Last Call td-35 Page 9

  "Drive straight ahead."

  Two blocks later, the man directed him to pull to the curb and park. They both got out of the car and into a red Chevrolet Nova where a man with a cowboy hat was sitting behind the wheel.

  Smith automatically recorded the car's license number in his memory as they got into the backseat. The man in the cowboy hat looked into the rearview mirror and his eyes met Smith's.

  "Doctor Smith?"

  Smith nodded.

  He recognized Colonel Vassily Karbenko, head of Russia's spy network in the United States, but he decided there would be nothing to be gained, and perhaps much to be lost, by saying anything now.

  "Good," said Karbenko. "We have much to talk about." He put the car into drive and pulled smoothly out into the late supper traffic. The man sitting next to Smith kept the gun pushed into Smith's ribs.

  She called at twenty after eight.

  "Miss Gonzalez," Mrs. Smith said. "The doctor isn't home yet."

  Ruby pursed her lips. Smith had left the office an hour ago and told Ruby he was going straight home. Straight home for Harold Smith meant straight home, Ruby knew. It didn't mean stopping for gas, for a newspaper, for a pack of ciga-

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  rettes, for a drink at the neighborhood saloon. It meant straight home. A nine-minute drive. Eight minutes and forty-five seconds if he was lucky and missed the light on the corner of Desmond and Bagley Streets.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Smith. The doctor was called into the city at the last minute," Ruby lied. "He asked me to tell you he's be late. I'm sorry."

  "Oh," said Mrs. Smith. The disappointment in her voice struck at Ruby's heart. "Men just have no idea what veal cutlets cost."

  "They sure don't, Mrs. Smith. As soon as I hear from him, I'll let you know."

  "Thank you, Miss Gonzalez." Mrs. Smith hung up. She was annoyed. The least this Gonzalez girl could have done would be to call before she had gotten the cutlets ready for the oven.

  Ruby did not put down the telephone. She called the guardhouse in front of the sanitarium and got the license plate number of the red Chevrolet she had seen loitering across the street.

  She punched up the computer console on Smith's desk and fed the license plate number into it. The computer was hooked up through interlocking networks with computer systems all over the country. This time Ruby picked the New York State motor vehicle records connection and waited for a return on the owner of the car.

  It took two minutes. The computer sent a message onto the small television-type screen on Smith's desk.

  "No record of vehicle registration."

  "Sheeit," Ruby mumbled. "Goddamn New York can't do nothin' right." Since she had moved to

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  Rye to work for Smith, her life had been a continuous series of run-ins with the New York State bureaucracy, typified by her problems in trying to register her white Lincoln Continental in New York. Not only were the state's auto registration fees the highest in the nation but the registration form-which was accomplished in most other states on a single postcard-sized piece of paper-ran to seven separate documents and required a law firm to fill out. Ruby finally surrendered and kept her Virginia plates and if she ever got stopped and got any lip from a state trooper for having an out-of-state registration, she was going to run the sucker down.

  She got out the Westchester County telephone book and began rifling through the yellow pages.

  She began calling all those service stations listed for Rye, New York.

  Ruby had found that people were never suspicious of the stupid, so she turned her accent into deep dripping Alabama.

  "Hello. Mah name be Madie Jackson. Ah's tryin' to fahnd me a car ah hits today in a parkin' lot. A red Nova. Ah wanna call the owner and fix up his car for he."

  On the twelfth call, she got lucky.

  "Yeah, Madie," said a black voice from Cochran's Service. "That be Gruboff's car."

  "Who?"

  "Igor Gruboff, some funny name like that. He live up on Benjamin Place. He here complainin' all the time. Hey, Madie, what you doin' after you call him?"

  "Depends on what ah's offered," Ruby said.

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  "Ah closes down at 11. Then it's party time."

  "Look for me," Ruby said.

  "What you be drivin', Madie?"

  "A blue deuce and a quarter," Ruby said.

  "All raht," said the gas station man. "Hey, Madie, you gonna go see this Gruboff ?"

  "Ah thought ah just call him."

  "Don' let him jive you none. He a tight-ass suckah and he be tryin' to con you outa yo' money."

  "Thanks, brother. Ah be careful and ah see you at 'leven."

  "Ah'll be waiting. You'll know me. Ah be the handsome one."

  "Ah can tell," Ruby said and hung up the telephone.

  She found Igor Gruboff's address on Benjamin Place in the telephone directory. On a hunch, she punched it into CURE'S computers.

  The printout came back that Igor Gruboff, fifty-one, was a communications specialist, working with micro-processing. He and his wife had defected from Russia eighteen years earlier, been granted asylum, and seven years ago had become American citizens. Mrs. Gruboff had died two years earlier. Gruboff was employed at Molly Electronics, which had four government contracts for silicon memory chips used in spacecraft.

  Ruby nodded. So much for the defection. Gruboff was still one of them. She remembered the man in the cowboy hat she had seen behind the wheel of the red Nova. Somehow, she doubted that that was Gruboff. She punched in the cow-

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  boy-hat description of the man into the computer and called for a correlation check against known Russian agents in the United States.

  The machine responded in less than ten seconds.

  "Colonel Vassily Karbenko, cultural attache to the Russian Embassy in Washington, B.C. Forty-eight years old. Given to wearing cowboy clothes. Actual rank, colonel in the KGB. Considered a personal protege of the Russian premier. In the field, Russia's highest-ranking spy in the United States."

  On a sheet of white paper, Ruby printed in large block letters the name and address of Igor Gruboff. She left it on Smith's desk for whoever might find it. In case finding it became necessary.

  The cellar of Igor Gruboff's home had been turned into a recreation room by putting ugly knotty pine panels over ugly cinderblock walls.

  Harold Smith was directed to a chair by Vassily Karbenko, who dropped his large Stetson on a table, then stood looking at Smith.

  Igor Gruboff stood by the steps leading to the kitchen, his hand inside his jacket pocket, holding a revolver. Smith noticed that like almost all foreigners his trousers were too short.

  "Might I ask who you are?" Smith said.

  "You don't know?" Karbenko said. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and leaned back against the table.

  "No, I don't," Smith lied. "I don't go to cowboy movies."

  Karbenko smiled. "Good," he said. "Very good.

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  But suppose we just leave it at that. That you don't know who I am. What is important is that I know who you are, or, more accurately, who you used to be."

  Smith nodded.

  "I want to know about Project Omega," Karbenko said.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Doctor Smith, let us clear the air," Karbenko said. "Your name is Harold W. Smith. You run Folcroft Sanitarium. Twenty years ago, while working for the Central Intelligence Agency, you devised a program called Project Omega. It was designed to bring about the assassination of certain Russian officials if the United States should lose a nuclear war. Its alleged purpose was to prevent such a war. It succeeded. Then you retired from the service. Through no fault of yours, Project Omega has been triggered. Three Russian ambassadors have been killed. The Russian premier is on the list for extinction. No one knows how to call off Project Omega. Yet, if it is not stopped before the Russian premier is killed, it might well be the first explosion in World War III. I
have no reason to believe that you are not a dedicated American patriot who does not want his country, and the world, ravaged by nuclear war. While I represent the other side, my goal is identical to yours. I find it necessary that we talk now to try to determine if there is any way to head off Omega before its damage becomes irrevocable. That is why I am here."

  "I told everything I know to officials of my gov-

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  ernment," Smith said. He folded his arms across his chest.

  "So I was told. However, Doctor, I do not believe that the current officials of your government and its CIA could find their feet in their shoes. My government is becoming very nervous. Anything is possible now and I need to know everything."

  Smith was silent.

  "So let us get right to it, shall we? I have been told by Admiral Stantington that there were four targets for CIA assassins under Project Omega. The ambassadors to Rome, Paris, and London, all of whom are dead now, and the Russian premier. Who picked the targets ?"

  "I did," Smith said.

  "How, twenty years ago, could you pick today's ambassador and premier? I do not understand or believe this," Karbenko said.

  "Two of the targets were geographic picks," Smith said. "That is, the envoys to Paris and Rome were to be marked for extinction. The assassins would have operated against whoever turned out to be the ambassadors to those countries."

  "I see," said Karbenko. "And the other two? The English ambassador and the premier?"

  "I drew up a list of ten young diplomats. I was sure the ambassador to England would be on that list."

  "You gay you drew up a list of ten diplomats, Do you mean there are nine more diplomats in Russia with assassins trailing them around ?"

  "That would be correct," Smith said, "except

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  that they are dormant. They are not in a position to attack because their instructions were to ... er, dispose of their man only if he was the ambassador to England."

  "And the premier? How did you know who would be the premier, here and now, twenty years later?"

  "I did not. I selected six candidates," Smith said.

  "I find that hard to believe. Twenty years ago, you could have polled the Politburo and their consensus would not have placed our current premier in the six most likely candidates. How did you succeed?"

  "I used different standards, perhaps, from those of the Politburo," Smith said.

  "And what were those standards?"

  "I selected the three most vicious and the three dumbest," Smith said.

  Gruboff growled near the staircase but Karbenko laughed.

  "Under the age-old theory that either the most brutal or the dumbest will prevail?" Karbenko asked.

  "Correct," said Smith. "Never the normal. The brutal or the stupid."

  "I will not ask you into which category our current premier falls," said Karbenko.

  "I wish you wouldn't," Smith said.

  "Who selected the assassins ?" asked Karbenko.

  "Another CIA man," Smith answered. "Conrad MacCleary. He is dead now."

  "And you expect me to believe that you did not know whom he selected ?"

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  "That's right," Smith said. "I didn't approve of MacCleary. I don't think I would want to know who he selected. Or how."

  "How? How might he select somebody?"

  "In MacCleary's case," Smith said, "one could never tell. It might be somebody he hustled at a card game. Or some drinking buddy. Or some woman he made fall in love with him. Somebody with relatives in the United States that he threatened. Or just somebody he bribed."

  "How could this MacCleary have done this without leaving a record for anyone in the CIA ?"

  "Because those were his instructions," Smith said. "From President Eisenhower, through me. Of course, no one knew that the project would someday be triggered."

  Karbenko nodded, and then carefully and slowly brought Smith back over the same ground.

  He was not interested in what this Doctor Smith thought he knew or didn't know. He wanted to find out what Smith actually knew and sometimes the two things were different. Perhaps MacCleary had dropped a name one night, mentioned some incident, let fall a hint. Careful interrogation took time and Colonel Vassily Karbenko was ready to use as much time as was necessary.

  He reflected grimly that he had nothing else on his schedule.

  Except perhaps World War III.

  Ruby Jackson Gonzalez parked her white Lincoln Continental half a block down Benjamin Place from Igor Gruboff's house.

  She rooted around in the trunk for a moment

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  and found a Gideon Bible wedged in behind the spare tire. The Bible was her mother's. When Ruby used to take her for Sunday drives, the old lady would read the Bible and lecture Ruby on driving too fast.

  She had finally stopped when Ruby installed a giant CB radio for her mother to play with on those Sunday drives. She no longer cared how fast Ruby drove.

  Ruby's CB handle was "Down Home." Her mother, who wore her hair inside a bandana, smoked a corncob pipe and never had anything on her feet but bedroom slippers, called herself "Midnight Lace."

  Ruby rang the doorbell of the Gruboff house. There was no answer. She rang the bell again, four times, staccato. When there was still no answer, she leaned on the bell steadily.

  In the basement where the doorbell rang, Karbenko stared angrily at it, then ordered Gruboff, "Go answer that. Wait. Leave me your gun."

  The burly Russian gave Karbenko his pistol. Karbenko placed it on the table behind him, with a glance at Smith that was shared commiseration, the acknowledgment by one professional to another that sometimes one had to do tasteless things in their business.

  Gruboff plodded up the steps. The doorbell kept ringing. He pulled the door open and saw a young black woman standing there.

  She raised her right index finger in the air like an eighteenth-century orator making a point. She waved the Gideon Bible in her left hand.

  " 'By this, all will know that you are among my

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  disciples if you have love among yourselves,' " she said.

  "Huh?" said Gruboff.

  "I am here to give you a free gift," Ruby said. She tried to look past Gruboff down the hallway of his house but his bulky body filled the doorway and sealed off her view.

  "I don't want any," Gruboff said gutturally. He started to close the door.

  "Wait," said Ruby. " 'A gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it; whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth.' Proverbs."

  "I told you, I don't want none," Gruboff said.

  "I want no money," Ruby said. "I'm going to give you this Bible. And I'm going to give you a copy of our free twice-monthly magazine, the Watchword. And then you'll get a copy every two weeks and you'll get a personal visit from me every five days, rain or shine, so we can stand out here on your porch and talk about the Bible." Under her breath, she mumbled "and you can really get to hate me."

  "I'm an atheist," said Gruboff. "I don't want your Bible."

  "An atheist!" Ruby said, as if proclaiming a victory. " 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' Psalms."

  "Aaaaaah," snarled Gruboff.

  "Try this one," said Ruby. " 'We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.' John, Three-Eleven."

  "Go away, lady."

  "You're not interested in the free Bible?"

  "No."

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  "Not in our free bi-monthly magazine, the Watchword!"

  "No," said Gruboff.

  "Not in my visiting you every five days to talk about the scriptures? I generally call when you're in the shower."

  "No," said Gruboff.

  "All right," said Ruby. She reached into her purse. "One last word."

  "Just one," said Gruboff.

  "This is from Acts. Eight-eighteen," Ruby said. " 'Give me also this authority that anyone upon whom I lay my hands may receive the ho
ly spirit.'"

  She smiled at Gruboff. "Here's yours," she said. She pulled the revolver from her purse, swung it and cracked Gruboff on the side of the skull. He staggered back from the doorway. "Move on out, honkey," Ruby said.

  She followed him inside and closed the door, and waited for his eyes to clear.

  "Where is he?" she asked. She pointed the gun at Gruboff, holding it expertly low and close to her hip so no wild swing of hand or foot could dislodge it before she could fire.

  "Where is who?" said Gruboff, groggily.

  "That's one," said Ruby. She pulled back the slide on the automatic. The locking sound was brittle hard in the still hallway. "Try for two? Where is he?"

  Gruboff looked at her, then at the gun.

  "This is a .22 caliber Ruger semi-automatic, the weakest handgun in the world," Ruby said. "The cartridges are five years old and the gun

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  may be rusty. Even if I hit you right between the eyes, I might not be able to stop you. Now what you have to ask yourself is, do you think I'll get lucky?"

  She was smiling at Gruboff but there was no humor in the smile and Gruboff looked at the gun again, then grunted, "Downstairs."

  "Lead the way. No tricks."

  Gruboff went down the steps, Ruby close behind him. In the cellar, Karbenko looked up and saw the anguished look on his underling's face. He reached behind him for the revolver on the table.

  Gruboff took a step into the cellar and Ruby stood behind him at the bottom of the steps, her gun trained on Karbenko.

  The tall Russian smiled at her.

  "Doctor Smith, who is this lovely lady to the rescue?" he asked.

  "My administrative assistant," Smith said.

  "You be all right; Doctor?" Ruby asked.

  "Yes."

  "Okay. You, Roy Rogers. Get over there on the couch. You too, gorilla." She waved with the gun.

  Gruboff moved in front of her and, as he did, Colonel Karbenko snatched the gun from the table behind him and sprinted the one step toward Smith where he stood behind the CURB director and put the barrel of the gun against Smith's temple.

  "Sheeit," said Ruby.

  "Put down your weapon, little lady," said Karbenko.

  Stubbornly, Ruby held the weapon on Kar-