“Let’s grow up, sweetheart.” He hoped to sound convincingly callous. “To play games of falling in love is just about the last thing we want right now.” He took another deep swig, then began to whistle “It’s the wrong time, It’s the wrong place … ”
“Thank you, nurse,” she said, struggling to regain her composure. The tune meant nothing to her.
Friday, September 21
Newsweek reporters discover that an armada of sixty ships was scheduled to arrive at Cuba in September, but news conference reveals that Kennedy knows nothing about it.
*
THE SPETSBURO COLONEL WAS UNAVAILABLE. AND NO NEWS about Form M-17. Boychenko was growing restless. He felt cut off. He sought to see the head of his department and his request was refused. Something or someone was holding him off. It might be the system. Or a single bureaucrat. Or a saboteur. Not impossible. Now if he could discover a saboteur right inside the Center … He knew he might only be imagining things, but that young lieutenant in the Spetsburo colonel’s anteroom had definitely been offish with him. And a colleague, too. No, nobody would know about the fiasco with Rust, not yet. But they would sense these things. And if he did nothing … Anything was better than this waiting game.
Again he thought about that Rust file. It could not be so thin and empty without a reason. Zemskov. Gennadi Romanovich Zemskov. The man with the legendary memory who had retired from Records only a couple of years ago. Boychenko could have kicked himself for not thinking about him sooner. And for the first time, he was pleased that Records had not yet been computerized. Tape erasure would wipe out all memories. Retirement would not. He telephoned Zemskov to announce his visit.
He walked to No. 12 Dzerzhinsky Street. At the gate he passed the deputy chief of the Special Investigation Department, and his hearty greetings were hardly acknowledged. Or was this again only his imagination? The KGB store was relatively empty. Most officers would do their shopping in the afternoon, when their wives had already told them what to bring home. Boychenko paused to think. What would please Zemskov? Things too expensive for a retired man, things reserved for the privileged on active service. Still, he would not want to spend too much out of his own pocket even if things were cheap here. He chose a bottle of Starka, a kilo of veal (and asked the man at the counter to try to put aside another kilo for him, too), and some fresh fruit.
Zemskov lived in a massive old block near the southern port on the Moskva River. Boychenko considered it a fair location for a Records clerk who had never achieved much and whose phenomenal memory had served only some slicker climbers’ advancement. But the names listed on the door revealed that the apartment was shared by three families. A real surprise, but only because an ex-KGB man was involved.
“Perhaps we could go out somewhere,” Zemskov suggested, but Boychenko was anxious to hide his shock.
“Why? What’s wrong with this place, Gennadi Romanovich? It’s a fine location with a fine view of the river, and if it’s good enough for you to live here, it’s good enough for me to have a drink with you.”
“Oh yes, it’s a fine view. Much better than what I used to have. Even if less roomy.” Zemskov tried to make it sound lighthearted. “But it can’t be helped. Just after I’d retired, my wife died and the building was chosen for redevelopment. So they gave me … this.” His voice trailed off. He was not sure about Boychenko’s reaction. “I mean, it’s only fair. I’m on my own. Families with children must have priority.”
“That’s the spirit.” His own voice made Boychenko realize that Zemskov had been half whispering most of the time. He looked around. From the edge of the window, a curtain ran across the room. He gestured toward it: “And that’s your bedroom, a real bachelor’s den.” He chuckled.
Zemskov did not try to share his merry mood. “Er … well, not quite. That’s where a young couple live. I mean temporarily. Until something better can be found for them.”
“Oh.”
Zemskov smiled to reassure the visitor. “They both work night shifts. That’s why I keep my voice down a little. I mean, it’s only fair. They must sleep.”
“Of course. Of course.”
Zemskov protested a little but was undoubtedly pleased with the presents. He wanted to open the bottle for Boychenko right away, but the major decided to go for a walk with the old man after all. Zemskov agreed. He took a key and picked up the presents. “Won’t be long; just put them in my kitchen cupboard.” He did not shut the door, and Boychenko heard the opening of a heavy padlock.
A woman moaned. A bed creaked. Now groaning. A suppressed cry. Boychenko stood up. Somebody must be sick behind the curtain. Some pain. Or a heart attack. He could not just stand there doing nothing for her.
Zemskov returned and picked out the sound from behind the curtain right away. He tried to smile but only managed to blush. “Well, the advantage of doing the night shift. I mean, during the day, it’s only me in the apartment. I mean, they have it almost all to themselves. The family from the other room leaves early.”
Boychenko had an irresistible urge to look behind the curtain, see whether she was pretty and watch her lovemaking if yes. But Zemskov was eager to usher him out.
They walked on the Damilovskaya embankment, and Boychenko decided to come to the point. “Things aren’t as well organized as they used to be in your time in Records.”
“Registry and Archives, you mean.”
“Of course.” How stupid of me, not to remember what a stickler the old man was, Boychenko thought. “Just the other day, I needed a file on a bloke called Rust, Helm Rust to be precise, and what do I find? Nothing. Somebody must have mislaid most of the contents. Come to think of it, it must have been in your time when his file was opened. In 1956, to be precise.” Not very subtle, thought Boychenko, but it should make no difference to the old man. “You wouldn’t remember him, I suppose. I mean, why should you?”
“An American?”
“That’s right! You’re really incredible!”
“A journalist.”
“Go on. Let’s see how good you are.”
“No. Leave it alone.”
“Why? It’s only an exercise.”
“I’m grateful to you, major. You brought me things I haven’t seen for years. I don’t want to be ungrateful. But there was something, er … something one should forget.”
“Such as?”
“Something about his father. And a brother.”
“The file says nothing about them.”
“You see? It was all transferred to another department.”
“What? From Records?”
“From Registry and Archives.”
“To what department?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You must tell me.”
“I can’t remember.”
“My dear Gennadi Romanovich — it’s important to me.”
“I can’t remember.”
“All right, Comrade Zemskov, if that’s the way you want to play it, it’s fine with me. Just fine. We’ll soon sort out what you can and can’t remember.”
“I’m sorry. All I remember is that something important was happening and the file was kept by the First Chief Directorate.”
“Which department?”
“First. I think.”
“U.S. and Canada.”
“But I can’t be sure.”
“You’d better be.” Boychenko was angry. Making such a fuss about a morsel of information that might help him to save his own skin, let alone his son’s! He was really tempted to take his presents back. But then he remembered the couple behind the curtain and felt sorry for the old fellow. “Well, thanks. It was a nice walk. Go easy on the Starka — you can really get sloshed if you’re not used to it.”
*
The last of Rust’s American clothes were tied in a bundle. From the bottom of the suitcase, Yelena produced a white coat and some documents. “Here are your papers.”
“Do I have to learn all the details?”
“Not really. Just the name, date of birth. If it comes to details, we’re in trouble anyway.”
She put on the white coat. Rust studied the papers. There was the dark-gray-green internal passport issued to Dmitri Gorbunov, aged thirty-five, born in Novgorod. His “social origin” was specified as working-class. The photograph showed a blank, squarish face, eyes staring straight into the camera. It would take a great deal of goodwill to mistake the man for Rust.
“I’m sorry,” said Yelena, “there hasn’t been time to change the picture. But I hope they won’t touch your papers anyway. If they ask for them, you pull them out of your pocket and hold them out to the militia or whoever And try to shake and look feverish.”
Most of the pages of the passport were filled with stamps, proving details of his existence. The most important of these propiski gave him permission to go to and reside in Moscow. Another showed he was married.
“The other papers are your spravki,” said Yelena. “Permission to be transported by special ambulance, permission to travel outside the Moscow zone, and your permission to enter the quarantine hospital in Ivanovo.”
“Will I go there?”
“No.”
He just glanced at her.
“I answered your question, didn’t I? If you ask more I’ll answer truthfully. But only if you ask me.”
“Will you come with me?”
“In the ambulance? Yes.” Using her crumbling lipstick, she painted “spots of fever” on his face.
It was big and ugly Florian who drove the white ambulance van with the red doors, red stripes on both sides and the back, red crosses in circles on the frosted-glass windows, flying a large yellow flag. They drove up Mir Prospekt, turning northeastward along Yaroslavskoye, and when they passed a gas station, Yelena turned to warn Rust: they would soon reach the outer ring-road intersection with the first checkpoint. Rust lay back, covered himself with a blanket and tried to shiver. He found it did not take much practicing.
Small traffic posts directed vehicles to the roadside. A wooden hut and a manually operated barrier elevated the roadblock to the status of a frontier crossing.
Yelena wound down her window and flashed a doctor’s identity card toward the guards, both armed with submachine guns. “One patient, suspected of being carrier of contagious disease Category Number One,” Yelena reeled off, “to be held in quarantine at Ivanovo.”
The senior guard, a corporal, looked suitably impressed and kept well away from the open window. “Wait here.” He walked to a boxed telephone. The other man shifted his weapon: he was now in charge.
The KGB officer supervising the roadblock sat in the warmth of his hut and listened to the whining corporal, who was obviously reluctant to come into close contact with something infectious.
“Damn it, man, when I was on point duty I had to check everything!” the officer shouted as if the telephone were merely something to hang onto. “Once I was ordered to do a body search on six lice-ridden Nazi bastards.” Naturally, he had never carried out that order, but nobody would know that.
The corporal returned to the ambulance. “Open up the back door.” Florian got out and walked to the rear with him. Rust grabbed the small gun under the blanket. He had seen a large motorcycle at the roadside. If it came to the worst, he could try to run for it.
“Papers.”
Yelena turned back in the passenger seat and smiled at the guard: “Don’t be afraid, comrade, it may not be a cholera case after all.”
Rust fished the papers out of his pocket with great apparent difficulty. Unable to handle them all at the same time, he held the passport between his lips and let saliva dribble on the spravki as he fumbled to offer them for closer inspection.
The corporal felt sick. He glanced around furtively. Nobody could see what he was doing. Nobody except the ambulance staff and that wretched, driveling, feverish man who breathed with a rattle trying to sit up on the couch and offer his sweaty face for inspection.
“Okay. Off you go.” The corporal nodded with his head toward Florian, indicating that the driver could shut the door. Why should he risk his life by touching that handle when the saliva of a Category One case might be just drying all over it?
“That was close,” Rust whispered.
Yelena seemed unperturbed. “Not as close as you think. Everything in my country is an eternal combination of extreme efficiency and total negligence, individual brilliance and corporate incompetence.”
Florian drove slowly through the labyrinth of traffic posts. The corporal waved toward the guard operating the barrier. The road was cleared. Still in low gear to show he was in no great hurry, Florian passed the KGB hut in the middle of the road.
“What’s a Category One disease?” asked Rust.
“I don’t know.” Yelena chuckled. “Our people are always impressed by precise classification.”
The KGB officer caught a glimpse of the woman doctor in the front passenger seat. Didn’t she look familiar? Why should she? He had never known a doctor. He had never been ill or in an ambulance. He might have seen her among the gynaecologists at the hospital when visiting his wife the other day. But then why should she be in the ambulance? There could be some simple explanation, of course, but if so, what was it? He picked up the phone to call the Ivanovo roadblock and alert the road patrol service.
*
Boychenko went straight to Registry and Archives. People of his rank and position would normally send for papers they wanted to see. His personal visit was bound to speed up procedures, particularly when the required documents were several years old and would have to be exhumed in the dusty cemetery of dead files.
He waited patiently for almost two hours in a small, damp, underground office and tried to list all the material that might contain original information and could have served as a basis for further investigation or for direct notes to be made on Rust’s file in 1956. For whatever would then happen to the file itself, the original reports would probably remain untouched.
A small trolley, fully laden with yellowing documents, was wheeled in. The rising dust made Boychenko cough as he began to sort them. He selected 1/1/1/SDR-1956 to be looked at first. It represented the Summary of Daily Reports, 1956, for First Chief Directorate, First Department, from informers in the U.S. Embassy, coded No. 1. It would certainly contain a load of garbage; Russian staff to be employed by embassies for menial tasks were always selected and assigned by the KGB, but these were low-calibre agents whose brief was to report anything and everything indiscriminately and slavishly.
He scanned page after page, and by lunchtime, his diligence had won its first reward: a cleaner had overheard a remark that “some American reporter had found his father in Moscow.” The reporter’s name was thought to be Rost or Tost or Trust. A handwritten note indicated that the information had been referred for further investigation and cross-checking.
Boychenko was delighted. It was just the sort of detail he could get his teeth into. The Spetsburo colonel would have no difficulty tracing what happened. It might also help to explain the immense interest in Rust. He made a note and was about to close the file when a quiet, authoritative voice told him: “Hold it.” Boychenko turned to face two armed civilians flanking a young plainclothes lieutenant from Special Investigations. “Your papers, major.”
“They were checked at the entrance. Besides, you know me, don’t you?”
“Your papers.”
Boychenko handed him his KGB identity card. The lieutenant pocketed it without looking at it.
“Are you armed?”
“Of course not.”
“Search him.”
Boychenko’s protests were ignored.
“What case were you reexamining?” The lieutenant took out a small notebook with torn edges and a German ballpoint pen.
“Rust. Helm Rust.”
“Have you been authorized specifically to conduc
t research here?”
“I have the right.”
“Have you or have you not been authorized?”
“No. I don’t need to be.”
“B. admits,” the lieutenant said as he wrote slowly, “that he had not been authorized.” He looked at the documents. “Which of those have you been through?”
Boychenko pointed at the SDR file. “Will you tell me what this is all about?”
“Let’s go.” The lieutenant turned to lead the group down endless underground corridors.
Boychenko recognized the place. A row of interrogation cells. Somebody must have gone crazy. Or could this be in connection with something else? His son. He might have done or said something. Or his wife. Another of her fresh crop of jokes? He had warned the silly bitch a million times. “It must be some mistake,” he mumbled, already guilty, as they pushed him into a cell.
Without any warning, the lieutenant hit him in the mouth. “Shut up. Until I ask you.” Boychenko spat out some blood. “Wipe it up.” The young officer sat down at the desk and surveyed the major with undisguised aversion. “I don’t like small, fat pigs, do you? … Do you?”
“No.”
“Sir!”
“No, sir.”
“So, you dislike yourself. Good. It creates some understanding between us. Right?”
“Right, sir.” He had to cooperate without complaint. It was his duty. And a sign of innocence.
“Now listen. I must submit a report quickly. The less trouble you give me, the less trouble I give you. So let’s have it. What’s your interest in Rust?”
“I got the case and — ”
“Don’t give me any shit. Why did you let him go?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh. You’ve decided to argue with me. Well, I don’t want to be unreasonable. After all, the days of Beria have gone. I’ll give you another chance. The men who took part in the Rust and Holly operation have already confessed that they let Rust go on your orders.”
“I see.” It was pointless to argue. If necessary, the men would be made to confess anything.
In the Company of Spies Page 12
