The Domino Conspiracy Page 3
Trubkin shrugged. “I can’t judge that.”
“Then what?” the General Secretary asked, his impatience obvious.
“Comrade Lumbas was removed from the project before the ignition circuits were fully tested.”
Khrushchev’s eyebrows raised to a sharp angle. “By whom?”
“In the aftermath it was said repeatedly that if Lumbas had remained with the project, he might have prevented the problem.”
“Did General Engineer Korolev try to get this Lumbas back?”
Trubkin nodded. “But Comrade Lumbas could not be located. He had been reassigned.”
“To what?”
The former cosmonaut shrugged. “Undoubtedly you would know better than I, Comrade General Secretary.”
Khrushchev leaped to his feet. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Major?”
Trubkin removed a document from his tunic and handed it to Khrushchev, who unfolded it and slowly read the official form used by the military to transfer its personnel. The document ordered Lt. Col. Viliam Pavelovich Lumbas to report to an address in Moscow for reassignment. The new organization was not named; there was only an address. When the General Secretary’s eyes reached the bottom of the document, his face suddenly whitened. The signature at the bottom seemed to be his, yet he had signed no such order. “It’s a forgery,” he said angrily.
“I thought it highly unusual,” Trubkin said, “so I took the liberty of checking the address. It doesn’t exist.”
The General Secretary collapsed into his chair and fought to control his anger. It seemed that his whole career had been marked by challenges from lesser men trying to dislodge him from power, but this—this was unprecedented, and the nakedness of it sent a chill through him.
“You have orders for me?” Trubkin asked.
“Get out,” Khrushchev said. “I need time to think.” First the Albanian fiasco and now this.
5 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1960, 10:20 P.M.Moscow
Malinovsky sawed off a piece of tough beef, chewed it slowly, then washed it down with a swig of red wine imported at great expense from France. Such indulgences made little impression on the defense minister, who tasted no appreciable differences between wines or vintages. There was red and white, and Malinovsky preferred red even with fish.
Colonel General Andrei Semenovich Gubin, on the other hand, was a connoisseur of wine, food, clothes and especially women. Gubin was a trim, slightly built man who always looked fresh, and other officers sometimes joked behind his back that the fastidious general ordered others to sweat for him. A famous paratroop officer with more than five thousand jumps, he had a medical chart listing more than twenty broken bones. Currently he served as commander of infantry for the Moscow Military District and was acclaimed as one of the Red Army’s most innovative strategists. At present he was devising a scheme to convert all Soviet infantry into airborne cavalry, using helicopters to lift them into battle. The plan was a solid one, Malinovsky thought, but not feasible because the army budget had been trimmed so drastically by Khrushchev, with the rubles shifted to rockets and an entirely new and separate branch of the military.
Gubin knew that Malinovsky had not invited him to dinner at his private mess to discuss his plan. “You’ve hardly touched your food,” the defense minister said, poking the air with his fork.
“An overweight paratrooper becomes a bomb,” Gubin said. The beef was gray, dry and overcooked; he would eat later.
“It’s time for the next phase,” Malinovsky said as he chewed.
“The Albanians have interdicted the mission?”
Malinovsky nodded. “We dropped it in their laps, and now it’s time to erase our connections.”
Gubin had guessed as much. “Lumbas and the American?”
“Kill both of them as soon as is feasible.”
“They’re both in Belgrade. It can be done almost immediately.”
“Does Lumbas suspect anything?”
“No.” Gubin was certain of this.
“If you’re not going to eat,” Malinovsky said, waving his knife, “you can go.”
When Gubin was gone, Malinovsky refolded his linen napkin and laid it over his plate. So far everything was progressing smoothly. Gubin had been a good choice. Over the years he had enjoyed his share of women, but he had shown good judgment in selecting married females whose interests did not include long-term expectations. It was common knowledge that he had once run six women for nearly a year, all of them friends of one another. Whatever else, Gubin was an impressive organizer and knew how to keep his mouth shut. He had been flattered when the defense minister had confided in him, but before approaching him Malinovsky had thoroughly checked out his sympathies and found him to be vehemently anti-Khrushchev. Now Gubin labored under the misconception that he alone served the defense minister, whereas Malinovsky had split the scheme into compartments and avenues, none of which would lead back to him. Lumbas and the American would be eliminated, and while Gubin saw to that another colleague would see to the former cosmonaut that Khrushchev was using as a bloodhound. All of this would take place far afield from him, just as it had in wartime. The trick, Malinovsky reminded himself, was to be able to clearly visualize all parts of the battlefield even when you were a long way off.
6 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1960, 4:30 P.M.Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Albert Frash was so astonished to see the signal that he did a double take, then stopped and stared at the marker on the electrical pole. Normally he passed markers left by assets, reading them with an imperceptible glance, but this time he had stopped and gawked like a rank amateur before realizing his error and quickly stumbling on. What he had seen was a red thumbtack with a diagonal scratch on it—an emergency signal requiring an immediate and unexpected meeting.
Using extra caution, Frash walked at varying speeds through two department stores, entering each from one direction, crisscrossing several floors, then exiting in a different direction in a process called “dry cleaning.” When he saw there was no tail, he headed directly to Navo Groblje, Belgrade’s New Cemetery, and entered it through the wooden gate at the entrance for gravediggers. An unlocked shed near the entrance held tools and work clothes; Frash took a tattered black coat, wide-brimmed straw hat and a long-handled shovel with a badly dented blade.
There were two meeting sites in the huge cemetery and a place from which Frash could watch both. Moving west along paths of dead brown grass he followed a line of lichen-covered mausoleums, reached his observation point and hugged the shadows of a pyramidlike tomb with a winged cherub on top.
It was not long before he saw Lumbas, but caution made him hang back. In his time with the Central Intelligence Agency, his instincts had served him well. His cardinal rule was that nothing is as it seems to be. Once understood and heeded, this principle kept you alive. Viliam seemed to be alone, but despite the emergency nature of the meeting he looked almost serene. Very odd. Frash considered approaching but stayed where he was and watched Lumbas light a cigarette. Whatever caused Viliam to summon him must be damned serious, yet he was smoking, something he avoided except in circumstances in which he was certain of security. Presumably this was not one of those times, yet Lumbas looked as if he hadn’t a care in the world. It didn’t add up. The meeting signal had been urgent and meant that they should rendezvous on the half hour, wait five minutes and if there was no contact, leave, return in an hour and try again. If there was no success on the third try, they would move everything back twenty-four hours. But a half-hour mark had already passed, Viliam had not moved away and alarms were sounding in Frash’s head. He was trying to decipher the puzzle when he saw two men trotting along an iron fence toward Viliam, who obviously saw them but did not react until they were nearly on top of him. Frash saw him pull a pistol from the back of his belt and run, but a shot sent him crashing into a third man coming from the opposite direction. Viliam and the man scuffled briefly, there were two muffled pops, and then the man was standing over Lumbas. Frash n
eeded to see no more and left immediately, walking slowly with a fake limp, his shovel on his shoulder. Kill them, a frantic voice begged; Flee, a second voice said.
As soon as he was out of the cemetery Frash got into a crowded bus, rode two blocks, got off, caught a bus in another direction, rode several kilometers, disembarked, and walked an S pattern through a park until he was sure he was not followed. Had the ambush been meant for both of them? The trees in the park had no leaves. Fall, the dying season. This had been his mother’s expression. Why did he remember it now?
He had been too far from the assailants to see more than that they were big and burly. The one who had killed Viliam might have been Asian, he thought. Who were they? It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Priorities. Something is wrong, but now’s not the time to think about it. Figure it out when you’re safe. Right now you have to concentrate on getting out.
Frash kept three separate sets of identity papers in three different dead drops. He made for the nearest one, picked up his package, flagged a cab, and within forty minutes of arriving at the airport was airborne. His ticket was one-way, Belgrade to London, with a stopover in Paris, but he had no intention of going to England.
What had gone wrong? In one week the full operation would have been launched. Months of planning and work were reduced to seven days of anticipation. Viliam was not supposed to contact him again until the operation had begun, but he had. Now it was all finished; Viliam had been the link, the link was dead and soon he would be persona non grata. Viliam had been relaxed and smoking even when they ran toward him, so he must have known the assailants, otherwise why hadn’t he reacted sooner?
The frustration was overwhelming, and as Frash sat in his seat trembling with rage, a flight attendant came up and knelt in the aisle. “Are you all right?” She had short brown hair, small dark eyes and a soothing tone developed with practice. When she touched his leg with her hand he stared at it until she moved it. “I just wanted to help,” she apologized. When he looked at her, her eyes widened and she fled down the aisle.
Viliam had set him up. The trap had been intended for both of them, and that told him all he needed to know. The whole thing had been a setup right from the start. Did his brother know? Frash could barely contain his rage.
His mother had recounted the events so often that Frash sometimes imagined he had been there. She always referred to it as the Black Day; it lay on him like a shroud. Not that he was fixated, but it was always there just under the surface, gnawing silently like worms eating away at wood.
The aspiring congressman wore a navy blue suit, tailored carefully, Mother said, with a blue silk tie, knotted perfectly. He was thin but relaxed, a man-boy with a golden tan and protruding eyes that made him seem sad and angry at the same time; he stood by while the patriarch of the Kennedy clan sat on the front of a wooden chair, his legs crossed, hands joined in his lap, like a closed and independent circuit, Mother said. The meeting had been arranged by Monsignor Salvatore Milani, a longtime power broker among the hordes of Italians who, in the decades before the war, had pushed the Irish out of Boston s North End.
John F. Kennedy, late of the U.S. Navy and a brief stint as a journalist, was about to enter the political arena and his father, the former ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, was using his influence and money to help the effort, a feudal lord settling the fief. Father Milani had said that this was the time to make a deal and Mother had believed him. A priest. The ambassador, she said, had cold, hard eyes and the countenance of a man accustomed to deciding the fate of others.
His father had opposed his mother’s plan, but when she set her mind there was no way to turn it. Milani led her to the Bellevue Hotel and took her up to the suite of rooms where the younger Kennedy was assembling his campaign.
“This is Mrs. Frascetti. She’s a professor at BC and a good Catholic like us. She has connections,” Milani added before leaving her alone with the two men. She had dressed carefully that day, picking a conservative gray dress and black shoes with not-too-high heels. A serious dress for serious business.
“I’m Albanian,” she told them. “My husband was in Zog’s regime, a leader of the Catholic faction. We left before Mussolini came and went to France. We left there because of the Nazis. Now we are here. We have a network: priests, soldiers, scholars, intellectuals, people of substance. We intend to take back our country.”
The ambassador’s tone was razor-sharp. “Get to the point.” He checked his watch, then tightened the knot of his tie. Humiliating, she told her son later.
“I can deliver votes,” she said. “My husband and I know Albanians up and down the East Coast.”
“How many do you know in the Eleventh Congressional District?” the ambassador asked. He looked past her, she said later, or through her. It was hard to tell. She wanted to check a mirror to reassure herself that her reflection had not been stolen; her eyes had been puffy and red when she confessed this to her son. “We’re people without shadows,” she sobbed. “They mocked us.”
“Two hundred,” she told her inquisitor.
“Of voting age,” he growled.
“Sixty or seventy.”
“Sixty or seventy,” the ambassador said, his face a pinkish-gray mask. “Fascinating.” A long pause followed. “How many are actually registered to vote?”
How could such an emotionless old man sire children? she wondered. “All of them,” she said too quickly.
“Democrats?”
She said later that her mouth moved, but it was filled with cotton and no sound came out. She nodded, her mind a blank. Party labels meant very little in Albania; what mattered were convictions and how you built a coalition. “Some,” she said with a croak after a long silence. “It’s irrelevant.”
“Explain,” the ambassador ordered.
“It doesn’t matter because I can deliver them all. You can rely on that.”
“I see,” he said. “Sixty or seventy people of voting age, some of whom may be registered Democrats and you can deliver them all to my son.” At this the son turned away from his father. “Is that it?” Was the son laughing? Why had he walked away? Earlier she was certain that he had been staring at her breasts. She felt naked before such men.
“Yes, that’s it.” She crossed her arms to shield herself.
“Sixty or seventy votes can make a difference,” the Ambassador said. She thought his tone playful. “And what is it you expect in return for delivering this—bloc?”
“Your son will be in Congress and his position will give him the means to influence the coming debates over sovereign lands taken illegally by the Communists.”
“I see,” the ambassador said. “For sixty or seventy votes, an unknown number of which may be Democrats, you expect access to the United States Congress.”
“You have my word.”
He had tried a smile at this juncture but it was obviously not something he used often and it came out a sneer. “Thank you for coming by.” No hand was extended; the eyes were fixed on a far wall.
The son had hold of her arm; it was over before it began and she had trouble sorting her thoughts. “When will I hear from you?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Father Milani,” the younger Kennedy said as he slipped her into the other room. “The ambassador would like to see you for a moment.” He gave her a wide smile and a reassuring pat on the back of the hand. “Thanks.”
The door was not completely closed. The voices behind it were not particularly interested in confidentiality. She heard the ambassador’s voice above the other two. “Jesus, Sal. Sixty or seventy votes? Where the hell did you find that one?” Their laughter drove her from the hotel.
She told her son everything. Over and over. Almost a mantra. Kennedy: the name was marked now, not by the mother, but by the son. By him. An insult was a crime and the penalty was death. Family honor was now on Albert Frash’s shoulders. One day he would find a way to even the score. Do it now, a hard voice said deep inside him.
The dark-haired attendant hugged herself and shook her head. She had seen the eyes of a maniac.
7 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1960, 2:10 P.M.Paris
Ramiz Kristo tapped his foot to funnel off nervous energy. It had been his idea for the group to meet in the woman’s flat, but now she was complicating matters. Paula Gide-Lemestre was twenty-eight, a short, gaunt figure with auburn hair and snow-white flesh covered with rust-colored freckles. The daughter of a former member of the Resistance and minister of education, she had been schooled in Switzerland and America; she was French, but she spoke English with a perfect American accent and put off would-be suitors with proclamations of sexual liberation and right-wing politics. Paula believed in monarchies, and because none remained in France she had loosely allied herself with those Albanians who served the exiled King Zog I.
In some ways this was a legacy. Paula’s mother had been a longtime supporter of artistic and émigré causes, and had had more than a few flings with the men who populated such groups. Like her husband, Jarelle Gide-Lemestre had served in the underground, was supported by her own inheritance, and had raised her only daughter to be fierce in spirit and to think and act for herself. When Zog and his entourage abandoned Cairo in the wake of a tax dispute with the Egyptians, she had stepped forward to welcome the exiles to France. To her mother the Albanians were exotic pets; to Paula they were potential collaborators, and though she suspected that she seemed flighty to them, her ardor for the Albanian cause was earnest. The problem with counterrevolution aimed at a distant place was that it was boring. All they did was hold meetings. God, how they could talk.
Zog and his beautiful wife were not attracted to the fawning French society, but many of the king’s intimates were, believing that their lavish treatment in France was their due, their rightful status in their own country having been usurped first by Mussolini and then denied by the Communists under Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu. After six years, however, the love affair with French society, which in the best of times tended to be fickle about fringe political causes, had abated, leaving the majority of the Albanians to their own devices.