The House of Special Purpose Page 7

  ‘You’re left-handed.’

  ‘How can you tell that?’

  ‘You wear your Rolex on your right wrist. Only left-handed people do that and you smoke with your left hand, holding the butt below the knuckle like a guy does.’ She held up her own hand to show the position of her cigarette high above the knuckle. ‘How’d I do?’

  ‘Extremely well. Bang on, as a matter of fact. Maybe you really are the sort of person to be in this business. You seem to have the properly suspicious turn of mind.’

  ‘Photographers are like detectives, I guess. They see a lot.’ She grinned at him. ‘You do me now.’

  ‘My age, maybe a little younger, not married but you like men. You were born in New York but you’ve spent most of your time recently either in Florida or California. I’d be willing to bet California. You’re a real blonde, not one out of a bottle, and you came from an extremely poor background, not a wealthy one. You’re also extremely observant, as you just proved, and you can’t sew worth a damn. How did I do?’

  ‘How’d you know about California?’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Black closed his eyes and concentrated. ‘“I was taking kiss-and-tell shots and occasionally shooting pictures of nitwit movie stars, usually the ones on the way up or on the way down.” You’ve got a tan, but since there aren’t too many nitwit movie stars in Florida, I bet on California.’

  ‘The blonde bit? There’s usually only one way to prove it and we’re not that close.’

  ‘The hairs on your arms are blond.’

  ‘That could be the tan.’

  ‘And so are those little soft hairs right at the nape of your neck.’ The detective reached out, his long fingers gently touching her.

  She shivered slightly. This wasn’t going the way she’d expected.

  ‘You tried to fix the hem on your skirt. The thread is the right colour but the stitches are a little too far apart to be professional and the fabric is puckering a little.’

  ‘You’re embarrassing me.’

  ‘I’ve got a frayed collar and cuffs and I need a haircut. No need to be embarrassed.’

  ‘Not married?’

  ‘Intuition. You don’t sound or act as though you’ve been domesticated. You do things your own way.’

  ‘You got that right. The poor childhood?’ He was so close it was spooky.

  ‘More intuition. You’ve got a tough edge to you they don’t teach in expensive schools.’

  ‘You said I liked men. Maybe I’m a lesbian.’ She smiled.

  ‘She who shall remain nameless,’ said Black, smiling again. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But how can you tell?’

  ‘You asked after Tom Barry. He told me about you when he got home from his time in America. He told me a great deal about you. As a matter of fact, it was difficult to shut him up.’

  ‘You cheated. You had inside information.’

  ‘That’s what being a spy is all about.’ He laughed. ‘And all coppers have informers.’

  There was a long silence and once again Jane found herself thinking about Thomas. Such a shy man and there was no doubt in her mind that he and Sheila Connelly, the IRA woman, had been involved with each other, however briefly. Like a fool she’d never said anything to him about her own feelings and in the end he’d burst into that hotel room, probably saving her life, but also catching her virtually in flagrante delicto in an assassin’s bed. Any possibility of romance between them vanished in that single instant, lost in a hail of bullets, a fog of smoke and a sea of blood. She smiled sadly, thinking of him again, wondering how different her life and his life would have been if she’d simply told him the truth. Jane stared out at the magnolia tree. It was getting dark now and long shadows were tracing across the little garden as the sun went down. A small breeze blew up and the last of the blossoms fell from the tree.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s my place to say this,’ said Black, his voice coming out of the semi-darkness of the room, ‘but you should know that Thomas Barry loved you very much.’ Black smiled. ‘I can see why.’ He looked her over with frank interest.

  ‘I loved him too,’ Jane answered quietly. ‘I loved him and I never said a word.’

  Chapter Five

  Sunday, November 23, 1941

  Mexico City

  The two men who had been watching the meeting between Halperin and Zarubin the previous day climbed down from the rusted, rattling twelve-year-old Ford Tri- Motor, swallowing hard several times in a vain attempt to get their hearing back. The flight from Laredo had been a bumpy one, and both men, to their embarrassment, had been violently ill. Stumbling down the rickety steps to the ground, they took deep breaths of thin, foul-smelling air. A huge dome of brown air stretched out over the entire city and everything smelled like they were standing directly in the path of a diesel exhaust pipe.

  The men were dressed entirely inappropriately for the sweltering heat but both had worn suits in an attempt to disguise the fact that they were carrying very heavy armament. The taller of the two men, his hair almost white blond and thinning, was Trevor K. Harding. He wore a .45 calibre Colt Automatic pistol in a shoulder rig. Everyone in the office said the K was for Kraut because he actually looked like everyone’s idea of a Nazi. The brown suit added to the look. The shorter one, with a round red nose, was called Sneezy because he looked a little like the Disney dwarf and always seemed to have a cold. He wore a blue suit and lifts in his Florsheims; his real name was Conrad Bonafontini. He preferred a Smith & Wesson Model 10 .38, since it weighed a lot less than the Kraut’s Colt Auto and fit into a snap holster he wore at the base of his spine, even though it did act as a conduit for sweat dripping down between the cheeks of his ass. What it didn’t do was sag down the left side of his suit jacket.

  Sneezy and the Kraut went through customs formalities, showing perfectly authentic U.S. Treasury identification and paying five dollars U.S. mordida, or ‘bite,’ to the customs officer so there wouldn’t be any long complicated forms in Spanish to fill out to get their weapons into the country. With their business done they left the terminal, found the Hertz booth next to the parking lot and rented the best car they could find on the lot, a dusty black 1931 Dodge DG four-door sedan with rusted-out running boards and no spare tyre in the fender well. They were also obliged to fill up the tank at the Hertz pump but since payment was in pesos the blatantly inflated charge wasn’t so difficult to bear. The Kraut got in behind the wheel and Sneezy, taking a small hand-drawn map from his suit jacket pocket, climbed in beside him.

  ‘Where to?’ said the Kraut.

  Sneezy pointed to a paved road that ran roughly south-west. ‘We go down this Avenida Morelos and then turn left about five miles along at Avenida Coyoacán.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘According to the map.’

  ‘Seems too simple.’

  ‘You’ve been doing this too long,’ said Sneezy. ‘Sometimes things are just what they seem.’

  ‘Nobody listens to that Freud shit any more.’

  ‘What’s Freud got to do with it?’

  ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know.’

  ‘Just drive the fucking car.’

  The Kraut started up the engine and crashed the big floor-mounted shift lever into gear. Lurching and grinding, they drove out of the parking lot. Soon they were lost in the fog of engine exhaust and the mad rush of motor cars, smoking motocyclettes and thundering trucks that streamed all around them. After a dozen wrong turns, the death of a chicken on a side street that required another dose of mordida and instant, raging headaches caused by the high altitude and the poor air, they eventually reached Avenida Coyoacán and headed south. Ten minutes after that, drenched in sweat, they reached the small provincial town of the same name.

  ‘Did you ever take Spanish in school?’ asked Sneezy as they drove through the outskirts of the little town.

  ‘Why would I take Spanish? Useless language. Everyb
ody speaks American anyway.’

  ‘I took a language course first year at Yale,’ said Sneezy. ‘Thought it might be interesting.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Interesting enough,’ Sneezy said. ‘You got to learn about root languages and how one language can “cover” another when the first country is invaded. Coyoacán isn’t Spanish, at least I don’t think. Maybe some Aztec mixed in or something but the word has something to do with coyotes.’

  ‘Who gives a shit, Conrad?’ said the Kraut. ‘We’re here to do a job, remember? When we’re done, we drive back to the airport and we get on the first fucking plane back to the closest place they have fans in the hotel rooms.’

  The Kraut rolled the Dodge into the Plaza Hidalgo on the eastern side of town and pulled to a stop in front of the ornate Casa de Cortes, once Coyoacán’s town hall. The square, like everywhere else in Mexico City, was empty. The Mexicans, it seemed, took their Sundays seriously. Sneezy checked the hand-drawn map again.

  ‘Now where?’ asked the Kraut.

  Sneezy followed a lightly pencilled line on the map. ‘Seven, eight blocks from here. Nineteen Viena Street. According to the diagram, we’re supposed to use the north entrance on Churubusco Street at the corner of Morelos.’

  ‘Just get us there,’ said the Kraut.

  ‘West out of the plaza,’ Sneezy answered, his tone a little clipped. ‘Up Avenida Mexico, then veer right when you see a sign that says Centenario. Got that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The tall blond man followed the directions given to him by his shorter companion, and within a few minutes of driving along the town’s cobbled streets they came within fifty yards of the house at 19 Viena Street. ‘That’s Morelos, running at right angles to us,’ offered Sneezy. The Kraut just stared at Leon Trotsky’s former residence. The street itself was treed, sun dappling down through the leaves, and looked very cool and pleasant. The compound, walled on every side with roughly made concrete lookout towers at the corners, was a fortress. At the corner of Viena and Morelos they could see a sky blue door set into the heavy concrete wall and, over the wall, the roof of what was probably some sort of guardhouse.

  ‘Surprised they got at him. Place is like a fort.’

  ‘They tried once,’ said Sneezy, who had read up on the subject when he heard about their assignment. ‘Bunch of Stalinist types dressed up as Mexican cops got into the compound and opened up with a bunch of tommy guns last year. Got everything but Trotsky and his wife.’

  ‘I thought he was killed with an ice pick.’ The Kraut slipped the Colt out of its shoulder holster and took a dull gunmetal Maxim silencer out of his jacket pocket. He began screwing the silencer onto the end of the automatic.

  ‘It was an ice axe,’ corrected Sneezy. ‘The guy’s name was Ramon Mercador, although there’s some people think that’s a phony. He was screwing Trotsky’s secretary, got so he could come and go as he pleased. Went into Trotsky’s office one day and hit him with the axe.’

  ‘They hang him, give him a ride on old Sparky? Whatever they do down here?’

  ‘He hasn’t even gone to trial yet. They’ve got him in the city jail downtown. Whores, food brought in, liquor.’

  ‘Lucky boy. Who’s paying the tab?’

  ‘Lot of bribes, I think. There’s no Russian embassy here but lots of Reds around.’

  The Kraut put the silenced automatic on the seat beside him. Sneezy took out his S&W, checked the cylinder and dropped the gun into his jacket pocket. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Time to get this done and get back home like you want.’

  ‘You really think we’re going to find anything?’ said the Kraut.

  ‘Honestly? No, not a chance. This whole thing is a wild goose chase. Bet your ass the NKVD here had a dozen guys going through the place before the body was cold. We’re just dotting i’s and putting in the periods.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Sneezy. ‘Why would Donovan be sending them to Mexico City if that was true?’

  ‘Same reason as us. To say that he covered all the bases.’

  ‘Well, let’s just go see anyway,’ said Sneezy. ‘Turn left on Morelos and pull in just before we get to the corner. That’s the entrance we’re supposed to use.’

  ‘Why that one?’

  ‘It’s the only one with a guard.’

  ‘I see.’

  The Kraut put the car into gear again and flipped down the signal lever, even though by now he knew it didn’t work. He drove slowly down the tree-lined street, looking left and right as he went. There were only a few cars parked and none of them was occupied.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Sneezy.

  ‘So am I,’ the Kraut answered, reaching down and patting the heavy, flat weight of the Colt. A few seconds later he spotted the red door at the end of the wall and slowed even more. He found a parking spot only a few yards from the entrance and pulled into it, cutting the engine. He and Sneezy climbed out of the old Dodge and walked to the scarred red door, their weapons hanging loosely in their hands. Sneezy kept his concentration on the street, his eyes roving ceaselessly, while the Kraut kept his eyes on the red door. If there was any problem, Sneezy would provide noisy and hopefully distracting cover, allowing them to get back to the car.

  They reached the red door. Sneezy stood facing the street, watching carefully. There were no pedestrians and no visible movement in any of the parked cars. The Kraut hammered on the door with his free hand and waited. A full minute passed without any sound or movement from behind the door. The Kraut banged again. This time there was a muffled voice.

  ‘No entrada.’

  ‘Now what?’ said the Kraut, turning to Sneezy. ‘He’s got to open the door.’

  ‘Mi hermano está enfermo,’ Sneezy called out.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him my brother was sick.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  It worked. They heard a key turning in a lock and the door swung open a few inches. A man in a brown policeman’s uniform peered out at them. ‘Que?’

  ‘Hola,’ said Sneezy, turning away from the street, smiling pleasantly at the man. The guard was fat with large sweat patches in his armpits, pitted skin, a heavy moustache and nicotine-stained teeth. His hair was thinning and slicked back with some kind of oil.

  ‘Hola.’

  ‘Hasta luego,’ Sneezy said and gave the Kraut the nod. The Kraut lifted up the big Colt, put the end of the silencer an inch away from the bridge of the man’s bulbous nose and fired once. There was a sound like a wet twig snapping. The entrance wound was the size of a nickel, ringed by speckled powder burns that matched the blackheads on the nose below the little hole. The exit wound was the size of a saucer and blew the back of the man’s head off, little bits of skull clattering off the wall of the guardhouse at his back, blood and tissue spraying everywhere. As the dead man began to fall, the Kraut pushed him backwards so he wouldn’t sag into the street. He stepped over the body and through the doorway, Sneezy hard on his heels. Sneezy closed the door and as he did so a second guard came around the corner of the guardhouse, this one stripped down to his undershirt, a bottle of Noche Buena in one fist, the other hand lost somewhere in the crotch of his uniform trousers.

  ‘Alvaro?’

  The Kraut didn’t wait for introductions. He levelled the .45 and shot the man in the chest and in the head. The guard’s left eye disappeared and a blood rose spread across the undershirt. He dropped, already deadweight, his bowels and bladder discharging as he slid to the ground.

  ‘Stinks,’ said the Kraut. He eased past the freshly killed guard and went around the side of the guardhouse while Sneezy waited. The Kraut reappeared a minute later.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Sneezy.

  The Kraut shook his head. ‘Place is a pigsty. Looks like they live there. Little stove, food, couple of beds. Few dirty comic books. Some newspapers. There’s a watchtower upstairs. You get to it by using a ladder. Crude.’

  ‘How old were the newspapers?’

&n
bsp; ‘Yesterday’s and today’s.’

  ‘Probably started their shift Friday night or Saturday morning.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Good chance. They said there were only two guards for the whole place. Caretakers really. I mean, Trotsky’s dead. So what’s to guard?’

  ‘Let’s not plan on sticking around too long, though.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  The two men went down a short gravel path that intersected with a longer one that led to the villa. They spotted a second tower at the far end of the high concrete wall but they had been told that it was vacant, having once been a garage. The garden within the walls was an overgrown waist-high jungle of plants, ferns and vines, the only landmark being the hutches for Trotsky’s beloved rabbits.

  The villa itself was surprisingly small with a living room–library, a kitchen, Trotsky’s study and bedroom downstairs and four smaller bedrooms on the second floor. Behind the villa and almost totally hidden by it was a small building that had once been the guards’ and servants’ quarters but which eventually was used by Trotsky’s grandson, Seva Volkov, and the other members of his family.

  Inside, it was as they had been briefed; the villa resembled almost exactly the way it had been the day Trotsky had died, right down to the blood-spattered walls and an open book on the desk in his study with a pair of glasses resting on the pages, one lens cracked, the other completely smashed. Friends and followers had suggested buying the house from the government, which had taken possession of it in lieu of payment for the extensive security precautions they had put in place during Trotsky’s time there. When and if the money was ever donated, the house and grounds would be turned into a museum commemorating Trotsky’s life and work. So far the idea was still in the planning stages.

  They worked as quickly as they could, going through everything in every room and even sometimes prying up loose floorboards. After more than an hour they had found nothing.

  ‘That’s it. It’s not here.’ The Kraut was standing in the middle of the living room on the main floor, surveying the wreckage created by their search.