The Talbot Odyssey (68 page)

“In the Falklands?” suggested Grenville.

“No, lad, in Glasgow. Fellow trying to get out the window of a lady’s bedroom as the husband returned home.” He laughed, then reached out and patted Grenville’s shoulder. “You’re a good lad. Steady now.” He looked at Johnson. “Keep an eye on the boy, General. I’ll cover as best I can up here.” Stewart glanced at his watch. “Ready.”

“How long were you in the Falklands?” asked Grenville.

“Ready!
Gas masks.”

Johnson and Grenville pulled their masks over their faces and adjusted the fit, then put on climbing gloves.

“Open it.”

They pulled the hatch open. The nausea gas hung below, as it was made to do, a thick white blanket lying over the area like a snowdrift.

Grenville and Johnson threw their rappelling lines into the opening.

“Go!”

They each went over the edge of the square hatch, rifles nestled in their arms, and began the two-story slide to the floor of the communications room.

Abrams and Cameron slid on their gas masks and moved quickly but cautiously toward the gas-filled doorway.

Katherine stayed behind in the television studio to cover the open hatchway.

Abrams and Cameron could hear the sounds of retching and coughing coming from the room. Abrams entered first, followed by Cameron. They moved as quickly as possible through the blinding smoke. Abrams thought Cameron seemed to be passing by the incapacitated men and women very reluctantly, like an alcoholic passing a bottle. But they had matters more pressing than adding more notches to Cameron’s rifle. They were looking for the main radio transmitter, and for Androv, and for Henry Kimberly—and for the third man, whoever he was.

Sutter watched as a figure appeared through the heavy-hanging gas, climbed through the break in the wall, and collapsed. He dragged the body away from the edge of the spreading gas. It was a young girl in brown overalls. Her face was blotchy and flecked with vomit.

Ann knelt beside her and slapped her. She said in Russian, “Breathe. Breathe.”

The girl took a deep breath.

Ann said, “Where’s the radio you use to transmit voice messages to Moscow?”

The girl squinted up at Ann through running eyes.

Ann repeated the question, adding, “You have five seconds to tell me or we’ll kill you.”

The girl drew another breath and said, “The radio . . . against the north wall . . .”

Ann asked her a few brief technical questions regarding frequencies, voice scramblers, and power setting, then slid on her mask and rushed toward the opening in the wall. Llewelyn and Sutter followed.

They moved quickly through the room toward the long right wall.

Many of the Russians had climbed atop the consoles to try to escape the low-clinging gas. One of them, Vasili Churnik, a survivor of the railroad tunnel incident, stood atop a computer and watched the two men and the woman walk in.

Tom Grenville’s gloved hands squeaked down the rope. He felt his feet hit the floor, bent his knees, and rolled off into a kneeling position, his rifle raised to his shoulder. He peered into the dense gas, but his visibility was less than five feet. The lights on the electronic consoles glowed eerily through the opaque fog.

Johnson was back to back with him now, forming a pitiful defensive perimeter of two. Johnson’s muffled voice came through the mask. “You see, Grenville, if they’d been prepared with proper chemical protective devices, we’d have been massacred. In war,” said the general, quoting an old army axiom, “as in life, lack of prior planning produces a piss-poor performance.”

Grenville turned his head back to Johnson. “General.”

“Yes, son.”

“Shut the fuck up. And don’t say another word unless it has something to do with saving my life. Got it?”

Johnson replied, “All right . . . if that’s the way—”

“Move out. You go your way, I’ll go mine. See you later.” Grenville made out three black-clad figures through the rolling gas, two men and a woman. He was disoriented and didn’t know if that was part of Pembroke’s team, including Ann, coming from the north, or Cameron’s team, including Katherine, from the south. But they weren’t Russians and he moved toward them.

Vasili Churnik watched as the three Americans passed by. The other Russians in the room, mostly technical people, had accepted the fact that they had been overrun by what must be a large number of commandos, and they were concerned only with gasping for air. But Churnik, by training and temperament, like Cameron, had difficulty letting a target pass. Especially after his humiliation earlier in the evening. He drew his pistol, a .38 revolver, and fired all six rounds into the backs of the three.

Grenville, who was very close, heard, then saw, the man fire from the top of the gray console. He fired a single shot and the Russian toppled over.

There was screaming in the room now and Abrams shouted, “Down! Down!” He unscrewed his silencer and fired into the walls to underscore his meaning. Men and women began diving to the floor.

Cameron rushed over to the three fallen people. Llewelyn was dead, shot in the back of the head. Sutter was stunned, but his bulletproof vest had stopped the two rounds that hit him. Ann was bleeding from the neck.

Cameron examined Ann’s wound, a crease along the left side of the neck. “Well, it’s not so bad as it looks, lass. Just bloody. Let’s stand up, then. We ought to find that radio.”

Ann stood unsteadily.

The Russian technicians were edging toward the two exits, into the short arms of the T. When they realized no one was stopping them, they stampeded out of the room.

Katherine sat on the desk in the television studio and watched silently as half a dozen people ran by her in the darkness and headed for the open trapdoor. Discovering that the ladder was gone, they stopped. Below, men shouted up at them. Guards, Katherine thought.

The Russians began jumping through the open attic hatch to the floor below. One of them, Katherine saw with horror, had separated from the rest and was heading toward her. She held her pistol tight and slipped under the desk.

The man, tall, well dressed, and distinguished-looking, came right up to the desk. The lighting was so poor, she was sure he couldn’t see her crouched under it.

He opened the top drawer and she saw him remove a few items, one of them a pistol. He turned and started walking away.

Katherine rose from beneath the desk.

The man heard the noise and spun around.

Katherine said, “Hello.”

The sky had cleared and the moon shone blue through the gabled window next to the fireplace. Dust motes danced in the pale moonbeams, giving them both a spectral appearance, as though they had met in a dream. A slow smile passed over Henry Kimberly’s face. “That must be Kate.”

“It is.”

He nodded.

“Drop yours,” she said.

He held one hand in his right pocket. “I don’t think I will.”

“Then I may shoot you if you move.”

“I’ll try to be still.”

Katherine looked at her father in the pale light, then said, “Somehow I never accepted your death. That must be a normal reaction. When Carbury came into my office, I had the irrational thought he’d come to tell me you were waiting in the lobby.”

Kimberly didn’t reply.

She continued, “I always fantasized about how I might meet you, but I never thought it would be at the point of a gun.”

He forced a smile. “I should think not.” He stared at her and said, “Well, Kate, I thought about how we’d meet also. But that wasn’t a fantasy. I knew I’d be back some day.”

She glanced at the desk. “Yes, you were going to be President.”

He nodded and said softly, “I was going to use the remaining years I have to try to get to know you and Ann.”

“Were you? What makes you think Ann or I would want to know a traitor?”

“That’s a subjective term. I acted out of conscience. I abandoned my friends, my family, and my fortune to work for something I believed in. So did a good number of men and women in those days.”

She laughed derisively, “And you’re going to tell me that you don’t believe any longer? That you want to make amends to your family and your country?”

He shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said that. I cannot make amends and I do not intend to.” His voice became distant, as though he were in another room. “You have to understand that when a person invests so much in something, it’s difficult to admit even to oneself—that you may have been wrong. And once you go to Moscow, it’s not easy to come home again. You deal with the devil because he has the short-cut approach to power. And when you live in Moscow, you begin to appreciate power and all that goes with it.” He let out a breath and looked at her. “I don’t expect you to understand. Someone of my own age who lived through those times would be more sympathetic.”

“I know a lot of men from those times. They are not sympathetic.” She let the silence drag out, then said, “Some men commit themselves to a cause and announce their intentions. If you were just a turncoat or defector, I could understand that. But you have lied and cheated, you betrayed everyone who put their faith and confidence in you. You’ve caused the deaths of friends, and you’ve let your children grow up without a father. You must be a very cold and heartless man, Henry Kimberly. You have no soul and no conscience. And now you tell me you were just a victim of circumstances.” She paused, then said sharply, “I think all you’re committed to is the act of
betrayal.
I think . . .” Tears ran down her face and her voice became husky. “I think . . . Why? Why in the name of God did you do that to . . . to
me?
”

Henry Kimberly hung his head thoughtfully, then his eyes met hers. He said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Sometimes I think the last time I felt any honest joy in my heart was a day on my last leave. I took you and Ann to Central Park . . . I carried you in my arms and Ann put her little hand in mine, and we laughed at the monkeys in the zoo—”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

Neither spoke for some time, then Kimberly said, “May I go now?”

She wiped her eyes. “Go . . . go where?”

“What does it matter? Not back to Moscow, I assure you. I just want to go . . . to walk in the village . . . see my country . . . find some peace . . . I’m not important any longer. No one wants me, either as a hero, or as a villain. I am not a threat . . . I am an old man.”

Katherine cleared her throat, then said coolly, “Who is Talbot Three?”

Henry Kimberly’s eyebrows arched, then he replied, “There is no Talbot Three. . . . Well, there was, but he died many years ago.”

She looked at him closely, then said, “You’re lying.”

He shrugged, then said softly, “May I go? Please.”

“No.”

He didn’t reply immediately, then spoke. “I’m afraid I must leave, Kate. And you won’t shoot me, any more than I’d shoot you.” He added in a tone that suggested the subject was closed, “I’m glad we met. We may meet again.” He began to turn.

Katherine shouted, “No! No, you will
not
leave.” She cocked the big Browning automatic.

Henry Kimberly looked back over his shoulder. He smiled, then winked at her. “
Au revoir
, little Kate.” He walked into the darkness of the attic and headed toward the open hatchway.

Katherine watched him, the muzzle of the pistol following his back. Her hands shook and her eyes clouded. A stream of confused thoughts ran through her mind, then suddenly focused on Patrick O’Brien. He had been her real father for all these years, and Henry Kimberly, a man unknown to her, and his friends had murdered him. And O’Brien would not let Henry Kimberly walk away, and would not approve if she did. Henry Kimberly had to pay. She said, or thought she said, “Stop,” but wasn’t sure if she had actually spoken. He kept walking. She fired.

The roar of the .45-caliber silver bullet shattered the silence, then echoed off in distant places. The sound died away, though the ringing remained in her ears and the smell of burnt cordite hung in her nostrils.

She looked across the twenty feet of open space that separated them. Henry Kimberly had turned at the open hatch and stared back. He looked neither surprised that she’d fired at him, nor surprised that she’d missed. They both understood that the act was a catharsis, a symbolic gesture. Kimberly lowered himself into the open hatchway and disappeared.

Katherine found that her legs had become weak, and she sat back in the chair behind the desk; his chair—his desk. His script lay scattered before her.

Katherine put her head down on the desk and wept.

Marc Pembroke sat in the dark alcove of the gable. He heard running footsteps coming toward him and watched in the half-light as about a dozen men and women, faces pale and eyes watering, filed past, heading for the staircase opposite him. He kept his rifle in the ready position and watched. His breathing had become difficult and he knew he was drowning in his own blood, yet his mind was still clear.

The Russians were not ten feet from him and he saw that some of them carried weapons. The first to arrive were staring down at the collapsed staircase. Below, on the landing, guards shouted up at them.

Pembroke saw the top rails of a ladder rising over the edge of the stairwell. There was some heated discussion over who was going to use it first—the guards who wanted to come up, or the technicians who wanted to get down.

A man in a suit stepped forward and settled the disagreement. Looking pale and shaky, but still arrogant, Viktor Androv pushed aside the crowd and began lowering his corpulent body onto the ladder.

Pembroke unscrewed the silencer from his rifle, then shouted, “Androv! Freeze!” He fired at the ceiling and the crowd hit the floor. He and Androv stared at each other over the clear space, Androv’s head and shoulders visible as he stood on the ladder, Pembroke sitting with his back to the wall in the alcove.

Pembroke said, “Did you know that Arnold Brin was my father?”

Androv’s mouth opened, but before he could say anything, Pembroke fired. The rounds ripped into Androv’s head and neck, and Pembroke saw the little rosettes of crimson blooming on Androv’s white pudgy face like a sudden outbreak of acne. Androv waved his arms in circles, then fell and crashed to the landing below.