Ted Allbeury - The Twentieth Day of January

“Sure I am, if it’s OK.”

“It’s OK,” she said softly.

Viktor Kleppe had been born Viktor Aleksandrovich Fomin in Yerevan in the Soviet Republic of Armenia. He was seven years old when the war ended, and an orphan. But a bright orphan who went straight from school to university, and from there to the KGB training school just outside Moscow. After two years at the old building in Dzerzhinsky Square he had been filtered into Norway with genuine papers and an identity taken from a headstone in a small churchyard in Stavanger. Two years later he had emigrated to Canada and worked at a boatyard in Hamilton, Ontario, until he’d got a work permit for the United States.

Despite the parsimony of Moscow he had converted the KGB’s 5,000 dollar fund into a small jewellery business that he operated from his apartment in Brooklyn. He was used as a cut-out for one of the KGB men at the United Nations, and then he was given a low-grade solo mission to penetrate the US Navy yard at Brooklyn. Although most of the information he got there was classified, none of it was news to Moscow. But they sent him down to Mexico for a coding and radio course, and when he came back to New York he was told to set up an espionage network to cover computer technology and electronics. By 1968 he was Director of all illegals covering New York and Washington. He dealt only in precious stones now, and his success and reputation were cover enough for the apartment in Sutton Place. His valuable stock was cover enough, too, for the extraordinary security precautions that he installed. He had perfect cover for his journeys inside the USA and overseas, and his business provided an almost check-proof channel for illegal funds which came in as the diamonds and rubies in which he specialized. He had acquaintances and contacts, in business and politics, at every level. And no friends.

He did favours large and small, and never asked anything in return from either individuals or organizations. He wasn’t a soft touch, he listened to the stories, and asked pointed questions; and when he paid out he knew whether it was for the expansion of a business, influence in a political party, a demanding mistress or an impending audit. He made no judgements and gave no advice, but it all went down in the little black books which, when they were full, were sealed in plastic bags and taped inside the cold water tank in the roof space. Not that there were all that many people in New York who could read shorthand in Armenian.

After Dempsey left, Kleppe walked over to the control panel alongside the row of hi-fi equipment. There were twenty-four heat-sensing buttons, a few of them marked with symbols, the majority coloured but blank. Kleppe’s forefinger lightly touched eight of the sensors and alerted the elaborate security controls that protected the apartment.

He walked slowly up Sutton Place, and used a public telephone to speak to his contact at the UN. He turned left at 57th, and two blocks later he took out a bunch of keys from his coat pocket and opened the door of a small jewellery shop. Inside he switched on the showroom lights and walked through to a small back office. On the glass table were piles of invoices and receipts, and he leaned over, looking at a typed list of figures on a sheet of paper as he took off his coat. Still reading, he pulled up the chair and sat down. He reached inside his jacket and took out a small calculator, and one by one he totalled the receipts and invoices. He sat for a moment looking at the totals and then scribbled a note on the pad by the telephone. When the door-bell rang he stood up and walked unhurriedly through the showroom, and nodded to the man who stood there brushing snowflakes from his hair.

“Come in, Yuri, you can do that inside.”

The other man stamped his feet on the mat inside the door, and leaned with one arm against the wall as he slid off his galoshes.

Kleppe closed and locked the shop door, and walked back to the office. He was sitting on the edge of the desk when the other man came in. The man had an unsmiling face, and he lowered his big frame awkwardly into the chair, pulling his wet coat loosely together, as if to exclude himself from the luxurious setting. His hands were enormous, with finger and knuckle joints so large that they looked swollen. One eye didn’t move, and he squinted up at Kleppe with the other.

“Is this place safe, comrade?”

“It has been for the last five years, Yuri. But you don’t have to stay long.”

The man’s big hand lay flat on the glass table and unconsciously smoothed its surface as he spoke.

“Colonel Rhyzkov was not impressed. He assessed him as a neurotic, and arrogant with it.”

Kleppe half-smiled. “Dempsey is an American, well educated, intellectual and independent. He would be bound to react aggressively against a man like Rhyzkov. Dempsey wasn’t impressed by Rhyzkov, for that matter.”

The big face jerked up quickly. “What were his comments about him?”

Kleppe swung a leg as he sat on the table, apparently looking with interest at his black shoe and its silver buckle.

“He just asked if we couldn’t afford to pension off old soldiers.”

“But Rhyzkov isn’t old. He’s barely fifty.”

Kleppe sighed, and turned to look at his companion. He spoke very quietly.

“I suggest you keep him out of sight in this country, Yuri. He gives a bad impression. He’s a political dinosaur and he looks it.”

The big man’s eyes blazed with anger. “That is a scandalous thing to say, Viktor.”

Kleppe smiled with cold, hard eyes. “You must accept my judgement, comrade. I have survived for years among these people, Rhyzkov would not survive for a day. I don’t want him near my operation. Is that understood?”

“Are you threatening me, comrade?”

“Threatening, no. Warning, yes. Moscow have instructed me to do something. Leave me alone to get on with it.”

The one blue eye moved to look at Kleppe’s face.

“Have you no sort of real hold on this man?”

“It’s not necessary, Yuri. The man is committed to us. Has been since he was in Paris. Always will be.”

The big man stood up, his one sound eye still on Kleppe’s face. Then he turned and walked slowly to the shop door and let himself out. It was still snowing, but his mind was too occupied to think of his galoshes. He carried them in his hand. It was a strange, wild country, America. He was glad that he could keep to the Soviet enclave in the UN building, and the apartment on East End Avenue.

Nolan’s team covering Kleppe followed him to Kennedy and waited to check that he actually boarded the plane and that the plane took off. They checked his booking with SAS. It was a direct flight, non-stop to London, leaving London an hour later for Copenhagen and Stockholm. Kleppe was booked through to Copenhagen under the name of Greenbaum.

Just before ten o’clock they went up the fire-escape stairs at the back of the block and the team put the big rubber suction pads on one of the windows, holding the glass in place while the glazier cut the glass at the edges of the frame.

As the team leader moved the long, thin, electronic lance across the floor of the apartment Nolan looked around the room from the window area. The walls were all panelled in a reddish-coloured wood and the floor was of oak parquet blocks. On a long shelf on the right-hand wall was an array of hi-fi equipment, and some sort of control panel. Across the space in front of the window was a long polished table with eight chairs spaced round it. There were no pictures, and no books. The team leader’s voice broke into his thoughts.

“It’s OK, Mr. Nolan, but you’ll have to keep to the white tapes, there are weight switches under the parquet blocks.”