When he entered the plane, a smiling hostess, an American girl, welcomed him into the long tunnel of seats. Brandon realized how long it had been since he had actually talked to an American woman, all fresh and made-up and distinctly mid-western. He smiled back and went to a window on the right side where he sagged into a chair, putting his briefcase under it. He wanted to smoke badly but the No-Smoking sign prevented that. In a few minutes the motors started, and slowly the jet moved off the runway to the takeoff position. Brandon looked around at his fellow passengers. The plane was only half-filled, and he found it difficult to type his companions. He tried to imagine who might be a secret policeman, but no one stood out in the group. Then Brandon caught himself and tried to analyze the situation. He had passed customs. No one was suspicious. If anyone had been, he would not have made it this far. And certainly, the Russians would not have put a secret policeman in a seat on an American plane just to follow him all over the world. They would get him while he was still in their camp. At this point in his analysis, John Brandon relaxed. The envelope in his pocket still intruded on his thinking, but he knew that he had gotten through the final barrier. While he watched, the ground rushed by him and Pan Am Flight Number 101 was airborne to New York.
He waited impatiently for the No-Smoking sign to blink off and then he lit the most delicious cigarette in his entire life. Beneath the jet the lush countryside receded below the clouds.
A huge lunch was served as the plane passed west of Norway and headed over the North Atlantic. The menu included chilled turkey slices followed by a fileted steak. John Brandon devoured the entrée, left the apple strudel dessert, and drank two cups of coffee. When the movie began, he watched for a few moments, then dozed off with his headset tuned to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. He slept for over an hour.
When he awoke, the North Atlantic was still beneath him. He got up from his seat and threaded his way to the bathroom at the rear. Inside, he combed his hair and washed the fatigue from his face. Then he thought again about Rudenko and the envelope. Pulling it from his inside jacket pocket, he held it in front of him and examined it in the harsh fluorescent light. In the upper left corner, there appeared to be some sort of address. Brandon read the smudged Cyrillic characters and made out the words. Soviet Society of Theoretical Physicists. Beneath that, in smudged ink, was an address, Number 10 Tolstoy Prospekt. That was all. The society itself was not familiar to him. But then he was a historian, not a scientist. He was terribly anxious to know what was inside the package but resisted the temptation to tear it open. It was enough to deliver it to Mr. Richter.
Brandon walked back to his seat and put his headset on. The Afternoon of a Faun lulled him back to sleep.
At 3:15 P.M., New York time, the plane landed at Kennedy Airport. Brandon went through customs quickly and looked for a pay phone. He called a hotel in Manhattan, then placed a second call to Washington and the State Department. When the operator there answered, he asked to speak to Karl Richter. In thirty seconds, a girl’s voice with a cool Southern accent came on the line, and Brandon asked again for Richter. The voice said, “Who’s calling, please?” Brandon gave his name. The voice excused herself for a moment, and then Richter came on the line. “Yes.” He sounded remote, vaguely unfriendly.
“My name is John Brandon, and I have something for you from Grigor Rudenko in Moscow. He said it was urgent that you get it promptly.” Richter’s attitude changed. “When can I see you, Mr. Brandon?”
“Well, I just checked into the Chatham Hotel here in New York, and I’m really bushed from the flight. How about tomorrow morning?”
“Fine. Take the shuttle from LaGuardia at nine, and I’ll have someone meet you at the gate. Make yourself known at the desk, and he’ll take you from there. And, by the way, Mr. Brandon, how did you meet Rudenko?”
Brandon gave the whole story to Richter, about his own background as a historian, his summer of research in the Soviet Union, his curious trip to the airport on the final day. When Brandon finished, Richter told him he looked forward to seeing him in the morning, then hung up.
John Brandon undressed slowly in the welcome air-conditioning of his hotel room. He put the manila envelope on a night table and hung up his lightweight suit. Then he put on a bathrobe over his underwear and took his toothbrush and shaving equipment out of his luggage. Before going in to shower, he called room service and ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and a pot of coffee. Refreshed by a cool shower, John Brandon stretched out on the bed to watch the evening news. He had missed television during his many weeks in Moscow.
A knock sounded at the door. Brandon tightened the sash of his robe as he opened the door to let the waiter in. A man stood there, dressed in a fall topcoat. He was swarthy; his face had several ruts in it, and his beard was bluish. The man asked, “Mr. Brandon?”
Brandon replied, “That’s me.”
The man pulled a peculiar-looking instrument from his right-hand pocket and put it directly in front of Brandon’s nose. He pulled the trigger, and although no sound came from the gun, John Brandon staggered backward, clutched at his face, and then sagged to the floor.
The man stepped over the body and walked about the room. He spotted the manila envelope lying on the table and went directly to it. Tearing it open, he looked swiftly at the collection of blueprints and memoranda within. The man shook his head in seeming amazement and then stuffed the material back inside the envelope. He put it into his inside jacket pocket.
Then he walked to the corpse on the rug, turned it over, and stared into the sightless eyes of John Brandon. The man put his hands under the corpse and, grunting, carried it the short distance to the bed. Pulling the blue covers down, the killer tucked Brandon beneath the blankets. He propped a pillow behind his head and folded his hands in front of him. Then the man stepped back and looked a last time about the room. Satisfied, he went to the door and picked the Do-Not-Disturb sign from a wall hook. In the corridor, he placed it on the outside door knob and then strolled casually fifty feet to the elevator. As he entered it, a waiter carried a sandwich and a pot of coffee past him down the corridor. The waiter stopped in front of John Brandon’s room and stared in confusion at the sign on the door. He knocked very softly, hesitated, and then turned away with the food order.
Down in the lobby, the man in the fall topcoat mingled with crowds of strangers in summer clothing and disappeared through the glass entrance into the warm night.
Tuesday, September 10
At 10:15 A.M., the next morning, Karl Richter was told by the man he had sent to the airport that no one named John Brandon had gotten off the plane from New York. In his air-conditioned sixth-floor office at the New State Department Building, Richter sipped a Dixie cup of black coffee and digested the news. Probably Brandon had just overslept and would catch the next shuttle flight due in at 11. He told the man to wait there and call him as soon as contact was made.
Ever since Brandon’s call the previous afternoon, Richter had become increasingly alarmed at the strange circumstances surrounding his impending visit. At the root of the mystery was the worry over Grigor Rudenko’s unorthodox manner of transmitting information. Grigor must have been in a desperate situation to have used an innocent man as messenger between Moscow and Washington. Always before, Rudenko had operated strictly according to the book as written by the CIA. Always before he had passed his information at the appropriate drops, whether they were embassy parties or clandestine “chance” meetings in playgrounds or at street corners. He had always been prompt, efficient, and the most productive operator working inside Russia. Rudenko must have sensed surveillance while possessing material too urgent to delay transmission.