Kryuchkov had worked in Stalin’s Public Prosecutor office, not a job for the squeamish, and had been involved in the savage repression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, joining the KGB in 1967. It was in Hungary he had met Andropov, who went on to head the KGB for fifteen years. It was Andropov who had nominated Chebrikov as his successor, and Chebrikov who had picked Kryuchkov to head up the foreign espionage arm, the First Chief Directorate. Maybe he, the General Secretary, had underestimated the old loyalties.
He looked up at the high-domed forehead, the freezing eyes, thick gray sideburns, and grim, down-turned mouth. And he realized this man might, after all, be his opponent.
Gorbachev came around the desk and shook hands; a dry, firm grip. As always when he talked, he maintained vigorous eye contact, as if seeking shiftiness or timidity. Unlike most of his predecessors, he was pleased if he found neither. He gestured at the overseas reports. The general nodded. He had seen them all, and more. He avoided Gorbachev’s eye.
“Let’s keep it short,” said Gorbachev. “We know what they are saying. It’s a lie. Our denials continue to go out. This lie must not be allowed to stick. But where does it come from? On what is it based?”
Kryuchkov tapped the massed Western reports with contempt. Though a former KGB rezident in New York, he hated America.
“Comrade General Secretary, it appears to be based on a British report by the scientists who carried out the forensic examination of the way that American died. Either the man lied, or others took his report and altered it. I suspect it is an American trick.”
Gorbachev walked back behind his desk and resumed his seat. He chose his words carefully.
“Could there… under any circumstances… be any part of truth in this accusation?”
Vladimir Kryuchkov was startled. Within his own organization there was a department that specifically designed, invented, and made in its laboratories the most devilish devices for the ending of life, or simply for incapacitation. But that was not the point; they had not assembled any bomb to be concealed in Simon Cormack’s belt.
“No, Comrade, no, surely not.”
Gorbachev leaned forward and tapped his blotter.
“Find out,” he ordered. “Once and for all, yes or no, find out.”
The general nodded and left. The General Secretary stared down the long room. He needed-perhaps he should say “had needed”-the Nantucket Treaty more than the Oval Office knew. Without it his country faced the specter of the invisible B-2 Stealth bomber, and he the nightmare of trying to find 300 billion rubles to rebuild the air-defense network. Until the oil ran out.
Quinn saw him on the third night. He was short and stocky, with the puffed ears and broadened nose of a pug, a knuckle-fighter. He sat alone at the end of the bar in the Montana, a grubby dive in Oude Mann Straat, the aptly named Old Man Street. There were another dozen people in the bar, but no one talked to him and he looked as if he did not wish them to.
He held his beer in his right hand, his left clutching a hand-rolled cigarette, and on the back was the black web and the spider. Quinn strolled down the length of the bar and sat down two barstools away from the man.
They both sat in silence for a while. The pug glanced at Quinn but took no other notice. Ten minutes went by. The man rolled another cigarette. Quinn gave him a light. The pug nodded but gave no verbal thanks. A surly, suspicious man, not easy to draw into conversation.
Quinn caught the barman’s eye and gestured to his glass. The barman brought another bottle. Quinn gestured to the empty glass of the man beside him and raised an eyebrow. The man shook his head, dug in his pocket, and paid for his own.
Quinn sighed inwardly. This was hard going. The man looked like a bar-brawler and a petty crook without even the brains to be a pimp, which does not need much. The chances that he spoke French were slim, and he was certainly surly enough. But his age was about right, late forties, and he had the tattoo. He would have to do.
Quinn left the bar and found Sam slumped in the car two corners away. He told her quietly what he wanted her to do.
“Are you out of your mind?” she said. “I can’t do that. I’d have you know, Mr. Quinn, I am a Rockcastle preacher’s daughter.” She was grinning as she said it.
Ten minutes later Quinn was back on his barstool when she came in. She had hiked her skirt so high the waistband must have been under her armpits, but covered by her polo-neck sweater. She had used the entire Kleenex box from the glove compartment to fill out her already full bosom to startling proportions. She swayed over to Quinn and took the barstool between him and the pug. The pug stared at her. So did everyone else. Quinn ignored her.
She reached up and kissed his cheek, then stuck her tongue in his ear. He still ignored her. The pug returned to staring at his glass, but darted an occasional glance at the bosom that jutted over the bar. The barman came up, smiled, and looked inquiring.
“Whisky,” she said. It is an international word, and uttering it does not betray country of origin. He asked her in Flemish if she wanted ice; she did not understand, but nodded brightly. She got the ice. She toasted Quinn, who ignored her. With a shrug she turned to the pug and toasted him instead. Surprised, the bar-brawler responded.
Quite deliberately Sam opened her mouth and ran her tongue along her lower lip, bright with gloss. She was vamping the pug unashamedly. He gave her a broken-toothed grin. Without waiting for more she leaned over and kissed the pug on the mouth.
With a backward sweep Quinn swept her off the bar-stool onto the floor, got up, and leaned toward the pug.
“What the shit do you think you’re up to, messing with my broad?” he snarled in drunken French. Without waiting for an answer he hauled off a left hook that took the pug squarely on the jaw and knocked him backwards into the sawdust.
The man fell well, blinked, rolled back on his feet, and came for Quinn. Sam, as instructed, left hastily by the door. The barman reached quickly for the phone beneath the counter, dialed 101 for the police, and, when they came on the line, muttered “Bar fight” and the address of his bar.
There are always prowl cars cruising that district, especially at night, and the first white Sierra with the word POLITIE along the side in blue was there in four minutes. It disgorged two uniformed officers, closely followed by two more from a second car twenty seconds afterward.
Still, it is surprising how much damage two good fighters can do to a bar in four minutes. Quinn knew he could outpace the pug, who was slowed by drink and cigarettes, and outpunch him. But he let the man land a couple of blows in the ribs, just for encouragement, then put a hard left hook under his heart to slow him a mite. When it looked as if the pug might call it a day, Quinn closed with him to help him a bit.
In a double bear hug the two men flattened most of the bar furniture, rolling through the sawdust in a melee of chair legs, tabletops, glasses, and bottles.
When the police arrived, the two brawlers were arrested on the spot. The police HQ for that area is Zone West P/1 and the nearest precinct house is in the Blindenstraat. The two squad cars deposited them there separately two minutes later and delivered them into the care of Duty Sergeant Van Maes. The barman totted up his damage and made a statement from behind his bar. No need to detain the man-he had a business to run. The officers divided his damage estimate by two and made him sign it.
Fighting prisoners are always separated at Blindenstraat. Sergeant Van Maes slung the pug, whom he knew well from previous encounters, into the bare and stained wachtkamer behind his desk; Quinn was made to sit on a hard bench in the reception area while his passport was examined.
“American, eh?” said Van Maes. “You should not get involved in fights, Mr. Quinn. This Kuyper we know; he is always in trouble. This time he does down. He hit you first, no?”