days were about to end, they went into action.” “The men who came after Gennadi took something away with them. Something that the SVR was afraid of.” Trofimov wanted to be amused. He took NikolayeVs arm and led him across the hall to one of the stone benches. “You don’t understand something,” he said. “I understand that people are going to start dying unless we can stop it. The SVR isn’t interested in doing anything except covering it up. If Martyrs follows the procedures we used to use, there’ll be a big payday at the end. Providing the operation has been accomplished. That’s quite a motivation.” “People die every day, but there’s only ever been one Valentin Baranov.”
Trofimov looked inward. “He was a genius, of course. No one could keep up with him. He worked with a Cuban defector living in Miami. A little nobody by the name of Basulto. We didn’t know what the general was up to. But when it was ended, maybe six months after it had begun, two extremely important men in Washington were dead. One of them was the director of the CIA, and the other was his friend, one of the most influential lobbyists in America.” Trofimov smiled with admiration.
“The general scarcely lifted a finger. The work was done for him. All he did was talk to a few people. “It’s the talking cure,” he told us.
Baranov was the Sigmund Freud of Department Viktor. His friends called him Sigi for a few months afterward. Until the next operation.”
“Who set up Martyrs?” Trofimov looked at Nikolayev. “Why, you, of course. Isn’t that why you really came to see me? To salve your conscience?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nikolayev said.
But he supposed that Trofimov was right. The man’s next words nailed it. “You asked who the assassins were? Your research with LSD and brainwashing helped make the program possible. The assassins were people who became killers because they were led to it. They were conditioned to become assassins.” Trofimov smiled and spread his hands as if the conclusion was so simple it needed no explanation. “Each of the killers has a target and a control officer?” Nikolayev asked.
Trofimov nodded. “I suspect that’s what the SVR took from Zhuralev. A list of the control officers and their Johns.” “What was he doing with such a list? He must have known that someone would come after him once it was known what he had.” “You made the appointment with him. You were the one conducting the researches.” Trofimov held up a tiny hand that looked like a bird claw. “That’s all I know.” “You must know the triggers,” Nikolayev insisted. “That kind of information was only in BaranoVs head. He told me that the supreme irony would be that he’d be credited with more operations after his death than while he was still alive.” “Meaningless ”
“Maybe not. You already have the name of one of the targets, or you would not be so concerned about Martyrs that you came to see me. If you know that name, then you must look for the people who have access to him and the control officer who will always be at their side. The assassin must get constant reassurance, constant pressure, constant brainwashing in order to remain active.” “That could be anybody,” Nikolayev said in despair. Trofimov nodded.
“Indeed. General Baranov sowed suspicion like wheat seeds in the wind.
The method was his trademark, and the soil was, and still is, fertile.”
“That’s not enough.” Trofimov got to his feet. “Don’t come looking for me again, because the next time I see you, I’ll kill you.” He turned and headed back to the Porte St-Germain 1”Auxerrois and the street outside. Nikolayev watched in frustration. There was more.
Trofimov had to know the names of at least some of the control officers. One of them. It would help him understand who they were and the nature of their connections between what they were doing now, and what they had been doing more than twenty years ago that engendered such loyalty to a dead KGB general. He got up and hurried down the gallery as Trofimov disappeared around the corner. His heart fluttered in his chest, and his jaw on the left side ached as if he’d been struck there. Trofimov had reached the street and was hailing a cab when Nikolayev got outside to the stone bridge that once crossed over a moat. A dark Peugeot sedan pulled up. Its passenger-side doors opened, and two men jumped out. They rushed to Trofimov’s side and grabbed him by the arms. Nikolayev stepped back into the shadows beneath the tall archway. There was nothing he could do to help. If they spotted him, they would take him, too. Trofimov managed to struggle free. He turned but got only a few steps before one of the men pulled out a pistol and fired three shots. At least one hit Trofimov in the back, sending him sprawling forward. Another hit the back of his skull, the side of his head erupting in a spray of blood and bone. A woman began screaming as Trofimov hit the sidewalk. The two men scrambled back into the Peugeot, and the car was gone in seconds. Nikolayev walked back through the museum, emerging a few minutes later from the Porte Marengo. He hailed a cab back to his hotel, and, three hours later, his business finished, he was boarding a train for Orleans. Someone would be coming for him. He would make sure that it was the right person. He did not want to end up like Zhuralev and Trofimov.
NINETEEN
“WE DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE EXPLOSION WAS AN ACCIDENT. WE THINK THAT THE INCIDENT WAS AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE OF MR. McGARVEY.”
Otto Rencke took the call at four in the afternoon, when Louise Horn was at the grocery store. The McGarveys were picnicking on a deserted island. The helicopter that was supposed to take them back to St. John exploded on the ground. Mr. McGarvey, his wife and their bodyguard, Dick Yemm, were unharmed. The civilian pilot was dead. “Bad dog. Bad bad dog-” He held the phone to his ear, and he began to hear that the OD was still talking. “They’re all right, Mr. Rencke,” the OD said.
“They were airlifted to the navy hospital in San Juan. They’ll be flown back sometime tomorrow.” Rencke started to panic. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “You said they weren’t hurt. Why are they at the hospital?” “Nobody’s hurt, sir. It’s Mrs. McGarvey.
She’s under sedation. The doctors don’t want to move her. She was very frightened.”
It was starting. He could feel it in his bones. The walls were closing in on them, and before long they would be so tightly boxed in that none of them would be able to move.
“Mr. Adkins is calling the senior staff for a briefing at five-thirty in the main auditorium. Do you require an escort, sir?”
“No. No. I’ll be there.” Otto put the phone down. The air in the apartment was suddenly very thin, as if it were perched atop Mt. Everest.
He went through the motions of putting on a jacket without thinking about what he was doing. He left a note for Louise on the kitchen counter so that she wouldn’t worry about him. He couldn’t stand knowing that Mrs. M. was in a hospital, or that she needed to be in the hospital. Besides Mac, Mrs. M. was his Rock of Gibraltar. His ideal of a strong woman.
He called for a cab and on the way out to the CIA he sat hunched in a corner of the backseat. He felt guilty. He should have known that something like this would happen. He should have guessed that an attack would be made on Mac before the hearings were over. He had treated his researches as an academic project. But Mac had serious enemies who did not want to see him make DCI. Even after all this time Vietnam over with, the Cold War run its course, the bad guys either dead or in retirement. Ineffectual. Old. Without mandate. Without purpose. No reason now.
Other than revenge.
He’d been renting a small stone house that had been used for the caretakers at Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown when Mac came out of retirement for him. Otto had been doing some computer consulting on the side, but in those days computers were so new that the few people who had them mostly knew what they were doing. Or they knew so little that they didn’t know enough to understand that they needed help. The caretakers’ house was cheap: Who wanted to live in a cemetery? But it had fitted his funereal mood.
He had his computers and his cats, and he didn’t know the depth of his loneliness and discontent.
But then Mac had come to put him to work hacking the CIA’s computers for information on the East German secret police, Stasi. That was the beginning for him. The Agency kept coming back to Mac for help, and Mac kept
