Summit (37 page)

Bill Sullivan stuck a frozen chicken potpie in the microwave and opened a beer. It was going to be all right, he kept telling himself. It was going to be all right. If anyone could get Winn to cancel the summit, Poole was the one. And Poole had believed him.

There would be problems, of course. Winn would want to see the evidence. He would call in Houghton and the rest, and they'd try to talk him out of it. But the risk was too great, and Winn would understand that.

And there might be retributions later, no matter what the president did. But Sullivan could live with that. Sullivan knew that he was right, and that he had done the right thing. And that was what mattered.

The microwave's timer went off. He took his supper out of the oven and brought it and his beer into the living room. He turned on the TV. Some game show was on; the audience was applauding wildly while a blond woman gestured in awe at a new car.

It was going to be all right.

The doorbell rang as he reached for his beer. He spilled half of it. He tried futilely to wipe up the mess with his handkerchief, then hurried to the door as the bell rang again.

Tom Poole was standing in the doorway. He was wearing jogging clothes; he looked tense. "Hi, Bill," he said. "I think we need to go over some things. Can I come in?"

"Sure. Of course." He stepped aside and let Poole in. "Can I get you a beer?"

Poole smiled. "No thanks."

They went into the living room together. Poole smelled a little ripe. Had he actually gone out jogging with this kind of crisis on his hands? "Excuse the mess," Sullivan said. "I spilled something just now and—"

"It's quite all right, Bill." Poole's hands were in the pockets of his sweat suit. He remained standing.

Sullivan wished he hadn't been watching TV. A fat woman was jumping up and down. Couldn't he at least have put the news on? He quickly walked across the room and switched the set off. "What's up, Colonel?" he asked, turning around.

Poole's hands were out of his pockets. He was holding a gun. It was aimed at Sullivan. "What's up, Bill, is that I have to kill you."

Oh Jesus. He had wanted to play with the big boys, and now he was back in the game. He felt like crying. But it wouldn't do to cry. "Why?" he whispered.

"You talked to the wrong man, Bill. You talked to the enemy. No hard feelings, of course."

Sullivan stared at Poole for one split second while his mind raced. He knew how to do one thing—take a dive. And that's what he did now. Down behind a wing chair, then a quick roll and he was through the open door to the basement and tumbling downstairs. Had he heard shots? Yes. No time to worry about it. Poole was after him.

The basement was dark, except for a shaft of light through the open door. Sullivan groped for a weapon, and found one. A hockey stick, sitting beneath the stairs with the rest of the equipment he hadn't used since Danny moved away.

Poole was coming down the stairs. Sullivan poked the stick through the railing and tripped him. A hockey player learns how to trip people. Poole came crashing down. The gun went off as he hit hard against the concrete floor, and Sullivan could hear it skitter away. He extracted the stick from the railing and rushed over to Poole before he could reach the gun. Then Sullivan raised the stick with both hands and slammed it down against Poole's head. He could feel bone crack beneath the blow.

Poole roared with pain and tried to grasp the gun.

Sullivan swung again. And again. And again. He didn't feel anything after a while; it was just a mindless animal movement that he had to keep repeating in order to survive. Finally he flung the stick aside and retched on the basement floor.

He would never be able to hold a hockey stick again.

He staggered upstairs finally, sobbing and trembling. His back hurt, and he felt some bruises from his fall, but he hadn't been shot. He washed his face in the kitchen sink, then sat down and tried to think.

You talked to the wrong man, Bill. You talked to the enemy.

Could Poole have been a Soviet agent? Sullivan believed Hill was one—why not Poole, too? But could he convince anyone else of it? He doubted it. At least, not soon enough to affect the summit.

It was up to him, then.

And he was beyond the pale. He had killed the president's favorite staff member. The CIA and FBI would be after him. The Russians were already after him, apparently. So how was he supposed to succeed?

Maybe he couldn't. But he supposed he had to try.

He limped into the living room and looked at the spilled beer, the uneaten chicken pie. It had all seemed so easy a few minutes ago. He sat down and closed his eyes. He didn't want to do this. He wanted to watch TV and get drunk and go to bed. He wanted to be able to forget everyone and everything, and have everyone forget him.

Well, not entirely.

If only—

He picked up the phone and dialed a number. His ex-wife answered on the second ring.

"Hi, Maureen. It's me. I was just wondering if, um, I could talk to Danny."

"He's out. At the movies."

"Oh." What was she doing letting him go to the movies on a school night? He forced himself not to say anything. "Well, how is everything?"

"Fine. How is everything with you?"

"Oh, you know, the usual."
There is a corpse in the basement, Maureen. For the first time in my life, I have killed a man. Help me, Maureen. Please help me.
If only he hadn't screwed up in that parking lot on Christmas Eve, he wouldn't have to face what he now had to face. He had an image of his actions radiating through his life, each moment affecting every succeeding moment, like dominoes toppling in a long, long row that ended in death. One mistake had irretrievably ruined so many of those moments. He tried to think of something to say. "Danny enjoyed himself this summer, I think. My mother sure enjoyed seeing him."

"Uh-huh."

So many moments, lost now but still important, if only to him. "We had some good times together, Maureen, didn't we? Back in college, and then after, when we were first married, and when Danny was a baby. I mean, it ended badly, and that was all my fault, but before that there were a lot of wonderful memories, right?"

"Have you been drinking, Bill? I don't want you calling here if you've been drinking."

Sullivan silently hung up the phone. He went into the bedroom, changed his clothes, and packed a suitcase. He was ready to go in a few minutes. Then he had a thought. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and reached way in the back, among the unused cufflinks and the socks he didn't like but wouldn't throw away. He took out a hockey puck.

So many moments.

The red light coming on, and his teammates charging out to bury him on the ice...

Sullivan found a manila envelope, addressed it to Danny, and put the puck inside. That made him feel a little better. He took a quick look around, then picked up his suitcase and headed out to his car.

He would mail the envelope from the airport.

Chapter 34

Igor Volnikov was informed of the problem as he was on his way to a special meeting of the Politburo. Someone in the CIA suspected the truth. A mistake had been made, clearly; they would have to track it down and find out who was responsible. But for now everything was under control. The
rezident
at the Washington embassy had done the right thing, telling Poole to kill the CIA officer. It was not ideal, but it would probably limit the damage.

And in the meantime nothing was going to spoil his moment of triumph. Even as he strode into the meeting room, he could feel the difference in the air. Only a few members knew the details, but everyone sensed that something historic was happening, and that Volnikov was at the center of it. They were about to learn just what he had accomplished for them.

Grigoriev opened the meeting. He looked glum and defeated. He had every reason to look that way. "This meeting has been called," he began, "to discuss an operation carried out by the Committee for State Security and how it affects my summit with President Winn, for which I am leaving this afternoon. Comrade Volnikov, would you be so kind as to summarize the operation for those members who may not be familiar with it?"

Volnikov was happy to do so. Some of them had complained that his psychic should have been going after bigger fish. He had brushed off their complaints. But now he could tell them why: he had been after the biggest fish of them all.

Of course, some of them had already been told. Grigoriev had to know, to ensure that Fulton received his invitation to play at the Peace Festival. Grigoriev had reluctantly gone along, obviously hoping that the plan would fail. He could then claim he had done his part, but the KGB could not do theirs. His hopes were in vain. And Volnikov had told Falin, the defense minister, because he needed the old man's help in the coming struggle. He was confident that he would get it.

The story took a while to be told, and he saved the master stroke till the end. "We will have, therefore, a president of the United States who will be a loyal servant of our cause. I suggest that, as a test of his loyalty, his first task be to obtain for us the formula of the drug that the CIA has developed to affect the production of endorphins in the brain. As you recall, this drug creates a permanent mood of complacency and happiness without apparently altering intelligence. We can then manufacture this drug ourselves, test it, and consider its possible uses for military and, um, correctional purposes." The room was silent. "Are there any questions?" Volnikov murmured.

And of course there were plenty. "Won't it be obvious to the American people if they have a Soviet agent as their leader?" Sokolovsky, the secretary of agriculture, inquired.

"Our targets do not lose their native intelligence when they are 'converted,'" Volnikov replied. "Winn will not suddenly proclaim himself a Marxist-Leninist, any more than the rest of our targets have. But we will know. There is no way that Winn would provide us with this drug unless he was converted. It is too important a secret."

"What will happen to the American pianist?" Kuznetsov, the Ukrainian party boss, inquired. "He's quite famous, isn't he? You can't just keep him locked up forever."

Volnikov nodded. "Quite perceptive, Comrade. Fulton is a notorious eccentric and recluse, so no suspicion will be aroused if he disappears for a few days while we hold him to ensure the psychic's obedience. After the summit we will have no further use for him, and then, unfortunately, he will be found to have committed suicide. Such things happen to gifted but unstable people."

"And what about the psychic?"

"She has proved herself to be disloyal and therefore dangerous to us. That is a major reason we had to construct this elaborate deception. Her usefulness will be at an end after this operation, I'm afraid, and she too will be disposed of."

"I don't care about these people," Falin growled. "As you say, he is crazy and she is a traitor. But what about the brave woman who volunteered to go into the enemy's headquarters and impersonate the psychic? Is there nothing we can do to save her?"

"We will not have to do anything, Mikhail Vladimirovich. The CIA will tire of seeing her fail their tests, give her a new identity, and let her go. That is their standard procedure. She will find out about Fulton's suicide and be inconsolable—she will even blame the CIA for it. Without Fulton there is no reason for her to stay in America. After a few months she will tell the CIA that she misses her homeland and wants to return to it. She will be of no use to them, so they will not stand in her way."

"Very clever," Falin muttered, smiling.

"This drug," Stashinsky, the foreign minister, said. "It worries me." His head was down. He was doodling on a piece of paper.

"Why is that, Comrade?" Volnikov did not trust Stashinsky.

"Not the drug so much as how it may be used," Stashinsky went on. He looked up. "It has come to my attention that people in your employ have developed plans to use this drug against the population of the United States. This seems to me to be arrant adventurism, and it must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. If you have such plans, I demand that you inform us of them."

Volnikov saw a look pass between Stashinsky and Grigoriev. The general secretary had put him up to this, of course. Many of the Politburo members, for all their anti-American rhetoric, basically liked the status quo. It had, after all, made them rulers of one of the most powerful nations on earth. Daring acts frightened them. He knew how to deal with that. "It is true that members of my staff have suggested possible uses for the drug, and this was one of them," he replied. "It seemed appropriate to consider it as an option, under the circumstances. But circumstances are about to change. With Winn under our control, we will have no need of such extreme and dangerous measures. I can assure you that this alone will be sufficient to guarantee our security and power in the world."