Checkpoint Charlie

I was there at three, an hour ahead of schedule, to inspect the area and insure it hadn’t been primed with spies or ambushers. My eyes don’t miss much; after forty minutes I felt secure and awaited Yaskov openly in the parking lot.

It was a pleasant su

Precisely at four Yaskov arrived. It might have been seemly and sensible for him to drive himself, in a Soviet-built Moskvitch or Pobeda, but Yaskov was fond of his comforts and he sailed elegantly into view in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes limousine. Like me he was a man who stood out in crowds anyway — he was not the sort of executive who dwelt in anonymity — and I believe The Organs must have put up with his ostentatious eccentricities on account of the excellence of his performances.

The chauffeur was, so far as I could tell, simply a chauffeur; his face did not flash any mug photos against the screen of my mind. He could have been a recent recruit or an agent whose face had not been put on file in the West but I doubted it because if the man were of any importance Yaskov would not have exposed his face to me. The chauffeur trotted around to open the limousine’s back door and Yaskov emerged smiling, uncoiling himself joint by joint, a very tall lean handsome figure in Saville Row pinstripes, a Homburg tipped askew across his silver hair. His pale intense blue eyes, illuminated from within, were at once the shrewdest and kindest eyes I’d ever known and I had always attributed part of his success to those extraordinary sighted organs: I suspected they had inspired more candor from his victims than had all the drugs and torture apparatus in the Arbat and Lubianka. Yaskov could charm the Sphinx out of its secrets.

As always he carried a cane. He owned an extensive collection of them. This one was a Malacca, suitably gnarled and gleaming. The excuse was an old leg injury of some kind but he walked as gracefully as an athlete and the cane was a prop, an affectation and I suppose if necessary a weapon.

He transferred it to his left hand and gave me his quick firm handshake. “Such a pleasure to see you again. When was our last meeting, do you recall?”

“Paris, two years ago. When we were all chasing Kendig.” He remembered it as well as I did but it was a harmless amenity and we both smiled. I said, “Why don’t we take my car?” — drawling it with grave insouciance: I didn’t want the chauffeur around.

“Why not indeed,” Yaskov said carelessly. He made a vague sign to the grey-uniformed man, instructing him to wait by the limo, and followed me to my hired Volvo.

We drove out of town along a country road that curled gently through the forest. I made a right here, a left there. After twenty minutes — small talk between us — I pulled onto the verge and we walked across a carpet of pine needles to the edge of a crystal blue lake. Central Finland has thousands of such lakes, each as postcard beautiful as the next; with a suitable net you can scoop up your supper from the bottom — fresh-water crayfish.

There was a log, strategically placed, and I sat down on one end of it. “I’m not bugged.”

“Nor am I. Shall we go through the wretched tedium of searching each other?”

“We’re both a bit long in the tooth for that kind of nonsense.”

“I agree.”

We trusted each other to that extent mainly because we were such fossils. We antedated the computer boys with their electronic gadgetry; we were the last of the tool-making men: we’d had to polish our wits rather than our mathematical aptitudes. In our decrepitude we still preferred to walk without the crutches of microphones and long lenses and calculator-cyphers. To do so would have been a confession of weakness.

He said, “You seem heavier than you were.”

“Maybe. I rarely weigh myself.”

“Don’t they have physical requirements in Myerson’s section?”

“For everybody but me.” I said it with a measure of pride and he picked it up; his warm eyes laughed at me.

Then he said, “I too. You know I have a serious heart condition.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“I’d have been astonished if you didn’t. It is a secret only from some of my own superiors.” He laughed again, silently, and settled on the log next to me, prodding the earth with his cane.

I studied the toes of his polished cordovan shoes. “This is a bit dicey, Mikhail. You may have guessed why I’ve been posted here.”

“May I assume the Company wishes me out of the Fi

“You may.”

“Well then.” He smiled gently.

I said, “You’ve got a villa on the Black Sea, I hear.”

“For my retirement.”

“Nice place?”

“One of the largest of them. Magnificent view. Every room is wired with quadriphonic speakers for my collection of concert recordings. It’s quite an imposing place. It belonged to a Romanov.”

“It’s a wonder to me how your bourgeois conceits haven’t got you in trouble with your superiors in the classless state.”

“A man is rewarded for his worth, I suppose.”

“You should have been born to an aristocracy.”

“I was. My father was a duke.”

“Oh yes. I’d forgotten.” I hadn’t forgotten, of course; I was simply endeavoring to prime the pump.”

On the far side of the lake a rowboat appeared from an inlet and proceeded slowly right to left, a young couple laughing. I heard the faint slap of the oars. I said, “I hope you’ll be able to enjoy the villa.”

“Why shouldn’t I, Charlie?”

“You might die in harness.”

He chuckled avuncularly.

I said, “It would be a waste of all those quadriphonic speakers.”

“I’ve often thought it would,” he agreed with grave humor.

“I don’t have a villa,” I said.

“No. I suppose you don’t.”

“I’ve got nothing squirreled away. I spend everything I earn. I have four-star tastes. If they retired me right now I’d be out in the street with a tin cup.”

“What, no pension?”

“Sure. Enough to live on if you can survive in a mobile home in Florida.”

“Of course that wouldn’t do.” He squinted at me suspiciously. “Are you asking me for money? Are you proposing to sell out?”

“I guess not.”

“I’m relieved. I would accept your defection, of course, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I prefer to see my judgments vindicated — I’ve always respected you. It would be an awful blow if you were to disappoint me. In any case,” and he smiled beautifully, “I wouldn’t have believed it for a moment.”

“The trouble with Charlie Dark,” I said, “I have champagne tastes and a beer income. I’m way past retirement age. I can’t fend them off forever. I’m older than you are, you know —”

“Only by a year or two.”

“— and they’re eager to put me out to pasture. I’m an eyesore. My presence embarrasses them. They think we all should look like Robert Redford.”

“How boring that would be.”

I said, “This time they’re offering me an inducement. A whopping bonus if I pull this last job off.”

“Am I to be your last job?”

“Charlie’s last case. A fitting climax to a brilliant career.” He laughed. “How much am I worth, then?”

“If I told you it would only inflate your conceit even more. Let’s just say I’ll be able to put up at Brown’s and the Ritz for the rest of my life if I take a notion to.”

“I don’t believe very much of this, Charlie.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping you would. It would have made this easier for both of us.” I took the pistol out of my pocket.

Yaskov regarded it without fear. One side of his lip bent upward and his eyebrow lifted. Across the lake the young couple in the rowboat had disappeared past a forested tongue of land; we were alone in the world.

I said, “It’s only a twenty-five caliber and I don’t know much about these things but at this range it hardly matters. With your heart condition your system won’t withstand the shock.”