Hopscotch (19 page)

Yaskov glanced up. Two of the museum's windows overlooked the path. Anyone could be there—zoom lens, lip-reader, parabolic microphone, anything.

Yaskov bowed his head and turned; they walked back between the trees of the arbor. “Will this satisfy?”

“It'll do.”

“We haven't met but of course we know each other.”

“I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time.”

“Yes,” Yaskov said. He ignored both Ivanovitch and Ross; so did Cutter.

“Our mutual friend Kendig”—Cutter seemed to savor the phrase with sardonic relish—“always had great admiration for you.”

“Kendig and I are among the last of the old wolves,” Yaskov said, “but perhaps there's still hope. I'm told you conform to the breed more than most of our colleagues.”

They were under a tree; Cutter reached out one hand at shoulder height, put his palm against the trunk and leaned against it. “Can that suffice for the amenities, Yaskov?”

“Certainly, if you like.”

Cutter's face turned slightly, half of it going into shadow. “Well? You're the one who asked for this meeting.”

“Yesterday morning he telephoned me in Berlin.”

“He was in Berlin?” Cutter straightened.

“No. It was a trunk call. I'm prepared to tell you where he called from, and where I think he may have gone from there.”

Ross was sensitive to the pound of his own pulse. He glanced at Ivanovitch but the little Russian was looking away as if bored.

“And in exchange?” Cutter asked.

Yaskov smiled very slowly in private amusement; it came to Ross that behind his lofty pretense of man-of-the-world professionalism Yaskov was taking pleasure in Cutter's discomfiture. A far cry, this man, from the technocrats the KGB was known ordinarily to spawn.

“You know his haunts far better than I do,” Yaskov replied.

“That doesn't mean anything. He'd avoid the old places.”

“If you knew him to be in a certain city, you'd be more likely to know where to look for him in that city,
n'est-ce pas
?”

“It's possible,” Cutter conceded. “It might depend on the city.”

“I am suggesting we search together for him.”

“It's an interesting thought.”

“Yes, isn't it. A new high in
détente
.”

“I'd have to clear it with my superiors of course,”

“Naturally. So would I.”

“How'd you expect to handle it?”

“Joint teams, Mr. Cutter.”

“Like Vienna and Berlin in the old days.”

Yaskov nodded slightly. “It is important to us all that he be—discouraged from carrying on. I rather suspect it is a bit more important to your side than to mine, but let's grant he's capable of embarrassing all of us, even if the embarrassment is in varying degrees.”

Cutter said, “Before we go on with this I'd like to have Ivanovitch's camera.”

Ivanovitch jerked as if stricken by an electrode; Ross stood up straight; Yaskov only shrugged and held out his hand, palm up, and a little camera came out of Ivanovitch's pocket. Yaskov gave it to Cutter. Cutter opened it, removed the film and gave it back, and it disappeared back into Ivanovitch's pocket.

“Thank you.”

“May we be assured Mr. Smith is not similarly equipped?”

Ross pulled his hands out of his pockets, empty. Cutter said, “We didn't bring a camera. Or a microphone.”

“Then none of us is wired for sound,” Yaskov said.

Ross murmured, “Are we just going to take his word for that?”

“Why not?” Cutter said offhandedly; then he went back to Yaskov: “You weren't in earshot when I introduced Smith to Ivanovitch.”

“It might have been Jones, mightn't it.”

Both of them laughed a little and then Cutter said, “There's a little problem about all this.”

“I wish you Americans didn't always think of things in terms of problems and solutions.”

“I'd call this a problem, quite specifically. It's got more than one solution. That's where you and I have trouble. You want him alive—you want to milk him. We don't particularly want that to happen.”

“As a matter of policy it is more important to my government that Kendig be neutralized than that he be brought home for questioning. I hope that clarifies my position?”

“You'd rather have half a loaf than none?”

“Precisely.”

“My, you folks are getting flexible this year.”

“I'm happy you appreciate that. Do we have a basis for cooperation, Mr. Cutter?”

“I'll put it to my superiors.”

“And your own recommendation to them will be?”

“It will be negative.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I hope you are,” Cutter said.

Yaskov inspected a fingernail. “I do hope nothing's happened to him.”

“Yes. You'd be embarrassed if some third-rate power reached him ahead of you.”

“So would you, Mr. Cutter.”

“I don't think you need worry that anything's happened to him. Things don't happen to Miles Kendig. He happens to them.”

Yaskov nodded as if on consideration he agreed. Then he said, “I fear your superiors will honor your negative recommendation.”

“I imagine they will.”

Yaskov's sigh was gentle. “A word in private, then.” He took Cutter away a little distance. Ross saw him lean forward, intending Cutter to listen to him, staring straight into Cutter's face. The icy ruthlessness of the eyes unnerved Ross; it was a point-blank stare that destroyed the barriers of ordinary defense and pretense. Yaskov spoke, Cutter nodded; then Yaskov crooked his finger and Ivanovitch stirred. Yaskov bobbed his cane toward Ross and went away, Ivanovitch hurrying after.

Ross said, “What did he say?”

“Kendig called him from Stockholm. Yaskov believes he went on to Helsinki from there.”

“A lot of this is going by too fast for me,” Ross said as they turned off the Champs. “Why'd he give it to us for free?”

“Because it's true he'd prefer half a loaf to none. He'd rather we nail Kendig than not see him nailed at all. He tried to bargain, we called his bluff and he had no choice but to give in to us for nothing.”

“You've got to be a Machiavelli in this business.”

“You'll pick it up as you go along, Ross.”

“What was all that about Ivanovitch's camera?”

“They haven't got you taped. They don't know
who you are. I didn't see any point making it easy for them—we might want to use you in the field after this. Ivanovitch didn't matter, he's on tape everywhere west of Warsaw—his name's Kirovoi, he's an errand boy. One look at him and you know what he is and what he does.”

“But you brought me along instead of somebody like him.”

“I wanted you to meet Yaskov,” Cutter said.

“I'm glad you did. It was an education.”

“There aren't many left like him,” Cutter told him. They turned in at the door and The Lemon Taster gave them an acidulous glance. Cutter said to her, “I'll want six field men upstairs at half-past six. The best you've got. Clear it through Follett. And book us eight seats on the first flight to Helsinki after nine tonight.”

“Yes sir. This came for you.”

It was a postcard from Stockholm. Cutter let Ross read it over his shoulder.

Having wonderful time. Wish you were here. M.K
.

Cutter's bark of laughter startled The Lemon Taster.

– 20 –

F
ROM A KIOSK
in
Stockmann
in Helsinki he made one call to London and then he rode a taxi to the airport and made it onto the British Airways Boeing with only a few minutes to spare. Snow-flakes drifted past in the night when they lifted off. He catnapped most of the way to Heathrow and walked through customs with only a routine glance at the Jules Parker passport. He rode the bus in from the airport to the terminal in Kensington and then did a little charade designed to disclose a tail, transferring from tube-train to red bus to taxi; he left the taxi in Regent Street and backtracked by bus into Kensington and walked down to the Kingston Close Hotel in its mewsish seclusion behind the boutique that used to be Derry & Toms.

He told the hall porter he was in London on business from Bradford in the north; he put on a broad Yorkshire accent and therefore wasn't asked for a passport. He signed in as Reginald Davies and let a porter carry his bag up to the room.

The hotel was comfortable but neither grandiose nor luxurious; it attracted commercial travelers from New Zealand and Scotland, dowager aunts from South Africa. He'd met a contact here once but he'd never booked into the hotel; it wasn't a place where they'd start looking for him.

He sent down for a pint of Dewar's. Afterward he had to think a moment why he'd done that—it wasn't his usual Scotch but it would not have been prudent to order Haig. Then he remembered who it was that drank Dewar's.

He had a shower and found the bottle in the room; he poured two fingers into a tumbler and sat in the easy chair to think out the moves—his and theirs.

Yaskov knew three things he hadn't known before. One: he'd seen the manuscript so he realized Kendig knew far more than anyone had thought he knew. Two: Kendig had been in Stockholm fourteen hours ago. Three: Kendig was traveling as Jules Parker and had flown from Stockholm to Helsinki under that name.

Cutter would have him out of Madrid by now; he'd have traced Kendig through Orly at least as far as Copenhagen by now and he too would know the Jules Parker ID. That was because Cutter and Yaskov had their stringers out—they'd have to have them out by now—and it would have been no great trick for them to canvass the airports in the guise of national or Interpol officers; they'd have sifted descriptions and names, eliminated the genuine travelers and narrowed the suspect list to not more than three or four, of whom the only repeat would be Jules Parker.

The teaser phone call he'd made from Helsinki would bring the British into it as well. Yaskov might be a few hours ahead of the Americans, a few hours behind the British; but quite likely they'd all collide at Heathrow. The odds were that within twelve hours both Cutter and Yaskov would bring their physical presences into London.

Anticipating the hunter's moves was always dicey. You might be too slow, too stupid; there was also the chance of being too clever—expecting them to move faster than they actually moved. That could be equally dangerous.

The British would put Chartermain on it. About a thousand RAF pilots—the few to whom so many owed so much—had won the Battle of Britain; half of them had been killed; among the surviving Spitfire pilots had been Chartermain but he'd lost his left leg to a Messerschmidt in September 1940 and they'd transferred him into Intelligence. He'd run some of the Double-Cross agents until the end of the war and then he'd moved over to MI6. Kendig was now in the jurisdiction of MI5 but that wouldn't take it out of Chartermain's control any more than the FBI business had taken it out of Cutter's control in Georgia.

So he was dealing with Cutter, Yaskov, Chartermain and indeterminate lesser fry from the French SDECE, the ex-Abwehr West Germans, the East German BND and whatever peanut agencies felt too vain to delegate the responsibility to the big boys. It made for an obvious question: to what extent would they reinforce one another and to what extent would they get in one another's way?

In keeping with that would be the internal abrasions in the American operation. Cutter would be using Follett's personnel because there was no other source. Cutter had despised Glenn Follett for years. Myerson wisely had seen to it that the two men worked in separate districts but now that safety device had been neutralized. Follett spent his life playing the role of bumbleheaded loudmouth and Cutter never had been willing to see past that defensive
screen; actually while Follett ran a loose ship he had a good talent and his achievements were commendable. But Cutter wasn't comfortable with people who acted as if they didn't know what they were doing; he had a few blind spots and one of them was a tendency to refuse to credit professionalism to those who lacked the appearance of professionalism.

Yaskov was a different artifact; he had the difficulties of bureaucracy but no one in his organization disputed his leadership. There was a temptation in nearly every human being to imitate that which he hated: men often displayed the very characteristics they most loathed in their fathers. Philosophically Yaskov was a dedicated Marxist, according to his lights; he believed honestly in the sort of society that encouraged five-year plans for the proletariat; but he was the son of a czarist officer and preferred elegance to efficiency,
noblesse oblige
to democraticization. In the elitist hierarchy of the Soviet KGB he enjoyed the privileged position of a Richelieu. He was a romantic and vanity dominated him; he would run the hunt with all his brilliant skill and energy because Kendig's freedom would be a personal challenge to his pride.

Chartermain was yet another factor: Chartermain was an imperial colonialist. He surrounded himself with staff who possessed ultra-English names like Colin and Derek. Most of the world was inhabited by poor ruddy bastards or bloody wogs. Chartermain's wife was “the memsahib.” His operations displayed a genteel and sophisticated casualness that took civil service bureaucracy into account and assumed that they should muddle through anyhow. In his chortling fashion Chartermain
probably had found and blown the whistle on more Soviet plants than had any other counter-espionage chief in the West.

Kendig had invited only the very best people to the ball.

They would run the usual drill: question airline counter people at Heathrow, taxi drivers, rent-a-car girls. They'd put people on the taxi stand outside the West End terminal. They'd keep bumping into one another and the people interviewed would let their questioners know that they'd been interviewed more than once. Gradually each agency would accrete a picture of its opponents' operations. Either they'd begin to confer or they'd proceed independently with the jealous pretense that the others didn't exist.