Tool of the Trade

  Tool of the Trade

  Joe Haldeman

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  A Biography of Joe Haldeman

  Traveling in the Soviet Union, I was surprised to find, every now and then, KGB and Intourist representatives who could unbend a little and temper their reflexes of suspicion and defensiveness toward Americans. If I named them, it would not help their careers, but this book is dedicated to them, with gratitude for adding a humane dimension to what was often a rather bleak and scary experience.

  Special thanks to the KGB man (or woman) who went to lunch (or was it dinner?) with us in Moscow (Leningrad? Kiev?) and, sitting down smiling, pushed the small flower vase toward me and said in a droll whisper, “Speak clearly.”

  I hope that humorist finds a bootleg copy of this book. I wouldn’t hold out for a Russian translation.

  Have you noticed that the most subtle shedders of blood have almost always been the most civilized gentlemen?…if civilization has not made man more bloodthirsty, it has at least made him more hideously and abominably bloodthirsty. Formerly he saw bloodshed as an act of justice, and with a clear conscience exterminated whomever he thought he should. And now we consider bloodshed an abomination, yet engage in this abomination more than ever.

  —FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

  Notes from the Underground

  PROLOGUE: NICK

  They would be watching the airport. Couldn’t go back there. Try Amtrak? The bus depots? I stepped out of the grubby phone booth and tried to collect my thoughts.

  They had Valerie. The man who picked up the phone told me so, in Russian. That was fast work. A good thing I’d had the cab let me off here, several blocks from home.

  They won’t hurt her. Not until they can get some mileage out of it.

  The air was crisp and smelled clean for Boston, traffic staying home with November’s first snowfall waiting heavy in the starless sky. Using my hand to occult a streetlamp, I could just see a few flakes darting in the light breeze.

  Driving would be hazardous. They say the first snowfall’s a bitch even if it’s just a flurry. And me not having driven in snow since Iowa, twenty years ago.

  Maybe I should take the T up to South Station and get on the first train to anywhere. No. They might have had time to cover it They might have had time to figure things out. So they could be frightened enough to kill me on sight. Which might be best for all concerned. Might might might. I would find a car.

  I could just flag down the next cab and have him take me a few hundred miles. Too conspicuous, though, a hired cab on the interstate at this hour. The KGB couldn’t mobilize the Massachusetts Highway Patrol, but it wasn’t just the KGB I was worried about. A nice anonymous car would be best. I remembered there was a large parking lot behind the grocery store here on Central Square, and headed toward it.

  There was a bar slouching next to the parking lot, not the kind of place I normally frequent, but the broken flickering EATS sign made my stomach growl. I’d only picked at the excellent meal on the Concorde, jetlagged and nervous, and had been running hard since it landed at Dulles. Nobody would be looking for me here, not yet I could spare a few minutes for a beer and a snack.

  The air in the bar was hot and rich with cooking smells—Greek smells, onion and garlic fried in olive oil. The bar had seen better days, probably when Hoover was president. The only remaining sign of elegance past was the long bar of dark oak, expensive detailing slowly eroding under the bartender’s cloth. Otherwise the place was all aged Formica and linoleum, dull under the muted glow of plastic pseudo-Tiffany lamps advertising cheap beer. I sat down on the end stool. The brass footrail had holes worn in it from a half century of scuffing.

  The woman behind the bar shuffled over and leaned heavily toward me. “What’ll it be, honey?” she asked, instantly endearing herself to me. I ordered some pretzels and a beer and, on impulse, a shot of ouzo. There were several brands behind the bar, Greek neighborhood; I picked the one whose name was hardest to pronounce. I said it with a perfect accent and she nodded, unimpressed.

  I watched thirty seconds of Gilligan and his island while she drew the beer and selected the proper package of pretzels. She poured a generous shot of ouzo and slid it over. “You’re a pr’fessor, right?”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “Educated guess.” She laughed.

  I touched the watch and stared at her. “Tell me why.”

  “You, uh, you said ‘please’ and, well, you look like the kind of guy who don’t go to places like this. You know, tie and all. Like you’re, like you’re slumming?” She looked confused and moved to the other end of the bar.

  I knocked back the shot of ouzo in one hard stab of licorice fire, and shuddered. One brandy after dinner doesn’t train you for this sort of thing.

  “Stuff’ll grow hair on your throat,” the other man at the bar said. Late twenties, unshaven, swarthy, wearing a rumpled army-surplus field jacket and incongruous sunglasses.

  “Celebrate the first snow,” I said, shrugging off my overcoat.

  “Teach at Harvard?”

  “MIT,” I said.

  “Engineer?”

  “No, psychology. Mechanics of language acquisition. Through semiotics.” That should encourage conversation.

  “Sem-me-autics,” he said, sounding it out. “What’s so dangerous about semiotics?”

  “What do you mean?” I said, knowing what he meant.

  “How come a psychology professor carries a gun?” He had the sort of “directed whisper” that British men cultivate, though his accent was coastal South Carolina. I could hear him clearly from eight feet away, but I, was sure no one else could.

  “That’s annoying,” I said softly. “The tailor charged me a great deal. He claimed that only a real pro could spot it.”

  “There you go,” he said with a small proud smirk. “Come on. What’s your real racket?”

  “Psychology,” I said. “Teaching and writing, some consultant work.” I actually did publish a paper or two every year on language acquisition and semiotics, but that was a smoke screen, or protective coloration. The Institute would not approve of my most important work, since they have a policy against conducting secret research in defense matters—even if the country you are defending is the United States. In my case, it was not.

  “Sure, psychology. If you say so, Doc.” He carefully poured beer right up to the rim of his glass.

  I stare
d at him. “And what line of work would you be in? To know about such matters?” He laughed sardonically. “No, really,” I said, and kept staring.

  He laughed again, nervously this time. “I—this is crazy.”

  “Yes,” I said, and didn’t blink.

  “I… I do lots of things.” Dots of sweat appeared on his forehead and upper lip. “I deal dope. Heroin and coke, mostly. Got three girls down in the Zone. Used to do some wet work there. You know.”

  “I don’t know. Tell me about it.”

  “I—I messed up some people for the, for the local, you know. The Family. Killed one, piece a cake. Piece a fuckin’ cake. Back a the head, one shot, pow. From across the room, one shot.”

  “That’s good,” I whispered. “Do you have a gun with you now?”

  “Sure. In this business—”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Hey. I couldn’t.”

  “Walk over here and slip it to me under the bar, where no one can see.” He shook his head hard, then eased off the barstool, sidled over, and passed me a small bright-blue automatic. I never took my eyes off him. It works better that way. “Now. Do you have any heroin?”

  “Yeah, five bags primo.”

  “Do you have the means for injecting it?”

  “The works, yeah.”

  “Good. I want you to go into the men’s room and inject all of it into yourself.”

  “Hey. I couldn’t take that much even when I was on it. Kill a fuckin’ horse.”

  “Nevertheless, you will do it. Inject it into a vein. In the men’s room. Now.”

  He shook his head but his eyes returned to mine. Then he went back to where his beer was and looked at it, but didn’t get back on the stool. “Now!” I whispered sharply. He shuffled back toward the men’s room.

  An unusual degree of resistance. Probably an approach-retreat confusion due to being an ex-addict. Like I feel about cigarettes.

  I gave him a few minutes, finishing my beer. A man stood up and headed for the john; I quickly followed him. I got there just in time to block the entrance as he came backing out. He touched me and spun around, agitated. “Hey—there’s a guy—”

  I put a finger to my lips. “Shh, I know. There’s a man throwing up in the toilet. That’s what you saw. Disgusting, isn’t it?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Guys oughta learn how much they can handle.”

  “You are going to leave and never come back to this place.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Don’t forget your coat. Don’t forget to pay.” You have to cover details like that.

  “Sure.” I watched him retrieve his coat and reach for his wallet and then turned my attention to the men’s room. It was an ugly place, thick purple paint rolled over walls and partitions, the porcelain appliances yellowed and cracked. Smell of old piss and too little cheap disinfectant. I used the urinal from a safe distance.

  He was slumped on the toilet with his head between his knees, knuckles on the grimy floor. The hypodermic was still stuck in his forearm, its reservoir full of blood, and a thin trickle of blood ran down to pool in his palm. I put a finger to his carotid artery. The pulse was shallow and irregular.

  It stopped. I shoved the body back into a more upright posture, so it wouldn’t be discovered right away. Like hauling on a bag of grain, hard work for a man my age. There was some blood on the floor but I scuffed it into amalgamation with the background dirt. A wad of paper served to jam the stall door closed.

  I went back to the bar and signaled the bartender. She came over, and I leaned close. “What do I look like?” I asked softly.

  “What?”

  I stared at her. “Describe me, please.”

  “Tall guy. White, bushy white beard, well dressed—”

  “No. I am black, short, bald, and wearing work clothes. Greasy jeans and an Exxon shirt that says Freddy on the pocket. Right?”

  “Exxon shirt with Freddy on the pocket.”

  “Good.” I looked down the row of booths and found a likely prospect, a young man with a parking-lot ticket sticking out of his shirt pocket. He was sitting next to a pretty girl who was drinking diet soda from a can; he had a draft beer. They were talking quietly.

  I sat down across from them. “Hey,” he said. “What—”

  I turned it up. “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Just this one beer.”

  “Good. Come on, we’re going for a drive.”

  He scratched his head. “Okay. Where to?” Good question. They’d expect me to go to New York; especially the KGB. They seem to think all the rest of the country is a suburb of Manhattan.

  “North. Up to Maine.”

  “What part?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

  “What about me?” the girl said. “Can I come along?”

  I hesitated. It might be slightly safer for me that way, if not for her. Willing hostage. “If we left you here, could you get home all right?”

  “Sure. My father’s the cook.”

  “You go home with your father. Tell him—what's your name?”

  “Richard.”

  “Tell him Richard had to leave early, to pick up some medicine for a sick friend. He’ll be out of town for a few days. And you never saw me. Never at all.”

  She looked vaguely through me, focusing on the TV set at the end of the bar. “Uh-huh. Bye, Rich.”

  I left a couple of dollars on the table. Then we put on our coats and walked out into the swirling night.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The man who calls himself Nicholas Foley—Dr. Nicholas Foley, a full professor in MIT’s psychology department—was born Nikola Ulinov, in Leningrad, in 1935. It was not the best time to grow up there.

  Leningrad is the most European of Soviet cities, partly from cultural tradition and partly from simple propinquity to Europe. Finland is not too long a drive away, and today, people who are allowed to can cross over into Helsinki and buy computers and jazz records and play roulette for Finnish charities. Finns seem to like Russians now, or at least tolerate them.

  But they were not fond of the Russians after Stalin’s 1939 invasion, and so it was Finnish soldiers who reinforced Hitler’s battalions, converging on Leningrad on the eve of Nikola Ulinov’s sixth birthday. Leningrad was ready for them. There weren’t many Soviet soldiers there—Stalin, having no love for the European city, had drawn most of the troops toward Moscow for the coming winter—but the civilians had been trained in street-fighting techniques. Molotov cocktails were mass-produced and distributed. Weapons oiled and ammunition portioned out. The people were ready to defend their city street by street against the implacable enemy. If the Nazis wanted Leningrad badly enough, they would no doubt have it. But they would first pay a terrible price.

  Hitler, or his advisers, outmaneuvered the Soviets. They saw there was no need to go into the city and fight. All you had to do was cut off all avenues of supply, and let the natives try to live through a Russian winter without food or fuel. Throw in some artillery. At least a third of the city’s three million would die. And then when spring came, simply lift the siege, and push the survivors out to disrupt the rest of the Soviet Union.

  The strategy did take Leningrad by surprise, but it didn’t work out quite as neatly as Hitler had hoped. More than a million did die, but the others didn’t cave in. They lived on moldy grain and shoe leather and hope and hate—until three Russian winters finally did to Hitler what one had done to Napoleon. Leningrad and Russia won, even if the price they paid would warp the city and the country with grief and fear for the rest of the century.

  (Leningrad’s reward for heroism was to become a noncity populated by nonpersons. Malenkov and Beria implemented Stalin’s distaste for the Western city by destroying, or hiding in inaccessible archives, all written records of the Siege.)

  Five-year-old Nikola knew there was a war going on, and like most boy children, he vaguely approved of the idea. Even when the artillery and bomb
s began dropping into the city, when sleep was pinched off by air-raid sirens—even then, it provoked excitement more than fear. An interesting game with obscure rules.

  Then one day at noon an artillery round or a bomb fell across the street, and Nikola ran outside breathless with excitement, and saw his best friend’s father stumbling bloodsoaked out of the wreckage of their flat, carrying cradled in his arms what was left of his son, blown to bloody rags and dying there in front of Nikola with a last bubbling moan. From then on he would remember the war as quite real, and terrible. And some parts would be too terrible to remember.

  The Leningraders tried to get their children out of the city before the fighting started in earnest. Nikola loaded a suitcase almost as big as he was aboard a boxcar headed for the relative safety of Novgorod. They never made it. Nazi Messerschmitts, perhaps thinking it was a freight train, bombed and strafed the children unmercifully. Nikola’s suitcase may have saved him; at any rate, the clothes and foodstuffs inside absorbed two bullets while he cowered behind it in the screaming dark. (Forty years later Nick Foley would still have trouble facing a locker room, or any such crowded sweaty place. The source of the small anxiety attacks was a mystery to him, which he accepted along with other small mysteries.)

  The Messerschmitts finally ran out of ammunition. A nearby farming community took care of Nikola and the other surviving children for a couple of weeks, and then a night convoy of blacked-out trucks and ambulances took them back to Leningrad. The children were to be rerouted east to Kirov and Sverdlovsk, and most of them did make it. Nikola didn’t. He found himself suddenly without a family, and while that problem was being straightened out, the last train left.

  His mother and father might have been alive at that time, but Nikola would never know. They had been arrested by the NKVD, imprisoned as spies for Nazi Germany.

  It was not impossible. His father was a German citizen who had immigrated to Russia in the twenties, declaring great sympathy for the Revolution and even changing his name from Feldstein to Ulinov. He had been a philology professor at Heidelberg; in due course he joined the philology department at Leningrad State University.