“Get it and let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Schwabing,” he said.
Schwabing was the artist’s quarter of Munich, much like New York’s Greenwich Village and London’s Soho. After leaving the hotel, they retrieved the Mercedes and had spent the next few hours shopping various department stores, purchasing a few articles of clothing, toiletry items, and a pair of cheap nylon suitcases into which they fed their things after first removing the price tags and store labels. leopoldstrasse, the main boulevard they had used this noon, was now alive with the early evening traffic when McAllister parked the car on a side street and he and Stephanie walked back up to a small, dy-looking nightclub in the middle of the block. It was barely six o’clock, yet already the place was more than half filled, the atmospheredense with smoke, a young long-haired man sitting on a small raised platform playing a Bruce Springsteen hit on his guitar. No one seemed to be listening to him-the hum of conversation was loud. McAllister found them a small table at the rear, and when their drinks came he got up. “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” he said.
Stephanie looked up at him but said nothing, and he turned and went to the bar where he sat down with his drink, placing a hundred-dollar bill in front of him.
It took the bartender less than a minute to come over to him, 1 glancing first at the money then at McAllister.
“I need an artist,” McAllister said in German. “The town is filled with them, mein Herr,” the barman said. He was a big, rough-hewn man with a beet-red complexion.
“This one would have to be special. Someone very good. Someone most of all discreet.”
Again the bartender eyed the money. “You are on the run?”
“Perhaps,” McAllister said. “You need papers, is that it?” McAllister nodded.
The bartender grinned. “Where’re you sitting?” McAllister motioned toward the back. The barman deftly slipped the hundred-dollar bill off the bar and pocketed it.
“I’ll send him back.”
“What’s his name?”
“I never asked,” the bartender said, and he moved away. McAllister went back to Stephanie and sat down. Her eyes were wide, but she was no longer shivering.
“Are you all right?” She nodded.
“Someone is coming over to talk to us. No matter what happens, don’t say anything.”
Again she nodded.
McAllister wanted to do something for her, something to make it easier. But there was nothing to be done. Not now.
Five minutes later a very old rat-faced man with bottlethick glasses that made his eyes seem huge and naked, a liter stein of beer in his hand, came over and sat down. When he grinned they could see thatmost of his teeth were missing. Everything about him seemed ancient and grubby except for his hands, the fingers of which were long and delicate, the nails well cared for. They were the hands of an artist.
“What sort of trouble are you in, then?” he asked. “You don’t want to know, my friend,” McAllister replied easily. “We need a pair of passports.”
The old man looked appraisingly at McAllister and then at Stephanie. He nodded. “Do you have the originals?”
“Blanks.”
“That’ll be easy then. Photographs?”
“No. And we’ll need to change our appearances, or at least I will.”
“No problem. My studio is just around the corner.”
“One more thing,” McAllister said. “I’ll need some visa stamps in my passport. A lot of them.”
“The well-used look,” the old man said understanding. “For what countries?”
“I’ll leave that up to you, except for one. The most current one.”
“Yes, for what country?”
“The Soviet Union.”
The old man sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. He shook is head. “That’s the tough one,” he said. “It’ll cost you.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen hundred for the lady’s,” he said without hesitation. “Dolars. Two thousand for yours.”
It was more than half the amount of money he had taken from ighnote’s safe. “We’ll need a place to stay tonight.” The old man nodded. “No problem.” He sat forward again. “Am I going to have the BND down on my neck?”
“Not if you keep your mouth shut,” McAllister said. “Half now, alf when they’re ready.”
The old man hesitated for a moment, but then he sighed. “It’s your skin,” he said, and he held out his hand.
Chapter 31
A cruel wind blew along the frozen Istra River thirty miles outside of Moscow, whipping the snow into long plumes, whining at the edges of the steep cliffs, and moaning in the treetops of the birch forest. It was early afternoon, but already the sun had sunk low in the western horizon. Darkness came early at this time of the year.
The large, bull-necked man, bundled in a thick parka and fur-lined boots, trudged up from the river, his breath white in the subzero cold. He stopped on the rise and looked across the narrow wooded valley to his dacha, smoke swirling from the chimney.
Someone was coming. He had felt it for several days now, though he had no real idea why. Instinct, perhaps. All he had wanted was containment. Nothing more, at least until the mistakes that had been made over the past months were rectified. But each day brought another new disaster, none of which he could understand. It was as if forces beyond his control were at work. For the first time in his long, illustrious career, he felt real pangs of fear stabbing at his gut. Explanations would be demanded. But he had none to give.
He looked back the way he had come and clenched his meaty fists in their thick gloves. Lies within lies. He had lived the life for so long that during times such as these he had a hard time recalling the truth.
Everything had somehow tumbled down around him because of one man-David Stewart McAllister. Only he didn’t know why, or how. Only that it had happened, was still happening.
Turning, he worked his way down the hill, across the valley and finally up to his dacha which in the old days had belonged to a prince, one of the czar’s family at court. Those days were gone, but the new age had its comforts.
Stamping off his boots in the mud room, he hung up his parka and rubbing his hands together entered the main body of the house just as his secretary emerged from the study, an odd look on his face.
“Yes, what is it, Mikhail?”
“It is a telephone call, Comrade General,” the younger man, Mikhail Vasilevich Kiselev, said. “From the United States.”
Something clutched at General Borodin’s heart. “Impossible.”
“Nevertheless it is so,” Kiselev said respectfully. Borodin brushed past his secretary and in his small study snatched up the telephone. “Yes, who is this calling?” At first he could hear nothing on the line except for the hollow hiss of what obviously was a very long-distance connection. Who knew this number? Who could possibly know it?
“General Borodin,” a man said in English. “Listen to me.”
“Who is this?” Borodin demanded, switching to English. Kiselev stood in the doorway, his left eyebrow rising.
“Harman and Potemkin are both dead, and McAllister is on his way to Moscow. Do you understand me?”
On an open line! General Borodin could hardly believe his ears. He had to hold on to his desk for support.
