The Peregrine Spy (17 page)

“Who does he trust?”

Frank shook his head. “Maybe not even himself. He seems very alone.”

“He trust you?”

“He seems to.”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t give a fuck about the Shah. You’re the one likes fartin’ around with emperors. I’ve recruited my share of Soviets, but never a KGB-er with a background like this Lermontov. So you can go on suckin’ up to the Shah if you want, but Lermontov’s mine.”

I wish you luck, thought Frank. He realized Rocky’s concession on the Shah had extended his lease in Tehran—and might give him a chance to rescue Lermontov’s defection.

“When’s your next meet with the thug?”

“I worked it out with Lermontov for two days from now, at the palace same time.”

“That’s awful fuckin’ quick.”

“I told you he’s in a hurry.”

“That may be good for us. We can count on gettin’ a shit pot full of debriefin’ requirements pourin’ in from NE and Soviet Division. They’ll be wantin’ t’ send some of their scalp hunters over t’ get in on the act.”

“That sounds like trouble,” said Frank.

“You got that right. Big trouble if they get here and start fucking things up, but they can’t come over without my approval. I can’t flat out turn them down, but you’d be amazed about how slow I can fucking get about not answering cables I don’t wanna answer. I don’t like the idea of your thug settin’ the pace, tryin’ t’ rush us. But in this case two days is good. It doesn’t give those idiots back home time enough t’ fuck things up.”

He paused. Frank knew he had more to say, “Look, Sully, this business with Lermontov looks good. And we got no choice but to run with it. But anything that looks this good has got to have some land mines along the way. If I was to let you handle it, you’d be in way over your head. A deal like this, you got to watch your ass with everything from jealous types in Soviet Division and NE to paranoid types in Counter Intelligence. But most of all you got to watch your ass with this Lermontov. He worries me. He may be runnin’ some game we haven’t figured out yet. Don’t ever assume a walk-in walks in on the level.”

“I hear you,” said Frank, “And believe me, he worries me, too.”

“Good,” said Rocky. “Better I pick it up.”

Only then, almost as an afterthought, did Rocky turn his attention back to Frank’s meeting with the Shah. Frank knew that Rocky, as an old Soviet hand, would be far more interested in Lermontov. He considered it a symptom of the agency disease, CIA-itis, an inability to see anything but the Soviet giant on the horizon. Lermontov worries me, he thought, but so do old Soviet hands.

“So what else can we do for this Shah of yours?” said Rocky.

“Any chance we can get him the same thing Lermontov wants, a visa to America?”

“Gettin’ the Shah to America will be even harder than gettin’ Lermontov there.”

“We’ve got to get Lermontov to America.”

“That I can work on,” said Rocky. “Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski, those guys. Gettin’ the Shah to America, that’s their job.”

“What’s my job?”

“You? You got it easy. Since you’re so hot to trot with the Shah, do a cable on that. I’ll do the Lermontov cable. You established contact, turned it over to me, chief of station, Russian speaker, and experienced Soviet Division man. Makes all the fuckin’ sense in the world, right?”

Wrong, thought Frank, but he kept the thought to himself and said, “Right.”

“That’s the only cable I need. Forget the other shit. We tell the folks back home what your buddy said about the collapse of the Soviet Union, they’ll laugh in our face. We got other people workin’ on Afghanistan. They don’t need your help.”

Frank’s stomach tightened, and he could feel the anger flaring under his skin. Through clenched teeth he managed to say, “You’re the boss.”

“I know,” replied Rocky. “We only got two days. I’ll have a safe house set up by tomorrow. Exclusive for Lermontov. You can give him the location when you meet up at the palace. Don’t tell him I’ll be there. You can surprise him.”

“I don’t mind surprising him,” said Frank. “I just don’t want to lose him.”

“Yeah, well, just remember. He’s not yours to lose. He’s mine.” Their eyes locked. Neither looked away.

*   *   *

He could not sleep. When he closed his eyes, images of Lermontov filled a giant screen. When he opened his eyes and stared at the metal plates Bill Steele had installed, memories of Lermontov crashed through like the grenade that shattered his window the day before. The grenade had not exploded, but he remembered Rocky’s words. Anything that looks this good has got to have some land mines along the way. He thought of Lermontov as a land mine, a grenade that hadn’t gone off. Yet. And he remembered the day they’d gone hunting in Ethiopia. It had been Tesfaye’s idea.

Tesfaye Tessema, editor of the English-language daily, the
Ethiopian Herald,
and Frank’s closest counterpart, was friendly with Lermontov. Friendly but, as far as Frank knew, not an agent.

“He must hate you,” Tesfaye had once said.

“Why should he hate me?”

“He’s never said so, but he must. Students and journalists are part of his job. He does quite well with the students, but among the journalists I don’t think so well. Except with a few, perhaps on some of the Amharic papers, including our good friend who accused us.”

An anonymous report submitted to the assistant minister of information in charge of the print media had accused Tesfaye “and his American friend” of stealing millions in advertising revenue. The ministry’s meager advertising revenue never approached a million, and no one of authority in the ministry had taken the report seriously.

“I know that made Vassily mad,” said Tesfaye, smiling. “He let me know that he wrote it and our journalist friend who works for him merely translated it into Amharic and turned it in.”

“But why would Lermontov bother?” asked Frank.

“Just to make people more suspicious of you. He knew such nonsense couldn’t hurt me, but many people like to believe the worst of you Americans.”

“Tell your friend Lermontov I appreciate his interest.”

“He is interested in you,” said Tesfaye. “He tells me he would like to get to know you. He’s always trying to recruit me, and I think he figures he can’t because of you.”

“Does he think I’ve recruited you?”

“No, and that makes him even more intrigued. How can you have so much influence without ever trying to recruit anyone? You should get to know him.”

“You should pursue this possibility,” Pete Howard had said. “Get to know him. See what you can find out.”

“What worries me,” said Frank, “is what Lermontov may have found out. About the case we’re building against him. And his crew.”

Frank had determined that all of the Russians based in Ethiopia with press credentials—correspondents of Tass, the Novosti Press Agency, Soviet television and foreign-language radio outlets, and various newspapers with the exception of
Pravda
—all reported to Lermontov, who was also accredited to Tass. Ethiopian security forces granted a degree of latitude to foreign intelligence agencies, but then the Russians went too far. Frank learned through Tesfaye that Lermontov himself had begun cultivating a multilingual foreign-born journalist who also served as a translator for the Ministry of Information and occasionally for the Emperor. Frank relayed the information to Pete Howard. Within a week Tesfaye invited Frank to join him on a hunting trip with Lermontov.

Again, Pete Howard encouraged him. “Just make sure Tesfaye watches your back.”

Frank remembered Lermontov’s weapon of choice. He’d brought along an array of hunting rifles wrapped in a tarpaulin, but his favorite looked like a cannon mounted on a shoulder stock.

“It’s a PTRS semiautomatic, developed as an antitank rifle during the war,” said a cheerful Lermontov after they’d unloaded their Land Rover and set up camp in a wooded area in the Awash Valley. “This fires a round roughly twice the caliber of an AK-47. Look at the size of the bore.”

Frank stared down the huge barrel, and Lermontov showed him a handful of huge shells. Somehow it seemed fitting that a man as big as Lermontov should carry such an oversize weapon.

“I could shoot you in the buttocks with this, and it would kill you. We’ll be going for wild boar, and if I do shoot one, I don’t want to have to try to shoot him twice.”

And I didn’t want to be between that cannon and a wild boar, Frank remembered, wide awake and staring at the metal-covered windows beyond the foot of his bed. Then he closed his eyes and, as though in slow motion, saw the huge, tusked boar charging out of the bush. He heard the roar of Lermontov’s massive rifle behind him. He wondered if he had really felt the rush of wind as the huge bullet sped past his right ear. He knew he had seen the boar stumble forward and fall in a quivering heap not more than a yard away from his feet. He still wondered whether Lermontov had tried to kill him or had saved his life. Two weeks later, the Ethiopian government expelled Lermontov and five other Russians for conduct inconsistent with their status as accredited journalists.

Beirut, he thought. No, I don’t think you tried to have me killed in Beirut. But Ethiopia. I still don’t know. He could hear the bullet whistling past his ear in the Ethiopian bush. He could hear the bullet striking his car, metal against metal on a street in Beirut. He thought of the watch on Lermontov’s wrist and remembered his words about time running out on the Soviet Union; about time tightening the grip acromegaly had on him. He heard an echo of the casual remark of their driver, Ali Zarakesh, that the streets named Churchill and Roosevelt might not have those names for long; the warning of the air force major, Anwar Amini, to watch the funnels of smoke in the sky over Tehran. Through the night, Frank sensed time running out. Somewhere a clock ticked, a time bomb, but he had no idea how soon it would go off. “Watch the smoke signals,” Anwar had said. “Perhaps they can tell you.”

CHAPTER SIX

The white-haired majordomo took their coats. “Major Sullivan, you will be meeting today first with His Imperial Majesty’s guest. The same gentleman you spoke with last week, in a room I will take you to. His Imperial Majesty may take some time for you after that meeting. Major Nazih, you may wait just here.”

Two Imperial Guard enlisted men, with Uzi submachine guns cradled in their arms, stood before the doors to the Shah’s private offices.

“Major Sullivan, kindly follow me,” said the majordomo, and Frank followed down a long, narrow hallway. At the far end, his white-haired guide, again in a gray morning coat, knocked at a door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and bowed Frank in.

Lermontov stood with his back to the door, thick hands folded behind him, gazing through French doors toward the snow-gilded slopes and the distant city now invisible in the afternoon glare. He crossed the room and reached out to Frank with an enormous paw.

“It’s good to see you again, old friend.” Though Lermontov’s hand swallowed Frank’s, his grip had become far gentler than Frank remembered from earlier days. Frank glanced at his hand, then caught Lermontov’s eye.

“Ah, yes,” said the big man, releasing Frank’s hand. “I don’t squeeze as hard as I used to, right? I have to be careful these days. If I forget, now that I’ve gotten bigger, I can crush somebody’s fingers. Besides, I don’t have anything to prove anymore.”

“Did you ever?”

“When you first met me, I was a very junior officer. Very insecure. I had to show everyone how tough I was.”

“You had me convinced.”

“Good. I must admit we did not think you were so tough, but you had begun to intrigue us. One of the Ethiopian journalists who worked for us told me you had said that you did not believe Communism was America’s enemy. When I reported that, Moscow became very interested in you.”

“As a target?” asked Frank.

“Well, at least as someone worth keeping an eye on. Someone with interesting ideas.”

“I might have been misquoted.”

“Perhaps,” said Lermontov. “But in the years since, I’ve come to realize what you said, or what my Ethiopian friend attributed to you, was very accurate. Communism isn’t your enemy. Russia is. China will be. Both may join the capitalist camp—and still be your enemy. We may shout about economic systems and human rights and forms of government, but we fight about national interests.”

“Ideology is dead?”

“No,” said Lermontov. “Ideology isn’t dead. It never existed, except as a cover for national ambition and, for some, to disguise personal interest. Do you think Stalin cared a rat’s ass about ideology?”

“You’ve picked up some interesting American slang,” said Frank.

“We get a monthly update.”

“Are you serious?

“I am always serious,” said Lermontov. “You know that.”

He sounds like Rocky, thought Frank.

“But we discuss ideology,” said Lermontov. “Not slang. Stalin wanted to expand Soviet imperialism and, above all, to keep all power in his own hands. He cared about Communism about as much as the Shah cares about his White Revolution.”

“From what I’ve read,” said Frank, “the Shah seems pretty proud of his White Revolution.”

“He should be proud,” said Lermontov. “The Americans love him for it. It makes him look like a benign, progressive ruler. He cares about it for the same reason he cares about his Imperial Bodyguard, about Savak and the torture rooms in Evin prison. They all help to keep him in power.”

“Don’t you feel a bit … nervous? Talking about the Shah like that? Here?”

“You mean because this room is bugged?”

Frank nodded.

“I’m beyond that,” said Lermontov. “In fact, in my own meetings with the Shah I’ve become quite open. I think it helped convince him of my sincerity, including my sincerity about wanting to talk to you. The Shah is very shrewd in handling people. That also helps keep him in power.”

“It can’t just be about power.”

“Power is what he craves,” said Lermontov.

Frank reacted slowly. He could feel his skin tighten. Lermontov had hit a chord. He could feel himself begin to change, but he resisted the change.

“The Shah’s a good man,” said Frank. He added to himself, Who maybe went wrong.