The Kremlin Letter Read online

  “It was a costly one.”

  Ward nodded and then went back to shaving. “What tipped you off?”

  “Polakov didn’t seem much concerned when the first two agents were sent in to get the letter and were killed. That’s because he expected them to be. It was he who tipped off the Chinese. He had assumed they had taken the agents out. When he got into Moscow he learned that it was Kosnov who caught them. He realized that they wanted Kosnov to know exactly what was in the letter. They were trying to force an incident. They obviously didn’t know Khrushchev’s days were numbered.

  “But Polakov had a good idea his might be. That’s why he contacted Rudolf and asked if he could stay there. He couldn’t go to Bresnavitch. His escape route was through the Chinese themselves, so he couldn’t go there. And Kosnov was already hot on his trail.”

  “And the man in the car?” Ward asked, coming into the room.

  “Chinese. Probably the Kitai.”

  “All seems kinda easy now, doesn’t it?”

  “And worthless.”

  “Whatya mean, worthless? We’re each getting paid.”

  “How many lives did it cost?”

  “Well, let me count. Polakov, the two agents, Kosnov and the German broad, Janis—”

  “Never mind,” snapped Rone.

  “I told you once, Nephew, and I’ll say it again—I’m sorry about that little girl of yours.”

  “Forget it.”

  Ward slipped on his jacket and looked at his watch. “We leave for the airport in about an hour. I got a little shopping I’d like to do first.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Of what?”

  “Don’t get into any trouble. An accident or the like.”

  “And miss the plane? Not a chance. I can’t wait to get out of this town.”

  “Sure,” said Rone.

  Rone and Ward sat in the back seat of Bresnavitch’s Zim.

  “I can’t get over it, Nephew, your first time across and you figure out the whole thing. It’s really a hoot.”

  “Why did you let the Highwayman die like that?” asked Rone.

  “That’s the way he wanted it. He didn’t have much longer to go no matter what, and he wanted to help. It was useless to everyone—except a dying old man.”

  “And who was that with him in the car, the man who was supposed to be me?”

  “A corpse we bought from the city morgue. Hey, Nephew, whatya say we skip London and spend a few days in Rome first?”

  “Why not just skip the trip altogether?”

  “Now what the hell are you talking about?” asked Ward.

  “You’re staying here.”

  “In Russia?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now why the hell would I do a thing like that?”

  “Because you’re Sturdevant.”

  “Nephew, you’re having delirium.”

  “You’re still Sturdevant.”

  “All right, let’s hear how you came up with this wild one.”

  “It started when we first met, with the plastic surgery, but I let it slip by. What triggered it was the realization that you were the man who took the message from the statue. I had only one simple question: Why would the Russians do business with you? Why you in particular? I worked backward from there.

  “First of all, you were the active head of the operation. You made the decisions and carried the Highwayman.”

  “He was sick.”

  “The way all of you operate, he would be in command as long as he could crawl, but he wasn’t. You were. The thing that threw me off the track was that none of the others, men who had Worked with Sturdevant in the past, knew you. You had changed your voice as well as your face.”

  “And when did this revelation strike you?”

  “When Kosnov recognized you. Not your face—but your voice. That’s what he was trying to pinpoint when he closed his eyes. He had done it just as I passed out. I kept wondering why he would recognize your voice but your own men wouldn’t. It took a while, but as usual the answer was simple. You took great pains to alter your voice and speech pattern, but only for English. You never thought of doing it with your foreign languages. To Kosnov you sounded just the same as you did years ago—your Russian hadn’t changed.

  “Whether Bresnavitch recognized you or whether you told him who you are is immaterial. Years ago, Bresnavitch wanted you to replace Kosnov. For him, the timing is perfect. He had a big hold over you—your life. But you got something else you’ve waited a long time for—Kosnov.”

  Ward’s smile was gone. He leaned back against the door and stared coldly at Rone. His lips tightened back over his teeth.

  “If that were the case, Nephew, I wouldn’t want anyone to know it. I wouldn’t want you out of the country.”

  “You need me to go out. You need me to collect your money and to tell a story.”

  “It could be arranged some other way.”

  “But even more,” Rone continued, “you need an insurance policy. I’m it. I realize now I had nothing to fear from Bresnavitch once the two of you had reached an agreement. In fact, I’ve been running around playing hero for no particular reason. One way or another I would have been let out of the country, because as long as I’m alive on the outside I can always reveal who he is. I’m sure you will convince him later I have detrimental evidence. For once the tables are turned. You need me to protect your Russian jog.”

  “Nephew Yorgi,” said Sturdevant, “you’re a downright scoundrel.”

  “I have a few names for you.”

  “Now let’s not end our friendship with sticky sentiment. I may be whatever you want to think, but you’re smart in my book. You crowded me right into the corner. Yes sir, Nephew, you short-haired me. You short-haired me good.”

  The car pulled up to the airline terminal.

  “Come on,” said Ward. “I got you a little going away present.”

  Rone followed him down the hall into a side office. The Eurasian, throat bandaged, was standing against the wall.

  “Let him see,” said Sturdevant.

  A side door was unlocked.

  “Go on. Take a look.”

  Rone peered in. B.A. was lying on an ambulance cot smiling up at him. Her lips moved, but no words were audible.

  The Eurasian pulled the door shut in his face and locked it.

  “We had one hell of a time saving her,” Sturdevant said. “Only part of the poison got down. She’s sorta paralyzed. Can’t talk as yet, but the doctors think she’ll get better.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “That depends on you. You see, Nephew, as long as I got that girl where I can watch her I kinda have a feeling you’ll use a little discretion in what you tell people about me. Like for instance how valiantly I died. I mean how valiantly Ward died.”

  “I’ll get her out of here,” Rone threatened. “Somehow I’ll get her out.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with trying.”

  Rone and Sturdevant sat silently in the private waiting room for some time. Finally Sturdevant spoke.

  “You see, Nephew, there’s not much place left for an old fellow like me to go. The world’s passed me by. I have to play my own tune my own way. Not too much chance of that back West. Right now, Bresnavitch likes my style. He’ll let me do things my way. Now you may call that double-dealing or even treason—and it may be, but I risked my neck for better than twenty-five years back on our side, and all I got for it was a boot in the tail. Maybe I just couldn’t make the grade the way things was turning. Well, here it’s different, or so they tell me. They need a man with my talents, Charlie boy. I got nowhere else to go. I need action—and this is the only offer I’ve had.”

  Rone tried not to listen but he did. He was mad and disgusted with himself. He was embarrassed. Even at the last, Sturdevant had outmaneuvered him. That in itself wasn’t too bad, but the price was what hurt. B.A. would stay in Russia. There was nothing he could do right now to help her
. He blamed no one but himself.

  “I know you’re kicking yourself in the back of the head because you think I put one over on you,” Sturdevant said passively. “Well, maybe I did—and maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was just a matter of minutes, a matter of time. Way back when we first met I told you it wasn’t what you found out or did, it was how fast you found it or did it. You were almost as quick as me, Nephew. All you missed was that last little wrinkle, and who knows—with a day or two more you might have pegged it. Now that ain’t so bad considering I got a dozen or two years of experience on you. It stands to reason I know a few tricks you don’t. Even so, there’s no one else living who could have come as close as you did.”

  Rone crossed the room and stared out at the airfield. A four-engine jet was touching down at the far end of the runway.

  “It’s a funny thing, Nephew, but I’m kinda proud of you, sorta like a father that brung up his kid right. You’re a good operator, Charlie Rone, as good as there is. But there’s always a little more to learn—most of all, about yourself. You have to know where you’re weak. You see, you care a little too much about other people’s feelings. That ain’t exactly an asset in our line of work.

  “Kill the emotions, Charlie boy. Drag them out and stomp them into the dust. Look at the world for what it is.

  “If there’s anything to be learned from this little exercise we just been through it’s exactly that. Potkin broke because of his wife and kids, and Kosnov got careless because of a woman, the same woman that made Polakov reach too far. And Nephew, it don’t take much figuring to see why I got you in the corner right now either.

  “You’ve just about finished kindergarten with flying colors, but before you get your diploma you gotta turn in a last little bit of homework. Do it well and I’ll give you back the girl as a graduation present. Not right away, but in a year or so.

  “This is the homework,” Sturdevant said, handing him an envelope, “and that over there”—he pointed to a square, flat package on the table—“is a little something I picked up for your trophy room.”

  The scream of the jet taxiing to a stop almost drowned Sturdevant out, but he raised his voice and shouted at Rone. “Any time you’re in doubt, think about Polakov and Kosnov and what ultimately killed them. Don’t let yourself get caught short like this again. As long as you don’t need nothing from nobody, you’ll be okay.”

  Rone took a window seat and looked out at Sturdevant. He was standing by the entrance shaking his clasped hands over his head.

  Rone unwrapped the package and looked down at his own security file, the file that had been sent to Kosnov by Potkin. The photograph was of a man Rone had never-seen—the corpse that accompanied the Highwayman to Siberia.

  He opened the envelope and found a typewritten note and a passbook from a Swiss bank He began reading:

  Commencement Assignment for Nephew Charlie

  1. Deposit my share of money in account specified by bankbook.

  2. Close up Tillinger house and send them all home. Don’t overdo how valiantly I died.

  3. Kill Potkin’s wife and daughters, or I kill the girl.

  Rone clenched his fist in sudden fury and turned back toward the window. Sturdevant was no longer to be seen.

  About the Author

  Noel Behn (1928–1998) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and theatrical producer. Born in Chicago and educated in California and Paris, he served in the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps before settling in New York City. As the producing director of the Cherry Lane Theatre, he played a lead role in the off-Broadway movement of the 1950s and presented the world premiere of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Behn’s debut novel, The Kremlin Letter (1966), was a New York Times bestseller and the inspiration for a John Huston film starring Orson Welles and Max von Sydow. Big Stick–Up at Brink’s! (1977), the true story of the 1950 Brink’s robbery in Boston, was based on nearly one thousand hours of conversations with the criminals and became an Academy Award–nominated film directed by William Friedkin. Behn also wrote for television and served as a creative consultant on the acclaimed series Homicide: Life on the Street. His other books include the thrillers The Shadowboxer (1969) and Seven Silent Men (1984), and Lindbergh: The Crime (1995), a nonfiction account of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyrightin © 1966 by Noel Behn

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3659-7

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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