Authors: Paul Vidich
Love. He wasn't sure what the word meant, and he had never said it seriously. It was a vague, sentimental, romantic word, an appalling word that only led to terrible disappointment. He embraced her and felt her trembling.
20
UNDERGROUND
F
INAL ARRANGEMENTS
to capture Roger Altman fell into place quickly. In exchange for a promise of asylum, Vasilenko agreed to cooperate. Vasilenko confirmed that a room on the fourth floor of the Soviet embassy had been set aside for a special guest, and this could only be Protocol. Chernov had boasted he could secretly transport Protocol to Moscow and become the Communist hero who'd reeled in his big prize.
“Tomorrow night he leaves,” Vasilenko said. “No later than that. The
Sedov
sails in two days. Protocol will be on it.”
Coffin snapped, “The embassy is watched round the clock.”
“What you don't know is this.” Vasilenko surprised the men in the conference room when he explained that he'd found a cellar door that led from the embassy's subbasement to an abandoned tunnel that ran under Sixteenth Street past the Carlton Hotel toward Lafayette Park. He had found the passage when he
looked around for a way to leave the embassy unseen. He needed a way to come and go without being followed, surprising Mueller in the Whiskey Bar, appearing beside him in the bar as if he'd materialized out of nowhere. “Yes, George, that was my trick. I came and left clandestinely. The FBI had their binoculars on the embassy's gate, the roof, and the windows, but I moved underground. I found an old iron door in the wine cellar behind a wall of Château Latour. I had to break a few bottles, so, of course, I couldn't tell anyone what I'd found because they'd say, âYuri, good work, but you'll have to pay for the wine.' So, it's my little secret. Chernov will be glad to have it. I can lead him to the hotel, through the cellar, and there will be a car to take us to the
Sedov.
You'll surprise him when he steps out to the street.”
Beneath Washington's streets is an unmapped web of old tunnels built in the aftermath of the British sacking of the U.S. capital. These subterranean defenses were forgotten in time and mostly abandoned to the seasonal flood waters that channeled in meandering paths to the Potomac. Sections were used in the Civil War by freed slaves arriving or departing in the underground railroad; others reclaimed to satisfy the city's hunger for secrecy, becoming archive vaults, or passageways for congressmen to move unseen for votes in the House of Representatives, or to hasten them to hotel dalliances, and later, portions were converted to bomb shelters, or annexed by the city's new trolley system.
The trap was baited. Low clouds laid a dampening gloom over splendidly dressed guests who arrived for the Republican gala in the Hotel Carlton's ballroom. Diligent doormen opened limousine doors and led celebrities past eager onlookers restrained by velvet
rope, and through the spectacle of light from paparazzi camera flashes.
Perfect cover
, Vasilenko had said, to move unnoticed in the open. These had been his last words that morning before he strode purposefully into the front gate of the Soviet embassy.
“They're late,” Coffin said, checking his watch. “It's past nine. Or, we've missed them.” This he snapped impatiently.
Coffin stood beside Mueller in the gray mist across the street and watched the buzzing crowd gathered under the hotel's canopy. Washington was not a European capital and there were no graceful benches to sit on, no quaint sidewalk cafés from which to clandestinely spy on a subject. No one designed the city for strolling. Certainly not in the open, subject to the city's miserable climate. With the low clouds came a light soaking drizzle that fell on Mueller and Coffin. They had left without umbrellas and water fell in rivulets from their hats, chilling them to the bone, adding to their impatience.
“They'll come,” Mueller said optimistically.
“I don't trust him,” Coffin said. He coughed his smoker's cough, and puffed on his cigarette again.
Inside the telephone booth at their side the handset began to ring. Coffin answered it. Mueller split his attention between a Buick parked just down the block on the opposite side of the street, and the half-heard conversation from the booth.
“Yes, we're here,” Coffin said. “Nothing so far. The fog makes it hard to see. Yes, Yes, I know. There's no room to fail. I'll call when I know something.” Coffin hung up and turned to Mueller. “He doesn't trust Vasilenko either.”
The director? “He'll come. He'll bring Roger. He has no
choice. His family is at risk. It's not a game for him.
There!
Look. The Buick is moving. They're on their way.”
This is what Vasilenko had said. When the Buick left its parking spot, that meant that the Russians and Altman would have entered the tunnel and be on their way. The Buick entered the queue of cars waiting to reach the hotel drive-through.
Coffin rubbed his hands against the chill and nodded at a Cadillac delivering a couple into the doorman's sheltering umbrella. The man was stout like a penguin in tuxedo and his right-wingism announced itself in a patriotically striped cravat. On his arm was a taller, younger woman wonderfully pleasing to the eye with her doll's face, pearl skin, topaz teardrop earrings, amber-colored scarf pressed over her shoulders, and a fine head of blond curls sculpted into an updo. Eyes of the curious onlookers followed as she made her way along the velvet rope, indulging all the attention with a coy smile.
“There is a word for all this,” Coffin said. “Sometimes you need the word first and only through the word do you know what you are seeing. Everything is inchoate until you have the right word. The word, George, is
diversion.
This is all a diversion. There, beyond the tall woman, is a tight group of men. You see that. Our bait and our catch.” He added in a perplexed whisper, “Why are people pointing?”
Under the hotel canopy Mueller saw four men moving behind photographers and onlookers all pressing forward to ogle at the woman. Vasilenko was the first to emerge, hatless, eyes darting, and he was joined by a thinner, shorter man in wide fedora pulled down on his forehead.
Mueller recognized Chernov's angular face, faint pockmarks, and pronounced clubfoot, which swung around when he moved it forward in his hobbled walk. Mueller felt a tinge of anxiety. Was it fear or concernâor just nervousness triggered by the sound of the gimp? For danger always poked its head out whenever Chernov appeared, as he had done in Vienna and Bern, each time offering another lure in his deprecating mannerâand of course one was always tempted. The Soviet colonel had a grim visage and his nose smelled for danger.
Roger Altman was half a step behind, unmistakable by his height, Hollywood good looks, and the double breasted blue blazer he'd been wearing when he disappeared, but different. Humbled, nervous. Eyes alert. Crimson pocket square missing. Here he was, Mueller thought, on his way to the dacha he'd dismissed. He was in the open, vulnerable, and there would be a terrible reckoning. He didn't look defeated, but then Mueller never thought Roger Altman was a person who allowed himself to look defeated. He was a refined man of good taste who never conveyed the image of a grubby man living a triple life. There was only this picture of confident coolness moving quietly along the perimeter of Washington's hoi polloi.
“Why are they pointing?” Coffin repeated.
A camera's magnesium lightning flash went off. One paparazzo and then another snapped Altman's photograph, and onlookers turned their attention from the tall woman to the discreet Altman and his nondescript companions, and then suddenly the crowd surged in a rabble, pens thrust out seeking a scribbled autograph.
Mueller didn't say what was on his mind in that instant. Some idiot forgets the plan, or a chance case of mistaken identity disrupts the intelligent working of a self-conscious plan. There is no way to apply coherence to the error and all bets are off. Mueller was already moving across the street in a run, signaling to Downes and two companions, ex-football players recruited for security work when the Agency decided it needed more muscle. They pushed through the crowd to cut off the escape route along the sidewalk. There was shoving and a few indignant protests from women pushed to the side by photographers eagerly clawing their way to snap Altman's photo. Blind mob frenzy didn't notice, or care, that the tall man in the blue blazer was someone's lookalike.
What happened next was this. Chernov saw the trap. He, his two Russian companions, and Altman, hustled through the hotel's revolving doors and disappeared inside to retrace their steps to the tunnel and the embassy, where Altman would be untouchable. Coffin, Mueller, and Downes convened on the street and agreed on a plan. Downes and his men would enter the tunnel from the hotel, giving pursuit, while Coffin and Mueller would race ahead to a grated manhole and intercept underground.
Mueller's foot searched beyond the last rung of the iron ladder that descended through the narrow ventilation shaft. From above, Coffin's flashlight shone into the blackness below and showed Mueller he'd come to the end. Mueller relaxed his grip and dropped to the tunnel floor, knees flexed, but still he crumpled on impact. He pointed his flashlight into the underworld. Noise from the street was far away and he found him
self in a dark, confining quiet. Telltale sounds of water gurgling over rocks came from somewhere and he smelled the dankness of old stone. Water droplets on the ceiling gleamed in the beam of his light. As he moved it around, exploring the space, darkness opened up and revealed a vaulted brick ceiling fifteen feet above his head that curved into a wall thirty feet opposite. A creek bed had formed into the grooved channels of old rail tracks laid in the stone floor. He saw rusted iron shackles that lay where they'd been thrown off in a freed slave's flight.
Mueller saw he'd come down in a spot where tunnel tributaries converged in a roundabout and these dark passageways led outward like spokes on a wheel. Arched tunnels disappeared into darkness, except down one where were dim electric lamps glowed. At intervals, ghostly light seeped into the tunnels through ventilation shafts, making dim, perfectly round spotlights on the floor. Mueller searched for the entrance to the Soviet embassy, which Vasilenko said was an iron door set inside a wall cavity.
Coffin was suddenly at Mueller's side. “Turn off your light,” he said. “They'll see us.”
Mueller obliged. He had always disliked the dark, its surliness, its menace. The threat of being seen and not being able to see. It was a childhood fear. Near total darkness surrounded them.
Suddenly, a high-pitched screech filled the space all around them. Far down one tunnel Mueller saw the bulging brow of a modern trolley come around a sharp curve, iron wheels grinding on the rails. Its headlamp pierced the space, sending vast illumi
nation into the dark. Light blinded Mueller, and then as suddenly as it came, the trolley completed its curve and darkness returned.
“Listen. Voices,” he whispered.
Coffin and Mueller pressed against the damp walls, ears alert to approaching voices speaking in an unconcerned register. Mueller's eyes were of little help in the surrounding obscurity, but he made out a duo of flashlights being used by the men trying to find their way in the dark. Mueller had no idea how much time elapsed before he heard the faint sounds of footsteps. Then he heard it, the slap of leather, and the pattern repeated itself, one footstep followed by the percussive tap of a clubfoot, Chernov announcing himself.
The Soviet colonel appeared in the dim light of a ventilation shaft. He entered the circle of illumination, hesitated, and then drew back into shadow, but for a moment his face was visible. He and his companions moved away from the center of the tunnel and hugged the perimeter, moving toward a wall cavity they'd found with their lights.
Mueller saw his mistake. He and Coffin had entered the tunnel at the roundabout and the embassy door was down a tributary. They weren't between Chernov and the embassy but catty-corner. Downes and his two men trotted down the tunnel, moving with alacrity, eager to get to the action, recklessly swinging their flashlights in the haste of their pursuit, unaware they were making themselves easy targets. Mueller saw the danger all at once.
“Stop,” he yelled.
The effect of Mueller's command was immediate. Chernov's
flashlight went dark and Mueller sensed the unmistakable threat of an intelligent adversary.
A gunshot in the dark. A brilliant flash created a momentary burst of light. Explosive sound broke against the solid darkness like a slap on the face. The blast's echo decayed in the tunnels and what remained was the plaintive moan of a wounded man.
“It's Downes,” Coffin whispered. Louder. “David, we'll get help.”
Hustling footsteps moved in the dark, stumbling on unseen rocks, scrambling on the stone floor toward some destination. More footsteps running, one with Chernov's distinctive percussive signature. All flashlights had gone dark. There was only the palpable presence of adversaries maneuvering in close proximity to each other, and as hard as Mueller tried, he couldn't tell foe from friend, or which direction to move.
“George, be careful. He's got a gun. He won't play fair.”
It was Altman. Mueller turned his ear to one spot, but then Altman called again, and the sound seemed to come from a different spot. Sound had no direction in the dark. Altman's voice bounced off the vaulted ceiling and put Altman everywhere. Coffin too had left Mueller's side and he was now alone, surrounded by muffled whispers, grunts, and the angry curse of someone in pain. He took his Colt service pistol out of his coat pocket.
“George, careful. He'll shoot me. He'll shoot you. Look for his cigarette. I'm not sure what they want with me, but I'm glad you're here. We'll have a good talk when this is over.”