Deep Cover

by Brian Garfield

  “That gives us a couple of days. Maybe we’ll run him to ground before then.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Forrester said. “You mentioned it yourself. They may try to reach me through Ronnie.”

  “Aeah. I didn’t want to think that through out loud.”

  “We’ve got to. Suppose Belsky gets to her?”

  “You mean suppose he forces her to toll you into a trap. They do work that way. If he knows enough about you and her. Maybe he doesn’t—it hasn’t made the papers.”

  “Don’t we have to assume he’s got good sources of information? I think we’d better arrange to get Ronnie out of the office.” Concentration made brackets and creases in his face. “Les Suffield can hold down the office for the time being. I suppose we have to expect them to tap the phones. We’ll have to make some arrangement with Les to report to me by outside phone. It had better be clean at both ends so they won’t be able to get at me through Les.”

  “Easy. You prearrange it that you’ll call Les at certain times of day at a pay phone. That way he doesn’t have to know where you’re calling from and if they get to him he can’t tell them anything. But it puts Les in a tight spot.”

  “We’re all going to have to rely on you to keep the heat off, Top. You’re the Judas goat—you’re the one Belsky’s going to have to find.”

  “That’s all right, I’ll have plenty of cover.”

  “Be sure Belsky doesn’t spot it.”

  “You’re never sure of anything in this kind of business,” Spode said, and reached for the ignition key.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Gaz military vehicle rolled to a quiet stop near the end of the runway and Andrei waited inside until he saw the plane’s lights describe a low turn at the far end of the strip. Then he got out and stood in the night wind wrapped in a trench coat cluttered with pockets, flaps, buttons, epaulets. The khaki belt was cleated tight against his belly and he wore a brown trilby hat with the brim turned down both back and front. The jet’s landing lights picked him up and his face had a gray tired look.

  When the plane stopped Andrei walked out to meet it. The starboard jet had been left idling and it made a whistle and stench. The door near the tail swung open, hinged at the bottom, becoming stairs, and Andrei waited on the tarmac while the man in the raincoat made his way down the stairs. The man in the raincoat stood on the bottommost step and the two of them spoke in Chinese.

  After fifteen minutes’ conversation the man in the raincoat climbed back into the airplane and by the time Andrei had walked to his vehicle the plane was already taxiing forward to make its takeoff run.

  When it was airborne Andrei climbed into the Gaz and let in the clutch. The Gaz leaped spryly across the tarmac toward the service road.

  On the way to the ring road he passed somnolent daschas nestled in stands of fir and birch. The countryside was carpeted with snow and it was temptingly easy to believe in the myth of the communal serenity of the peoples of the USSR but Andrei had memories of famines, peasants feeding roof thatch to the stock, cattle dying: Andrei was far away from his boyhood but his roots were in the land.

  He played games on one of the cloverleaf intersections of the ring road until he was certain there was no one following him; drove past tall buildings under construction on the outskirts of Moscow, open steel frames festooned with cranes and scaffolds; drove into the city past a crowd of Old Believers gathered in front of a church for a midnight service; made his way along Tsvetnoy Boulevard into the Arbat and into the military garage where the dozing attendant nodded vaguely; and walked around the corner to the KGB building.

  The night sentries cleared him up to the fifth floor and he sat down in his office with a bright light shining directly down on the top of his desk, the only light in the room. He picked up the phone and dialed slowly, his thick fingers hardly fitting into the holes in the dial, methodically picking out each digit—G3-92-01.

  He leaned back in the chair and that was when he saw the shadowy figure in the open connecting doorway to Rykov’s office. It was Rykov, leaning on his cane. Andrei showed his surprise but not his chagrin; he gave Rykov a smile and a hand gesture and when a voice answered the telephone Andrei said into the mouthpiece, “Yes, is this G2-71-08? … Forgive me, I must have dialed improperly.” He cradled the telephone and Rykov came away from the doorway and approached one of the leather chairs near Andrei’s desk. Rykov’s limp seemed very pronounced.

  Rykov settled into the chair before he spoke. “Go ahead, complete your call—I’m in no hurry.” His voice was as thick as if he had been drinking.

  “I can take care of it later. A matter of no importance.”

  Rykov nodded vaguely, dismissing it. “In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky has one brother say to another, ‘Sometimes it is very unwise to be a Russian.’”

  Andrei smiled.

  “You don’t need to humor me,” Rykov said. “I am not senile.”

  “What sort of talk is this?”

  “Only a fool without humility can get through hours like these without misgivings. I have set things in motion without the troika’s permission. If I fail I’ll be purged, liquidated, but that doesn’t matter. What stings is the knowledge that I’ll be charged with treason against the state when in fact I am a patriot if I am anything at all.”

  Andrei said nothing and after a moment Rykov mused, “The Japanese proverb has it that great villainy is often called loyalty. Of course any war is proper and just if you win it and get to write the history books.” He lit one of his Pamirs and held it nervously, lifting it to his lips every few seconds with a jagged motion. “If Belsky fails, it will destroy me and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  “Belsky has never failed,” Andrei said politely.

  “The fate of us all has never rested on Belsky’s shoulders before,” Rykov replied.

  Ticking silence, and then Rykov continued, “I spoke again with Yashin tonight.”

  Andrei started. “And?”

  “The same. He accuses me of desiring a Wagnerian glory, a Pyrrhic victory. Once again I showed him our evidence and once again he shrugged it off—he has the audacity to quote Stalin to me: ‘Paper will put up with anything printed on it.’ To him either the Chineseare too cleven to risk war with us or they are stupid enough to be bluffing.”

  “That’s only rhetoric,” Andrei said. “It fails to take the facts into account.”

  “Exactly what I said to Yashin. But as always it is Grigo-renko who has Yashin’s ear and the GRU is persuaded it is all a Chinese bluff to make us give ground.”

  Andrei drew breath; he made his voice reluctant: “The GRU could be right.”

  “Right?” Rykov spat the word out as if it were an insect that had flown into his mouth. He stabbed his cigarette into the tray on the corner of the desk and immediately lit another. Andrei could not recall having seen him so angry; it was a bleak chill that came off Rykov like death and Andrei, who had been ready to speak, held his tongue.

  “What does it matter if the are right or wrong? China has thrown down the gauntlet, bluff or not. We must accept the challenge or back away from it. The troika means to back away and we cannot have that. Khrushehev’s regime was toppled in the end because Khrashchev backed away when Kennedy rattled a saber. And Cuba was far away across the world. What must happen if we give ground before the Chinese on our own borders? Is there any question? Another debacle on our part and there will be nothing left of Russian resolve, Russian will, Russian courage. Stalin sought to appease Hitler and we know what came off that, and still the troika carries on. To preserve the illusion of peace they will give away our Far Eastern lands and they will give away Russian dignity. ‘We must hold up our heads among the civilized nations of the world,’ Yashin says. As if the opinion of the rest of the world mattered more than Russia’s opinion of herself.”

  Andrei spoke carefully. “Naturally I agree that peace is not the sole objective—not at the expense of Soviet territory or as
you say Soviet dignity. But possibly war is not the only available alternative.”

  Rykov’s thick lips rolled around the cigarette. “Strategy is not your strong point, Andrei. It is China, not the Soviet Union, which has offered the ultimatum. N’est-ce pas?”

  “Yes, I think we all agree on that.”

  “And Yashin insists it is a bluff, and you are not certain but that Yashin is right.”

  “Intending no disloyalty, I must concede the truth of that.”

  Rykov continued the dialectic: “Whether it is a bluff or not China is shaking the mailed fist at us. What are the options? Only two. Accept the challenge and fight back—by hitting them before they hit us. It’s elementary but the troika remains stubbornly blind to it and that is why we have had to take these extraordinary clandestine measures.”

  “It is a logic with a weakness,” Andrei replied, willing to say it now because Rykov had calmed down. “The weakness is that yours are not the only alternatives.”

  “I see no others.”

  “But of course there is another,” Andrei said mildly. “We simply ignore the challenge. Act as if we know nothing of their war preparations. Continue as before, giving no ground yet starting no hostilities. After a while the Chinese will have to recognize the foolishness of their fruitless threat and they’ll dismantle it.”

  “An assumption of dubious validity, Andrei, unless we are prepared to admit at the outset that under no circumstances is China willing to risk war—that the entire structure is pure bluff.”

  “The GRU assumes it is.”

  “The GRU does not have our resources,” Rykov said patiently.

  “But with all our resources we have not received incontestable evidence that China actually intends to attack us. Clues, hints, possibilities yes. But no Chinese official is known to have stated unequivocally that they intend to make war on us.”

  “The bulk of the evidence is far too substantial to ignore.”

  “But it is not conclusive.”

  Rykov said, “It is to me.”

  Andrei dipped his head. “Your judgment has always been correct.”

  It was the proper thing to say. It earned Rykov’s fatherly smile.

  When Rykov left the office and went into his own, Andrei went downstairs two flights and entered one of the subsection Control offices. The sentry nodded and drew himself up because a visit from the Second Secretary was rare. Andrei closed the door behind him and made use of one of the safe-line phones. It took a little while to get through and when Yashin came on the line his first words were, “Wasn’t that you before?”

  “Yes. Viktor came in just as you picked up.”

  “I see.” On the telephone Yashin’s voice seemed particularly scratchy with age. “What has happened, then?”

  “Yevtenko arrived from Peking and I spoke with him.”

  “Does his report coincide with those Viktor has been receiving from his people?”

  “More or less. There were no remarkable differences—no one is lying to us. It’s a question of emphasis. They might make the same moves either way; you can see that—if a bluff is to be convincing it must look like the real thing. But Yevtenko has been on the scene a long time and I should be inclined to rely rather heavily on his aptitude for scenting the difference between a real effort and a sham. That was why I wanted to meet with him personally instead of having him report by the usual channels—I wanted to gauge his feelings as well as his knowledge of the facts.”

  “And?”

  “He believes they are bluffing.”

  “Why?”

  “As I say, it’s mostly intuition. He assumes the Chinese expect us to be spying on them—otherwise it couldn’t be a bluff, you see. They must intend for us to know what they’re doing. With that in mind a few lucky coincidences become less coincidental. For example, when Yuan Tung sought an agent to obtain up-to-date defense charts of Vladivostok he just happened to single out one of our own double agents for the assignment. Several things like that. One of Yevtenko’s sub-agents had been in deep cover for three years until Yevtenko activated him on my orders a few days ago—the subagent has spent a year as a domestic on the staff of the Maoist elite retreat in the mountains of central China, the underground bunkers where the Maoist leadership will presumably safeguard itself during a war. Viktor has had extensive reports of increased shipments into that retreat—indications that they are preparing the subterranean caverns for a long siege. But our subagent reports that the preparations inside the underground bunkers have not been nearly as comprehensive as those outside. For example bedding has been received but has not been unpacked. Many of the foodstuff shipments are of a perishable nature and they do not have sufficient freezer capacity to store them for any length of time. That sort of thing. What I’m getting at is that it looks as though they are making war preparations only in the places where they have reason to expect us to see the preparations.”

  Yashin said, “That sounds fairly conclusive to me.”

  “No. Not necessarily. It could all be explained—perhaps they expect to set up the bedding later; perhaps they still have freezers scheduled to arrive within the next forty-eight hours. It’s all conjectural. But Yevtenko has a very keen nose and no matter how hard I pressed him he still insisted he smells a bluff, though it is not cut and dried by any means.”

  “But Viktor still plans to set off his private war in less than forty-eight hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have reached the end.”

  “Comrade First Secretary, I must repeat what I said at the outset when I first came to you. There are times when it pays to sit still and do nothing—it is possible to win out that way if your opponent’s position deteriorates faster than your own. I repeat that in your own interests. You know what happens to several key comrades if Viktor is deposed—they must go down with him. I have no access to the methods he has devised of destroying them in the event of his own downfall.”

  “The downfall of a handful of old men is a very small thing by comparison with the downfall of the very planet, Andrei. It’s not even worth discussing.”

  “But we still have time. I earnestly expect to obtain proof that the Chinese have mounted nothing more than a bluff. If I can obtain it within the next twenty-four hours I’m sure I can persuade Viktor to abort. He can give the countermand at any time up to half an hour before the assigned moment. But of course Viktor is the only one who can give that countermand—he alone knows the signal; he and Belsky agreed on it privately.”

  “Of course. If that weren’t the case we could have put a stop to this nonsense the minute you brought word to me.”

  “There isn’t time to break Viktor down and force the code out of him. He must be reasoned with and we need evidence to do that.”

  Yashin said bitterly, “I’m not sure it would do any good at this late point in the game. You and I and all the others have changed as the world has changed but Viktor is still living in Stalin’s era and wishes to drag all of us back into it with him. He is at war with the inevitable and I’m not sure but what he’ll continue his operation regardless of what evidence he gets to prove the Chinese don’t really mean to go to war. Andrei, you are the only man in the world for whom he has affection. You must persuade him. You know what’s at stake.”

  “I do. But he has always been the stronger of us. Always.”

  “To him you are like a son. There is a time when a son must step out of his father’s shadow. You must prevail. Of course you recognize that once it is done you will take Viktor’s place; it goes without saying.”

  “I don’t want his place. I have been his second for almost thirty years. When Viktor goes there’s nothing left that I want here. I’ll retire to a farm somewhere.”

  “You are a good man, Andrei. I know how painful it is for you.”

  “I shall do everything in my power.”

  “Do more than that, Andrei.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The garage behind Lu
dlum’s house had been converted into a plywood-paneled room containing a large round poker table with green felt topping. It was getting dark outside and they were grouped around the table under a ceiling lamp; the light was harsh, with smoke wheeling through it. The linoleum floor was littered with shoe-crushed cigarette butts and Styrofoam coffee cups.

  Belsky was saying, “The reason should be obvious. You can’t have an effective committee if it numbers more than six or seven people; beyond that they always fragment into subgroups and the leader loses control. When circumstances force you to have a committee of fifteen or twenty, the best solution is to gather the six or seven top people into a sort of executive committee to make the basic decisions and pass them on to the others.”

  Ludlúm said, “I see that. But we’ve got a hell of a lot of people to pass the word down to and not a hell of a lot of time to do it in. If I had a couple of my people here now, just to listen, it’d save a lot of time getting them aside to where I can talk to them.”

  “You’ll just have to make the time, Captain.”

  Ludlum opened the snap-ring top of a beer can. It spewed with a hiss. Ludlum was in his uniform, Air Force blues with railroad-track insignia. A huge gorilla torso on strangely spindly feminine legs. A pugilist, and other things as well: communications officer for the missile wing, Amergrad cell leader, expert in electronics.

  Belsky said, “It shouldn’t be that bad. In theory the force numbers well over two hundred Illegals but in practice we’ve only got to work with about eighty-five—the people directly connected with the operation.”

  He was talking to fill silence; they had to wait, the group wasn’t complete. Restive, Nick Conrad got up and stood by the edge of the window, watching for the latecomers. His fingers toyed with the venetian-blind cord, tying and untying knots in it. A little less than forty-eight hours to go.

  They heard the car coming. Ludlum stood up and went outside. The screen door closed behind him with a hiss and a slap. Belsky pulled the light string and they waited in darkness. He could feel their heat around him—Conrad, Hathaway, Adele Conrad, Fred Winslow. With Ludlum outside and the two new arrivals it made an ungainly group, seven of them not including Belsky, but he couldn’t pare it down any tighter.