The Sisters Read online

  The Potter twisted in his seat to look behind them. The tradecraft was fairly elementary, but extremely efficient. One instant you were going in one direction. The next instant you were off in the opposite direction. If someone were following you, he'd have to make a highly visible U-turn.

  Nobody did.

  "We are as clean as the freshly scrubbed ass of a baby," the driver, who had been studying his rearview

  mirror, said after a moment. He turned south at the next crossroad. The taxi passed under a sign that indicated the airport was dead ahead.

  They crossed a circus caravan heading into the city, with several overweight lions lazing in cages in flat trucks, and the head of a giraffe projecting over the cab of a large van. Several dozen open trucks filled with cabbages and early apples from nearby collective farms were hacked up behind the caravan. The highway widened as they got closer to the airport. It was six lanes, three in each direction, when they finally spotted the hangars and control tower and radars and turned off onto the flat approach road.

  "The meter is running," the driver reminded them in a tight voice. He adjusted his scarf so that it covered the lower part of his face. "Be sure to pay me when I let you off-it looks more natural that way. And for God s sake don't forget the two valises in the trunk compartment.'

  "Svetochka is frightened," Svetochka suddenly whispered in the Potter's ear. She looked as if she were ready to throw up.

  "Think of yourself as an actress playing a role-two roles, actually," he whispered back. "You had the makings of a great star once. You can do it."

  Svetochka swallowed. "Svetochka will try," she murmured.

  The taxi slowed as it entered the circular driveway in front of the terminal and pulled up before the main doors. "Remember," the Potter instructed Svetochka, "you are a happy Russian wife off with her husband to the Black Sea for some sand and sun."

  Svetochka drew a deep breath. Then, moistening her lips, flashing her most superior smile, she slipped into the role. "Do pay the man, Feliks," she ordered in a loud voice. "I don't want to miss a minute more of sun than I have to.'

  The Potter glanced at the meter and counted out some rubles. Then he went around to the trunk compartment and removed the two valises in it.

  The taxi roared away from the curb before the Potter could close the lid of the trunk compartment. A uniformed policeman farther along the curb called after the squirrellike driver, but he never looked back and he never slowed down.

  Standing in the gutter, the Potter stared after the departing taxi, then started to carry the valises toward the door. From the curb Svetochka berated him. "Darling, there are porters who do that sort of thing."

  The Potter dropped the valises and signalled with a forefinger. A porter strolled over and placed the two valises onto his dolly. "Domestic or foreign?" he asked in a sullen voice.

  "Domestic," Svetochka told him. The porter nodded and wheeled his dolly off. The Potter and Svetochka fell in behind him.

  Oskar's scheme was elegantly simple. Using their own internal passports and a set of genuine Aeroflot tickets for a flight about to leave for the Crimea, they would pass through the cursory checkpoint at the

  "Domestic" entrance. At some point two Americans (hired for the occasion by Oskar) with reservations and tickets for an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna would pass through the door marked "International' twenty meters farther down the driveway, where the control was more strict.

  There, frontier officers who spoke several languages not only checked passports and visas and currency forms, but cast an experienced eye over the traveler's valises and clothing; if there was any doubt, the passenger would be engaged in conversation.

  Smiling broadly, chatting away as if she had nothing more on her mind than whether she had taken along enough bathing costumes, Svetochka presented their internal passports and their airline tickets to the guard at the door. He glanced at the photos on the internal passports and then looked up at the faces in front of him, lingered for a moment more than he had to on Svetochka, checked the date on the tickets, put a tick next to their names on a boarding list, and waved them through.

  The Potter had the same relationship with airports that he had with telephones: he used them without enthusiasm. Once inside, he paid off the porter and retrieved their valises. Carrying one in each hand, he led Svetochka through the crowded hall toward the staircase that descended to the toilets. Downstairs, a janitor in overalls was backing toward them mopping the linoleum as he went along. Svetochka said,

  "Excuse me, can we pass?"

  The janitor turned. It was Oskar. Svetochka gasped in surprise, then, recovering, started to bring her hand up so that Oskar could kiss the back of it, but abandoned the idea when she saw the frown of disapproval on his face.

  The Potter had half-expected Oskar to turn up; he knew from personal experience that there was an irresistible urge to hover in the wings during any delicate operation. It was not so much a matter of making sure it went oft without a hitch as of taking pleasure from its going off without a hitch. In Oskar's shoes, he would have done the same.

  "So," Oskar said quietly, "you have only to follow me." He put aside his mop and led them to an unmarked, unlocked door. "Five minutes, yes?" he reminded them as they ducked into the small room in which the janitors stored cleaning products. "I will rap twice when the coast is clear." So saying, he let himself out the door on the other side of the storage room- which led to the toilets on the "International" side.

  Svetochka and the Potter snapped open their valises. Inside each was a second, smaller valise, this one of American manufacture and plastered with old stickers in English. Inside the second valises were several sets of clothing with American labels sewn into them. They had been made to measure by the Jewish tailor that Oskar had taken them to. "Look at this underwear," Svetochka whispered as she stripped off her Russian garments, "it is genuine nylon!"

  They quickly dressed in the new set of American clothes, fitted on their American shoes, pocketed their American passports and Austrian Airlines tickets to Vienna, and packed their old clothing away in the valises they would leave behind in the room. As a final touch, the Potter slung an American camera over his shoulder.

  "How does Svetochka look?" Svetochka demanded, adjusting the pleats in her navy-blue skirt.

  "You look, as they say in America, like a million dollars," the Potter told her. And he meant it. The Jewish tailor had dressed her better than she normally dressed herself. "Are you ready to play your second role?"

  Svetochka nodded, and repeated the English phrases he had made her memorize. "What does he say? With his accent I can't understand a word."

  She smiled and asked in Russian, "How was that?"

  "Excellent."

  The Potter transferred the length of piano wire with the bamboo grips on each end to the pocket of his American suit jacket. While Svetochka put the finishing touches on her makeup, he checked to make sure the package he had recovered from the old man's cottage was securely wedged between several shirts at the bottom of his American valise.

  There were two soft raps on the door leading to the "International"

  toilets. Oskar squeezed into the small storage room. "So: it is time to go," he said. He inspected them from head to toe. "You will easily pass for Americans. The plane for Vienna is boarding now. Surveillance is light. The two frontier specialists on duty are posted, as we knew they would be, at the front gate. The people at the Austrian Airlines desk will assume that if you got past the frontier specialists, you are the genuine article." To Svetochka he added, "If someone talks to you in English, just smile and repeat what Feliks taught you to say. Feliks will answer in English if he has to."

  Oskar opened the door a crack to make sure that the hall outside the

  "International" toilets was empty. Then he motioned them out of the room. Carrying the smaller, American valises, the Potter and Svetochka climbed the stairs toward the main "International" hall. At the top step the Pot
ter paused to look back. Oskar had turned away and was rinsing a mop out in a pail of water. There are no good-byes for people in our line of work, Piotr Borisovich had noted when the Potter accompanied him to the airport on the first leg of the voyage that would take him to his assignment in New York. The Potter had felt a lump mounting to his throat; he couldn't have said anything if he had wanted to. Piotr Borisovich had emitted a thin, brittle laugh and had stalked away. The Potter had stared after him for a long moment, wondering if they would ever meet again, then had turned back toward his limousine.

  In the main "International" hall, the Potter led the way toward the Austrian Airlines boarding gate. From invisible loudspeakers a crisp voice announced in Russian, and then in German, that the flight to Vienna was now boarding. In the Domestic half of the terminal, Oskar's Americans, who had entered the airport through the guarded

  "International" door on one set of documents, would be boarding the plane to the Crimea using duplicates of the internal passports of the Turovs, Feliks and Svetlana, and a second set of tickets. When the boarding lists of the Crimea and Vienna flights were checked by the frontier police, everyone would be accounted for.

  The Potter and Svetochka were passing the counter where babushka dolls of all sizes were being sold. The Vienna gate loomed ahead. Suddenly the Potter felt a hand on his shoulder. "Feliks?" a voice asked quietly.

  The Potter turned and found himself looking into the unsmiling face of the dapper flaps-and-seals man from the sleeper school. He wore pointed Italian shoes and sported a hairline mustache on his upper lip. His real name was Grishka something or other, but everyone had called him Starets, or Holy Man, because he happened to have been born in the same village in the remote Tobolsk Guberniya of Siberia as the original Starets, Rasputin. It had been a standing joke at the sleeper school to cross yourself when you passed the Starets in a corridor. The last time the Potter had seen the flaps-and-seals man was during the sleeper school ceremony at which the Potter was handed an inscribed Czechoslovak wristwatch.

  "Grishka," the Potter spluttered, mustering all the enthusiasm he could.

  He had never really liked the flaps-and-seals man; he was too obvious a Party hack, too ready to report snatches of idle conversation he may have overheard. "What on earth are you doing here?"

  The Starets lowered his voice. "I am off to Vienna for a flaps-and-seals job. ' The Starets had been fanned out to local rezidents quite a few times during his years at the sleeper school. A local agent would want to get into a letter or a valise without the owner becoming aware of it.

  The Starets would be called into town for a one-shot assignment, opening and closing the flaps and seals so perfectly that nobody would know they had been broken into.

  "And you?" the Starets asked. He nodded at Svetochka over the Potter's shoulder. They had met at various social functions held during the Potter's tenure as novator. To the Potter he said, "I thought you were on the Genter's shit list."

  "I am on assignment too," the Potter said quickly. The words just came out. He couldn't think of anything better to say.

  By now the Starets was studying his clothing and his valise with its American stickers. His eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his tone of voice was guarded, "You are going to Vienna with her?"

  The Potter had the sinking sensation experienced by cornered animals. He might have been able to convince the Starets that he was going to Vienna on assignment. But Russians in his position-Russians in any position!-

  were never allowed out of the country with their wives. The wives were kept back as hostages against their return.

  "Last and final call for Austrian Airlines flight 407 to Vienna," the voice on the loudspeaker system announced.

  "I am under orders to the Vienna rezident," the Potter said quietly. "We are supposed to look like American tourists arriving from Moscow.

  The Starets was openly suspicious now. "I don't believe you," he said flatly. "If what you say is true, I would have been instructed not to engage you in conversation and jeopardize your cover."

  The Potter smiled thinly. "You are in the process of blowing an operation that has been in the works for a long time," he informed the Starets. "It was to make this operation credible that I was retired as novator of the sleeper school. If all this preparation is wasted, it will go hard on you."

  The Starets insisted stubbornly, "I must check what you tell me with the Center."

  The Potter came to a decision. "I will show you my orders, he said. "It will save you from looking like a fool." He turned to Svetochka. "Wait for me here, ' he instructed her. Motioning with his hand, he indicated that the Starets was to follow him. He led him down the stairs to the

  "International" toilets. Oskar, dressed in street clothing, was emerging from the janitor's storage room. "I need to use the room for a moment,"

  the Potter told him. Oskar glanced sharply at the Starets. "It is all right," the Potter said, as if he were anticipating a question other than the one in Oskars eyes. "I can vouch for him. He is the flaps-and-seals man from the sleeper school. I want to show him my Vienna orders."

  Without a word, Oskar stepped aside and allowed the two men to enter the small room. The Potter went in first. The Starets followed. It never occurred to him to worry about his safety. He was a head taller than the Potter, and a good deal huskier; on top of everything, he was a member of the Moscow Center's amateur karate team. Inside, the Potter removed his ticket pouch from his breast pocket, took out the ticket, and handed it to the Starets. "Hold the next-to-last page up to the light," he ordered him. "There is a travel authorization, an unlimited-funds authorization, an access-to-codes authorization. You will recognize the signature."

  The Potter said it all with such authority that the Starets began rehearsing what he could say to explain his interference in an ongoing operation. The novator had been fired from the sleeper school, not transferred to another directorate, he could argue. He was travelling with his wife, a point that would be in the Starets' favor; nobody travelled abroad with a wife. It wasn't his fault if someone at the Center had failed to alert him that they were booked onto the same flight. The Starets held the ticket to the light and squinted up at it.

  Just as it dawned on him that no secret writing was emerging, he felt the strand of piano wire slip over his head and settle around his neck.

  He started to reach for it as the incredibly strong hands of the Potter, straining against the bamboo grips at each end of the wire, tightened it across his Adam's apple. The Starets attempted to scream, but all that emerged from his throat was a strangled gasp. There were karate movements that might have saved him: an elbow to the solar plexus, a foot lock that could send an attacker plunging sideways. But these were things remembered during intraservice matches. With the wire vise tightening on his neck, every instinct screamed out to him to wedge a finger between the wire and the throat, to alleviate the horrible pressure that was building up in his lungs.

  His sight went first; suddenly he was blind. Then he lost control of his bowels. Then his muscles went limp.

  The Potter let the lifeless form settle slowly to the floor, where it lay in a heap like dirty laundry. He reached for a limp wrist and felt for a pulse. Finding none, he retrieved his plane ticket, stared for an instant at the corpse, then let himself out of the storage room.

  Oskar had disappeared. The Potter didn't hold it against him. Oskar had counted on getting the Potter and his wife out of the country without leaving a trace. No matter how things turned out in the small janitor's room, it wouldn't be healthy for him to stick around. For the Potter, everything now depended on when they found the body. If the Vienna-bound plane was still in Soviet air space, the Chief Directorate of Border Guards, a KGB department, had the authority to order it back to interrogate the passengers. If that happened, the Potter was doomed.

  "You look as if you've seen a ghost," Svetochka whispered when the Potter returned. "What happened to your friend?"

  "I made up a story abo
ut us being authorized to leave the country."

  "And he swallowed it?"

  The Potter nodded grimly.

  "Then why are your hands shaking?"

  "Come on," the Potter snapped. He hefted the two valises, one in each hand. At the counter, Svetochka presented their American passports and tickets as the Potter deposited the valises onto the scale.

  "You are traveling light," the woman behind the counter said pleasantly in English, which she spoke with a thick German accent.

  Svetochka smiled nervously at the Potter and articulating carefully, said, "What does he say? With his accent I cannot understand a word."

  The woman behind the counter was too busy tagging the valises to catch Svetochka's mistake. She pushed a foot pedal and the conveyor belt started up, carrying off the valises. "Have a good flight," said the woman, handing the tickets and passports, and a pair of boarding passes, back across the counter.

  "We will try," the Potter replied.

  They boarded the plane, found their seats, strapped on their seat belts-and waited. "What if he comes on the plane and speaks to you in Russian?" Svetochka whispered worriedly.

  The Potter stared out of an oval window at the uniformed border guard at the foot of the ramp. A civilian walked up to the guard and together they double-checked the manifest. One of them tapped the paper with the point of a pencil. A passenger was missing. Would they allow the plane to take off without him?

  Svetochka plucked at the Potter's sleeve. "What if?" she demanded. "What if? What if?"

  "He will not board the plane," the Potter replied woodenly.

  "How can you be sure?" The Potter avoided her eye. "I am sure." Outside, one of the uniformed frontier officers who had been stationed at the

  "International" entrance trotted up with a list of his own in his hands.

  The three men compared lists. The civilian shook his head in puzzlement.

  Why would someone check in through the main entrance and then not show up at the plane? The pilot of the Austrian Airlines plane descended the stairs. There was a hurried conversation among the four men. The pilot glanced at his wristwatch several times. The civilian hurried over to the terminal door and plucked a telephone off its hook, The pilot boarded the plane and said something to one of the stewardesses, who walked down the center aisle counting noses. She reported the results to the pilot, who descended the stairs again. The civilian returned to the ramp. Gesturing toward the control tower, the sky, his wristwatch, the pilot argued with the three Russians. They listened, exchanged looks, raised eyebrows in indecision. Finally the civilian shrugged and signed the manifest; allowing a plane to take off with one passenger too few was not as serious as allowing it to take off with one passenger too many. The pilot bolted up the stairs and tugged the plane door closed after himself. Workmen in green overalls pulled the stairs clear of the plane. A moment later one of the engines coughed into life. And then a second.