The Peregrine Spy (69 page)

“Take the rubber bands off and drop ’em in low as you can without gettin’ yourself burned.”

Frank followed instructions and dropped in the first stack. The bills scattered as they fell and caught quickly, but one charred note swirled upward on a funnel of smoke. Frank caught it with his left hand, crumpled it, and dropped it back into the barrel.

“Good catch,” said Steele. “You’ll do just fine.”

Four more towers of smoke spiraled into the blue winter sky. Before he’d emptied the last stacks from the carton, Frank went to Steele to borrow the box cutter and slash open another. Watching the others and following their lead, he tore apart the cartons as he emptied them and added them to the potlatch. Smoke now curled from all eight barrels. He had no problem burning rials
,
but then he slashed open a carton marked with a blue
X
and saw packs of American dollars in hundreds, fifties, and twenties. As he dropped in the first batch, he felt needles of regret pricking his fingertips.

He thought of all the twenties given to him by Lermontov that he’d turned over to Rocky. He thought of the money Belinsky had gleaned from his Aeroflot racket. He suspected it all added up to nothing compared to what he burned now. America, the magnificent. So powerful and rich, we have money to burn. He thought of stuffing a stack into his pocket and knew he couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? I might get caught. My often lapsed Catholic conscience would bother me. He stripped away another rubber band and fanned a stack of fifties into the tongues of flame that licked through the wire mesh. An afternoon in purgatory, burning away his sins.

*   *   *

They left the barrels outside to burn down and congregated in Troy’s office. Frank had remembered their cables and given them to Steele. Cantwell and Rushmore had gone to check on the battle from the roof of the air force administration building. They weren’t gone long.

“We didn’t get to the roof,” said Rushmore. “Air force guys had started to pull out and had the building locked up. Said last time they checked, the Bodyguard looked to be pullin’ out. They’d backed up Damavand, and the head of the column had turned into some street that runs north.”

“Maybe we should get out of here, too,” said Gus.

“One last job,” said Troy. “The weapons.”

“Can we have our shotguns back?” said Gus.

“No way. Word is to surrender all weapons. The ambassador figures there’s no way we can fight our way out of Iran. So we turn over weapons and try to talk our way out. He has great faith in this yardbird character. Yardi, or whatever his name is.”

“We’ve got a lot of shit back there,” said Steele. “Special weapons, explosives, more burn barrels. I could put a timer on some C-4 and blow it all.”

“I like the idea,” said Troy. “But there’d be hell to pay if some Iranians wandered in after we pull out and got themselves killed. Frank, I hate to ask, but think you could go back over there and talk to your
homafar
buddies?”

“What for?”

“Well, I’d feel a lot better if we surrender our weapons to air force types rather than have them wind up with some raggedy posse of ragheads. And those guys seem to trust you.”

“I can do it if I have to,” said Frank. “Except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, last night the
homafaran
emptied out their Dowshan Tappeh arsenal and gave weapons to the militants. They planned to take two truckloads of weapons to the university this morning.”

“You get that in your cable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Maybe when he reads it Rocky’ll understand why I decided to just leave our weapons here. Time to go. No shotguns, Gus. If anybody wants to keep his personal sidearm, make sure I don’t see it. And nobody’s gonna see mine.”

They could hear signs of the fading battle as Frank turned the Nova up Damavand. “Poor bastards,” said Gus. “The Immortals don’t look so immortal anymore.”

“I can feel some hints of mortality myself,” said Frank. “Watch out.”

An open truck came barreling down Damavand toward them. Armed militants, firing their weapons in the air and shouting slogans, packed the back. The truck swerved around them.

“We go to the house, wash up, pack what we have to quick as we can, and head for the bachelors’ compound, right?” said Gus.

“Sound like a good plan,” said Frank, as he turned into their street. “Except…”

Clusters of armed teenagers in green headbands chatted among themselves along the street. They raised their rifles and chanted,
“Allah-o akbar
.
”
Frank tapped the horn, blat-blat-blat, blat-blat, catching the rhythm of the chant. He kept his eyes straight ahead and drove past the young gunmen.

*   *   *

“Jesus, you look like hell,” said Todd Waldbaum as he let them in the door of the air force guards’ quarters. They told what had happened, and Todd offered showers and fresh clothes. “Major Sullivan, you’re about my size. I can come up with a clean shirt and a pair of slacks. Commander Simpson, you’re more Dwight’s size. He’s a toad, but I’ll get him to give up some duds.”

“’Preciate,” said Gus. “Looks like you’ve got a crowd.”

“More coming, most likely. Everybody’s assigned to a compound they’re supposed to hole up in.” Bill Steele and Cantwell joined them.

“Looks like you guys didn’t make it home.”

“We tried,” said Gus. “But we had unexpected company. Teenagers with M-14s.”

Washed, shaved, and relaxed in clean clothes, Frank and Gus exchanged a glance.

“Vodka in the freezer,” said Gus. “Scotch in the fridge.”

“’Fraid not,” said Frank.

“Surely these healthy young men must have something they’d let us have a drop of.”

“I asked Todd about that. No booze at all. Embassy orders.”

“No booze and no weapons,” said Gus.

“They still have their weapons,” said Frank. “But all stacked together in a closet, waiting for somebody to show up they can surrender them to.”

“Let’s grab a couple and go rob a liquor store.”

“Good plan, except…” He realized he’d said that word often in the past hour.

“Except,” echoed Gus. “I know. There’s no liquor stores left to rob.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

He decided he would attract less attention by walking to the new safe house. He knew he might encounter an Islamic patrol or a band of marauding teenagers armed with AK-47s. He knew he might arouse the suspicions of the nervous Americans now crowded into the air force guards’ bachelor quarters. He knew the risks, and he knew he had to take the risk. He knew he must do all he could to secure Lermontov as an agency recruit, to put to rest those rumors that Lermontov had already recruited him. Endgame. Checkmate. He understood little about chess, but those expressions seemed right.

Expecting Lermontov at four, he crossed the quiet street at three-thirty. He reminded himself that he’d grown up in New York, where crossing the street was always a risk. Piece of cake, he thought as he walked half a block east, climbed the stone steps, and let himself in. The decor showed signs of what Frank had identified as early Bill Steele. Drawn blinds, no curtains, a Formica-topped dinning room table, tubular framed chairs, and bare wooden floors. The refrigerator, turned to the lowest setting, gaped at him like a toothless mouth when he opened it. He turned the setting up, hoping Lermontov would bring Stolichnaya.

He extracted his tape recorder from his pocket and shed the parka. It still smelled of smoke and the acrid fumes of sodium nitrate, napalm, and cremated hundred-dollar bills. He edged his way down the narrow stairs that led from the hallway to the two-car garage he could unlock only from the inside. He undid the lock and tested the overhead door. It went up smoothly. He pulled it shut but left it unlocked. Upstairs, he sat by a front window. He lifted a corner of one blind and, with a wad of notebook paper, propped it open just enough to give him a view of the street.

At a few minutes after four, according to Frank’s Timex, the lights of an approaching blue Fiat flashed on and off. He hurried down to the garage and heaved the door open in time to see the Fiat continue its way up the street. He caught only a glimpse but recognized the huge frame behind the wheel. He jerked the garage door down and locked it.

He repeated the ritual the next day, thirty minutes earlier. At three-thirty, the blue Fiat again appeared. This time the lights flashed on and off twice. The Fiat’s front bumper nearly touched the garage door as Frank flung it up. Lermontov pulled in quickly and slammed on the brakes. The small car bounced as Frank lowered and locked the overhead door.

Lermontov put a hand on the roof of the car to pull himself out. In his greatcoat and lamb’s-wool hat, he seemed to fill the garage. “I’m getting old. Or fat. Or something.” He reached into the back seat and lifted out his briefcase. “We should have met at my embassy. We seem to attract less attention from the Islamic neighborhood committees than you Americans.”

“Considering what we have to talk about, that doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“No, not a good idea. My apologies for running off on you yesterday. I was already a bit nervous by the time I got here. Fires everywhere. Many roadblocks. Then, as I turned into this street, in my rearview mirror I spotted several of our brave Islamic revolutionary allies walking up the block. With M-14s undoubtedly provided to the Shah by his American benefactors. I suspected they might take too much interest in me, and in this house, if I pulled in.”

“No need to apologize. Same thing happened when we tried to get home the other evening.”

“I take it you now call the air force guards’ house across the street your home.”

“What makes you think that?”

“No car in the garage. In these times, I don’t think you walked very far to get here.”

“Someone might have driven me,” said Frank.

“As a KGB asset, we will have to arrange some training for you in how to lie. You should have said, ‘Someone drove me.’ Not, ‘Someone might have driven me.’”

“Gotta admit, I could use the training,” said Frank. He often felt uncomfortable about lying. “How ’bout we go upstairs?”

Lermontov got only as far as the foot of the stairs. “Wait. I think I’ll leave my overcoat down here.” He tossed his coat and hat into the car, then, moving sideways like a skier making his way up a slope, squeezed his way up the narrow stairway.

“I hope, when I leave my current employer, the apartment you provide for me in Washington won’t have such a skinny staircase.”

“I don’t know what kind of apartment they’ll provide,” said Frank. “I’ve never worked with a traitor before.”

“Touché,” said Lermontov. “I didn’t know if we would be congratulating each other or crying in our beer. But some instinct told me your cupboard might be bare. So I brought.”

He opened his briefcase and pulled out the biggest bottle of vodka Frank had ever seen. “What is that?” he asked.

“Two liters. Export quality. I’ll leave it with you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“It occurred to me you might need some reserves,” said Lermontov. “You know they may pull you out of here any day. They can’t, however, pull you out until the Iranians let them bring in some planes.”

“It beats walking.”

“Some people have gotten out by truck through Turkey, but I don’t recommend it.”

“What about getting Russians out?”

“No. Our embassy will stay. But once you’re gone, Moscow will recall me and,
Inshallah,
reassign me to Washington. Normally, that would be a six-month process. But, given these circumstances, we can expect an accelerated transition.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“We should meet at least once more at a Soviet safe house. It would be helpful, to keep Moscow interested, if you brought as much good material as you can get your hands on.”

“That means I first have to find a way to get to the embassy. And right now we’re under orders to sit tight where we are.”

“I have great faith in your ability to make yourself an exception. But we must also prepare for the possibility this will be our last meeting. In Tehran, that is.”

“I don’t think it can happen that fast,” said Frank.

“Who knows?” Lermontov’s neck disappeared as he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Knowing how our bureaucracy works, it will be at least a month before I return to Moscow. Another two to three months, at best, to work out my assignment to Washington. By then you will have been contacted by someone under the direction of our
rezidenza
in Washington. Someone working under deep cover, as an American under the name Howard King. He will take you to dinner and suggest you begin working with him. You will express dismay at such a clumsy effort at entrapment. Ask him if he works for your Counter Intelligence office or the FBI. At some point he will say this is only an interim arrangement until ‘your friend’ arrives. Leave abruptly. If we do meet again here, at a Soviet facility, no matter what I say then about your contact with Howard King, this is the way you will handle it.”

“Understood,” said Frank. Lermontov had again taken charge.

“And of course our station in Washington still has an active penetration agent in Langley. We must move forward, but with great caution.”

“Any chance you can identify him before we’re all out of here?”

Lermontov was slow to respond. “Perhaps. But only if he does something foolish that reveals himself. And he does not seem like a foolish person.”

Neither are you, thought Frank. Giving him up from here might convince our Holy Ghost that he doesn’t need you in America.

“In all probability,” said Lermontov, “your second contact in Washington will come from me. But it will not come directly. You will receive a phone call at home from an Ethiopian. He will speak in Amharic, identifying himself as your old friend from Addis, using the name Hailu Gebre.”

“I’m afraid my Amharic’s pretty rusty.”

“Understood. He will switch to English and arrange to meet you for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. But at the appointed time and place he will not meet you. I will.”

“You’ve read too many spy novels.”