Rockets' Red Glare (19 page)

Keating and Pomerantz froze momentarily, then settled back into their chairs with wistful sighs.

“Yes?” Keating called out.

The door to the small dining room opened, and one of his aide’s entered. He smiled at Pomerantz, then bent to Keating, and whispered something.

“Tell him I’m on my way,” Keating said.

The aide nodded and hurried off.

“The President’s calling,” Keating said.

“I’ll be here.”

“Could be awhile.”

“I’ll be here,” she replied seductively.

No more than fifteen minutes had passed when Keating returned, accompanied by his aide, and, with cautious optimism, briefed Germany’s minister for strategic deployment on the
Kira.
Despite the short interval, the President’s call had turned Keating’s mind firmly to business, and the intimacy had been forever lost.

* * * * * *

Chapter Twenty-eight

Raina Maiskaya stepped out of the elevator into the Hotel Eden’s handsome lobby, pulling on short leather gloves. In fur hat and tailored wool coat that went below the calves of her boots, she looked like the wealthy Roman women who came to the hotel’s chic rooftop restaurant with their lovers—as she had many times with Theodor Churcher.

She didn’t know she was being watched; she assumed it, and planned to use the long walk to Piazza di Trevi to lose any surveillance. The Eden’s revolving door spun her into the cool night. She walked east on Ludovisi. East was the wrong direction. But Ludovisi is a one-way street, and walking against traffic would prevent a vehicle from tailing her.

Kovlek and the KGB man were across the street in the Fiat. They drove to the intersection, made a left into Pinciana, and went around the block. The Fiat was on Aurora approaching Ludovisi when Raina came around the corner into the glare of its headlights. When the oncoming traffic passed, they made a broken U-turn and followed at a distance.

At the next intersection, Raina turned west into Liguria. A third of the way down the steep slope, she angled into a cobbled alley behind the shops.

The Fiat drove a short distance past the alley, stopped, and started to back up.

“No, she’ll hear the car,” Kovlek said. “And it’s a rat’s maze in there—staircases, narrow passageways.”

The driver pulled the Fiat to the curb.

Kovlek removed two palm-sized walkie-talkies from the glove box, and handed one to the driver.

“I’ll let you know where we come out,” he said.

Kovlek walked up the incline into the darkened alley. Light spilled from a few windows onto the piles of trash and cars that hugged the buildings.

Raina followed the twisting alley to a court from which other passageways branched. She was going down a staircase when she heard footsteps and looked back. A shadow stretched high across a wall above her. Then a figure shrouded in darkness appeared atop the steps. The man paused, unsure of the route she had taken from the court. Raina held her breath in the shadows until he stepped back to examine the other passageways; then she hurried down the steps to an adjoining lane.

Up ahead, two men were unloading a bakery truck. One dragged sacks of flour onto the tailgate. The other stood in the street, stacking them on a dolly. Raina hurried between the truck and the building, startling him as she passed. The sack slipped from his grasp, hit the ground, and burst, broadcasting the flour across the cobblestones. The two men began arguing heatedly in Italian.

Footsteps were coming down the staircase behind her now—but Raina couldn’t hear them.

* * * * * *

Andrew was at a stand-up counter in a coffee bar, a few blocks from Piazza di Trevi when the city’s bell towers began pealing their solemn call to vespers. He glanced to his watch, washed down the last bite of a brioche with his second cup of espresso—to keep him alert—folded the map, and hurried into the dark streets that swirl around Piazza di Trevi. He heard the fountain before he saw it, and moved in the direction of the roaring waters.

Valery Gorodin passed the time window-shopping, and had become virtually captivated by a display of lingerie. Italian men loved it and their women loved to wear it, and their shops knew how to sell it. The window was filled, not with stiff plastic torsos, but with photo blowups of luscious Italian models in seductive poses, wearing the risqué fare. Gorodin had given his imagination full rein when he noticed a reflection rippling across the glass, and realized Andrew was leaving the coffee bar. Gorodin had lost his concentration, and almost missed him. He waited until his anxiety subsided, then followed.

* * * * * *

Indeed, Piazza di Trevi is one of Rome’s major shopping districts. And the semicircle of boutiques opposite the fountain are among the busiest, especially on reopening after the midday shutdown. By six o’clock, the well-lit piazza was crowded with shoppers and strolling Romans taking their
passeggiata.

For this reason, and for the many escape routes in the knot of surrounding streets, Raina Maiskaya had picked this time and place for the meeting. She was feigning interest in some shoes on a sidewalk display when she saw Andrew come loping into the piazza.

Getting out of the hotel had settled him, but now his apprehension returned, and his stomach was churning. The impact of the immense monument in the tiny piazza—the powerfully muscled Tritons charging through the swirling waters on their steeds—gave him a tourist’s demeanor that concealed his nervousness.

Raina watched him, wondering how anyone who looked so much like Theodor Churcher could be so different in temperament. She recalled the time Churcher complained, “The kid’s an eccentric, a cowboy who won’t join the club,” and how she gently suggested he involve Andrew with the Arabians, and how it delighted Churcher when the horses brought them together, as she’d predicted.

Andrew saw the striking woman coming across the piazza. Yes, yes, he could see
her
on his father’s arm. He had no doubt she was the woman that day in Tersk. And when her long strides brought her beneath the light, he saw she had a cool, mysterious beauty—sharp features set against luminous porcelain, like Steichen’s portraits of Garbo. He stared, unable to imagine how the image had ever escaped him.

Raina quickened her stride, broke into a little run, and threw her arms around him in an expression of sympathy and affection. And he returned it. Moments earlier, he was anxious and alone in a strange city. Now, he was holding this woman who had held his father, who he sensed shared his feelings and concerns, and whose presence bolstered him. He had no idea that her gesture, though genuine, also established a cover.

“Were you followed?” she asked, still hugging him. Her voice had the dusky lilt he heard over the phone.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”

“
I
was, but I lost him.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Andrew said in a whisper as they pulled back from each other, “how’d you get into the suite?”

“Don’t whisper. It attracts attention,” she warned. “With a key—your father had given me.”

Andrew smiled, feeling a little naive. “How do you know he was murdered?” he asked.

She blinked at his directness, took his arm, and started walking around the curve of the piazza. “He called me that morning. He was furious, and said he was going to ‘kick Aleksei’s butt.’”

“Sounds just like him,” Andrew said with a little smile. “Who’s Aleksei?”

“Aleksei Deschin, cultural minister, Politburo, and very close to the Premier. Your father ‘did business’ with them for years.”

“He was paid in paintings, wasn’t he,” Andrew said. It was a statement.

“Yes. That’s where the problem arose. He discovered the ‘payments’ were fakes.”

Andrew nodded with some understanding now. “Payments for what?”

“Cooperation—in matters of national security. That’s all he ever told me. For my own protection.”

Andrew was stunned by her reply. “That’s, that’s just unbelievable,” he finally muttered, the words sticking in his throat. “I don’t know what to say.”

To his extreme dismay, she had confirmed his darkest suspicions about his father. His hopes of disproving them, if only to himself, had just been undeniably shattered. The realization was anguishing, and, despite the evidence, fueled his unwillingness to accept the idea that his father had hurt his country.

Theodor Churcher was a patriot, and war hero, not a traitor; and try as Andrew might, he couldn’t reconcile his view with Raina’s; the data refused to compute. If she was right, the world might soon learn that his father had sold out to the Russians. The thought was more than painful—it was mortifying.

He walked in silence until the impact wore off, then his face softened with a question.

“What’s your name?”

“Raina, Raina Maiskaya,” she said lyrically.

“Who killed my father, Raina?” he asked with quiet intensity.

“Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie,” she said, bitterly enunciating each syllable.

Andrew stared at her baffled.

“GRU,” she said. “They’re like KGB—just as ruthless but more cunning.” She shook her head, dismayed. “It should never have happened. There was a package. Your father was totally confident it would
protect him.” She saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You’re aware of it—”

“Yes,” he said cautiously, hearing McKendrick’s voice warning him.

“Then I assume that it has been—”

“No,” he said, anticipating her question.

“They got it,” she said flatly.

Andrew nodded grimly. “You’re familiar with the contents?” he asked.

“Drawings. Engineering drawings of a tanker.”

“A tanker? I don’t get it.”

“Nor do I. Your father wanted the drawings. I got them for him. That’s all.”

“
You
got them—”

“Yes, from a man I know. A Jew. He’s a marine engineer in Leningrad. A refusenik. His job sensitivity is used as an excuse to detain him. He wanted his son to get out of Russia before he could be conscripted.”

They had crossed the piazza and were a few steps into the darkness of a narrow street. Raina swung him around, and started walking in the direction from which they had just come.

“What is it?” he asked at the sudden reversal.

“Nothing. Just a precaution. I don’t like to be predictable. To make a long story short, I heard about my friend’s problem, and used my connections to get his son out—in exchange for the drawings.”

“They killed my father before they had them.”

“He must have endangered something of very high priority for them to take that chance.”

Andrew nodded, thinking his father had trusted her completely—and he would now. “The highest,” he said. “My father wanted that package to go to the CIA.”

Raina flicked him a look.

“McKendrick took two bullets trying,” Andrew went on. “Now it’s my turn.”

“How?”

“You got the drawings for my father. Get them for me.”

“Impossible.”

“I’ll be in Moscow in a week,” he said, ignoring her reply, and, in a commanding tone, added, “Find a way.”

Raina’s face hardened at his brashness, then eased into a smile.
Pure Theodor Churcher,
she thought.

Kovlek had been watching from the steps of a church across the piazza, and casually tailed them when they walked off together. Now, all of a sudden, they were coming right at him. He was positive she hadn’t seen him earlier; positive she had no reason to suspect him. He would handle this boldly, as if he had as much reason to be there as they. And so, he came at them, at a brisk cadence.

As expected, Raina took no notice of him as they passed within a meter of each other. As a matter of fact, she averted her eyes. For no special reason. Just a quick glance to the ground that fell atop the granite pavers where he stepped, that fell atop his shoes, atop the flour that filled the crease between the upper and sole and dotted the polished black toes. She knew a man had followed her into the alley; and she put the pieces together, and knew Kovlek was that man.

“I was wrong,” she said, pulling Andrew closer, and wrapping her arms around him, as if they were lovers. “The man with the glasses—”

Andrew’s eyes flicked in Kovlek’s direction.

“Don’t stare,” she warned.

She pulled him to her and kissed him. Hard. On the lips. “I’ll contact you again,” she said as she broke it off. Then gently brushing the hair from his puzzled face, added, “I’m sorry for what I had to tell you, Andrew. And very sorry for this.” He didn’t understand until she reared back and slapped him across the face. “Animal! Filthy animal!” she shouted, implying he had suggested something tawdry. She turned on a heel and stalked off in the direction of a dark narrow street.

The blow caught Andrew by surprise. He recoiled, backing into a row of sidewalk display racks.

Most observers laughed, assuming, as Raina intended, that she had just dispatched an overzealous gigolo.

Kovlek stiffened, and took the walkie-talkie from his pocket.

Gorodin was watching from a shadowed doorway. He winced, realizing Kovlek was about to apprehend her. Left alone, she would think her charade had worked and maintain contact with Andrew, which Gorodin much preferred. He whistled to get Kovlek’s attention, and shook no vehemently to dissuade him.

Kovlek had had his fill of his GRU rival. And having blown the surveillance, he shuddered at the thought of facing Zeitzev empty-handed. He ignored the warning and clicked on the walkie-talkie.

“Vladas? Vladas, are you there?” he barked to the driver in the Fiat. The walkie-talkie crackled with a reply.

“She spotted me!” Kovlek went on. “She’s heading west on Sabini!
Move in! We have to pick her up now! Hurry!” He clicked off and charged after Raina.

Andrew had spotted them running across the piazza. He had just started to pursue when Gorodin stumbled purposely into his path.

“Merde!”
Gorodin shouted as they went down in a tangle of limbs. He made certain he landed atop Andrew to further delay him and, as they got to their feet, acted as if the collision was Andrew’s fault.

“Idiot!”
he exclaimed, throwing up his hands.
“Ce n’est pas ma faute! C’est vous qui l’avez fait. Idiot!”

“Okay, okay!” Andrew said, trying to placate the incensed Frenchman.

Suddenly, the screech of tires and blast of headlights came from behind them. The Fiat roared past, following Raina and Kovlek into the narrow street.

Andrew whirled from Gorodin, and ran after it. The piazza was cluttered with displays and shoppers, which slowed his progress. He threaded his way through them, rounded the corner, and ran into the narrow street. His footsteps echoed in the tunnel of hard surfaces. Hellbent, he ran a long distance in the darkness before realizing the street was empty. The man and the car and Raina Maiskaya had vanished into the night. Andrew pulled up abruptly, then reversed direction and hurried back to the piazza.

Gorodin was gone.