A matter of time

1973-1977

The days and weeks, though sometimes leaving a brackish taste, flowed swiftly into swamps of years. Four slid past. Michael became convinced he had gotten away with it. He hadn't noted a glimmer of suspicion on the part of any of his associates.

There was no shortage of work, of study, of training. From his Peking office he now commanded the director's entire American operation. It was growing, perfectly, into a gem of the spymaster's art. Webs were being spun tight about an unsuspecting fascist America; the crisis was coming on almost too swiftly for belief.

At Huang's insistence Michael undertook one foreign field operation each year, under deep cover. The missions were supposed to keep him in touch with his Occidental roots. He suspected they were intended to test his reliability more than as training or to accomplish anything,

Twice he ventured into the Soviet Union, first to Kiev, to confer with radical elements in the Ukrainian Party, then to Moscow itself, where he helped transfer certain damning Soviet documents to the custody of the U.S. Embassy. He did his work quickly and carefully, and made the most of the opportunities to see strange lands and peoples. For security reasons he didn't get much chance to see Peking. Caucasians attracted too much attention.

His third venture took him to Prague. It was the spring of seventy-five, and this was a more significant mission. He was supposed to collect a lengthy document outlining anti-Soviet feeling in the Czechoslovak Party. Certain officials, admirers and adherents of Alexander Dubcek, were preparing the report in hopes of enlisting Chinese support for an anti-Soviet move.

Michael's contact was a young woman from Interior Ministry, a comer in the Party. While he fretted through countless delays-the streets seemed curb to curb with KGB-and wrestled anxieties about how his office might be managing in his absence, the lady showed him Prague. And in the shadow of the castle of the Bohemian kings he fell in love with both.

Old Prague was a beautiful city, a fairy-tale city. Ilse was a beautiful woman, a fairy-tale princess, a socialist Cinderella. And the most remarkable wonder was that she fell as madly as he. That he could be loved that way, without reservation, as madly as he himself could love, would amaze him as long as he lived.

The hopelessness of their affair only intensified it. They tried to cram an entire relationship into a few short weeks.

Michael was tempted to betray his trust. And Ilse offered to go to Peking. But once the report changed hands, once the moment for decisions arrived, neither could abandon an appointed pathway. They made violent love throughout a night. Michael made promises he had no hope of keeping. Then he took the report to Peking.

He nursed a hope that, soon, he would feel safe enough to ask Huang's intercession in behalf of his romance.

Moves had to be made. His past had to be secured. The Snake thing couldn't be left ready to hang him at any instant.

Michael's office occupied a backwater of a bureaucratic niche midway between Huang and Sung's more orthodox intelligence command. While he suffered interferences from both, Michael enjoyed a great deal of freedom. His department wasn't on the table of organization; no one knew quite how to handle him. Moreover, his small MIA corps were more loyal to him and one another than to their adopted masters. Michael had the elbow room and means to undertake small actions on his own initiative. And now he had initiative.

Within a month of his return a routine report from Sinkiang noted the passing of prisoner A.O. Cantrell. There had been a mining accident.

The director called with condolences, suggested a few days off. He understood. He himself had had a boyhood friend who had never seen the light, who might even now be on Taiwan.

Michael flew to Sinkiang for the funeral. He took a black wreath. He even made a sad little speech honoring an old comrade who had found peace at last.

He did it very well, very convincingly.

His next mission took him to West Germany, with a license to kill, under instructions to test a possible double agent in Hamburg. He resolved the matter in two days, making a friend of the relieved suspect. But he stole the rest of the month.

His report never mentioned the three-week love vacation in Czechoslovakia.

Ilse's feelings hadn't cooled either. Between them, those few days, they concocted enough wild schemes for a dozen spy novels. But when the moment of decision came, both still couldn't help trudging right on down those roads already programmed.

Michael returned to Peking determined to enlist Huang's aid. But he stalled, and stalled, and the days rolled into weeks, which rolled into months.

He felt secure the day the director summoned him. So secure that he was sure Huang had a positive response to the request he had finally gotten around to making. It had to be good news. Huang sent some hard-eyed flunky around with a handwritten note when he turned you down.

The director had grown fond of him, he knew. He was walking, talking, irrefutable evidence of the soundness, of the value, of the man's work. In private Huang treated him like a favorite son.

Sung, who outside the inner circle wore another name, was there too. Michael was surprised. There was no love lost between Sung and his mentor. Sung's presence made the Spartan little office seem overcrowded.

"An operation?" Michael guessed. "Something important this time?"

"The most critical we've ever faced," Huang replied coolly. "A termination."

Michael trembled. "Me?" His guts cramped. "I've never handled anything like that."

Sung stared like a cobra about to strike.

"You've had the training," Huang countered. "It should be simple. In, do it, and get out before the police know what's happened."

"Out of the country?"

"England."

Who, in Britain, could possibly need killing? "You lost me. There isn't anybody there." Could the target be a renegade agent? The trip to Hamburg had been a police mission. "Anybody important would be buried in security."

"Not this man. Not the kind we're used to-or who are used to us. The British don't know he's important yet. But his life or death could mean the life or death of everything we've been trying to accomplish. We think you're the man to handle it."

Michael's guts tightened more.

"You'd better tell me the whole thing."

Huang pushed a file folder toward him.

Michael need read but the first of the fascist editorials. Sweat beaded on his face. They knew it all. Had known for some time.

So much for Huang's backing in the Ilse matter.

He was so terrified that he just read on, delaying the inevitable confrontation. Finally, he could stall no more. He met Huang's eye.

"So, "said Huang.

Michael didn't respond. He couldn't.

"You have your choice. Rectify your error of egoism. Or don't. You remain sufficiently valuable, though compromised, that, if the plan survives, we will consider the trauma of the corrective action ample discipline."

The director's voice was hard now. He was angry and dismayed. He had been betrayed by his master work. His words came carefully measured, set alone, as though a period belonged after each.

Sung smiled wickedly. He was enjoying this. He enjoyed anything that discomfited Huang.

Michael was, as he remembered his father saying, between a rock and a hard place. This was one hell of a choice. His life or Snake's.

What could he do?

Snake would be terminated no matter what. The director would go to any length to salvage what he could.

"How do I do it?"

Huang thawed a degree. To the temperature of liquid helium.

This would be hard to survive.

But he would manage. And he would make these men pay.

Time and success had been working changes. Michael was more confident now, more daring… Snake would be mourned. And avenged.

"Tuesday you leave for Prague. Interpreter with a cultural mission. The embassy will put you into Austria with good German papers. You'll go to the man you met in Hamburg. He's already working on it. He'll have new papers for you. He'll relay last-minute instructions and provide the information you'll need to locate your target. You'll be on your own once you leave Hamburg. You'll have to arrange for anything you'll need beforehand."

On his own and alone, Michael thought. And forevermore a target himself if he didn't kill quickly and get himself home. There would be an unspoken and uncertain deadline. Once it passed, the hounds would hit his trail. And they would get him someday.

Remember Leon Trotsky.

Oh, the goddamned, Olympian stupidity that had led him to join the army.

The affair had its bright moment. He was unable to leave Czechoslovakia immediately. His keepers let him see Ilse and their son. Probably as an incentive to come back.

He told Ilse the whole thing. She, too, had trouble reconciling personal feelings and needs with the demands of the State.

With one human being behind him, that one special woman, Michael was certain he could cope. He knew he would someday reach a position where he could extract a savage retribution from the men compelling him to cannibalism.

Then it was down the toboggan run of fear: Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Hull, London. A shop in Bond Street, where a wordless man named Wilson gave him a fat attache case and a look that said he hated dealing with such sordid people.

Michael wondered what they had on the man, but only momentarily. He had but one goal now, to survive till he could see Huang and Sung roasted on spits.

He was on the Hamburg office expense ledger. Credit unlimited. He picked up a thousand pounds at the firm's London bank. He would live in style. He started with a suite at the Mayfair.

There he examined the case's contents.

One Weatherby.227 bolt action varmint rifle without markings. Monte Carlo stock in hand-rubbed walnut. The weapon had been drilled to mount a starscope, a nightsight that made use of ambient light. The scope shared cheesecloth wrappings with a long tubular silencer, five rounds of target ammo, and five explosives rounds. The latter were the kind that had had a hole tapped down the centerline, filled with a drop of mercury, and resealed. The kind that would rip a man worse than any dumdum or hollow point.

There were two sets of identification. He could be Llewelyn Jones, lorry mechanic from Cardiff. Or Thomas Hardy, insurance executive, on holiday from Ottawa, Canada.

"Too big a hurry," he muttered. How the hell could he fake a Welsh accent? And he didn't know shit about insurance, though that identity would be manageable as long as he didn't have to answer business questions.

It looked like Spuk would have to get him back to Hamburg.

There were flyers for the rock concert. Just two performances remained. Tonight and tomorrow night.

He didn't like it.

The man in Hamburg had called the mission a widow-maker. He had been right.

Haste made wasted agents.

Speed, surprise, and the complacency of the English would be his advantages. He had to make the best possible use of them.

At least someone had bothered to do a preliminary study. There were freehand drawings of the hall layout, and confirmation of earlier reports on the habits of the Danzer group.

They could not be reached outside the hall. The group traveled in dense security, which existed entirely to hype their reputation.

It wasn't working. They hadn't yet played to a sellout audience.

The moment of maximum vulnerability would come while they were on stage. Therefore, the rifle.

Michael sprawled across his bed, eyes closed, for ten minutes.

This could get rough. He wouldn't have a friend in the whole damned country.

Above all else, he concluded, he had to secure his line of retreat.

Thoughts of Ilse and the baby intruded. God, what a woman… He didn't understand her. How could she love him so much?

He had had a dozen lovers before Ilse, but not a one had he needed the way he needed her. Maybe it was a response to his total expatriation. And the little guy… He was such a quiet baby, almost spooky with those big, blue, intelligent eyes. Ilse insisted that he was going to be a great man someday.

He tried forcing them from his mind. That only created a vacuum into which Nancy and his first brood stole.

Nerve was the key, he reminded himself. He had to start getting himself up for it now. He could not be the old Michael. He couldn't let fear make him do something that would get him killed or caught.

Damn! There just wasn't time to do it right. They wanted Snake dead quick. Did Sung have an observer on his tail? Probably.

He rose, turned to the rifle. Why this weapon? With its flat trajectory it was superb for small game at extended ranges, but… For this job Michael would have preferred something heavier, something with a lower muzzle velocity. The slower projectile had more time to break up inside its target. Nor was he familiar with the weapon. He assembled it and broke it down twice, feeling for economy of motion. Speed practice would have to wait. He had things to do, alternatives to establish, before the shops closed for the day.

Cash checked the Canadian papers again. They might do.

He selected a vanity case, descended to the lobby.

"Yes, Herr Spuk?" the clerk asked as he approached.

Michael forced a slight accent as he asked, "Would it be possible for the hotel to obtain entertainment tickets?" “Of course, sir. A show, sir? They recommend-" “The Danzer concert. A box. For this evening." “Danzer, sir?"

“Erik Danzer. The rock singer." “Very well, sir." The man's nose went up. “The young lady, she is fond of Danzer."

It was a red herring that Michael hoped would produce multiple rewards. The clerk would adjust his present opinion. And in future should report that Herr Spuk had had a female companion when the police came asking their questions. They might waste valuable time trying to find the woman.

"Ah, I see." The clerk winked.

Michael smiled, then asked the doorman to hail a cab. He tipped generously.

It was Huang's money.

He studied the Hardy identity during a brief journey. And within a half hour was in a second cab, studying again, after having taken a small room as Thomas Hardy.

That afternoon he obtained wigs, theatrical makeup, and new clothing. And surgeon's gloves.

They should have provided the latter with the rifle.

Wigs were a must for the concert hall. His military-style haircut stood out like the sex of a male interloper in the girls' locker room at showertime. He was lucky he was traveling German. The English expected Germans to look like soldiers on leave.

Then he tried pushing his luck, and the calm, talent, and training of the man within him.

"What's the matter, Mr. Hardy?" the rental officer asked.

He had been frantically rehearsing his driving. And had forgotten that the British did everything bass-ackward.

"This is my first trip to England. I forgot all about right-hand steering. On the Continent-"

"I should have realized, sir. I'm sorry. We do have a little left-hand Simca automatic."

"Fine. Perfect. The Jag really wasn't me anyway." What had made him choose that beast? This was no time for doing a Walter Mitty-playing-James Bond number.

"On the expense ledger, sir?" The attendant began processing the new papers.

"Yes. You know how it is."

"I wish I did, sir. I wish I did. I didn't ask before. Not polite, you know. But I wondered… you're from Ottawa…?"

"Yes?" Michael's heart crept toward his throat. He didn't even know where in Canada Ottawa was.

"I wondered if you'd ever heard of a Mr. Charles Allen Underhill, sir. That's me mum's brother. He emigrated after the war."

"I'm sorry. No."

"Ah, I expected so. And him always writing Mum what a big name he is over there."

"That's human nature."

"Aye, sir, that it is. Just sign and we're ready to go." Michael slid the Simca into traffic without giving himself away, then spent two hours puttering around like an old man, relearning his driving. He did so in mortal terror of an accident. If the police noticed him now…

He survived. To rent another room and another car-a Volkswagen. He took them under the Spuk name. The room included garage privileges. He moved the Simca there, then drove the Volkswagen back to his original base.

He was leaving tracks, he knew. But time was tight. Corners had to be cut. The important thing was to keep the trail just obscure enough to give him a reasonable chance of reaching Hamburg.

The maid had been in during his absence. He panicked, rushed to the attache case. But it hadn't been disturbed. He sighed.

"Got to get ahold of myself," he muttered., He began calling travel agents, scattering a dozen Bremer-haven reservations in three names, and air passages to Hamburg, Cologne, and Munich. And made a mental note to get a road map so he could study the approaches to Dover. As a last resort he would try for Calais. He threw himself on the bed.

"Why don't I just tool over to the U.S. Embassy?" he muttered to himself. "I could turn myself in. They'd take care of me." He thought of his children, Michael and Tiffany, and one whose name he didn't know, one unborn till after his capture. Little Mike ought to be ready for junior high… so many years. So soon gone.

Then he thought of Ilse, and another son, and the debriefing the Americans would put him through. It would be easier just to go on.

The desk clerk called. His tickets had arrived. He thanked the man and instructed him to obtain the same box for the final performance, then asked not to be disturbed before noon tomorrow.

It was time to commence the evening's adventure. He began by taking two aspirin.

He took his attache case along, after emptying it of all but innocuous papers. He drove the VW to the garage where he had left the Simca, switched, went on to where he had registered as Hardy. There he changed clothing.

Imitative of the era of George III, his outfit was an eye-grabber. He added makeup and a long-haired blond wig.

Finding a parking space near the hall proved impossible. First point of adjustment. He would have to position the car during the afternoon, and arrive by cab for the critical performance.

There was no trouble with the case. No one paid any attention. His clothing, the limp caused by the stone he had put in his shoe, the winestain birthmark painted on his cheek and throat, proved sufficient distractions.

Inside, he reflected that he should have brought the weapon in now and have hidden it…

But that would have aborted his two a.m. practice session on the bank of the Thames.

That didn't begin encouragingly. He used all five target and two killing rounds before he trusted his weapon. He selected the sternlight of a moored barge for his final check shot.

It shattered. He departed to the muted, mystified curses of a river man.

Two rounds remaining.

He would need just one.

He would use it right up front, while they were spotlighting the members of the band, while the audience was still mesmerized by the show. Three to four seconds exposure for each musician. Plenty of time. If he timed his shot, his target wouldn't fall till after the spot had traveled on. There would be mild confusion at first. Twenty to thirty seconds would pass before anyone realized there was something badly wrong. He would be down to the side exit by then.

The lights would come up. More confusion. Time to reach the Simca. Panic. Screams of "Murder!" and "Police!" He should have the Simca off the street before it began settling out. He would become Hardy, aging himself with makeup, and be on the road again, in the VW, before the police showed any real life.

Would they seal all exits from the country? It seemed unlikely. They would have no reason to believe it a political killing. A grudge killer would just go home. Anyway, they wouldn't want to antagonize thousands of travelers when Britain needed every tourist mark and dollar. He didn't think that they would develop a reliable description before the unavoidable traces he had left had begun to surface. He would have a damned good chance of being over the Czech border, or at least into Austria, by then.

And the exposed trail would end at Hamburg.

Only bad luck could stop him. Or his own weakness.

He began to feel optimistic in spite of the haste of the mission.

But would he squeeze the trigger when the moment came?

He slept. And dreamed a nightmare in which his pursuers had run him into farm country resembling that surrounding the city where he had been raised. He lay exhausted, behind a treeline, near the top of a low ridge. They were coming toward him across a newly harvested cornfield, spread out in a broad skirmish line. They wore dress-blue police uniforms. Some were close enough to make easy targets. But when he laid the crosshairs on the nearest, he found himself looking into the face of his father.

He woke in a sweat, shaking. And immediately began practicing assembling his weapon.

He kept at it till he could do it without thinking, while concentrating on something else. Then he packed, went over the room till he was sure he had left no fingerprints, and checked out. He drove to the Spuk hideout, repeated his erasures. Then he took the Simca and parked it within a block of the concert hall.

A cab delivered him to his third address, where he changed into the Georgian costume, worked on the rifle, and scrubbed fingerprints again.

What a stir those would cause if found and identified.

And how unhappy the director would be.

Michael waited till he could enter the hall with a surge of young people. Again no one challenged the attache case.

Only the starscope, a baggy American leisure suit, a wig, and his makeup lay within. Not one person in a thousand would have recognized the scope. The rifle barrel was down his left side, beneath his shirt. Its breach he held clamped in his armpit. The silencer he had tucked inside his waistband at the small of his back. The rifle stock he had cut off at the handgrip. The rest wouldn't be necessary for this shot. What remained he had thrust down the tight pants over the "bad" leg. The long coat concealed the bulges.

He wouldn't have fooled anyone watching for weapons smugglers. But gunrunners don't do business at rock concerts.

And people don't see anything they don't expect to see.

He hurried to a balcony level rest room, locked himself into a stall, quickly changed clothing and makeup. The rifle parts went into his bag. Everything else went into a waste can, beneath used paper towels, while the rest room was momentarily empty. He emerged looking a shopworn forty-five and faggoty, a man people would move away from without knowing why.

Trial chords reverberated through the auditorium.

The worst would be over in minutes.

"Snake, Snake, why the hell did you have to be so damned stubborn?" he muttered.

And thought, Mr. Director, how long do you expect to last if I survive this?

He moved to his box. As the house lights dimmed he assembled his weapon. He was cool, calm, without fear or thought. Training had taken over.

XXVII. On the Y Axis;