingly or not, mixed her blood with the blood of some conquistadore; his cheekbones were broad and his eyelids had the epicanthic fold. He looked more like an Indio than the peónes of his native Mexico. He was nearly Brook’s age, but already the deposits of the years were fleshing out his jowls. He could have been a Mexico City businessman except for his mashed nose. He was a good man in a fight, one of the best.

The two men shook hands warmly. “Long time, primo,” Benny said. His black eyes were sparkling.

“Six months,” Brook said. “Tangiers, wasn’t it? A great town for a couple of redblooded lechers.”

The Mexican showed his perfect teeth. “How long did we wait? — sixty days? And the guy never showed up. What a waste of the taxpayers’ money.”

“Let’s hope we have better luck this trip.”

“Thees time? I’m not so sure.” His wetback cover-accent sometimes showed when he was telling jokes on himself. “I was all set to go see Mondragon.”

“Who?”

“Juan Mondragon of Spain, in my opinion the greatest torero in the world. He’s fighting in Mexico City Sunday. Who knows when he’ll fight here again?”

“I bleed for you,” Brook said.

“In Sevilla he made eleven natural passes in a row and finished with a magnificent pase de pecho. They awarded him both ears and the tail. Goddam, I’d like to have been there.”

“Come on, Benny,” Brook said. “Today it’s a bear, not a bull. I’ll bet if you ask Levashev he’ll tell you they invented the bullfight.”

Benny said something about the land of the commissars in dirty Spanish.

They rode toward the hills. The horses were moth-eaten and querulous, poor stock. They could have taken a jeep over the dirt road, but Lopez thought it would look better if they seemed to be riding out for pleasure, so they had rented the nags at the shack and corral outside town. He had brought along for Brook a pair of blue jeans, a screaming sports shirt, shiny new boots, and even a Stetson in Brook’s size; he had changed into a similar costume. Two tourists out for a gander at the great Southwest.

“You can see some of the buildings now if you squint,” Lopez said.

Brook squinted.

“It used to be a ranch owned by a retired admiral, of all people. The government bought the spread just to keep Levashev there.”

“Were you in on this from the beginning, Benny? You seem to know a lot about it.”

“You are speaking,” Lopez said, “to one of the in-group, amigo. I am a very important man.”

Brook told him what he was in dirty English. The ranch was clearer now. It looked as if it had grown out of the New Mexican earth. “Pity the poor taxpayer again.”

“Worth every cent,” Lopez said. “Levashev’s their walking memory bank. Every time they need a fact about the other side the General has it. They’re always coming back to him.”

“I wonder what he thinks about all this.”

“All what?”

Brook nodded at the lunar landscape. “Presumably Levashev defected because he wanted to get free. And here he is, a prisoner.”

“Listen, Pete, this Levashev is a realist, like most Russkies. He knows that the minute our side let him loose the KGB would have a killer on his back. He’s got all the vodka he wants, he’s past the age of tomcatting, and from what I hear he’s nursing a real hate for the present commie regime. Remember, he was one of the original Bolsheviks, a pal of Lenin’s. He knows how much the brass at KGB want to get him. He’s perfectly happy here.”

“It’s hard to believe, being stashed away at the bottom of nowhere.”

“The Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce will not like you, señor! What’s with you, Pete? Levashev is an old man. All he wants is peace. Are you putting yourself in his place?”

“Maybe that’s it,” Brook said.

They came to an innocent-looking barbed-wire fence. Brook edged his horse toward it.

“Cuidado!” Lopez said.

“Electrified?”

Lopez nodded. “And a lot more not visible to the eye. This place is like something out of a science-fiction story! Let me lead.”

They followed the fence line until they came to an ordinary-looking gateway with a shack beside it. Before the shack, watching them approach, stood a Mexican in a wide straw hat and dusty work clothes. At least he looked like a Mexican. Brook kneed his horse closer to Lopez. “A leftover from Pancho Villa’s army?”

Lopez laughed. “That’s Shel Rifkin, born in Brownsville.”

“Texas?”

“Brooklyn. The other two in the shack are CIA, too. In case you’re interested—”

“—they’re holding rifles on us. What am I, blind? I thought they were expecting us.”

“They are. But how do they know we’re not Brezhnev and Kosygin in disguise?”

In the shack Brook was introduced to the three CIA men. Rifkin’s companions were also in clothes that went with the terrain. The CIA men checked their credentials, made the standard cracks about the cushy life enjoyed by FACE’s pampered playboys, and why didn’t they resign and join a real intelligence outfit? They also grumbled about having to pull nurse duty in the wilderness — apparently on this assignment agents were not rotated as often as usual — and indulged in other comments that came under the heading of shop talk. But in spite of their camaraderie, Brook noticed, they carried out a minute doublecheck; one even announced their arrival time, to the second, over a powerful transmitter in a corner of the shack.

Brooks and Benny Lopez were given a jeep. They drove for a mile or so along a two-rut road that led across a succession of low ridges and arroyos in a landscape stippled with boulders and scrubby piñones. At last they arrived at the ranch house, which was surrounded by old trees.

Brook looked around. There was no one in sight.

“No guards here?”

“Not where you can see them,” Lopez said with a grin. “They keep ’em out of the way so Levashev won’t be reminded he’s a target.”

A soft-footed Filipino houseman in a white coat led them into a Texas-sized rancho living room. A slight, small old man stood looking out a windowed roor that opened on a patio. His back was to them. In Russia Brook had been surprised at the generally short stature of the populace; he was reminded of it now. The old man wore a gray Stalin-type jacket and carried in his hand what Brook took to be a pipe.

General Levashev turned. It was not a pipe. It was a pistol.

He had the broad flat Mongolian-Turkish look of his Tartar ancestry, with overhanging clumps of cotton for brows and a shock of white hair. His eyes were young and alert; the puffy peasant hand that held the pistol was steady.

Brook was one coordinated linkup of muscles; without glancing at Benny, he knew that Benny was, too. It was automatic, like a knee-jerk. There were moves to make when a pistol was pointed at you and he and Benny Lopez without conscious thought were reviewing those moves just as automatically.

“Peace,” Peter Brook said in Russian; and then he said in English, “Put that thing down, General. You’re supposed to be expecting us. I’m Peter Brook. This is Benigno Lopez. Both of FACE.”

Levashev lowered the pistol. He allowed himself to smile, but without relaxing. Here’s a man, Brook thought, who tastes death every minute of his life. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

Brook nodded at the pistol. “You feel that’s necessary, General?”

Levashev must be close to eighty, Brook thought, and his yellowish skin was as unlined as a boy’s. Still, there was a musty aura about him, a smell of old age. It was more than weariness; he looked empty of belief. “A personal precaution,” he said. His English sounded like Gromyko’s, thick and heavy. He shrugged and went to a desk and placed the pistol in a drawer. He did not shut the drawer. “I am told the defenses are impenetrable here. Yet one does not arrive at my age, in this world we live in, by faith alone. So I have insisted on a last defense, in what they tell me is the impossible event that someone should slip through. Nothing is impossible, only unlikely. Forgive me. Will you be seated, gentlemen? Make yourselves comfortable.”

Brook and Lopez sat down on a settee, and Levashev sank into the armchair facing it. He did not move with marked slowness, yet all his movements spoke of lassitude and indifference, as though he had gone through every possible motion innumerable times and no longer cared to improvise new ones.

“A drink?” he said. “Wine? Whisky? I believe there is even bourbon. That is what Americans prefer, I find.” His tone suggested that he, Levashev, found bourbon barbarous. Once a Russian always a Russian, Brook thought.

“Nothing, thanks.” Benny Lopez shook his head, too.

Levashev folded his thick fingers in his lap. “Well, then. What can I tell you gentlemen?”

“You must have been briefed, General,” Brook said. “We’re here to learn all we can about Aleksei Krylov.”

Levashev reached for a pipe with a curved stem. “Aleksei Vassilievich Krylov. I know him very well. The first time I saw him I knew that he would one day become an important man. Do you know why? Because he was never a very good socialist.”

“I don’t follow,” Brook said.

Levashev’s smile thinned. “In the Soviet Union these days, Mr. Brook, no good socialist succeeds. The only means of rising above the masses is by cultivating contempt for them — discreetly, of course. One never calls it that. Instead, you pretend that the benefits you are enjoying enable you to serve the dear Ivans and Mashas better. Since everyone in the — what you call the Establishment — is doing the same thing, no one contradicts you. Russia was really the wrong country for revolution. That is the tragedy of it.”

“I wish we had more time to discuss these things, General,” Brook said respectfully. “But time is of the essence. We have to get specific information about Krylov and take off.”

Levashev shrugged; the shrug said that Americans were a hurrisome people. “What shall I tell you? His background?”

“We know Krylov’s background. Up through the party ranks, special training in the Foreign Institute, the usual. His first foreign assignment was China, back in the Fifties. When your people were still welcome in China.”

“Interesting, that assignment of Krylov’s.” Levashev filled his pipe with slow fingers, applied a match, puffed and puffed; Brook thought he would never get it going. The Russian finally sat back. “We sent a number of advisers to China to help build their socialist state. Krylov went along to help organize the secret arm of their state security apparatus — it came under what was called internal security, but it was really their foreign intelligence network. They were naïve in those days. It took our Chinese comrades some time to realize that Krylov was there to gather information on their young security system for the central index in Moscow. I suspect they have never forgiven Krylov for it.”

“He had other assignments after China,” Brook prodded him.

“But before as well. That is most important. As a young man Aleksei Krylov served his apprenticeship — as an apparatchik — in various posts abroad. He was, in fact, a simple kidnapper and assassin. As time went on, he showed such talent as to rise rapidly in the KGB, where he is now a lieutenant colonel. Krylov has traveled a long and difficult road since the days when he was a mere professional murderer. He has developed proper contempt for the masses, almost bourgeois manners, perhaps too much of a taste for the luxurious trivia of the West. Of course, while serving abroad attached to embassies and legations in various spurious posts, he operated throughout as part of the Soviet intelligence apparat. I am sure you are familiar with the dangers of this sort of life to a Soviet agent. Krylov has done well, nevertheless. I suspect they have sent him to Tokyo as a reward. A breathing spell, you might say. For a year or two. That was a mistake, it now appears.”

“Yes,” Brook said. “You don’t have to be a capitalist in Tokyo to enjoy its fine line of vices.”

“That is why only the most trusted agents are sent to such posts. Even then they are watched; sometimes they are forbidden to leave the Embassy grounds. Krylov, however, has been very nearly above suspicion. There will be some red faces — and perhaps some rolling heads — if he should defect. He was given the best cover of all, that of cultural attaché. This permits him to mingle freely with the foreign community. In fact, he is encouraged to do so.”

Brook nodded impatiently. “We know all this, General. What we hoped to learn was the inside stuff about Krylov. His hobbies, likes, dislikes, weaknesses — things like that.”

Levashev stared at him. “I should say that most of Aleksei Vassilievich’s personal interests are of the capitalist, even the aristocratic, mold. He fancies himself a gourmet and a connoisseur of vintages. He likes to ride pour le sport, and in Denmark and England he even developed a fondness for yacht racing, the most capitalist pleasure of all. He has become reckless, I believe. Yes, a ripe plum for you.”

“Doesn’t this make him suspect in the eyes of his superiors?”

“Yes and no. He is clever and slippery and plausible. His explanation, when he attends certain garden parties and sporting events that are not on the official list, for example, is that he is carrying out the spirit of his orders, which are to mingle with the enemy in order to learn secrets. It is a fact, moreover, that he has produced invaluable intelligence for the KGB. In the Soviet Union nothing succeeds like success, as I believe you say here. So Krylov has managed to keep his position, with only an occasional reprimand for too much zeal. But you ask about his weakness. It is this fondness for luxuries.”

“That’s a Russian Communist speaking,” Brook said. “Forgive me, General, but in the United States the achievement of luxury is the common man’s dream.”

“And that is your weakness, too,” old Levashev retorted. “But let us not become embroiled in argument. Krylov has the requisite working-class background, or he would never have advanced so rapidly in the first place. Luxury is not natural to him, which is perhaps why he pursues it so fiercely. And why, because he must feel guilty about it, he is constantly parading his knowledge of ‘the finer things’ he pursues. Perhaps I am painting too crude a picture. While he exhibits many of the characteristics associated with your nouveaux riches, he is not at all obvious or stupid about it. I call it a weakness only because such things are self-deceptions. In the Soviet Union we have made an art of this, for all our practicality. It is this that, in my opinion, will result in the eventual collapse of the Marxist state.”

“Then you would recommend playing on Krylov’s love of Western luxury, General?”

“It is my recipe for traitors.” Levashev paused to relight his pipe. Brook and Lopez stared at him. Didn’t he realize that he had just damned himself as well? The men in the Kremlin were certainly not calling General Levashev a Hero of the Soviet Union. He was an astonishing old man. “How do you plan to bring Krylov over, Mr. Brook?”

“No plan yet, General. I’ll size up the situation when I get there. The main thing is how badly he wants to defect. We’ve received indications that he’s about ready. You know how delicate these things are.” Brook could not resist it.

“Oh, yes,” Levashev said; he sat blinking at them with his Stalin eyes. “I began that way myself. The idea begins as a little lesion, a sort of psychic tumor. It is at first frightening, but as it grows one becomes less afraid of it. It is the leaving of your own kind, your country — forgive me if I sound chauvinistic — that gnaws at a man. I would not be seated here today if the schemers in the Kremlin had not betrayed the socialist revolution.”

“Then you still believe in that crap?” Brook exclaimed.

“Mr. Brook.” Levashev sounded hurt, and Brook felt ashamed. But then Levashev smiled and waved his pipe. “This, as you Americans are fond of saying, is a free country, is it not? Of course I am still a Marxist. Your intelligence is well aware of my ideological loyalties. It is precisely because of them that I decided to oppose the present regime. I shall never see the results of what I am doing — not in my lifetime — but one must live with a purpose, and this is mine. To help destroy those who have betrayed us.”

“And you’re content to live here like a prisoner to do it?”

Levashev’s shrug was broad. “What do I need beyond the small comforts I find here? To have purpose is enough. If we had more time I would explain in detail, but I am sure it would bore you.”

“Let’s get back to Krylov,” said Brook, nodding at once.

“If you wish.” Levashev struck another match.

In the room at the motel Brook mixed a Scotch and soda for Benny Lopez and one for himself.

“Here’s to Tokyo,” said Lopez, raising his glass. “May it turn out better than Tangiers.”

“Now, Benny,” said Brook. “There won’t be much time for fleshpotting.”

“When is there ever? You know the reason I joined this damned outfit? I thought I’d see the world, with a girl in every port. But every place I go, I don’t have time. Maybe after this one I’ll quit. Open a law office. Santa Fe, maybe. Run for office.”

Brook smiled.

“Yeah.” Lopez drank sadly. “What am I kidding myself for, compadre? Nobody ever quits this racket.”

Brook looked at him. “You believe that rumor?”

“Rumor.” Lopez laughed. “In the last five years three FACE agents have quit. Only three. And they were all dead from ‘accidents’ within a year.” He twirled the glass. “You believe it?”

“I don’t know.”

“To hell with it,” said Lopez, and raised his glass again. “To Tokyo.”

“To Tokyo,” said Brook, and drank with him.