Honeytrap Read online

  Honeytrap

  By Aster Glenn Gray

  Honeytrap

  Copyright Aster Glenn Gray 2020

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part One

  1959

  Chapter 1

  “It’s natural,” Mr. Gilman said – “Well, not natural, exactly. But certainly not unusual for two young men thrown constantly into one another’s company, facing peril together, perhaps saving each other’s lives, to become, hmm. Attached to each other.”

  Mr. Gilman stood in front of his office window, gazing at a golden tree shedding its leaves on the wide lawn. From the corner of his eye, he watched the young man who sat on the other side of his desk: Special Agent Daniel Hawthorne, dark-haired and handsome and, at this moment, possessed of a perfect poker face.

  “I was in England during the war,” Mr. Gilman mused, “and this sort of David and Jonathan friendship is very common there. It can be a beautiful thing, such a friendship, as long as it doesn’t begin to shade into something… well, a little Brideshead Revisited, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” Hawthorne said mildly.

  Mr. Gilman raised his eyebrows. Hawthorne was the literary type.

  Still, it was good of him to pretend he didn’t understand the allusion. It would be far easier to sweep this all under the rug if Hawthorne kept up his end by denying everything.

  “I mean,” Mr. Gilman said, “that an ordinary young man, like yourself, with powerful, ah, passions, which normally he channels toward young women – your file suggests you’ve got a bit of a reputation in that regard…”

  Hawthorne’s eyes flickered toward the file on Mr. Gilman’s desk.

  “Well, when a young man like that finds that his work keeps him on the road so constantly that it’s impossible to meet nice girls, and throws him instead into the companionship of another man for months on end…”

  Hawthorne’s face took on an expression of puzzled innocence.

  Mr. Gilman coughed. “Well,” he said. “Circumstances have made it necessary to move both you and Agent Preston to new assignments.”

  He feared an outburst, but Hawthorne said nothing for a long moment. At last he replied, “I’ll go where the Bureau needs me.”

  “Good man,” Mr. Gilman said. He gazed out at the golden tree, his hands in his pockets. Then he returned to sit in the leather chair behind the desk. “Have you been following the coverage of Mr. Khrushchev’s visit to America?”

  “I might’ve seen it mentioned in the newspapers,” Hawthorne allowed.

  “The reporters have been enjoying themselves, haven’t they? It isn’t every day a Soviet Premier visits the United States. But one thing they missed,” Mr. Gilman said, “is that someone attempted to assassinate Mr. Khrushchev in Iowa.”

  “Sir?”

  Mr. Gilman removed a folder from his top drawer. “On September 23rd, Chairman Khrushchev passed through Iowa on a train. On the way, the train paused for a couple of whistle-stops, so Chairman Khrushchev could shake hands and kiss babies, rather like an American presidential candidate. Shortly after one of these whistle-stops, in the town of Honeygold, county seat of Honeygold County, some of the guards heard a thump against the side of the train. When they examined the train at the next stop, they found a bullet embedded in the siding.”

  Mr. Gilman flipped open the folder to show a photograph of the damage. As Hawthorne leaned forward to look at it, Mr. Gilman continued, “Naturally, we immediately dispatched agents to the place where they heard the original thump. The shooter was long gone, but they found what they believe to be the shooter’s blind.”

  Mr. Gilman flipped to the next photograph: a small trampled area in the tall grass, littered with cigarette butts. Next, a close-up photograph showing the faint outline of two boot prints in the dirt. “Marlboro cigarettes,” he said. “Size 14 men’s boots. Unfortunately the ground was too hard to get a clearer impression of the tread. The agents followed the trail as best they could, but it ended in a nearby creek bed.”

  “The shooter knew the area, then.”

  “Most likely.” Mr. Gilman moved to the next picture: a bullet casing. “They found this among the cigarette butts. From a Mauser pistol – World War II era, they say. Probably someone’s war trophy.”

  “A pistol?” Hawthorne said. “For a long-range shot?”

  “An odd choice for an assassination attempt, isn’t it? Frankly,” Mr. Gilman said, “I’m inclined to think it was a farmboy amusing himself by taking a few potshots, never dreaming that the train carried such an important personage, but…” He shrugged. “Naturally the Soviets have been in a tizzy. And, unfortunately, there’s one more piece of evidence that suggests it could have been planned. When our shooter ran out of cigarettes, he rolled his own cigarette using a page torn from a magazine.”

  He flipped to the next photograph: a close-up of a ragged square of paper with a burnt edge, the name of the magazine in the lower corner.

  “The Good Shepherd,” Hawthorne read.

  “We’ve looked into it, of course. A one-man crackpot operation in Indiana. Mr. Thomas Salt sends mimeographed copies of his rants to his subscribers every other month. America has wandered from its roots as an agrarian nation, industrialization will destroy us all, et cetera. He doesn’t actually say that a spot of thermonuclear war would do us all some good, but it’s certainly implied.”

  “And what better way to start a thermonuclear war than assassinating the leader of the Soviet Union?” Hawthorne said. “Where was Thomas Salt on September 23?”

  “Our agents have ascertained that he was at a church meeting all day,” Mr. Gilman said. “They also managed to persuade him to part with a list of his subscribers. Normally they would have continued the investigation from there, but unfortunately…”

  He paused long enough that Hawthorne prompted him. “Unfortunately, sir?”

  “The Soviets threw a fit. Well, they had been throwing a fit all along, of course: they wanted to investigate themselves, which naturally we had to refuse, and… Well, discussions deteriorated to the point where they accused us of using the excuse of an investigation to try to cover something up. As if we couldn’t have done a perfectly competent job assassinating Mr. Khrushchev if we had a mind to.”

  “Naturally,” Hawthorne said wryly.

  “Well. During their talks at Camp David, Mr. Khrushchev – who seems to be quite taken with the idea of Soviet-American friendship at the moment – suggested
to President Eisenhower that we might cooperate to investigate the problem. A Soviet agent and an American agent might, as it were, work together.”

  “Sir?” Hawthorne sounded like a child who had expected coal in his Christmas stocking and found a present instead.

  Mr. Gilman smiled. “I expected the lower-level Soviet bureaucrats to drag their feet for months. But Khrushchev must have given them a kick in the pants, because they’ve coughed up an agent.” Mr. Gilman slid a slim dossier across the desk. “Lieutenant Gennady Ilyich Matskevich. Supposedly he’s an officer in the Soviet military, but between you and me and the gatepost it’s almost certain he’s KGB.”

  Hawthorne flipped the dossier open. “Not a lot of information.”

  “He only arrived in the United States two months ago. I suspect they’re tossing him to us as a sacrificial lamb because he’s their most junior agent. Of course they may be taking the opportunity to send us a drunkard or an idiot. A problem agent they want to get off their hands.” Mr. Gilman paused, just for a moment, and then went on, “Naturally I thought of you. As I recall, you speak a little Russian.”

  “A very little. When I was a kid we lived next door to some White Russian émigrés. They used to babysit my sister and me, and we picked up some of the lingo. But of course that was a long time ago.”

  “It’s more important to us that you studied it quite off the record,” Mr. Gilman said. “The KGB may not be aware that you have any grasp of the language at all. Better not let Lieutenant Matskevich know either. And, frankly, while that may prove useful, it’s more important to me that you’ve got a reputation for working well with difficult agents. I want you to befriend Lieutenant Matskevich. Show him that Americans aren’t the bogeymen that Pravda makes us out to be.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Show him America in the best possible light. No trips to the slums, no forays below the Mason-Dixon line. I don’t want to give him the opportunity to gather propaganda.”

  Hawthorne raised his eyebrows. “By propaganda you mean true reports about race relations in the south?”

  Mr. Gilman looked at him.

  Hawthorne subsided. “Sir.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Gilman said, “it’s likely to be a challenge. The last thing we want is for news of the assassination attempt to leak out, so you can’t let anyone know that’s what you’re investigating: you’ll need some sort of cover. And then, of course, the Russians can be difficult to work with. Unfriendly, obstructive, all business. Enormous prudes, too.”

  He paused, just for a moment, watching Hawthorne from the corner of his eye. A muscle jumped in Hawthorne’s cheek.

  Yes. For all that pretense of innocence, he knew very well what this was all about.

  “I suggest that you take this Gennady Ilyich Matskevich to a strip club to get acquainted,” Mr. Gilman suggested with a smile. “I imagine the sight of all those beautiful American girls would do you both a lot of good.”

  Chapter 2

  Gennady Ilyich Matskevich indicated the mini golf course with a sweep of his mini golf club. “This is what Americans do for fun?”

  “Mini golf,” Daniel informed him solemnly, “is thrilling.”

  He was hoping to startle a grin out of Matskevich, but Matskevich maintained his deadpan. “More thrilling than a corn maze?”

  “At least up there with a drive-in movie theater,” Daniel told him. Matskevich’s mouth twitched infinitesimally, and Daniel added, with a sigh, “It’s too bad all the drive-ins are closed for the season. There’s nothing like watching a movie through a bug-flecked windshield while listening to a tinny little speaker that’s out of sync with the screen.”

  “Hollywood movies are all so much alike,” Matskevich returned, “they are probably more enjoyable when you can’t hear the dialogues, anyway.”

  Daniel attempted to fake indignation, but a grin broke through. He cleared his throat and suggested, in his most patronizing tone, “If mini golf’s too hard for you, we can go to a bar instead.”

  Matskevich shook his head. “There are bars everywhere, all around the world. When we colonize the moon, a bar is the first thing we will set up. Whereas this minigolf…” Matskevich spread his arms. “This is really American.” A pause. Daniel folded his arms, waiting for the punchline, and Matskevich did not disappoint. “Boring and flat.”

  “There’s a windmill,” Daniel protested. “How can you possibly call that boring?”

  “Is this what you do for fun here? Watch the blades of a windmill turn round and round? In Moscow,” Matskevich said, “we have the Bolshoi.”

  “Mmm. Where you watch dancers turn round and round?” Daniel scoffed.

  Matskevich lifted his chin. “At least the windmill,” he said, “is probably less predictable than your Hollywood movies.”

  “Hey now,” protested Daniel. He lifted his golf club as if it were a sword. “How dare you cast aspersions on the honor of Hollywood?”

  He jabbed the golf club at Matskevich like a fencing foil. Matskevich parried the blow and jabbed at Daniel, forcing him backward. Daniel attempted a sweeping slash. The weight of the golf club head pulled him off balance, and as he stumbled, Matskevich scoffed, “Even an American can’t believe Hollywood has honor.”

  Daniel forfeited the duel by laughing too hard to continue. “At least give mini golf a try,” he urged.

  “Of course,” Matskevich said. “We have already paid to play this game, so we should not waste it. But I will not enjoy it.”

  He approached the first hole with a look of intense concentration, like a cat stalking a sunbeam, and Daniel suppressed a grin. He figured that Matskevich had orders a mirror image to his own: if Daniel was supposed to show America in the best possible light, Matskevich doubtless was supposed to appear unimpressed by everything.

  Daniel had been nervous about this assignment. Oh, immensely relieved to get it, of course. He’d walked into Mr. Gilman’s office fully expecting to be fired, so getting any second chance at all was a stunning piece of luck, and a second chance that gave him the opportunity to work with a real live Soviet agent…

  Daniel had been fascinated by the Soviet Union ever since he was a child, listening to the Polyakovs’ bloodcurdling stories about escaping Leningrad by the skin of their teeth in the early days of the Revolution. Not that they called their lost city Leningrad. “How dare that man stain our darling Piter with his name!”

  Piter: short for St. Petersburg.

  And here finally was a chance to learn more about the Soviet Union: to get to know a Soviet agent, see if the brainwashing and dictatorship had squashed all the individuality right out of him or if there was still a real person under there, with thoughts and opinions and maybe even a sense of humor…

  Well. The sense of humor, at least, definitely existed.

  But relieved and thrilled as Daniel had been, he had also felt very nervous. As Mr. Gilman had pointed out with his exquisite Phillips Exeter tact, this was the kind of assignment you gave a problem agent. A drunk, an idiot. A Communist so doctrinaire that he could be counted on to loathe his American partner on principle.

  An FBI agent stupid enough to sleep with his partner.

  Not that Daniel and Paul been sleeping together anymore by the time that Mr. Gilman summoned Daniel to his office. That had ended a month before, after yet another argument about yet another waitress. Maybe Daniel really had been flirting with that one, but only because Paul would think Daniel was flirting whether he flirted or not, and Daniel figured he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  “None of this is really real to you,” Paul had said. He leaned across the booth as he spoke, his voice barely more than a whisper, but so intense that it felt like a shout. “You’re fucking around with me because it’s convenient.”

  “Convenient,” Daniel choked. Convenient was jerking off in the shower, hiring a prostitute, maybe – if you wanted to stretch it – jerking off with a frat brother while dead drunk. It was not a six-month-long relat
ionship that could get him fired, ruin his reputation, estrange him from his family, and lose him every friend he ever had.

  “Yes, convenient!” Paul snapped. “You don’t know a damn thing about the manly love of comrades. You’re going to go back home and marry a nice girl and leave me flat. You can’t even stop ogling waitresses.”

  Christ.

  Even if Matskevich had been a drunken fool, it would have been a relief to have a new partner.

  And he wasn’t a drunk or an idiot – and he wasn’t good-looking, which was a different kind of relief. Matskevich was two or three inches shorter than Daniel (no giant himself at 5’10”), with light brown hair and a round Slavic face: high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows. Dark gray eyes, quick and observant.

  Not that it would’ve mattered if he’d looked like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Daniel was done with men, after the debacle with Paul. But still, this made it easier.

  “Hawthorne?” Matskevich’s Russian accent, light though it was, mangled Daniel’s last name. “Your turn.”

  “Oh, right.” Daniel hurriedly moved to put his golf ball on the tee. “You can call me Daniel, if you want.”

  Matskevich tipped his head to the side. “No,” he said. “I think I should not.”

  “Oh.” Daniel was surprised; almost hurt. But then he shrugged. “Last names are more professional, I guess.” He positioned the golf ball and gave it a putt. “We’ll hit Des Moines tomorrow. We’ll finally be able to start investigating the case.”

  ***

  The agent in charge of the Des Moines field office was a man named Mackenzie or MacDonald or something like that, but Daniel had never heard him called by his full name: he was always Mack.

  Mack eyed Daniel and Matskevich wearily when they arrived. If Daniel hadn’t met him before, he might have thought Mack was annoyed that they had arrived only a few minutes before the office closed up, but in fact Mack always looked tired. The deep pouches under his eyes gave him a certain resemblance to a bulldog.