The Domino Conspiracy Page 6

  “If you two could shoot straight, we wouldn’t need more,” Ezdovo shouted as he dug his heels into the gelding. It was a joke. The three of them were renowned for their marksmanship; each year the two boys got better, and Ezdovo told himself that when age began to take its toll on his eyes, as it surely would, they would become his masters. Perhaps then he would remain at home and let them hunt on their own. He could go out to visit them from time to time, but he would leave it to them to harvest the furs. With luck, however, there remained many more years with life as it was. He was fifty-two years old, technically too old for this strenuous life, but he was strong, fit and in perfect health. Talia was forty-one but looked younger, and soon they would fuse again and take strength from each other, as they had for sixteen miraculous years.

  Tanga had a population of four hundred, about half of them children. Most of the villagers were of Cossack descent and proud of their heritage. Many of them could trace their ancestors back to the Cossacks posted to what was now Ulan-Ude in 1666; they treasured the knowledge that Cossacks, male and female, were hard, reliable people, more interested in personal independence than in a sense of community. But when faced by an outside threat the people of Tanga were a fierce lot, and Ezdovo and Talia were pleased to be among them.

  The village was built in a sprawling valley eight kilometers west of the river. Unlike most frontier villages, where buildings tended to be packed together, Tanga was spread out. Most houses were within hailing distance of each other, but no closer, the only exception being several in the town’s center built around provision stores and a large log meeting hall that in summer was the scene of the richest fur auction in the Buryat Autonomous Republic. Unlike most Soviet hunters in Siberia, who worked under an arrangement that gave them a base salary from the state and a fee for the pelts taken, the fur hunters of Tanga were independent, negotiating each year with the government to establish the season’s prices. Two summers ago, when its prices for their furs were too low, the Tangans had refused to sell their pelts, which had provoked an angry response from Moscow.

  “Bullshit,” Ezdovo said to his colleagues. “The state is our only customer. If it won’t meet our prices, then we won’t sell. There are always the Chinese.” This position had started an argument that ended in several fistfights. It was common knowledge that Chinese buyers waited on the borders to buy prime Russian pelts, but usually they dealt with individual hunters. Never had an entire village threatened to make illegal sales to the Chinese. It was a serious threat, and when the fighting was over, the state’s buyers retreated to Ulan-Ude to seek direction from Moscow.

  Many people in the village were torn. They could take furs legally only if the government renewed their annual licenses, but it had been exhilarating to see the frightened government scabs flee with their tails between their legs. It was risky, but at least they had acted as Cossacks, and what was more important than that? Moscow could stick its rubles up its ass.

  The government men returned in late August, this time led by two men from Moscow, one of them a deputy minister of agriculture; they also brought two dozen armed men with them. KGB, Talia said when she saw them. They wore new clothes and looked nervous. In cities KGB men were accustomed to respect and fear, but in Tanga the people openly ridiculed their appearance and the way they stuck together like frightened boys.

  The government officials were unexpectedly polite and respectful. They wanted to talk. Their bearing and soft voices said Let’s use logic. Talia was chosen to represent the hunters, which unnerved the men from Moscow. How could a woman speak for these crazy Cossacks? No conference was held among the hunters to map strategy; Talia knew how her people felt and she understood what was expected of her. She put on one of her two dresses, waited until the government men were seated in the community hall and then staged a grand entrance. The dress was bright red with no sleeves, and cut short so that her long, tanned legs showed amply above white open-toed, high-heeled shoes. The government men were stunned by her beauty. The townspeople grinned at one another.

  The state had reconsidered, the two men began. They went through their list, reciting revised prices for various qualities and sizes, which were 20 percent higher than the original offer but still 20 percent below the previous season’s, and exactly half of what the hunters of Tanga had calculated the value of the pelts to be.

  Talia greeted their effort with a wide smile followed by the kind of laugh reserved by adults for children who have been naughty in a cute way. “We appreciate your generosity,” she told the men, “but these prices are unacceptable. You give us no choice. Our livelihoods depend on the prices, and we reject these. Do better or do without.”

  The deputy minister was a short man with reddish-blond hair and a freckled face. “These prices are better than others get.”

  “They should be; our furs are better.”

  “Some income is better than no income,” he argued.

  “Not here,” Talia said. “This is not a city. Everything we have we must get for ourselves. Either the price is adequate or we have no reason to sell. The furs will not melt, and there is always next year; perhaps prices will be higher then. In any event we have had our best sable harvest in several years.”

  The rich black fur of the Barguzin sable was the most valuable in the world. At one time the state had tried to raise the animals on farms, but they had proved temperamental and refused to breed. The program had failed miserably, and once again it fell to hunters to fulfill most of the world’s demand for this precious fur. Either they sold their furs or the world went without, which meant that the government lost a valuable source of foreign currency. Talia knew that her people had the advantage.

  “You are backward, stubborn people,” the man from Moscow told her. His good nature had faded.

  “In some ways of life, stubbornness is a virtue, not a fault.”

  “I am not authorized to negotiate beyond the stated prices,” the man said defensively. “I will have to discuss your position with my superiors.”

  “Tell Nikita Sergeievich,” one of the hunters called out. “He’s one of us.”

  The ministry official glared at the hunters. “I should tell you,” he said, his voice deepening, “that it has been proposed that individual licenses be abolished and that all fur harvesting become exclusively a state venture.”

  Talia’s smile did not waver. “It is one thing to pass an edict in Moscow and quite another to enforce it in the Yablonovy Mountains. You could deny us our licenses, but you cannot stop us from taking furs. Here God is on high and the Kremlin is far away.”

  The official raised his voice. “It could become an issue of force.”

  “Your words are wasted,” Talia said. “There are few of us and many of you, but the Yablonovy Mountains are ours, and like you we understand the essence of direct action. How could you use force? Do you have men enough to guard every rock in these mountains? Can the KGB trap a cloud?” She laughed and the room erupted with laughter.

  The government man was red in the face. “Uncooperative citizens can be dealt with.”

  Talia’s voice turned hard. “I repeat, this is not Moscow, comrade. There are no roads, no trains, no airports. You cannot approach in force without our knowledge. Even paratroops would be ineffective; the mountains would separate them and make concerted activity impossible. To employ force, you would require huge resources, all of which we could negate with little effort.”

  “Your words might be judged in some quarters to be seditious.”

  “No, comrade,” Talia said. “We are true citizens and as loyal as you. We speak only facts; our sole interest is in justice and fairness. We are resolved in this matter; there will be no sale this year. Perhaps next summer we can meet to discuss this again.”

  “You cannot blackmail the state,” the man said angrily. He was clearly having great difficulty controlling himself.

  “And you, comrade, will not blackmail us,” Talia said. “Let us declare a stalemate; tak
e the winter to reconsider your position.”

  “You will starve over winter,” the deputy minister’s associate blurted.

  “That is entirely possible,” Talia said, “but we will still have the furs and you will not.” She stood then and clasped her husband’s arm. “We have differences,” she told the men from Moscow, “but here we offer food and drink to visitors even when we don’t agree with them. We invite you to join us.” The tables in the hall had been laden with food.

  The officials declined the invitation and left immediately for Ulan-Ude, but the people of Tanga celebrated with a night-long feast. The next day most of the adults were still drunk or in the initial phases of excruciating hangovers.

  That fall the Soviet government announced to the West that a virus had overwhelmed the Barguzin sable population, so Western buyers found less than a quarter of the normal supply. By summer prices had skyrocketed; when the government buyers returned to Tanga they paid even more generously than the villagers had anticipated and all was well again. By standing their ground and withholding their furs, the Tangans had helped not only themselves but increased the profit and foreign currency that came to the U.S.S.R. from pelt sales. The standoff that had nearly become a revolt had turned out well, and virtually no one outside Tanga and some high-placed government officials in Moscow were aware of what had happened.

  This episode increased Talia’s stature in the village, but it also pinpointed her as a troublemaker with the authorities. Talia and Ezdovo recognized this danger, but life today was so demanding and full that to worry about tomorrow was foolish. Done was done.

  That had been two years ago. Now even Ezdovo’s horse was excited and pressing to gallop, but he reined him in. When your heart is pounding and your head light with anticipation, he told himself, it’s important to maintain composure.

  Their house was built in a clearing on a small rise. The cedar trees around it were massive, some of them more than seventy meters high, with girths over three meters. Below the log house were larch trees and a stand of silver firs. When it was exceptionally cold the pitch in the pines sometimes exploded like grenades, a sound Talia called “winter music.”

  Though he was anxious to see his wife, Ezdovo did not go directly to the house. Instead he unsaddled his horse, checked the animal’s legs for cuts from the snow’s crust, wiped him dry, covered him with a heavy blanket, filled the grain bucket and checked the water trough. In the Yablonovy Mountains one survived by attending to detail and doing first those things that needed doing, even if your own desires had to be delayed. There was a thin layer of ice across the water trough, but Ezdovo broke it with slight hand pressure and knew the horse would be all right. He had designed the trough to collect water from a spring that came from a rocky formation above the barn; because the water moved constantly under tremendous force, it rarely froze in the pipes and formed only surface ice in the trough.

  Returning to the barn, Ezdovo hoisted his gear and turned to find Talia standing two meters away. Her black hair was loose and fluttered in the winter draft that blew through the barn. She wore a heavy robe and knee-high sealskin boots. She untied the robe and let it fall, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. “Here,” she said. “Now. A month is too long to be apart.”

  11 SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 1961, 1:05 A.M.Moscow

  Situated in the stern section of a barge moored permanently in the Moscow River, the club was illegal and, like many semisecret establishments in the Russian capital, had its own peculiar clientele, in this instance fliers and Aviation Ministry people.

  Trubkin arrived just after midnight and ordered a glass of straight gin. Better than vodka, he reasoned. He loathed gin, which meant he’d nurse this one glass and keep his senses. The main room was paneled with varnished white cedar and dimly lit. Three young men with scraggy beards sat cross-legged on the floor tuning their guitars. Two bartenders sullenly stacked tall glasses behind a plywood bar. Several young women sat at a table talking in low tones; Trubkin noted that they were a younger lot than usual and considerably more attractive than the regulars. Secretaries or students looking for some fun and a few extra rubles—whores, not pros.

  Colonel Sergei “Snake” Mandrich sauntered in an hour later, his topcoat open and dripping melting snow. The two men embraced and sat down. “The Snake now flies a desk,” Trubkin said, “but he looks fit.” Mandrich had a diamond-shaped head and bulging eyes. When he spoke, his tongue flicked in and out as he constantly wet his lips. As a pilot he had been emotionless, his appearance and demeanor accounting for his nickname.

  “Can’t say the same for you,” Mandrich shot back good-naturedly. “No word in two years, and suddenly you want to meet. You look like shit. I heard about your medical problem, and I’m sorry. You were the best.”

  The two men had known each other off and on for twelve years. They had met while in flight school, then taught North Korean pilots to fly MiG-17s during the Korean War; later they had served together in a MiG-21 interceptor group on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Both had been test-pilot-program graduates and cosmonaut trainees, but Mandrich had been eliminated early on, then rewarded with a flight squadron command. Now he was in Moscow as Air Force liaison to the Mikoyan Aircraft Works, where a new delta-wing interceptor was in development.

  “We’re born into our bodies,” Trubkin said disconsolately. “In my experience they seem to fail when we need them the most.”

  “You lived hard,” Mandrich said. “Maybe too hard.”

  Trubkin raised his glass to his old friend and nodded. “Direct as ever. I need information.”

  Mandrich called a waiter over and ordered a glass of vodka for himself. The band began to play soft jazz, an off-melody with lots of chording and discordant notes.

  “It has to do with your current assignment.”

  “Classified,” Mandrich said with a smile.

  “Not details. I’m only interested in security issues. I need to be educated.”

  The waiter brought vodka and Mandrich leaned forward. “Such as?”

  “How were you selected?”

  “Based on my background.”

  “Not that. What mechanism is used to make selections? There must be many candidates for any job; how do they cull the lists?”

  “Committee,” Mandrich said. “Each service has its own, but for high-level assignments there’s a mixed group, including the KGB and the Ministry of Aviation.”

  “To whom does this group report?”

  Mandrich did not answer right away. “Nice,” he said, nodding toward the women who were now mingling with purpose.

  “The selection group,” Trubkin said, turning his friend back to the question.

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “Don’t press,” Trubkin said softly. “Leave it at I have a need to know and that we’ve been through a lot of living together.”

  Mandrich took a drink of vodka and grunted. “Dual reporting to the General Staff and the Politburo.”

  “You have full responsibility for your project?”

  “That’s a matter of semantics,” Mandrich said wistfully. “The Mikoyan people have the engineering responsibility, but directions, policy and administration reside with me.”

  “How many people on your staff?”

  “A hundred, more or less.”

  “You select your own people?”

  “I can say who I want. You looking for a job?”

  “I have more than enough to do right now.” But it was an interesting thought, and Trubkin tucked it away. “Are your requests honored?”

  “Sometimes. If I make an issue of someone I can usually get him, but mostly I ask for certain qualifications, and then the selection committee sends me somebody who matches the request.”

  “You accept this?”

  “You mean the lack of control? Of course, but the people they send are competent, and that’s what matters. Even in a single-seat interceptor control is an illusion. It’s the Soviet way.
”

  “But if the project fails, you get the blame.”

  Mandrich grinned and raised his vodka in salute. “That’s how it is.”

  Later Trubkin negotiated a price with two of the women whom they took to a forward cabin. Initially the women objected to being in the same room, but Trubkin sweetened the price and they reluctantly agreed.

  At 7:00 A.M. the two men dressed, left the women, walked the narrow gangway to shore and shook hands. “An interesting night,” Mandrich said with a grin. “It was like old times.”

  Trubkin doubted that his life would ever again be like old times. “Does the selection committee report to a particular individual or to the group at large?”

  “There are co-chairmen,” Mandrich said. “Malinovsky and Khrushchev, but Shelepin is the liaison for both groups. The KGB is always the glue.”

  Trubkin stared at the Moscow River and turned up his collar. Why did Khrushchev’s name keep turning up? But Shelepin was a new name and a troublesome one. The former cosmonaut walked along the river with snow spitting at his back. Shelepin was said to be Khrushchev’s man, moved to the KGB three years before. Was he engineering something? Or had Khrushchev started an initiative to implicate Shelepin or others of high rank? Anything was possible, which meant he had to go carefully from here on. Only one thing was certain now: Malinovsky could be ruled out. He was a Khrushchev man; the defense minister’s mouth, cynics quipped, was a perfect fit for the General Secretary’s dick.

  12 TUESDAY, JANUARY 10,1961, 7:00 A.M.Galveston, Texas

  Beau Valentine was sprawled on the floor beside the bed, his bare legs covered by a tan raincoat that smelled faintly of perfume. On the floor next to him were two boxes of fried chicken, a carton of runny coleslaw on its side, several slices of dark green jalapeños and a plastic cup of red pop. There was an odd blend of aromas: perfume, rancid chicken, slaw, hot peppers, semen and sweat, the last two a familiar part of mornings-after. He rolled slowly onto his left side and stared at two empty green bottles under the bed. Where the hell was the third one?