The Blind Spy

disappearing into the snow on either side. The generals’ identities were shown and logged by the guards. The Mercedes pulled up half a mile beyond the entrance, outside a long, low building, most of which was concealed beneath the earth.

It was Golubev, the special assistant from the prime minister’s office, who was there to meet them. A chivvying young man with a foolishly small moustache, Golubev was a product of the new, post-Soviet era. He was a politician-lawyer rather than a soldier—let alone an intelligence officer—and therefore the kind of bureaucratic ministry man who elicited little respect from either of the generals. His youth allowed no memory of the defeat in Afghanistan or even of the collapse of the entire Soviet Union two years later. Unlike the generals, Golubev looked to the future at the expense of nurturing the past and its humiliations. And, to the generals, he also looked to the future at the expense of redressing the balance that had been lost in the past twenty years since the Soviet Union collapsed. That balance—in the dreams of many like them—was the restoration of the Russian empire.

With a fussiness that disguised fears of his own, Golubev brushed imaginary dust from the lapels of his jacket, smoothed its sides, and then led the generals through cream-painted concrete corridors to an elevator that took them down four floors into the earth and finally into a brightly lit room the size of a tennis court. It was one of several operations rooms in this core SVR building and Viktorov knew it well. It was here that many undercover missions had been planned, from the wars in Chechnya to foreign assassinations in the Middle East and Europe. Long, identical tables were laid out in neat rows, each with a harsh light over it, and at a casual glance the whole space might have suggested a snooker club.

Golubev proceeded to a table near the centre of this space and pulled up two tall chairs for the generals that offered a view down onto the high table, and then one for himself, which he never sat on.

At once, Viktorov looked at several maps that had been opened on this long table. The particular map that caught his eye—it was in the centre of the table, which was at the centre of the room—was of the Soviet Union. It was a pre-1991 map, in other words, from a time before the Soviet Union had broken up. Viktorov was pleasantly surprised, as if he was looking at a recently discovered family treasure that had been uncovered in the clearing out of an old attic, and he took a greater interest. He saw another map of the period, and of equal size, next to it that was a close-up of part of the former empire. It had been titled “Little Russia,” but only by a scrawl on a yellow Post-it note stuck to the top. The name on the map itself, however, was “Ukrainian SSR.”

“When is the prime minister arriving?” Viktorov asked, looking down on Golubev from the tall seat. Golubev fidgeted uncomfortably. Viktorov was a big, muscled man, despite his age, and he took care about his appearance and his physical fitness. His eyebrows were artfully shaped to eliminate the wild-growing hairs that age had unleashed, and the skin of his face had a polished, pampered appearance. General Antonov, on the other hand, was ruddy in complexion and had allowed the hairs of his advancing age to grow like weeds in an abandoned courtyard. The one general affected a modern, careful appearance, while the other seemed to seek the virtues of a rugged lack of vanity.

“You’ll be meeting with some colleagues first,” Golubev said. “The prime minister has been detained.”

“Colleagues?” Antonov queried. “For how long?”

“Patriotiy,” Golubev replied almost mutely, as if embarrassed at the mention of this informal, almost underground group that was definitely not part of his modern Russian vision. “We are waiting for the prime minister’s call,” he added.

“Ah,” Viktorov said. “Our Patriotiy friends. That’s the reason for the map, then.” He was pleased to be meeting with fellows and, no doubt, old colleagues, too, from the Patriotiy.

Golubev didn’t reply. But the generals relaxed into their seats as the nervous ministry man ordered coffee to be brought.

The Patriotiy were the core, Viktorov ruminated as he waited for the coffee to arrive. They were the promise. They were like a rare seed, preserved in one of Russia’s frozen storage units, that guarded the planet’s ecological and agricultural future. Like these rare seeds, the Patriotiy were the guardians of Russia’s past and the hope for its future. They were the only ones left with any power who were true to the memory of their own people where Russia’s former might was concerned. And for a moment Viktorov felt a brief affinity for the GRU boss Antonov, a veteran like himself of Afghanistan.

The Patriotiy consisted mainly of these veterans from the Afghan war. Most important in this all-but-secret society of the new Russia, members of the Patriotiy didn’t believe that the loss of empire was anything other than a temporary historical mistake. In any democratic country, they would have been way outside the political process, on some semilunatic fringe. In the Russia of the twenty- first century, however, they were at the centre of power, though invisibly so to all but a few. Afghan veterans like himself and Antonov, who had risen in Putin’s Russia through the organs of the security services, the Patriotiy were now in control of several intelligence departments and government ministries and had brought their grudges of lost empire with them.

Coffee arrived, delivered by an attractive woman in uniform whom Viktorov smiled at with an avuncular look that didn’t—and didn’t intend to—disguise the lust that lurked behind it. And then the room began to fill up with a dozen or more men in their sixties or seventies and a few younger men. Most of them were in uniform, lesser generals, colonels, retired or not retired. Greetings were exchanged, old links renewed. Two more uniformed female assistants had now materialised to help Golubev distribute files to all the men. Viktorov gave his trademark smile to the woman who approached his table. He took a file and slipped a pair of reading glasses over his nose. The title in bold Cyrillic on the cover was: “Reappraisal. The Weakness of Ukraine—Political, Economic, Ethnic, and Military.”

Viktorov and the others leafed through their files without yet reading them closely. “Who wrote this?” Viktorov snapped at Golubev.

“A think tank at the Ministry of the Interior,” was the reply. “Along with some of your own intelligence staff, General.”

Behind my back, Viktorov thought. The prime minister’s mind games had begun. He snorted loudly and confidently, though whether at the words “think tank” or the fact that Interior people were in part the authors was unclear. Not that he despised the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry was one of several important ministries now controlled by the Patriotiy, and its chiefs shared the same aims as the people in the room.

For a moment, Viktorov removed his glasses and looked across the large room. He stared hard with unfocused eyes until he recognised his son, Dmitry. Or Balthasar—though only the two of them knew him by the latter name. He saw that Balthasar was talking to an older man—an officer in the Alpha Group, Viktorov thought. Viktorov couldn’t take his eyes away from his son.

Then Balthasar broke away from a brief exchange with the officer and began to make his way through the throng. He walked with expert precision around three tables and paused to nod a greeting and say a few words to two or three other men. He looked assured, smooth in his movements, somehow modern, Viktorov thought, in that his proper deference to senior men was never at the expense of his personal pride and individuality. He was a colonel—also in Department S—and was now thirty-eight years old. But in this room he was a junior.

Viktorov saw Balthasar was clearly making his way towards him. With one hand he was lifting up a chair that was in the way, while with the other he shook greetings with colleagues. He looked directly into people’s eyes.

Amazing—even now it amazed Viktorov. Such extraordinary power Balthasar had. Nobody who didn’t know him would ever have guessed that he was blind. And, knowing that he was blind, nobody would have dreamed that he could be Russia’s most senior and most-decorated intelligence field operative in all of the Muslim countries. Amazing, there was no other word for it. Sometimes his son’s strange abilities discomfited Viktorov—but there was no denying Balthasar’s extraordinary, if uniquely bizarre, powers. For not only did he have an unerring geographical relationship with the people around him and with his surroundings in general—sensing the chair, moving it easily, knowing precisely where there was a hand to be shaken, understanding exactly where to meet other’s eyes with his own sightless ones—but also, despite all of this supernatural power, to Viktorov’s mind, Balthasar’s real value was that he could do what no eye and no electronic device could do, no matter how sharp or sophisticated. He had the ability of seeing inside the minds of those he was with. He had a sixth sense and maybe—who knew?—a seventh and an eighth.

Viktorov cast his mind back thirty-nine years. The brothers of Balthasar’s mother who he, Viktorov, had rescued him from all those years ago had said he was cursed by God. This “curse” had turned out to be a most