The Domino Conspiracy Page 7

  With considerable effort he crawled onto the double bed next to the sleeping woman and examined her. Was she Hispanic? Mexican? No, Cuban, or maybe Venezuelan. Sylvia something. Sandy, Sally, Sarah. Probably she had told him, but the previous night’s events were fragments without pattern, nothing linear, more a slide show with no order and randomly placed blanks. She was a customer; that much he could remember. From Miami, she had told him. It was an interesting order: six cases of fragmentation grenades, three BARS with ammo, twelve customized M-1s with Bausch & Lomb sniper scopes. She had also pressed him for several boxes of .22 caliber ammunition with subsonic loads, but he had turned her down on this because such ordnance smacked of assassination work, which he avoided on principle.

  The shipment was to be sent to a warehouse in New Orleans. There was little doubt that it was the CIA that was backing her organization. Funny how life twisted in repetitive patterns. Valentine had left the OSS in 1946, and as soon as he bought his military surplus business in 1956 the CIA had sent emissaries to visit him, not payroll employees but sanitized intermediaries, people who for a fee would do as they were asked but who could not be easily traced back to the Company, their deniability based on the careful construction of layers. These emissaries let him know that certain business would come his way, and that they would provide assistance in acquiring certain difficult-to-get matériel. It had been a lucrative arrangement; he made a nice profit, and the Company’s selected clients received what they needed. Yet he was not devoid of principles; he would not sell silencers or special ammunition. They could obtain these for themselves elsewhere.

  Valentine rarely saw such customers more than once. Usually they came alone, or sometimes in pairs, but never in threes. He dealt with certain groups several times, but generally with different people each time. Almost always they were men, so it had been a pleasant surprise when this woman had shown up the previous afternoon. They’d argued about price, compromised, completed their business, talked, gone for a drink and ended up in his three-room suite in the Hotel Galvez.

  Now he wondered who she was. Her skin was tanned but without luster, like stagnant backwater in the Atchafalaya Swamp. She had long, straight black hair that had twisted and matted during the night; now it lay against her oversized pillow like a wispy halo. Her short, muscular arms were stretched out straight, her legs apart. Tiny ankles and feet. Small breasts, but perfectly formed, gravity pulling them flat. A small shaft of light reflected back to the bed from the mirror on the opposite wall, illuminating a thick, dark mass of pubic hair. There was a line of thin, soft hair from the navel down. Had she been an enthusiastic lover or catatonic? He had no idea and didn’t care, but maybe she knew where the other bottle was.

  It’s the slivovitz, he told himself. Plum brandy: he had acquired a taste for it during the war. He had supervised a joint operation, combining his Italian partisans with a Yugoslavian group, and afterward they had gone on a three-day binge. Since 1948 he had gotten several cases a year from an importer in Miami who had a connection in Havana. Why the Cubans had slivovitz was a mystery, but now that Castro was running the show he assumed his connection was broken. Fidel had the scent of a moralist, as all revolutionaries did, and he guessed he would be a dangerous pain in the ass for the U.S.

  The woman, he remembered, had drunk her brandy too fast. Vaguely he remembered her vomiting out the fifth-floor window. Or was that another woman and another night? Since Ermine’s death there had been a lot of women and he seldom remembered faces, much less names.

  The woman looked to be in deep sleep. He debated awakening her. He was certain there had been three bottles of slivovitz, but now he saw only two empties. She was attractive but of indeterminate age, which was not unusual for Hispanics, if that’s what she was. She might be twenty-five or forty or anywhere in between. Some remained firm and young forever; others turned into wrinkled hags when barely out of their teens. Had they finished the third bottle, too? Shit.

  “Hey,” he said, poking at the woman’s left shoulder. “Hey . . .” What was her name? In the future, he promised himself, he would write down their names and stuff the note in his pocket for later reference. It would make mornings less clumsy. “C’mon . . . Miss.” He poked harder this time.

  When she awoke, it was with her eyes alone, and he had a sudden sense that she was coiled to repel an attack, yet her body was not tensed. Only her eyes moved, and when they reached him they stopped. “You want to do it again?” she asked. Peculiar accent. What was it?

  He shook his head. “Not that,” he said, trying to smile, but his head hurt too much. What he needed was a drink from the third bottle.

  “Thank God,” she said. “Last night I was afraid you were incapable of getting enough.” There was an accent. Very slight. Dutch? German? But she looked Hispanic.

  He grimaced and held up one of the empty bottles. “Where’s the other one?”

  “A good thing,” she said. “I’m sore down there.” Her eyes showed the way. “You really ought to see a doctor about your problem,” she added.

  Valentine shifted automatically to defense. “I don’t need a doctor. I don’t have to drink. I like to drink, and right now I’d like to find that other bottle. It’s my last one. Maybe forever,” he said disconsolately, which was overly dramatic, perhaps, but true.

  “I wasn’t referring to your drinking,” she said calmly. “Priapism. Abnormally prolonged erection. Usually there is no libido connected to it; often there is excruciating pain. Neither of these symptoms seems to pertain to you. It can be caused by injuries to the spinal cord. Have you ever hurt your back?”

  Valentine stared incredulously at her. “Who are you, Florence Nightingale?”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You should see a doctor. It could be your back or an obstruction in the urinary tract. There are medicines and surgical treatments to repair the damage. It can be fixed.”

  His temper started to flare, but he checked himself. “I’ve never had complaints before.”

  “I’m not complaining.” She stretched leisurely, starting with her ankles; he watched as she methodically flexed her muscles and joints. Again he had a sense that there was more to her than his first impression, an air of self-discipline that most people lacked. Had it been reflected in their lovemaking? He tried to remember, but couldn’t. It didn’t matter; in an hour she’d be stale air. “The fact is,” she said as she rolled her shoulders forward, “that it was an exquisite night. You gave me great pleasure, and I hope I did the same for you.”

  “Sure.” Where was the other bottle? He looked around.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said, “but such conditions can be dangerous.”

  “It’s always been that way,” he told her, wondering why he felt the need to offer an excuse.

  “In any event, I remember only two bottles, and they were more than enough. I think I was sick.”

  “I’m certain I had three.” He made a face and looked around the room again. “You puked,” he added.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Do you always drink so heavily?”

  “That? That was just social drinking. Sometimes I really tie one on.”

  “What time is it?”

  The switches in their conversation were intensifying his headache. “Almost seven,” he told her. Or was it six, or eight?

  “Got to get home before my husband finds me.” When he recoiled she laughed at him. “A little joke,” she said. “No husband. But I do have to go catch a plane in Houston.”

  She closed her eyes and moaned, then rolled across the bed, planted her feet solidly on the floor and disappeared into the bathroom. Her muscular buttocks rippled as she walked. She showered, emerged a few minutes later with a small towel wrapped around her head, gathered her clothes into a pile and began dressing. As she pulled on one of her nylons she paused, tilted her head to the side and smiled at him. “One more time before I leave?”

  “Like one for the road?”

  “That�
��s the general idea.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Valentine said. “No offense.”

  She shrugged, fastened her garter belt, dropped a gray shift over the top, wiggled it into place, speared her shoes with her toes and went to the mirror to examine herself. “Horror show,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Want some advice?” he asked.

  “Part of the overnight service?”

  “Just this once. If you’re hooked up with the Company, be damned careful. They tend to promise a hell of a lot more than they deliver. Take it from me.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then came over, kissed his forehead lightly, walked to the door and opened it. “A confession,” she said. “The third bottle’s on the ledge.” She pointed to the window. “Sorry, but another bottle of that stuff would have killed us both, and if I’m going to die I want it to count for something.”

  Valentine moved quickly to the window and leaned out. The bottle was on a narrow ledge tucked neatly against the sandstone wall. When he turned back, she was gone. He sat down on the bed, opened the last bottle, poured a small quantity into one of the water glasses they had used last night and thought of Ermine. No matter how many women he slept with, his mind retreated to Ermine when they were gone. Today, however, the memories seemed dimmer than usual.

  They had married in 1947, and she had drowned in 1951 while they were fishing for bass in the Atchafalaya, a remote bayou in southern Louisiana filled with cypress stumps and crawdads. He had gotten out of the pirogue and made his way across several logs in order to reach a dark hole. He pitched a dozen casts, working the surface lure back to him with a wiggling motion, but there were no takers. When he turned around, the pirogue was empty and there was no sign of his wife.

  At first he thought it was another of her practical jokes. She was forever sneaking up on him, trying to scare hell out of him. But it wasn’t funny this time, and after thirty minutes he knew something was seriously wrong. He began diving, ignoring the water snakes and black-backed cottonmouths that wiggled wildly away from him into thick patches of floating white-water hyacinths.

  He found her body just before sundown and realized what had happened. She had slipped into the water intending to pop to the surface in front of him, only she had gotten tangled in some submerged cypress roots, which became a webbed prison. It took great effort to dislodge her body and get it into the boat.

  There had been a cursory investigation by the parish coroner, who had ruled it accidental drowning. Then he had buried her in New Orleans in the family vault in what remained of old St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on Rampart Street. A priest and two Negro altar boys officiated. There was no need for pallbearers; he’d cremated her, which was what she had wanted.

  Ermine had relished the fire of slivovitz as much as he did. She liked everything he liked, and he loved her. “Widower,” he said out loud. “Stupid word.” He raised his glass in salute, took a sip, then set the glass down. On June 2 she would be dead ten years. Where had the time gone? Wasted, mostly. Suddenly his need for a drink was gone. He put the bottle back on the ledge and took a shower.

  Later he went downstairs and checked the desk for messages. The desk clerk was named Bobby Something, from the Big Thicket country north of Houston. He had bowlegs and a cowboy’s gaunt face. “Not looking so good, Mr. V.”

  Valentine did not like Bobby Something. Hotel people were supposed to be invisible, especially in a classy place like the Galvez. People who patronized old-line hotels like this expected privacy and paid for it.

  “Messages?”

  “I’ll look,” the clerk said. “Heard you had the company of a fine-looking’ woman last night. Amazin’ how you find ’em, Mr. V. What’s your secret? Me, I been in Galveston five years and I never seem ta’ find ’em, but you seem ta’ have ’em all the time. Like fishing, I guess. They say five percent of the fisherman catch ninety percent of the fish.” Bobby checked the pigeonholes behind him. Valentine imagined that his lips moved when he read the numbers on the small brass plates above each box. “Hey! You got something.” When he returned to the chest-high counter, he held the envelope back, forcing Valentine to reach for it. “You ever got too many split-tails to handle you might could toss one my way,” he said.

  “Learn to fish first,” Valentine said. He snatched the message away with a quick motion, then retreated several feet into the lobby to read the message. There was a tiny note inside the envelope. He read it and froze. It said, “Call Arizona ASAP.” The area code was Washington, D.C.

  “Hey, Mr. V,” Bobby Something called out from behind the desk. “You see a ghost or what?”

  13 MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 1961, 7:40 P.M.Vinnitsa, Ukraine

  His was a soldier’s room, Colonel Taras Ivanovich Bailov reminded himself. Small and devoid of decoration, it was a place to store clothing and tools and to sleep. Soon he would again be with Raya in Moscow, and then he could bask in the spaciousness of her accommodations. And bask in her. The mere thought of the slippery, warm sleeve between Raya Orlava’s legs provoked a response that made him laugh at himself. Here he was preparing to make a night parachute drop from two hundred meters and his independent-minded member was standing stiffly at attention with no more stimulation than a memory. He taught his Spetsnaz troops the importance of self-control, yet he could not control his own appendage. Shame on you, Taras Ivanovich, shame.

  Soon, however, thoughts of Raya faded as Bailov focused on the task ahead. His head and face shaved clean, he stood beside his bed, which was neither a real bed nor the standard-issue cot, but a wooden box two meters long and a half meter high. Early in his Spetsnaz career Bailov had decided that to live comfortably on base rendered living primitively in the field unnecessarily difficult; to shift from a softer setting to a harder one created natural psychological resentment, especially early in a mission before the body accustomed itself to privation. This response, he reasoned, would most often occur early in a mission or exercise, which was always the most dangerous time. Because of this, he decided to live in such a way that any psychological adjustment would be minimal, which meant eliminating creature comforts away from the field. Thereafter he slept in a hard wooden box, using only his sleeping bag for bedding and his pack for a pillow. He had begun this practice early in his military life, and as he rose in rank the men who served with him copied him not because he demanded it but because they respected him and understood the purpose. By now all the officers in the First Independent Spetsnaz Brigade slept in wooden boxes, which they called Bailov Coffins. Between missions their commander kept his head shaved clean and did not allow his hair to grow. This, too, the men of the First Brigade copied, and over time their shaved heads became their trademark.

  Standing beside his narrow box, Bailov pulled on two pairs of thick gray wool socks, stepped into porous linen underwear and then put on a net vest that hung loosely over the undergarments to create a layer of insulating air. Fatigues next, their seams stitched several times with heavy thread to provide extra strength; they were padded at the elbows, knees, and shoulders to make them more durable. Boots, his old friends, soft, reaching up to midcalf with numerous straps and wide, soft soles of special material resistant to fire and nearly impossible to penetrate. His gray leather helmet was shaped precisely to the dimensions and contours of his head and fit like a mask. It was snug; he would not remove it until the mission had ended. Next, a fur jacket with a black silk lining, and over this a special poncho that hung to his knees, its outer surface raspy to provide traction on snow and ice. Over all of this he donned a white winter smock for camouflage.

  When Bailov dressed for a mission he imagined himself to be a gladiator preparing to enter the arena. He had talked so much about gladiators that his troops called the regiment The Gladiators, which pleased him immensely. They had even presented him with a reproduction of a golden helmet with red plumes that they had liberated from a movie company while they were on maneuvers in Czechoslovakia. The helmet was now displayed in the
mess hall; Bailov wore it only when the regiment was celebrating. Unlike other Soviet military units, the First Brigade had a mess hall that doubled as its recreation center. Enlisted men and officers always ate and played together, which instilled a sense of belonging.

  Bailov checked his watch and equipment. Flat gray pack; he would attach this to his waist for the jump. A 180-gram flask for water. Water-purification tablets; his men called them anti-shit pills. Three kilos of specially packaged food. Four boxes of matches that would ignite even when wet. A supply of fuel tablets that could be used to heat food, like the Americans’ Sterno but more concentrated and reliable. An array of medicines and antiseptics. One small towel, a plastic toothbrush, toothpaste, foldable razor, liquid soap in a metal tube, fishing gear, needle and thread. Weapons: P-8 pistol with silencer and sixty-four rounds of special ammo; a Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifle with one hundred and twenty rounds; on his right calf his black Spetsnaz knife, worth a fortune on the black market. The knife was spring-loaded with a button trigger; the blade could be shot like a bullet and at forty-five meters would bury itself deep in its target. He carried four extra blades in a leather case strapped to his left calf.

  Satisfied that he had everything, Bailov slid his AK-47 into its black-leather case, turned off the single naked bulb overhead and headed for the briefing room two kilometers away. In other branches of service the men were transported, but Spetsnaz moved by its own power, which meant everyone walked, officers included. Fitness was paramount.

  Four groups of twelve men each, called sticks, would make a jump from four small aircraft in trail formation. Bailov sat with his own stick and let his regimental staff officers conduct the briefing. The men around him were attentive but pumped with adrenaline, so a lot of snide comments were aimed at the briefing officers. Bailov liked it that the men did not alter their behavior in his presence; he had earned their respect and they his, which removed the need for artificial behavior. They were tough, coarse and wild. What’s got a black heart, two legs and would fuck a snake? Spetsnaz! They would follow the orders of any officer, of course, but they respected only those who demonstrated that they had equal competence and greater aggressiveness than themselves. Bailov was the hardest officer they had ever known, and the fairest. Their colonel.