*
Boychenko had several men checking airport, port and railway-station logs. Noted departures, irregularities, anything vaguely unusual or suspicious was to be reported to him right away. A squad of six men concentrated on the records kept by all controllers of Moscow exit roads. By the afternoon a short list of events deserving special attention had been drawn up for him. Among these was a mention of an ambulance with a suspected disease carrier destined for the isolation unit at Ivanovo. There was some reference to a Category One disease.
“What’s that?” Boychenko asked, but nobody had the answer. He marked that and another dozen entries in the log for further investigation. He then changed into uniform and ordered a staff car to take him to the KGB hospital.
“The old man is in bad shape,” said the colonel in charge of the ward.
“That’s not the question, comrade.”
“I know. I’m just telling you.”
“Will he survive a brief interrogation?”
The colonel shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a risk to question him at this stage.” He stopped and thought about the risk he himself was taking by expressing a view that could be used against him later on. “I mean, a lot would depend on the interrogator.”
“So you’re against interrogation,” Boychenko said, trying to pin him down.
“Not at all, major, not at all. All I’m saying is that I don’t know how urgent an interrogation is. I know nothing about his case. And we can’t judge how much he’d be able to withstand. Come and see him for yourself. If I reduce the sedation, he may lapse into a coma or just die.”
The old man was in a windowless cubicle, watched at all times by a nurse and a guard. He was mumbling in his sleep. “It’s so cold, so cold.”
“Can’t you give him an extra blanket or something?” asked Boychenko.
“It’s no good. The cold is inside him.”
A nurse came in. “Comrade Boychenko is wanted on the telephone.”
The call was from the First Chief Directorate. It urged Boychenko to carry out an interrogation at the earliest possible opportunity — yet not to forget how essential the suspect’s survival remained. He tried to disguise his fury as he passed on the order and, preferably, the responsibility to the colonel: “Considering the relatively low level of risk you’ve outlined to me, I must ask you now to prepare the patient for a brief interrogation. How long will it take?”
“A few hours.”
“I’ll wait here.”
*
The smell of cheap plastic permeated the air in the bar. The ill-conceived lighting effects created gloom rather than ambience. A scratched record of the Don Cossacks blared desperately from a large speaker to complete what was meant to be nightclub decadence inducing foreigners to feel at home and part with their money merrily.
“We must be a wee bit crazy to pay one pound sterling for that,” grumbled Andrew call-me-Mac McGregor and held his shot glass to the light. “Look at it, just look.” He rolled the drops of liquid around. “Not enough to wet the glass.”
Rust could not have agreed more with him, and he helped the bearded man to cope with the mathematical puzzle: if a whiskey and a gin and tonic cost two pounds five shillings and sixpence, how much should Mac get back from a five-pound note in Greek drachmas and Bolivian pesos, the only small change the barman claimed to have?
“Stop blathering, me lad, just keep the money and give us another whiskey, a gin and a wee tonic,” said McGregor and turned to give Rust some useful advice for life: “Never cut that Gordian knot, me friend, if you can liquidize and drink it.” Rust felt sorry for him. It was too easy. McGregor was naive and hungry for companionship after three weeks in Russia, spent mostly in mud-bound kolkhozi where whiskey was consumed only by fat capitalists in the occasional visiting film shows, and where his interpreter truly believed that Bonnie Prince Charlie was “some Englishman.”
Back at the apartment on the Nevsky, Rust told Yelena that he would dine with the Scotsman that evening. “Can you get me a beard like his?”
“Yes, but that won’t be enough. Your hair will have to be tinted gray, and Florian will give you an injection in your gum to make your face swell. When is your Scotsman planning to leave?”
“Tomorrow evening. It’s the six-forty P.M. BO AC flight to London via Helsinki and Copenhagen.”
“Could you get him here tomorrow morning?”
“Yes. On one condition. You must guarantee his safety.”
“That’s all right. There’s no reason to believe that he’ll be more than inconvenienced.”
“Not good enough. I want your word on it.”
“Okay. You have it. I never thought you’d be so deeply concerned about the safety of complete strangers.” She smiled.
“And I never thought you’d be so callous concerning the lives of innocent bystanders.” Rust’s voice was even sharper than his words, but she did not seem hurt. If anything, she looked surprised. The way Charles might be surprised in a situation like this. Or Schramm. Way back in the days of training him, Schramm used to hint that hurting the innocent was sometimes inevitable. “You’ve got to learn to sin without guilt.” Rust wondered if he could ever come to terms with a principle like that. “You must be pragmatic about such things,” Schramm said. “That’s what makes generals and other executives. And good agents destined for glory.” Rust hoped he could still say wholeheartedly what he had answered to Schramm. “I doubt if the glory can ever match the guilt.”
“How will you get him here?” Yelena asked.
“Easily. He’s keen to come.”
“Why?”
“I’ve promised him an introduction to a very beautiful Russian girl. I didn’t tell him how callous she might be. But I said he might be able to date her when he comes back to sell more of his milking machines over here.”
At midnight, the colonel promised Boychenko that it would not be long now. “Your man is delirious, with a very high temperature, but he should be able to answer a few gently put questions.”
While waiting, Boychenko phoned his wife. There was no news about the raped girl, which was good news, and there was positively good news about his daughter’s job prospect at the Foreign Trade Ministry: Boychenko had signed a rather complimentary political character reference for a surgeon who wanted to apply for permission to seek a job in the capital; the surgeon’s son, in turn, had arranged a little advantage for a friend’s aunt on the waiting list for a new set of bath faucets, and she had then had a word with her next-door neighbor, the widow of a general, who owed her a favor and could obtain from the privileged department of Voyentorg, the army store, a couple of long zip fasteners and a pair of Czech spike-heel shoes for the parents of a Foreign Trade Ministry clerical supervisor.
“Do you want me to be present during the interview?” asked the colonel.
Boychenko thought for a second and decided against it. “No, just stand by with a full emergency unit. You must not allow him to die.”
The old man was shaking all the time. The sight of Boychenko’s uniform forced him to try to sit up. He made a superhuman effort. “Ask me, major, ask me anything. We’re on the same side.”
“Naturally.”
“And keep warm.”
“That’s right. We must keep warm. And keep away from all the cold places. You know what I mean?”
“I do. Just ask me. What do you want to know?”
Boychenko stepped to the bed and leaned forward until their faces almost touched. “I have only one question. Where’s your son?”
The old man opened his mouth, but could not speak because his jaw was twitching so badly.
“You don’t want to answer me? Fair enough, I understand.” He tore the blanket off the bed and threw it on the floor. “Fair enough. If that’s what you want.” He opened the window, and icy rain sprayed him, which made him furious. The old man’s twitching must be pure hysteria and an excuse not to answer the questi
on. A hearty slap in the face was, in his experience, an effective remedy for both.
“Where’s your son?”
The shaking stopped. The old man’s eyes popped wide open in a fixed gaze at the window. Not even the rain made him blink. “He’s not my son,” he whispered.
“Liar!” Boychenko’s fist went hard into his kidney.
Pyotr Nikolayevich curled up in slow motion. In the cold wind his parchment skin began to turn blue.
“Don’t you dare die on me!” He beat the emergency call button frantically.
While the doctors worked on the patient, the colonel asked Boychenko what had happened.
“Nothing. You said he was delirious. Well, he was not. I asked a simple question. He kicked off the blanket and lied to me like any normal healthy person.” Wouldn’t I lie to get that damn kid off that rape charge? But he quickly qualified his remark just to be on the safe side when the colonel would make his report. “I mean, he tried to lie to me, like any enemy of the people would.”
The old man was given some oxygen and an injection. Waiting for the effect of the sedatives, Boychenko telephoned his office to make arrangements for charging the young lieutenant with negligence in carrying out the arrest or, alternatively, with the unnecessary killing of an important witness. He had just put the phone down when he heard the old man mumble again.
“It’s not my fault … I don’t know where he is … Florian gave the orders … Please, Yelena Ivanovna … please don’t make me do it … No, I won’t argue, you’re right … the greatest … Dy-na-mo! Dy-na-mo! ... I must keep warm … Please, please … Florian, please … you’re so big and strong, so big … please help … ” He was staring at the wall, but Boychenko guessed he was seeing ghosts.
The major pushed a doctor out of the way and leaned over the bed. “It’s all right,” he whispered soothingly. “It’s all right now. I’m Florian. I’m here to help you.”
“Help me.”
“Here.” He pulled the blanket tight around the curling body. “Keep warm. I’ll help you. But I must know where your son is.”
“I don’t know.”
“And where’s Yelena?”
“In her cab. The cab … she’ll run me down if I don’t support Dynamo. She will.”
A doctor, his hand on the patient’s pulse, tried to say something, but Boychenko made him shut up with a wide wave of his hand. “I’ll help you. I promise. But I must know where your son is.”
“The cab … ” Pyotr Nikolayevich tried to sit up to escape the cab running fast toward him, then fell back, still staring in horror, and not seeing even ghosts anymore.
The charge would have to be unnecessary killing of an important witness, Boychenko concluded. That and perhaps negligence and breaking certain aspects of socialist legality. What particular aspects was something to be decided later on. Florian and Yelena. They must be found somewhere. There could not be all that many women cabbies who were ferocious Dynamo supporters, Boychenko encouraged himself. He wanted to get on with the search fast, but first he ought to have a word with the colonel in charge of the ward. Perhaps their accounts of the events leading to the death could be coordinated. He asked several people, but nobody seemed to know where the colonel was. Boychenko guessed he must already be working on his report of the unfortunate circumstances. Which left Boychenko no time to spare before delivering his own version.
Tuesday, September 25
U.S. State Department reserves 28th-floor suite in Waldorf for Dean Rusk-Gromyko lunch. NATO exercise in Greece for half a million men. Kennedy writes to Nasser and confirms his conviction that “it’s possible to find an honorable and humanitarian solution to Arab-Israel dispute.” Wall Street prices fall. Sterling sinks to $2.80. Dollar sinks to DM4.
*
COLONEL OLEG PENKOVSKY DECIDED TO WALK TO HIS office partly because it was an exceptionally bright, sunny morning and partly because he wanted to see if he was followed. He said a few cheerful words to the dezhurnaya (knowing full well that even his mood might be reported and subjected to scrutiny). He left his home, No. 36 Maxim Gorky naberezhnaya, and stopped to send a few ostensibly joyous glances up and down the glittering Moskva River. This gave him a chance to take in the sight of the few cars parked along the embankment. Yes, the one he thought might be there was still there. It was an ordinary black-on-yellow number plate, MC35-45, a Moscow registration. Although the car seemed to be empty, he was sure that somebody was watching him from inside it. It was no good to pretend that this was just the routine periodic check on him. It had been going on too regularly for too long in the past few weeks. But then why did they not pull him in for questioning? Did they suspect that he had accomplices? Were they GRU security or KGB? Must be KGB. He wished he could do something against them. He hated the neighbors. They had begun to dismantle the GRU, Penkovsky’s own people, quite ruthlessly. Several important GRU agents in the West had been eliminated by brother officers. The KGB wanted it all to itself. Penkovsky wished he could repay them in kind and expose some of their own agents. Or at least make sure that his last dispatch about the Cuban buildup and the very limited capability of the Russians’ home-based rockets would reach the right people. But he had no way of knowing that.
He turned left and walked at a leisurely pace along the awakening embankment.
*
Leningrad, too, had a sunny morning. Rust was leaning on his elbow, watching Yelena’s peaceful sleep. Throughout the long night, she had said goodbye to him with every inch of her body. He wondered what lovemaking with her without lurking threats and pressures might be like. Would she be equally attractive and her sex equally exciting if his life did not depend on her? She stirred and, as always, was awake from one second to the next. She had the ability to cross the boundary into and out of sleep without any gradual process. It was a soldier’s art to fall asleep and wake up just like that. “Hello, soldier,” he said. “Welcome to this world.”
“What time do you have to pick up McGregor?” she said, sitting up and looking at her watch.
“Plenty of time.”
“There’s never enough time. Especially not this time.” She moved, then smiled, noticing his eager eyes. “Would you mind turning away while I get up and find at least a shirt to put on?”
Her shyness amused him, but it was pointless to tease her with it yet again.
“You didn’t say what time you had to pick him up.”
“Ten-thirty. He’ll have packed and checked out by then. The plan is that I bring him here. He thinks we’ll spend a long, oozy day with that beautiful girl — you’ll do, I guess — then we’ll take the London flight together.”
“Good. Florian will be ready.”
“How do you plan to keep Mac here until the flight leaves?”
“We’ll pump him full of fast-acting sedatives. That should knock him out for twenty-four hours at least. He’ll then be found, probably in a daze, with your papers in his pocket. It may take him a day or so to prove that he’s not you, but then they’ll let him go.”
“Sounds easy.”
“It better be.”
She returned to the bed, wearing only his shirt. He greeted the sight with a wolf whistle. She seemed not to understand. “Looks sexy on you.”
“Does it?” It was a straight question. The art of light flirtation was not in her armory. She walked to the cupboard and studied herself in the long mirror on the inside of the door. “Is that what you find sexy?”
“Mm.”
“Has she ever worn your shirt?”
“Who?”
“The girl you were in love with in Leningrad.”
“Can’t remember.”
“Liar.”
“Honestly.”
“Then you’re not in love with her anymore.”
“No, probably not.”
“Why?”
“It’s gone.”
“How long does it take you to fall out of love?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know. There’re no rules.” The question and the mood of the moment pleased him, he admitted to himself. And he knew that both of them were acting out of character. There were no ties, no conventions, nobody else to consider, not past commitments, no future. Falling in love on the moon could be like that, in a state of weightlessness. She took another hard, searching look at herself in the long mirror as if trying to memorize the picture, then shut the door and sat on the bed. “Did she leave you?” Her voice was clinical but not cold. “No.” He had not told Yelena any details about the breakup, and he did not want to lie to her now. “It, just … you know.”
“Do you wish she was here now?”
“What a silly question.”
“Is it?”
“You’re not jealous, are you?” he asked lightly.
“I don’t know.” The matter-of-fact answer bore the hallmark of sincerity. “I don’t know what jealousy feels like. Do you?” She was drifting toward a deeper, more emotional conversation, and he knew he had to steer her clear of it. “No, I specialize in vacation affairs with women who visit the Upstairs. It’s their vacation and my affair. I can spot them as they come through the door. Jealousy is no part of the deal, so nobody gets hurt, sweetheart.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“No. Why?”
“You called me sweetheart again.”
“Did I?” If anything, he was angry with himself. Let yourself go, he urged himself. Enjoy it to the full while it lasts. He kissed her.
She kissed him back, but remained distant and thoughtful. “If this is jealousy, I don’t want to know any more about it.”
“It’s a deal.” He tried to pull her back into bed.
“You know something? Nobody had seen me cry since Kiev, not until you saw me in Moscow.”
In the Company of Spies Page 17
