Permanent Interests Read online

  "One day at a time, baby. One day at a time."

  Growing a year older every twelve months was a bummer. But birthday parties were another thing. Ever since he could remember, Toby Wheeler loved birthday parties. He liked the gathering of friends, poking fun at the birthday boy or girl, the sharing and caring. But the thing he especially loved about birthday parties, and he kept it secret, was birthday cakes. Wheeler got positively giddy over vanilla cake with lots of sugary frosting. He would pig out on cake. If his wife didn't watch him closely, he would get sick to his stomach after getting second, third 174 JAMES

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  and fourth helpings. It was just one of those things. A simple human fallibility. Marion rapped her husband on the knuckles with a spatula as he was surreptitiously fingering frosting from their daughter's coconut and cream birthday cake sitting on the kitchen table.

  "Hey! What's that for, you crazy woman?"

  With one fist on her hip and the other brandishing the spatula rapier-like at her husband, she answered, "I don't want my man to be a fat slob. Nor do I want him having a heart attack just because he can't discipline himself around food, and particularly junk food!"

  Wheeler shook his head, but couldn't suppress a smile.

  "Man-o-man. Other men got loving wives who feed them well. Me. I had to marry Attila the Hen."

  "Well, Mr. Frosting Fat Ass. If you can't stand the heat, you can get out of this here kitchen!"

  Without warning, he sprang at her. With his hands now firmly around her waist, Wheeler planted a fat, wet kiss on his wife's lips. Caught completely by surprise, she succumbed, getting cake icing in his hair as she embraced his neck.

  "There now. Am I still Mr. Fat Ass? Darling? "

  Her face reflecting both love and exasperated humor, Marion let out a short laugh.

  "I don't know what you are. You're just a silly man. My silly man. Dear! "

  The doorbell rang. She broke from his embrace.

  "Courtney's little friends are here! We've got to get moving." Marion rushed to answer the door, to usher in the first of a dozen little kids coming to celebrate their daughter's sixth birthday. With her hand on the knob, Marion admonished her husband one more time with a shout, "Now you stay clear of that cake, you here me?!"

  "Yeah, yeah." He licked the spatula.

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  The kids o.d'ed on sugar, having devoured the cake, inhaled the jelly beans and guzzled Sprite. They were now venting the resultant burst of energy on games, notably

  "Twister" and pin the tail on the donkey. A dozen cacophonous little voices squealed "Old McDonald," "Big Bird, Where Are You?" and, of course, "The Birthday Song."

  Wheeler genuinely enjoyed playing with the kids, allowing them to ride on his back and gamely acting as a stationary target for Courtney's new Power Ranger Zapper gun.

  The effect of two hours of six year-old mayhem, however, left Wheeler with a throbbing headache and a need for some fresh air. With Marion's ready permission, he took leave for a stroll. Marion was grateful that he had blocked out time to spend with his family and even to take a stroll in the neighborhood. It wasn't only his birthday cake cholesterol intake that worried her. She was concerned that he'd been putting in too many hours on his story about organized crime's inroads into government.

  The phone rang constantly. Wheeler had to meet sources at weird hours in the outer suburbs. His editor was constantly at him to develop further leads. The consequent stress made him irritable and listless around the house. But Courtney's birthday snapped him out of it. For Wheeler, family came first.

  Wheeler quickened his pace through the maple-lined streets of his neighborhood, a bucolic enclave nestled against Rock Creek Park containing ranch houses occupied by affluent black professionals.

  God, he loved this place. It was the perfect antidote to a scruffy little pig farm in Texarkana, where he was raised.

  As he sprinted along the street pavement, determined to burn off some of the megacalories he had ingested that 176 JAMES

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  afternoon, his mind turned to his recent discussions with Marion about having another baby. A son this time.

  Hmmn. And more occasions to eat birthday cake!

  The blow came much too fast for Wheeler to realize what had happened. It was only when a neighbor almost ran over his sprawled body in the middle of the road that his situation was known. Marion and Courtney held his hand in the ambulance ride to the hospital. He had a faint awareness of this. After an initial going-over in the emergency room, Wheeler was examined carefully by doctors. He had incurred a severe blow to his fourth cervical vertebra, Marion was told. It was too early to know whether there was damage to the spinal cord. They injected him with something to arrest such damage. He would need to stay perfectly still for days. Then they would be able to tell whether he suffered permanent paralysis.

  "Another mugger attack, I suppose," offered the attending physician sympathetically.

  "I don't know. I don't know," was all a shaken Marion could offer in response.

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  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was 11:00 am and Horvath, seated behind his hundred-year old oak desk in the National Security Adviser's office in the West Wing, clasped his hands before his face in a meditative fashion. He was contemplating how to direct that afternoon's briefing of the President on military options concerning "Major Regional Conflicts" --

  "MRCs" in Pentagonese. The Joint Chiefs would be doing the briefing. He had little tolerance for the military. There was something about their clear-eyed, can-do, gung-ho attitude that he found disquieting. He had seen that attitude in the eyes of the Iron Guard when he was a kid in Hungary during the war. He could recall hearing the screams of Jews from his neighborhood being hauled off by the Hungarian Fascists. He saw the same autonomic behavior among the communists who followed the Fascists, and in the eyes of the hated Soviet occupying troops. When he hurled those Molotov cocktails as a teenager, he aimed directly at Russian eyes, if he could get close enough.

  Despite control by a democratic government and the trappings of a citizen-force, the American military too were a culture unto themselves and therefore were capable of anything in the right circumstances. They understood only 178 JAMES

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  control and discipline. He must control the military.

  Nicholas Horvath, witness to history.

  His secretary brought in that morning's mail. She opened and screened all official correspondence, tacking on a self-stick note here and there reminding him of an upcoming meeting with a correspondent, informing him that she had passed on a copy to another office requesting a draft reply, and so on. Anita was as efficient as they came.

  And discreet. She would forward on to her boss unopened anything explicitly marked "Personal." Thus, the large brown envelope in that morning's take, marked "Strictly Personal," arrived on his desk intact, unopened.

  The STU-III secure phone rang. It was CIA Director Levin.

  "Nick, you've seen today's Post article on Zimbabwe, I take it. All this shit that Mugabe's dishing out about how we had plans to overthrow him. This is a heads up. The President may get saddled with questions from the media or Congress. I know that Senator Presser is on his high horse…"

  "Uh huh, uh huh," Horvath kept murmuring half-listening and half-daydreaming. He reflexively reached for a letter opener and lazily tore the top of the big business envelope.

  "…we've prepared some press guidance. Basically, it throws cold water over all this nonsense about trying to overthrow…"

  Horvath slowly reached in and pulled out the contents of the envelope, though his gaze was fixed absently on a large map of the world on the opposite wall.

  "…I'll fax it to you. Please let me know your reaction…"

  "Yeah, sure, be glad…" Horvath's heart stopped. Ten thousand bells and sirens shrieked in his brain. His eyes PERMANENT INTERESTS

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  bulged from their sockets. He felt that he would pee his pants that very moment.

  Staring back at him were photos of abused female faces.

  Mug shot-like. Russian women. Whom he had beaten.

  Beneath their swollen faces were typed their names:

  "Marissa Vassileva." "Nina Turcheva." "Olga Galinska."

  "Lydia Puchinskaya." There were other photos. Of him strolling hand-in-hand with one of the women. Kissing another in a doorway. Making love on a couch. Receiving oral sex in a bathroom. There was a cd as well.

  The sweat poured from his face and armpits. He felt dizzy. He stifled the sudden urge to vomit.

  "Uh. Uh. Dave. Yeah. Sure. Uh. Can I call you back?" Horvath, shell-shocked, slowly replaced the receiver on the blinking, compact secure phone unit. He sat there frozen. The jolt was such that he was incapable of even panicking. He sat paralyzed. It seemed that a darkness was closing in all around him. Oh, let it not be!

  Not be! No! No! No! He buried his face in his hands.

  His intercom buzzed. It was Anita reminding him that he had a luncheon appointment at the Maison Blanche with the Scandinavian ambassadors. He snapped to. But was weighted down by a complete loss of energy.

  He hurriedly shuffled through the photos looking for a note, a letter. Something. But there was none. He clutched the cd. Turning his head wildly like some forest beast on the alert for predators, with trembling hands, Horvath stuffed the disk into a small stereo on a side cabinet, frantically put on earphones and pressed the start button.

  It seemed an eternity for the sound to come on. It was of a woman screaming. He heard his own voice issuing calm warnings not to struggle. He sounded like a crazy man. Something made of glass smashed. "Stop! Stop!"

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  the woman cried. He recognized it as belonging to a young Byelorussian woman he'd been seeing. The sweat continued to pour off Horvath's brow.

  There was a slight pause as the first recording segment ended. The next segment came on. He heard Lydia's voice. "Stay away from me, or I'll stab you!…This Russian will fight back!" Then there was his own pathetic voice.

  "Lydia, I'm sorry. Please come out."

  He couldn't take it any more and stopped the machine.

  In his panic and despair Horvath struggled to focus his thoughts. Somebody was out to blackmail him. That was clear. Oh, Horvath! You thought you were so smart.

  You're nothing but an idiot. A stupid, insane fool! And now you will pay.

  The torture was in the waiting. The blackmailers didn't have to write a message to him. They'd be contacting him presently. A real professional job. Horvath was extremely thirsty. And he needed to relieve his bladder badly. He bolted out of his office and rushed to the mess across the way in the ornate Old Executive Office Building. After doing his business, he thrust his head into the men's room sink and repeatedly threw cold water on his face. In the mess, he bought a cold Coke and chugged it. Nearby was a pay phone. Assured that no one was noticing, he lumbered over and pressed a number into it.

  "Hello?" Lydia answered.

  "Lydia, it's me. What the hell is going on? Who put you up to it?" he demanded.

  "I don't know what you mean, Nicky."

  "Like hell you don't, you rotten bitch--"

  She hung up.

  With frenzied hands, he dug into his pocket for another quarter and pressed as if his life depended on it.

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  "If you don't speak to me like a gentleman, I will hang up again," she warned.

  With great effort, he tried to calm himself. "Lydia. I need to see you. Urgently. "

  "What

  about?"

  "I think you know."

  "No,

  I

  don't."

  Horvath took a deep breath. "Never mind. Can I see you tonight?"

  "Okay. I will be here."

  Horvath was little more than a zombie for the rest of the day.

  She opened the door without uttering a word, turned and walked slowly away from him. The image of her swaying gently forth, hips moving, that sleek body swathed in a black, form-fitting cocktail dress, would have driven him into a frenzy in better times. He followed this time like a scared puppy dog.

  She led him through the simple foyer, through the hallway lined with oil paintings, into the living room.

  Horvath hadn't felt so frightened and humbled since he was punished by the headmaster in his grade school.

  Sprawled comfortably in an overstuffed, patterned arm chair was Yakov. Opposite him, to the rear, was Dimitrov.

  In another armchair by the fireplace was a third Russian.

  None rose as Horvath entered.

  Yakov sported his trademark Cheshire grin. With his left hand, he signaled Horvath to take a seat next to him.

  Horvath dutifully obliged. Lydia sat demurely at the far end of the room, her eyes fixed forlornly away from the others.

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  "With your permission, I shall dispense with introductions and small talk," Yakov began. "Let us get to business."

  "Who are you? KGB?" Horvath stammered.

  Yakov took a moment to study Horvath. Again, the serpent sizing up its prey.

  "To answer your question, no. There is no more 'KGB.'

  Is gone forever. With Soviet Union."

  "Then who are you? What do you want from me?"

  "Ah, but I am being a terrible host. Please. A refreshment." Yakov gestured to a tray containing bottles, glasses and an ice bucket. "I have Egri Bikaver. Slivovitz.

  Even Unicum. All straight from Hungary."

  It made Horvath's blood boil. Only Russians knew how to humiliate with kindness. Horvath hesitated. Yakov mumbled an instruction to Dimitrov. The latter poured the potent Slivovitz apricot brandy into a small vodka glass and handed it to Horvath. The latter took it and slugged it down. Dimitrov poured another.

  "Please not to preoccupy yourself that we are spies. I assure you we are not."

  Horvath shook his head as if not comprehending.

  "We are…entrepreneurs. We provide services…for a fee. And you have a problem. We can help you with your problem."

  "So, then, you are…"

  "Friends. From now on we are your friends. You can always rely upon us. And we on your cooperation."

  "And you are Russians."

  "We are newcomers. Here to pursue the American dream."

  "I fought against Russians. In Hungary. From the United States. I will not betray my country!" Horvath said bravely. Nicholas Horvath, freedom fighter.

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  "Ah, yes. The little guerrilla fighter. And my father was there. He helped liberate Hungary in 1956. And my uncles drove out Nazis from Budapest in the Great Patriotic War.

  So, my friend, we have something in common. And so, we meet today."

  Horvath paused to collect his senses. "What do you want then?"

  "Information! No surprise there, tovarishch. "

  "And if I don't cooperate?"

  "But you will. You have your family, yes?" Yakov leaned forward. "But more important. You have career.

  You have reputation. You have money. In America, nobody sacrifices these. Are you prepared to spend the rest of your life as a poor mouse? As a man of shame? As nobody, with no respect, no money, no future?"

  Horvath gazed at the floor, speechless.

  "Of course not!" Yakov continued. "So, we work together from now on. You fulfill our requests and we help you whenever you have problems. Like today." Yakov saluted Horvath with a glass of vodka and knocked it back.

  "Now. Here is Mr. Smith." He pointed at Dimitrov.

  "And there," gesturing to the third Russian, "is Mr. Jones."

  Mr. Jones was Igor Rokovsky, SVR colonel, an American specialist. In the course of his regular duties at his embassy, Rokovsky, like many of his colleagues, moonlighted for e
xtra cash as a free-lance agent. Yakov had recently taken him on. "Mr. Jones will be your contact.

  And your friend."

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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Colleen had just finished a grueling two hours of Thai.

  The tones, four of them, were the hardest thing to master.

  "Ma," for example, could mean horse, dog, or come, depending on the tone placed on it. Likewise, "kai," could mean near or far. And on it went for nearly every conceivable monosyllable.

  She went to collect her mail and messages from her pigeon hole. A single yellow telephone message slip was there. "Call: Mr. D.S. Warren," it said, and listed a phone number.

  She called. Mr. Warren, in the bureau of diplomatic security, asked her to come by to answer a few routine questions. They probably wanted to update her clearances, she thought.

  D.S. Warren occupied a small partitioned cubicle in State's annex office building across from the Department on E Street. Mr. Warren himself was one of those security functionaries who instilled insecurity and fear by feigning calm and congeniality. Furthermore, his J.C. Penney blue, three-piece suit and brylcreamed hair made him a dead give-away as a security man, or at least the stereotype that most "substantive" officers had of them.

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  "Miss McCoy. Like I said on the phone, I have just a few routine questions I'd like to go over with you." Colleen could never figure out whether, by using "Miss" in lieu of

  "Ms.," the notoriously sexist security guys were advertising their contempt for feminism, or were simply as slow and plodding as everybody liked to make them out to be.

  "It's come to my attention that you claim to have some special information concerning the murder of Ambassador Mortimer."

  Routine questions, my eye, she thought.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Well, you reportedly have stated that you believe the ambassador was killed for something he did, or people he knew. Is that right?"

  A little inner voice told Colleen to be on guard. "I have no idea who killed him, or why. That's your task to resolve, isn't it, Mr. Warren?"