"Your mother wouldn't like that, Ivan," Vassilivich had said.
"You don't know my mother," Ivan had whimpered.
"I know whereof I speak, Ivan. We can send her apples."
"She has apples."
"We can send her a bright shiny new radio."
"She has a radio."
"We can send her whatever she wants."
"She wants Chinaman heads."
"You don't know that, Ivan. You are lying."
"Not lying. She always wants Chinaman heads."
"That's not so, Ivan."
"She would if we gave them to her."
"No, Ivan. You can never keep heads again."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Once now and never again?" Ivan had asked.
"Never, Ivan. Not now, not ever. Never."
There had been other incidents, but Ivan had always responded to a firm hand before. When the American, Forbier, had been outed and Ivan had crushed his ribs with one hand blow and Vassilivich had said enough, Ivan had backed off, and Vassilivich had given him a friendly pat on the cheek and they had gone out to enjoy the rest of the beautiful spring day in Paris.
But now, in the dim Italian restaurant with the three plates of spaghetti topped with veal in cream sauce set before Ivan, Vassilivich found reasoning difficult.
"I not spend all money," Ivan said, and his two large hands brought out bowlfuls of tenthousand lire notes, equal to about twelve dollars American apiece. The Treska unit did not calculate finances in rubles but in the American unit of dollars.
Ivan plopped the money down on Vassilivich's side of the table. Vassilivich tried to organize them and counted as he did.
Ivan lifted one plate of dripping spaghetti like a small saucer and sucked it all down, veal and sauce as though it were the dregs of a tiny cup of tea.
He licked his lips. Then he finished off the other two and asked that the basket of fruit on a counter in front of the kitchen be brought to him. The waiter smiled and with typical Italian elegance and grace presented the basket to Ivan. Ivan took the basket and began to swallow apples and pears whole, as if they were little pills. The waiter eagerly got the brown wicker basket back before the customer ate it like a cracker.
There were two sausages which Ivan chomped on like pretzels, and a halfgallon of Strega liquor. Ivan finished off his meal with two pies.
"There are 40 million lire here, Ivan. We gave you only 20 million. Where did you get the rest of the money, Ivan?"
"I not beat up people and steal," said Ivan.
"Ivan, how did you get the rest of the money?"
"I not spend all money like you say."
"Ivan, you had to get the money from somewhere," Vassilivich said.
"You give it."
"No, Ivan, I gave you 20 million lire three days ago. You lived three days on assignment and you came back with 40 million lire. That means you at least got 20 million lire from somewhere, assuming you didn't eat for three days, which I doubt."
"Count again."
"I counted, Ivan."
"I not spend all the money."
"Where did you get that new watch, Ivan?" asked Vassilivich, noticing a gold Rolex held by a belt to Ivan's immense wrist.
"I find it."
"Where did you find it, Ivan?"
"In a church. Priest beat up helpless nuns and Ivan save nuns and workers and they gave him watch because priest so nasty to all of them, making them give all their things to the state."
"That's not so, Ivan."
"Is so," Ivan said. "Truth. You not there, you do not know. Priest a big man and very strong and very mean. He say Chairman Brezhnev stick his thing in sheep's asses and that Mao Tsetung is good and Brezhnev bad."
"You're lying, Ivan. That's not right."
"You like Chinamen and hate Russians. You always hate. I know."
Gently, for that was the only way one dealt with Ivan, Vassilivich walked the lumbering powerhouse out of the restaurant and up the street to the Atlas Hotel and up a flight of stairs to a small room where he told Ivan that he must guard the room and not leave it. And yes, Ivan would get another medal for protecting the room, and yes, Vassilivich believed what Ivan had said. He liked Ivan. Everyone loved Ivan because now he was in charge of this very important room which he must not leave. There was drink in the refrigerator and Vassilivich would send up food.
He only realized he was nervous when, in the elevator going down, he found his hands trembling and stuffed them into the pockets of his trim Italian suit.
If he had believed in God, Colonel Vassily Vassilivich would have said a prayer. He walked down the narrow street again and turned into the motor underpass beneath the Quirinal Palace. His footsteps made hollow clicks in the tunnel. A small sporting goods store featuring ski goggles, guaranteed to be worn by Gustavo Thoeni, was still open. Vassilivich knocked five times. The door opened with a thin dark man nodding respect. Vassilivich went into the back room, windowless, with walls of unpainted cement.
Three men were at a table marking a clear, long paper. Vassilivich nodded two of them out of the room. One stayed. When they were alone, Vassilivich said, "Sir, we have trouble."
"Shhhh," said the man. He was chubby, like someone's little doll, but he was bald, and the flesh folded on his face like flaps on a poorly made valise. His eyes were small dark balls beneath salt-and-pepper brows that sprouted like timid wheat in the dry season. He wore an open-necked white shirt and a dark, expensive, striped suit that somehow looked cheap on his short, round frame.
He had the new light shoulder holster, just like Vassilivich's, except that his dangled without that flat invisibility that the holster was designed for. No matter. The man could not be underestimated. He had a mind that could solve three problems simultaneously, he spoke two foreign languages without accent, four languages fluently, and understood three more. He had what the KGB had always looked for in their commanders force. It was a thing that could be felt by experienced men. Vassilivich knew that he himself did not have it.
The Second World War had shown some men to have it. A war was the easiest proving ground for it. Peace could allow subtle intrigue to promote men without that force to positions that required it. But General Denia, sixty-four fat, balding and graying, with sloppy clothes, had it in handfuls. He was the sort of leader that men who had known great pressure would choose, if the highest echelons had not already chosen.
Now he did not want to hear of troubles. He was opening champagne for his executive officer.
"Today, we celebrate. We celebrate what I never thought we would celebrate."
"General Denia," interrupted Vassilivich.
"Do not call me that," said Denia.
"This is a safe room. There is lead lining this room."
"I say to Vassily Vassilivich, do not call me general because I am no longer a general," he said, tears clouding his eyes and the cork popping open. "I am Field Marshal Gregory Denia, and you are General Vassily Vassilivich. Yes, General, General Vassilivich. Field Marshal Denia. Drink."
"I don't understand."
"Never before have there been such victories. Never have such a small number done such great things. Drink, General Vassilivich. You too will be a hero of the Soviet Union. Drink. Back at the central committee, they talk of nothing but us."
"We have a problem, Gregory."
"Now drink. Problems later."
"Gregory, it was you who told me that the surest way to death is undue optimism or undue pessimism. We have trouble with Ivan. There will be an international incident."
"There can be no international incidents. We are the power on this continent. From Vladivostok to Calais, there is nothing but KGB. Do you not understand what we are celebrating? Have you not counted the bodies? The CIA is all but inoperative from Stockholm to Sicily. From Athens to Copenhagen, there is us and no one else."
"We are overextending ourselves, Gregory. America will do something."
"America will do
nothing. They have castrated themselves before the world,. If you think we have gotten promotions, you should see what Propaganda is getting. It's obscene. There are enough ZILs and servants floating around the Propaganda unit now to make a czar jealous. To us! The future is now."
"Nevertheless, it is impossible not to encounter some reaction from somewhere, and we will be overextended. We can no longer control Ivan, and he's not the only one. We have men setting themselves up in villas. I have not heard from three whole teams for a week."
"I give you one order and one order only, general. Attack. You have never before experienced the collapse of an enemy. I tell you, we cannot make a mistake. It is impossible."
"And I tell you, comrade field marshal, for every action there is a reaction."
"Only when there is something left to react," Denia said. "Attack." He gave the shaken Vassilivich a sloppy hands crawled list with running champagne diluting the ink in two of the names.
Vassilivich had never seen a list like this before. There were twenty-seven names. When the Sunflower was about, there would be one carefully examined and chosen name with cross descriptions, so that precisely the person designated, and no one else, would be hit. There would be practically a book on that one person. Now there was only a list with names and city addresses.
In a list drawn as sloppily as this one, at least five of the names had to be incorrect.
"This is not an adequate targeting if I may say so," said Vassilivich. He refused the glass of champagne.
"I know that," said Field Marshal Denia. "It doesn't matter. Bodies. We give the central cornmitee bodies. All they want. And you will inform Ivan that he is a major."
"Ivan is a homicidal imbecile."
"And we are homicidal geniuses," said Marshal Denia. He drank the champagne so rapidly that it spilled over his chest.
It did not take Vassilivich long to analyze the list. It included everyone in the vicinity of Italy whom the committee thought might better serve their interests by being dead, including a good halfdozen persons Vassilivich judged had probably done nothing worse than offend some KGB officer somewhere along the line. It was a garbage list. Success was doing what the American Sunflower teams had been unable to accomplish. It was destroying the skill and cunning of the Treska unit.
When Ivan Mikhailov heard he had been promoted to major he wept. He fell to his knees, his weight cracking the ceramic tile of the floors. He prayed. He thanked God, St. Lubdinasivich, and Lenin, Marx, and Stalin.
Vassilivich told him to be quiet, his voice carried. But Ivan would hear none of it. He asked God to look after Stalin and Lenin who must be in heaven now.
"We don't believe in heaven, major," said Vassilivich acidly.
"But where do you go if you are a good Communist?" asked Major Ivan Mikhailov.
"Insane," said General Vassilivich, who believed that Communism would ultimately be the best form of government for man if a few kinks could be worked out, but wondered if the kinks might not be endemic to man. This line of thought led inevitably to the conclusion that man himself might not be ready for self-government.
"Insane, major," said Vassilivich. In the room was a refrigerator stocked with small bottles of imported whiskey and fruit drinks in cans. The hotel stewards checked the refrigerators every morning and put on the bill anything that had been consumed.
Vassilivich opened a l 1/2 ounce bottle of Johnny Walker Red and made notes on the list. The names were not even coded. Just a list. They might as well have handed him random pages from a telephone directory. There were no teams at his disposal to isolate and to set up the targets. With Ivan in this state of excitement at his promotion, he might just tear down a building to get to an assignment.
Well, even if the rest of the team was going to pieces, Vassily Vassilivich was not about to betray his training. He noticed seven of the names were Italian Communists, men he personally admired.
He and Ivan would make early morning hits of two each day, waiting to hear if their descriptions were put out over the radio, and then continue until their descriptions were known, at which point they would pull out. Already, there had been descriptions issued on Team Alpha and Team Delta. In saner times they would have been withdrawn to Moscow.
He was interrupted by Ivan's crying.
"What's the matter, Ivan?"
"I am major and no one is around to order around."
"There will be plenty of people to order around back home," said Vassilivich.
"Can I order you?"
"No, Ivan."
"Once?"
"Tomorrow, Ivan."
Just outside of Rome, in the small city of Palestrina, Dr. Giuseppe Roscalli made himself morning coffee and a light breakfast cake. He sang as he took the cake out of the old iron stove with the same bunched-up cloth he used to dry the dishes. He had been one of the pillars of the Moscowites, a small faction within the Italian Communist Party which favored following the Moscow line. At least until the week before, when a former friend of his had published revelations about life in Russia, and a day later had been crushed to death in an elevator. Dr. Roscalli was sure it was murder, and he was sure the Russians were behind it. He had wildly informed the Russian consul of this and threatened exposure. He was going to denounce Moscow.
He worked the lines of his speech in his head, already hearing the applause. He would accuse Moscow of being no different from the czars, except that the czars were more incompetent and had a cross on their flags instead of a hammer and sickle.
"You who claim to be the will of the masses are the owners of the masses. You are the new slavers, the new royalty, living in splendor and opulence while your unfortunate serfs labor for pittance. You are an abomination before all thinking and progressive peoples."
He liked the word abomination. It was so fitting because what Russia had promised made its reality so much more vile. Abomination. Only an American movie actress with cotton for a brain could fail to see it. Human beings, more and more, were recognizing the Communist menace.
He heard a knock and the announcement of a package for him. He opened the door. A well-dressed man held a small box wrapped in shiny silver paper with a pink bow. The man smiled.
"Dr. Roscalli?"
"Yes, Yes." said Roscalli and a giant of a man suddenly appeared behind the gift bearer. A massive hand closed on the mouth of Dr. Roscalli. From ear to ear it covered his face. He felt a thumb like a spike press into his spine, and still seeing everything quite clearly over a finger the size of a banana, he felt the lower part of his body float off somewhere, and then, as if he were caught between Spanish castanets, the life snapped out of him.
"Put the body near the chair, Ivan," said Vassilivich.
The package also came in handy that morning for Robert Buckwhite, an American on loan to the Italian oil industry. Buckwhite was a geologist. Buckwhite also worked for the CIA. In different times, he would be considered just one of their spies, to be watched by one of Russia's spies.
Buckwhite was a relatively minor functionary who would, on his death, be replaced by another relatively minor functionary. Nothing would be gained by his death, except another name for Treska to put on the bodycount list it would send to the central committee.
So as Buckwhite returned to his home in the small town of Albano where his mistress waited, two men signaled his car to the side of the road. One had a package in a silver wrapping with a pink bow.
"Signer Buckwhite?"
Buckwhite nodded and his head did not finish the nod. His neck was shattered at the wheel.
"Take his wallet, Ivan."
"But you say we not steal."
"Right, but I wish to make it seem as if others steal."
"Can I keep wallet?"
"No. We throw it away later."
"Why take it if no keep it? Why? Why?"
"Because Stalin in heaven wants it that way," said Vassilivich.
"Oh," said Ivan.
Ivan wanted lunch. Vassilivich said lunch wou
ld have to be later because in towns where people had been crushed, big men might attract attention.
Ivan wanted to give his one order now, being a major.
Vassilivich said he could.
"I order you to have lunch now," said Ivan. "All mens to have lunch. Immediately. Is order from Major Mikhailov."
"We will follow your order later, Ivan."
"Now," said Ivan.
He had two legs of lamb in garlic butter, eating them like lamb-chops, a gallon of Chianti and twenty-seven canolis, filled with rich, sticky white cream. A team of carabiniere bristling with sidearms arrived with the twenty-seventh canoli.
They demanded to see identification. They demanded that the two men eating lunch keep their hands on the table. They demanded immediate politeness.
Ivan burped. Then he broke them like breadsticks. One got off a shot. It went into Ivan's shoulder. It had as much effect as sticking a tack into a rhino's hip. There was another shot, but this too proved woefully inadequate. It was a .22 caliber short.
In the car, Ivan picked the small slug out of his shoulder the way teenagers popped pimples on their face by pressing the flesh together. He did not calculate that the Italian policemen had been using .25 caliber weapons. He did not reason that since the Italians were using .25 calibers, the .22 short must have come from somewhere else. He did not bother to think that maybe the only man who might try to kill with a .22 short would have been General Vassily Vassilivich.
Ivan held the little bloody nuisance of a slug up to the front of the windshield, then crushed the lead flat between two giant fingers.
Vassilivich felt his bladder release and his shoes become soggy. He suggested that because Ivan's meal had been interrupted, in Rome he himself would make Ivan a meal. In a dropoff flat overlooking Via Veneto, an expensive way station for fast flight and exit, Vassilivich ordered bags of spaghetti, boxes of mushrooms, gallons of wine and a side of beef.
He had to personally select the seasoning. He went outside to a small shop and got fourteen cans of an American rat poison.
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