“Anything else?” Katukov asked. He still seemed unflappable. “No? Then let me summarize if I may. Jovanović’s deposition makes it impossible for certain forces in the Kremlin to remove their opposition. Your deposition makes it impossible for me to do anything but admit defeat gracefully and send you ashore with Mrs. Baker and Nada Reading.”

  I said: “When do we leave?”

  Julius snickered.

  Colonel Katukov said: “May I see Comrade Jovanović’s interesting memoirs?”

  “Just getting out some papers,” I told Julius, and got them out and handed them across to Katukov. He read and pocketed them.

  “Interesting,” he admitted, “and valid. The world would believe Ivo Jovanović, of course. You are absolutely correct. My hands—not to mention the hands of my associates in Moscow—would be firmly tied. Except that you made one unfortunate mistake.”

  “Give you five minutes to explain that,” I said, trying to mime his tone of voice but feeling a tightness in my throat. His calm confidence was maddening. No one is that good an actor.

  He completed the replay by saying: “It won’t take five minutes. To liquidate Ivo Jovanović would have been the simplest of matters, but the last thing I wanted was his liquidation. It would also have been simple to put him to crude torture and hope he would break. But at his age such treatment might well have killed him, and then where would we have been?

  “The alternative was obvious—the granddaughter. Her life in return for his cooperation.” Katukov leaned back in his chair, lit a Kazbek and blew smoke in my direction.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t you suppose the Yugoslav secret police would have realized the granddaughter would be my obvious target? How could I have snatched her out from under their nose, so to speak? The point is, she was delivered to our friend Julius by the one man most likely to make Captain—Storz I believe his name is?—relax his guard.”

  I opened my mouth and a name came out: “Stevo Reading.”

  “Naturally, Mr. Drum. The one man Captain Storz would trust. The one man you would trust. Her husband. He finally decided he hated his wife more than he loved the country of his birth.” Colonel Katukov gave me the one and only real smile I ever saw on his face. “It was very thoughtful of you,” he said, “to send Comrade Jovanović’s deposition and your own to Stevo Reading for safekeeping.”

  Only one of us was unflappable after that.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TEN MINUTES LATER WE were in the Nawojowa’s radio shack, Colonel Katukov leaning across the counter to talk in what could have been either Russian or Polish to the radio officer, Julius at the door with his Luger, me at a porthole watching the rain stream down.

  It was a small room just off the bridge, no more than twelve by twelve, with banks of electronic gear behind the counter and a pair of chairs, a small round table and a telephone in a wall niche this side of it, like a religious object in a shrine.

  The radio operator, a fat little man, absolutely bald, listened, nodded, tossed a casual salute, surrounded his face with earphones and went to work.

  “We are calling Dubrovnik ship-to-shore,” Katukov said. “I believe we will find Comrade Jovanović home? You will speak to him. You will tell him you have been wasting my time and his—and jeopardizing the life of his granddaughter. When you have made that sufficiently clear, Comrade Jovanović will then supply the information he should have sent with you.”

  I felt like a tired old used car they had just sprayed with embalming fluid to give it that new car smell. But it was still embalming fluid. I said: “Jovanović won’t give you the information. Why do you think he wrote out that deposition? Once the world press gets hold of it, you’ll be out of his hair for good.”

  “And Nada Reading will be dead.”

  A few beeps rewarded the radio officer’s efforts and then he was talking into his headset. Katukov waited. I waited.

  The radio officer pointed to the telephone. He crooked a finger at me and took off the headset. I leaned across the counter and put it on and heard static and a few unfriendly beeps and then the spaced whines that signify a ringing telephone in Yugoslavia. Katukov, with the phone to his ear, heard the same. The radio officer sat down on his side of the counter and got a pipe going. Julius blew imaginary lint off the front sight of the Luger.

  A click cut into the fourth telephone whine. A deep voice said: “Storz.”

  I said: “It’s Drum, Captain. Aboard a Polish freighter called the Nawojowa off Rijeka harbor. I’ve got a problem.”

  Katukov, of course, was listening. What I had to do was sound confident. Plan A has been bolixed up, men, so we shift over to plan B, as decided in advance. Only nothing like that had been decided in advance. I was improvising and hoped Captain Storz would play along with me. Not to mention Jovanović. Confidence was the key. Trouble was, I felt about as confident as a small rodent after he is dropped into a cage with a hungry boa constricter and begins to realize what that colorful coiled thing is.

  “What kind of problem?” Storz said. “Girl not there?”

  “Katukov says she’s here. I haven’t seen her yet. I’m willing to take his word for it. Problem is Stevo Reading. Katukov has my copy of Ivo Jovanović’s deposition and either now has or will soon get Reading’s copy. Or maybe Reading just destroyed it. Seems to be his way of ending a bad marriage. I figure you know what that means,” I said slowly, “and I’ve got Katukov on another phone so he can hear it. How soon can you set up the press conference for the old man?”

  Silence. I felt sweat trickling down my ribs.

  The radio officer blew a cloud of pipe smoke. He tried again and the pipe made noises like a coffee percolator. He removed it from his face, gave it an annoyed look, shoved it back between his teeth and tried another match on it.

  Katukov looked like a man trying to look inscrutable.

  “Press conference, hokay,” Storz said at last.

  “He around?”

  “Sleeping,” Storz said.

  “Get him up.”

  We’d unsettled Katukov somewhat. Now he looked like a man trying to look like a man trying to look inscrutable.

  Jovanović came on the phone: “Yes, Mr. Drum. Captain Storz informs me you’re with them. That’s wonderful. Is my granddaughter all right?”

  “Katukov says she is. But I guess it’s not as wonderful as you think, Mr. Jovanović,” I said, trying to sound the proper amount chagrined but not despairing. “Reading double-crossed us. He’s not going to release your deposition to the press.”

  “Reading, Mr. Drum? I am shocked.”

  “So it looks like you’ll have to hold that press conference yourself after all. I know how you wanted to stay out of the limelight if you possibly could, but since Reading—”

  “His own wife,” Jovanović said. He sounded pretty dismayed. He was pretty dismayed. So far it was going fine, but what I’d said about a press conference probably hadn’t registered yet.

  “Colonel Katukov doesn’t believe you’re prepared to go all the way if you have to, even including the press conference.”

  “I see, Mr. Drum,” Jovanović said. “I see.”

  I had no idea what it was he saw.

  He said: “Let me speak to Colonel Katukov.” Calm, no-nonsense voice. I liked that.

  Katukov said: “The girl goes free after you give me names, numbers and any codes necessary for access to those twelve accounts in Geneva. Then of course the threat of a press conference will be quite irrelevant.”

  A long pause, or maybe it just seemed long. “I am not going to give you that information, Colonel Katukov.”

  “Then you will never see your granddaughter again.”

  “I know your reputation, Colonel. You are not a stupid man. In a few hours, in a very few hours, the world will learn what a foolish mistake I made thirty years ago. I made, Colonel. No one else. You understand?”

  “I understand that it would be the same as killing the girl with your own hands.”

  “Perhaps I misjudged you,” Jovanović said, and I wondered how much it was costing him to remain that calm. “Perhaps you really are a stupid man. Once I speak out, your faction in the Kremlin is going to lose. That is inevitable. How deeply are you committed, Colonel?”

  Katukov said nothing.

  “If you have not taken sides openly, I suggest you do nothing further to endanger your position with the Central Committee. I suggest you return to Moscow at once. To do some fence-mending, Colonel Katukov.”

  “If you speak to the press, the girl is dead,” Colonel Katukov said.

  “And so is your career. Release her. Go home to Moscow.”

  “Think of what you are doing, Comrade Jovanović. Once the girl is dead there is no bringing her back.”

  “Noon,” Jovanović said. “Nada will call me, from Rijeka, saying she is safe. Or I will speak to the press. You have until noon.”

  “You know my answer already.”

  “Noon,” Jovanović said. He hung up.

  I removed the earphones and gave them to the fat radio officer.

  Katukov said: “He will change his mind. He must, Mr. Drum. But you won’t be alive to see it.”

  I stood there, my back to him, saying nothing. Past the clutter of electronic gear was a porthole, night-dark beyond, rain streaming down the other side of the glass. Katukov and Julius were reflected in it.

  “Because,” Katukov said, “I could be wrong. If Jovanović speaks to the press, I would find myself in serious trouble.”

  “Your boys in the Kremlin would be all washed up.”

  “Worse than that. I would have to cover my tracks or, as you suggested, face liquidation. Whatever happens at noon, Mr. Drum, I am afraid that you know too much. Far too much to leave this ship alive.”

  Threatening to kill Nada Reading was one thing. It might be a bluff. Telling me I had to die was something else. No bluff necessary.

  If you led my kind of life, there was a dark alley waiting for you somewhere with no way out. It was where you went when your luck turned bad. I had reached it. A small radio shack on the quarterdeck of a Polish freighter with a name like something out of Hiawatha, the wee hours of the morning and an electric storm outside, a Russian spy with a mind like a computer and the American thug who did his dirty work, a fat radio officer who would tell his friends back home in Cracow or Lvov how a guy got shot dead in the wireless room or maybe taken out on deck and killed—that was how it would be. And maybe a year or two from now at a cocktail party in Washington, a dame you knew once nibbles at her martini and turns to a guy who is trying to figure out whether he has a chance to seduce her and says: “I wonder what ever happened to Chet Drum, haven’t seen him around in a while.” And the guy says: “Turned expatriate, living in Europe or somewhere.” And the dame says: “Some people have all the luck,” and the conversation turns to something else, and a snatch of cocktail party talk is all the immortality you will ever have, not that it matters.

  Katukov said: “Kill him, Julius.”

  The bald head of the radio officer jerked up. If you are on ships and around radios you understand English. We looked at each other and his eyes turned away. All that in a split-second. He was just a man with a ringside seat.

  In the porthole I could see Julius staring at my back. Which kneecap? I thought, wondering if that was the last thought I would ever have.

  Julius stayed in character. “You mean right here?” he said, and saying it took a second, and during that second I spun and dropped to my knees clawing for the Magnum and felt the spring release let go and the butt of the big revolver slap against my palm and then it was bucking in my hand, once, twice, and as Julius got the words out the left side of his face crumpled and the back of his head erupted pink-white against the bulkhead and he was dead before he was down, the Luger having fired once, shattering some of the radio equipment.

  “Leave it alone,” I told Katukov. He crouched over the Luger, not moving.

  “Back behind the counter. Move.”

  He went there. The radio officer’s face was green. He dropped his pipe.

  Footsteps on the other side of the hatch. What they heard could have been thunder, but some smart-aleck Pole had decided it wasn’t. A voice called out something in Polish.

  “Tell them one o’clock and all’s well,” I said. “Tell them to scram.”

  Katukov said something. The footsteps went away.

  “Get Dubrovnik again,” I told the radio officer. “Same number. I want Captain Storz.”

  The fat man looked at Katukov. Katukov shook his head.

  I pointed the Magnum at the fat man. “Be a dead hero,” I said.

  He didn’t look at Katukov after that. After a couple of tries he got the earphones where they belonged. His hands were shaking. He sat down over the radio key to call for a phone line. He fiddled with it and looked at me. He was sweating.

  “The transmitter,” he said. “The bullet. It won’t work.”

  Sweat was streaming down his face. He was terrified.

  “Fix it,” I said.

  He got out a set of tools and used a Philips head screwdriver to remove the back plate of the transmitter. When the plate came off, a lot of junk fell out. He showed me the fluttering palms of his hands.

  “You got a spare?”

  “No.”

  “Spare parts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then repair it.”

  Five minutes to assess the damage. He kept on shaking and sweating. I could smell him. He looked up at me.

  “Not a chance,” he said. “It is hopeless.”

  “Fix it or you’re dead.”

  His face crumpled, almost like Julius’ face had under the impact of the bullet. He began to cry.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  I believed him.

  “And what,” Katukov asked me calmly, “are you going to do now?”

  I said: “The launch. We’re taking Marianne and Mrs. Reading ashore.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “That will get you what Julius got.”

  Katukov laughed. “A gun in your hand, Mr. Drum, does not make you master of all you survey.”

  That was what I had told Julius in the parking lot, when Julius had pulled the Luger on me. I had been right then. Katukov was just as right now. Shooting him wouldn’t earn me a thing.

  We both listened to the thunder for a while. The center of the storm was moving toward Rijeka. I got out a cigarette awkwardly with one hand and lit it. I looked at Katukov. He stared right back at me, the eyes behind the bifocals cold and patient. Nothing for me there. I looked at the radio officer. He was seated behind the counter with his arms folded on its surface and his head down on them.

  “You,” I said.

  The fat face jerked up. He snuffled and took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and blew his nose.

  “What’s the drill?”

  “The drill?”

  “If I hadn’t come aboard. What was the schedule?”

  Katukov said something quickly in Polish.

  It was a threat, but I could top it. I thumbed the hammer of the Magnum back.

  The radio officer decided that was the more immediate danger.

  He said: “At dawn we weigh anchor and sail into Yugoslav territorial waters. A Rijeka harbor pilot comes aboard with the immigration authorities. The pilot takes us in.”

  I liked that. I liked that very much. I didn’t need the radio phone. Once we were inside Yugoslav waters, with the immigration people aboard, I had Katukov.

  “All that happens without any orders from Colonel Katukov?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s the truth. I swear. Those are our orders unless the colonel changes them.”

  The colonel wasn’t going to change anything. I looked at my watch. A little after two. Four hours or a bit less to first light. I listened to the rain drumming on the overhead.

  And waited.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A GRAY FUNEREAL DAWN seeped in at the port hole.

  It was still raining, but the wind had dropped. The radio officer had found a blanket and covered Julius’ body with it. Julius’ polished black bluchers and maroon socks protruded.

  We had spent four hours listening to one another breathe. I felt stiff and cramped. My eyes were bleary. The radio officer had sweated through his jacket, filling the room with his stale smell. Only Colonel Katukov seemed untouched by four of the toughest hours I have ever spent, the wavy graying hair in place, the eyes behind the bifocals clear. He still had the look of a man about to convene the board of directors to tell them how to spend a few million bucks of the company’s money.

  A series of soft repeated thuds came through the deck plates. A foghorn moaned. A bulkhead began to vibrate. I looked out at the calm, rain-flattened sea and saw that we were moving. I remembered the trip out from Rijeka. A narrow channel separated the island of Cres from the mainland. When we reached that we would be inside Yugoslav territorial waters, where the immigration authorities and the pilot would board us.

  The radio began to beep. Its keeper didn’t quite jump a foot.

  “What’s up?”

  “The receiver. They request permission to board.”

  “But you can’t answer. Will they come anyway?”

  “I believe so,” he said. “It is only a formality.”

  Having received no answer, I thought, they’d board and head straight for the radio shack, with the captain’s kind permission. Would the captain give his kind permission? He’d have to. By now he was probably curious himself. He was taking orders from Katukov, sure, but after all it was his ship.

  How long? We’d passed through the narrow channel fifteen minutes before reaching the Nawojowa. Fifteen minutes then, or maybe twenty. We were moving slowly, feeling our way in the rainy dawn. It would all be over, one way or another, in fifteen or twenty minutes. Or figure half an hour at the outside, by the time they boarded us and maybe had a drink of the captain’s grog and made their way to the radio shack.

 

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