Read The Talbot Odyssey Online
Authors: Nelson DeMille
Spinelli let out a whistle. “Well, that’s it for the NYPD.” Spinelli paused, then said, “I think the CIA wants to take it from here anyway.”
“Listen, Dom. . . . Good work. Thanks for calling.”
“No problem, Abrams. I owe you. For what, I don’t know, but I’ll pay you back. What’s that wine you drink?”
“Villa Banfi Brunello di Montalcino, seventy-eight vintage. Go home, Dom. Seriously. Go home.” Abrams hung up and turned around.
Van Dorn looked up from the conversation. “Anything for us, Abrams?”
Abrams put the telephone back on the desk. He hesitated, then said, “The police and the CIA went into Thorpe’s apartment and found Colonel Carbury’s body in a food locker up in the attic.”
Katherine put her hand over her mouth and sank into a chair.
Van Dorn’s voice was low and angry, “That son of a bitch. Wait until I get my hands on that—”
Ann interrupted, “Oh, don’t take it personally, George. Peter has nothing personal against any of us. He’s just bonkers.” She looked at her sister. “Sorry, Kate. I should have warned you.”
“You did. I wasn’t listening.”
Ann turned back to Abrams. “What else did your police friend say?” She held Abrams’ eyes for a few seconds and Abrams understood that she understood. Ann turned away.
Abrams said, “The police and CIA are looking for Thorpe, of course. I told them to try next door.”
Van Dorn snorted, “If Thorpe is there, he’s home free. All the more reason to blow the place up.” Van Dorn lit a cigar stub.
Katherine stood and drew a long breath. She said, “No, George. I agree with Tony that we can’t do that.” She turned to Abrams. “But we absolutely must get into that house. There may be something we can do there to stop this . . .” She hesitated, then said, “My father is in there . . . Peter may be in there . . . I think a personal confrontation—not an artillery barrage—is more in keeping with the spirit of our group.”
Van Dorn said nothing.
Ann added, “As a practical and professional matter, I’d like to get my hands on that communications equipment. That may be the key to shut down their operation.” She turned to Van Dorn. “No artillery, George. We go in there
mano a mano.”
Van Dorn nodded. “All right. . . .”
Katherine put her hand on Abrams’ arm. “All right?”
Abrams didn’t think a choice between a mortar barrage and a commando raid was much of a choice, but he could see the point in the latter. He said, “Look, you don’t need my approval. Go ahead. Put a bullet in Androv’s fat belly if you can. But for God’s sake, leave Mr. Van Dorn here on the telephone to try to head off this EMP blast.”
Van Dorn drew heavily on his cigar, then spoke. “I won’t waste time by making a show of telling you I won’t send my people where I wouldn’t go myself. During the war I sent hundreds of men and women out to meet their fate without me. Everyone has a job. Mine tonight is to stay here by the phone and the telex. And to hell with anyone who thinks badly of me.”
Ann put her arms around Van Dorn’s huge shoulders. “Oh, George, no one will think badly of you. If we fail next door, they’ll come here and shoot you anyway.”
Van Dorn smiled grimly as he stepped away from Ann and patted the holster under his pocket. “In 1945 I had a shoot-out with two KGB goons in the Soviet sector of Vienna. We all missed. I won’t miss this time.”
Ann smiled. “Well, George, it’s never too late in life to redeem yourself.” She added, “I’m going next door, of course, because I can work their communications equipment.” She turned to Katherine. “You’re going because you must.” Ann looked at Abrams.
Abrams shrugged. “I’m going because I’ve got a screw loose.”
Katherine smiled at him. “And your Russian is good, and you know the layout.”
Ann said to Van Dorn, “You ought to break up this boring party, George.”
Van Dorn shook his head. “Can’t. That would look suspicious. The invites said until one A.M., and my neighbors somehow have access to that sort of information.” He thought a moment, then added, “I’d like to keep them all here anyway.”
Van Dorn looked at Katherine. “What do you carry?”
She nodded toward her bag. “Browning automatic, forty-five caliber.”
Van Dorn reached into his pocket and produced the silver-plated .45-caliber bullet. “This is melodramatic, I know . . . but we were young then and given to theatrics. Nevertheless, the bullet is real.”
She took it without a word and held it in her clenched hand.
Ann said, “Well, George, if we’re not back by the time the lights go out, I trust you won’t hesitate to fire your artillery.”
“If I don’t see you back here, or hear from you, EMP attack or not, by midnight, I’ll let loose with the mortar.” He looked at the three people. “All right?”
Everyone nodded.
There was a knock on the door and it opened. Marc Pembroke walked in.
Ann smiled at him. “You’re looking fit, Marc. Fit enough to do a job?”
“Oh . . . hello, Ann. Long time.” He turned to Van Dorn. “Tonight, is it?”
“Right.” Van Dorn glanced at Abrams, then said to Pembroke, “There are children in the basement. They’re innocent, of course. There are also women and diplomatic staff down there. Exercise some judgment.”
Pembroke nodded. “A complication but not a problem. When do we shove off?”
Van Dorn looked at his watch. “Can you get ready in thirty minutes?”
“No, but I will.”
“Then gather your people and my people, and bring them here.”
“I’ll fetch them now.” Pembroke turned.
Van Dorn called out, “One more thing. It’s time to settle some old scores, right here in this house. As we discussed.”
Pembroke nodded and left quickly.
Van Dorn went behind his desk and picked up the telephone. He looked at the three people in the room as he dialed, and said, “In the last war, radar gave you as much as an hour’s warning. Today, they’re happy with fifteen minutes. I’ve given them a few hours. I hope to God they’ve been using the time constructively.” He spoke into the receiver. “Hello, Van Dorn here. We’ve gone through fire and through water.” He began speaking to the person on the other end.
Abrams walked over to the wall where the pictures hung in neat rows, and stared at them. Katherine came up beside him. She said, “We’ve actually had about forty years’ warning, haven’t we?”
Abrams didn’t reply.
She said softly, “We haven’t even gotten to know each other yet.”
He glanced at her. “We have a rendezvous for breakfast tomorrow. The Brasserie.”
She smiled. “Don’t be late.” She turned and walked back to her sister.
Abrams continued looking at the pictures, but his eyes were not focused on them. He thought that in many ways events had come full circle. He remembered his parents and their friends meeting in mean rooms, plotting and planning for the day when the workers would throw off their chains. He thought of George Van Dorn exchanging gunfire with the future enemy in the streets of Vienna. He contemplated the personality of James Allerton, a half century or more in the service of a foreign power, making him perhaps the country’s longest-enduring traitor. He reflected on the Kimberly diary, and Arnold Brin’s message, and other dead messages, and dead files, and dead matter from the living and the dead; and he thought that somehow the dead past had returned to bury the living and the unborn.
THE ASSAULT
Claudia Lepescu moved quickly down the narrow path that cut diagonally across the face of the cliff. Above, on Van Dorn’s wide lawn, she heard a man shout to her in a British accent. One of Marc Pembroke’s men.
She kicked off her high-heeled shoes and continued down the dark path, faster now, yet fearful she would fall off the ledge. Behind her, she heard two sets of footsteps enter the path.
Claudia reached the bottom of the incline and ran down the laurel-covered slope, picking up speed until she stumbled and fell. The pursuing men heard her cry out and headed toward her. She sprang to her feet and continued until she came to the stockade fence.
Claudia put her palms against the fence and breathed deeply as she stared up at the jagged points of the pickets, silhouetted against the sky like dragon’s teeth. She turned and rested her back against the fence.
The gusting north wind rustled the branches around her, and dark feathery clouds raced across the white face of the moon. To the northeast a bolt of lightning lit up the sky and she saw the shapes of the two men standing motionless in the distance. One of them called out, “Claudia! We won’t hurt you! Claudia—” A roll of thunder shook the ground beneath her feet and drowned out his words.
She turned and moved unsteadily along the wooden wall, but there seemed to be no way through it. She had been told she could climb the fence from this side because of the horizontal braces nailed to the upright pickets, but the fence was nearly twice as tall as she, and it didn’t seem possible. Behind her, she heard footsteps in the loose gravelly soil.
Claudia ran on another fifty yards and stopped to catch her breath. Her feet were cut and she could feel blood oozing into her panty hose. Her black knit dress was snagged in several places, and her face and arms were scratched and bruised. She felt rivulets of warm perspiration running down her body.
Suddenly two flashlight beams sliced through the dark air.
Claudia lowered herself quickly into a crouch behind a small bush. The light beams were searching systematically over the length of the fence and through the laurel behind her. She waited until they passed by, then stood, stepped back for a running start, and ran at the fence. Her feet and hands scrambled and searched for a hold, but the first horizontal brace was too high, and she slipped down, cedar splinters sliding into her skin.
“There
you are.” The footsteps approached.
Claudia felt tears forming in her eyes and salty sweat burning her lips. She called out, “I’ve got a gun.”
The footsteps slowed and the lights went out. One of the men said to the other, “Easy now. Circle around.”
Claudia stared up at the fence again. It looked like one of those stockade walls in the cowboy movies. This brought to mind a lasso. . . . She quickly slipped off her panty hose and groped along the ground until she found a good-sized stone. She dropped the stone into the toe of one of the legs, knotted it so it wouldn’t slip out, and clenched the other foot of the hose. She stood, twirled the panty hose above her head, then cast it up at the fence. On the second attempt the stone-weighted toe fell between two pickets and she pulled on it to wedge it tighter, then began her ascent, hand over hand up the nylon rope, her bare feet planted on the fence. The nylon stretched tauter until there was no more slack in it and she feared it would snap.
Her feet found the first cross-brace; she rested a moment, then continued and reached the second brace.
The flashlights went on again; a beam found her and rested on her face. A man shouted, “Stop, or we’ll shoot.” She heard that awful metallic noise of a gun cocking in the night air.
With a last burst of energy, born of fear, she hoisted herself up to the pickets, feeling them dig into her chest and abdomen.
From two different directions she heard the wheezy coughs of silenced guns, followed by the sounds of bullets smacking and splintering the wood below her. The whole fence swayed from the impact. She let out a terrified cry, then closed her eyes and rolled gently over the pickets. Before she was even aware of a sense of falling, she felt the abrupt shock of the earth slapping against her face and chest, knocking the wind from her.
She lay still for some seconds, then sucked the air back into her lungs. She heard noises on the fence and realized she hadn’t pulled the panty hose over with her, and they were using it.
She jumped to her feet and began running. Across the strip of partly cleared right-of-way, a patch of moonlight illuminated the dark low outline of the stone wall that bordered the Russian property. She heard the two men behind her and tried to run faster, heedless of the pain in her feet or the aches in her legs. Her clinging knit dress constricted the movement of her legs and she slowed long enough to pull the dress up and tuck the hem in her belt, then put on a burst of speed.
Pembroke’s two men were gaining, but they were not shooting, calling, or using their flashlights; nor would they, she knew, this close to the Russian property. The stone wall lay twenty feet ahead, then ten, then it was on her suddenly. She thrust her hands out to meet its capstone and vaulted over, hardly breaking stride.
Claudia plunged headlong into the bush beyond the wall. The pace of running footsteps behind her slowed, then halted at the wall. She slowed her own pace and began picking her way more carefully through the rising terrain.
Suddenly, lights blazed on all sides of her and she heard a voice bark in harshly accented English, “Stop! Stop, we shoot!”
She froze.
“Hands on head!”
She did as she was told.
“Kneel!”
She knelt, feeling her bare knees settle on the damp, rotting vegetation. The lights hurt her eyes and she shut them, thinking to herself that perhaps they had orders to shoot her on the spot.
An unnaturally long time passed, then Claudia heard the sound of a revolver cocking.
Pembroke’s two men, Cameron and Davis, stood quietly at the low stone wall. Davis raised a twenty-power Starlight scope and scanned the wooden terrain to his front. The thin light of the cloud-obscured moon and stars was electronically amplified to give a green-tinted picture. Davis adjusted the resolution and focus knobs. “There. They’ve intercepted her . . . but I can’t make out what’s happening.”
Cameron said, “Let’s go back.” They turned from the stone wall and made their way through the no-man’s-land toward the stockade fence. About five yards from the fence, they circled around a thick stand of boxwood and knelt.
Tony Abrams, also kneeling on one knee, regarded them in the dim light. Unlike conventional soldiers, he thought, whose uniforms and equipment had to serve in many terrains and circumstances, these men were very specifically outfitted for one thing: a short, quick night raid. Their clothing and equipment were patchworked shades of black and gray, their faces dark and inscrutable.