The Trade Read online

  The Trade

  William H. Hallahan

  For Janet

  PROLOGUE

  In April 1945, American and British forces, sweeping across the Rhineland of Germany, reached the Elbe River and waited there while Russian troops, driving from the east, overran and sacked Berlin.

  The place of the Allied halt was profoundly significant, for the Elbe River became a principal part of the boundary line between East and West Germany. It was the line of permanent dismemberment of the Third Reich. Today few people believe that the reunification of the German nation will occur in the lifetimes of those now alive. For already the barrier has existed for nearly forty years.

  But there are those who dream of removing it forcibly.

  1

  The heat in the streets was malevolent.

  All the military advisers had told Colin Thomas that here in Central America, neither the government troops nor the revolutionists ever commenced shooting before four in the afternoon.

  It was only noon, far too early, yet Thomas had ordered all the troops in place, where they crouched in misery, for the sun was directly overhead, and it was difficult to find any cover. The very sidewalks and the street pavings, the walls and the stones of the buildings that the troops hugged were radiating heat like ovens, and the sun was making them hotter every minute.

  Thomas stood on the rooftop and felt the sweat run down his face and down his back. A heat breeze, panting, stirred the scaly, scraping leaves of the palms while high in the sky, the vultures circled expectantly. Not a civilian was in sight; no traffic moved: the noncombatants had cleared out. The town pigeons hid in the coolness of the belfries. It was 105 degrees in the shade.

  The leader of the government troops, Colonel Mendez—part Spanish, part Indian, part black—looked at the thermometer and then, with doubt, at Thomas.

  “Are all the units in position?” Thomas asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s your show, Colonel Mendez.”

  The two of them, from the rooftop of the office building, studied the terrain with their field glasses.

  The objective was a collection of half-finished high-rise apartments being built for Galápago’s swarming poor. During the night, the rebel Sindicalistas had slipped into the city and occupied the buildings, where they now waited in the cool shade.

  The colonel didn’t move. “The sun has made our rifles too hot. My men cannot hold them. And they have no water.”

  “That will give them the incentive they need to fight their way into the buildings. There’s plenty of water and shade inside.”

  “We will wait until four.” Colonel Mendez folded his plump arms and looked exactly like a bountiful Buddha.

  “Go,” Thomas said. “Now.”

  Colonel Mendez’s flat brown eyes looked into Colin Thomas’s pale-blue gringo eyes and attentively read their message. He glanced down once at the pistol in Thomas’s hip holster, then turned and made a signal with raised hands showing huge sweat stains at both armpits of his tunic. The signal was received. The attack would begin.

  It was ironic that the rebel Sindicalistas had occupied the apartment complex. The Benevolent Leader himself had a great financial interest in those buildings, and he was having an unpleasant task in explaining the huge cracks that had appeared in the walls.

  It was murmured in the cafés that the cement had far too much sand, and many doubted that the buildings would stand long enough to be finished. The government leaders had stolen too much cement money for their secret bank accounts; they were behaving like grasping men who expected soon to be out of office—exiled or executed. They waited with their families in the Jockey Club near the airport with their private aircraft for the outcome of the battle.

  At fifteen minutes past noon the government troops started the battle with a mortar shell that blew a hole in the side of an apartment three stories up. The boom roared inside the hollow building like a drum, and a great cloud of cement dust roiled across the compound. Government snipers on the burning rooftops and government troops in the side alleys began to pour a thundering hail of fire into the buildings. Other units hurried into the streets and ran toward the complex, shouting wildly. The government’s two tanks crawled forward, so sun-hot the tank commanders risked their own safety rather than shut their ports and vents. Behind the tanks crouched parts of several platoons.

  All the weeks of Thomas’s training program in the jungle north of Galápagos City were now put to the test.

  Sixth Platoon quickly cut off Avenue May First at the rear to prevent rebel reinforcements from entering, and, once in position, the Sixth commenced firing a heavy, pounding barrage at the complex. More mortar shells blew holes in the walls, and the hollow buildings reechoed with booms that carried for miles. The concussions made the ground tremble, and cement dust rose in a cloud over the complex.

  Seventh and Eighth Platoons reached the walls of the apartment buildings before the first rebel shots were fired. When the rebels began firing back, Thomas detected the sound of Russian Kalashnikov automatic rifles and some old American M-Is. The rebels were also firing rifle grenades down at the doorways and along walls to create blizzards of stone fragments amid the charging troops.

  The fire fight increased in ferocity and now the afternoon was filled with screams and cries, shouted orders and earth-shaking noise.

  Government snipers on the rooftops kept up a raking fire at the windows of the buildings while the other platoons at street level maintained a covering fire. More government units hurried out of the side streets toward the complex.

  The attacking platoons were now mounting the scaffolding outside the buildings in order to clean out the rebels from the top floors down. Many, hit by rifle fire, fell screaming into the streets. Smoke began to flow from a number of fires inside the buildings.

  Thomas felt he had only four or five hours to clean out the rebel Sindicalistas, for with darkness the rebels could regroup to plan new strategies. He would then have to bring up enough artillery to pound the buildings to rubble and that could take days or weeks.

  The ferocity of the government troops surprised even Thomas, for within two hours it was clear that the rebels were in a bad position and that the midday surprise attack had caught them unprepared. They had occupied the buildings as a staging area—a place to wait out the day’s heat. Their laxness had let the government troops get control of the upper floors and of the streets around the buildings. And now outnumbered, outgunned, with no reserves of ammunition, the rebels were cut off from both supplies and reinforcements.

  By four o’clock it was all over. The government soldiers draped flags from many windows. Their comrades in the streets waved flags back, cheering.

  The water tankers drove into the complex, followed by ambulances and trucks, while the troops were openly shooting prisoners through the head with their pistols. There would be few captives.

  The last shots were fired at five.

  Thomas found Colonel Mendez and his staff standing in the long shadows of the apartment buildings, smiling and chattering. They awaited the Benevolent Leader. The thought of promotions and decorations and bonuses danced in their eyes.

  Thomas and four of his drill instructors walked quietly past them and into the complex. One of the instructors, Masters, had gone to the rear with Sixth Platoon and was now missing. Thomas spoke sharply to a government soldier looting a body, and soon guards were posted in the area.

  The walls were badly damaged, full of large holes, covered with pockmarks and streaked by smoke and fire. Several large bloodstains had leaked down the outside walls from windows. No one had been detailed to put out the smoldering fires, and no one paid any attention to them. Everywhere, scattered through the streets, among cement mixers, wheelbarrows and construction tools, lay dead rebels.

  On the other side of the complex, behind a burned-out truck on Avenue May First, they found Drill Instructor Masters, shot through the temple. The back of his head had been blown out.

  Nearby two sandaled feet stuck out of a doorway and the five men stared at them. Thomas stooped and picked up the rifle—an M-I. The safety had never been taken off. The soldier who had carried it and died without firing it was about eleven years old. As they walked back, the daily five-o’clock breeze began to cool the streets, announcing that it was time for the cantinas and cafés to open. At the Jockey Club by the airport, jubilant government figures and their families could return to their luxurious homes, safe for another six months or a year. The city would return to normal.

  A long black limousine approached, its official banner fluttering. The Benevolent Leader emerged in his cream-white uniform and dark sunglasses and hugged his colonel and patted the others. He put his arms around them and made smiling remarks that caused them all to giggle.

  “Too bad about these splendid buildings for our suffering poor,” said the Benevolent Leader. “They are ruined, completely ruined. They will have to be torn down and rebuilt.” His eyes clearly wished for more holes.

  He spoke to Thomas softly, away from the others. “You are truly a great teacher, Mr. Thomas. And a great patriot of human freedom. I can hardly believe these are the same troops I turned over to you for training. They are tigers! I am convinced that Excalibur Ltd. is the finest arms company in the world and I am preparing testimonials for you and your partner Mr.—ah—Gorman. Did you make a body count?” The official newspaper was holding its press run for that tangible evidence of the Leader’s invincibility.

  “A few more minutes. There are
about sixty percent communist Sindicalistas.”

  “Good.”

  “And about thirty percent Centralistas.”

  “Good.”

  “And about ten percent children.”

  The general removed his sunglasses and gazed intently into Thomas’s eyes, seeking even a trace of insolence.

  “It is as you say,” Thomas said. “Your people adore you.”

  In Amsterdam, Colin Thomas’s business partner, Frank Gorman, sat in a small café and watched the traffic crossing the Blue Bridge in a downpour. The first autumn gale off the North Sea had swept the streets and bridge of pedestrians with a pelting rain, and in the canal the boats all bobbed and reared on their mooring lines. Gorman ordered another cup of coffee and waited patiently.

  A taxicab crossed the bridge and turned into the square, then drove in a diagonal directly to the coffee shop. The passenger dashed through the rain into the shop.

  “Well,” he said, “what’s a little rain when fair-weather friends get together?” He spoke with a Russian accent and he smiled merrily as he shook hands with Gorman.

  “How is the travel business, Uri?”

  “Marvelous. I am booking groups from all over Europe to visit the socialist paradise of Mother Russia. I am going to get a People’s Medal of Achievement if this keeps up. More group tours to Moscow were booked out of my office than in any three other offices in Western Europe.”

  Gorman smiled skeptically at him. “I’m glad for you, Uri. How much repeat business do you get?”

  Uri Gregov smiled yet again. “You are my best repeat business, Frank.”

  “How is Dudorov?”

  “Ah, you know about that? Everyone knows about that. He’s well.”

  “I hear he’s still weak as a kitten.”

  “Well, you know what major surgery is like. He’ll coast for a while. Even asleep in bed, he’s the shrewdest agent in the business. Why do you ask about Dudorov?”

  “He’s your arms specialist.”

  “I see. We talk weapons, then? Good. How can I help you?”

  Gorman leaned forward and said in a low voice, “I want the RPG-8.”

  “Oh. I see.” Gregov lit a cigarette. “Hmmmm.”

  “Two boxcars.”

  “Two!” Gregov sighed. “You like our little antitank gun, then? Marvelous weapon. One man can carry the whole thing in a small case.” He smiled again. “You see, we did learn something from the Arab-Israeli war of seventy-three. Two boxcars?”

  “Two.”

  “The price will be high.”

  “How high?”

  “The new American assault rifle.”

  “Oh, come on, Uri.”

  “It’s the only thing I’m allowed to accept. What did you have in mind? You must have known I would have to get something exceptional in exchange for the RPG-8. What are you authorized to offer?”

  “Any standard items from the U.S. arsenal.”

  “Thank you, but there’s nothing we need. We are still dining on the loot we got from Vietnam.”

  “That stuff is moldy by now, Uri. We have lots of new toys. If we could go back to Vietnam with our new stuff, the outcome would be a lot different. Ask for something.”

  “No, I think I’ll stick with the new rifle.”

  Gorman rubbed his face thoughtfully and looked out at the rain. “How’s the coffee?”

  “Excellent. I shall have another.” Gregov waited patiently as he watched Gorman’s face.

  “Okay, Uri. You’ve got the rifle.”

  “Excellent. It’s a pleasure doing business with you. How many can I have?”

  “How many do you need, Uri?”

  “The cash equivalent of the antitank guns.”

  “Bullshit. We’re not scrap iron dealers.”

  “Shhhh. I am just a Soviet travel agent.” Uri Gregov smoked and studied Gorman’s face, trying to find the price. “You must want the RPG-8 very badly to put your new toy up for it. I think I’ll ask a stiff price. One hundred cases.”

  “Are you out of your mind, Uri?”

  “I’ll throw in a free ten-day all-expense tour of Moscow just for you.”

  “And a one-way Aeroflot ticket.”

  “Russia is a paradise, Frank. You’ll never want to leave it. Do we have a deal?”

  “Sixty cases.”

  Gregov considered that. He sighed a cloud of cigarette smoke and drank half his coffee. “Good. I accept. See how nice I can play? Same arrangements? Same signals? Two jet transports each—and only two. Same pickup point in the South Atlantic.”

  “Agreed. Will yours be from Interpol?”

  “Yes. Best quality.” The Russian looked thoughtfully at Gorman’s face. “I have one more piece of business, something very small.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Are you ready, Frank? I want to defect to the United States.” He waited while Frank Gorman took a long measuring look at him. He stood up. “Think about it, Frank.”

  Gregov dropped his cigarette in the half cup of coffee and walked away buttoning up his raincoat. In three quick steps he was back in his waiting cab.

  Gorman watched the cab diminish in the rain as it hurried back across the Blue Bridge and up Amstelstraat.

  He often wondered at the wisdom of these direct swaps. In effect, the United States had just told Moscow that it had a new steel alloy for tanks that take direct shots from the RPG-8 missile. At least that’s what tests were expected to show. In a few days, on a secret ordnance range in Texas, American military ballistics men would be firing RPG-8 missiles at test stand models of a new American tank.

  And Moscow had just told the United States that it was very worried about the new U.S. assault rifle. In fact, it was admitting for the first time that it had not yet mastered the technology of turning out machine-stamped barrels like the new assault rifle.

  He stood up. He would have to call General Wynet in Washington. Then he smiled: he’d been authorized to give up to 150 cases of the new rifle.

  As he skipped and jumped over the puddles to his car, he wondered what the United States would do about Gregov’s request to defect. Everyone in Washington would be drafting a dream list of secret information that Gregov would be expected to bring with him. It would take two boxcars to carry all the documents. It was none of his business, of course, a matter for the counterintelligence people in Washington. But it was a shame: he would miss playing at “I Spy” with Uri Gregov.

  In Paris, Bernie Parker stepped in haste from the train onto the Métro platform of the Madeleine station. He couldn’t have been mistaken. With just one glimpse he had recognized the man, the boyish innocent face, the curly blond hair and the cherubic blue eyes.

  It wasn’t just the identifiable features; it was the mocking smirk that he had fixed on Parker. There could be no doubt. It was the same one he had eluded in Cologne. Parker glanced back; he still had three blocks to go before he could escape his homicidal pursuer.

  Parker hurried down the platform amid the late-afternoon crowd, along the tiled walls of the Métro and up the stairs through the exit. Flight wasn’t his style. Parker was a big, physical man, a brawler and a trained combat veteran. He wanted to turn and slap the insolent smirk off the man’s face. But he had a more important errand. He hefted his attaché case and promised himself he would deal with his pursuer on another day.

  He quickly started up the stairs to street level, toward streaming sunlight. A glorious autumn day waited at the top of the stairs.

  A premonition made Parker turn his head. The man was not ten feet behind him, closing the gap and smirking as though he knew a terrible secret. Parker began to mount the steps two at a time, knocking people aside. He had nearly reached street level when the muffled shot hit him in the middle of the back. As he fell, his attaché case was pulled from his hand. His assailant stepped quickly past him, up the stairs and into a waiting automobile.

  He was known as Quist. Just Quist. His smirk had slipped somewhat when he got out of the car still holding Bernie Parker’s attaché case. He entered the phone booth by the Paris American Express office near the Printemps department store and placed a call to Cologne. Perplexed, he tugged his lower lip while he waited.

  When Quist was a small child, people said he was an angel. He had golden hair, golden skin and a cherubic baby’s mouth set between two full pink cheeks surmounted by two singularly beautiful blue eyes. People often stopped his mother on the streets of Stockholm to admire her baby and to congratulate her. All the world loved to pet him. What made him seem particularly angelic was an irresistibly lovely smile he turned on everyone. He was never any bother, his mother said.