The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [78]
“I can tell you how the arms come to the V. C. through Cambodia,” Klimenko said in a rush of words. “I can tell you what we are going to do with the structure of the Cuban intelligence service. I can give you names you don’t have. There’s been a change in the funding system—I set it up, I know the banks and the account numbers. Paul, don’t be foolish.”
Christopher shook his head.
“I know what you think,” Klimenko said. “You’re worried about your cover. But you have no cover with us. We know about you—we’ve known for years. When you begin thinking about yourself you lose your profession. I know.”
A Vatican guard appeared in the stairway door. “The gallery is closing,” he said in Italian.
“Do you want to go down first?” Christopher asked.
Klimenko uttered a little laugh; he was in possession of himself again.
“It’s comic how I fit the defector’s pattern,” he said. “I tell you how I love Russia, and offer you her secrets in exchange for safety. It’s no wonder people like you and me exist, Paul—men are so predictable, so easy to use. I know what you’ll do next. We’d better set up a meeting now. I don’t want to use the telephone anymore.”
“Gherman, I won’t see you again. I can’t help you. What I’m telling you is not technique, it’s the truth.”
“You don’t believe in the quality of the merchandise.”
“I care nothing about it one way or the other.”
“Signori,” the guard said, “you must descend now. The gallery is closing.”
Klimenko fluttered his gloved hand impatiently at the guard. He turned his back on the man and again put his face close to Christopher.
“There was an operation in the States last month,” he said. “The code word was Weedkiller. A million dollars went through a certain Swiss bank. An American got the money. A million dollars, Paul. Think about that.”
“When?”
“The money went into the bank in Zurich on November 25. It was taken out the next day, just before the bank closed.”
“By whom?”
Klimenko looked aside. “I don’t tell you that now. When we meet again, when I have assurances—but not on this roof, in the rain.”
“You’ll have assurances when I have this information,” Christopher said.
“Weedkiller?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“Tomorrow,” Klimenko said. “I can’t wait longer than that.”
Christopher nodded and smiled at the guard, who had come onto the gallery and was walking toward them with his arms thrown out and his shoulders shrugged to show that he was at the end of his patience.
“All right,” Christopher said. “Five o’clock in the morning, in the Protestant cemetery behind the Porta San Paolo. I’ll meet you on Shelley’s grave.”
“Romantic,” Klimenko said.
He walked away, leaving Christopher to talk to the remonstrating guard, who might remember him.
3
In one of the souvenir shops near Saint Peter’s, Christopher bought a postcard of John XXIII. He took a taxi to the main post office in the Piazza San Silvestro and, using the typewriter at the telegraph office, typed the name and address Nsango used in Elisabethville on it. In the message space he typed a Christmas greeting in French and signed the message with three initials. He could speak like a Frenchman, but his handwriting was plainly American.
He dropped the card in the airmail box outside and walked next door to the long-distance telephone office. When the call came through, the clerk put him in Cabin 10 as usual, and he could hear the tap sputtering on the line. Sybille answered.
“You’re coming for Christmas!” she said.
“No, I want to invite you down here.”
“My dear, we can’t. We’d have to charter an extra plane to carry the presents my husband has bought me to make up for his guilty conscience.”
“Is he there?”
“At five-thirty? Have you forgotten already what it is to be chained to a machine gun like a poor German private, rat-tatting away for the Fatherland?”
“Will you give him a message? Tell him I’d like to have lunch with him. Write down the date and time carefully—you know what his memory is.”
Christopher gave her a formula that would bring Webster, if he understood it, to Rome the following