The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [80]
“Good morning, Paul.”
“Gherman. Did you case this place last night?”
“Why?”
“You knew right where to find Shelley.”
“I came earlier this morning. No one has picked me up.”
Klimenko lifted his feet, in pointed Italian shoes, one after the other out of the wet grass. “Nevertheless, I’d like to get under cover as soon as possible,” he said. “All this standing about in the open isn’t good.”
“That grave over there is where Edward John Trelawny is buried,” Christopher said. “He snatched Shelley’s heart out of his funeral pyre on the beach at Viareggio. Later Trelawny was a secret agent in Greece with Byron. He thought Byron was a romantic amateur.”
“Dung,” Klimenko said. “Let’s go over to the trees.” In shadow, surrounded by the straight stems of the cypresses, Klimenko seemed more at ease. “What arrangements have you made?” he asked.
“If what you have is valuable, I can hand you over to someone this afternoon. They’ll tell you what to expect.”
“What will that be, roughly?”
“Safe transportation to the States, debriefing, a place to stay until you’re ready to surface.”
“I don’t want money,” Klimenko said. “That has to be made plain. No money.”
“All right, I’ll tell them. What do you have with you?”
“Your interest was aroused by Weedkiller. I’ve brought you something.”
Klimenko removed his hat and turned out the sweatband. He handed Christopher three small photographs and a slip of paper with a series of numbers and letters written on it in red ink. The photographs showed two men in dark American suits and white shirts crossing a sidewalk. One of the men carried a large attaché case. The cameraman had been sitting in a car: the angle of the door showed in a corner of the picture. The faces were very clear.
“What bank in Zurich is the account number for?” Christopher asked.
“Dolder und Co., in the Bleicherweg. It’s a small bank. This was a one-time usage.”
“Who are these people?” Christopher held up the clearest photograph.
“The men who made the withdrawal. They spoke American English.”
“Names, Gherman.”
Klimenko shrugged. “They were couriers. The names they used on the hotel register were Anthony Rugged and Ronald Prince.”
“Rugged and Prince? Come on, Gherman.”
Klimenko reached into his hat and handed Christopher photocopies of two Swiss hotel registration cards. “The cards are genuine,” he said. “What do names like that suggest to you?”
“Clumsy Americanization.” Christopher looked again at the men in the photograph; they had dark, closed faces; one man’s mouth was open, as if he had been chewing gum. “Probably Ruggieri and Principi originally.”
“Something like that. I saw the passports they handed in at the hotel—genuine. Their names are Rugged and Prince.”
“What was the million dollars for?”
“I don’t know. I carried it from Stockholm. It was brought to me from Moscow by the head of my section. I made the deposit, and my instructions were to put the money in the account and leave Zurich at once. Center wanted no surveillance on the messengers.”
“Why not? Is that your standard procedure?”
“No. Do you want me to explain the whole system now? Briefly, this is the only cash transaction in any amount I’ve ever handled where no receipt was required. I couldn’t believe the irregularity of it.”
“Why would they do it this way? A million dollars.”
“Obviously security was more important than money. It was a very tight operation.”
“You must have been given a deposit slip.”
“No—they wanted no paper of any kind. Not even in the files at No. 2 Ulitza Dzerzhinskogo.” Klimenko smiled bleakly when Christopher did not react to the address of KGB headquarters, spoken aloud.
“What was the withdrawal code?” Christopher asked.
“Also spoken, not written. To make a withdrawal, one cited the number of the account and gave the codeword tortora, which means ‘dove’ in Italian.”
“Why Italian?”
“I’ll come to that—it was an