Страница 9 из 70
The pencil point broke; Buckner threw it down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to speechify. I get pissed about it. All right, this proposal your people put forward-the President thinks it may help us buy the time we need.”
“You’re keeping a lot under your hat.”
“I have to. Look, this conversation is not taking place. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to meet President Roosevelt, Colonel. You’re only going to meet me. You understand why?”
“I think so.”
“If you flap your lip in the wrong places it won’t hurt anybody but me. I’ll deny it and you’ll look like an ass. Officially I’m not on the White House staff. There’s nothing on paper that empowers me to speak for the President. That’s the way it’s got to be-we’ve got to cover the President’s ass. Clear enough?”
“Yes.”
“If I’m challenged I’m prepared to testify that you and I are meeting right now to discuss your duties on your new assignment on the Soviet desk at War Department Intelligence. That’s your official roster duty, by the way, until you hand in your resignation.”
“My what?”
“We’ll get to that,” Buckner said. “This is a complex operation they’ve proposed. We’re going to need close liaison at all points. Your name was put forward by Prince Leon and his group-they said you were one of them and one of us at the same time, you’d be the ideal contact man.”
“What about you? What do you think?”
“I go along with them. It’s their operation.”
“From the way you’re talking I’m getting the feeling you’re making it yours. President Roosevelt’s.”
“It’s got to be a Russian operation. Led by Russians and ma
“I might if I knew what it was.”
“I have to leave that up to your own people.”
“I’m an officer in the United States Army. You’re my people,”
“Not if you take this job on. You’ll have to resign your commission. That’s what I meant before.” Buckner smiled a bit ruefully; his smile laced crow’s feet around his eyes and gave him an outdoor look. “It won’t be a piece of cake, Colonel, but it could make you a mighty big place in history if that sort of thing impresses you.”
“Tell me this-who’s got the final authority over operational plans?”
“I’d hope we’d be able to take that on the basis of mutual cooperation. But the decision will have to be up to your people, ultimately. Frankly that’s one reason I’m pleased with this meeting. I have a feeling you and I should be able to work together pretty well.”
Buckner riffled the files in the open folder on his desk. “If your people blow the operation it’s their own neck. The United States had nothing to do with it. I hope they all understand that.”
“I’ll make sure they do.” It could affect their decisions; it might even cool them from the plan, if that seemed necessary. He felt handcuffed by ignorance: he had to contain his anger.
Buckner produced a typed letter-order. “You’re officially on thirty-day furlough as of now. Go to Europe, talk to them, get it all settled among you. Then come back and tell me what you’ve decided and we’ll get to work.” He handed it across the desk. “Don’t waste time. The war isn’t standing still for us. I’m going to book you on the diplomatic plane to Lisbon tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’d better make it two seats.”
It caused a momentary freeze. Buckner’s expression inquired of him; then it changed before Alex could speak. “The Countess. Sorry, I forgot.”
It was Irina’s mother who was the Countess but he didn’t take the trouble to set Buckner straight. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
Buckner had an ingratiating grin that showed a great many teeth. “Not when it counts. That’s what the President pays me for.”
Alex found himself liking the American despite his suspicions. Buckner didn’t have the secretive trappings that usually went with positions like his.
Buckner seemed to sense the line of his thinking. “You’re coming into this dead cold, aren’t you? It’s all brand new to you. I gather the Countess couldn’t tell you much about it.”
“No.”
“That’s a hell of a woman.” He was turning pages over; he paused at one. “This is your letter of resignation. You’ll decide whether you want to sign it-it’ll be waiting here when you get back from Europe.”
“You’re pretty confident. Otherwise you wouldn’t have had it typed up.”
“You’ll take the job,” Buckner said. “You’d be crazy not to.”
But Buckner didn’t know Vassily Devenko.
PART TWO:
August 1941
1
The assassin stood in shadow just within the fringe of the oaks. He could not be seen out of the sunlight-he was merely another dark vertical shape in the forest shadows with the heavier mass of the mountains looming above and behind him.
It was his last chance. He’d tried it and miffed it twice before. Blow it again and his employers would have his head in a basket. But he didn’t feel nervous on that account. If you had nerves you didn’t go into this game in the first place.
He held the 8x Zeiss glasses casually by their strap. At intervals he fitted the reticles to his eye sockets and studied the long motorcars arriving by ones and twos.
The villa a thousand meters below him was a restored seventeenth century ducal summer palace, erected recklessly in the foothills of the Pyrenees by an insensitive Bourbon during a time of Spanish decline and retrenchment. Its builder’s wealth obviously had exceeded his grasp of architectural unities: from the assassin’s angle of view it resembled a village of semidetached buildings haphazardly assembled at different times.
He had never been inside it but he had seen photographs of the interior and had committed a draftsman’s schematic plans to memory. Its rooms were constructed on an awesomely grand scale-made possible by the mild Spanish climate which minimized the need to contain heat. The ceilings were very high, most of them arched or vaulted; there were floors of marble and walls of Alhambra tile; floors of inlaid wood and walls of common plaster covered with murals and extensive bas-relief. There were enough stately bedchambers to accommodate a score of royal hunting guests and courtesans; and plain quarters sufficient to contain fifty-two servants. Many of these were unoccupied now.
The assassin knew that the king’s chamber-the four balconied windows directly above the porte cochere — was occupied by the villa’s present owner-of-record, the Grand Duke Feodor Vladimirovitch-one of the three Romanov Pretenders to the throne of St. Petersburg and a leading member of the last ruling family of Imperial Russia.
But the Grand Duke was an old man and infirm. It was his first cousin, Prince Leon Kirov, who managed the Grand Duke’s villa-as well as his widespread business affairs, his social and familial obligations and his life.
Feodor’s estate was maintained by twelve house servants, five gardeners, two grooms and four chauffeurs. On the grounds they kept a string of jumpers and thoroughbred pleasure horses, seven automobiles and a flock of ducks and geese on the man-made pond. The Romanovs and Kirovs took their exercise on bridle paths or playing te
The thick green lawn stretched away from the house two hundred yards down a wide swath bordered by formal woods. The main gate at the foot of the lawn, just visible to the assassin, was made of heavy wrought iron and it was guarded by two liveried sentries who wore sidearms. Beyond the gate waited a ravenous pack of tattletale journalists from international gossip rags; now and then when a stately car drew up a photographer would rush forward and crouch to get a picture but that was all right so long as they remained outside the gate.