He buttoned up his coat and picked up the hat. “That’s right. You will.” He pulled out his snap-lid pocket watch. “My plane returns shortly. You’ll get further details from the cobbler; he has coded instructions waiting for you. Anya?” He took the stunning girl’s hand; she bowed slightly; Rykov nodded without changing expression and turned and opened the door.
Valentia said, “Do svidaniya, Ivan.”
The corridor was freezing cold. Up at the corner the young Berdachev stood with his breath steaming gently from his nostrils. Rykov walked past him without remark and went half a dozen paces down the main hall before he stopped and retraced his steps silently to the corner.
Berdachev’s voice: “Does he never relax?”
“Not in public,” the woman said. “I stood watch with him once when we were breaking down a Japanese agent in Shimizu. Five days, and I saw him sleep two hours the entire time.”
“Who is he, anyway?”
“The Kremlin’s hatchet man.”
There was more; Rykov did not stay to listen. He went back toward the terminal.
The Moskvitch needed valve work. It met Leon Belsky at the Vladivostok airport, driven by a hulking flat-faced Man-churian, and transported him to the waterfront. The car chugged and coughed the whole way. Belsky left the car without a word and the Manchurian drove away. A cold salt wind swept across the docks. It was almost midnight. Belsky plodded through the snow toward the lights of the crew shack on the landward end of a small industrial dock. The lights of the city vaguely outlined the big harbor and foghorns hooted continuously while lighthouse beacons stabbed the dark. Vladivostok was a closed city and there were no pedestrians or vehicles abroad except official ones.
Migachev was waiting for him in the crew shack. The room was overheated by a large coal stove and Migachev was stripped down to the trousers, no shoes, no shirt. His chest and shoulders were covered with a thick black pelt. “You belong behind a butcher’s counter,” Belsky told him.
“Well, I hate the cold. I was born in Sochi where it’s warm. I wish I was there now.”
“I know where you were born,” Belsky said. “Get your clothes on—I’m in a hurry, we want to make landfall before daylight.”
“Daylight tomorrow, you mean. Not today, unless you want my boat to sprout wings. If you’re in such a hurry why don’t you fly?”
“Too many people watch the incoming flights over there. Japan Defense Agency, CIA, Chinese—the whole world lives in Japanese airports. In this part of the world there are too many people who’d recognize me.”
“Yet you’re going over there. ”
“Japan’s the hot spot. A Caucasian like me sticks out. In America I’m just another middle-aged businessman. Come on, hurry up.”
Migachev sàt down to lace his boots. “We’ve plenty of time. Help yourself to the food.”
Belsky ate standing up—black bread, herring, a cup of koumiss. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
“I’m ready. Let’s go.” Migachev had put on a heavy turt-leneck sweater over his undershirt, a topcoat over that, a heavy greatcoat over that, and a flowing oilskin slicker on top. He wore fleece-lined gloves inside his mittens and three pairs of socks inside his oversize waterproof boots.
“We’re not going to the North Pole,” Belsky said.
“The bridge on my boat is open.”
Belsky grunted. “Let’s go. Are my things aboard?”
“Yes, of course.” Migachev warmed his mittens over the stove and turned off the lamp. Belsky followed him through the door by ear until he was beyond the end of the dockhouse and could orient himself by the city lights. Migachev’s boots crunched the snow with loud hollow whacks. It was low tide; the water was six meters below, and Belsky moved with care—it would have been easy to slip off the dock. Migachev went down the ladder first and lighted a kerosene lamp on the boat. Belsky climbed down, testing each rung before he put his weight on it. The boat was a twenty-meter fisherman—sixty-five-footer, he corrected himself doggedly. It had twin diesels, too much engine for such a boat, specially installed for Migachev’s clandestine runs across the Sea of Japan. In outward appearance she was clumsy, disreputable, an old-fashioned fishing boat in need of paint, but beneath the waterline her hull was sleek over a deep-ocean keel, shaped for speed.
They went out of harbor on one engine. It growled sonorously; the boat’s movement was sluggish until they cleared the last channel buoy and moved beyond earshot of land. Then Migachev cut in the second engine and opened them up. The fisherman jumped forward, riding high on her keel, making twenty-seven knots. The linesman came astern from his lookout post in the bow and took the wheel from Migachev, who turned and said, “We can go below now.”
Belsky was enjoying the cold salt wind but Migachev was wet and miserable and went below without waiting an answer. Belsky followed him into the cramped cabin. He had to stoop to clear the transom when he entered. There was a tart chop to the sea and he had to keep hold of the bulkhead to avoid being pitched off his feet.
Migachev sat down on the lower bunk, nearest the heat of the engines. “Those are your things.” Migachev pointed to the suitcase and the objects laid out on the opposite bunk. The suitcase was Samsonite, the clothing American with San Francisco and Fresno shop labels. Belsky already had with him the English tweed suit and overcoat he would wear on the Japanese leg of the journey.
Migachev said, “It will take about twenty-six hours to Komatsu. We should arrive about three o’clock tomorrow morning. You can catch a bus into Fukui, it’s only seventy kilometers, and the train to Kyoto arriving at eight-fifteen. You have a reservation on the ten-o’clock flight out of Kyoto for Honolulu and Los Angeles.”
Belsky examined the documents. There were three passports, all bearing different names. Two were American, the third Swiss. The Swiss passport in the name of Heinrich Wiedemann, textile merchant, he would use to board the JAL plane at Kyoto and to clear American customs and immigration at Los Angeles—because, curiously, the Americans tended to inspect foreign visitors from friendly European countries with less care than they exercised in inspecting their own people.
Belsky had a look at the rest—visa, Social Security card, Fresno voter’s registration, California driver’s license, birth and baptismal certificates, school and university diplomas, an Air Force discharge, the lot—and then he climbed into the upper bunk and went promptly to sleep.
By the local calendar and clock it was early Tuesday afternoon by the time Belsky cleared Customs at Los Angeles International Airport and made his way to a telephone booth. Migachev had given him the number.
“Westlake Publishers, may I help you?”
“My name is Dangerfield,” Belsky said. “I believe you have a message for me.”
“Hold on a moment, please?”
The girl’s voice was replaced by a man’s. “Mr. Dangerfield? Right on schedule, sir. Have a good trip?”
“I think you’ve got something for me.”
“Where are you calling from, Mr. Dangerfield?”
“Los Angeles airport.”
“Then it’s an open line. We might meet for lunch—do you know Flagg’s? The taxi driver can find it, near the Beverly Wilshire. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. There’ll be a table in my name—Tucker Stark. Satisfactory?”
“No. Meet me at American Airlines here at the airport. The front entrance.”
“Ah, that’s somewhat irregular, Mr. Dangerfield. I’d prefer not to—”
“I have a plane to catch, Mr. Stark.” Belsky hung up and went outside.
He confirmed his ticket and checked his bag and by the time he was finished standing in lines the contact was there at the front door. Belsky recognized the man from the photos in his dossier: Tidsov, cover name Tucker Stark, chief of the Los Angeles rezidentsia. As soon as he knew he had been spotted Tidsov walked into the building and turned toward the concession area carrying a leather suitcase, one of those squat soft bags designed to fit under an airplane seat. Tidsov put it into a twenty-four-hour storage locker, deposited a coin and locked it, and came away with the key in his pocket. Belsky watched him without actually looking at him more than once; he followed with the corners of his vision while Tidsov went into a telephone booth and closed the door. Three minutes later a blond man wandered past the phone booth and Tidsov stepped out of it and left the building without glancing at Belsky; meanwhile the blond man stepped into the phone booth Tidsov had just vacated, emerged momentarily, walked directly to the bank of lockers, inserted a key and withdrew the leather flight bag from the locker. The blond man carried the bag out through the glass-doored entrance and Belsky turned to watch covertly while the blond man exchanged glances with Tidsov. Then the two men separated and walked away in opposite directions.