“Who?”
Repin really laughed now. He made it seem the greatest joke there was, and it made him quite cheerful again. “That is the trouble, Tarp! Nobody knows!” His pitch went up and he giggled. He poured himself more Scotch and drank. “There was a great meeting in Dzerzhinsky Square. Andropov came. All the way from his office as general secretary of the Party he came! Beranyi came — young, hard, called by many an idealist because it is thought he would hesitate for a second or two before knifing his mother. Telyegin, my personal friend of the old days, pal of Ho Chi Minh and maybe the man who poisoned Stalin. Strisz, the bureaucrat. Falomin, the wolf. Mensenyi, Szelyupin, Galusha — a dozen others! I was not there, this is all relayed to me by various of them individually and in secret, you understand. But — what a meeting it must have been! First, they are nervous because of Andropov, because he is nervous; second, they all want the job of Semyon Tsvigun, recently deceased, mourned by nobody. And third, they believe that right there in that room is probably the man who has stolen from his mother country enough plutonium to make so many atomic bombs the world could go insane. Stolen it and shipped it out of the Soviet Union! Can you picture it, Tarp?”
“Not a pretty picture.”
“And what do all these heavy fighters do in the same ring? Eh? Do they punch hard and knock each other out? Oh, no, Tarp! They negotiate. They agree that none of them would touch this problem with his fingertips with asbestos gloves on! Why? Fear — what else?” Repin grinned and leaned forward and banged the bottle slowly on his thigh. “What if the thief is Andropov himself? Or what if the thief is Beranyi? Or what if it seems to be one man, and it is really another? Oh, no! Not with two pairs of asbestos gloves on! No, no, they say, let us go to an outside master; let us not bother the rest of the Soviet leadership with this matter; let us keep it among the brotherhood of the upper echelon of the KGB. Let us go to old Repin and ask him to deal with it.” A great grin split his face, as if a melon had been slashed. “So — I deal with it! I come to you!”
“Was that their idea?”
“No, no, that is my judgment. They do not know about you — do not want to know about you.”
“All but one of them.”
“Well, maybe, yes — all but one. Yes, the plutonium thief will want to know. Hey?”
“And the money you offered?”
“That was voted in Dzerzhinsky Square. At the meeting. There is lots of money in Dzerzhinsky Square.”
Tarp took the cutting board out of its clips and rested it against his thigh, his narrowed eyes searching the white docks and the white boats around him. “Who knew you were coming here from Cuba?” he said.
“Only three people in Cuban KGB.”
“Swell.” He moved toward the hatch. “Come below.”
“But I like the sun!”
“I don’t want blood on my deck. Come below before somebody starts shooting.”
Laughing, stumbling a little, Repin blundered his way down the narrow ladder and along the passage to the cabin. By the time he got there Tarp was pushing shells into the twelve-gauge from an open box on the room’s central table. He slammed the last one in, swung the gun up, checked the safety, and laid it on the table. “You armed?” he said to Repin.
“Certainly not.”
Tarp jerked his head toward the shotgun. “Safety right there. Push it this way. Pump it after each shot.”
“What am I shooting at, please?”
“Almost anything but me. I’m going topside to take us out.”
When he had reached the ladder, Repin called after him, “Will you do it?”
Tarp turned slowly. “I don’t see yet what it is I’d do.”
Repin held up a hand, fingers spread. “Find where the plutonium goes.” A finger dropped. “Get back the plutonium or the bombs made from it.” Another finger closed. “Find the traitor who engineered it all.” The hand became an angry fist.
Tarp did not have to think for very long. He had no interest in the internal rivalries of the Kremlin or Dzerzhinsky Square: if they-all killed each other with stolen plutonium, it would be fine with him. But when the plutonium passed the Soviet border and threatened the rest of the world, he got worried. Repin was right about that — he had a fire. Weapons-grade plutonium passing out of regular channels meant madness, just as Repin had said. Terrorism or oppression or an insane war. Forty bombs worth of madness.
“I want a quarter million bucks,” he said.
Repin began to protest as a matter of form and then gave it up.
“Pegged to the New York price as of today,” Tarp insisted. “Gold.”
“Of course. One-third now. Where would you like it?”
“Half now. My bank in London. They can probably just wheel it from the KGB corner of the vault to my corner.”
Repin shook his head. “So cynical,” he murmured.
“I’ll want three passports, all different nationalities. One with a diplomatic stamp so I can get in and out easily. I want a sluzhba courtesy card, first priority.”
“Oh, now!”
“You know the game, Repin.”
Repin shrugged. “Oh, well.”
“A source of money and weapons inside the Soviet Union. And don’t put me in touch with anybody’s network, not even yours. And for God’s sake don’t try to use me — got that? No ploys to bust dissidents or any of that bull. If you try to use me, I’ll get you.”
Repin’s head sank down, seemingly into his neck, as if there were a well between his shoulders waiting for it. His hard old eyes met Tarp’s and his hands spread wide on the table, only inches from the shotgun. “No. Because right now, I need you.” His left index finger came off the table. The gesture was a very small one, but commanding. “But do not threaten me, Tarp. Nobody ever threatened me and carried it through.”
“Likewise.”
They stared at each other. Tarp gave a little nod. He went up the ladder into the wet heat and the sunlight.
First Cuba, then Moscow, he thought, what could be simpler?
Chapter 2
Repin was wearing a suit that looked as if it had been made in Bulgaria for sale in Cuba to Russians, for its fabric was sleazily lightweight and its style was a decade or two out-of-date, even in Eastern Europe. Repin had probably picked it up in Cuba on purpose, Tarp thought; he was normally vain about his clothes, but he believed in protective coloration. In this case, however, the coloration was wrong, for he looked like exactly what he was — a Russian in the wrong part of the world.
“Put this on,” he said tersely. He tossed a red knit shirt to the Russian.
“What is this?”
“It’s a shirt. Somebody left it on board.”
“What is wrong with clothes I am wearing? You do not like these clothes?”
“You look as if you’re planning to offer Castro a cigar. Come on, put it on; this area’s crawling with Coast Guard patrols. Drugs and Haitians are their big thing, but they’d take a Russian agent for the change.”
Repin was fingering the shirt with distaste. It was short-sleeved and it had a press-on image of a small animal just above the pocket. He wrinkled his nose.
They had come out on deck and Tarp was steering from the flying bridge while Repin held on to the ladder halfway up, behind him. To their left the Caribbean sun was burning away the last of the morning haze, while to their right the water was green and then indigo and then a wonderful purple like the side of a dolphin when it is first caught.