Jesus, I hope so. Rule thought. A little human intelligence on the ground would be very comforting in the circumstances.
The meeting broke up, and as Rule left the conference room, a voice close behind her said, “Kate, you believe he’s got HUMINT to back up that assessment?”
Rule turned, surprised to find Ed Rawls back at the Agency so soon. He must have handed Malakhov off to a settlement team, she thought.
“No,” she said.
“Neither do I,” Rawls replied.
“Ed, from what he said about the capabilities of that thing, wouldn’t the Baltic be a good theater of operations for it?”
“Ideal, I’d say. See you around, Kate.” He turned and walked away down the hall.
Rule was deep in thought and almost to her office when she absentmindedly ran head on into a man coming around a corner.
“Kate, how are you?”
Rule tried to reorganize her thoughts.
“Jim Gill! I thought you were still in Rome. What are you doing here?”
Gill, a tall, stringy fellow with a pronounced southern accent, looked questioningly back at her.
“Sure I’m still in Rome; I’m just back for a couple of days for a meeting.
Listen, I was just looking for you in your office. I didn’t get an answer to my cable last week. Have you lost interest in Appicella?”
It took Rule a moment to register the name.
“Appicella?
Of course I’m still interested. I didn’t get any cable from you; I haven’t heard anything about Appicella since your original report.” Emilio Appicella was the Italian computer pirate, who, with his bragging about his visits with Majorov, had set this whole thing in motion.
Gill shrugged.
“Well, shoot, I guess communications screwed up. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from you.”
Rule resisted taking him by the lapels.
“What’s happening with Appicella?”
“Well, of’ Emilio has got himself another invitation to go east.”
“Invitation? From Majorov, you mean?”
“That’s what he says. I sent you all this stuff, you know; cabled it last week. Maybe they just haven’t gotten around to it in crypto or something.”
The hell they hadn’t decoded it. Rule thought. Somebody was screening her traffic. Somebody had stopped that cable.
“Tell me, now, Jim.”
“Emilio’s flying to Vienna on—Jesus, what day is this, Monday?—Wednesday, he’s connecting in Vienna with a Leningrad flight. 1 asked for instructions, Kate. Didn’t hear from you. didn’t hear from ops. The station’s been a madhouse the last couple of weeks, and when I didn’t hear, I just thought I’d take it up when I got back here.”
“Has anybody in the Rome station dealt with Appicella besides you?”
“Nope, he’s mine, all mine.”
“When are you going back to Rome?”
“A week or so.”
“Come on back to my office for a minute, will you.
Jim?” She led him back down the corridor and closed the door behind them.
“Listen, Jim, have you talked with anybody inops about this, yet?”
“Nope, I just got in this morning. Haven’t even been up there, yet.”
“Jim, I’ve got to talk with Appicella before he leaves for Vienna. Can you get in touch with him directly, without going through the Rome station?”
Gill produced a notebook.
“Got his phone number right here. He works at home.”
“It’s extremely important that I talk to him. and I’m going to have to short-circuit the system just a little to do it. Will you wait until you’re back at your hotel, then call him and ask him to see me?”
Gill looked thoughtful.
“I guess you wouldn’t want me to mention this to ops, huh?”
“I’d rather not. They’d only screw it up. You know how they are.”
“You just want to talk with him, then?”
“That’s it. Just call him for me, and give me his number.”
“Well. hell. all right. If I wait until tonight to call, I’ll wake him up. You don’t want me to call from here, huh?” he grinned.
“I’d rather you didn’t. Just tell him to expect a call from me, and tell him it’s important.”
“Okay, Kate, I’ll hand him off to you. I’ll tell him what a great looking broad you are, and he’ll be dying to meet you. He’s a real ladies’ man.”
“Tell him anything—well, almost anything. Just get him to agree to talk to me.”
“Okay, I’ll call him.”
“I owe you one, Jim.”
“And one of these days I’ll collect, you count on it.”
He wrote down the phone number and opened the door.
“I’m due inops. See you.”
Rule grabbed her bag and walked out to where her secretary sat.
“Jeff, I’m feeling like death. I’m going home and to bed. The way I feel. I don’t think I’ll be in tomorrow, either. Anybody calls, tell them I’m not answering the phone. If they want me badly enough, they’ll send a courier.”
“Okay,” Jeff said, and went back to his magazine.
Rule left the building, got into her car, and stopped at the first gas station. She dialed Pan American.
“You have a night flight to Rome, don’t you? Good. I want one seat;
I’ll give you a credit card number.” - HELDER, exhausted and a little drunk, had slept soundlessly until midmorning. He woke, -sweating, his dreams back in the mini sub Sokolov with the screwdriver protruding from her eye, the hatch jammed. The sun on his face seemed like the light of heaven. He stood and looked out the little window at the spires of Stockholm. He was alive and safe.
He took a cool shower, washing away the sweat and the last vestiges of the dream, or rather, the memory. He dressed in his other clothes, a light tweed jacket and linen trousers, packed his bag, retrieved the pistol from the fridge, and went down to breakfast. He ate greedily from the array of eggs, sausages, and herring, a good Swedish breakfast, then he paid his bill in kroner.
“Where would I go to book passage on the ferry to Helsinki?” he asked the girl at the desk.
“I can book it for you by phone,” she said, and dialed a number. Soon she had booked him a single cabin on the evening sailing.
“The ferry leaves at six and arrives in Helsinki tomorrow morning at nine,” she said.
“Just pick up your ticket at the terminal an hour before sailing.”
He thanked her and left. As he walked through the narrow streets of Stockholm’s Old Town, looking at the fair Swedes and their city, something came to him that he had not had the time to consider. He was alone in a Western city with an American passport, credit cards, and a lot of money. It would be perfectly possible for him to take a taxi to Stockholm airport and buy a ticket to anyplace in the world. Majorov would never find him. Or would he? Could the credit card charges be traced? Would the passport hold up under scrutiny? And how would he earn a living when the money ran out? He had been trained to survive in a foreign city for a few days, but did he know enough of western life to survive on a long-term basis without tripping up? With luck, maybe, but probably not.
There was another alternative, though; he could take a taxi to the American Embassy and present himself to the authorities there. Better yet, he could board a plane for New York or Washington. With what he knew or suspected about Malibu and Majorov’s plans, he would surely get a warm welcome. Still, he knew something about how the KGB worked, and the CIA would certainly not be much different. Would they believe him? Would they think he was a plant? Would they torture him for information he did not have? He suddenly felt very much alone and lost.
Then he thought of Trina Ragulin, and he didn’t feel lost anymore. She was at Malibu, waiting for him, and where she was was where he wanted to be. If he went back, they had a future together. Majorov had promised him promotion and command if he performed well, and he had done that. The buoy was precisely where Majorov wanted it, and if Sokolov was dead, that would be all right with the colonel, too. His instructions had been to kill her if they had to abandon, and Helder had done just that, however inadvertently. By all rights, he should return as a hero, having earned Majorov’s gratitude, and he had seen what patronage could do for an officer’s career in the Soviet Navy. He could go back, marry Ragulin, rise in rank, and send their children to the best schools, ascend to that level of living which so few Soviets achieved. Could anyone in the West offer him more than that?
He emerged from the narrow streets into an open area and heard martial music. His map told him he was at the royal palace. He walked into a cobblestone courtyard and joined a crowd of tourists watching the changing of the guard. He followed the young men in their neatly pressed uniforms with their weapons held rigidly before them as they performed their routine. He wondered what they would do if they knew that he was a Soviet spy with an automatic pistol tucked into his belt. Probably drop to one knee and fire on him. He chuckled at the thought of the tourists scattering, the bullets ricocheting about the square.
When the performance ended he walked down a long flight of stairs to the water and looked about him. Stockholm reminded him a bit of Leningrad, with its expanses of water in the center of the city. He leaned against a stone railing and took his sketch pad from his bag. He sketched the palace, the water before it, the palace guards in their comic-opera uniforms, an old man on the street, whatever caught his eye. He felt a hunger pang and was surprised to look at his watch and see that more than two hours had passed.
He walked back up the steps and into the Old Town again. He had passed a restaurant in a little square earlier and thought he would go back. A girl seated him at an empty table for four on a glass-enclosed terrace which looked out over the square to the Swedish Academy across the way. The place was obviously popular, for it was filling fast. Helder ordered a beer and looked over the menu.
“Excuse me,” a voice said.
Helder looked up to find the hostess who had seated him standing with a man at her side.
“Would you mind sharing your table with this gentleman?
I’m afraid we are quite full.”
Helder looked quickly at the man. He was tall, dark hair. late thirties; casually, but elegantly dressed; English, Helder guessed. He didn’t look like a Swedish policeman.
“If it’s inconvenient, I don’t mind waiting.” the man said, misreading Holder’s hesitation.
“No. please sit down. I’m afraid I was daydreaming, and it took a moment for the penny to drop.”
“Thank you,” the man said, and sat down. He ordered a drink and picked up the menu.
“Do you know this place? Can you recommend something?”
American, not English. Some sort of regional accent, Helder thought. Southern, maybe.
“No, I’m a tourist; my first time here.”
“British?” the man asked.
“No, American.”
“Really? So am I. Where are you from?”
“Minnesota, originally. I live in New York, now.”
“There’s something about your accent I can’t place.
That business about the penny dropping is an English expression, so I thought you might be British.”
“You’re right, I picked that up from an English girl I know. As for my accent, my parents were Swedish; maybe that’s colored it a bit.”
“You speak Swedish?”
“Not really. The folks, once they were in America, wanted to be Americans. They insisted on speaking English when I was growing up. As for something to eat. you might try the gravlax; that’s marinated salmon with a sauce of mustard and dill. My mother used to make it.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The waitress came back and they ordered.
“You’re a New Yorker, then,” the man said.
“I love that city, especially the restaurants. Do you know Cafe des Artistes, on the Upper West Side?”
“No, I live in Greenwich Village, and I spend most of my time there, I guess.”
“Good eating in the Village, too. Know La Tulipe. on West Thirteenth Street?”
“I’m afraid not. My girl friend’s quite a cook. We eat at home more often than not. I work at home. too, so I guess I don’t get around as much as some people.” The man was beginning to sound like one of Mr. Jones’s legend drills.
“Can’t blame you.” the man laughed.
“Me, I do most of the cooking for my girl friend. What do you do?”
“Commercial artist. Illustrator.”
The man craned to see Holder’s sketch pad.
“And a good one, too, I expect. That’s very nice. May I see what you’ve been doing?”
Helder handed him the pad.
“Very good, indeed. Do you ever have a show?”
“Oh, no. By the time I finish doing advertising work and book jackets, 1 don’t have much energy left for my own work. Vacations are the only time I have to draw for myself.”
“Pity. Have you been in Stockholm long?”
“Arrived yesterday, and I’m off to Helsinki tonight. I have an aunt there I haven’t seen since I was a child.”
“Nice to have someone show you around in a strange city,” the man said.