“You Company men and your protocol. Seat a potential target to your left so you can shoot him without removing your weapon from its shoulder holster, while at the same time placing him in the awkward position of having to draw and turn.”
“Given the fact that you’re left-handed, that strategy would be only half-effective. Also, since my objective is Naz’s recovery, killing you ranks rather low on my list of priorities—at least for this meeting.”
From the corner of his eye, Melchior saw Ivelitsch pretend to look around. He knew full well the KGB man had cased the joint as thoroughly as he had himself.
“And the beautiful Madam Song? Will she be joining us today? Or any of her associates?”
“She’s shopping for a replacement lamp for the one you broke. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I’m sure that seems hopelessly bourgeois to you, but apparently it was quite expensive.”
“On the contrary. Even a Communist can appreciate the need for domestic comforts. The Russian winter is long, dark, and cold. You should spend more time with her, Melchior,” Ivelitsch continued. “Aside from the fact that the girls in her house are even more beautiful than the antiques, she’s a clever girl. She could teach you a few things.”
“Such as?”
“The need for an organization. Going rogue requires a flight of inspired lunacy. But going solo is just insane.”
Ivelitsch’s words were so similar to Song’s that Melchior wondered if they were conspiring together. But he managed to keep his face and voice impassive.
“And what makes you think I’m going rogue?”
“Rip Robertson’s corpse for one thing. And Orpheus for another.”
Melchior tapped the paper. “Rip’s death hasn’t made the news, so I take it this is your way of telling me you’ve got a man inside CIA. However, I was just batting cleanup on Orpheus, so whoever your man is, he’s only getting half his facts.”
“Our man is Stanley.”
“Stanley?” Melchior did his best to keep his voice level. “The mythical mole who penetrated MI-5? He’s the British version of the Wise Men.”
“He’s Kim Philby,11 and he’s every bit as real as the Wise Men. He has lunch several times a week with James Jesus Angleton10 whenever he’s in DC. After three or four gimlets, there’s very little Mother won’t tell his old friend.”
This time Melchior made no attempt to hide his surprise. “Why in the world would you tell me that?” he said, although he knew there could only be one answer. “Philby’s been missing since January.”
“He’s in Moscow, drinking all the vodka his liver can stand. Now, turn around, you half-caste moron, before you attract attention.”
Melchior looked forward again. He stared at the shrouded faces of the wet commuters, wondering if any could even begin to imagine what was happening while they raced toward their trains.
“You’re rogue too,” he said, and again wondered if Ivelitsch and Song were in cahoots—it seemed like an awfully big coincidence (the very thing that BC had said about Melchior’s presence on the train, come to think about it) that she would ask Ivelitsch to turn against KGB when, in fact, he already had.
“I prefer the term enlightened,” Ivelitsch was saying now. “The Cold War is a lose-lose scenario. The United States and the Soviet Union can’t make a serious move without risking nuclear reprisal. They put on frivolous headline dramas like the Cuban Missile Crisis or mount expensive but largely pointless proxy wars—the Baathists versus General Qasim in Iraq, say, or Movimiento 26 de Julio in Cuba, the North and South Vietnamese—and send them to the slaughter. What’s needed is a smaller organization, more nimble, more obscure, free of the restraints of dogma and politics that neither side actually believes, let alone adheres to.”
Melchior flicked a picture of President Kennedy shaking hands with Martin Luther King on the cover of his paper.
“I think both of these men would disagree.”
Ivelitsch looked at the two beaming faces as if he couldn’t tell them apart.
“As a Negro, Reverend King leads the only American manifestation of a phenomenon so common in the old world, namely, the remarkable tenacity of ethnic groups to resist integration into the modern heterogeneous state. His idealism is tribal, which makes it resistant to compromise, but also confines it to his own constituency. The last I checked, Negroes made up about ten percent of the U.S. population, which is a number that means more to retailers than pollsters. President Kennedy, by contrast, wants to have it both ways. His optimism is ridiculously naive—ridiculously American, one wants to say—but his cynicism is Irish to the core. He’s trying to appease everyone—the hawks and the doves, the businessmen and the beatniks, the New Men and the Negroes. In the end it’s going to be the death of him.”
Something about Ivelitsch’s use of the word “death” suggested it wasn’t a euphemism.
“Lemme guess,” Melchior said. “The mob. Johnny Roselli? Jimmy Hoffa? Sam Giancana maybe? Pissed off that Bobby isn’t giving them quid pro quo for Cuba?”
Melchior’s tone was joking, but Ivelitsch responded to it seriously. “Have you heard anything specific?”
“Let’s just say that if you want to get away with knocking off the president of the United States, you probably shouldn’t go around telling everyone that that’s what you intend to do. Have you heard anything?”
Ivelitsch shrugged. “Mafia men dislike Communists even more than they dislike Kennedys. But if and when it happens, we need to be ready to take advantage of the chaos that will surely follow. Until then, there’s the question of Orpheus, and, of course, the bomb. We need to get the former out of the country, the latter in.”
Melchior could only shake his head at Ivelitsch’s candor. The man was working as hard as possible to prove his break from his employer. Either that or he planned on shooting Melchior as soon as he found out what he wanted to know. Of course, Melchior was considering the same thing, assuming he could get Ivelitsch to stop talking about U.S. politics and tell him where the hell Naz was, or what he wanted for her return.
“So,” he said, moving the conversation in that direction. “Where do you propose we move Orpheus? With Miss Haverman?”
“Is that her name?” Ivelitsch said. “A lovely girl. Beguiling, I have to say. I can see why she’d have such a hold on Orpheus.”
“How much do you know about that?”
“Rather less than you, I think,” Ivelitsch said. “Edward Logan’s records on Project Orpheus seem to have disappeared from the Boston office. Ditto Joe Scheider’s from Langley.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Melchior said.
“I didn’t think so,” Ivelitsch said, smiling wryly. “At any rate, Miss Haverman is enjoying the comforts of one of the luxury suites in the basement of the Soviet Embassy for the time being. As for Orpheus, I think he’d be better off in the Soviet Union.”
Melchior snorted. “Putting aside the fact that that is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, I thought you were leaving KGB?”
“Why would I do something like that? KGB has access to the kind of money and manpower you and I could never raise, at least in the short term. And unlike you, I’ve been nothing but a model citizen my entire career. My superiors have no reason to suspect me.”
“If only they could hear this conversation,” Melchior said. “All right then. Orpheus to Russia. And the bomb?”
“We haven’t found it yet, but you have to realize that it’s only a matter of time. It’s leaking—badly. A dozen people have already fallen ill. It’s a trail of human bread crumbs. You need to tell me where it is so I can send someone to fix it before the Cubans or my team find it or, even worse, it’s no longer good for anything.”
“And then you look the other way while I move it again?”
“We move it here.”