XPD

34

From the East River to the Hudson, 10th Street cuts right across Manhattan at its widest place. Property speculators tried to call the east side of it ‘the East Village ’ but there were not many takers among the Russian emigrés, Italian waiters or Puerto Rican delinquents who lived there. Still less interest was shown by the drunk sprawled near the Russian Baths not far from the intersection with First Avenue. It was the morning of Monday, July 30, and the hot summer had made the city into a stone oven which, even at night, did not cool. Two old men had put a table on the pavement to continue the chess game they started inside the old brownstone house. Kids were working to get the fire hydrant opened, cheered on by some teenage girls who were sunbathing on the rusty fire escape above.

Three men emerged on to the flat roof of the property next to the all-night grocery. They vaulted effortlessly over the low wall that separated this roof from the one next door, dodging between washing hung on the roof clotheslines to dry. Their sweat shirts were dirty and stained, their jeans worn white at the knees and frayed at the pockets. The first man was dark complexioned with an Afro haircut and Zapata moustache. The other two men were white. One, a slim youth with tattooed arms, laboured under the weight of a blue metal toolbox. The third man of the trio was Melvin Kalkhoven, whose clean face and short haircut ill suited his grubby clothes. He detoured to peer into the street below.

The three men stopped at the dilapidated little shed which gave access to the building’s interior staircase. Once they were inside, the stale heat of this old building hit them like a hot towel. The black man-Pete-put on a set of Con Edison coveralls which he had been carrying under his arm. The other two waited for him and listened to the sounds of the street and watched for any movement inside the building. A fire engine could be heard somewhere over on the west side, and below them the janitor was arguing with a drunken tenant; their raucous voices echoed in the stair well.

‘These old houses smell bad,’ said Pete.

They moved quickly to the top landing. Pete went to the window and with difficulty got it open. He looked down into the street. The other two men donned white cotton gloves.

Melvin Kalkhoven looked at his watch, ‘Ready to go, Pete?’

Pete nodded. The tattooed youngster put down the toolbox and began working on the door lock of apartment No. 8. The lock had already been examined by a CIA team the day before. The skeleton keys they had been provided with were the correct choice. It was only thirty seconds before the door swung open.

‘All clear,’ said Pete. He too looked at his watch.

Kalkhoven and his assistant moved quickly inside the apartment and closed the door behind them. ‘What a lousy little lock,’ said the youth. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’

‘Expensive locks in a district like this could draw just the sort of attention these people are trying to avoid,’ said Kalkhoven. ‘This is a safe house… nothing secret, nothing valuable here… just a place to meet.’ He looked quickly into the tiny rooms. There were two telephones: one in the bedroom and a wall phone in the sitting room. No, not the telephones, he decided, the electricity supply sockets would be more suitable. It was very hot and airless inside the apartment-the windows had not been opened for weeks; they were secured by screw locks. The two single beds in the smaller room were neatly made up, bedclothes and matching green nylon overlays folded in envelope-corner style, as beds are made in hospitals.

‘They haven’t been slept in in months,’ said Melvin Kalkhoven. ‘It’s just a meeting place.’ Already he was at work removing the cream-coloured plastic cover from the electricity outlet by the bed. His assistant began work on the one behind the refrigerator. His name was Todd Wynn, a thin, wiry twenty-five-year-old-he looked no more than eighteen.

‘Watch that screwdriver,’ said Kalkhoven. ‘We don’t want scratch marks on the plastic covers.’

‘Why are we using such old-fashioned equipment, Melvin?’

‘ “Be not curious in unnecessary matters,” it says in the good book. “For more things are showed unto thee than men understand.” ’

‘Don’t kid around, Melvin. Why aren’t we fitting voice-activated bugs, or something more sophisticated?’

Kalkhoven said, ‘Because the guys who use this place are pros. Like I tell you, don’t mark the plastic. These are the kind of people who will check the place.’

‘You didn’t answer the question.’

‘OK,’ said Kalkhoven. Working quickly he removed the screws holding the wall plate and pulled the cover off. From his pocket he took a tiny carrier transmitter, no larger than a packet of razor blades. He fitted it into position, squeezed it to bend the wires and replaced the plastic cover. ‘Because if we put voice activated sets into this room anyone could locate them using a vest-pocket detector. Blast off any powerful sound and the voice activator will sing for you. Easier than hell to find them.’

The youth was slower in putting his carrier transmitter into position. ‘So someone’s got to sit outside and monitor this baby?’

‘Right,’ said Kalkhoven, ‘But at least they won’t be transmitting until we switch them on. These are good sets. They’re small because they take their power off the mains supply and use the wiring as far as the junction box as an antenna. They’re old but they’re good. I’ve got no time for some of this space wars junk that the Technical Services Division has developed; it goes on the blink too often. You done that one? Now do the other room. And don’t get jumpy. We got all the time in the world. We get anyone showing up here and Pete outside will hold them off. Pete’s a good guy.’

From the landing outside, Pete was watching the street where a uniformed police sergeant walked as far as the grocery, helped himself to an apple and stood eating it while watching the traffic pass. He was not one of the regular precinct cops; he was a nursemaid sent from police HQ to watch over such capers.

The kids had abandoned their efforts to get the fire hydrant going. The cop studied the chess game for a moment. ‘He’s going to take that bishop,’ he advised.

The old man who was the subject of this good advice gave the officer no word of appreciation. ‘Why don’t you go find Dillinger?’ he asked.

‘Come on, pop,’ said the police sergeant good naturedly, “The FBI got Dillinger back in the thirties. You’re smart enough to know that.’

‘So why wouldn’t I know how to play my bishop?’ said the old man.

The decline of the US dollar in world money markets during 1979 played havoc with Edward Parker’s budgets and plans. Suppliers in Taiwan and South Korea had contracts expressing their payments in Japanese yen, but virtually all the companies buying Parker’s radio components were in the United States and Canada. Now Parker was being squeezed by the movements of the world’s economy. His profit margin was getting thinner day by day and he knew that, unless some miracle happened within a year, he would have to start laying off workers at his assembly plant. If he was eventually going to be forced to a closure, he knew it would be better to face that fact sooner rather than later. He had seen what happened to other businesses where the management had refused to face the facts; the results had been total tragedy for everyone concerned. One man he knew, until recently a senior partner in a small but profitable radiophone company in Michigan, was working as a gas station manager in Ohio and, let’s face it, gas stations were not a growth industry. Poor man.

‘He complains all the time. He was always like that. In the army he was the same way,’ said Kleiber.

Parker wrenched his mind away from the capitalist problems that faced him in his business affairs. Truth to tell, he had become obsessed with the technical tasks of capitalism. He had to remind himself that he was the USSR ’s illegal resident and, whatever happened to his radio components company, Moscow Centre would demand that his espionage work be exemplary. He concentrated his mind upon the man sitting opposite him in this seedy New York apartment. He was a plump, cocksure man with a cropped head and ready smile. Willi Kleiber was not someone Edward Parker would choose as a dinner companion but he was one of his best agents, and they were on the brink of a success that might well enable Parker to go back to Moscow in a haze of vodka fumes and accompanied by the sound of clinking medals.

‘Who complains all the time?’ said Parker.

The light was orange. It was evening and the dying sun was huge and pincered between the tall buildings. Outside in the street some boys were playing softball on a diamond marked in chalk. They could hear their shouts.

‘Max Breslow complains all the time,’ said Kleiber, looking at Parker with narrowed eyes and wondering why his boss was so slow to comprehend him. ‘The joke of it is that Böttger’s people have encouraged him to continue making this film. Once they had seen the script, and decided it was harmless, they told him to actually go ahead and make this damned film.’ Kleiber laughed. He wrinkled his nose as he did it. The sound was more like a snigger than the sort of belly-laugh one would expect from this jack-booted German rowdy, thought Parker, but he allowed himself a smile.

‘There is no chance that Breslow guesses you are working for the Soviet Union?’ Parker looked at his watch. It was 6.10 p.m. He must catch a plane back to Chicago in time to do some paperwork before going to bed. At one time the illegal resident had always lived in Canada, but Parker had pressed Moscow Centre to let him be in the USA. Because he travelled so much of the time, they reluctantly agreed.

Kleiber laughed. ‘My old comrade Max would challenge you to a duel if you suggested such a thing.’ They were speaking English. Kleiber’s English was heavily accented compared with Parker’s, but Kleiber prided himself on his command of languages and Parker was wise enough to indulge his agent’s ego.

‘And what of Böttger and these other madmen? Are you sure they have no suspicions that you are working for the Soviet Union?’ His lungs gurgled on the humid air. Parker removed his jacket and loosened his tie. He detested these New York City summers. The buildings trapped the damp, stale air and made the ugly sounds of the streets unnaturally loud.

Kleiber grinned. ‘Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,’ he called in a lilting tone that mocked Parker’s caution. ‘Böttger, Rau and the others are senile, my friend. Crazy!… Meschugge!… Nuts!… Loco rematado!… I tell you this over and over again, but still you don’t believe me. Listen Eddie, these old fools are going through their second childhoods. They are liberals, they think I am a liberal, they don’t suspect me of anything. Now quit worrying, will you?’

But Parker did not quit worrying. He was a worrier by nature and he had mixed feelings about Kleiber. Kleiber’s loyalty to Moscow Centre was never in doubt, but then he would have given equal loyalty to any organization that gave him a realistic opportunity to relive something of his wartime life. He was as hard and fit as many men half his age, and as dispassionate as a machine. He was intelligent and, judging from what Parker knew of Kleiber’s security organization, a shrewd businessman. But for his weaknesses-women and gambling-he would by now have been wealthy. But Kleiber did not want to be wealthy. Kleiber was in love with hardship.

‘And Breslow will make money from the film,’ said Kleiber. He laughed again. He seemed to think it was genuinely funny. Obviously he had no resentment about the money that Breslow would make. Parker noted that; it was unusual in a man.

Parker said, ‘General Zhadov has ordered that the Stein documents are top priority. Nothing must stand in the way of our getting them.’ Parker had always used the name Zhadov-his old commander in the Fifth Army-to personify the whole bureaucratic empire of Moscow Centre and any orders or instructions emanating from it. But this time Parker had General Shumuk in his mind when he said it. ‘And General Zhadov,’ Parker added, ‘is a very tough cookie who doesn’t get his priorities wrong.’

Kleiber smiled. ‘You tell your General Zhadov to get stuffed,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the Stein documents, and I’ll get them my way. And it won’t be because some senile old fart in Moscow Centre tells me it’s a top priority.’ The air was heavy and unmoving. Somewhere on the other side of the city they heard a police siren wailing.

Parker said nothing, although for a moment he relished the vision of Kleiber confronting General Shumuk. Parker knew that Shumuk had accounted for tens of thousands of Kleibers in his time. He would be trampled underfoot without pause.

‘You’ll end up a general there someday, Willi,’ said Parker, ‘then you’ll change your tune.’ It was the standard Moscow line for outstanding agents. You gave them medals and military ranks. Once, Parker had gone to all the trouble of getting a Russian colonel’s uniform, complete with orders, medals and all the trimmings, just to show it to a nasty little computer programmer in Kansas City who was stalling with material that Moscow Centre kept demanding. The uniform did the trick; the programmer paraded in front of a mirror with it. The following year Parker promoted him again and the little jerk responded by wanting to go to Moscow for a visit. What a fiasco that would have been. Luckily the little fellow’s employer lost his War Department contract, so that he was no longer handling material that Moscow wanted; sudden reduction in rank! Parker smiled at the thought of it.

‘Me a general?’ said Kleiber. ‘No thanks. You’ll never get me to Moscow, Eddie. Forget that idea, right now.’

‘They all say that at first, Willi,’ said Parker. It was fun to encourage this man’s egomania to see how far he would go.

‘You know they are in Geneva,’ said Willi Kleiber, ‘You know Stein’s documents are in this big house on the lake front.’ He had already told Parker his important news but he wanted to enjoy it again.

‘Yes,’ said Parker. ‘It’s a small package. Bring it. There should be no trouble.’

‘Fly stateside from Geneva?’ said Kleiber. He wrinkled his nose, as if detecting a foul smell. ‘ Geneva has more Moscow Centre people living there than you’ll find in Moscow itself. It’s the espionage capital of Europe, you know that, Eddie. Why bring the documents back here, when I can hand them over in Geneva for the diplomatic bag, and have them in Moscow the same night?’

Parker realized that he should not have baited Kleiber who was an intelligent man. This was his retaliation. Kleiber knew that if the documents were handed over to a Russian agent in Geneva, Parker would share little of the credit for the coup. Perhaps he guessed too how badly Parker needed some credibility with Moscow Centre.

‘I’d prefer you to bring the documents back here,’ said Parker. His voice was cold and pitched a little higher than previously. His nerves had tightened the muscles of his throat. Kleiber had a quick eye for other men’s weaknesses; he smiled. Parker added, ‘How do we know who we might be dealing with in Geneva, Willi? You might be handing the result of all this effort and hazard to some dumb clerk who’ll file it, or lose it, or some damned thing. These things happen, you know.’

‘Is it an order, Eddie?’

In fact, Edward Parker had no authority to make the carriage of the documents back to the USA a direct order. Not only was it in contravention of standing instructions about briefing agents for missions overseas but it exceeded his territorial authority. The rulebook said Kleiber should be provided with a ‘drop’ and ‘letter box’, if not a proper structure and ‘cut-out’. This was especially true of Task Pogoni, the very high priority mission for which the Centre had sent General Shumuk all the way to Mexico City.

But this was a chance for Edward Parker to redeem his reputation with his Russian superiors. It would perhaps provide a chance for him to see once more the wife and grown-up son whom he sometimes missed with a yearning which bordered on physical pain, and was all the more agonizing because he could speak of it to no one. ‘Bring them back here, Willi. It’s an order.’ He looked at his watch again and began calculating how long it would take to get to the airport. Before going to bed tonight he must go through his factory accounts again.

The FBI sound engineer and his assistant were pleased that the meeting was at an end. Boxed inside a poorly ventilated panel truck together with a photographer, driver and clerk, they were all shiny with perspiration. They had long since emptied the tiny refrigerator of its cold drinks. The sound engineer removed his headphones. ‘That’s it,’ he said. In the street outside someone started shouting at the children playing softball. A transistor radio was playing ‘Hello Dolly’, and whoever was carrying it banged on the panel truck as he passed. It was a normal extrovert action in that locality, but the men knew it was their signal to move.

‘Son of a bitch,’ said the sound engineer. ‘He wants him to bring the papers back to the USA. That’s good. The boys will snatch him when he re-enters the country. The poor bastard is going to get a hundred years in the pen.’

Todd Wynn, Kalkhoven’s young assistant, checked his shorthand notes, then took the spool of tape off the machine and pocketed it before signing a receipt for the driver.

‘What gets into these guys?’ said the driver bitterly. ‘They have no loyalty to their friends or the people they work with. Do they get a kick out of betraying people?’

‘They should get the chair,’ said Melvin Kalkhoven. ‘These two hoodlums are the ones who snuffed that movie producer in LA and hacked his head off. And Scotland Yard are looking for them on account of the same kind of job they did in London.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said the driver, as he climbed carefully over the recording equipment ‘I’ve got a lovely wife waiting in bed for me.’

The other men laughed. They knew he meant some other man’s wife.

Todd Wynn glanced at Kalkhoven, who, if he had a biblical quotation apt for such hypocrisy, kept it to himself.