Deep Cover (22 page)

She stripped them off without remark. Torrio glanced toward Belsky and found no reprieve there; he went forward breathing shallowly and examined her armpits and the soles of her feet and went into all the orifices of her body with a doctor's rubber finger-glove. When Torrio was done and had turned to the bed to inspect her clothes, the woman stood up straight and faced Belsky. She had the body of a ripe young girl—rigid high breasts like pink rubber, soft curve of waist and thighs. She faced him with her breasts thrust forward, arms akimbo, feet apart, challenging him to remain unperturbed, and she scored her point; Belsky did not take his eyes off her when she put her clothes on and smoothed down her dress.

Torrio's face was covered with a light oily sheen. Belsky said, “Do that with all of them.”

“You really think you need to—”

“Be quiet,” Belsky said. “Do as you're told.” He went through the back door and found himself on a concrete patio surrounded by screens. Evidently it had once been an open
carport. It ran the width of the house, about twenty-five feet by fifteen. The furniture was bamboo and rattan with print-fabric cushions. Reptilian potted plants hung from the roof on wrought-iron chains. He said, “There's another room I haven't seen.”

Nicole's reply was hostile. “You haven't seen the kitchen or the bathroom or my office. Which one did you have in mind? Or were you thinking of another bed?”

Of course she had an office. Probably she did most of her work at home. She was a political reporter for one of the television stations, he recalled. “Don't spar with me, I haven't got time.”

“What's the matter? You're not a fag, are you?”

“You haven't got meat on you like a good Russian woman.”

“If you like cows.” She showed her teeth. “I think you're kinky. You get your kicks out of pushing people around. I know a couple of cops like you.”

He put his lazy stare on her and after a moment it made her step back; she waved a hand around in front of her and said in a different tone, “Look, I keep forgetting you're not local product. The average red-blooded American loudmouth is a whining coward inside. You're not like that but it takes some getting used to—don't forget I've been out of touch for twenty years.”

“I haven't forgotten it,” he said.

Five of them arrived shortly before five o'clock. They emerged from the bedroom one by one, adjusting their clothes; they were all on edge. Ramsey Douglass was last to arrive. Belsky was displeased. At sight of Douglass, Nicole stirred and lifted her hand quickly to her hair as if to reassure herself nothing had given way. A curious and revealing reaction: Belsky watched them now as a pair.

Ramsey Douglass was handsome in a weak Byronic way; he wore his hair in sleek fingerwaves and a comma of it fell across his forehead. He had the look of one who was recovering from a fashionable illness. (Belsky's mind made the automatic memorized connections: Ramsey Douglass = Dmitri Smolny,
born Leningrad 1931, trained at Dubna, commissioned ensign in Red Air Force 1952, degrees in aeronautical engineering and physics, linguistic aptitude high, political rating adequate; married 1952, widowed 1953, son Fyodor Dmitrovich now 22 and employed by Intourist in Moscow.)

There was very little time to study the others because he had a great deal to tell them and they would have to be on their way within forty-five minutes to make room for the next batch. He made a kind of shorthand inventory compounded of what he knew from their dossiers and what he got from quick scrutiny:

Nick Conrad, Major USAF, electronics warfare AOS (Nikolai Konrad, forty-two, recruited into KGB from Red Army in 1952 and trained in languages and electronics).

Adele Conrad, Grade 9 civil servant, senior clerk-typist Eareckson Wing personnel department, DMAFB (Alla Konrada, forty-one, recruited into KGB while a modern-language student at Moscow University, met and married Nikolai Konrad at Amergrad, 1953). Three children, all of whom had been born in America—ages 19, 18, 15.

Fred Winslow, Lieutenant Colonel USAF, Deputy ICBM Wing Commander, Eareckson Wing, DMAFB (Vladimir Voz-shin, forty-four, recruited into KGB from Aeroflot pilot-training program and trained in military administration and languages).

Celia Winslow, housewife, active in community affairs—League of Women Voters, Pima County Democratic Party organization, Parent-Teacher Association (Kassia Vozshina, forty-three, recruited into KGB with her husband and trained in languages). The Winslows had a twenty-two-year-old son born in Russia and a fourteen-year-old daughter born in West Germany where Winslow had served a two-year tour of duty as a major with a ground-to-air missile squadron.

Two others were not present. Ilya Zinenev, in Washington, D.C., had been recruited out of Leningrad University and seeded into Tucson as a university mathematics instructor but as requirements had changed he had been shifted into the political sphere. Boris Dolinski, today in Scottsdale, had been
assistant to a Ukrainian commissar when recruited, and had been trained in American political science by KGB at Amergrad. The absence of these two didn't matter since the mission would be military rather than political.

The Rykov plan had allowed for the fact that the American armed forces tended to rotate their personnel from base to base. About one-fifth of the Amergrad agents were posted away from Tucson at any given time: Winslow, for example, had served tours of duty in West Germany, Alaska, South Vietnam, New Jersey and California. But Winslow's predecessor as Deputy Wing Commander had been another Amergrad agent and his successor would be yet another. This was ensured by the placement of Amergrad personnel administrators in key Pentagon and NORAD offices so that control was maintained over transfers and reassignments. The preponderance of Amergrad agents remained in Tucson at all times but the scheme allowed for sufficient rotation to avert suspicion. By the same token local officials like Adele Conrad had been seeded into positions from which they could direct the placement of lower-echelon agents like Hathaway to units where they could exercise maximum leverage from within.

The scheme had been worked out to maintain cell-to-cell security. The system was analogous to a cargo ship's watertight bulkheads, which were designed to seal off any compartment that leaked, to preserve the seaworthy integrity of the vessel as a whole. Of the nearly three hundred Amergrad agents, there wasn't one who could identify more than eleven of his comrades. Most of them could identify only four or five. In the entire Western Hemisphere there was only one man alive who could name all 287 Amergrad agents: that man was Leon Belsky, and each time he thought of it his tongue twitched against the hollowed molar near the back of his lower jaw.

He sat them down and told them what they were to do. He delivered his address in a pitchless voice, without animation, as if it were a ritual incantation. While he spoke he watched them. They were filled with nervous anxiety, that much was
evident—all except Ramsey Douglass who appeared bemused.

“The objective is the missiles themselves rather than the command hierarchy. You have to work out the details in terms of a one-shot coup, not a continuing operation. Moscow wants these ICBMs fired at targets of Moscow's choice. That's all you have to do, shoot the missiles—not take over the air base or the state of Arizona. In a way this makes it easier but remember you won't know the precise day or hour until the last minute and when it comes you've got to be prepared to move instantly and simultaneously. It'll require faultless timing.

“I'm meeting with you before the others because your cell is the key to the whole job. Winslow will execute the command to fire the missiles. Conrad has to see to it that our own code envelopes are substituted for the NORAD ones at the proper time. Douglass will draw up the details of target reprogramming. Douglass and Conrad together will have to blueprint the severing of the fail-safe communications links within the missile groups themselves so that when the group commanders double-check for confirmation they'll receive the replies we'll be substituting for NORAD signals.”

Ramsey Douglass showed a double row of white teeth. He spoke in a drawl. “You'd have to interdict the security system and the communications hookup at every level from Colorado Springs and Washington on down. How am I supposed to handle that?”

“You're not. Everybody has his own job to do—just worry about yours. When the time comes we'll have control of every communications relay and all signals to and from the silo complexes will go through us. No messages will be allowed in or out except those we initiate. The group commanders won't know they're receiving fake messages and the higher commands outside the base won't know anything unusual is going on here until it's too late for them to do anything about it. Of course they'll see the missiles on radar after they've been launched but they'll have no way to stop them.”

A throbbing vein stood out in Nick Conrad's forehead. Fred Winslow was twisting his knuckles. Adele Conrad's eyes were
moist and blinking fast like semaphores; Celia Winslow's stare was fixed against the knot of Belsky's necktie and she kept rubbing her thumb across the pads of her fingers. Nicole Lawrence stared astringently at Ramsey Douglass as if it were up to Douglass to remedy the situation. The five of them made a studied mute tableau; only Douglass seemed capable of rational speech.

Douglass of course was the cell leader and he had had more advance warning of the meeting than the others, but he hadn't been told the purpose of it. Either he was a man who adapted quickly or he was bright enough to have guessed it had to be something like this. In either case it made him valuable. But Belsky didn't like this screened porch as a meeting place and it was Douglass who had suggested it. The man was erratic; there were signs he was too easily prepared to choose the paths of least resistance without asking enough preliminary questions.

Still, it was Douglass who asked the obvious question: “Just who are we supposed to shoot at? I assume that information's on a need-to-know basis but you've got to realize we have to know the general nature of the targets if not the specific locations. Before you tell me it's none of our business you'd better know this. These missiles have been fueled and installed with the expectation that if they're ever used, the targets will be Russian or Chinese. Now if Moscow wants us to shoot them at Washington or Western Europe or Tel Aviv, you're going to have to tell us pretty far in advance. It's not just a question of reprogramming the target coordinates—it's a question of adding or draining fuel and programming new data cards for the computers and all sorts of preparations that you simply can't do at the last minute. These birds weren't installed with the idea in mind that they'd ever have to be used against targets in Colorado Springs or the District of Columbia. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Perfectly. Take my word for it that we've taken that problem into account in our planning. You'll be given the target information in time to make all necessary adjustments and preparations. For the moment we're withholding it because we're entering a critical stage of activation and that means the
risk of some of you being blown is greater than it's been at any time since you were seeded in. If you're blown and cornered you'll be questioned, and you can't reveal what you don't know.”

Douglass said, “That's okay, as long as you know the full extent of the technical side of it. If that's going to be my responsibility I've got to be given time enough to do the job. On a thing like this you can't just get nine women pregnant and expect a baby in one month.”

The kitchen door squeaked open and Belsky's head whipped around. Hathaway stopped in the doorway and said, “I'm sorry to bust in. It's important.” He lifted his chin in beckoning signal and stepped back into the house.

Belsky strode inside and pulled the door shut. “What is it?”

Without speaking Hathaway turned on his heel and led him past the closed bedroom door to the room beyond the kitchen, Nicole's office.

Hathaway pushed the door open and stood to one side and when Belsky stepped into the doorway he saw Torrio in the room holding a stranger at gunpoint. The stranger's face was rigid with alarm.

Hathaway said, “Torrio found this guy out back of the house with a shotgun mike and a tape recorder. Bugging your meeting.”

The stranger winced when the door slammed. He had his hands behind his head and his shoulderblades against the wall. Torrio was sitting on a corner of the desk, on one hip, training a .25 Browning automatic pistol on him from eight feet away. The surveillance equipment lay on the desk blotter—a small battery tape recorder and a high-resolution microphone with a nine-inch cone and disk sound reflector, one of those ultrasensitive long-range microphones adapted from missile-tracking antennae. It had a shoulder stock like a light carbine and there were stethoscopic earphones. The device was familiar enough to Belsky. With it you could hear ordinary conversation four blocks away.

Belsky said, “Do you know him?”

“I've seen him around,” Hathaway said.

Torrio reached under his elbow with his left hand. Belsky saw a wallet in it. He took three steps forward and emptied the wallet on the desk.

Driver's license, Social Security card, private-investigator's license, Police Auxiliary membership card, miscellany. August R. Craig (the Police Auxiliary card listed him as “Gus Craig”), 357 South Kavanagh Ave., Tucson, Arizona 85716. Driver's license: ht 5′ 10″, wt 150 lbs, date of birth Aug 1 1933, place of birth Peoria, eyes brown, hair brown, identifying marks left earlobe missing, ½-in. scar on lower lip.

Belsky could hear the man's breath rasp in and out. Hathaway swung toward him. “Who're you working for, Craig?”

Craig's only reply was a nervous hostile grin.

Hathaway made a fist and moved forward on the balls of his feet. Belsky said, “No. Come out here with me.” He went into the hall and nodded through the doorway to Torrio, who stayed put and kept his gun leveled. Hathaway emerged from the room and pulled the door to. Belsky said, “I have to finish with these people. I'll attend to him later.”