Dangerous Games td-40 Page 8

  Dimitri Sorkofsky was called "The Rhino." He was six-foot-three and weighed 250 pounds. His Neanderthal brow belied his high intelligence. His hands were like massive paws, and yet Natasha had often called them the gentlest hands in the world. Her love for him had found beauty where there was none for others to see.

  He had been so proud of her, just as he was proud of his skills, and when he reported to his superiors in the Kremlin and was told that he would be in charge of security for the Olympic Games, he was, oddly, not thrilled-first, because he thought he was simply the most qualified man for the job, and second, because Natasha was not there to share in his glory.

  His superior, a man with eyebrows like black hedges, told him that a decision had been made at the highest levels on the Americans' request to send

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  their own security people to protect their threatened athletes.

  "And that decision is?" asked Sorkofsky.

  "That decision is no. The American imperialists would only seize that opportunity to flood our country with their CIA spies."

  Sorkofsky nodded, silently wondering to himself if his superior really believed that claptrap, and knowing it didn't really matter. The Americans would send agents anyway. He knew it because it was what he would have done under the same circumstances.

  He was wished well in his new assignment. He had just begun to assemble a staff when he was informed again by his superior that the Americans had protested to the premier and a compromise had been reached. Another man would be added to his security force, a West German police captain named Wil-helm Bechenbauer.

  "That's all right," Sorkofsky said. "I can work with him."

  "You know this man?" his superior asked, suddenly suspicious.

  "No. But I can work with anybody."

  Captain Wilhelm Bechenbauer did not like being assigned to Russia. He did not like being away from his family that long.

  His son was of high school age and his wife, a good woman quite capable of raising their twelve-year-old daughter, Helga, was not equipped to handle fifteen-year-old Hans. That boy needed the strong hand of a father.

  Bechenbauer was a dapper, well-dressed, trim man of five-foot-seven whose weight never varied more than a pound from 140. He sported an impeccably trimmed mustache and he too had a nickname. He was called "The Ferret."

  The Ferret was looking forward to meeting the

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  Rhino, and the longer he thought about it, the more he looked forward to something else about his Moscow assignment: Russian women. He had never had a Russian woman and he was looking forward to it. At forty-six, Bechenbauer was as lusty as he had been at twenty-six, and while this pleased him, it seemed to irritate his wife. He managed, nevertheless, to make do.

  Captain Bechenbauer had been in Colonel Sorkofsky's outer office for twenty minutes and he knew that it was no accident that he was being forced to wait so long. Sorkofsky was establishing their relative positions early in their relationship. Bechenbauer thought to himself that it was a needless display. He was perfectly willing to let the Russian run the show. He lit one of his favorite cigars and sat back with his legs crossed, pleased to find that the colonel's secretary was attractive. Perhaps she would be the one to introduce him to the world of Russian women.

  Sorkofsky thought that half an hour was long enough to keep the West German waiting. He was about to buzz his secretary but decided to go outside and welcome Bechenbauer himself. The West German, if he was as smart as his dossier seemed to indicate, would know what Sorkofsky had done.

  When he opened the door, he saw a smallish man sitting on the edge of his secretary's desk. Both were laughing. He noticed the wedding band on Bechenbauer's left hand and took an immediate dislike to the German. Away from home only one day and already looking to play love games. The colonel had never cheated on his wife, neither in life nor in death, and he detested any man who would.

  "Captain Bechenbauer, I presume," he said loudly. His secretary jumped and looked sheepish. Bechenbauer looked at Sorkofsky, at the girl, and then back to the KGB colonel. He was frowning

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  when he slid off her desk and approached the larger man with his hand outstretched.

  "I am pleased to meet you, Colonel. I have heard many good things about you."

  Sorkofsky turned away from the German's hand.

  "Come inside, Captain," he said and walked to his desk. Behind him, he heard Bechenbauer whisper something to his secretary and became even more annoyed.

  When Bechenbauer was in the office, Sorkofsky curtly commanded: "Sit." The West German obeyed and looked at the Russian colonel with an amused look on his face.

  "We have a problem already, Colonel, and we have just met?" he asked in flawless Russian.

  "It is your problem if you toss yourself onto other women the moment you are away from your wife," Sorkofsky said.

  "I am sorry if I poached on your private preserve," Bechenbauer said.

  For a moment, Sorkofsky did not understand the idiom, then his face reddened and he leaped to his feet.

  "Miss Kamirov is my secretary and nothing more, Captain, and I object to your implication."

  "Then I apologize for the implication," Bechenbauer said. "However, I do not apologize for my behavior, which is none of your business. We are here to work on a mission. I will not attempt to change your life habits and I would appreciate it if you would not attempt to change mine. I will tell you only that I love my wife in my own way. I will not discuss it further."

  Sorkofsky blinked rapidly while looking at the smaller man across his desk. The German confused him. He seemed sincere about his love of his wife and yet he cheated on her. Sorkofsky threw his hands up in the air with a smile.

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  "Captain, I apologize too. I did not mean to lose my temper. It does not often occur. It will not again."

  Bechenbauer transferred his cigar from his right hand to his left hand, stood up and stepped up to the colonel. He extended his right hand.

  "In that case, perhaps we can start again with a handshake."

  Sorkofsky met the Germans' eyes again and together they smiled before shaking hands like old friends.

  "Good," said Sorkofsky.

  "And I want you to know that I understand you are in charge of this operation. I am here only to help you in any way I can."

  "Thank you." The two men returned to their seats. "You know why you are here?"

  "I know that the Americans asked permission to send their agents to protect their athletes. I know that your country refused. I know that the Americans had me designated to come in as an advisor. I also know that this is supposed to lull all you Russians to sleep so that you will never guess that American agents will be sent in anyway."

  Sorkofsky grinned.

  "You are very perceptive," he said.

  Bechenbauer smiled back. "No problem," he said. "If the Americans run their spy system the way they run their foreign policy, we need only look for the athletes wearing trenchcoats and carrying daggers. They will be easy to find. I think our biggest problem will be keeping them out from underfoot."

  "My opinion exactly," the big Russian said. "You were at Munich?"

  Bechenbauer's face lost the faint smile that habitually played at the corners of his mouth. "Yes, Colonel. I wish I could tell you what the horrors of Munich were like."

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  "I have been in war, Captain. I know what bodies look like."

  "I'm sure you do," the German said, "but we are not talking of dead soldiers, killed hi battle. We are talking about young people who came to Munich to compete in games and were greeted with death. To such as you and I, violence is a way of life. But these were children. That is why I am here. I volunteered because I feel I have something to atone for."

  "Why you? You were not on the security team at Munich," the Russian said.

  "It was my country in which this atrocity occurred," Bechenbauer said. Sorkofsky was confused by the man but could not doubt
his sincerity. How strange that the man could be so sensitive in one way and in another, he had no sensitivity at all. Unless alley cats were to be considered sensitive.

  "I understand," he said. "Perhaps you will rest at your hotel and in the morning, we can review our plans."

  "That is kind of you, Colonel." With a smile, Bechenbauer added, "Perhaps I may even find some young lady who will show me your Russian nightlife."

  The man was incorrigible, Sorkofsky decided, but before he could say anything, the small German had left his office.

  Bechenbauer was curious too about Colonel Sorkofsky and he asked Miss Kamirov about him after they had made love for the second time that night.

  "Your colonel intrigues me, Ilya."

  "Oh?" she asked, blinking her large brown eyes at him. They were in bed in his hotel room, where they had ended up after cruising several of Moscow's dull nightclubs. Ilya was taller than Bechenbauer and more than twenty years younger, but she made no attempt to hide her attraction to him. Most women

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  were attracted to him, and she had been surprised at the ferocity with which he made love. He was better and more adept than any young man she had ever encountered and she had encountered her share, for she enjoyed sex.

  "Why does he intrigue you?" she asked.

  "He seems such a rigid moralist. Is he always like that?"

  "So far as I know. I am told he was devoted to his late wife. Now his life is his two daughters."

  "He has never made a pass at you?" Bechenbauer asked.

  "Never. I tried to get him to but he never seemed to notice. Finally I gave up."

  Bechenbauer nodded. So Sorkofsky was for real. For some reason, he felt pleased. He might never like the Russian but he could respect him as an honest man.

  Rolling over atop Ilya, he began to think the time he spent in Russia might not be so hard to take after all.

  Sorkofsky had tucked his girls in after telling them a bedtime story, and then gone to his den, where he smoked his only pipe of the day and drank his only vodka. He kept it in the small freezer section of his den's refrigerator, which helped to thicken the liquid into a velvety soft relaxant.

  He thought of Bechenbauer as he sipped. He had originally been wary of the man, suspecting that he might be an undercover American spy in Russia to coordinate the efforts of all the American spies. But he had rejected that idea now. His life with Communist conspiracy theory had taught him one thing: generally the simplest explanation is the accurate one. Bechenbauer was a German security officer, no more, no less. And from his file, a very good one.

  The doorbell interrupted his muse. A military

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  messenger was on his doorstep. He seemed surprised to see the Rhinoceros in pajamas and bathrobe.

  "Sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but Lieutenant Protchik thought you should see this tonight."

  Protchik was one of Sorkofsky's aides, an ambitious young soldier who did everything he could to keep on the colonel's good side. Sorkofsky detested him.

  He took the envelope and thanked the corporal. He waited until he was back in his study before he opened the envelope and read the contents.

  It was another note from the S.A.A.E. The note had just been received by the president of the United States, Protchik advised him in a cover memo.

  The note to the president read:

  "Everything is in place. As a lesson to the imperialist cowards of America who flee their friends at the first sign of trouble, let it be known that not one American athlete will return from Moscow alive. All will die."

  The note was postmarked Salisbury, Rhodesia. The first note, Sorkofsky knew, had been sent from Pretoria, South Africa.

  Sorkofsky read the note several times, then telephoned Bechenbauer's hotel.

  A woman answered the insistent ringing in the German officer's room.

  "Let me speak to Captain Bechenbauer," Sorkofsky ordered stiffly.

  The woman seemed confused and stuttered a moment, then Bechenbauer came onto the line.

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "Something has come up. Can you be in my office at 6 A.M.?"

  "Of course, Colonel."

  Sorkofsky hesitated. He thought he should say something to the German about his deplorable morals.

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  "Will that be all, Colonel?" Bechenbauer asked.

  Angrily, Sorkofsky snapped, "Yes. Until tomorrow. But for God's sake, man, try to get some sleep."

  He slammed down the telephone and walked upstairs to his bedroom. Something was bothering him. He shouldn't have acted so brusquely with Bechenbauer. What was it?

  The woman. Her voice had sounded familiar and had seemed flustered when she heard Sorkofsky. Did she recognize his voice? She must have. How had Bechenbauer known it was him on the telephone when he had not identified himself?

  Was it-? No. Not his secretary. He told himself he must stop conjuring up ghosts. He had enough real problems to deal with.

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  CHAPTER TEN

  Remo had seen it in the Caribbean, and he expected it in South America and Africa, but he hadn't expected it when he and Chiun stepped off the Russian Aeroflot liner at Moscow's Airport. Beggars.

  "Choon gum, mister?" asked a young boy with a blond head so square that it looked as if he had been raised in a Kleenex box. When Remo shook his head, the boy did not even acknowledge it, but instead just moved farther down along the line of American athletes who had arrived on the plane, asking in his few words of English, "Choon gum, candy?"

  Remo and Chiun followed the line into the main airport terminal. A young man about Remo's size with thin sandy hair and the face of a mob scene extra sidled up to him.

  "You got jeans?" he asked. "Hundred dollars American if you got jeans."

  "I don't wear jeans," Remo said.

  "Whatchoocall whatchoowear? Chinos? Fifty dollars American for chinos?" the young Russian said.

  "No," said Remo. "I'm wearing them myself."

  "How about a robe?" Chiun said to the man. "Like mine." Almost reverently, he touched the blue brocaded robe he wore. "Maybe a little thinner. Just what you need for your summers. Fifty dollars. I brought extras."

  "No wear robe," the man said. "Need jeans, chi-

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  nos. Got buyer for jeans, chinos. You got jeans, chinos, mister?"

  "Be gone, primitive," Chiun said. He turned his back on the man and spoke to Remo.

  "These people have nothing to wear?" he asked.

  "Sure. If they all want to wear khaki pants," Remo said. "American clothes are what they want."

  "What kind of country is this?" Chiun said.

  "Just a vision of a glorious new tomorrow of brotherhood and freedom," said Remo, reading from a brochure that Russian travel guides were shoving into the hands of all the athletes.

  "This is stupid. It was never like this under Ivan the Wonderful," Chiun said.

  "Welcome to Russia," said Remo. "You have seen the future and the only thing that works in it is you and me."

  The Russians had decided that security checks would be made at the Olympic village, not at the airport, and the athletic contingent was herded through the terminal toward waiting buses. As they moved in lime, Remo noticed a long queue of people standing alongside one of the far walls.

  Chiun saw them too.

  "What is that?" he said. He walked away from the athletes toward the far line.

  Remo followed him. "It's a line. Come on, Chiun, we've got to go."

  "Not yet," Chiun said. "If there is a line, it means there is something good at the end of it. I know about lines, Remo. I have seen this before. We will stand in this line."

  "Come on, Chiun. Whatever they're selling, you won't want. Let's hit it."

  "Nonsense," Chiun said. "You never really learn anything, do you, Remo? I tell you, there is something good at the end of this line."

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  Remo sighed. "You wait in line. I'll go up front and see what they're selling."


  "Yes," Chiun said. "Do that and report back to me." As Remo walked away, he called out: "And check the price."

  "Yes sir," Remo said.

  At the end of the line, there was a counter that looked like an American newsstand with a hand-painted sign in Russian over it. Remo could not read the sign but he could see what the people were buying: cigarettes. English cigarettes, Players, in a cardboard box. One pack each.

  "Cigarettes," he told Chiun.

  "I don't believe it," Chiun said. He folded his arms. "Why would anyone wait in line for cigarettes?"

  "Because it's hard to get foreign cigarettes in Russia and Russian cigarettes taste as if they're made from cow flop. Take my word for it, Chiun, they're selling cigarettes."

  "That is terrible. What a tragedy."

  "Yes."

  "If we had known cigarettes would have been such a hit, we could have brought some with us and sold them," said Chiun.

  "Next time maybe," Remo said.

  They walked back toward the line of American athletes slogging slowly toward the waiting buses. As he glanced around, Remo noticed that almost all of the Americans were being accosted by young Russians. He could hear some of the words. They were being offered hard cash for their blue jeans, cash for their Mickey Mouse sweatshirts, money for loose cigarettes they might have, money for gum or candy or digital LED watches.

  "Next time we come, remember to bring cigarettes," Chiun said definitively. "And a lot of the other junk these people seem to want."

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  "I will," Remo said. He had read stories about Russia's sacrificing consumer interests to spend money on defense, but they had been just words to him until he had seen for himself how that policy translated into reality for the Russian man on the street.

  That impression was reinforced as they rode through Moscow on buses. Everywhere, Remo saw lines, stretching out the front door of stores and halfway down the block. And he saw people carrying out their precious packages after having successfully outlasted the line. A few packs of cigarettes. Pantyhose. One woman carried a brassiere in her hand and her face was set in a look of tigerish triumph.

  Remo and Chiun were assigned a room together in a large cinderblock building that was inside the miles of fencing that surrounded the Olympic village built just outside Moscow.