The House of Special Purpose Read online

  They went through Trotsky’s villa quickly. Black barely paused as he went from room to room, virtually striding through without much apparent interest in his surroundings. He stopped briefly to examine the blood spatters on the wall by Trotsky’s desk and the smashed eyeglasses but nothing more. The place had obviously been ransacked, right down to torn-up floorboards. Every room had been searched as thoroughly as possible.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Jane said. ‘Someone’s gone through this place with a fine toothcomb.’

  ‘They didn’t find anything,’ said Black as they made their way back to the overturned living room.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because there’s no end to the search.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘If you look and you find something, there is a moment like Archimedes – “Eureka.” I have found it! Unless by some incredible fluke that which is discovered is in the last possible place to search.’

  Jane looked around and saw what Black meant. The entire place had been gone through, everything and everyplace. Nothing had been overlooked. ‘And that means they didn’t find what they were looking for?’

  ‘It means more than that. This place has been searched more than once. The first time was calm and careful. Somebody went to the trouble of putting Trotsky’s glasses back on his desk. The second was more reckless, as though they didn’t have much time.’

  ‘But nobody found anything?’

  ‘They may have found a lot of things,’ said Black, ‘but they didn’t find what they were looking for.’

  ‘The film.’

  ‘Or the key.’

  ‘Okay, we’ve searched now. That makes three sets of people who’ve gone through the house. What now?’

  ‘Mercador’s clue.’

  ‘What was it he said?’ Jane asked.

  ‘The irony of the film being protected by Christ’s resurrection.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any crucifixes anywhere.’

  ‘In the house of a communist like Trotsky? Doubtful, especially since he was born a Jew.’

  ‘Then what’s the joke?’

  ‘Trotsky wasn’t known to have much of a sense of humour so it’s probably a bad one,’ Black answered. He stared blankly out the nearest window and into the gardens.

  ‘The Resurrection is Easter,’ said Jane. She smiled broadly. ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that Trotsky was passionate about raising rabbits?’

  Black spun on his heel. He grabbed Jane by the shoulders and pulled her into a bussing kiss on the mouth. ‘Bloody good!’ he crowed. ‘Our Red friend hid the damn film in his rabbit hutches!’ He released her and headed for the stairs. ‘Come on!’ Jane stood for a moment, two fingers up to her lips, then followed him as he went down the steps two at a time.

  There were six empty hutches, side by side, wire boxes on high wooden legs fitted with simple wire doors. Troughs hung from the side walls of each hutch to provide food and water. Rabbit pellets had fallen freely down through the wire floors and piled up beneath the hutches, where the rotting faecal matter had half composted into earth, aided by a variety of nasty-looking beetles, centipedes and worms.

  After ten minutes of searching, Jane and Black could find no conceivable hiding place for either a reel of cine film or a key on a silver chain.

  ‘That’s it, then.’ Black lit a cigarette and stood staring at the hutches. ‘I was so bloody sure.’

  ‘I still am,’ said Jane. She looked around until she found a wide stick and began pushing apart the foul piles beneath the hutches. Before long Black found his own stick and joined her, plunging it into each pile, spreading the material around as widely as possible. They found what they were looking for under the centre hutch. Jane came up with it, a small flat key dangling from a filthy silver chain.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ she said, ‘the proverbial needle in the haystack.’

  ‘No wonder it was never found.’ Grinning, Black took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and cleaned off the key and the chain as best he could. He threw away the handkerchief, then dropped the chain and the key into the water in the birdbath behind him, rinsing off the last of the shit. Jane took out her pocket pack of Kleenex and dried it off. They stood there in the hot morning sun examining their find.

  The key was unburnished grey, three inches long with four flat notches along the blade of the metal. The only mark on it were the letters FNB/V engraved on the side.

  ‘Safe-deposit box?’ asked Jane.

  ‘I’d say that’s likely. The question is, where?’

  ‘Maybe Mercador knows.’

  ‘If he does, it’s unlikely he’ll tell us and I think the chances are reasonably good that our interview with him will be recorded. The Mexicans are sure to be interested.’

  ‘Why?’ Jane asked. ‘What do they have to do with it? To them it’s just a murder.’

  ‘The Mexicans have been secretly selling petrol to the Nazis for several years.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I think our best bet is to get this key back to Washington and put the whole thing back where it belongs – in Donovan’s hands.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wednesday, November 26, 1941

  Coyoacán, Mexico

  The Cuban-born NKVD agent Guadalupe Gomez, travelling on a doctored Greek passport that identified her as Alexandra Kalinos, sat in the second-floor bedroom of the house directly across the street from the Trotsky villa on Morelos Street. She had arrived in Mexico City at almost the same time as Morris Black and Jane Todd and had wasted no time checking into a hotel. Taking a taxicab to Plaza Hidalgo she had walked with her bag to Morelos Street and followed it until she reached the house opposite the red door marking the entrance to Trotsky’s former residence.

  There had been lights on in the house across from Trotsky’s and she found two people in residence, a manservant who let her into the outer yard and the owner of the house, an old widower. The manservant had been easy. As a rule Gomez kept an eight-inch section of sharpened coat hanger up the sleeve of her blouse for such occasions. With virtually no effort at all she’d managed to slide the weapon out, palm the tape-wrapped end and shove the point into the corner of the man’s eye, letting the point slide along the bone to the superior optic fissure and from there into the brain. At that point she moved the wire quickly back and forth as though she were scrambling eggs and doing precisely that to the man’s brain. He was dead in seconds. She dragged him off to one side of the path, roughly hiding him under a bank of shrubbery.

  Taking the short winding path up to the front door, she entered and dropped her bag in the living room, searching through the house until she found her quarry, the old man. Looking through his mail later that night, she discovered that his name was Rafael Torres, a retired jeweller with a married daughter living in Vera Cruz who operated a small jewellery booth at the Hotel Imperial with her father as silent partner.

  She’d found Torres in his study, asleep in his chair with the radio on. She simply slit his throat with her pocketknife and left him seated where he was. From there she found the second-floor bedroom that looked out onto the street, returned to the living room and fetched her bag. From it she took the broken-down M91/30 sniper rifle and PU scope she had been supplied with by Zarubin and reassembled it. Then she sat down to wait, keeping the shutters partially open and the curtains drawn, leaving a gap of only an inch or so.

  The targets had arrived less than an hour ago, the sound of their vehicle bringing her out of her light, catnapping sleep. They left a young man at the wheel of the old Pierce Arrow and went in through the red door. Zarubin had briefed her on what they would find once they arrived but they didn’t reappear immediately. Gomez returned to Torres’s study, placed her required telephone call then returned to the bedroom, hefting the familiar weight of the rifle in her arms. The man and the woman remained hidden from view for the next half hour, finally reappearing shortly after ten thirty. Jus
t as they came through the red door, Gomez heard the first police sirens in the distance. She put the rifle to her shoulder and her eye to the sight. Squeezing the trigger, she shot through the windscreen of the car, choosing a safe body shot that pierced the young driver’s chest. She pushed the bolt of the rifle forward, then pulled it back, managing to get a second and then a third shot off, trying for the man and woman, but both of them ducked down behind the protective body of the car. Not that it mattered since the point of the exercise was simply to keep them where they were until Morales arrived.

  * * *

  Jane was moving towards the car when she suddenly saw the windscreen explode and the terrible spray of blood erupt from Cesar’s chest. The young man shuddered once, then slid sideways, dead, on the seat. Black grabbed her by the arm and harshly yanked her to the ground as the sound of the first shot blasted in her ears, followed by the hammering of the second and third shots into the wall behind her. He dragged Jane into the protective shadow of the Pierce Arrow and pulled the big automatic out of his jacket pocket. In the distance Jane could hear the odd, ululating sound of the European-style police sirens.

  Another shot splintered stone in the wall behind them and Jane pushed herself even closer to the side of the car. ‘What the hell is happening!’

  ‘We’re Judas goats!’ Black answered as another shot slammed into the metal cladding of the door. He fired back blindly, the big semi-automatic bucking in his hand.

  ‘Speak English, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘It’s a setup!’ The detective put an arm around her shoulder and pushed her around him so the mass of the twelve-cylinder engine block would be between her and the shooter. Using his heels, he pushed himself along the pavement, dragging himself towards the passenger-side door. In the distance the sirens were getting closer with each passing second.

  ‘What set-up? Who?’

  ‘Our Captain Morales is involved. I can tell you that much,’ said Black. ‘Why else would the police be so close?’ Black reached up with one hand and pulled down on the door handle. ‘Not to mention the fact that he was the only one who knew we were coming here.’

  ‘Unless you count the professor or whatever he was.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Another shot rang out, this one striking the opposite door of the car. Black pulled open the passenger door and slithered into the car on his belly, keeping as low as possible. Jane heard the sound of the ignition key and then the starter button engage. The engine fired up instantly. Black appeared a few seconds later, dragging the body of Cesar Durantes by the collar of his shirt. Jane was horrified.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Clearing the way,’ Black grunted. He managed to get the body out of the car and eased it down onto the pavement. ‘When I give you the word, I want you to get behind the wheel and be ready to go at a moment’s notice. I want you to angle the car to the other side of the street. It will increase the angle of fire and give us a better chance.’ The sirens were very loud now, no more than two or three blocks away. Another shot smashed into the side mirror of the Pierce Arrow, sending shards of glass and metal in all directions.

  ‘Why don’t you get behind the wheel?’

  ‘Because I can’t bloody drive!’

  Jane stared at the body on the pavement. In death the young man looked no more than a child. ‘We can’t just leave him here!’

  ‘He’s dead. He’s past caring,’ Black answered. ‘On the count of three.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘One, two, three!’

  Black pulled back the heavy slide of the automatic pistol, jerked himself up into a standing position and began to fire, aiming upwards at the house across the street. He glanced to his left, saw that Jane was at the wheel of the car and threw himself into the front seat. ‘Now!’ he yelled. ‘Drive!’

  Jane lifted her foot off the clutch and jammed it down onto the gas, swinging the big wheel to the left, swerving over to the other side of the street and the protective foliage of the trees lining the cobbled road. Their speed increased as the engine roared, Jane pushing through the gears as quickly as she could. Black pulled himself up into a sitting position just as Jane reached the corner and careened into the heavy traffic on Rio Churubusco Avenue. Looking to his left, Black saw that the leather of Jane’s seat was a sticky mass of blood. The sound of the sirens was fading behind them but the bullet-riddled car and the non-existent windscreen would soon attract the wrong kind of attention. The street they were on was actually a broad boulevard, with mature trees running down a park-like grass median.

  ‘We can’t stay in this thing much longer,’ Jane said, reading his mind. ‘We have to find another car.’

  ‘Turn off the first chance you get.’

  A few seconds later Jane spotted a break in the boulevard, swung across both lanes of traffic and hurled the big car down a narrow side street. A block farther on Jane spotted a large green-and-white sign that read PEMEX, the name of the government petroleum monopoly.

  ‘Is that a gas station?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Black.

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  Jane wheeled the big car onto the gas station lot, which was sandwiched between two warehouses. There were two ball-topped pumps, the pumps green, the balls white, and behind them an ancient-looking garage with a rusting, corrugated metal roof. Several old cars were parked against the warehouse wall on the right and both of the sliding doors on the garage itself were open, the work bays empty. A fat man in an undershirt and a straw hat was sleeping in an old car seat, a section of newspaper keeping the sun out of his eyes.

  Without being asked, Jane drove directly into one of the empty service bays and both she and Black climbed out of the car. Using greasy canvas straps riveted to the bottoms of the garage doors, the detective pulled both of them down. The doors, like the roof, were made from corrugated metal that had once been painted green like the pumps, the remains of the paint now eaten away with surface rust. Going through the garage into the connecting office, Jane looked around until she saw a rack of keys, each set marked with a paper tag and a scrawled licence number. By this time the fat man had awakened and came storming into the office, screaming at Jane in Spanish. She ignored him until he made a grab for her, at which point Black pulled the automatic pistol out of his jacket and pointed it at the man. He had no idea if there was any ammunition left but it seemed to do the trick.

  ‘Parada,’ he said, assuming that it meant stop since the word was on most street corners in red. Black moved the pistol a little closer to the man’s bulbous nose.

  ‘Si.’ The man stepped back, raising his hands overhead, smiling and showing off a set of tobacco-stained teeth.

  ‘Turn that sign around,’ Jane said to Black. She pointed at the hanging sign on the door leading out to the lot. Black edged around the fat man with his hands up and switched the sign from Abierto to Cerrado, then pulled down a faded green roller blind. Jane waved her hand towards the rack of keys. ‘Donde está llave de Chevrolet?’ The man glanced at the gun.

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,’ said Black.

  ‘I don’t.’ She pointed. ‘The word’s painted on the rack. Llave.’ She turned back to the fat garage owner. ‘Chevrolet!’

  ‘Cinco,’ the garage owner said nervously. He made a fist with one hand and then opened it.

  ‘Five,’ said Black.

  ‘Si, si!’ said the man, turning towards the detective. ‘Fife.’

  ‘We’ll need something to tie him up with and to gag him as well.’

  ‘We’re stealing a car presumably.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Excellent idea.’ Black handed the gun to Jane, turned around and went back into the garage. Keeping the gun on the man, Jane slid over to the rack of keys and took down the fifth set.

  ‘Si?’ asked Jane, dangling them in her hand.

  ‘Si,’ said the fat man, nodding vigorously, his smile threatening to dislocate his jaw in his eagerness to ple
ase.

  Black found a skein of copper wire, a pair of pliers and a roll of wide silver plumber’s tape. The fat man’s face fell. Jane gave the gun back to Black, went behind the small office desk behind her and rolled out a wooden chair on wheels.

  ‘Show him you want him to hold out his hands,’ she said.

  Black put his wrists together, demonstrating what he wanted the garage owner to do. He obeyed, sweat rolling freely down his cheeks now, the black hair at his temples wet and lank. He blinked nervously, looking back and forth between Jane and Black. Jane pulled a four-foot length of wire and snipped it off. She wrapped the fat man’s wrists with it, tightly enough to make the Mexican wince. When the man’s hands were secured, Jane took one end of the roll of silver tape and began wrapping it around and around the man’s head, being careful not to cover his nostrils. When she’d gone around a dozen times, she ripped off the tape end.

  ‘That should do it,’ she said.

  ‘I wonder what the Spanish word for sit is?’

  ‘Point your gun at the chair,’ said Jane. ‘He’ll understand that.’

  Black pointed his gun at the chair but the man didn’t move.

  ‘Sit!’ The man looked at Black, obviously terrified now. ‘Idioto!’

  ‘Wait,’ said Jane, ‘you’ll give him heart failure.’ She took the man’s bound wrists and led him to the chair, gently pushing him down into it. The Mexican dropped down heavily and the chair half spun around. He desperately tried to look over his shoulder at his armed captor and when Black turned the chair around there was a widening stain on the lap of the man’s trousers.

  ‘He’s wet himself.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jane. ‘Means he’ll stay put and not try to escape.’

  ‘We can only hope.’

  Jane got down on one knee and repeated the binding process with the copper wire, tying the man’s feet together tightly. Then she went to the front door leading out onto the lot and rattled the knob. ‘Llave!’ she ordered. ‘Donde está el llave de porto?’