Walking Back The Cat Read online

  For my brother, Alan

  Us Apaches don't believe the world will last forever. We say that the rocks and the mountains will be around a long time, but even they will disappear. And when they have all gone —the rocks and the mountains and the Apaches and the white man—what will be left? What will be left are our deeds.

  —ESKELTSETLE

  WALKING

  BACK THS CAT

  PROLOGUE

  The young man, pale as Lazarus returned from a grave, rose from the hole in the sand to thaw himself in the first light of the cool desert sun. He carried a pump-action shotgun diagonally across his back on a sling. He was about to launch a small helium-filled balloon to plot the morning's ground winds when he heard the snorting of the horse. Startled, he slipped the shotgun off his back and worked a shell into the chamber. Squinting, he made out the horse pawing at the sand between him and the washed-out sun edging over the dunes. The animal, saddled, bridled, off-white and pure Arabian, loped closer. Talking soothingly under his breath, holding out a palm as if it were filled with sugar cubes, the young man drifted toward the stallion. Snorting through its nostrils, the horse tossed its head but stood its ground. When the horse started sniffing his hand, the young man snatched the bridle, flung himself onto its back and jammed the heels of his Special Forces desert boots into its flank.

  "Waaaaaaaa!" he cried.

  The squad's CO, a black second lieutenant, emerged from another hole. "Watch out for—" he cried as the stallion, its ears pasted back, its hooves kicking up silent storms of sand, flew past and headed for the dunes.

  Bent low over the stallion's back, clinging to its braided mane with one hand, brandishing the shotgun with the other, the young man—who had never been on a horse in his life —discovered he could ride the demon.

  And then the stallion's hoof came down on a small round plastic canister buried in the sand and the mine exploded, ripping off the animal's right front foot, bursting open its stomach. The rider leaped clear as the horse slued sideways into a drift of sand. Lying on its back, foaming at the mouth, it flailed away with its three good legs and the stump of the fourth as if it were treading air.

  A helicopter throbbed in low overhead and marked with a green flare the

  Prologue

  spot where the young man stood riveted to the floor of the desert. A quarter of an hour later the sweepers from Charlie Company, their long-handled detectors twitching like antennas on an insect, approached from the west and cleared a path to him through the mines.

  The black second lieutenant came up behind the sweepers. Firing his M16 from the hip, he put the stallion out of its misery. The young man started to apologize for all the trouble he had caused, but his CO cut him off with a wave of the hand. "Everyone needs to have a philosophy," he called across the sand. "Mine is: I don't want to know what happened. But I want to make damn sure it doesn't happen again."

  Robert Littell

  "Talk shop/' he murmured. "Admit it— you thought they had forgotten we existed, misplaced the files, stranded us in this godforsaken country, but they haven't. We have got ourselves a new Resident." He spoke with unaccustomed intensity, stressing each word as if it were a pearl pried with enormous effort from a reluctant oyster. "His code name is Prince Igor." Le Juif bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a malevolent smile. "You see what I am driving at? Parsifal redux!"

  "This new Resident—you have met him?"

  "There is a cutout in place between me and the Resident. It is the woman with the code name of La Gioconda. She has met him. I can vouch for her—we have been assigned to the same network since coming to America."

  "A cutout between you and the Resident is unusual."

  "The situation is unusual. The world is unusual. The century is unusual."

  "How can you be sure the new Resident is genuine?"

  "La Gioconda conveyed his bona fides. She passed on an identifying cryptogram known only to me and our masters in Moscow Center. It is the signal we have been waiting for. The period of hibernation is over. The Training Villa has been taken over by the KGB Veterans Association. Wetwork is being run out of our old Moscow seminary." Le JuiPs body, racked by a silent cough, stiffened. He dragged a very large handkerchief from a pocket of the jacket draped over his scarecrow shoulders, spit into it, inspected the phlegm, then, satisfied that his condition had not deteriorated, folded the handkerchief away. From between his books he produced a small package and slid it across the table. "New one-time pads. New cryptograms. A vial of ricin. A remote radio detonator for explosive charges; it has a range of up to two and a half miles. I should know. I fabricated and tested it myself. Also money for operational expenses."

  A buzzer sounded over a loudspeaker. "Five minutes to closing," announced the brittle voice of a woman who worked with one eye glued to the clock she was punching.

  Le Juif started to gather up his books. "This is a heroic day," he whispered. "Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bukharin . . . our work in progress, our dream." He reached across the table and gripped Parsifal's wrist with his clawlike fingers. "Whatever happens to me, you must hang on to the dream. If you don't, it will float up like a helium-filled balloon, it will soar into the stratosphere, growing smaller and smaller until it is lost from

  Walking Back the Cat

  sight." He looked up at the lights recessed in the ceiling, which were starting to dim. "La Gioconda describes Prince Igor as a visionary. He is preparing a great exploit, something that will make wetwork history', something that will shake the world. I cannot tell you more now." Scraping back his chair, Le Juif heaved himself to his feet. He plucked a sealed envelope from his breast pocket and dropped it on the table in front of Parsifal. "Inside you will find the details of your first assignment from Prince Igor—an address in Dallas, an apartment number, a cryptogram to get you past the door."

  Fixing his moist gaze on Parsifal, Le Juif nodded as if he had access to the secrets of the universe. "You do see it, don't you? Capitalism, unrestrained by the existence of an alternative, is doomed. Greed will smother justice and generosity. We must strive on."

  Turning abruptly, he scurried like a crab from the reading room.

  Walking Back the Cat

  He heard a scraping sound inside the apartment, got a faint whiff of jasmine perfume as someone studied him through the peephole. He scratched impatiently at his week-old beard; when time permitted, masking your face was routine wetwork tradecraft. He would feel human again when he shaved off the mask; when he recognized the face that gazed back at him from the mirror.

  Parsifal knew he had knocked on the right door when it opened the width of a black safety rod. Low-rent apartment buildings on the bitter edge of a Dallas ghetto didn't protect their tenants with tungsten safety rods. A haggard woman wearing a cream-colored blouse, a tight black knee-length skirt and no stockings peered out at him. She took in the handkerchief spilling from the breast pocket of his sports jacket, the razor-sharp crease in his trousers, the soft loafers. "So: What is it you are selling?" she asked in a voice husky with fear.

  The instructions in Le JuiPs envelope had led Parsifal to expect someone in the mid-forties. He hadn't been told it would be a woman. Not that it changed anything except the odors reaching his cranial nerve fibers, which dispatched olfactory information to the brain; even without perfume women never smelled like men. He delivered his half of the recognition signal with some embarrassment; it was a shade too literary for his tastes. "Voltaire, on his deathbed, was asked by a priest to denounce the devil. I was led to believe you would know the story."

  The woman completed the cryptogram. "Voltaire tells the priest to fuck off. Voltaire says, This is not the time to make enemies.' "

  The woman's watchful eyes stared ou
t from deep shadowy sockets, giving her the appearance of a hunted animal; she looked ready to slam the door shut if her visitor made one false gesture. She kept one hand hidden behind her back. Parsifal wondered if she had a firearm in it. "The hallway stinks of garbage," he told her, tapping a forefinger against the side of a nostril to illustrate the offense. "You ought to complain." He rambled on; small talk often lulled people into letting down their guard. "The odor almost asphyxiated me. I could never live in a building like this. Garbage is the perfect metaphor for the twentieth century; the stench of garbage could be said to come from the rot of civilization. How do you put up with it?"

  "The stench of garbage or the rot of civilization?"

  Parsifal offered her what he hoped was a disarming grin. "Both."

  The woman barricaded behind the tungsten safety rod didn't crack a smile. "The garbage in the hall is sealed in plastic sacks. I do not smell a

  Robert Littell

  thing. The odor of civilization rotting is something you grow so accustomed to you are no longer aware of it." She sized up the man who had rung her bell. "So: what has happened to the agent who calls himself Dewey?"

  Parsifal, a stickler for detail, spotted two long gray hairs on either side of her eyebrows curling off in the general direction of her ears. He smelled her lipstick and noticed that it had been sloppily applied, deforming her mouth. He heard tinny big-band music coming from the apartment. "I was not instructed to tell you what happened to Dewey," he answered.

  The woman glanced down at the leather attache case in Parsifal's right hand, at the thin square carton tucked under his right arm, then up again at his eyes, which were all she could see of his face. "Tell me anyway," she ordered.

  Whoever she was, she was clearly used to being obeyed.

  "Dewey came down with German measles. Caught it from a neighbor's daughter. Didn't want to pass the germs on to you."

  She nodded at the package under his arm. "What is that?"

  "Wheat-germ pizza."

  "Who is it for?"

  "Me. You. Whoever."

  "In the four months I have been here, I have up to now been contacted by your Mr. Dewey," she insisted nervously. She didn't add that Dewey had always turned up with a pizza under his arm; that they had shared it while he delivered the money and she filled in gaps in the ongoing debriefing.

  Parsifal shrugged with his eyebrows. "Variety is supposed to be the spice," he remarked offhandedly. When she looked at him vacantly, he added with a smile, "Of life." He took pride in his ability to speak English like a native-born American; to season his English with idiomatic expressions.

  A grimace flickered onto the woman's painted lips. "So: money is the spice of my life. You brought some?"

  Parsifal caught a glimpse of a gold incisor shimmering in her mouth. For answer he hefted the attache case.

  She tested him. "How much?"

  "Three months' worth. Nine thousand dollars. In crisp twenty-dollar bills. Each bill has been folded lengthwise down the spine as if someone started to turn it into a paper glider."

  Walking Back the Cat

  When the woman still hesitated, Parsifal backed away. "If you'd feel more comfortable waiting for Dewey . . ." He left the sentence hanging in the air between them. It was an inspired touch.

  She came to a decision. The door closed. The safety rod slipped out of its runner. Then the door opened wide. His nostrils flaring in irritation, Parsifal plunged through a cloud of jasmine perfume into the apartment.

  The woman followed him into the living room, which was furnished in Salvation Army modern and sliced with bars of shadow and light cast by half-drawn Venetian blinds. Without a trace of embarrassment she brought the hand out from behind her back and set a red brick down on the coffee table. She snatched warm-up pants and a sweatshirt off the back of the couch (Parsifal had detected the faint odor of dry sweat) and tossed them through a half-open door. "I could heat up the pizza," she said awkwardly. Her fingers worked through her hair, which was uncombed and smelled of henna. "We could talk. I do not have many visitors. I do not see . . . many men."

  Parsifal, a heavy man who moved easily, cranked up an expression that could pass for a smile as he took a turn around the room. "I don't mind," he said finally, winding up in front of her, handing her the carton. "Only fools refuse to mix pleasure with business."

  "Do you have a name?"

  "Everyone has a name. Mine is Howard."

  She offered her hand. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Howard," she announced with formality.

  He held on to her hand a moment longer than he had to. "Howard is my surname."

  "American names mystify me. I still do not understand if Dewey is a first name or a surname."

  "My friends call me O.O."

  "O. O. Howard." She shook her head; she might as well have defected to the moon as America. "Are you crazy for Italian opera too?"

  "Too?"

  "Dewey is a crazy man for Italian opera. He always turns up with a tape and plays it on my machine while we eat."

  "The radio is music enough for me."

  "You can leave the money on the table," she called over her shoulder. She disappeared through a swinging door.

  Robert Littell

  Parsifal watched the door jerk back and forth, then set the attache case down on the back of the couch and dialed in the combination. The lid clicked open. He pulled on a pair of latex surgical gloves and removed the eleven-millimeter Chamelot & Delvigne 1874 French military revolver fitted with a short, stubby, jury-rigged silencer. On the radio a pilot broadcasting from a helicopter was in the middle of his midday traffic summary. "If n you're heading out towards Dallas-Fort Worth airport on the interstate, let's hope you're not racing to catch a plane. A seven-car fender bender's backed cars up for miles . . ."

  The woman pushed through the swinging door into the living room. "The pizza will be ready in — " She caught sight of the pistol, which was gripped in two hands and aimed at her heart. Hugging herself, she started to tremble. "Who are you?" she whispered hoarsely. "Which side wants me dead?"

  "I was not instructed to have a conversation with you before I killed you."

  Parsifal had to hand it to her, the woman put on a class act. With a shudder she regained control of her body, of her emotions. "So: tell me anyhow," she ordered, her painted lips pulled back in a mocking sneer. "I promise to take your secret to the grave with me."

  From an almost forgotten past Parsifal dredged up an identity she could recognize. "I am what the Apostle John identified as the rider of the pale horse: death. As to who wants you dead, it is the Russians."

  "I have put money aside for a day of rain . . . thirty-five hundred dollars." She managed a fragile smile, which Parsifal associated with broken china that had been glued back together. "Today could come under the heading of a day of rain."

  The woman was clearly a professional, and very proud; she read in his face that there was no possibility of talking her executioner out of fulfilling his contract. Her hands fluttered over her skirt, ironing out wrinkles. Then, bunching the fingers of her right hand, trembling slightly, moving deliberately, she touched her forehead, her chest, her left shoulder, her right shoulder. Murmuring something in Russian, she filled her lungs with the last breath she would ever take and nodded imperceptibly, granting Parsifal permission to shoot.

  He squeezed the trigger. The revolver erupted in his hands, spitting out its lethal seed. The woman, flung backwards into the swinging door, crumpled to the floor, jamming it open. An ink black stain spread across the front of her cream-colored blouse.

  Walking Back the Cat

  Squatting next to the twitching body, Parsifal got another whiff of her jasmine perfume. Was it his imagination or had the scent started to grow stale? With the ball of his thumb he worked back an eyelid. He squeezed her thumbnail between his thumb and forefinger until her nail bed turned white, then released it. The blood seeped back under her nail. The woman was clinically ali
ve, but she wouldn't be for long. Reaching for her wrist, he reset the tiny watch strapped to it two hours ahead, then slammed her wrist against the floor, shattering the watch, stopping time.

  Stepping over the body, he went into the kitchen. Now came the creative part of wetwork: the signing of the execution with someone else's signature, the messing of the sheets to make it look as if someone else had slept in the bed. He turned off the oven and tossed the pizza into a corner and half-burned the carton in the sink so the Dallas police would conclude that a delivery man had talked his way into the apartment and murdered the woman, and tried to cover his tracks. Then he systematically opened every container and jar to make it appear as if someone had ransacked the apartment for hidden money or jewelry. He swept the frozen food in the freezer onto the linoleum and ripped open each item; he emptied the contents of the small plastic garbage pail into the sink; he pulled out all the drawers and tossed the forks, knives, cooking utensils and the thick wad of supermarket discount coupons into the empty garbage pail.

  Returning to the living room, Parsifal slit open the cushions on the couch with a kitchen knife, flung clothing that smelled of camphor out of a closet and a dresser and pulled up the frayed rug. He emptied the medicine chest in the tiny bathroom and shredded the mattress in the tiny bedroom. He pulled frames from the walls and cut pictures from their frames. Behind one picture he came across the $3,500 in crisp twenty-dollar bills —each bill folded lengthwise down the spine as if someone had started to turn it into a paper glider—wedged into a crack under a flap of wallpaper. He let several bills flutter carelessly to the floor as he pocketed the money. He found the woman's purse, took the handful of twenty-dollar bills in it and dropped the purse and some loose change near the body wedged in the swinging door.

  Three-quarters of an hour after shooting her, Parsifal knelt next to the body. The scent of jasmine had been replaced by a distinctly acrid effluvium. Parsifal's nostrils flared in revulsion as he identified the odor;

  Robert Littell

  the woman had been menstruating. Breathing through his mouth, he squeezed the woman's thumbnail between his thumb and forefinger once more.