Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [79]
Since arriving in Russia, he’d scrutinized every step he took, and steps taken by others. That afternoon, among many of his thoughts, profound and occasionally whimsical, was why, more important how, Lerner had so effortlessly laid the answers in his lap so quickly. He answered by reminding himself of Lerner’s long experience in Moscow, and the professional that he was, one of countless dedicated and skilled American men and women representing their country far from home, blessedly removed from Washington’s penchant for political meddling, getting the job done and proud of it. But it had been too easy, and it wasn’t over. If something bad could happen, it would. “You’re always expecting the worst,” Doris had said with some regularity before the divorce. She was right. And he was still alive.
As he dried himself vigorously after setting the shower to the hottest temperature he could stand, his thoughts went to his friend and CIA mentor, Tom Hoctor, who he’d learned was in Moscow with the secretary of state. Why hadn’t Hoctor made contact? Surely, Pauling reasoned, Hoctor hadn’t accompanied Secretary Rock as part of her diplomatic mission. Presumably, he’d come to Moscow to oversee the CIA’s stake in the investigation of the missiles’ origins. Hoctor had made it clear to Pauling at Langley prior to Pauling’s departure for Moscow that he, Hoctor, was in charge of the operation. But he’d also instructed Pauling to report only to Lerner, who would be the conduit of all information between Moscow and Langley. Another convoluted, broken chain of command.
Pauling dressed in jeans, a navy-blue T-shirt that hugged his torso, white athletic socks, sneakers, and his multipocketed tan vest. It was a fair night in Moscow, although low clouds moving quickly over the city promised rain by morning. He searched his carry-on bag on the floor of a closet and pulled from it a nine-millimeter Austrian Glock 17 semiautomatic. He checked the clip, slipped the weapon into the vest’s largest right-hand pocket, then removed two small, spring-loaded devices attached to tiny glass ampules from the bag and placed them in one of a half-dozen pockets on the left side. He then pulled out two slightly longer ampules and also slipped them into his left pocket. Each spring-loaded ampule contained prussic acid. He’d been given them, and the Glock 17, that afternoon by Harold Sutherland, a longtime embassy employee (read CIA) who spent his days behind a locked door in the embassy’s basement. The sign on the door read TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, a benign promise considering the sophisticated instruments of death the room contained, some personally invented by the CIA’s Sutherland, an acknowledged technical genius. Sutherland’s final words to Pauling were “Make sure when you trip the spring, Max, that the prussic acid goes up somebody else’s nose, not your own. But if it does, break one of the other ampules under your nose and breathe in the nitro, fast!” Pauling had been trained in the use of prussic acid, and the antidote, nitro, but appreciated the reminder.
The final item removed from the bag was an envelope containing twenty ten-thousand-dollar bills, which he slipped into an inside vest pocket and zippered it closed. He pulled a slip of paper with a phone number written on it from his jeans pocket, said it aloud a few times, then burned it in an ashtray.
He rode the elevator to the opulent lobby, went into a bar off it, and sat alone sipping bottled water with lime. At eleven-fifteen, he stepped out onto Teatralny Proezd. The streets in Theatre Square were busy as more than two thousand people spilled out of the Bolshoi Theatre after enjoying a performance by the world-famous ballet company bearing its name, joining hundreds of others,