Red Rabbit Part 45

NOT FIFTY YARDS AWAY, Oleg Ivan'ch was standing in the line to use the men's room. Hudson managed to get right behind him. The lobby was filled with the usual buzz of small talk. Some people went to the portable bar for more drinks. Others were puffing on cigarettes, while twenty men or so were waiting to relieve their bladders. The line moved fairly rapidly-men are more efficient at this than women are-and soon they were in the tiled room.

The urinals were as elegant as everything else, seemingly carved from Carerra marble for this n.o.ble purpose. Hudson stood like everyone else, hoping that his clothing did not mark him as a foreigner. Just inside the wood-and-gla.s.s door, he took a breath and, leaning forward, called on his Russian.

"Good evening, Oleg Ivanovich," Hudson said quietly. "Do not turn around."

"Who are you?" Zaitzev whispered back.

"I am your travel agent. I understand you wish to take a little trip."

"Where might that be?"

"Oh, in a westerly direction. You are concerned for the safety of someone, are you not?"

"You are CIA?" Zaitzev could not utter the acronym in anything but a hiss.

"I am in an unusual line of work," Hudson confirmed. No sense confusing the chap at the moment.

"So, what will you do with me?"

"This night you will sleep in another country, my friend," Hudson told him, adding, "along with your wife and your lovely little daughter." Hudson watched his shoulders slump-with relief or fear, the British spook wondered. Probably both.

Zaitzev cleared his throat before whispering again. "What must I do?"

"First, you must tell me that you wish to go forward with your plan."

Only the briefest hesitation before: "Da. We will proceed."

"In that case, just do your business in here-" they were approaching the head of the line "-and then enjoy the rest of the concert, and return to your hotel. We shall speak again there at one-thirty or so. Can you do that?"

Just a curt nod and a gasping single syllable: "Da." Oleg Ivan'ch really needed to use the urinal now.

"Be at ease, my friend. All is planned. All will go well," Hudson said to him. The man would need a.s.surance and confidence now. This had to be the most frightening moment of his life.

There was no further reply. Zaitzev took the next three steps to the marble urinal, unzipped, and relieved himself in more than one way. He turned to leave without seeing Hudson's face.

But Trent saw his, as he stood there and sipped a gla.s.s of white wine. If he'd made any signal to a fellow KGB spook in the room, the British officer hadn't seen it. No rubbing the nose or adjusting his tie, no physical sign at all. He just walked back through the swinging door and back to his seat. BEATRIX was looking better and better.

THE AUDIENCE WAS back in its seats. Ryan was doing his best to look like just one more cla.s.sical music fan. Then Hudson and Trent reentered the box.

"Well?" Ryan rasped.

"b.l.o.o.d.y good music, isn't it?" Hudson replied casually. "This Rozsa chap is first-rate. Amazing that a communist country can turn out anything better than a reprise of the Internationale. Oh, after it's over," Hudson added, "how about a drink with some new friends?"

Jack let out a very long breath. "Yeah, Andy, I'd like that." Son of a b.i.t.c.h, Ryan thought. It's really going to happen. He had lots of doubts, but they'd just subsided half a step or so. It wasn't really very much, but it was a d.a.m.ned sight better than it could have been.

THE SECOND HALF of the concert started with more Bach, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Instead of strings, this one was a celebration of bra.s.s, and the lead cornet here might have taught Louis Armstrong himself something about the higher notes. This was as much Bach as Ryan had ever heard at one time, and that old German composer had really had his s.h.i.+t wired, the former Marine thought, for the first time relaxing enough to enjoy it somewhat. Hungary was a country that respected its music, or so it seemed. If there was anything wrong with this orchestra, he didn't notice it, and the conductor looked as though he were in bed with the love of his life, so transfixed he was by the joy of the moment. Jack wondered idly if Hungarian women were any good at that. There was an earthy look to them, but not much smiling.... Maybe that was the communist government. Russians were not known for smiling, either.

"SO, ANY NEWS?" Judge Moore asked.

Mike Bostock handed over the brief dispatch from London. "Basil says his COS Budapest is going to make his move tonight. Oh, you'll love this part. The Rabbit is staying in a hotel right across the street from the KGB rezidentura."

Moore's eyes flared a bit. "You have to be kidding."

"Judge, do you think I'd say that for the fun of it?"

"When does Ritter get back?"

"Later today, flying back on Pan Am. From what he sent to us from Seoul, everything went pretty well with the KCIA meetings."

"He'll have a heart attack when he finds out about BEATRIX," the DCI predicted.

"It will get his eyes opened," the Deputy DDO agreed.

"Especially when he finds out that this Ryan boy is in on it?"

"On that, sir, you can bet the ranch, the cattle, and the big house."

Judge Moore had himself a good chuckle at that one. "Well, I guess the Agency is bigger than any one individual, right?"

"So they tell me, sir."

"When will we know?"

"I expect Basil will let us know when the plane takes off from Yugoslavia. It's going to be a long day for our new friends, though."

THE NEXT SELECTION was Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." Ryan recognized it as the tune played in a Navy recruiting commercial. It was a gentle piece, very different from that which had preceded it. He wasn't sure if this evening's performance was a showcase for Johann Sebastian or for the conductor. In either case, it was pleasant enough, and the audience was wildly appreciative, noisier than for the concert selection. One more piece. Ryan had a program, but hadn't bothered looking at it, since it was printed in Magyar, and he couldn't read Martian any better than he could decipher the spoken form.

The last selection was Pachelbel's Canon, a justly famous piece, one that had always struck Ryan like a movie of a pretty girl saying her prayers back in the seventeenth century, trying to concentrate on her devotions instead of thinking about the handsome boy down the lane from her farmhouse-and not quite succeeding.

WITH THE END, Jozsef Rozsa turned to the audience, which leapt again to its feet and howled its approval for endless minutes. Yeah, Jack thought, the local boy had gone away, but he'd come home to make good, and the home boys from the old days were glad to have him back. The conductor hardly smiled, as though exhausted from running the marathon. And he was sweating, Jack saw. Was conducting that hard? If you were that far into it, maybe it was. He and his Brit companions were standing and applauding as much as everyone else-no sense standing out-before, finally, the noise stopped. Rozsa waved to the orchestra, which caused the cheering to continue, and then to the concertmaster of the orchestra, the first fiddle. It seemed gracious of Rozsa, but probably the thing you had to do if you wanted the musicians to put out their best for you. And then, at long last, it was time for the crowd to break up.

"Enjoy the music, Sir John?" Hudson asked with a sly grin.

"It beats what they play on the radio at home," Ryan observed. "Now what?"

"Now we get a nice drink in a quiet place." Hudson nodded to Trent, who made his own way off, and took Ryan in tow.

The air was cool outside. Ryan immediately lit a cigarette, along with every other man in view and most of the women. Hungarians didn't plan to live all that long, or so it seemed. He felt as tied to Hudson as a child to his mother, but that wouldn't last too much longer. The street had mostly apartment-type buildings. In a Western city, it would have been condos, but those probably didn't exist here. Hudson waved for Ryan to follow and they walked two blocks to a bar, ending up following about thirty people leaving the concert. Andy got a corner booth from which he could scan the room, and a waiter came with a couple gla.s.ses of wine.

"SO, WE GO?" Jack asked.

Hudson nodded. "We go. I told him we'd be to the hotel about one-thirty."

"And then?"

"And then we drive to the Yugoslav border."

Ryan didn't ask further. He didn't have to.

"The security to the south is trivial. Different the other way," Andy explained. "Near the Austrian border, it's fairly serious, but Yugoslavia, remember, is a sister communist state-that's the local fiction in any case. I'm no longer sure what Yugoslavia is, politically speaking. The border guards on the Hungarian side do well for themselves-many friendly arrangements with the smugglers. That is a growth industry, but the smart ones don't grow too much. Do that and the Belgyminiszterium, their Interior Ministry, might take notice. Better to avoid that," Hudson reminded him.

"But if this is the back door into the Warsaw Pact-h.e.l.l, KGB's gotta know, right?"

Hudson completed the question. "So, why don't they shut things down? I suppose they could, but the local economy would suffer, and the Sovs get a lot of the things they like here, too. Trent tells me that our friend has made some major purchases here. Tape machines and pantyhose-b.l.o.o.d.y pantyhose, their women kill for the things. Probably most are overtly intended for friends and colleagues back in Moscow. So, if KGB intervened, or forced the AVH to do so, then they would lose a source of things they themselves want. So a little corruption doesn't do any major damage, and it supplies the greed of the other side. Never forget that they have their weaknesses, too. Probably more than we do, in fact, much as people argue to the contrary. They want the things we have. O fficial channels can't work very well, but the unofficial ones do. There's a saying in Hungarian that I like: A nagy kapu mellett, mindig van egy kis kapu. Next to the big gate, there is always a little door. That little door is what makes things work over here."

"And I'm going through it."

"Correct." Andy finished his wine and decided against another. He had a ways to drive tonight, in the dark, over inferior roads. Instead, he lit one of his cigars.

Ryan lit a smoke of his own. "I've never done this before, Andy." "Frightened?"

"Yeah," Jack admitted freely. "Yeah, I am."

"First time is never easy. I've never had people with machine guns come into my home."

"I don't recommend it as after-dinner entertainment," Jack replied, with a twisted smile. "But we managed to luck our way out of it."

"I don't really believe in luck-well, sometimes, perhaps. Luck does not go about in search of a fool, Sir John."

"Maybe so. Kinda hard to notice from the inside." Ryan thought back, again, to that dreadful night. The feel of the Uzi in his hands. Having to get that one shot right. No second chance in that ballgame. And he'd dropped to one knee, taken aim, and gotten it right. He'd never learned the name of the guy in the boat he'd st.i.tched up. Strange, he reflected. If you kill a man right by your home, you should at least know his name.

But, yeah, if he could do that, he could d.a.m.ned well do this. He checked his watch. It would be a while still, and he wasn't driving tonight, and another gla.s.s of wine seemed a good idea. But he'd stop it there.

BACK AT THE ASTORIA, the Zaitzevs got their little Bunny to bed, and Oleg ordered some vodka to be brought up. It was the generic Russian vodka brand that the working cla.s.s drank, a half-liter bottle with a foil closure at the top that essentially forced you to drink it all in one sitting. Not an altogether bad idea for this night. The bottle arrived in five minutes, and by then zaichik was asleep. He sat on the bed. His wife sat in the one upholstered chair. They drank from tumblers out of the bathroom.

Oleg Ivan'ch had one task yet to perform. His wife didn't know his plan. He didn't know how she'd react to it. He knew she was unhappy. He knew that this trip was the high point of their marriage. He knew she hated her job at GUM, that she wanted to enjoy the finer things in life. But would she willingly leave her motherland behind?

On the plus side of the ledger, Russian women did not enjoy much in the way of freedom, within their marriages or without. They usually did what their husbands told them to do-the husband might pay for it later, but only later. And she loved him and trusted him, and he'd shown her the best of good times in the past few days, and so, yes, she'd go along.

But he'd wait before telling her. Why spoil things by taking a risk right now? Right across the street was the KGB's Budapest rezidentura. And if they got word of what he had planned, then he was surely a dead man.

BACK AT THE British Emba.s.sy, sergeants Bob Small and Rod Truelove lifted the plastic bags and carried them to the emba.s.sy's nondescript truck-the license tags had already been switched. Both tried to ignore the contents, then went back to get the alcohol containers, plus a candle and a cardboard milk carton. Then they were ready. Neither had so much as a gla.s.s of beer that night, though both wished otherwise. They drove off just after midnight, planning to take their time to scout the objective before committing to a course of action. The hard part would be getting the right parking place, but, with more than hour to pick it, they were confident that one would appear in due course.

THE BAR WAS emptying out, and Hudson didn't wish to be the last one in there. The bar bill was fifty forints, which he paid, not leaving a tip, because it wasn't the local custom, and it wouldn't do to be remembered. He motioned to Ryan and headed out but, on second thought, made his way to the loo. The thought struck Ryan as very practical, too.

Outside, Ryan asked what came next.

"We take a stroll up the street, Sir John," Hudson answered, using the knightly t.i.tle as an unfair barb. "Thirty-minute stroll to the hotel, I think, will be about right." The exercise would also give them a chance to make sure they weren't being followed. If the opposition were onto their operation, they'd be unable to resist the temptation to shadow the two intelligence officers, and, on mainly empty city streets, it wouldn't be too difficult to "make" them along the way . . . unless the opposition consisted of KGB. They were cleverer than the locals by a sizable margin.

ZAITZEV AND HIS WIFE had the comfortable glow of three very stiff drinks each. Oddly, his wife showed little sign of approaching sleep, however. Too excited by the night's fine entertainment, Oleg thought. Maybe it was for the better. Just that one more worry to go-except for how the CIA planned to get them out of Hungary. What would it be? A helicopter near the border, flying them under Hungarian radar coverage? That was what he would have chosen. Would CIA be able to hop them from inside Hungary to Austria? Just how clever were they? Would they let him know? Might it be something really clever and daring? And frightening? he wondered.

Would it succeed? If not . . . well, the consequences of failure did not bear much contemplation.

But neither would they go entirely away. Not for the first time, Oleg considered that his own death might result from this adventure, and prolonged misery for his wife and child. The Soviets would not kill them, but it would mark them forever as pariahs, doomed to a life of misery. And so they were hostages to his conscience as well. How many Soviets had stopped short of defection just on that basis? Treason, he reminded himself, was the blackest of crimes, and the penalties for it were equally forbidding.

Zaitzev poured out the remainder of the vodka and gunned it down, waiting the last half hour before the CIA arrived to save his life . . .

Or whatever they planned to do with him and his family. He kept checking his watch while his wife finally dozed off and back, smiling and humming the Bach concert with a head that lolled back and forth. At least he'd given her as fine a night as he'd ever managed to do....

THERE WAS A parking place just by the hotel's side door. Small drove up to it and backed in neatly. Parallel parking is an art form in England that he still remembered how to perform. Then they sat, Small with a cigarette and Truelove with his favorite briar pipe, looking out at empty streets, just a few pedestrians in the distance, with Small keeping an eye on the rearview mirror for activity at the KGB residency. There were some lights on up on the second floor, but nothing moving that he could see. Probably some KGB chap had just forgotten to flip the switch on the way out.

THERE IT WAS, Ryan saw, just three blocks, on the right-hand side of the street.

Showtime.

The remaining walk pa.s.sed seemingly in an instant. Tom Trent, he saw, was by the corner of the building. People were coming out of the building, probably from the bas.e.m.e.nt bar Hudson had shown him, about right for closing time, just in twos and threes, n.o.body leaving alone. Must be a saloon for the local singles crowd, Jack thought, setting up one-night stands for the terminally lonely. So, they had them in communist countries too, eh?

As they approached, Hudson flicked a finger across his nose. That was the sign for Trent to go inside and distract the desk clerk. How he did that, Ryan would never know, but minutes later when they walked in the door, the lobby was totally empty.

"Come on." Hudson hurried over to the stairs, which wrapped around the elevator shaft. Getting to the third floor took less than a minute. And there was Room 307. Hudson turned the k.n.o.b. The Rabbit had not locked it. Hudson opened it slowly.

Zaitzev saw the door open. Irina was mostly asleep now. He looked at her to be sure, then stood.

"h.e.l.lo," Hudson said in quiet greeting. He extended his hand.

"h.e.l.lo," Zaitzev said, in English. "You are travel agent?"

"Yes, we both are. This is Mr. Ryan."

"Ryan?" Zaitzev asked. "There is KGB operation by that name."

"Really?" Jack asked, surprised. He hadn't heard about that one yet.

"We can discuss that later, Comrade Zaitzev. We must leave now."

"Da." He turned to shake his wife awake. She started violently when she saw the two unexpected men in her room.

"Irina Bogdanova," Oleg said with a touch of sternness in his voice.

"We are taking an unexpected trip. We are leaving right now. Get Svetlana ready."

Her eyes came fully open in surprise. "Oleg, what is this? What are we doing?"

"We are leaving right now for a new destination. You must get moving now."

Ryan didn't understand the words, but the content was pretty clear. Then the woman surprised him by coming to her feet and moving like an automaton. The daughter was on a small children's bed. Mother Rabbit lifted the sleeping child to semi-wakefulness and got her clothes organized.

"What are we doing exactly?" the Rabbit asked.

"We are taking you to England-tonight," Hudson emphasized.

"Not America?"

"England first," Ryan told him. "Then I will take you to America."

"Ah." He was in a very tense state, Ryan saw, but that was to be expected. This guy had laid his life on the c.r.a.ps table, and the dice were still in the air. It was Ryan's job to make sure they didn't come up snake eyes. "What do I bring?"

"Nothing," Hudson said. "Not a b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Leave all your papers here. We have new ones for you." He held up three pa.s.sports with a lot of faked stamps on the inside pages. "For now I will hold these for you."