Death Is My Comrade by Stephen Marlowe Page B

is?”
    SEC’s Larned kept on pacing. He hadn’t said a word since the introductions. Every now and then he’d give the door an anxious look. I wondered what he was doing there. Probably, he wondered what I was doing there.
    CIA’s MacReedy, seated on a corner of the big desk which held down floor space in front of the window, leaned forward and jabbed his empty pipe in my direction. “You come with pretty high recommendations, Drum. Nevertheless I must ask you to keep what is discussed in this room today in strictest confidence.”
    â€œSure,” I said. “Okay. I gather you’re putting a lid on Alluliev’s murder and the kidnaping, to keep the Russian-American cultural exchange program from fizzling. That’s ironic, in a way, because it’s just what Semyon Laschenko wanted.”
    â€œThat’s one reason,” MacReedy admitted. “But it isn’t the important reason.”
    Larned gave the door another anxious look. I said: “What is?”
    â€œEver since he won the Nobel Prize,” Jack explained, “reports have been filtering through the Iron Curtain on Vasili Rodzianko. Though it was officially denied, he wants out. Though he claims to repudiate his book, what information we have says that’s a lie too. The book is a ringing denunciation of the Red way of life. Rodzianko feels as strongly about it today as he did when he wrote it. Ilya Alluliev’s letter was just one source of information. I could name five or six, and so could MacReedy here, all. in considerably more detail and most of them capable of substantiation.”
    â€œTake our word for that,” MacReedy said. “We know Rodzianko means what he wrote. We know he wants out. And since he was the Reds’ fair-haired boy in literary circles for better than twenty years, that adds up to dynamite. But despite all the information we’ve gathered, the government’s official policy was, and must remain, hands off. If Rodzianko comes out, that’s great news for the West. But he’s got to come out under his own power.”
    â€œThen and only then,” Jack said, “can we think about lining up the lecture tours and Voice of America broadcasts that can stand the Russians on their ears. State and Central Intelligence are in complete accord on that.”
    MacReedy, lighting his pipe, said, “Last night a way to get Rodzianko out without official government involvement was dumped in our laps.”
    â€œWhich,” Pappy told me, “is where you-all come in, Chester.”
    â€œYou mean Alluliev’s murder?” I asked. “I don’t get it. MacReedy claims CIA already knew the deal on Rodzianko before that but was powerless to act. How does what happened to Alluliev change anything?”
    â€œThe West wants and needs Vasili Rodzianko,” MacReedy said. “Vasili Rodzianko wants and needs the West.” He smiled thinly, grudgingly. “If this was a foreign intrigue movie, a spy picture, we’d send an agent parachuting into the suburbs of Moscow, he’d pick up Rodzianko and they’d fight their way out from behind the Iron Curtain.”
    â€œWith dogs baying at their heels and the Red Army tripping over its hobnailed boots trying to stop them,” Pappy said.
    Jack shook his head. “But this isn’t a spy picture. We think we have a way to get Rodzianko out, Chet.”
    â€œHow?”
    Jack showed me a wolf’s grin. “In a regularly scheduled airliner, with all his papers in order.”
    I gave Jack a blank look. Expecting him to be as surprised as I was, I glanced at SEC’s Larned. For the first time, the rangy man looked quite calm. When our eyes met, he nodded slowly. He had even stopped pacing. He. read the dial of his wrist watch and said: “The man is late.”
    Then MacReedy looked concerned. “He wouldn’t back out?”
    Larned shook his head. “He’ll be