Ted Allbeury - The Twentieth Day of January

“Let’s try the TH 94.”

“OK. I’ll give you your shot first. I’ll need a pulse count and a lung check.”

The young man put his fingers remarkably lightly on the artery at Nolan’s wrist and closed his eyes. It was a high count and he did it again to make sure. He was used to abnormal counts. Adrenalin glands were generally working overtime when he was called in. He put the stethoscope probe up to his mouth and breathed on it. He went carefully over Nolan’s chest and back. There were no lung problems, and he folded up the stethoscope and knelt down to his bag. He stood up and put two pills on the desk.

“Take those, without liquid, then they’ll work faster.”

“Is it OK to eat afterwards?”

“Yes. It’ll help. Where’s the guy for the TH 94?”

“In the basement.”

“It will take half an hour to start working. Shall I go down now and give him his jab?”

“No, I want to be there. I’ll give you a buzz when I’m ready.”

He pulled across the bundle of reports as he waited. There was a brief report on the electronics at Kleppe’s place.

Prelim: Electronics .

Extensive anti-bugging frame covers all rooms and doors. Similar to MAJOR MK IX.

Miniaturized high-power transceiver. Modified SOVTORG model 30. Four crystal fixed frequencies. Component analysis indicates extensive use, approx. nineteen repeat nineteen hours. Cameras Polaroid SX 70. Olympus OM2 with macro lens 55mm and copying device and Recordata back. Signed Harrap and Simon.

The soup and sandwich came, and he read the Moscow embassy report as he ate.

“Your 97016 stop subject Tcharkova, Halenka aged twenty-seven repeat twenty-seven with child (female) aged seven stop well-known painter acceptable to regime stop current address Minskaya Ulitsa 17 repeat 17 Moscow stop several successful exhibitions stop married stop photographs to follow message ends 147011.”

He pressed the red button and when the medical orderly came they walked down to the entrance hall and collected the duty guard.

Kleppe was still sitting at the table, as if he had never moved since Nolan had left him.

The young man checked Kleppe’s pulse and then undid the cuff-links on Kleppe’s right arm. He pushed back the arm of his jacket, and the shirt, swabbed the inside of his forearm and fetched up a vein with pressure from his thumb. The hypodermic looked more like a veterinary size to Nolan and he watched as the needle slid in. It took a long time for the plunger to empty the syringe. Kleppe watched the clear liquid empty into his arm. The puncture was swabbed and Nolan used the bleeper and he and the medical orderly walked back together. At Nolan’s office door the young man looked at his watch.

“He’ll be ready to go at five o’clock. You’ll get four hours out of him.”

“Thanks.”

Nolan walked across the causeway at the end of the lane to the edge of the water. There was a watery sun now on the horizon, sending fingers of light to the edges of the dark clouds and across the choppy water. It reminded Nolan of a biblical engraving in his room when he was a child; in flowing script the title was “Easter Morning.”

A 36-foot Hatteras was making its third attempt to tie-up at the jetty on the far side of the Bay. It came in sideways-on and an offshore wind held it too far away for a rope to be thrown. It came round again and the penny had dropped. It went in nose on and when the for’ard rope was fast the engines brought its stern round. A skein of geese flew overhead from the reed beds behind where he was sitting. And there were three tugs and a navy patrol boat coming under the Throgs Neck Bridge. On the bridge itself the commuters still had the lights on on their cars, and there was a long build-up for the toll booths.

Nolan, like most other senior operators in CIA, was well aware that he lived in a naughty world. It was that that justified much of what he did, or ordered to be done. Investigating committees frequently applied the word “horrific” to some of their operations, but the CIA put that down to the luxury of a loftiness that only the CIA’s work made possible. What the CIA did was generally all too routine, and the majority of their operations were counter-punching, resisting attacks rather than attacking. Nolan and the top echelons at Langley were used to their role, and the extravagant outrage of journalists and politicians. From time to time when depressions and storms rolled across from Capitol Hill there would be the pointed question asked of who would “preserve, protect, and defend” if the CIA took the Boy Scout oath.

But this operation seemed as unreal to Nolan as other operations seemed outside the intelligence community. After they had proved that the President-Elect was a reed that bent to Soviet winds, what then? What happened? Every solution spelt disaster. Deep depression for millions of people, a hundred McCarthys, all the words of 1776 made nought, the checks and balances exposed as a dream, and an icy tension between the two most powerful nations in the world. And the final excuse for the buttons to be pressed to turn a grinding ache into a final amputation. It was like working diligently to prove you had cancer. Whatever happened was going to be bad for America.

They all knew that there was no easy solution. But he knew, and they would know, that there was an easy solution. It had lurked on the periphery of his mind for two weeks like a hungry animal at the edge of a wood.

He stood up, brushed the seat of his trousers and walked briskly back to the house to expunge the lurking thought.

Nolan looked at Kleppe’s face as the door clanged to behind him. There was something wrong with Kleppe’s left eye and that side of his face. It was like a man looked who had had a stroke. A kind of paralysis. He sat down facing Kleppe, and spoke calmly and quietly.

“You’re Victor Kleppe. A Russian?”

The head shook vigorously and the mouth distorted with effort.

“Armenian. Not Russian.” The face contorted as he laughed.

“You’re an officer in the KGB?”

The dark eyes flickered but he nodded as his mouth worked without making a sound.

“Andrew Dempsey is one of your men?”

“’Merican, ’Merican.”

“He’s an American?”

Kleppe nodded energetically.

“He’s a Communist. He works for you?”

Kleppe put his hand to his lips as if to make them work. “Yes.”

“He controls Powell?”

He nodded. “Old friends, schooldays.”

“You get your instructions from Moscow?”

“Moskva and United Nations.”

“Moscow wanted Powell to be Governor and then President?”

“Money and influence. The networks.”

Nolan could just make out the words. He used the bleeper and when the door opened he called out. “Get the medic down here.”

He sat silent until the young man came in. He looked up at him. “There’s something wrong. He can’t talk properly.”

The young man bent down and looked at Kleppe’s face. He touched the left side with his fingers then took a metal probe and touched the cheek. It drew blood but Kleppe didn’t flinch or move. The doctor looked at Kleppe.

“Have you been taking penicillin?”

Kleppe nodded and touched his chest.

“You’ve had bronchitis, yes? Or influenza?”

“Yes.”

The young man straightened up.

“He’s allergic to penicillin and this drug has geared it up. It’s like when you get a dentist’s injection, your mouth swells up and goes numb. And it’s drying his mouth and his throat. I’ll give him something to flatten it, but he’ll be like this for two days.”

“You do that.” Nolan said, and bleeped for the guard and left.

It took them one hour to trace Harper. He was out of Washington.