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by Frederick Forsyth

  By Soviet standards, conditions were luxurious. A small apartment but all his own, better shops than anywhere in the country, a higher salary, and limitless research facilities—all were his. What he did not have was the right to leave.

  Once a year there was the chance for a vacation in an approved resort, at a fraction of the usual price. Then it was back inside the barbed wire, intercepted mail, tapped phones, and monitored friendships.

  Before he was thirty he met and married Valya, a young librarian and teacher of English in Arzamas-16. She taught him the language, so that he could read the harvest of technical publications pouring in from the West in the original. They were happy at first, but slowly the marriage became blighted by one flaw; they desperately wanted a child but could not have one.

  In the autumn of 1977 Ivan Blinov was staying in the spa resort of Kislovodsk in the northern Caucasus when he met Zhenya Rozina. As was often the case in the gilded cage, his wife had had to take her vacation at a different time.

  Zhenya was twenty-nine, ten years his junior, a divorcée from Minsk, also childless; lively, irreverent, a constant listener to the “voices”—the Voice of America and the BBC—and a reader of daring magazines like Poland, printed in Warsaw and much more liberal and versatile than the dreary, dogmatic Soviet publications. The shuttered scientist was entranced by her.

  They agreed to correspond, but as Blinov knew his mail would be intercepted (he was a holder of secrets) he asked her to write to a friend in Arzamas-16 whose mail would not be looked at.

  In 1978 they met again, by agreement, this time at the resort of Sochi on the Black Sea. Blinov’s marriage was- at an end in all but name. Their friendship became a torrid affair. They met again for the third and last time in 1979 at Yalta and realized they were still in love, but that it was a hopeless love.

  He felt he could not divorce his wife. If there had been another man after her, that would have been different. But there was not; she was not beautiful. But she had been loyal to him for fifteen years and if love had died, that was the way of things. They were still friends and he would not shame her by divorce, not in the tiny community in which they lived.

  Zhenya did not disagree, but for another reason. She told him something she had not told him before. If they married it would mar his career. She was Jewish; that was enough. She had already applied to OVIR, the Department of Visas and Permissions, to emigrate to Israel. Under Brezhnev there was a new dispensation. They kissed and made love and parted, and never saw each other again.

  “The rest you know,” she said.

  “The transit camp in Austria, the approach to our embassy?”

  ‘‘Yes.”

  “And Ivan Ivanovitch?”

  “Six weeks after the vacation in Yalta I realized I was carrying his child. Ivan was born here, he is a U.S. citizen. At least he will grow up free.”

  “Did you ever correspond with him, let him know?”

  “To what point?” she asked bitterly. “He is married. He lives in a gilded prison, as much a prisoner as any zek in the camps. What could I do? Remind him of it all? Make him yearn for what he cannot reach?”

  “Have you told your son about his father?”

  “Yes. That he is a great man. A kind man. But far away.”

  “Things are changing,” said Monk gently. “He could probably get as far as Moscow nowadays. I have a friend. He travels often to Moscow. A businessman. You could write to the man in Arzamas-16 whose mail is not intercepted. Ask the father to come to Moscow.”

  “Why? To tell him what?”

  “He should know about his son,” said Monk. “Let the boy write. I will see his father gets the letter.”

  Before he went to bed, the small boy wrote, in good but touchingly flawed Russian, a two-page letter that began: “Dear Papa …”

  ¯

  GRACIE Fields returned to the embassy just before midday on August 11. He knocked on Macdonald’s door to find his Head of Station deep in gloomy thought.

  “Bubble?” said the older man. Fields nodded.

  When they were ensconced in Conference Room A Fields tossed a photo of the dead face of an old man on the desk.

  It was one of the batch taken in the woods, similar to the picture brought to the embassy by Inspector Chernov.

  “You saw your man?” asked Macdonald.

  “Yep. And it’s pretty traumatic stuff. He was the cleaner at UPF headquarters.”

  “The cleaner?”

  “That’s right. The office cleaner. Like Chesterton’s Invisible Man. There every night but no one noticed him. Came about ten each evening from Monday to Friday, cleaned the offices from end to end, left before dawn. That’s why he was a shabby old thing. Lived in a slum. Earned peanuts. There’s more.”

  Fields recounted the story of N. I. Akopov, late personal secretary of Igor Komarov, who had elected to go for an unadvised and as it turned out terminal swim in the river about the middle of July.

  Macdonald arose and paced the room.

  “We’re supposed, in our job, to rely on facts, facts, and only facts,” he said. “But let’s indulge in a little supposition. Akopov left the damn document out on his desk. The old cleaner saw it, flicked through it, didn’t like something he saw, and stole it. Make sense?”

  “Can’t fault it, Jock. Document discovered missing the next day, Akopov fired, but as he’s seen it he can’t be left in the land of the living. He goes swimming with two hefty lads to hold him down.”

  “Probably done in a water butt. Slung in the river afterward,” muttered Macdonald. “Cleaner doesn’t show up and the penny drops. Then the hunt is on for him. But he’s already slung it into Celia Stone’s car.”

  “Why? Jock, why her?”

  “We’ll never know. He must have been aware she was with the embassy. He said something about giving it to Mr. Ambassador for the beer. What bloody beer?”

  “Anyway, they find him,” suggested Fields. “Work him over and he tells all. Then they finish him off and dump him. How did they find Celia’s apartment?”

  “Followed her car, probably. From here. She wouldn’t notice. Found out where she lived, bribed the guards on the gate, checked out her car. No file lying around, so they broke into her apartment. Then she walked in.”

  “So Komarov knows his precious file is gone,” said Fields. “He knows who took it, he knows where he threw it. But he doesn’t know whether anyone took any notice of it. Celia could have chucked it away. Every crank in Russia sends petitions to the high-and-mighty. They’re like autumn leaves. Perhaps he doesn’t know the effect it caused.”

  “He does now,” said Macdonald.

  From his pocket he produced a small tape-player, borrowed from one of the women in the typing pool who was accustomed to playing her music tapes on it. Then he took a miniature tape and slipped it in.

  “What’s that?” asked Fields.

  “That, my friend, is the tape of the entire interview with Igor Komarov. One hour on each side.”

  “But I thought the killers took the tape machine.”

  “They did. They also managed to put a bullet through it. I found fragments of plastic and metal at the bottom of Jefferson’s right-hand inner breast pocket. It wasn’t the wallet they hit, it was the tape recorder. So the tape will be unplayable.”

  “But …”

  “But the fussy bugger must have stopped on the street, extracted his precious interview, and put a fresh tape in. This was found in a plastic bag in his trouser pocket. I think it shows why he died. Listen.”

  He switched the machine on. The voice of the dead Journalist filled the room.

  “Mr. President, in matters of foreign affairs, particularly those concerning relations with the other republics of the USSR, how do you intend to secure the rebirth to glory of the Russian nation?”

  There was a slight pause, then Kuznetsov began translating. When he had finished, there was an even longer pause and the sound of footfalls on carpet. The machine clicked off
.

  “Someone rose and left the room,” said Macdonald.

  The machine switched back on and they heard Komarov’s voice give his answer. How long Jefferson had had his machine switched off they could not know. But just before the click they could hear Kuznetsov begin to say: “I am sure the President will not be …”

  “I don’t follow,” said Fields.

  “It’s hideously simple, Gracie. I translated that Black Manifesto myself. Through the night, back at Vauxhall Cross. It was I who translated the phrase ‘Vozrozhdenie vo slavu otechestva’ as ‘the rebirth to glory of the motherland.’ Because that’s what it means.

  “Marchbanks read the translation. He must have mentioned the phrase to Jefferson’s editor, who used it in turn to Jefferson. He liked the imagery so he produced it back to Komarov last night. The bastard found himself listening to his own language. And I’ve never heard that phrase used before.”

  Fields reached across and replayed the passage. When Jefferson had finished, Kuznetsov translated into Russian. For “rebirth to glory” he used the Russian words vozrozhdenie vo slavu.

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Fields. “Komarov must have thought Jefferson had seen the whole document, read it in Russian. He must have jumped to the conclusion Jefferson was one of us, come to test him out. Do you think the Black Guards did it?”

  “No, I think Grishin called up a contract hit from his underworld contacts. A very quick job. If they’d had more time they’d have snatched him from the street and questioned him at leisure. They were told to silence him and get that tape back.”

  “So, jock, what are you going to do now?”

  “Head back to London. The gloves are off. We know and Komarov knows we know. The Chief said he wanted proof it was no forgery. Three men have now died for that satanic document. I don’t know how much more bloody proof he wants.”

  San Jose, November 1988

  SILICON Valley really is a valley running along a line between the Santa Cruz mountains to the west and the Hamilton range to the east. It stretches from Santa Clara to Menlo Park, which were its limits in 1988. Since then it has spread. The nickname comes from an amazing concentration of between one and two thousand industries and research foundations dedicated to the highest of high technology.

  The international scientific conference of November 1988 was held in the Valley’s principal city, San Jose, once small Spanish mission town, now a sprawling conurbation of gleaming towers. The eight members of the Soviet delegation were quartered in the San Jose Fairmont. Jason Monk was in the lobby when they checked in.

  The basic eight were escorted by a much larger phalanx of minders. Some were from the Soviet’s U.N. mission in New York, one from the consulate in San Francisco, and four had come in from Moscow. Monk sat over a cup of iced tea, tweed-jacketed, with a copy of New Scientist beside him, playing spot-the-hood. There were five in all, clearly protectors from the KGB.

  Before coming, Monk had had a long session with a top nuclear physicist from the Lawrence Livermore Lab. The man was ecstatic at the chance of at last meeting the Soviet physicist Professor Blinov.

  “You have to realize, this guy is an enigma. He really came to prominence over the past ten years,” the Livermore scientist had told him. We began to hear rumors of him on the scientific circuit about that far back. He was a star inside the USSR before then, but he wasn’t allowed to publish anything abroad.

  “We do know he got the Lenin prize, along with a host of awards. He must have gotten a rack of invitations to speak abroad—hell, we sent him two—but we had to send them to the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. They always said ‘forget it.’ He’s made major contributions and I guess he must have wanted international recognition—we’re all human—so it was probably the Academy turning down the invitations. And now he’s coming. He’ll be lecturing on advanced particle physics, and I’ll be there.”

  So will I, thought Monk.

  He waited until after the scientist had made his speech. It was warmly applauded. In the auditorium Monk had listened to the addresses and circulated during the coffee breaks and thought they might as well all be speaking Martian. He did not understand a word.

  In the lobby of the hotel he became a familiar sight with his tweed jacket, eyeglasses hanging on a cord around his neck, and a handful of scientific journals. Even the four KGB and one GRU officers had stopped studying him.

  On the last night before the Soviet delegation was due to head home, Monk waited until Professor Blinov had retired to his room before knocking on the door.

  “Yes?” said a voice in English.

  “Room service,” said Monk.

  The door opened as far as the chain would allow. Professor Blinov peered out. He saw a man in a suit holding a bowl with a display of fruit topped with a pink ribbon.

  “I did not order room service.”

  “No, sir. I am the night manager. This is with the manager’s compliments.”

  After five days Professor Blinov was still bewildered by this strange society of limitless material consumption. The only things he recognized were the scientific discussions and the tight security. But a free bowl of fruit was a novelty. Not wishing to be discourteous he released the chain, something the KGB had told him not to do. They of all people knew about midnight knocks on the door.

  Monk entered, deposited the fruit, turned, and closed the door. Alarm sprang into the scientist’s eyes.

  “I know who you are. Leave now or I will ring my people.”

  Monk smiled and dropped into Russian.

  “Sure, Professor, anytime you want. But first, I have something for you. Read this first, then ring.”

  Bewildered, the scientist took the boy’s letter and cast his eye over the first line.

  “What is this nonsense?” he protested. “You force your way in here and …”

  “Let’s just talk for five minutes. Then I’ll go. Very quietly. No fuss. But first, listen please.”

  “There is nothing you can say that I want to hear. I have been warned about you people. …”

  “Zhenya is in New York,” said Monk. The professor stopped talking and his mouth fell open. At fifty, he was gray-haired and looked older than his years. He stooped, he needed glasses to read, and now they were perched on his nose. He peered at Monk over them and slowly sat down on the bed.

  “Zhenya? Here? In America?”

  “After your last holiday together in Yalta, she received her permission to leave for Israel. In a transit camp in Austria she contacted our embassy and we gave her a visa to come here instead. In the camp she realized she was carrying your child. Now, read the letter, please.”

  The professor read slowly, in bewilderment. When he had finished, he held the two sheets of cream paper and stared at the opposite wall. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Slowly two tears welled up and trickled down his cheeks.

  “I have a son,” he whispered. “Dear God, I have a son.”

  Monk took a photograph from his pocket and held it out. The boy wore a baseball cap high on his head and a wide grin. There were freckles and a chipped tooth.

  “Ivan Ivanovitch Blinov,” said Monk. “He’s never seen you. Just a faded photograph from Sochi. But he loves you.”

  “I have a son,” repeated the man who could design hydrogen bombs.

  “You also have a wife,” murmured Monk. Blinov shook his head.

  “Valya died of cancer last year.”

  Monk’s heart sank. He was a free man. He would want to stay in the States. That was not the game plan. Blinov preempted him.

  “What do you want?”

  “Two years from now, we want you to accept a lecture invitation in the West and stay here. We will fly you to the States, wherever you are. Life will be very good. A senior professorship at a major university, a large house in the woods, two cars. And Zhenya and Ivan with you. Forever. They both love you very much and I think you love them.”

  “Two years.”

 
“Yes, two years more at Arzamas-16. But we need to know it all. You understand?”

  Blinov nodded. Before dawn he had memorized the address in East Berlin and accepted the can of shaving foam with, somewhere in the midst of the aerosol, the small vial of invisible ink for his one single letter. There could be no question of penetrating Arzamas-16. There would have to be one meeting and handover, and a year later the escape with everything he was able to bring.

  As he walked out into the lobby, a small voice inside Jason Monk said: You are a grade-A ratfink. You should have let him stay here, now. Another voice said: You are not a Family Reunification charity. You are a fucking spy. That’s what you do, it’s all you do. And the real Jason Monk swore that one day Ivan Yevdokimovich Blinov would live in the States with his wife and his son, and Uncle Sam would make it all up to him, every last minute of those two years.

  ¯

  THE meeting took place two days later in Sir Henry Coombs’s top-floor office at Vauxhall Cross, jocularly known as the Palace of Light and Culture. The title had originated with an old warrior, long dead, called Ronnie Bloom. An Orientalist, he had once found a building of that name in Beijing. It seemed to contain very little light and not much culture, reminding him of his own headquarters at Century House. The name stuck.

  Also present were the two Controllers, East and Western Hemisphere, Marchbanks as head of Russia Section, and Macdonald. It was Macdonald who reported for close to an hour, with occasional supplementary questions from his superiors.

  “Well, gentlemen?” asked the chief at last. Each gave his reactions. They were unanimous. The presumption had to be made that the Black Manifesto had indeed been stolen and was the genuine blueprint for what Komarov intended to do when he came to power: create a one-party tyranny to carry out external aggression and internal genocide.

  “You’ll put all you have told us in written form, Jock? By nightfall please. Then I’ll have to take it higher. And I think we should share with our colleagues at Langley. Sean, you’ll handle that?”

  The Controller Western Hemisphere nodded. The chief rose.

  “Damnable business. Has to be stopped, of course. The politicians have to give us the green light to put a stop to this man.”