CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Ted?”

“Yes?”

“Do you recognize my voice?”

There was a long pause. “Yes, I think I do. Bloody hell, man, what’s going on?” Ted Bishop’s voice sounded different muted, tense. It was the voice of a frightened man. Metcalfe was calling from a telephone kiosk several blocks from Lana’s father’s apartment on Petrovka. The British journalist worked out of the Me-trop ole thus he was almost always there.

“Later,” Metcalfe said abruptly. “I need your help.”

“You’re telling me. This place is swarming with YMCA boys.”

“I need you to grab some things from my room. You can get in, right? You’ve known the staff there for years; someone can let you in.”

“They’ve known me for years, doesn’t mean they like me. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“I appreciate it. Let me call you back in a few hours with a place to meet.”

“Speaking of phone calls, you’ve been getting a bunch of urgent messages from someone they’ve even been giving ‘em to me, in the dining room, in case I saw you. Someone named “Mr. Jenkins’? Bloke sounds desperate.”

“Mr. Jenkins” that was Hilliard. “Got it,” Metcalfe said. “Thanks.”

“All right uh, listen, do yourself a favor, and don’t come back here. You understand what I’m saying?”

Metcalfe hung up and immediately placed a call to Hilliard at the U.S. Embassy. He identified himself as Mr. Roberts, but before he had a chance to say that he’d lost his passport, Hilliard interrupted.

“Jesus Christ, where the hell have you been?” Hilliard said in a low, trembling voice, some combination of fear and anger. “What the hell have you been up to? You’ve been burned, do you know that?”

“Yes.”

“They’re out for blood, man. You’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge, you understand me? You’re in sanction now. You’ve been called out of play.”

Metcalfe went cold. He had to get out of Moscow, out of the Soviet Union, immediately. He had been burned; he was now designated for either arrest or an immediate kill. Corky had passed on the order that he was to be ex filtrated out of the country at once.

“I’ll need support.” Meaning false papers, visas, plane tickets. Documentation that only Corky could provide.

“Obviously. The good Lord has provided, but He wants you to move fast. Like yesterday. Understood?”

“Understood.” Hilliard’s manner of referring to Corcoran might have been, at another time, amusing. It wasn’t now.

“And as for me, I’m feeling a hankering for satsivi. In half an hour or so.” With that, Hilliard hung up.

Metcalfe rushed from the telephone booth.

The violinist observed the small, balding, bespectacled man leaving the main entrance of the American embassy. The man was, he knew, a minor functionary in the embassy, a third secretary. He was also, according to the intelligence that had been provided him, an agent of American intelligence.

As he tailed the American, the wind shifted, and he caught a whiff of Barbasol. The man had freshly shaved, using an American brand of shaving cream.

Yes. This man would lead him to his target. He was sure of it.

The gun weighed heavily beneath Amos Hilliard’s suit coat. He was not used to wearing a gun, disliked its heft, and he hated what he was about to do. But it had to be done. Corky had been adamant about it. The encoded message had been unambiguous.

Metcalfe is a risk to the mission, therefore a risk to the fate of the free world. It is a sad necessity, but he must be eliminated.

The young agent had accomplished what he’d been ordered to do. But he’d been blown. Moscow was crawling with goddamned NKVD and GRU agents who were on the verge of grabbing the fellow. They’d get him; it was only a question of when, how soon. Corky couldn’t possibly exfiltrate Metcalfe in time. And once they got him, they’d interrogate him as only the Russians could, and Metcalfe would crack; there was no doubt of it. The entire operation would be exposed, and Corky could not would not allow that to happen. Far too much was at stake. It must not be jeopardized by a single human being.

Hilliard wondered at times like these whether he was truly cut out for this job. This sort of thing was truly the worst part of the assignment. He sort of liked Metcalfe, but that wasn’t the main thing. He knew that Metcalfe was one of the good guys, one of the white hats. The young fellow was no traitor. But Corky had issued the order, and Hilliard had no choice. He had a job to do.

Metcalfe arrived at the Aragvi Restaurant seven minutes ahead of schedule. “In half an hour or so” meant thirty minutes precisely; Hilliard was as exact with language as he was punctual. The customary line that snaked out the front of the restaurant wasn’t there, because it wasn’t yet dinnertime; this made it easier for Metcalfe to observe the comings and goings. As he staked out the front and side entrances of the restaurant from his vantage point on the steps of Central Telegraph on Gorky Street, he recalled that he’d promised to call Ted Bishop back with a rendezvous site. But that would have to wait until after this meeting. The ache in his shoulder had lessened, though he could still feel the throbbing of a minor blood vessel.

Amos Hilliard entered the Aragvi by the back stairs, where he knew he would not be noticed, and met his way through the dark passage to the men’s room.

He was surprised, and a little unnerved, to find that someone was there. A man was standing at the sink washing his hands vigorously with soap and water. Well, no matter. Hilliard would wait. Once the guy had left, he would take out the Smith & Wesson revolver and screw the sound suppressor into its specially modified threaded barrel. He would double check to make sure the chamber was loaded.

Stephen Metcalfe would arrive, expecting to receive false documents and instructions on how to leave Russia furtively. The last thing he would expect was for Hilliard to whip out a revolver and fire several silenced rounds into his head.

Hilliard hated having to do this, but there really was no choice.

He hesitated, glancing at the man at the washstand who kept washing his hands with a remarkable thoroughness, working up a foam that Hilliard thought wasn’t possible with that shitty Soviet soap.

There was something naggingly familiar about the blank-faced man with the aristocratic features and the long, delicate fingers. He wondered whether he’d seen the man’s face somewhere before. Just recently, he thought; could it be? But no. It was just his nerves.

Then the man at the sink looked up, and their eyes met, and Amos Hilliard felt a sudden, unaccountable chill.

At exactly one minute before the designated rendezvous time, Metcalfe crossed Gorky Street and strode up to the restaurant’s service entrance. It was unlocked, naturally, given the frequency of deliveries of food and other supplies; he was able to enter undetected and walk through the deserted restaurant to the men’s room where he had met Hilliard just a few days earlier.

There seemed to be no one in here, and he hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to lock the door, as Hilliard had done last time. Best not to, he decided; Hilliard was late. He briskly walked through the room, checking the stalls, and in the last one he saw Hilliard.

Hilliard’s shoes and trousers, to be more precise. There was no mistaking the diplomat’s tweed pants and brown leather brogues; they unquestionably belonged to Amos Hilliard and not to a Russian.

Strange, he thought. Why was Hilliard on the can rather than waiting out here by the sinks, as he had last time?

“Amos!” he called out, but there was no reply. “Amos,” he said again, more concerned.

He pulled at the stall door, which swung slowly open.

Jesus Christ! What he saw sickened him, stunned him, caused him to sink to the floor. No, not again! Amos Hilliard sat on the toilet, his head slumped back, his darkly bloodshot eyes staring at the ceiling, a bloody discharge coming from his nose and mouth. His throat had been nearly severed just below the larynx. The ligature mark, a razor-thin furrow, was scarlet and pronounced; it indicated that the weapon had been some kind of thin, strong wire. The diplomat had been strangled, garroted in exactly the same way as Scoop Martin and the members of the Paris station.

No! Hilliard must have just been killed, minutes ago he could not have been here long. Five minutes? Even less, maybe?

Metcalfe touched Hilliard’s crimson face. It was at a normal body temperature.

The killer had to be nearby.

Metcalfe raced out to the door, then hesitated. The murderer might be waiting for him on the other side of the door, the deserted restaurant affording him temporary shelter, enabling him to stand there, ready to pounce.

Metcalfe crashed his foot against the door, causing it to swing open. He hung back, crouched to the side of the doorjamb, watching to see if any figure jumped from the shadows, garrote in hand. No one did. He leaped into the hall, torquing his body from side to side, ready to jump if he had to. But no one was there. Still, the killer could not have been gone for much more than a minute or two.

He ran down the nearest staircase, bounding down the steps two and three at a time, nearly crashing into a waiter bearing a tray. Metcalfe glanced at the slight, uniformed waiter, sizing him up quickly, rejecting him as the possible killer.

A gust of cold air in the hall told him that the exit to the street had just opened, moments ago. Someone had either come in or gone out, though this was not the way Metcalfe had entered the restaurant. The killer. It was possible, in any case. Had he left through this door?

Stealthily he pushed the steel door open a crack, taking care not to make a sound. If the killer had left this way and was walking so as not to appear suspicious to others on the street not running, then he could not be far. He would be within sight. If there was even the possibility of an element of surprise, Metcalfe wanted to preserve it. He slipped through the narrow opening, gently pushing the door closed behind him, satisfied that he had not made a noise.

He was at the rear of the building. Large steel trash bins overflowed with malodorous food garbage. He looked around, but there was no one here.

Whoever it was who had murdered Amos Hilliard had vanished.

Metcalfe knew he had to leave at once, but to go where? He couldn’t return to the Metropole. The fact was, he’d been burnt. He’d been observed servicing a dead drop; the NKVD knew he was engaged in clandestine activities. He had to get the hell out of Moscow as soon as possible. But that was far easier said than done. In this totalitarian state, where everyone was watched and borders were heavily guarded, it was as difficult to leave as it was to enter. Among his papers at the Metropole had been several sets of passports and other bogus identification, but they had surely been seized by the NKVD by now. By far the most prudent, most logical course was to contact Corky and have him proceed with the exfiltration Hilliard had mentioned. To do it right required coordination, horse-trading at a high level. The sort of thing that Corky, who worked in mysterious ways, was expert at arranging. An exfiltration was not something that was done by a lone agent, except in the direst emergencies.

He wanted to take Lana with him. It wasn’t safe for her here any longer, given her involvement. He had promised himself that he would protect her; now, he needed to bring her out.

In order to set the plan in motion, Corky had to be contacted, and for now the best way to reach Corky seemed to be through Ted Bishop. Metcalfe, after all, could not place an international telephone call except from his hotel, and returning there was out of the question. In Moscow one could not place an overseas call from a telephone booth. Amos Hilliard was dead. He had no transmitter.

That left only Ted Bishop. Bishop, as a foreign correspondent, was expected to place long-distance calls regularly, perhaps even daily, whether from his hotel room or from Central Telegraph. So Bishop could place a call for him, to one of the emergency numbers in London or New York. Simply by speaking a few meaningless-sounding words, once the phone was answered,

Bishop would alert Corky without knowing what he was doing or whom he was speaking to.

And there were other ways for Bishop to help, if he was for some reason unable to place a call. It was the BBC radio broadcasts that Metcalfe used to listen to in Paris that gave him the idea. Coded messages, in the form of personal greetings, were broadcast during each evening’s BBC news messages that alerted agents in the field, their true meaning opaque to all other listeners. Why not use news dispatches in the same way? Metcalfe decided. He mentally drew up a plan for an innocent-sounding dispatch that Bishop might plausibly send to his newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. It would be, say, a review of a concert, a performance maybe even the ballet. But certain emergency phrases contained within the bland-sounding dispatch coded language that Corky had formulated, which would easily get past the Soviet censors would reach Corky, come to his attention, alert him to what was going on, what needed to be done. This method wouldn’t be as quick as an emergency telephone call to a prearranged number in London or Washington, which was the preferred method.

Of course, Metcalfe couldn’t level with Ted Bishop, couldn’t tell the journalist the truth about who he was, what he was doing here in Moscow. He’d craft a plausible lie about how the Soviet authorities were preparing to arrest him because he was a wealthy businessman, as part of their ongoing campaign to discredit foreign capitalists as spies. That’s all Ted Bishop needed to be told. Given the Englishman’s apparent anti-Soviet bias, that was probably all it would take.

After all, Metcalfe reflected, he’d lied to someone far more important to him, someone he cared about no, loved deeply. Lies were beginning to come far too easily to him.

Still, the English journalist remained a question mark in Metcalfe’s mind, his loyalties unclear. For now, Metcalfe would have to assume that no one was to be trusted. He would have to be exceedingly cautious with Bishop.

Quietly, with a casual lope, Metcalfe took the path around to the far side of the Aragvi, unseen by the police. He found a phone booth a few blocks away in front of a shabby-looking storefront infirmary, the Central Moscow Clinic Number 22. The clinic was dark, closed; no one was observing him. He called the Metropole and asked for Ted Bishop.

Number 7 Gorky Street was the massive, imposing Central Telegraph building, completed in 1929 in the grand Soviet architectural style. Its interior was equally imposing; it was designed to convey the solidity of a central bank or at least an important government institution, which it was. Here Muscovites waited in long lines to send telegrams to friends and relatives in distant reaches of the Soviet Union, to mail packages or buy postage stamps, to place international calls from stuffy booths. Still, despite its amazingly high ceilings and columns and granite, despite the immense hammer-and-sickle emblem of the USSR on the wall, it retained the gloomy aspect of all Soviet bureaucracies. Metcalfe stood in the shadows of an alcove, waiting for Ted Bishop.

As he watched a middle-aged man place a phone call from one of the booths, he saw how closely monitored telephone calls were. You had to show either a passport or an identity card, fill out a form, pay in advance, and then there was no doubt that someone was listening in to your call. He considered, then rejected, the option of placing an international call himself to one of Corky’s emergency numbers. His false Russian identity papers would not permit him to place an international call; for that, he’d have to use either his true identity, which was now far too risky, or his Daniel Eigen passport, which he had to assume was compromised as well. No, Ted Bishop would have to place the call for him. He could do it without arousing undue attention.

Finally, precisely on time, the rotund journalist entered the massive doors, carrying Metcalfe’s leather bag, looking around anxiously. Metcalfe hung back, watching, waiting to be sure that no one had followed Bishop in. While Bishop walked all the way into the center of the rotunda, peering around the interior, Metcalfe stayed concealed in the dim alcove, watching the front doors to make sure there were no others trailing in the reporter’s wake. Others following Bishop or working with him.

Metcalfe let another minute go by. Bishop began pacing back and forth, a scowl of irritation on his face. Finally, when it appeared that Bishop was about to leave, Metcalfe slowly emerged from his concealed alcove.

But Bishop, who hadn’t yet seen Metcalfe, appeared to be signaling to someone, flicking an upraised index finger steadily. Metcalfe froze, stayed put, watched.

Yes, Bishop was definitely gesturing to someone. But whom?

And then Metcalfe saw whom Bishop was gesturing to.

At the far end of the lobby, beside a long row of what looked like bank-teller windows, a door opened, and a blond man came out.

A blond man with pale eyes. His NKVD pursuer strode up to Ted Bishop and began speaking rapidly in what Metcalfe could hear was Russian.

Metcalfe felt his insides turn to ice. Oh, Christ! Ted Bishop was rotten.

It suddenly came to him in a sickening headlong rush: The insatiable, jovial, journalistic curiosity, the searching questions. The anti-Soviet rants that concealed darker allegiances. The drunken scene in his room, when Bishop had rushed to the bathroom to vomit. That must have been a ruse, a pretext to go through Metcalfe’s belongings, which included certain spy paraphernalia, the hollow shaving brush and cream, the multiple false identity papers. Bishop must have searched them while he was in the bathroom pretending to be sick and had thereby discovered the truth about Metcalfe. Perhaps he had been tipped off by the NKVD, after its agents had torn apart Metcalfe’s room. Perhaps he was doing a follow-up search for the NKVD.

Anything was possible. The reporter had been in Moscow for years, tolerated by the authorities. Deals must have been struck, compromises made. Or worse. Foreigners occasionally were recruited by the NKVD; Ted Bishop was one of them.

Know all your exits, Corky said. But Metcalfe hadn’t had the time to do so. The press of time had caused him to omit the very security precautions he most needed to observe.

Walking quickly along the perimeter of the lobby, keeping to the shadows until he reached the front doors, Metcalfe waited until a couple approached, arguing loudly, and slipped through the doors close behind them.

Then he accelerated his pace until he was running down Gorky Street. He had to reach Lana at the Bolshoi and warn her.

Unless it was already too late.