Kleiber laughed. ‘My old comrade Max would challenge you to a duel if you suggested such a thing.’ They were speaking English. Kleiber’s English was heavily accented compared with Parker’s, but Kleiber prided himself on his command of languages and Parker was wise enough to indulge his agent’s ego.
‘And what of Böttger and these other madmen? Are you sure they have no suspicions that you are working for the Soviet Union?’ His lungs gurgled on the humid air. Parker removed his jacket and loosened his tie. He detested these New York City summers. The buildings trapped the damp, stale air and made the ugly sounds of the streets unnaturally loud.
Kleiber grinned. ‘Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,’ he called in a lilting tone that mocked Parker’s caution. ‘Böttger, Rau and the others are senile, my friend. Crazy!… Meschugge!… Nuts!… Loco rematado!… I tell you this over and over again, but still you don’t believe me. Listen Eddie, these old fools are going through their second childhoods. They are liberals, they think I am a liberal, they don’t suspect me of anything. Now quit worrying, will you?’
But Parker did not quit worrying. He was a worrier by nature and he had mixed feelings about Kleiber. Kleiber’s loyalty to Moscow Centre was never in doubt, but then he would have given equal loyalty to any organization that gave him a realistic opportunity to relive something of his wartime life. He was as hard and fit as many men half his age, and as dispassionate as a machine. He was intelligent and, judging from what Parker knew of Kleiber’s security organization, a shrewd businessman. But for his weaknesses-women and gambling-he would by now have been wealthy. But Kleiber did not want to be wealthy. Kleiber was in love with hardship.
‘And Breslow will make money from the film,’ said Kleiber. He laughed again. He seemed to think it was genuinely funny. Obviously he had no resentment about the money that Breslow would make. Parker noted that; it was unusual in a man.
Parker said, ‘General Zhadov has ordered that the Stein documents are top priority. Nothing must stand in the way of our getting them.’ Parker had always used the name Zhadov-his old commander in the Fifth Army-to personify the whole bureaucratic empire of Moscow Centre and any orders or instructions emanating from it. But this time Parker had General Shumuk in his mind when he said it. ‘And General Zhadov,’ Parker added, ‘is a very tough cookie who doesn’t get his priorities wrong.’
Kleiber smiled. ‘You tell your General Zhadov to get stuffed,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the Stein documents, and I’ll get them my way. And it won’t be because some senile old fart in Moscow Centre tells me it’s a top priority.’ The air was heavy and unmoving. Somewhere on the other side of the city they heard a police siren wailing.
Parker said nothing, although for a moment he relished the vision of Kleiber confronting General Shumuk. Parker knew that Shumuk had accounted for tens of thousands of Kleibers in his time. He would be trampled underfoot without pause.
‘You’ll end up a general there someday, Willi,’ said Parker, ‘then you’ll change your tune.’ It was the standard Moscow line for outstanding agents. You gave them medals and military ranks. Once, Parker had gone to all the trouble of getting a Russian colonel’s uniform, complete with orders, medals and all the trimmings, just to show it to a nasty little computer programmer in Kansas City who was stalling with material that Moscow Centre kept demanding. The uniform did the trick; the programmer paraded in front of a mirror with it. The following year Parker promoted him again and the little jerk responded by wanting to go to Moscow for a visit. What a fiasco that would have been. Luckily the little fellow’s employer lost his War Department contract, so that he was no longer handling material that Moscow wanted; sudden reduction in rank! Parker smiled at the thought of it.
‘Me a general?’ said Kleiber. ‘No thanks. You’ll never get me to Moscow, Eddie. Forget that idea, right now.’
‘They all say that at first, Willi,’ said Parker. It was fun to encourage this man’s egomania to see how far he would go.
‘You know they are in Geneva,’ said Willi Kleiber, ‘You know Stein’s documents are in this big house on the lake front.’ He had already told Parker his important news but he wanted to enjoy it again.
‘Yes,’ said Parker. ‘It’s a small package. Bring it. There should be no trouble.’
‘Fly stateside from Geneva?’ said Kleiber. He wrinkled his nose, as if detecting a foul smell. ‘ Geneva has more Moscow Centre people living there than you’ll find in Moscow itself. It’s the espionage capital of Europe, you know that, Eddie. Why bring the documents back here, when I can hand them over in Geneva for the diplomatic bag, and have them in Moscow the same night?’
Parker realized that he should not have baited Kleiber who was an intelligent man. This was his retaliation. Kleiber knew that if the documents were handed over to a Russian agent in Geneva, Parker would share little of the credit for the coup. Perhaps he guessed too how badly Parker needed some credibility with Moscow Centre.
‘I’d prefer you to bring the documents back here,’ said Parker. His voice was cold and pitched a little higher than previously. His nerves had tightened the muscles of his throat. Kleiber had a quick eye for other men’s weaknesses; he smiled. Parker added, ‘How do we know who we might be dealing with in Geneva, Willi? You might be handing the result of all this effort and hazard to some dumb clerk who’ll file it, or lose it, or some damned thing. These things happen, you know.’
‘Is it an order, Eddie?’
In fact, Edward Parker had no authority to make the carriage of the documents back to the USA a direct order. Not only was it in contravention of standing instructions about briefing agents for missions overseas but it exceeded his territorial authority. The rulebook said Kleiber should be provided with a ‘drop’ and ‘letter box’, if not a proper structure and ‘cut-out’. This was especially true of Task Pogoni, the very high priority mission for which the Centre had sent General Shumuk all the way to Mexico City.
But this was a chance for Edward Parker to redeem his reputation with his Russian superiors. It would perhaps provide a chance for him to see once more the wife and grown-up son whom he sometimes missed with a yearning which bordered on physical pain, and was all the more agonizing because he could speak of it to no one. ‘Bring them back here, Willi. It’s an order.’ He looked at his watch again and began calculating how long it would take to get to the airport. Before going to bed tonight he must go through his factory accounts again.
The FBI sound engineer and his assistant were pleased that the meeting was at an end. Boxed inside a poorly ventilated panel truck together with a photographer, driver and clerk, they were all shiny with perspiration. They had long since emptied the tiny refrigerator of its cold drinks. The sound engineer removed his headphones. ‘That’s it,’ he said. In the street outside someone started shouting at the children playing softball. A transistor radio was playing ‘Hello Dolly’, and whoever was carrying it banged on the panel truck as he passed. It was a normal extrovert action in that locality, but the men knew it was their signal to move.
‘Son of a bitch,’ said the sound engineer. ‘He wants him to bring the papers back to the USA. That’s good. The boys will snatch him when he re-enters the country. The poor bastard is going to get a hundred years in the pen.’
Todd Wynn, Kalkhoven’s young assistant, checked his shorthand notes, then took the spool of tape off the machine and pocketed it before signing a receipt for the driver.
‘What gets into these guys?’ said the driver bitterly. ‘They have no loyalty to their friends or the people they work with. Do they get a kick out of betraying people?’
‘They should get the chair,’ said Melvin Kalkhoven. ‘These two hoodlums are the ones who snuffed that movie producer in LA and hacked his head off. And Scotland Yard are looking for them on account of the same kind of job they did in London.’