The Key to Midnight

go.'
        'That's why I stopped in Kyoto.'
        'Yes.'
        'And went to the Moonglow Lounge.'
        'We implanted that and a lot of other things, and I must say you performed perfectly.'
        Joanna slid forward on her chair, filled with a new fear. 'How detailed was the program?'
        'How detailed?' the fat man asked.
        'I mean… was Alex…?' She bit her lip and then took a deep breath. 'Was he programed to fall in love with me?'
        Peterson smiled. 'No, I assure you that he wasn't. But by God, I wish I'd thought of it! That would've been a surefire guarantee that he'd follow the rest of the program.'
        Alex got up from his chair, went to the bar, and poured more of the Remy Martin into his glass. 'Moscow will wonder why you weren't killed too.'
        'You'll tell the press and police there was a fat man who got away. That's the only description you'll be able to give. You'll say I shot at you, and you returned my fire. When I ran out of ammunition, you chased me, but I had quite a lead, and I got away in the darkness.'
        'How do I explain Ursula Zaitsev?' Alex asked bitterly. 'She wasn't armed, was she? Don't the Swiss frown on killing unarmed women?'
        'We'll put the 9mm pistol in her hand. Believe me, Alex, you won't wind up in jail. The CIA has friends here. It'll use them on your behalf if necessary. But that won't even be called for. All of this killing was strictly in self-defense.'
        They spent the next fifteen minutes constructing and memorizing a story that would explain everything that had transpired without mentioning Mirror or the fat man's true role in Chelgrin's downfall.
        Finally Peterson stood up and stretched. 'I'd better get out of here. Just remember… give me half an hour before you call the police.'

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    84
        
        They stood at the open door of Rotenhausen's house and watched the fat man drive out of sight in his gray Mercedes, down toward the lights of Saint Moritz.
        When Alex closed the door, he looked at Joanna and said, 'Well?'
        'I guess we have to do what he wants. If we talk about Mirror, if we spoil their fun and games, they'll kill us. I don't doubt that. You know they will.'
        'They'll kill us anyway,' Alex said. 'They'll kill us even if we do exactly what they want. We'll call the Swiss police, tell them our story. They won't believe us at first, but in a day or two or three, they'll match your fingerprints to Lisa's. And other things will fall into place, so then they'll accept what we've told them. They'll let us go. We'll tell the same story to the press, just the way Peterson wants it told, with no mention of Mirror or Lyshenko. Newspapers all over the world will front-page it. War hero, Senator Tom Chelgrin, was a Russian agent through the two decades of the Cold War. Big news. The former members of the KGB will gloat and preen about how clever they were, and the current government of Russia will pretend to be embarrassed and distressed that such a thing could have been done by their predecessors. In time everything will quiet down. We'll start to lead normal lives again. Then someone in the CIA will begin to worry about us, about a couple of civilians walking around with this big secret. They'll send someone after us, sure as hell.'
        'But what can we do?'
        He had been considering their options while Peterson had been helping them create a slightly altered version of the truth for the police. 'It's a cliche, but it'll work. It's the only thing we can do. We won't call the cops. We're going to walk out of here, go to Zurich tonight or in the morning, hole up in a hotel, and write a complete account of this, all of it, including Mirror and everything Peterson just told us. We'll make a hundred copies of it and spread them among a hundred attorneys and bank trust departments in ten or twenty countries. With each sealed copy, we'll leave instructions that it be sent to a major newspaper, each copy to a different major newspaper in the event that we're killed - or in the event that we simply disappear. Then we'll send a copy to Peterson at his real-estate office in Maryland and another to the Director of the CIA, along with notes explaining what we've done.'
        'Will it work?'
        'It better.'
        For twenty minutes they moved rapidly through the house, wiping everything that they might have touched.
        In the garage they found the