Deep Cover

Everything he remembered about her had been wiped away as if by death and what was happening inside him was like an assassin’s knife between the ribs. His mind observed, cataloged events, drew conclusions without believing; his scalp shrank and the delayed shock thudded into him in waves: his heart chattered with a fast violent thumping. He shot to his feet and tramped back and forth slamming his feet down hard.

“Belsky, Trumble, Craig, Les, Ro

“That might not be all of them. That’s one of the rules when you’re working under cover—you don’t know anybody so you can’t fink on anybody. For all we know there’s a hundred of them.”

“A hundred of what?”

Spode replied, “We have to assume they’re KGB, don’t we.”

“You mean because of Belsky.”

“Sure. Has to be.”

The roots of Forrester’s hair began to prickle, an outbreak of needles. “How could they possibly have operated in this country for twenty years or more without being caught?”

“That seems to be the whole point—they didn’t operate. They just melted in and waited. That’s the KGB hallmark—infinite patience.”

The adrenalin pumping through Forrester’s body made his hands shake. He was staring down at Ro

“Got to be,” Spode muttered. “Can you doubt it?”

“I can. I want to. But I don’t.”

“Listen, they’re plants—Belsky came here to turn on the switches and get them all moving like wind-up toys. Thirty hours, she said.”

“We’ve got to crack them, haven’t we, Top?”

“How? The only name we’ve got is Belsky’s and there’s already an army of people looking for him. They don’t know his contacts so they’re not going to find him. And look, even if we did find one of them he’d have nothing to gain by confessing. Whatever we could do to him if he refused to talk would be nothing compared to what the KGB’s people could do to him if he did talk. They’re glued together and the cement’s had twenty or thirty years to dry.”

It was a feeling like ice across the back of Forrester’s neck. “Tomorrow night. And we don’t even know what to look for.”

Spode picked up the phone, listening, put it back. “The line’s still dead and we can’t get a car out until the rain quits and the gullies flush out. Look at that stuff come down, we won’t get out of here before midnight.” He came away from the window, still pacing the room as if it were a zoo cage. “Listen, you got a raincoat or a poncho or something?”

“Coat closet in the hall,” Forrester said absently, and then snapped his head around. “No, I’ll go. You stay here with Ro

“Nuts. You ain’t thinking. It’s got to be me. I’m the one who knows the people in the Agency—I know who to call and what to say. You don’t.”

“Then give me the names and phone numbers. We’re in a time trap and I’ve got more clout than you’ve got—it boils down to that, Top, I can get them moving faster.”

While he talked Forrester was striding across to the foyer closet. But Spode followed him and planted his feet, obstructing the way. “Listen, Senator or no Senator, what the hell is it, your personal crusade? No infidels allowed? You know damn well where the Agency’s concerned I carry more weight than you do because they know me and they don’t know you. They’ve seen nut cases in Congress before.”

“We’re wasting time, Top.”

“And wasting wind, but let’s spell it out—you just want to be a fucking hero, don’t you?”

It staggered him. “Is that what you really believe?”

“What other excuse have you got? You’ve got to be the one stays with her because she’s the only one who can lead us to them and you’re probably the only man in the world she’ll spill to. That makes me the one that goes to the phone.” He plucked the oilskin slicker out of Forrester’s hand. “I’m sorry about what I just said. I didn’t mean that. I know better.

Forrester was looking at Ro

Spode shrugged into the slicker and Forrester turned to him. “Pay attention before you go—there was a reason I felt I ought to be the one to talk to the Agency people. If we call in the Agency we’ve got to do it discreetly and make sure the Agency keeps the lid on it.”

“I’m not sure I get that. We don’t know what Belsky’s orders are but I’d say the odds against tomorrow were damned high. We may need to call out the troops before this is over—what do you mean keep a lid on it?”

“I mean our primary objective is to get to Belsky and neutralize him and get these undercover people of his out of this country.”

“Go on.”

“If we put everything we know in the lap of the authorities they’ll put out a net—and you can only use a net when you can afford to have a lot of i

“You’d better go a little slower for us country boys.”

“If the public finds out the Soviets are intriguing in our own back yard the result could be catastrophic. We’ve got to keep the Cold War cold, but it won’t stay cold if we start a full-scale witch hunt. Another round of McCarthyist paranoia. If we can avoid that we must.”

“But maybe we can’t. They’re pla

“Not from what Les said. Remember? ‘The world will know what happened but it can’t be allowed to find out how it happened. If the truth came out you’d have a global war.’ All right—first implication, if the truth doesn’t come out we won’t have a global war.”

“Are you saying it’s better to let them go ahead with what they’re doing than to stop them?”

“Not at all, Top. I’m saying we want to stop them without anyone knowing we’ve stopped them—without anyone knowing there was anything that had to be stopped. We don’t want to crowd Belsky into a corner where he’s got no choice. If this news gets out it’ll wreck whatever slim chance we may have to negotiate a withdrawal of these people in secret. If we can reach Belsky before tomorrow night we need a bargaining position and we won’t have one if the public is onto it. We’ve got to leave Belsky an exit—convince him we won’t expose this thing if he’ll back away and get his people out of the country without attracting attention. When he sees the alternative—a likely war between our countries—he’ll have to abort his program and pull his people out. And the public never needs to know a thing about it.”

“It’s a contradiction,” Spode said. “It won’t work unless we can reach Belsky, and we can’t reach Belsky unless we get the whole world out there hunting for him.”

“We’ve got to try it, Top. That’s why I wanted to be the one to talk to your people at the Agency. They’ve got to realize the urgent need to keep this under wraps.”

“They’ll be hard to convince. I mean, what the KGB wants is to keep it covered up and if we played along with that we’d be accused of talking treason. In this game the first rule is never do what the other guy wants you to do.”

“Once Belsky knows we’re onto him it’s no longer a question of what he wants us to do.” Forrester shook his head. “I could get the President’s ear, Top, but if there’s any chance at all of our neutralizing Belsky it’s better if the President doesn’t know a thing about it until after it’s done.”

“It’s a hell of a long shot you want to try.”

“It’s the only shot I’ve got, isn’t it?”

Spode’s eyes widened slowly. “Now I see what you’re doing. You don’t want me to make any phone calls at all, do you? Because right now the Agency only knows Belsky’s here, they don’t know anything else about it, and you’d just as soon it stayed right inside this room because if you can reach Belsky and get him to call if off then nobody at all has to know about it. Nobody. You’d rather never have the President find out at all. The President or anybody else outside of you and me.”