their eyes water, and the smell of burned fuel, and burning rubber and plastic, was very strong. Kathleen’s face was coated with sand.
She sat looking at the fire, shaking her head. “No,” she said softly.
“Oh, God, no. No. Oh, God, no.”
SEVENTEEN
SUSPICIONS
Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns it into fury…
Suspicion is the companion of mean souls…
EIGHTEEN
“A TRIGGER WAS TRIPPED SOMEWHERE … A THRESHOLD REACHED. IT WAS DESIGNED TO BEGIN AUTOMATICALLY.”
It took a week for Nikolayev to find the man he was looking for in the crowded Montmartre, what the locals called the Butte. Nikolayev was an old man, but he had not forgotten his tradecraft fall backs switched cabs, boarding the metro train and leaving it at the last second as if he had changed his mind. Window stops to catch the reflections of the pedestrians coming up behind him. Crossing a street in a crowd with the light, then turning around and darting back the way he had come as the light changed. Turning down narrow side streets that were completely devoid of traffic to see who followed. He was a man not frightened of physical harm at those times. His primary objective was to find Vladimir Ivanovich Trofimov without leading another pair of shaved-headed, leather- jacketed thugs to him. Trofimov apparently lived quite in the open in a small apartment building off the rue des Trois Freres near the Place Emile Goudeau.
But when Nikolayev arrived and spoke with the old lady concierge it was only to find that the place was simply an accommodation address. M.
Trofimov lived somewhere else. “Peutetre dans les quartiers. Perhaps elsewhere, monsieur.” After one hundred francs exchanged hands, the woman suddenly became Nikolayev’s sly confidante; batting her eyelashes and coquettishly lowering her eyes. What was it about him that suddenly attracted old Frenchwomen? “On Saturdays M. Trofimov is to be found at the Louvre. In the Cour Carree. The department of Egyptian Antiquities. I tell him that Sundays have free admission, but he insists on Saturdays. I have seen the cornets des billets, and the special notices he receives.” More misdirection? Nikolayev wondered on the way back down into the city. But for all spies there was a level ground home plate, the Americans called it. A place where the spy’s own truths were known, where he was safe, in order to preserve his sanity. Spies often met their end not because they were betrayed at the field level, or because their tradecraft was faulty. They very often failed because their home plates were insecure. They had no place to run to. The bad ones invented a series of truths that sometimes they could not unravel themselves. Those were the ones who ended up putting a pistol to their own heads and pulling the trigger.
If the concierge and the accommodation address were not Trofimov’s home plate, the man would nevertheless be watching the Louvre for whoever might be coming behind him. Since General Zhuralev’s death in Moscow, Trofimov would be taking care with his tradecraft. He would have to think that he might be next. The cabbie dropped Nikolayev across from the Place de Valois, and he went the last few blocks on foot to the Place du Louvre. He entered the museum through the Porte St-Germain 1”Auxerrois, turning immediately to the left into the ground-floor ancient Egyptian exhibits. A stairway led to the crypt of Osiris, and, at the end of the long hall, stairs led up to the galleries where Egyptian history was traced forward to Roman times. He stopped just within the gallery at the head of the Osiris stairs. The museum was not as crowded as it can get, but there were enough people coming and going that he had trouble keeping track of them all. School groups on field trips. A tour guide and his flock of elderly people, possibly Americans. A half-dozen Catholic nuns in black habits. A few young artists, sitting cross-legged on the marble floor, sketching exhibits.
Trofimov had been a small man, with a narrow face and rapid, birdlike motions. He was a few years younger than Nikolayev, but still an old man by now. Possibly stoop-shouldered; certainly wearing glasses; white hair, pale complexion. He had worked in Department Viktor as General Baranov’s chief of staff in the sixties and right up to the early seventies. He would have been privy to everything, or nearly everything that went on in the department. Nikolayev had been certain that he would be able to convince General Zhuralev to cooperate. It was still Moscow, and there were a lot of long memories there.
Memories that were easily accessible so that an old man might be frightened by them. In addition, Zhuralev had lived in near poverty.
His meager military pension could have been discontinued at any moment.
It was different with Trofimov. This was Paris, and from what Nikolayev had been able to gather from his researches, the man had left Moscow, if not wealthy, at least comfortable, even by Western standards. There’d be no interrupting his pension. Nikolayev started through the main gallery. It was arranged to look like an Egyptian temple, lined with statues, columns and carved doorways. The hall was impressive. Some of it reminded Nikolayev of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. That museum had the tsars to thank; this exhibit had Napoleon’s army to thank. “I suppose that I should be flattered that someone has come all the way from Moscow to seek me out,” someone said in Russian at Nikolayev’s shoulder. Without breaking his stride, Nikolayev glanced at the skinny old man beside him. “Vladimir Ivanovich ”
“D#,” Trofimov replied. “What do you want?” His tie was crooked, and it did not match his brown hounds tooth jacket or dark blue dress slacks. He almost certainly lived alone. His hair was dyed black, and he wore dark glasses. He looked like a spy from a fifties movie. “Do you know who I am?” “I know you. Otherwise, I would never have allowed you to see me. What do you want?” “Operation Martyrs. I think it has started.” Trofimov stopped. He looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Do you think that’s why Gennadi Zhuralev was murdered?
The old fool.” “I wanted to talk to him.” “So did a lot of people.
But it’s over now, or very nearly so. Just a few more months. Maybe six or seven.” “What are you talking about?” “The bank accounts, of course. The money. That’s what it’s about now.”
Trofimov gave Nikolayev a curious look. “What’s your part in Martyrs?
You were a Baranov man, weren’t you?” “I want to put a stop to it.”
“Why?” “The old days are gone. They’re starving in the streets of Moscow. We need the West’s help. I don’t want to die eating rats for my dinner.” “They’re always starving in Moscow. But they always have enough vodka.” Trofimov shrugged. “Anyway, it’s going to stop of its own accord once the money is gone.” He shook his head, then gave Nikolayev another appraising look. “What does this have to do with me?
Why did you come here? What do you want?” “I need the names of the assassins and their targets. Martyrs has been buried all these years.
Why all of a sudden has it gone active? Why all of a sudden is somebody closing the funding accounts?” “A trigger was tripped somewhere,” said Trofimov. “A threshold reached. It probably happened by accident. Some bright young officer found the money trail and went after it. Then when the agents in place found out that their pay
