“I can give you four or five days, no more,” Wilson said. “My people have to know by then if Brezhnev will make the phone call.”
“Of course,” Shevenko said. “Isser, could you do me a small favor in return for my coming here on such short notice? If I sent you a bottle of the water in our building could you have your chemists analyze it? Our chemists know nothing about coffee, they only know about tea. If it’s the water ruining my coffee I may have to get bottled water from West Germany.” He turned back to Wilson.
“One more thing, I was going to notify you through Dobrynin that I have asked Fidel to get me tickets to the Super Bowl game in Miami. I asked him to route me from Havana through Mexico City. I’ll keep you advised of my itinerary through the diplomatic pouch, if that’s all right with you.”
Wilson shrugged.
“I’ll call Isser every day; it’s easier for me to contact him than to get in touch with you.”
The door opened and two Mossad agents came in. Shevenko stood up and shook hands with the three men and left. Bernstein led Wilson into the living room and Naomi came in with a plate of sandwiches, crisp slices of cucumber between thin slices of whole wheat bread that had been spread with sour cream.
“You should have served him some of these sandwiches,” Wilson said. “He might have offered to buy up your whole cucumber crop.”
“I will watch him drink coffee but I will not eat with him,” Bernstein said. “You shook him badly with those pictures. He caved in, admitted the crime. I have known him a long time. I have never seen him so upset.”
“I didn’t see any sign of that,” Wilson said. He finished his sandwich and reached for a second one as Naomi poured fresh coffee.
“People in our business are schooled to show no emotion in their face or their hands,” Bernstein said. “I was watching his feet under the table. He was upset.”
“The important thing is that he got the message,” Wilson said. “All I have to worry about is whether he will contact Brezhnev and if he does, if Brezhnev will call the President.”
Bernstein chewed slowly. “I would say that Shevenko will try to carry out his part of the bargain. But there is a manic atmosphere in the Politburo. Brezhnev might not be able to take the political risk of backing down from a Politburo decision.
“How much do you know about that?” Wilson eyed the Mossad chief.
“I know the vote to test the torpedo was five to four. One member of the Politburo was sick and did not vote. Brezhnev could have cast the tie vote and that would have ended the matter for some time but he did not vote. So he might not feel strong enough to risk calling the President.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Time for you to go, my friend. Pray tonight, as I will, that this madness will go no further. I will be in touch with you after each of Shevenko’s calls to me.”
Sitting in the living room with Schemanski, who was finishing the last of the sandwiches, Bernstein turned to his aide. “Did you catch that reference Shevenko made to Bob, telling him to tell his boss that he got the cigars at the United Nations? Leah told us that his cover for being away from his office was an inter-office memo ordering him to go to New York to see some people at the UN. You’d better get word to Leah at once and warn her that Shevenko may have an agent inside the CIA who also reads inter-office memos.”
“I think you’d better warn Mr. Wilson, too,” Shemanski said.
“How can I do that? If we do he’d start searching for Leah. I don’t want her cover blown. It took a long while to get her in place.”
“We should find some way to tell him,” Shemanski insisted. “It’s not nice to keep that sort of thing from a friend who once saved the lives of your wife and daughter.”
“He saved my life too, more than once,” Bernstein said. “I owe him debts I can never repay. Let me think about it. I want you to take the tape reel off the recorder and get the film from the camera upstairs. I wonder if there was enough light in the kitchen to get good pictures of those photos Bob spread out on the table?”
“I’m sure there was,” Shemanski said.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Bernstein said. “Get the tape and the film and then we’ll go back to the office.”
CHAPTER 6
Igor Shevenko retraced the route he had taken to get to Israel. By plane from Lydda Airport to Rome and then on to West Berlin. He was met at the airport there by a nervous agent who was not worried at the prospect of easing his Director back through the Iron Curtain but concerned that Shevenko would think him nervous and thus not trustworthy. He boarded a Soviet airliner with a malfunctioning heater system and spent the trip to Moscow shivering in the cold. In his office he rubbed at eyes that were scratchy from lack of sleep. Stefan Lubutkin rushed in with hot coffee and a plate of caraway seed cookies.
“You are tired, Comrade Director,” Lubutkin said solicitously. “The meeting in East Berlin was difficult?”
“All meetings are a waste of time, you know that,” Shevenko growled. “East Berlin is a dead city, I hate it. Not even Lenin could have revived it.” He looked at his aide out of the corner of his eye, wondering if Lubutkin suspected that he had gone far south of East Berlin.
“It is not a frivolous city, that is true,” Lubutkin said solemnly. “But in time, when Germany is reunited under our rule, it will change.”
“Get me Admiral Zurahv on the phone,” Shevenko said. He chewed a cookie, savoring the delicate taste of the caraway seeds.
An hour later Shevenko met the Admiral in a park. The two men, the Admiral, bearlike in his uniform greatcoat, Shevenko in a heavy sheepskin-lined coat and a warm muffler, walked along a pathway.
“It is safe to talk here, Admiral,” Shevenko began. “What I have to tell you is for your ears alone.” He stopped and flicked a heavy gobbet of snow from the winter-nude branches of a bush.
“The Americans have found their submarine, Admiral.”
“Impossible,” the Admiral grunted. He kicked at a clump of ice on the pathway and sent it skittering. “You cannot put a diver down two thousand fathoms and the only deep submergence vessel that could go that deep is in Hawaii.”
Shevenko reached inside his coat and pulled out a brown manila envelope. He opened it and handed one of the two photographs Wilson had given him to the Admiral.
Zurahv studied the picture for a long moment and then stared at Shevenko, who handed him the envelope. “I got this from one of my people who was afraid to trust it to the diplomatic pouch, Admiral. I had to go to East Berlin to meet him. I brought the picture back to give to you. I assure you it is genuine.
Zurahv held the photograph up and looked at it closely. He put it in the envelope and smiled at Shevenko. “I know it is genuine, Comrade,” he said jovially. “It bears out exactly what the research people said would happen when the weapon hit the screw of a ballistic submarine and that research report is known by only a very few people. So now we must go to full production of the weapon.”
“That is your decision to make of course, Admiral. But now that you are convinced that the information I learned is genuine I must offer you the rest of the package. I assure you it is also genuine.
“The Americans have not announced the loss of their submarine. They will do so, of course, and attribute the loss to an unknown mechanical failure. But not until after they have destroyed one of our submarines, Admiral. The obvious target of them is the submarine that carried out the weapons test. If I may, sir, I would suggest you move that submarine to a safe area.”
“Bull’s balls!” the Admiral snorted. “The Americans would not dare take such an action. They don’t have the political freedom to act in that way. They don’t have the will to do such a thing.”