Conspiracy (3 page)

“You see that guy?” he asked.

The corporal dropped his mask. “Where?”

“Down there by the station. You think he has binoculars?”

The corporal picked up his mask and dusted it off. “Yeah,” he said. “Is that the inspection team?”

“Maybe. Never saw ’em come in an open jeep before.”

The corporal rubbed the last of the dust off his mask with his sleeve. “You know, I just remembered,” he said. “I used to get a reaction like this when I was a little kid in school. My face would turn red and itch like hell for a few minutes, and I’d get sent home. By the time I was out the door of the nurse’s office I’d be feeling better. I’d get outside and my face wouldn’t have a thing wrong with it, and I’d be out of school till the next day. My old lady never did believe that nurse.” He patted his cheek and grinned, teeth showing white.

“You feeling better?”

“Yep.” He was putting on his mask again.

While they were inside Unit Seven, checking the grenades and giving the rabbit food and water, the corporal seemed to loosen up. He asked about the Russians, not just making conversation but really interested. Especially in the moves the Soviets had started last winter to bring the Arabs around to their side. For a guy who said he didn’t watch the news anymore, he followed the sergeant’s analysis of the Russian strategy pretty well.

The sergeant watched him put clean newspaper in the floor of the rabbit’s cage, noticing with approval the care he took not to disturb the rabbit’s electrode wires. The new man was concentrating on his work even while he talked. The sergeant liked that.

“What you’re saying,” the corporal said through his mask, “is that they’re trying to beat us at our own game. Right the hell in there with us in the world oil marketplace.”

“Exactly. And what are we doing about it? We’re selling ’em all the wheat they want again, and electronics, and machinery, and whatever the hell else they ask for.”

“I guess we’re scared to say no.”

The injustice, the sheer stupidity of the situation made the sergeant want to spit in disgust, but he had his mask on. Instead he picked up one of the Cobor grenades, a smooth black cylinder about the size and weight of a sixteen-ounce can of beer. It was safe to heft the thing because the firing mechanisms of the grenades weren’t activated when they were in storage. “We got the best goddam leader since Ike was in the White House, but the goddam Wall Street—”

He stopped talking abruptly when he saw a shadow cross the entrance way at the top of the metal steps.

Then he thought he heard something crunch the dust and sand outside on the road.

“I know what you mean,” said the corporal. “What we need is—”

The sergeant motioned him to cut the chatter. Then he went for the steps, jerking his head to indicate the corporal should follow.

His leather-soled boots made surprisingly little noise on the steel-grid treads. When he reached the top of the steps, he kept low behind the open steel door and waited for the corporal. “I’m going for the radio,” he said quietly.

The corporal pulled off his mask. “How do we know it’s not the inspection team?” 

“No signal.” The sergeant patted the beeper on his belt. “Now, give me cover.”

7

Rachel Quinn fixed her gaze past the hot white studio lights, below the glowing red bulb on Camera Two, onto the dark lens opening. She gave no sign of nervousness. Her gray-green eyes, cool and appraising, never faltered. Her long black hair, heavily sprayed both before and during makeup, remained firmly in place, showing a healthy sheen on the studio monitor. Her thin lips, glossed with dark red, looked firm and decisive.

But she knew that soon she would need more cocaine.

Did it always have to be this way?
thought Rachel.
Why couldn’t that little Russian gymnast have just showed up on time?

She stared at the UBS broadcast studio clock. At this particular moment she had planned to be four miles away, in the “old” section of Madrid. There, in the Ritz Hotel, the British Football Association had taken a suite for British players and their guests to watch the opening game. Rachel had been invited.

At the suite would be Rachel’s lover and, lately, her connection for cocaine: Alec Conroy, the blond, “angel-haired” teenage British rock singer, now twenty-eight and in semi-retirement as a naturalized American citizen.

At the suite would also be liquor, which was Alec’s weakness. And women, Alec’s other weakness.

Rachel had met Alec at a similar gathering in Manhattan, an opening-night party given by a Broadway producer. She had come alone. Alec had brought a frizzy-haired little redhead, as wide-eyed as Little Orphan Annie and barely out of her teens. Rachel could still remember the girl’s hurt, betrayed stare from across the room at the end of the party when Alec, slurring his words only slightly, had whispered, “C’mon, luv,” against Rachel’s ear and directed her toward the door. 

Rachel had gone along, partly following her reporter’s impulse to get a closer look into the private life of a celebrity, and partly out of curiosity. At thirty-seven, she had slept with her share of men, good lovers and bad, but she had heard rumors that Alec Conroy was really something not to be missed. She had no intention of developing anything like a serious relationship; she knew enough to realize that night was neither the first nor the last time for him to leave one woman for another. She was not about to put herself in the same position as that pathetic little redhead.

When they first made love that night, she didn’t climax. 

The second time, roughly a half hour later, she did. 

When he drew her to him a third time and she felt his hardness, she giggled like a schoolgirl, “Don’t you ever get enough?” and he whispered, “Do you?” 

He entered her at the same moment, and she experienced a kind of release. A hidden reserve of desire suddenly warmed her and then she was no longer thinking, only moving with him, flushed and shuddering with pleasure. 

Four more times that night, he awakened her. Each time the hot surge of delight seemed to grow more intense. Each time, afterward, they would drift off to sleep in each other’s arms, and she would feel the sweat of his body mingling with hers and feel the other wetness on her thighs and hips and belly and think,
I hope he never gets enough
. 

When the sun came up just after six, he woke her yet another time and, naked, led her first to her refrigerator for a pre-mixed Bloody Mary and then into the shower, where he washed her from top to bottom and then dried her with three towels and led her over to her couch in front of the fireplace and spread her legs and made her come first with his mouth and then again astride him, towel under hips, thrusting and driving until she could no longer hear her own cries of ecstasy. 

Later, as she watched him dress, the sunlight glittered on his golden hair and she knew that somehow she had to keep him.

Until now, she had succeeded. Here in Madrid they were staying in the same hotel, in adjoining rooms, which she was paying for. As nearly as she could tell, he had been faithful. He didn’t have money enough to stray very far, and she herself had hardly thought of another man. Indeed, she had found things about him outside the bedroom that she liked very much, so that now she looked forward to casual times with him—dinners, shopping, Sunday walks—with nearly the same anticipation as the lovemaking. 

One afternoon before a taping she had even entrusted him with the secret of her on-camera “charisma”—a five-year-old secret she had shared with no one else. He had smiled his soft-lipped, choirboy smile and shown her two hundred grams he had bought just that morning. He offered to become her supplier. Less risk, better quality, lower price. 

It came to her one morning that she was not only vulnerable, she was also in love. She rather liked the feeling.

But at moments like this, there was the possibility that it all might end. If he drank too much at the British reception before she got there, he might start to talk. Or another woman might steal him.

The reception was at least a twenty minute cab ride away. And the interview with Keith Palermo would take at least a half hour.

She saw Palermo coming in now, being greeted by her assistant at the studio entrance.

She stared again at the clock.
Why did it always have to be this way?

8

The corporal had already unholstered his weapon, a standard army .45 automatic. Probably on edge, thought the sergeant. Not fifteen minutes earlier he’d gone over the safety regulations that ruled out drawing a gun inside the igloo. He made a note to remind the corporal about that when they were through chasing shadows or coyotes or whatever was out there.

Then he pushed the steel door wide open and took off, running for the vehicle in a half-crouch, his boots slipping on the dirt that covered the pavement. From the corner of his eye he could see a jeep parked on his left, about halfway to igloo number eight. He concentrated on reaching his own vehicle. He never parked far away from the entrance, again because of the regulations, and it was only a few more steps. Then he would be behind bulletproof glass. 

He was wrenching the door handle open when a gun boomed out behind him. Something hit him at the small of his back as hard as he had ever been hit, just over the kidney and moving up into his chest like a hot knife.

It slammed him into the vehicle and his knees gave way. He was down in the dirt, the sudden fire inside him overwhelming. When he looked at the right side of his chest, he saw a jagged hole that grinned at him like a bright red mouth, spouting blood.

Nausea and shock made him gag. All he could think of was that the bullet had caught him in the back and come out his chest and torn a hole through him like he was so much meat on a skewer.
I am hit,
he thought
. And if I don’t move, I’ll die right here in the dirt.

The door to the vehicle was open. Remembering his training, he groped for his shirt with one hand and pulled it out of his belt, stuffing the loosened cloth into his wound with his fingertips to stop the blood. Then he crawled up onto the driver’s seat and reached for the radio. The microphone came off the hook in his hand. He fumbled for the switch before he realized that the wire had been cut through.
All right,
he thought
, you’ve got to drive this son of a bitch out of here
. He got the door shut and pulled himself up to where he could see out the windshield.

The corporal was standing in the entrance to the igloo, arms folded across his chest, cradling the .45. Behind him, a smaller man was coming out with a thirty-pound box of Cobor grenades on his shoulder. He wore a combat uniform with no insignia and no cap, his face sallow and flat in the light, the color of road dust. The sergeant spotted the pair of field glasses hanging from his belt. 

His strength was failing, but he still felt rage that he had been tricked so completely. They had set him up back there at Unit Six when the corporal took off his mask—a signal no one with binoculars could have missed. And then the corporal had kept him talking so he wouldn’t hear the jeep coming up the service road. He had run out to the radio, fat, dumb, and happy, while the corporal was taking aim to shoot him in the back.

The gun in his belt holster seemed remote, miles away, but he got it loose and crawled across the seat, lying sideways, inching himself toward the door on the far side and then nudging the handle up with the tip of his .45 till the door clicked open. Then he had to use both hands to work the safety. He knew the wadded-up shirt cloth would pop out from his chest in a gush of blood the moment he took his hand away, but when it actually happened he was concentrating on the safety catch and hardly noticed. He plugged himself up again, only dimly aware of the fresh warmth on his wet fingers. He wanted to knock off the one carrying the grenades first, and then he would make a try for the corporal, and after that he would see.

The target was a silhouette by now, an oblong box up over a pair of moving legs. Kneeling on the seat, the sergeant braced his weapon between the windshield pillar and the partially opened door. He shot twice, low, so he wouldn’t hit the grenades. He did not hear either shot, but he had the satisfaction of seeing the silhouette crumble.

He pitched forward off the seat and knocked the door all the way open. As he hit the pavement, he got one arm up to protect his face. He did not feel the impact. He could see his gun but he couldn’t move, and the corporal was watching him, taking aim, when another shot flared from inside the igloo. The corporal straightened all the way up, in mid-stride. His head snapped back, his body arched. As he went down he was screaming something the sergeant couldn’t hear.

A few feet from the sergeant, he hit the dirt face down and lay still.

And the sergeant saw a uniformed gunman emerging from the igloo. Tall, thin, sandy hair. He could still see his own gun too, half covered by dust but tantalizingly close.

He was trying to inch his body forward to reach the gun when he died.

The sandy-haired man walked quickly to where the sergeant and the corporal lay in the dirt, and satisfied himself that both were dead. A few moments later he knelt beside his wounded comrade, who lay moaning beside the Cobor grenades. After a few quiet words, the moaning stopped. The sandy-haired man put the barrel of his gun up against the temple of the other and fired once.

Then he loaded the Cobor grenades onto the jeep and drove east across the plateau, heading for the mountains. 

At the first filling station he came to, he used the pay telephone.

A recorded voice told him to leave a message.

He said, “On schedule for Game Day,” and hung up the phone. 

9

Zadiev, his manner seemingly very cooperative, asked Sharon to come in. “As you can see, our clerks follow Russian hours and not Spanish,” he said, gesturing to the two empty receptionists’ desks. “They still take their afternoon siesta, though, and quit early as well. If you had difficulty reaching us today, let me apologize.”