Deschin slipped on his glasses, and leaned close to the painting, examining the spot where Churcher’s fingernail was now digging into the paint.
“Very, very astute,” he said, his face still close to the textured surface. He straightened, and peered over the tops of his glasses with a professorial air. “You’re overreacting, Theo. Really. In spite of what we’d all like to believe, Van Gogh was human. He made mistakes, and he fixed them. We all do.”
“Fine,” Churcher retorted. “How do you propose to fix this one?”
Deschin inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then filled the compartment with smoke. “I’m afraid you’re forgetting a most famous American proverb, Theodor. Now how does it go?” he wondered, feigning an effort to recall it. “Ah, yes,” he resumed. “ ‘Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.’ You’re familiar with it. No?”
Churcher seethed, lifted the painting with both hands, and smashed it over the back of a chair. The canvas shredded. The frame splintered.
The four Russians flinched.
Deschin ducked to avoid a piece of the gilded wood that rocketed past his ear.
Churcher’s cold look said, It’s broken now!
Deschin settled and brushed flecks of paint and gold leaf from his jacket. “What do you want?” he asked in a tone intended to signify he’d had enough.
“The originals, of course,” Churcher replied. “All of them. As we agreed a long time ago.”
“Or?” Deschin prodded.
“Or — like I said, I’ll be forced to take steps to even out the ante in Geneva,” Churcher replied. “Of course, should I meet a sudden and suspicious end, the director of Central Intelligence will receive, under anonymous cover, a complete set of drawings and specifications for the Kira conversion. He should be able to figure out the rest from that. I know he will. We play golf. Jake Boulton’s a very bright fellow.”
“How?” Deschin asked coolly. “How did you get the package of drawings, Theo?”
“I spend a lot of time in your country, Aleksei,” he replied, thinking if Deschin was shaken he was hiding it well. “I have friends there.”
“The paintings will be a problem for me,” Deschin said flatly. “Though many works from the Hermitage and Pushkin have been shown in your country recently, I’ve managed to withold ‘your’s’ from those exhibitions. But eventually I’ll be forced to include them; and they’ll be exposed to scrutiny by international experts. So you see, Theo, we can’t very well give you the originals and send fakes. There’s no other way to resolve this?” he concluded, his tone now more pleading than demanding.
“The paintings were the only reason I got into this. You know that. There’s nothing else you people have that I want or can’t buy,” Churcher replied. “I mean, we have an agreement. And for years, more than twenty of them, I’ve kept up my end.” He’d become too hard, too emotional, he thought, and consciously shifted gears. “Look, I’m not here to rub your nose in it, Aleksei,” he said, his voice pained, that of a man not wanting to hurt a friend. “You have some problems? Take all the time you want, okay? Weeks, months, whatever. Long as when it’s all done, I come away with what I’ve been promised, just like you. Now, that’s fair, wouldn’t you say?”
Deschin nodded contritely. “More than fair,” he admitted. A section of torn canvas had come to rest on the table in front of him. He stubbed out his cigarette in the pigment, and shook his head in dismay. “I’m sorry, Theodor,” he said.
Gorodin knew what was coming now. They had discussed this over breakfast during the voyage from Cienfuegos. He tensed, preparing to move quickly when the signal was given, though what he was about to do was no longer to his taste. To his surprise, Uzykin signaled Beyalev instead. At that very instant, and by that simple gesture, Gorodin knew, to his delight, his days in Cuba would be over soon.
On the flick of Uzykin’s eye, Beyalev stepped forward, pulled the 9mm Kalishnikov from his shoulder holster, and brought the steel spine of the grip down hard onto the side of Churcher’s head, just above his left ear — all in one smooth, swift motion.
Textbook, Gorodin thought. His mind drifted back to his last kill — a puzzled young fellow in a hotel room six years ago. It was a covert assassination; what those in the trade, on the Soviet side, call a Mokrie Dela, literally, a “Wet Affair.” It had soured him terribly, and he was more than pleased to keep it his last. Often, in his sleep, Gorodin still heard the muffled crunch of Dick Nugent’s body when it landed on the concrete decking around the pool of the Americana Hotel that night in Miami.
Churcher remained conscious just long enough for his eyes to snap open in astonishment. Then, the expression fell from his face, and the chairman of the board of Churchco Industries slumped in Beyalev’s arms.
Deschin grimaced. Then nodded.
Gorodin took Churcher’s wallet and removed the electronic card key.
Beyalev lowered Churcher to the floor, and pressed the muzzle of the Kalishnikov to his temple.
“No!” Deschin exclaimed.
He and the captain moved with lightning speed. The captain got to Beyalev first and jammed his thumb behind the trigger, preventing him from pulling it.
“We agreed I would seek confirmation from Moscow should a kill appear necessary!” Deschin said to Uzykin sternly. As the bodyguard of a Politburo member, Uzykin clearly outranked his KGB colleague. “Call him off!” Deschin went on. “This decision must be made at the highest level — and with the Premier’s concurrence.”
Beyalev and the captain were still crouched over Churcher’s unconscious body, glaring at each other, hands locked about the Kalishnikov’s trigger assembly.
Uzykin nodded to Beyalev, indicating he had deferred to Deschin.
The captain eased somewhat, slowly removed his thumb from behind the trigger, and stood.
Beyalev holstered the weapon.
“Carry him forward,” the captain ordered. “We have procedures to efficiently dispose of him if Moscow so decides.”
The others moved to take Churcher’s body.
Deschin winced, averting his eyes, and headed down a passageway toward the communications bay.
Chapter Eleven
A wind-driven sleet slashed across Red Square into the unflinching faces of the elite Red Army Guard at sentry post no. 1—the entrance to Lenin’s Tomb.
Premier Kaparov had been on an emotional high since he and Deschin had revealed the existence of a Soviet missile base in the Western Hemisphere to his chief negotiator. Churcher’s threat to forward drawings of the Kira to the Americans, thereby alerting them to SLOW BURN, had plunged him to the depths of depression.
“He can’t be allowed to do this,” the Premier said bitterly.
Pykonen, Anatoly Chagin head of GRU, Sergei Tvardovskiy head of KGB, and two Politburo members representing the military — who were gathered around the table in the Premier’s office — nodded dutifully.
“Decades of hard work and excruciating tests of patience will be wasted,” Kaparov went on. “When I think of our efforts in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central America—” He paused, and shook his head despairingly. “For over twenty years those ventures have kept the enemies of the Soviet state chasing the elusive carrot of détente while the threat of cold war alternatives snapped at their heels, kept them busy while we established our position of nuclear superiority — and now, all for naught.”
“And needlessly so,” Tvardovskiy said. He was a loud, repulsive fellow with capped teeth. He knew the flecks of gold atop the worn incisors reinforced his ruthless image, and left them that way. “These eventualities should have been foreseen, and safeguards developed to deal with them,” he went on. He didn’t have to say GRU, and not KGB, had been entrusted with SLOW BURN’s security. “Who knows if the situation is even salvageable now?”