The Talbot Odyssey

PROLOGUE

“This is the way the world will end,” said Viktor Androv, “not with a bang, not with a whimper… but with a bleep, bleep, bleep… ” His wide face broke into a grin and he made a gesture toward the electronic consoles that lined the walls of the long, dimly lit garret.

The tall, aging American standing beside him remarked, “Not really end, Androv. Change. And it will, at least, be bloodless.”

Androv walked toward the stairs, his footsteps echoing loudly in the attic room. “Yes, of course,” he said. He turned and studied the American in the half-light. He was still rather handsome for his age, with clear blue eyes and a full head of white hair. His manner and bearing, though, were a bit too aristocratic for Androv’s own tastes. He said, “Come. I have a surprise for you. An old friend of yours. Someone you have not seen in forty years.”

“Who?”

“The grocer. Did you ever wonder what happened to him? He is a capitalist now.” He nodded his head toward the staircase. “Follow me. The steps are badly lit. Careful.”

The thickset, middle-aged Russian led the way down the narrow staircase and into a small wood-paneled room, barely illuminated by a single wall sconce. He said, “It’s unfortunate that you cannot join us at our May Day celebration. But, as we do each year, we have invited Americans who are friendly to us. And who knows? Even after so many years, one of them may recognize you.”

The American did not reply.

Androv went on, “This year, we have invited the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. They will bore everyone with stories of how many Fascists they killed in Spain a half century ago.”

“I’ll be fine in my room.”

“Good. We will send up some wine. And food. The food is good here.”

“So I see.”

Androv patted his paunch good-naturedly. He said, “Well, next May Day, Moscow will be importing much American food under very favorable trade conditions.” He smiled in the dim light, then pushed open a panel on the wall. “Come.” They stepped into a large Elizabethan-style chapel. “This way, please.”

The American crossed the chapel, converted now into an office, and sat in an armchair. He looked around. “Your office?”

“Yes.”

The American nodded to himself. Since he couldn’t imagine a bigger or more elegant office in the mansion, he assumed that the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations had lesser accommodations. Viktor Androv, the chief KGB resident in New York, was obviously top dog.

Androv said, “Your old friend will be here shortly. He lives close by. But there is time for us to have a small drink first.”

The American looked toward the far end of the chapel. Above what had once been the altar hung portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the Red Trinity. He looked back at Androv. “Do you know when the Stroke will occur?”

Androv poured sherry into two glasses. “Yes.” He passed a crystal glass to the American. “The end will come on the same day it began—” he raised his glass “—the Fourth of July. Na zdorovie.”

The American responded, “Na zdorovie.”

1

Patrick O’Brien stood on the sixty-ninth floor observation roof of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center and looked off to the south. The skyscrapers fell away like a mountain range into the valley of the shorter buildings downtown, then climbed again into the towering cliffs of Wall Street. O’Brien spoke to the man beside him without turning. “When I was a boy, the Anarchists and Communists used to throw bombs on Wall Street. They killed a few people, mostly workers, clerks, and messengers — people of their own class, basically. I don’t believe they ever got one capitalist in a top hat, or interrupted five minutes of trading on the floor.”

The man beside him, Tony Abrams, whose late mother and father had been Communists, smiled wryly. “They were making a symbolic statement.”

“I suppose you would call it that today.” O’Brien looked up at the Empire State Building three quarters of a mile in the distance. He said, “It’s very quiet up here. That’s the first thing anyone used to New York notices. The stillness.” He looked at Abrams. “I like to come up here in the evening after work. Have you been up here before?”

“No.” Abrams had been with O’Brien’s law firm, O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, located on the forty-fourth floor of the RCA Building, for over a year. He looked around the nearly deserted roof. It ran in a horseshoe shape around the south, west, and north sides of the smaller top-floor structure that held the elevator. It was paved with red terra-cotta tile, and there were a few potted pine trees planted around. A scattering of tourists, mostly Oriental, stood at the gray iron railings and snapped pictures of the lighted city below. Abrams added, “And I confess I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building either.”

O’Brien smiled. “Ah, a real New Yorker.”

Both men stayed silent for some time. Abrams wondered why O’Brien had asked him to share his twilight vigil. As a process server, pursuing a law degree at night, he had not even seen the old man’s office, much less had more than a dozen words at one time with him.

O’Brien seemed engrossed in the view out toward the upper bay. He fished around in his pocket, then said to Abrams, “Do you have a quarter?”

Abrams gave him a quarter.

O’Brien approached an electronic viewer mounted on a stanchion and deposited the quarter. The machine hummed. O’Brien consulted a card on the viewer. “Number ninety-seven.” He swiveled the viewer so that a pointer indicated the number 97. “There it is.” He stared for a full minute, then said, “That lady in the harbor still gives me the chills.” He straightened up and looked at Abrams. “Are you a patriot?”

Abrams thought that a personal and loaded question. He replied, “The occasion hasn’t arisen to really find out.”

O’Brien’s expression registered neither approval nor disapproval of the answer. “Here, you want a look?”

The viewer made a grating noise and stopped humming. Abrams said, “I’m afraid the time has run out.”

O’Brien looked at the machine sharply. “That wasn’t three full minutes. Send a letter to the Times, Abrams.”

“Yes, sir.”

O’Brien put his hands in his pockets. “Gets cold up here.”

“Perhaps we should go inside.”

O’Brien ignored the suggestion and said, “Do you speak Russian, Abrams?”

Abrams glanced at the older man. This was not the sort of question one asked unless one already knew the answer. “Yes. My parents—”

“Right.” O’Brien nodded. “I thought someone told me you spoke it. We have some Russian-speaking clients. Jewish emigrés down in Brooklyn. Near your neighborhood. I believe.”

Abrams nodded. “I’m rusty, but I’m sure I could communicate with them.”

“Good. Would it be too much of an imposition if I asked you to sharpen your Russian? I can get you State Department language tapes.”

Abrams glanced at him. “All right.”

O’Brien stared off into the west for several seconds, then said, “When you were a detective, you sometimes had duty protecting the Russian Mission to the UN on East Sixty-seventh.”

Abrams looked at O’Brien for a second, then said, “As a condition of my severance from the force, I signed an oath not to speak of my past duties.”

“Did you? Oh, yes, you were in police intelligence, weren’t you? The Red Squad.”

“They don’t call it that anymore. That sounds too—”

“Too much like what it is. By God, we live in an age of euphemism, don’t we? What did you call it in the squad room when the bosses weren’t around?”

“The Red Squad.” He smiled.

O’Brien smiled too, then went on. “Actually, you weren’t protecting the Russian Mission at all, but spying on it… You pretty much knew the principal characters in the Soviet delegation to the UN.”

“Possibly.”

“How about Viktor Androv?”

“How about him?”

“Indeed. Have you ever been out to Glen Cove?”

Abrams turned and stared into the sun setting out over New Jersey. At length he answered, “I was only a city cop, Mr. O’Brien. Not James Bond. My authority ended at the city line. Glen Cove is Nassau County.”

“But you’ve been out there, certainly.”

“Possibly.”

“Did you keep any private notes on these people?”

Abrams replied with a touch of impatience, “My job was not to watch them the way the FBI watches them. My areas of responsibility were strictly limited to observing the contacts they made with groups and individuals who might be a danger to the City of New York and its people.”

“Who might that be?”

“The usual crew. Puerto Rican liberation groups, Black Panthers, Weather Underground. That’s all I was interested in. Look, if the Soviets wanted to steal chemical formulas from a midtown research lab, or steal Ratner’s recipe for cheese blintzes, I could not have cared less. That’s all I can say on that subject.”

“But as a citizen you would care, and you’d report that to the FBI, which you did on a few occasions.”

Abrams looked at O’Brien in the subdued light. The man knew entirely too much. Or possibly he was speculating. O’Brien was a superb trial attorney, and this was his style. Abrams did not respond.

O’Brien said, “Are you prepared for the July bar?”

“Were you?”

O’Brien smiled. “That was so long ago, I think I took the test in a log cabin.”

Abrams had heard that Patrick O’Brien had a disconcerting habit of shifting subjects, seemingly at random, the way a card-shark shuffles a deck before he deals himself a straight flush. Abrams said, “Were you going to make a point about bombings on Wall Street?”

O’Brien looked at him. “Oh… no. It’s just that today is the first of May. May Day. That reminded me of the May Day celebrations I used to see down in Union Square. Have you ever been to one?”

“Many. My parents used to take me. I used to go when I was on the force. A few times in uniform. The last few years undercover.”

O’Brien didn’t speak for some time, then said, “Look out there. The financial center of America. Of the world, really. What would be the effect of a low-yield nuclear weapon on Wall Street?”

“It might interrupt five minutes of trading.”

“I’d like a serious answer.”

Abrams lit a cigarette, then said, “Hundreds of thousands dead.”

O’Brien nodded. “The best financial minds in the nation vaporized. There would be economic ruin for millions, national chaos, and panic.”

“Possibly.”

“Leading to social disorder, street violence, political instability.”

“Why are we talking about low-yield nuclear weapons on Wall Street, Mr. O’Brien?”

“Just a happy May Day thought. An extrapolation of a swarthy little black-clad Anarchist or Communist tossing one of those bowling ball-shaped bombs with a lighted fuse.” O’Brien pulled out a pewter flask and poured a shot into the cap. He drank. “I have a cold.”

“You look fine.”

He laughed. “I’m supposed to be at George Van Dorn’s place out on Long Island. If it should ever come up, I have a cold.”

Abrams nodded. To be an accomplice to small deceptions, especially one involving O’Brien’s partner, George Van Dorn, he knew, could lead to bigger deceptions.

O’Brien poured another shot and passed it to Abrams. “Cognac. Decent stuff.”

Abrams drank it and passed back the cap.

O’Brien had another, then put it away. He seemed lost in thought, then said, “Information. This is a civilization which rests almost entirely on information — its manufacture, storage, retrieval, and dissemination. We have gotten ourselves to a point in our development where we could not function as a society without those billions of bits of information. Think of all the stock and bond transactions, the commodities exchange, metals exchange, checking- and savings-account balances, credit card transactions, international transfers of funds, corporate records… Much of that is handled down there.” He nodded off into the distance. “Imagine millions of people trying to prove what they lost. We would be reduced to a nation of paupers.”

Abrams said, “Are we talking about low-yield nuclear weapons on Wall Street again?”

“Perhaps.” O’Brien walked along the roof and stopped at the railing at the eastern end of the observation deck. He looked down at the Rockefeller Center complex. “Incredible place. Did you know that there are over four acres of rooftop gardens on these buildings?”

Abrams came up beside him. “I don’t think I knew that.”

“Well, it’s a fact. And that will cost you another quarter.” O’Brien took the quarter from Abrams and deposited it in another electronic viewer. He bent over and peered through the lenses, swiveled the viewer, and adjusted the focus. O’Brien said, “Glen Cove is about twenty-five miles and a world away from here. I’m trying to see if I can pick out Van Dorn’s pyrotechnics.”

“Pyrotechnics?”

“It’s a long story, Abrams. But in a nutshell, Van Dorn, who lives next door to the Russians, allegedly harasses them. You may have read about it.”

“I may have.”

O’Brien swiveled and focused again. “They are going to sue him, in Nassau County Court. They’ve been obliged to retain local attorneys, of course. Have a look.”

“At the local attorneys?”

“No, Mr. Abrams, Glen Cove.”

Abrams bent his tall frame over the viewer and adjusted the focus. The Hempstead Plains rose toward the Island’s hilly North Shore, an area of wealth, privilege, and privacy. Although he could see very little detail at this distance, he knew, as O’Brien suggested, that he was looking at another world. “I don’t see the rocket’s red glare,” he commented.

“Nor the bombs bursting in air, I’m sure. Neither can you see that our flag is still there — above Van Dorn’s fort. But I assure you it is.”

Abrams stood straight and glanced at his watch.

O’Brien said, “Well, even Dracula needed a good lawyer. Poor Jonathan Harker. He learned that after you are invited into a sinister castle, you sometimes have difficulty getting out.”

Abrams knew he should have been thrilled at the opportunity to stand on this roof with the boss, but he was becoming a bit impatient with O’Brien’s musings. He said, “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

O’Brien smiled. “There are very few employees in the firm who would admit that to me. They usually smile and nod until I get to the point.”

Abrams leaned back against the railed enclosure. A few tourists were still walking around. The sky was pink and the view was pleasant.

O’Brien went back to his scanning, then the viewer went black. “Damn it. Do you have another quarter, Abrams?”

“No, I don’t.”

O’Brien began walking back the way they’d come, and Abrams walked beside him. O’Brien said, “Well, the point is that I may fire you, at the end of the month. You will be hired by Edwards and Styler, who are attorneys in Nassau County. Garden City. They’re representing the Russians in their suit against Van Dorn.”

“That sounds rather unethical, since I’m working for you and Mr. Van Dorn now. Don’t you think so?”

“Eventually the Russians will abide by Edwards and Styler’s request to visit the estate on a day they are being harassed by Van Dorn. They didn’t grant Huntington Styler’s request to visit today, but probably will the next time Van Dorn plans to have a party. Probably Memorial Day. You’ll accompany the Edwards and Styler attorneys, then report back to me on the substance of what was discussed.”

“Look, if George Van Dorn is in fact harassing the Russians, then he deserves to be sued, and to lose. In the meantime, the Russians should get an injunction against him to cease and desist.”

“They’re working on that through Edwards and Styler. But Judge Barshian, a friend of mine, incidentally, is having difficulty making up his mind. There is a fine line between harassment and Mr. Van Dorn’s constitutional and God-given right to throw a party now and then.”

“I’m sorry, but from what I’ve read, Mr. Van Dorn appears to me as though he’s not a good neighbor. He’s acting out of pettiness, spite, or some misdirected patriotism.”

O’Brien smiled slightly. “Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to appear, Abrams. But there’s more to it than a civil case.”

Abrams stopped walking and looked out over the north end of Manhattan toward Central Park. Of course there was more to it than a civil case. The questions about his speaking Russian, his patriotism, his days on the Red Squad, and all the other seemingly disjointed and irrelevant conversation were not irrelevant at all. It was how O’Brien played cards. “Well,” he said, “what am I supposed to do once I’m in their house?”

“Pretty much what Jonathan Harker did in Dracula’s castle. Get nosy.”

“Jonathan Harker died.”

“Worse. He lost his immortal soul. But since you’re going to be a lawyer, like Mr. Harker, that may be a distinct advantage in your career.”

Abrams smiled in spite of himself. “What else can you tell me about this?”

“At the time, nothing further. It may be a while before I discuss it with you again. You will discuss it with no one. If we proceed, you will report directly to me and no one else, regardless of what claims anyone may make that they are acting on my behalf. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Fine. In the meantime, I’ll get you those language tapes. If nothing comes of this, at least you will have sharpened your Russian.”

“For your Jewish emigré clients?”

“I have no such clients.”

Abrams nodded, then said, “I do have to study for the bar.”

O’Brien’s tone was unexpectedly sharp. “Mr. Abrams, there may not be any bar exam in July.”

Abrams stared at O’Brien in the subdued light. The man seemed serious, but Abrams knew there was no point in asking for a clarification of that startling statement. Abrams said, “In that case, perhaps I should study Russian. I may need it.”

O’Brien smiled grimly. “It could very well come in handy by August. Good night, Mr. Abrams.” He turned and walked toward the elevators.

Abrams watched him for a second, then said, “Good night, Mr. O’Brien.”

2

Peter Thorpe looked down from the hired helicopter. Below, the three-hundred-year-old village of Glen Cove lay nestled on the Long Island Sound.

The weekend retreat of the Russian Mission to the United Nations came into view, an Elizabethan mansion of granite walls, slate roofs, mullioned windows, gables, and chimney pots. It was laid out in two great wings to form a T, with the addition of a third, smaller wing attached to the end of the T’s southern cross. Formerly called Killenworth, the estate had been built by the arch-capitalist Charles Pratt, founder of what later became Standard Oil, for one of his sons. The house had over fifty rooms and was set on a small hill surrounded by thirty-seven acres of woodland. A few other surviving estates of Long Island’s Gold Coast sat amid the encroaching suburbs, including five or six other Pratt estates, one used as a nursing home. Peter Thorpe had been at the nursing home several times, but not to visit the elderly.

Also visible below, in what had once been Gatsby country, was a large group of protestors gathered in front of the gates to the Russian estate.

Thorpe looked back at the skyscrapers of Manhattan Island and stared for a while at the United Nations building. He asked the pilot, “Have you ever flown any Russians out?”

The pilot nodded. “Once. Last summer. Do you believe that place? Jesus. Hey, where’s your castle?”

Thorpe smiled. “The one directly north of the Russians’.”

“Okay… I see it—” A star cluster suddenly burst off the port side of the helicopter and the startled pilot shouted, “What the hell —?” and yanked on the collective pitch stick. The helicopter veered sharply to starboard.

Thorpe laughed. “Just some fireworks. My host must be starting his annual counter — May Day celebration. Swing out and come in from the north.”

“Right.” The helicopter took a new heading.

Thorpe looked down at the traffic along Dosoris Lane. The local mayor, Thorpe knew, was violently anti-Russian and was leading his constituents in a battle against their unwelcome neighbors.

In fact, Glen Cove had a long history of doing battle with the Russians ever since they’d bought the estate after World War II. Red-baiting village cops in the 1950s used to stop everyone coming or going through the gates and write tickets for any minor infraction, though the tickets were never paid. There had been a period of detente, roughly corresponding to the period of Soviet-American detente, but the Red-baiting fifties had clearly returned, not only in Glen Cove but in the nation.

Recently, in retaliation against the mayor’s summary banning of Russians from all village recreational facilities, Moscow had banned American diplomats from the Moskva River or something equally inane. Pravda carried a long feature article condemning Glen Cove as a bastion of “anti-Soviet delirium.” The article, which Thorpe had read in translation at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had been as idiotic as Mayor Dominic Parioli’s ramblings that precipitated it.

Thorpe reflected smilingly that Glen Cove also had given the State Department a headache. But finally, last summer, the federal government agreed to pay the village the $100,000 or so in annual property taxes that they lost because of the tax-exempt status of the Russian estate. In return, Mayor Parioli had agreed to lay off. But from where Thorpe sat now, twelve hundred feet above the village, it didn’t appear that Glen Cove was living up to its end of the treaty. Thorpe laughed again.

The pilot said, “What the hell’s going on down there?”

Thorpe replied, “The populace is exercising its rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

“Looks like a fucking free-for-all from here.”

“Same thing.” But to be fair to the village, Thorpe thought, circumstances had changed since the Glen Cove — Washington accord. There were persistent reports in the national press of sophisticated electronic spying equipment in the Russian estate house. Local residents complained of TV interference, which was to them as alarming as the electronic spying that caused it.

The purpose of the electronics, though, was not to wipe out Monday-night football. The real target of the electronic spying was Long Island’s defense industry: Sperry-Rand, Grumman Aircraft, Republic Aviation, and the dozens of high-tech electronic and microchip companies. Thorpe knew that the Russians were also eavesdropping on Manhattan’s and Long Island’s large diplomatic communities.

The question was always raised, “Where did the Russians get all this high-technology spying equipment?” And the official State Department answer was always the same: through their diplomatic pouches, which were not always “pouches” but often large crates protected from search and seizure by the protocols of diplomacy. Yet, Thorpe knew this was not true. Nearly all the equipment they used to spy on the local defense industry had come from that industry itself. It had been bought through a series of dummy corporations and delivered by helicopter right into the Russians’ backyard. Some of the very, very sensitive stuff that couldn’t be bought had been stolen and transported around in a purposely confusing manner, which included trucks, boats, and finally helicopter. Thorpe said to the pilot, “When you flew the Russians out here, did they have crates with them?”

The pilot shrugged, then replied, “Yeah, and enough luggage to take a two-year cruise. Boxes of food, too. But I didn’t know they were Russians and neither did the dispatcher. I was just supposed to pick up a party at the East Side Heliport and take them out to a Long Island estate. Anyway, they had these boxes and steamer trunks all over. So they dump this shit onboard and tell me to fly to Kings Point, which I do. Then, before I land, they say go on to Glen Cove, so I go. Then they point out this place below and I land. This van was waiting — some kind of deli catering van. A bunch of guys unload real quick and wave me off. Christ, I still didn’t know they were Russians until about a month later I see an aerial picture of the place in the Times. There was some flap over taxes and beach passes or something. Never got a tip, either.”

Thorpe nodded. “What was written on that deli van?”

The pilot looked quickly at Thorpe. “I don’t know. Can’t remember.”

“Did anyone speak to you about that trip?”

“No.”

Thorpe rubbed his chin. The man was suddenly less communicative, which could mean several things. Thorpe said, “You didn’t contact the FBI? They didn’t contact you?”

The pilot snapped, “Hey, enough questions. Okay?”

Thorpe pulled out his wallet. “CIA.”

The pilot glanced at the ID. “Yeah. So what? I used to fly lots of CIA in ’Nam. They weren’t as nosy as you.”

Thorpe smiled. “What did they tell you? The FBI, I mean.”

“They told me not to talk to you guys. Hey, I don’t want to get in the middle of some shit. Okay? I said too much already.”

“I’ll keep it quiet.”

“Okay… clear it with them if you want to know anything else. Don’t tell them I spoke to you, though. I didn’t know you were CIA. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of characters.”

“Take it easy. Just fly.”

“Yeah. Christ, I feel like a cabbie picking up muggers all the time. Russkies, FBI, CIA. What next?”

“You never know.” Thorpe sat back as the helicopter began its vertical descent. This mini-war between the village and the Russian estate had a comic-opera quality to it. More comical perhaps was the open hostility of another local land baron, George Van Dorn, Thorpe’s weekend host. Peter Thorpe looked down at the adjoining estates, two small fiefdoms, sharing a common, semi-fortified border, worlds apart in political philosophy and engaged in some sort of bizarre medieval siege warfare. Some of it was amusing, he thought, some of it was not.

A fountain of colored balls from a Roman candle rose into the sky over the helicopter bubble. Thorpe said, “No evasive action necessary, chief.”

The pilot swore. “This could get dangerous.”

Thorpe pointed out to the pilot Van Dorn’s illuminated landing pad, formerly the tennis court. Van Dorn had proclaimed tennis to be a sport of sissies and women. Thorpe, who played tennis, had suggested to Van Dorn that the sissies and women should be accommodated if they were his houseguests, but to no avail.

There was a radio frequency painted on the court in luminescent numerals. The pilot asked increduously, “Am I supposed to radio for permission to land?”

“You’d better, chief.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake… ” He switched frequencies and spoke into his helmet microphone as he hovered, “This is AH 113, overhead. Landing instructions. Over.”

A voice crackled back and Thorpe heard it from the open speaker. “This is Van Dorn station below. Have you in sight. Who is your passenger?”

The pilot looked annoyed as he turned to Thorpe.

Thorpe smiled. “Tell them it’s Peter, alone and unarmed.”

The pilot repeated Thorpe’s words in a surly tone.

The radio operator replied, “Proceed to landing pad. Over.”

“Roger, out.” The pilot switched back to his company frequency, then said to Thorpe, “Now I know two houses to avoid.”

“Me too.” Thorpe could see the Van Dorn house clearly now, a long white clapboard colonial, very stately, but not quite as grand as his enemy’s castle. Thorpe felt the warmer air from the ground entering the cockpit, and smelled the early-blooming flowers. From the empty but lighted swimming pool, two men were firing skyrockets, like a mortar crew, thought Thorpe, dug in against possible counterfire. “If the Russians could get a fireworks permit,” he said to the pilot, “they might shoot back.”

“Yeah,” growled the uneasy pilot, “and if I had my old Cobra gunship again, I’d waste the fuckers, and these assholes too.”

“Amen, brother.”

The helicopter came to rest on the tennis court.

3

Stanley Kuchik felt the sweat collecting under his shirt. He wondered what the Russians would do to him if they caught him here on their property. For decades the students at Glen Cove High, down Dosoris Lane from the Russian estate, had passed those forbidding walls and portals on their way to and from school. There had been stories of students penetrating into that foreign land, but they were always students in some distant misty past. There was, some speculated, a sense of inadequacy based on the knowledge that none of them, boy or girl, had found the courage or enterprise to redress the insult of those mocking walls.

But now came Stanley Kuchik, with the right stuff. Tonight he was going to prove that even if he wasn’t exactly the biggest kid in the class, he was the bravest. Ten of his buddies had seen him scale the fence between the YMCA grounds and the Russian property, and watched him disappear into the trees. His mission was clear: Obtain irrefutable proof of his deep penetration into enemy territory and rendezvous at Sal’s Pizza any time before 10:00 P.M. He knew that if he blew it, he might as well apply for his working papers, because he’d never again set foot in Glen Cove High.

Stanley raised his binoculars and focused on the big mansion about two hundred yards off. Purple shadows darkened the broad north terrace, but he could see some activity around the house. A few men and women sat in lawn chairs and someone was serving drinks. He wished they would all go inside.

He checked his Marine K-Bar knife to make sure it hadn’t slipped from its sheath, then ran his fingers over his camouflage paint — actually his mother’s green eye shadow, supplemented by a few swirls of brown eye pencil. The stuff held up pretty good in all kinds of weather, even when it was real hot and he sweated a lot. He wore his Uncle Steve’s tiger fatigues from ’Nam and his own black Converse sneakers.

He finished the Milky Way, stuffed the candy wrapper into his pouch pocket, and retrieved a Snickers. He froze. Two men were coming toward him on a gravel path ten yards off. He listened for dogs, but there weren’t any and he breathed a little easier. Even if the men spotted him, he could outrun them. He did the hundred-yard dash in ten flat pretty consistently, which he knew he could improve if he had a few Russkies behind him.

Stanley lay perfectly still as the two figures emerged between the plantings on the path. He recognized the short fat one with buggy eyes: Froggy. He’d seen Froggy in town a few times and on the beach once. Froggy had even spoken to Stanley’s freshman class a couple of years back. He was a cultural-affairs guy or something and spoke pretty good English. When the Russians used to be allowed to play tennis on the village courts, most of them hardly ever threw the ball back when you asked. But Froggy would waddle all over to get your ball, grin, and toss it back. Froggy was okay. Stanley tried to remember his name. Anzoff or Androv or something. Yeah. Androv. Viktor Androv.

The other man was one of those slicky boys: swept-back hair, a suit that looked like Stanley’s old First Holy Communion outfit, and dark glasses. The guy looked tough, though. Probably a killer, Stanley thought. A man from SMERSH.

The two men were babbling on in Russian, and Stanley could make out the word Amerikanski over and over again. He shifted his body slightly, pulled open his field bag and brought out a Minolta Pocket Autopak 470 camera. He framed his subjects and got off three quick shots. He returned his equipment to the bag and waited until they were a full minute out of sight before he got into a sprinting position. He listened. Everything was quiet.

Stanley dashed across an open piece of ground, covering about fifty yards in less than six seconds. He dove into a small, weed-clogged depression and lay still. He felt very exposed, but there was no other concealment around. He looked for listening bugs but couldn’t see any, although he thought this should be an obvious place for one. As his respect for the Russians’ security lessened, his cockiness grew. Well, he thought, maybe their security was good. They just hadn’t reckoned on Stanley Kuchik.

Stanley had been awed by his Uncle Steve’s stories about his escape-and-evasion course in Panama, and he had given Stanley his old field manuals on infiltration, recon patrols, and outdoor survival. Stanley had taken to it very naturally, when he’d practiced in the woods near his house, as though some feral instinct had been awakened by the pictures of men creeping through the bush.

He peered over the rim of the depression. The Russkies showed no signs of going inside yet. He didn’t think they would. It was still warm and pleasant. He’d have to proceed right under their noses.

Stanley knew that today was a Russian holiday. The Russians from the UN would be all over the place soon. He’d already spotted about a dozen walking around the gardens, plus the ones on the terrace. He’d planned this for some time… M-day minus six, M-day minus five… but now he thought he might have been foolhardy. Nuts, actually.

At least he hadn’t spotted any kids. Sometimes the Russkies brought their kids with them. The kids could be a pain because they ran wild in the woods and fields. When they weren’t around, he’d heard, they went to some kind of camp a few miles away, called Pioneer Camp, which was like a Boy Scout or Girl Scout camp. But he bet that instead of doing camp things, they learned how to spy.

Stanley thought about that for a while, then remembered his mission. He crept forward toward the open end of a drainage culvert where it stuck out below the steep drop in the lawn. The earth stank here and was covered with swamp grass and bulrushes. This was the farthest he’d ever come on the Russian property.

Stanley hesitated, then raised himslf up to the open culvert. He squeezed headfirst into the slimy clay and began crawling upgrade. He knew none of the other kids in the junior class could fit in the pipe. Being small had a lot of advantages.

As he got closer to the house, he saw that some weeping willow roots had found their way between the pipe joints. He used them to pull his way through at first, but at one point the roots were so thick he had to cut them away with his K-Bar. He heard chirping ahead and saw little red eyes looking back at him. He struck the pipe with the knife’s pommel and growled, “Beat it! Go away!” His heart was pounding and his mouth was sticky.

Stanley remained motionless and took stock. He had less than three inches on either side of his shoulders, and although he was not claustrophobic, he was beginning to get nervous. What if he got stuck? The fetid air was making him nauseous, and the total darkness was giving him the creeps. He felt oppressively confined and had the sudden urge to stand, break free, run in the open air. Sweat covered his body and he began shaking. He thought about going back but didn’t think he could get through those roots feetfirst. “Well, jerk, you can’t stay here.”

He resumed his crawl until he reached a juncture of several pipes. The air was better here and he took a long breath. He looked up into a vertical shaft that ran about twenty feet to the surface. There was a metal grating at the top, and he could see the first evening stars twinkling in the sky. “Piece of cake.”

He knelt on one knee and unclipped his flashlight from his web belt, turned it on, and pointed it up the shaft. He saw the first iron rung leading to the surface. He replaced his flashlight, took a long breath, and began the ascent, hand over hand, until he reached the metal grate. He pushed up on it and it scraped noisily across the concrete rim. He listened for a few seconds, then stuck his head up and looked around. A white flagpole rose up from the ground not ten feet away. There he spotted what he was after: the dark red flag of the USSR.

The flagpole was surrounded by a circular hedgerow about four feet high. He was concealed within the plantings, unless someone was looking down from an upstairs window. He scanned the second-story windows and the third-story gables, but could see nothing. He hoisted himself out of the shaft and low-crawled through the trailing pachysandra until he reached the base of the flagpole, then rolled over on his back. He drew his K-Bar knife and took a long breath. He listened.

He heard music coming through the partly opened French doors leading out to the terrace. Pretty bad music, he thought irrelevantly. The night was fairly still, though, and he wondered if they would hear the flag falling as the rope slipped through the pulleys. He put the knife to the halyard, but hesitated. Maybe he would just get the hell out of there. But then he looked up at the red flag with the yellow hammer and sickle, and the five-pointed star, snapping in a brief gust of wind, and he knew he couldn’t go back without it.

Suddenly there was a noise like a rifle shot, and he almost lost control of his bladder. He lay in the damp pachysandra, waiting. Overhead there was another loud report, and a shower of sparks — red, white, and blue — rained down. More rockets began bursting overhead, and Stanley laughed softly. Crazy old Van Dorn, giving it to the Russkies again. And he had no doubt where all the Russian eyes were turned. He sliced easily through the halyard and the weight of the flag pulled the severed rope through its pulleys.

The flag floated down slowly at first, then grew larger as he stared up at it. It settled over his entire body. It was made of some sort of lightweight bunting. He’d expected something heavier. The flag also smelled funny. Still, he had it.

Stanley lost no time. He cut the flag loose, twisted it tightly into a rope and tied it securely around his waist. He slipped through a space on the blind side of the hedge, away from the terrace, then raised himself into a sprinting stance, ready to run like hell across the lawn. Then the floodlights came on. “Oh, Christ!”

Even though the first rule of patrolling was never to go back the same way you came in, Stanley turned and slowly crawled back to the open storm drain. He quickly lowered himself down, pulling the grate cover back into place. “Okay… okay… you got lucky… ”

Halfway down the vertical shaft he heard a voice yell down to him, “Stop! Halt! We shoot.” A powerful light beam shone down the shaft. Stanley dropped the last ten feet and hit the muddy bottom of the shaft. He ducked quickly into a culvert opening headfirst as he heard the grate being lifted. “Holy Mary…” He realized he was in the culvert that led toward the mansion. He had no choice but to keep moving.

4

The traffic on Dosoris Lane was snarled, and with good reason, thought Karl Roth. There was an international incident brewing and everyone wanted to see it, or take part in it. He edged his old panel truck up a few feet, then spoke with a trace of a Middle-European accent. “We will be late.”

Maggie Roth, his wife, glanced into the back of the van. “I hope the food doesn’t spoil.” She too had an accent, which her American neighbors found charmingly British, but which to Londoners was identifiable as Wapping Lane Jewish.

Karl Roth nodded. “It is hot for May the first.” The panel truck’s engine-temperature gauge began to climb. “Damn it. Where do all these cars come from?”

Maggie Roth replied, “They are the cars of the exploited working class, Karl. Coming from the tennis courts, the golf club, and the yacht club.” She laughed. “Also, Van Dorn is having another spite party.”

Karl Roth frowned, then said, “Androv sent word that he has a surprise for us.”

She laughed again, but without humor. “He could surprise us by paying his bloody bills on time, couldn’t he?”

Roth smiled nervously. “Please be civil to him. He has asked us to stay for a drink. This is a big celebration for them.”

She grumbled, “He could have asked us to stay for the whole party. Instead, we go through the servants’ entrance like beggars and stand in the kitchen helping with the food. Classless society my foot.”

Roth let out a breath of exasperation. “It would be noted by the FBI if we stayed too long.”

“They’ve already noted your comings and goings. They’re bloody well on to something, I’ll tell you.”

He snapped, “Don’t say that! Do not mention anything to Androv.”

“Don’t worry on that account. Do you think I want to end up like Carpins—?”

“Quiet!”

The van moved up a few more feet. Suddenly a rocket arched into the gathering dusk and exploded in a red, white, and blue shower of sparks that lit up the purple sky. Several people along the road cheered and auto horns began honking.

Roth sneered. “More provocation. That came from Van Dorn’s estate — that reactionary swine.”

“He pays his bills,” remarked Maggie Roth. “And why didn’t we get the job on his party, Karl? We could have handled both. Van Dorn likes you. You’re so bloody obsequious toward him. Yes, Mr. Von Dorn, no, Mr. Von Dorn. It’s Van Dorn anyway, Karl. Maybe he’s wise to the fact that you snoop around when you go there. Or maybe he just thinks you’re popping one of the maids.” She laughed. “If he knew what you really were…”

Karl Roth let out another sigh of exasperation. Maggie must watch herself, he thought. The van moved ahead a few more feet. Angry shouting could be heard now up the road. Police cars were parked on the right shoulder, and on the left he could see the huge ornate wrought-iron gates of the Russian estate. People with picket signs were blocking the entrance and the police were trying to keep order.

From his high vantage point Roth could see several limousines trying to get into the gate entrance. The police were stopping each one and checking licenses and registrations. Roth said, “More harassment.”

“Where’s our registration? I don’t want a bloody ticket. We don’t have diplomatic immunity.”

“There. In the glove compartment. My God, what a mess!”

Another rocket arched high into the air and exploded with a loud report. Maggie Roth tittered. “Mr. Van Dorn is aiming them to explode over the Russians.”

“Why do you find that amusing?”

“But it is. Don’t you think so?”

“No.”

She stayed silent for some time, then said, “Do you realize we’ve delivered them enough food over the past six months to last out a long siege?”

He didn’t reply.

She added, “And all that canned stuff and dried stuff. Those bastards only buy the best — the freshest — now they want tins, dry foods… Well, Karl, what’s it all about, then?”

Again he didn’t reply.

Her tone was sharp. “Bloody beggars are planning World War Three, that’s what they’re about. Well, Glen Cove is safe, isn’t it, Karl? They wouldn’t drop a bomb on their own people, would they—”

“Shut up!”

She retreated into a moody silence, then mumbled, “I hope the damned mayonnaise has spoiled and they all get food poisoning.”

5

Stanley Kuchik lay on his back in the upward-curving culvert, his arms above his head and his head bowed under an immovable metal grate. Tears formed in his eyes. “Stupid… moron… Stanley, you asshole…”

He looked up at the grate, all that separated him from the cellar of the mansion. He thought about trying to go back, but if he got caught somewhere below, he’d die there and rot and his stink would be awful and they’d call a plumber who would use a Roto-Rooter and… ugh!

He knew that the Russians would be waiting for him where the culvert opened into the bulrushes, but after a while they’d figure out that he’d gone this way instead. They’d be down here soon and yank him out and shoot him. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph… ” In anger and frustration he balled his hands into fists and beat against the grate, tears running freely down his face as he sobbed.

He heard something that sounded like a sharp clink, and stopped. Tentatively he pushed against the grate and it lifted. He cocked his arms and pushed up like a shot-putter, throwing the heavy grate into the air with a strength he didn’t know he had. The grate crashed to the concrete floor a few feet away.

Before the adrenaline gave way to the paralyzing muscle fatigue he felt, Stanley grabbed the sides of the opening, pulling and kicking at the same time, heaving himself up and out of the hole, then tumbling onto the floor.

He lay there on the cold concrete for several seconds, breathing heavily, feeling his muscles flutter and his body shake. He drew a deep breath and stood unsteadily. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

Stanley brushed himself, straightened his clothes, and checked his gear. Everything was in place including the tightly girthed flag.

He looked quickly around. He was in the boiler room. Three huge furnaces stood across the room along with three hot-water tanks and oil tanks.

He opened a crudely made wooden door and passed into an unlit room. He found an overhead pull chain and turned on a single light bulb. He looked around. Stacks and stacks of boxes filled with canned foods lined the walls and formed aisles in the immense space. “Christ, they could feed an army.”

He turned on his flashlight and walked through the storage space, reading the familiar brand names until he came to a door. He listened, but could hear nothing. He opened the door and entered a room filled top to bottom with steel file cabinets. He selected one at random and pulled open a drawer, shining his light on the file tabs marked with Cyrillic lettering. He extracted a sheaf of papers and stared at the top one. “Crazy goddamned language . .” He stuffed the entire sheaf into his field bag and continued walking.

He could see basement windows, opening out to window wells, but there were bars over all of them. He knew he had to find a cellar door that led outside. He could faintly hear music, talking, and laughing in the room above. He continued prowling around the cluttered area.

His flashlight picked out something on the wall, and he steadied the beam on it, then walked toward it. He played the beam around the area and counted three large electrical panels. He opened one of them. Inside were two rows of modern circuit breakers. They were all marked in Russian, leading Stanley to believe that it had not been an American electrician who installed the new system. Stanley retrieved his Minolta and slid the close-up lens into place. He stood directly in front of the electrical panel and held the camera cord straight out to measure fifty centimeters. He framed the panel, stood perfectly still, closed his eyes, and hit the shutter button. The camera flashed. He moved to the next two panels and shot two more pictures. Now he had proof that he’d been in the mansion itself.

Stanley played his flashlight around and spotted something on the floor to the right of the electrical panels. He quickly moved closer to it and knelt. It was a big brute of a generator, Americanmade, bolted to the concrete above another floor drain. It wasn’t running and Stanley suspected that it kicked on automatically when there was an interruption in electrical service. He shined his light farther down the wall. There was a huge oil tank in the corner, probably diesel oil, he thought, to run the generator. “Christ, these guys don’t take any chances.”

He stood and played the light around, then moved across the room. Rising from the floor was an electric water-well pump, connected by a two-inch pipe to the water main overhead. The pump wasn’t running either, and Stanley guessed that it turned on if the generator did, or if the village water was shut off. Stanley scratched his head thoughtfully. “Food… fuel… electricity… water… Real shitheads… Ready for anything.” He began walking again.

He passed through an opening in a wooden wall and came to a room full of lawn furniture and gardening tools. He scanned the walls with his flashlight and finally spotted a set of stone steps leading up to an overhead door. “Okay, Stanley, time to go home.”

He unlatched the doors and pushed on the left-hand one. It opened with a squeak and he stepped up into the cool night air behind a stand of hemlock.

He found his last candy bar, an almond Cadbury, very expensive but his favorite. He chewed thoughtfully on the chocolate as he surveyed the hundred yards of brightly lit lawn. Beyond the lawn was a thick tree-line. He finished the chocolate, licked and wiped his mouth and fingers, and got into a four-point sprinter’s crouch. He waited, looked, listened, took a deep breath, and mumbled, “Okay, feet, do your thing.” He shot out of his stance, tearing at top speed across the open lawn toward the trees. He was less than five yards from the edge of the woods when he heard a dog bark, followed by a growl.

“Halt! Stop!”

“Sure — yeah — right.” He crashed through the undergrowth, into the woods. He came to a nearly vertical rise in the ground and took it in three long strides.

As he continued to run, the low-hanging branches of the maples whipped at his face and arms, and he felt a gash open above his right eye. A pine bough raked him across the mouth and he stifled a cry of pain. “Oh, screw this! Jesus Christ, never again… never… ”

One of Van Dorn’s Roman candles shot into the air and Stanley could see where it was fired from, so he changed course slightly and guided toward it.

There were easier ways out of the Russian estate, but Van Dorn’s place was his closest, and therefore best, chance. His only chance, really.

As he maneuvered through the woods, the maple and oak gave way to laurel and rhododendrons, and he knew he was approaching the borders of Russian territory. He ran into a coil of barbed wire and sliced his hand. “Jesus H. Christ!” He took his wire cutters and snipped out an opening, then passed carefully through. In the distance he thought he saw lights from the Van Dorn estate.

He could hear the Russians calling out behind him. And the dogs barking. A low stone wall suddenly rose up and he jumped it on the run, then slowed to catch his breath. He had technically crossed into neutral territory, an unused right-of-way that separated the two estates. No-man’s-land. He took a few steps toward Van Dorn’s place, but he found he was very shaky. A cold sweat covered his body and he was nauseous. He heaved and brought up some chocolate and acid. “Aaahh!” He took a few long breaths and began moving, half running, half walking.

Behind him he heard a sound like a shot and he ducked. Then the sky was lit with a parachute flare. The Russians had tripped one of their own flares, by accident or on purpose, but he was out of the circle of light and kept moving. He wondered if the flare would attract any friendly attention. But he didn’t want any attention, he just wanted to make it on his own and keep his rendezvous at Sal’s Pizza.

He came to a wooden stockade fence, with pointed pickets at the top, over ten feet high. The boundary of Van Dorn’s property. Stanley slapped at the fence. “Fucking Berlin Wall… ” About three inches of cedar separated him from freedom.

He began trotting east along the wall. He saw a rise in the land near the fence. From the top of the rise to the top of the fence was not the impossible ten feet but a more manageable seven or eight feet. He cut back toward the Russian estate to give himself a running start, then swung back toward the small mound of earth. A half-moon had risen above the distant trees and cast a pale light over the long and narrow right-of-way. Stanley looked to his left and saw six Russians and two dogs approach at an angle to his intended path. He knew he had only one shot, if that.

One of the Russians shouted, “Stop! Halt! Surrender!”

Stanley yelled back in a steady voice, “Up yours!”

The Russians released the dogs, and Stanley turned on his last burst of energy and speed. Both dogs lunged, but overshot him, reeled, and came back. Stanley hit the mound running, then jumped. His momentum took him up and forward, and he smashed into the fence but got his arms around the top of the pickets. The dogs leaped at him and one of them got hold of his sneaker. He kicked free. A Russian shouted, “Stop! Stop! We shoot!”

Stanley yelled back, “Sit on it, schmucko!” He pulled himself up and over the pointed pickets, hung for a moment, then dropped to the ground below, tumbling onto the rocky soil. American soil. End of game.

Stanley stood, turned, and began trotting away from the fence, laughing then crying, and finally howling in the moonlight and dancing. “I made it! I made it!” He jumped into the air and clapped his hands. “Stanley, you are the best!”

He tightened the flag around his waist and began trotting, then something impelled him to turn back toward the fence. The jagged pickets were silhouetted against the evening sky, and atop the ones he’d just scaled, he could see the moonlit shape of a large man coming over the top. “Oh, no! You can’t do that! Back! Stop! Halt! Nyet! Nyet! Private property! America!” Stanley turned and began moving as fast as his leaden legs would carry him.

The terrain was fairly open here except for a few white birches and boxwoods. Elongated moon shadows lay over the fields of wild flowers and Stanley tried to stay in those shadows. The ground rose, gently at first, then more steeply, then it became almost a cliff. “What the hell…?” He started slipping in some sort of goo. Clay. White clay. The Long Island terrain was mostly flat and benign, but there were parts of the island on the North Shore that had been formed by the Ice Age glaciers’ terminal moraine, some fifteen thousand years ago, and this was one of those areas. And it was screwing him up. There were loose rocks, gravel, and this strange, slippery white clay, which, thought Stanley, was like dog turd. He realized very soon that he had picked the wrong spot to reach Van Dorn’s broad lawn.

He heard them again, but without the dogs. He guessed they had helped one another over the fence; at least five of them anyway. The biggest lard-ass stayed behind with the dogs. He wondered what was driving them on. He was running for his life. How much could they pay these guys?

They weren’t calling to him anymore, but he could hear them walking, not behind him but off to the west about forty yards. “Bastards.”

Stanley summoned up the last of his strength and began kicking toeholds in the resilient white clay, clawing at it with his fingertips. “I’ll sue them. I’ll tell Van Dorn… they’re trespassing on American property. Fucking nerve. .”

He heard footsteps pattering on the side of the cliff to his left. They had found a path and were moving rapidly up on it. “Oh…” Directly below, about fifteen feet down the cliff, he heard something, and looked back. In the moonlight he saw a Russian who had been placed there to stop him from escaping by sliding back down. The man was holding what looked like a gun, and he was smiling up at Stanley; a very ugly smile, Stanley thought.

Stanley hung on the side of the nearly vertical rise and felt tears forming in his eyes as he realized that, after all this crap, he wasn’t going to make it.

6

A few cars behind Karl Roth’s deli van, a gray chauffeur-driven limousine also edged through the traffic on Dosoris Lane.

Katherine Kimberly, sitting in the rear, regarded the young Englishman at the opposite end of the long seat. Marc Pembroke was undeniably good-looking, though in a slightly sinister way. He possessed all the charm and breeding of his class, but also its cynicism and affected indifference. She remarked, “It ought to open up a bit once we get past the Russian place.”

Pembroke replied politely, “It’s just as well Mr. O’Brien didn’t come with us. At his age the flu can lead to complications.”

“He has a cold.” Katherine thought she detected a tone suggesting that Patrick O’Brien, senior partner in the law firm in which she was a partner, had simply begged off. She studied Pembroke for a moment. He was dressed in a white flannel pinstripe suit, a straw slouch hat, white silk shirt, and red silk tie with matching pocket handkerchief. He wore black-and-white saddle shoes. He might, thought Katherine, have been on his way to one of the surrounding mansions to play a role in a 1920s movie. She didn’t think George Van Dorn would appreciate such foppishness. Yet, in some indefinable way, Pembroke still radiated a hard masculinity. She said, “Mr. O’Brien is usually in excellent health. Last May Day he parachuted from a helicopter and landed on George’s tennis court.” She smiled.

Pembroke stared at the blond-haired woman. She was extremely pretty. She wore a finely cut simple mauve dress that complemented her pale complexion. Her sandals were on the floor, and he noticed her feet were callused, and he remembered that she was an amateur marathon runner.

Pembroke glanced at her profile. She had what they called in the army a command presence. He had heard she was rather good in the courtroom, and he could easily believe it.

She looked up and their eyes met. She did not turn demurely away, as women are taught to do, but stared at him in the same way he was staring at her. Finally he said, “May I give you a drink?”

“Please.”

Pembroke looked at the attractive young couple in the facing jump seats. Joan Grenville was dressed in white slacks with a navy blue boat-neck top. Her husband, Tom, wore a blue business suit of the type favored by his law firm, O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, for its employees. Pembroke, who was not an employee, wondered if Tom Grenville intended to make points with Van Dorn, a senior partner in the firm, and wear the depressing thing the entire weekend. Pembroke said, “May I give either of you a drink?”

Joan Grenville replied, “If you’re giving, I’m taking.”

Tom Grenville forced a smile and said to Pembroke, “My wife only understands Manhattan idiom.”

“Really?”

Grenville said, “I’ll make the drinks. Scotch all around?” He busied himself at the small bar.

Joan Grenville addressed Katherine in a petulant voice. “We should have gone in the helicopter with Peter.”

Katherine replied, “Even by helicopter, Peter will undoubtedly manage to arrive late.”

Marc Pembroke smiled at her. “That’s no way to speak of your betrothed.”

Katherine realized she had been a bit too candid, and that Pembroke was baiting her. She replied, “Actually I usually arrive too early, then accuse him of being late.”

“The Theory of Time’s Relativity,” said Pembroke, “was first discovered by watching men and women waiting for each other.”

No, thought Katherine, not baited, but led, and she wasn’t going to be led by this charmingly cunning man. She said, “Temperature, too, is relative. Men are usually too warm when a woman feels comfortable. Why don’t you take off your jacket?”

“I prefer to leave it on.”

And with good reason, she thought. She had spotted the pistol.

The limousine moved up a few feet. Grenville handed the drinks around. “We may be the only people in the country celebrating — what is it called? — Loyalty Day. It’s also International Law Day, or something.” He sucked on an ice cube. “Well, most of us at Van Dorn’s will be lawyers, and most of us are loyal, so I suppose it’s fitting.” He bit into his ice cube.

Joan winced. “Don’t do that. God, what a horrid weekend this is going to be. Why does Van Dorn make such a spectacle of himself?” She looked at Marc Pembroke.

Pembroke smiled. “I understand that Mr. Van Dorn never misses an opportunity to make his next-door neighbors uncomfortable.”

Joan Grenville finished her Scotch in a long swallow, then said to no one in particular, “Is he going to blare those speakers toward their estate again? God, what a headache I get.”

Tom Grenville laughed. “You can imagine the headache they get.”

Katherine said, “It’s all rather petty. George lowers himself by doing this.”

Joan Grenville nodded in agreement. “He’s going to do it again, isn’t he? Memorial Day, I mean. Then again on July Fourth. Oh, Tom, let’s be out of town. I can’t stand all this flag-waving, martial music, fireworks, and whatnot. It’s not fun, really.” She turned to Marc Pembroke again. “The English wouldn’t behave like this, would they? I mean, you’re civilized.”

Pembroke crossed his legs and looked closely at Joan Grenville. She stared back at him and the first smile of the evening broke across her face. They held eye contact for several seconds, then Joan reiterated, “I mean, are you civilized or not?”

Pembroke rubbed his lower lip, then replied, “Only recently, I think. Are you staying the weekend?”

The sudden shift in subject caught her off guard. “No… I mean, yes. We may. And you?”

He nodded.

Tom Grenville seemed not to notice the currents passing between his wife and the Englishman as he made himself another drink. There was a sharp knock on the window of the stopped vehicle and Grenville lowered it. A helmeted policeman peered in and asked, “Van Dorn’s or the Russians’?”

“Van Dorn’s,” answered Grenville. “Don’t we look like capitalists?”

“You all look the same to me, buddy. Pull out on the shoulder and go around this mess.”

Grenville instructed the driver through the intercom and the limousine pulled out of the line of traffic and moved slowly on the shoulder.

Before they came to the main entrance of the Russian estate, they passed the YMCA, whose enclosed tennis courts as well as a few other buildings had once been part of Killenworth. Grenville said to his wife, “That’s where the FBI headquarter themselves. The CIA uses the Glengariff Nursing Home up the road.”

“Who cares?” replied Joan.

Marc Pembroke said, “How do you know that?”

Grenville shrugged. “Local lore.”

The limousine drew abreast of the main gates to the Russian estate, moving very slowly through the police cars and motorcycles. Katherine thought there must be at least a hundred people picketing, led by the mayor of Glen Cove, Dominic Parioli, holding a huge bullhorn and wearing an Uncle Sam top hat.

Tom Grenville inclined his head toward the demonstrators. “About a fourth of them are FBI agents, with a few CIA, plus some county and state undercover police. Not to mention a KGB spy or two. If it weren’t for all the double agents, Parioli couldn’t muster ten people.” He chuckled softly.

The demonstrators started singing “America,” the police were trying to get the vehicles through the crowd, and rockets were bursting overhead. In the distance, Van Dorn’s speakers could be heard now, also blaring out “America.”

A separate group of demonstrators, made up of members of the Jewish Defense League and Soviet Jewish emigrés, was shouting anti-Soviet slogans, in Russian, through a loudspeaker aimed at the estate house. A group from the local high school was baiting a few grim-looking uniformed Russian guards through the fence.

Joan Grenville finally spoke. “I wish to God everyone would just calm down. This makes me nervous.”

Her husband replied, “We’ll be past here in a minute.”

Katherine responded, “I think Joan was speaking in a larger sense. This makes me nervous too.”

Pembroke nodded and put his drink on the bar. He said, “I think I hear war drums.”

7

Stanley Kuchik hung on to the side of the rising cliff. He didn’t think he could climb another inch, yet he refused to let himself slide down into the arms of the Russian below. Overhead, he heard people walking. He took a long breath and continued up the slippery incline, hardly conscious of what he was doing.

Suddenly, he tumbled onto the narrow footpath. It was several seconds before he realized where he was and was able to take in his surroundings. The first thing he saw was feet and legs. Legs coming up the path toward him, and legs coming down the path toward him. He was trapped. He wondered what they would do to him.

A voice said, “What the hell are you doing here? This is private property.”

Stanley started to reply, then realized the man had spoken in good American English. A man down the path responded breathlessly, “We chase this thief. He steals from us.”

The American said, “What the hell did he steal?”

Stanley raised himself into a sitting position. Two men, Americans, were standing about five feet off to his left on the narrow footpath. Four Russians stood in Indian file about ten feet to his right down the sloping path. The first, a young, hard-looking man dressed in a brown uniform, spoke in an angry voice. “He steals flag. He spies on diplomatic property.”

“Oh, bullshit. Spies, my ass. All you people think about is spies.”

“He has flag. You see?”

Stanley instinctively moved one hand to the knotted flag around his waist. His other hand moved toward his knife.

The American who was speaking answered brusquely, “I don’t see any flag.”

Stanley looked at the American. He was dressed in a suit and was kind of old, with white hair and heavy jowls. Stanley thought it might be Van Dorn himself. No one spoke or moved for a while. Stanley got his fingers around the handle of his knife.

The second American, a young man with blond hair and dressed in a white suit, squeezed around the older man and knelt beside Stanley. He spoke. “Hello. My name is Marc. What’s yours?”

Stanley stared up at him. He wasn’t American after all. Maybe English. He answered, “Stanley.”

“Stanley, that’s quite an outfit you’re wearing.”

Stanley looked the Englishman up and down and wanted to say Look who’s talking, but replied, “Camouflage.”

“So I see. Your face is not naturally green, is it? Are you all right?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, don’t be frightened. You’re safe now.”

Stanley looked at the larger Russian force and nodded dubiously. He said very softly, “They have guns.”

Marc Pembroke nodded and whispered, “I’m sure they do. So just take your hand off that knife. It won’t do any good, you know. We’ll have to talk our way out of this one.”

Stanley did as he was told.

Pembroke said in a normal voice, “Is that a Russian flag around your waist?” He smiled slightly.

The boy nodded.

“Where did you get it, Stanley?”

“From their flagpole.”

Pembroke’s smile widened. “You don’t say.”

The older man moved closer and said gruffly, “You stole that from their flagpole?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you old enough to drink, kid? I’ll buy you a drink.”

“No, sir. Thank you.”

The lead Russian spoke impatiently. “We take flag. We call FBI. This is federal offense.”

Van Dorn reached his hand down and helped Stanley to his feet. “It’s up to you, kid. You want to keep the flag?”

Stanley seemed surprised that he had any say in the matter. “Well… I…”

Pembroke spoke softly to Van Dorn. “He really can’t keep it, George.”

“Why not?” bellowed Van Dorn. “He stole it. It’s his. That’s what American capitalism is all about.” Van Dorn laughed at his own inanity.

Pembroke looked annoyed. “Don’t be an ass, George. Enough is enough. Be a good neighbor, now.”

“Fuck them.” He rubbed his heavy jowls in thought, then said, “Tell you what, though. I’ll show you all how Communism works. Give me your knife, kid. We’ll cut the goddamned flag into seven pieces and give everyone a piece to wipe their ass with.” He laughed.

Stanley knew better than to go for his knife. Old Van Dorn, he thought, was a weird dude. Stanley looked at the group of Russians, who appeared a little closer now. Stanley thought they looked pretty mad, like they were going to do something. Stanley wished that Van Dorn would shut up and let the Englishman do the talking.

Van Dorn said to the Russians, “You’re trespassing on my property. You understand that we have private property in this country? Beat it.”

The tall Russian out front took a step forward and shook his head. “We take flag. Hold boy here. Call FBI.”

“Try it,” said Van Dorn.

There was a long silence, then Marc Pembroke unknotted the flag and pulled it from Stanley’s waist. “Sorry, lad, it is theirs.” Pembroke made a movement to throw it up to them, then held it out. The tall Russian in uniform came up the narrow trail and stopped a few feet from Stanley and stared at the boy.

Stanley stared back and noticed that the Russian’s uniform was tattered, dirty, and covered with burrs. Stanley smiled.

The Russian snatched the flag from Pembroke’s hand and yanked it past Stanley’s face, brushing him. Pembroke pulled the boy away. “All right, incident closed. It was only a prank. We’ll take care of punishing the boy.”

The tall Russian seemed to grow bolder. “We wait here. Boy stays here. We call FBI.”

Pembroke shook his head. “We go, chaps. With boy. I apologize on behalf of the citizens of Glen Cove, the American people, and Her Majesty’s government. Now leave.”

Van Dorn, who had stayed uncharacteristically silent, added in a low, threatening tone. “Get off my property.” He raised both arms and leveled a huge, long-barreled revolver at the tall Russian. He cocked the hammer. “Next time… if you cross that fence again… bring pallbearers along. You have ten seconds to turn around. Nine, eight…”

No one moved. Then the tall Russian said to Van Dorn, “Capitalist swine!”

“Seven, six…” Van Dorn fired. Everyone fell to the ground except Van Dorn. The echo of the gun’s blast died away and the night was still.

Pembroke got up into a kneeling position, a pistol in his hand, the other hand pressing Stanley to the ground.

Van Dorn said, “Just a warning. Get moving.”

The four Russians stood and quickly did an about-face. They began picking their way down the dark narrow trail. Van Dorn lowered his pistol, then slid it into a big holster under his jacket. “You can’t let those goons push you around.”

Pembroke holstered his own revolver and helped Stanley to his feet. The boy was visibly shaken but seemed to be nodding in agreement with Van Dorn.

Pembroke looked a bit exasperated. He said sharply to Stanley, “What are you supposed to be, then? A commando?”

Stanley mumbled something that sounded surly. The shock was wearing off and already he felt cheated and angry.

Van Dorn rubbed his hanging jowls, then said brightly, “Hey, I’ve got a Russian flag. Want it?”

Stanley’s eyes widened. “Sure.” He paused, then said, “Where’d you get it?”

Van Dorn laughed. “At the Elbe, Germany, 1945. It was a gift. I didn’t do anything crazy to get it. I think you deserve it. Come on, I’ll buy you a Coke or something, and get you cleaned up before you go home.”

They began climbing the path. Van Dorn said, “You live around here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know your way around in there?”

“Sure.” Stanley was feeling much better. He remembered his pictures, and the Russian file in his field bag. And if Van Dorn gave him the flag, he could show it around… but maybe what really happened would make a better story. He had to think about that.

Pembroke said, “Do you do this often? I mean, go into their estate?”

Stanley replied, cautiously, “I’ve jumped the fence a few times, but never got close to the house before.”

Van Dorn commented, “If we hadn’t heard a lot of commotion — dogs and shouting — you’d be in their house right now.”

Stanley didn’t believe they could hear anything from so far off, especially with that damned music blaring.

They reached the top of the path and began walking across a flat, open lawn that had a set of rising bleacher seats at one end. Van Dorn said, “This is a polo field. But I guess you know that, don’t you? You’re not the guy who steals my tomatoes, are you?”

“No, sir.” Stanley looked across the polo field. On either side of the bleachers were two high poles, each supporting a loudspeaker. The speakers were silent now, and Stanley wondered if they hid directional microphones aimed at the Russian estate. Maybe that’s how they knew what was happening. On the far side of the lawn he saw the big white-lighted house.

Van Dorn was pulling at his jowls again, then asked, “Hey, how’d you like to do some work on my place? Saturdays. After school. Good pay.”

“Sure.”

“We can talk a little about your adventures.”

Stanley hesitated, then said, “I guess that’s okay.”

Van Dorn put his arm awkwardly around Stanley’s shoulders. “How’d you get so close? To the house, I mean?”

“Drainage culvert.”

Van Dorn nodded thoughtfully. He said with a smile, “You didn’t get in the house, did you?”

Stanley didn’t respond at first, then said, “I think I could.”

Van Dorn’s eyebrows lifted.

Pembroke said, “What’s in that bag you’re carrying?”

“Things.”

They walked for a while, drawing near the big house, where Stanley could see that a party was going on.

Pembroke asked, “What kinds of things?”

“You know, patrol things.”

“What are patrol things, lad?”

“You know. Camouflage paint, flashlight, camera, candy bars, patrol maps. Like that.”

Van Dorn stopped walking. He looked at Marc Pembroke, who was looking back at him. Van Dorn nodded slightly.

Pembroke shook his head.

Van Dorn nodded again, very firmly.

Stanley watched them. He had a funny feeling he had not seen the last of the Russian estate.