Mazurka (10 page)

What was the rest of his life going to be like after that high? He shivered under the blanket. He went down on his knees and began to unhook the metal springs attached to the frame of the bed.

He wasn't going to Russia. He was sure of that.

5

Fredericksburg, Virginia

The large white house, built in neo-colonial style, was located in a narrow leafy street on the edge of Fredericksburg. Its former owner, an Australian who had made a vast fortune publishing a horse-racing sheet, had sold the property in 1985 to a man who said his name was Galbraith and who hinted vaguely that he had retired from a lucrative career in the aerospace industry. Both the name and the career were fabrications. The property, all seven wooded acres of it, changed hands for one million dollars in a transaction so smooth and quick it surprised the Australian handicapper, who took the money and moved to Boca Raton.

The house, set some distance from its closest neighbour, had undergone considerable changes under the direction of the new owner. Steel shutters were hung on the windows, an elaborate security system installed, and several new phonelines added – although not by technicians employed by the Bell telephone company. A huge mainframe computer was hooked up in a room on the second floor, which had been remodelled for just that purpose. The interior walls were painted a uniform oyster-shell colour. Mature trees were planted all around the property and, as if these did not quite satisfy the owner's lust for privacy, a ten-foot brick wall, electrified along the top, was also constructed. Galbraith, an enormously fat man with an addiction to things English – such as croquet, crumpets and Craven A cigarettes – was rarely seen in the neighbourhood, perhaps only occasionally glimpsed as he went past in a stately Bentley with darkly tinted windows.

At two a.m. US Eastern District time, two hours after Frank Pagan had left the American Embassy in London, a beige BMW drew up at the gates of the dark house, which slid open to admit the vehicle. The car moved up the circular driveway, then parked directly in front of the house. The driver, a man called Iverson, emerged from the German automobile and climbed the steps to the front door. Iverson inserted a laminated card into a slot, and was admitted after a moment. Inside, he headed at once for the door that led to the basement.

Iverson had bright blue eyes which were heavily lidded and his chin appeared to have been carved in stone. His blond hair had been cut so close to the skull that the scalp seemed blue-tinted. He was in his late forties, but the lack of lines and creases, the lack of
animation
in the face, made it impossible to guess. It wasn't the kind of face that accommodated expressions with any ease. There was severity and a sense of singlemindedness about the man. He descended the stairs to the basement in the stiff-backed manner of someone who has been for most of his life associated with one or other arm of the military.

Galbraith, dressed in the kind of loose, monklike robe he found very comfortable, his feet bare, sat on a brown leather sofa in the basement. He sipped espresso from a demi-tasse, then set the cup down on a smoked-glass table and raised one hand, which resembled a small plucked chicken, in a rather weary greeting.

“Sit,” Galbraith said in an accent that was Boston, but had been tempered to suggest the other side of the Atlantic. “Welcome to
As The World Turns
.”

Iverson sat. He stared at the various consoles on the wall, some of which depicted the darkened garden outside, while others flashed a variety of data transmitted from the mainframe on the second floor. Some of this information, which was coded, concerned the flight-plans of American fighter aircraft on NATO assignments in various parts of Europe. Other data, which constantly changed, listed such things as troop manoeuvres in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the movement of ships and submarines in the Soviet Baltic fleet, the orbits of Russian spy satellites, the location of Russian radar installations, and a whole lot more besides, much of it irrelevant in global terms.

Galbraith had a whole world brought into the basement by the consoles. He was like some fat spider in the dead centre of an intricate electronic web whose strands stretch around the globe. He sat sometimes for hours, observing the relentless flow of information that travelled from space satellites and other complex computer links at great speeds along the filaments of his web. Iverson studied the consoles in silence, glancing now and again at Galbraith's face in which the eyes were mere slits surrounded by ravioli-like pillows of white flesh.

Galbraith, who weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, breathed noisily as if sucking enough air for three men. His laboured breathing had been one of the arguments he'd used when he'd first gone before a secret session of the Congressional Select Committee on Intelligence Operations to demand funds for the purchase of this property in Fredericksburg.
The air in DC, gentlemen, is becoming increasingly hard to live on. It dulls the senses and clouds the mind. Fresh air means increased alertness, and a happier, healthier crew. And cost-effective, too, a lower tax base, cheaper utilities, less expensive housing
.

Galbraith was as persuasive in argument as he was imposing in girth. Few politicians ever liked to contend with him, and fewer still demanded a reckoning, although there were always a couple who longed for his blood, small-minded men who called themselves – proudly, mind you – ‘moralists', and who waited a chance to pounce on the fat man, catching him in some ugly covert operation with blood on his palms. These were men, usually from states where the electorate was corn-fed, who had a smell of old bibles and damp pulpits about them, and who drew their constituencies from the same people who donated money to TV ministries. They were stupid men, and narrow-minded, but they were not to be underestimated because they wielded the kind of power that could punish intelligence efforts where it really hurt-in the old pocketbook. And they waited, with withdrawn fangs, for Galbraith to commit a public faux pas, or fall into an espionage scandal. But not even these critics realised that Galbraith was effectively separating himself from the DIA – the Defense Intelligence Agency – to establish an autonomous branch, an inner sanctum, in the tranquil countryside of Virginia. The operation became known, to those who knew such things, as the GIA, Galbraith's Intelligence Agency.

The funds were approved and Galbraith moved the computer operation out of the capital, although he left most of his staff behind in the old quarters. He took with him only a handful of specialists, men and women trained to interpret the data provided by the computer. These were people he'd hired personally and who tended to see the world through the same prism as Galbraith himself did, which was one of self-preservation and what the fat man thought of as ‘sophisticated' patriotism – to differentiate it from ‘frontier' patriotism, which he considered a mindless kind of thing, a redneck instinct, a mere wormlike reflex. Galbraith's version was grounded in the simple assumption, which needed no drum-rolls to accompany it, no National Rifle Association to maintain it, that the continued existence of the United States as the primary power in the world guaranteed the continued existence of the world itself.

“Good of you to come at this hour, Gary. Smoke?” And he pushed a box of Craven A across the glass surface of the coffee table. Iverson declined. With a remote control device, Galbraith switched off the consoles. Iverson noticed the absence of electronic humming in the room now.

Galbraith said, “Here's a fine illustration of the limits of modern technology, Gary. While we sit in this lovely house and can keep track, say, of a couple of penguins merrily fornicating in Antarctica, we still haven't reached a situation where we can do a damn thing to predict human behaviour. In other words, just as we think we have matters under control, up pops some human idiot to scramble the whole equation.”

“Which human idiot do you have in mind, sir?”

Galbraith stood up. His huge robe flowed around him like a collapsing tent. He went to a closet, opened it, took out a packet of English chocolate digestive biscuits and nibbled on one. Then, disgusted by his own needs, he tossed the half-eaten biscuit into a waste-basket. “They've ordered me to diet again, Gary. Which makes me cranky as hell. It came down from no less an authority than the White House physician, who speaks in a voice like God's. Galbraith, he says, there's a svelte person inside you, and he's dying to get out. Either you let him out, or you die. Svelte, I ask you. Do I look like there's a thin bugger inside me pining for freedom?”

Iverson said nothing because he'd never known how to make small talk. Years of military service and discipline had robbed him of most social graces. He was all business. He smiled uneasily as he looked at the fat man, knowing full well that Galbraith's obesity was his trademark as much as Aunt Jemima's face on a packet of pancake mix. On the Washington dinner-party circuit, at least along that inner track where the real power-brokers wined and dined, several people had perfected an imitation of the Galbraith waddle, which the fat man responded to in a good-natured fashion. None of his impersonators knew for sure what he did for a living, an ignorance Galbraith fostered by behaving in a self-deprecating way. He made fat jokes at his own expense. My obesity, he'd once told Iverson, is my cover – in more ways than one.

Iverson said, “You were talking about a human idiot, sir.”

“Yes, so I was.” Galbraith returned to the sofa and plumped himself down. Iverson's presence was comforting to him because Gary was a man without hidden emotions. No neuroses, no festering depths. Galbraith sometimes thought that Iverson was a relic from the Eisenhower years, when no shadows disturbed the American psyche, a time when the boy next door was exactly that, not some secret cock-flasher or dope fiend or peeping-tom. Iverson made Galbraith positively
nostalgic
for the simpler days of the Cold War, the apple-pie days.

“I'm talking about an idiot who has scuppered our friend Vabadus, and has thus threatened White Light.”

“Scuppered?”

Galbraith looked wan suddenly. “Vabadus is dead, Gary. He was shot by someone unknown to us.”

Iverson went straight to the only point that mattered to him. “Before or after the connection?”

“Before, alas. It wouldn't have mattered had it happened after. Then we'd know everything was secured.” Galbraith made a fist out of one of his plump hands in a rare gesture of irritation. “It's my understanding that dear old Scotland Yard has become involved, which may pose problems for us.”

“Of course,” Iverson said.

“With luck, they may miss the point. They may simply overlook it. On the other hand …”

“On the other hand the Yard may become a little too alert,” Iverson said.

“Precisely, Gary. And we can hardly tell our British allies what's going on, can we? Nobody tells them anything these days in any event, so why awaken them from their well-deserved slumber now and talk to them about White Light?” Galbraith sat back and sighed. He turned the name White Light around in his head for a moment. It was the in-house code for the Baltic project. Galbraith, who had grown up in intelligence agencies at a time when code-names were bestowed on anything that moved, had christened this project White Light in memory of his one trip through the Baltic countries at the height of the so-called Khrushchev ‘thaw'. What the fat man most remembered, aside from a rather depressing socialist shabbiness in the capital cities of the Baltic, was the extraordinary length of summer nights and how the sky was suffused by an odd white clarity.

“So what do we do?” Iverson asked.

Galbraith stared at the younger man. “I think the only reasonable thing is to keep a very close eye on the situation in London and if it gets out of hand – if, say, certain persons at the Yard get a little too alert – then we may have to do a dark deed.”

Iverson, who knew what was meant by the phrase dark deed, nodded his head slowly. “What do we know about the killer?”

Galbraith took a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his huge robe and passed it to Iverson. “So far only a name, which I've written down for you.”

Iverson stared at the name. “You want me to look into his background?”

“I think it's essential.” Galbraith picked up the remote device and pressed a button and all two dozen screens flickered back to life. He stared at one screen in particular, which showed a list of all fighter planes, mainly F-16s, allotted to NATO, and their schedule for that day. “At least I don't see any problem with this aspect of the matter,” and he waved a hand at the screen.

“That's the easy part,” Iverson agreed.

“I love smooth sailing, Gary. I love it when the parts click nicely together. It's like solving Rubik's Cube by sound alone.” Galbraith tapped the remote device on the surface of the table. “But I just hate unexpected problems. And I especially hate the idea of anything unfortunate happening to Scotland Yard personnel, God knows. Sometimes, though, self-interest takes precedence over sentiment, Gary. It's that kind of world these days. I wish it were otherwise. But we're all realists in this neck of the woods.”

Iverson agreed again. It was another thing Galbraith liked about Gary. He was such an agreeable fellow. Galbraith dismissed him, heard him go back up the stairs, then there was the sound of the door closing. Alone, the fat man stared at his black and white electronic universe in an absent manner. He was thinking about Vabadus again. He felt he'd lost a friend, even though he'd never met the man. Vabadus, in Estonian, meant freedom. Galbraith thought it a very appropriate choice for the late Aleksis Romanenko.

London

Frank Pagan's flat in Holland Park had more than a touch of squalor about it. It was the kind of place in which a man clearly lived a solitary life. Somehow, Pagan had the feeling that it was always late in this apartment, always dark, as if sunlight never managed to find its way through the curtains. When he stepped into the living-room, the first thing he did was to pour himself a glass of Glenlivet. He surveyed the chaos of things like a stranger who finds himself suddenly tossed into another man's world. There was a milk bottle with curdled contents and three slices of hardened toast and a glass of orange-juice that had alchemised into an antibiotic. Pagan shut his eyes and savoured the drink.