To Free a Spy (22 page)

Ticcio was not there that night. Warfield sat at the bar and tried Fleming again. Still no answer but this time he left a message on her voicemail and at Hardscrabble that he was at Ticcio’s now and hoped she would join him. He watched the couples on the dance floor snuggle to the Dean Martin impersonator and kept an eye on the entrance for Fleming.

After half an hour she walked in. He knew she would show, but seeing her was still a shock. His heart raced. Adrenaline rocked his nerves into high gear. He couldn’t wait to wrap his arms around her and tell her how much she meant to him and ask what it would take for them to get back to where they were a few months ago. He felt her skin against his once again. Heard her warm voice. Sensed her fingers running through his hair. How he had missed her. The sheer white cotton outfit she wore emphasized her tan, and her hair swept her shoulders now. He despised what he had done.

As Warfield stood up to greet her, Fleming turned to the man entering the door behind her and laughed at something he said. She walked within inches of Warfield as the maitre d’ led the couple through the bar to their table but if she saw him she didn’t show it.

* * *

Aleksei Antonov walked up from the orchestra and as he lit a Cuban cigar a look of satisfaction graced his face. At least that was one thing the Russians had over the Americans. The smoke took on shades of maroon and gray as it curled upward to the lights. Captain Aleksandr Nosenko rounded the corner from the mezzanine where he was seated for the concert and lit a cigarette off the end of the general’s cigar. Antonov was pleased with Nosenko. Not every young officer he’d selected to personally groom rose to his expectations, not to the degree Nosenko had. And like Antonov, Nosenko worried about the easy availability of the sea of nuclear resources left over after the Soviet Union fell apart. The captain contacted General Antonov with any news worth disturbing his mentor for in order to arrange a clandestine meeting. Tonight he informed Antonov that Boris Petrevich was in Tokyo. That was certain now. Antonov decided against telling Nosenko that he’d already learned about Petrevich from an old comrade.

There was no law or rule against Captain Nosenko’s collaboration with General Antonov but it seemed to both of the men that privacy of communication was nonetheless in order. After all, Antonov and to some degree Nosenko were products of the old ultra-secretive Soviet culture. But it wasn’t like the captain was hiding the information from his superiors: They had the same direct access to it he did. The difference was that Antonov in his retirement had not only the determination but also the time and financial resources to do something with it.

“So what will you do now?” Captain Nosenko asked after giving Antonov the news.

The house lights signaled the first call to return to the theater. The general studied the thick maroon carpet for a moment before answering.

“Tokyo.”

“I will accompany you.”

“
Nyet
.”

“You will go alone?”

“Initially, yes, until I have specific information about Boris Petrevich. Then I will invite the American, Warfield, to meet me there.”

Nosenko looked away. “Just as I thought.”

“You do not agree with that course of action, Captain?”

“You trusted Colonel Warfield to stop Petrevich once before.”

“It was not Warfield’s failure. Your own intelligence sources determined it was his FBI.” Antonov said it in a tone intended to end the matter.

Nosenko persisted. “And that will not happen again in Japan? This may be the last opportunity to neutralize Boris Petrevich and recover the uranium he controls.”

Antonov squinted at his protégé’s tone. “Warfield is no less determined than you or me, Captain, to keep our nuclear arsenal out of irresponsible hands. And he is known to take personal risk when his objective requires it, so I suspect he will not involve his FBI in this matter again.”

“May I remind my general that Colonel Warfield no longer enjoys the support of his own government? Perhaps determination is not the only important criterion in choosing an ally.”

Antonov flared. He wasn’t accustomed to being questioned by a captain, even Nosenko. “Be reminded yourself, captain, that Warfield consistently succeeded against us when he was our enemy. I am aware that was before your time, but I fear that your studies of military and KGB operational history have failed you in this regard.”

The young officer glanced around to see how many others witnessed the reprimand.

Antonov looked directly into Nosenko’s eyes. “Will that be all, captain?”

Nosenko nodded. “What would you have me do, sir?”

Intermission was over. Antonov knew Nosenko’s motives were pure, and cooled off. Nosenko had been with the general so long and gone through so much with him that now he must feel shut out. And in favor of an American. Antonov put his hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Without you here in Moscow, in the army,” he said, “we lose our primary source of intelligence, which is crucial to our cause. Otherwise, you would accompany me to Tokyo.”

Antonov arrived back at his dacha after midnight and poured himself a brandy. It went well with Cubans. He leaned back in the leather chair he called his thinking chair and stared at the ceiling, processing what he knew.

Before the cigar was gone, the six-foot-three general moved from the cracked and wrinkled leather of the old chair to his computer where he scheduled a flight to Tokyo the next day, then e-mailed a note to Warfield. It was almost three a.m. when he turned the lights out.

* * *

Warfield felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He couldn’t bear to stay at Ticcio’s any longer, that close to Fleming with another man. Before leaving, he went to the men’s room where he got a shot of himself in the mirror. Was it possible she didn’t recognize him? She hadn’t looked right at him but she did seem to be aware of her surroundings. She had glided past him so near that he smelled the perfume he had given her. No way she would have missed seeing him before he…before he became so different.

The beard. That was it, that and the weight and his hair that had grown shaggy. What had he done to himself? To Fleming? Here she was with another man, no doubt having given up on him while he let himself and everything important to him disintegrate. He was enraged at his own doings. As he turned to leave the restroom he kicked the full-length mirror dead center, sending it to the floor in a million pieces.

He sat in the parking lot for several minutes to get himself together. When he got back to the condo there was a red, tan and black envelope taped to his front door. It was from his mortgage lender, who said his condo was in the process of foreclosure for non-payment of his loan. They had sent all the required notices about missed payments and, having received no response from him, regretted to tell him his home was now in foreclosure proceedings. He could expect the local sheriff to serve him with the legal documents. He read the letter three times under the porch light before going inside. He stood in the living room and looked around at the place for a minute, tossed the notice on the table and went back to his car.

The ringing was back. He opened all the windows in the car hoping to make it go away. When he reached ninety most of it did. He sat at the It’ll Do bar and ordered a double Jack on the rocks. He swiveled around to the softly-lighted dance floor, much larger and louder than the one at Ticcio’s, and watched over-heated lovers who might be having their first dance together melt into unity as Patsy Cline delivered I Fall to Pieces. He tilted his glass to the juke box. “Know what you mean,” he mumbled.

Something surged through him when Toni walked up and rested her arm on his shoulder. “Out in the wilderness for awhile, huh Cam?”

Her question would’ve been painful except for the Jack. “Hi, Toni.”

“Hey, I like the beard on you,” she said, tugging at it. “Weight’s not bad either. I like a man with some meat on his bones.”

Toni’s eyelids gently waved up and down like the wings of a July butterfly. The lovers on the dance floor caught Warfield’s eye. “Workin’ tonight?” he asked.

“Depends on who wants to know?” She smiled.

“Forgot. You own the place now.”

“Thought it was about time you’d be back. Didn’t wanna miss you.”

“Dance?” he asked, as Celine Dion began to sing My Heart Will Go On.

She lowered her huge eyes for a moment as if she was thinking it over and then looked at him again. “Not here,” she whispered. “My place.”

* * *

A few hours after General Antonov and Captain Nosenko met in the Moscow theater, Fleming arrived at Hardscrabble to hear her phone ringing. It was Macc Macclenny returning her call. “How’s my favorite shrink?”

“Macc, you bum! How’s life on the Colorado?”

“Rough out here! Really rough! Thank that Senator what’s-his-name for closing Lone Elm. Hope you’re calling to tell me you and Warfield are headed my way.”

She wished that, too. But she’d called Macc for another reason. Now she had to tell Warfield’s best and oldest friend he’d stumbled.

Warfield had a constitution of steel, the stainless kind that came with a warranty. The internal fires, the passion, the grit that made him what he was couldn’t be bought or created or turned on inside someone who didn’t have them. You couldn’t simply will yourself to be that kind of man: You either were or you were not. Macc would find it hard to understand that these hallmarks of Warfield had failed him.

He sobered after hearing her explanation. “The guy’s never been depressed a day in his life, Fleming. If it wasn’t coming from you I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Strong men like Warfield aren’t immune.”

“What’s he doing?”

“You mean what’s he
not
doing. He’s a recluse. I’ve tried to rescue him to the point of badgering. He never initiates contact. God only knows what else is falling through the cracks.”

“You mean you haven’t seen him?”

“Hardly at all since you left. Couple nights ago he called from Ticcio’s, left me a message to meet him there but I didn’t get it until the next day. Tried to call him but his voice-mailbox was full and wouldn’t accept any more messages. My e-mails go unanswered. The times I’ve gone by his condo all the blinds are closed. I don’t know if he’s there or not. I let myself in once and couldn’t believe the condition it was in.”

Macc groaned.

“Funny thing was,” Fleming continued, “I was at Ticcio’s that night when he called. My brother was here from Germany and I took him there for dinner. I’d have seen the War Man if he’d been there.”

“How long does this stuff last? This depression.”

“Varies case to case. Not easy to deal with. Sometimes it’s a life sentence. I don’t think that applies to Cam.”

“Hell no, not for Warfield, it’s not. I’ll keep calling ’til I reach him and then I’ll get him down here on the river and work his ass off. He won’t have time to be depressed. He’ll get over it in no time, Fleming; you wait and see.”

* * *

Macc ran his hand across his pate as the twin-prop De Havilland 8 came to a stop and cut its engines at the Flagstaff-Pulliam Airport. His hairline had moved further and further back year by year and he’d begun shaving his head a few months before he left Lone Elm. The stubble reminded him he had neglected to use the razor on it this morning.

He wondered what his old boss would be like. Fleming had described him in a way Macc could not envision, but when he called him to invite him to Arizona he had a better understanding.

The Cameron Warfield he had known since that day at Fort Huachuca so many years ago was a guy who didn’t even have bad
days
, not to mention bad months. It hadn’t been easy to get him to make the trip, but to Macc a few days inside the Grand Canyon was better than any medicine a doctor could prescribe. The Grand Canyon and Colorado River had their own way of healing a man’s mind and body and soul.

Macc was stunned when he saw Warfield. Long shaggy hair. Extra weight. Black eyes. Worst of all, the vacant look. Macc wasn’t sure how he’d greet this stranger but when they were close enough Macc threw his arms around him in a bear hug and was surprised Warfield held on to him so long. It was a good start, Macc thought, but as they made their way out of the terminal little was said beyond Warfield’s comment on his flight. He’d had to change planes in Denver and Phoenix.

The north rim of the Canyon, minutes south of the Utah state line, was a three-hour drive up U.S. 89 from Flagstaff and Macc knew it’d be a long, quiet trip the way things were going. Talk between them was stilted like a first date of teenagers, not like the two buddies they were. An hour north of Flagstaff, Macc pulled off the highway at an old wood frame structure with a stained metal roof. The building had been painted sky blue by someone who by now would be too old to work, and the paint was peeling. The thick layer of dust paste on the pickups in the parking lot told how long it’d been since it rained. Even the lone cactus standing at the right end of the building looked bedraggled. The faded sign out front said this was the Blue Penny Saloon.

Macc knew alcohol wasn’t quite the prescription for depression, but he wasn’t going to coddle Warfield, and besides that they wouldn’t be at the Blue Penny long enough for a lot of drinking.

“It’s about the only place between here and Utah,” he said.

A blast of heat clipped them as they stepped out of Macc’s white pickup, and Warfield muttered something about Saudi Arabia.

“One-eighteen today, twenty-percent humidity,” Macc said. As they entered the dark roadhouse, four or five cowboys with leather faces and big hats sitting at a long bar turned to see who it was. The jukebox was loud. A layer of sawdust covered the plank floor and a pool table in need of new felt stood idle on the other side of a dance floor. The cool breeze from the swamp cooler provided a welcome hint of moisture in the air.

“Help you boys?” The barmaid wore tight shorts and a tank top. She smiled tan teeth but Macc figured it didn’t matter. The tank top probably kept most eyes to the south.

“Draft.” Warfield said, looking around the place. Dusty beams sitting on wood columns provided the support for the roof. The Budweiser mirror behind the bar had lost much of its silvering and now yielded gray, rippled images. A lone woman who looked like she belonged to the place sat at a table next to the dance floor. Three cowboys smoking at a nearby table appeared to be interested, but she didn’t.