and athletics were high and she became a capable wireless operator and excellent photographer. She also had her first lover, her small-arms instructor who was runner up in the Soviet Rifle Championships. Anya became an excellent pistol shot.
Up to now, all her training had been in the Soviet Union. But with the termination of her course at STD she was sent to work at an Avanpost in Czechoslovakia. These mobile operation groups were engaged in surveying and, where necessary, liquidating Russian spies and party workers in the satellite countries. Anya’s work in this sector had been beyond reproach although it was noted on her zapiska that she had always delegated the act of execution.
Upon recall to Moscow, Anya had been given the rank of Major and assigned to Military Records where she was granted access to the files on all military personnel below the rank of General or equivalent. In conjunction with other departments of SMERSH she was responsible for the vital character assessment that preceded any promotion or demotion. She had written copious and highly detailed reports and as a result of her conscientiousness - although she was unaware of it - three men and a woman had been hanged with fine wire. A death for traitors that Stalin had borrowed from Hitler.
The bizarre course from which she had just been summoned was one that united several branches of the ever-expanding octopus of SMERSH, and it was here that she had met Sergei Borzov for the first time. He had been reticent about his role in the organization, as had she. It was never wise to talk too much) and dangerous to ask questions.
One of the two sentries outside Number 13 bent down to open the door of the car and his sub-machine gun banged against it clumsily. The driver began to protest about his paintwork and then stopped abruptly when the sentry looked at him. Anybody involved with SMERSH was to be feared. Anya left the car and walked up the broad flight of steps leading to the big iron double door. She continued to feel uneasy.
At first glance the large olive-green room on the second floor could have been mistaken for a government office anywhere in the world. The floor was fitted with finest quality carpet and a large oak desk dominated one end of the room. Two spacious windows gave on to a courtyard at the back of the building and were fringed by heavy brocade curtains. On one wall was a large portrait of Brezhnev surrounded by a thin border of faded wallpaper which indicated where an even larger portrait of Stalin had once hung.
On the desk were two wire-frame baskets marked IN and OUT, a heavy glass ashtray, a carafe of water and tumblers and four telephones. One of the telephones was marked in white with the letters V. Ch. These letters stood for
‘Ah, Major Amasova. Come and sit down.’ The warmth in the man’s voice surprised Anya. She had only met him on three occasions when answering questions about reports she had submitted.
Colonel-General Nikitin, the Head of SMERSH, was standing behind his desk and extending a hand towards a straight- backed red leather chair. He was a tall man dressed in a crisply pressed khaki tunic with a high collar, and dark blue cavalry trousers with two thin red stripes down the side. The trousers disappeared into riding boots of black, highly polished leather. On the breast of the tunic were three rows of medal ribbons - two Orders of Lenin, Order of Alexander Nevsky, Order of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Red Star, the Twenty Years* Service Medal and a ribbon that Anya did not recognize. It must belong to the newly struck Sino-Soviet Friendship Medal. Anya remembered the colours so that she could look it up when she got back to Military Records. Above the rows of ribbons hung the gold star of a Hero of the Soviet Union.
‘I apologize for my late appearance, Comrade General. You heard of the technical problems with the Ilyushin?’
Nikitin held up a peremptory hand that told her that her question was unnecessary. ‘I was informed.’ He paused and looked hard into her face. ‘How was the course?’
Anya was thrown by the suddenness of the question. It redoubled her fears that she had been summoned because of her relationship with Sergei. She could feel herself blushing. For the first time she wondered if his mission might have been engineered to separate them.
‘Very interesting, Comrade General.’
‘Very interesting?’ General Nikitin smiled. His face was rough and calloused, like a potato left to dry in the sun, but the eyes could have been prised from a week old corpse. There was no visible sign of life behind them.
Anya felt her blush deepen. ‘It was a most unusual and unexpected assignment.’
‘Which you took the fullest advantage of.’
Somewhere, in a distant corner of the room, a blue-bottle was beating against a window pane. A furious, high-pitched buzz and then silence for ten seconds. Then the buzzing starting again. Nikitin was still probing her with his cold, lustreless eyes.
‘The scope of the course came as a surprise to me.’ This was if anything an understatement. The movement order assigning her to the dacha on the south-eastern coast of the Crimea had confined itself to the words ‘Cold War Techniques’. It had come as considerably more than a surprise on the first morning of the course, in the company of twenty attractive young men and women, to be confronted by a folder with ‘Sex as a Weapon’ printed in bold letters on its shiny cover. What followed had been a revelation. Lectures, films, demonstrations, what was discreetly described as ‘Controlled Participation’ with electrodes attached to various parts of the body to measure the degree of response, tests, more measurements, interviews, instruction in the latest cosmetics available in the west and how to apply them, a course in haute couture. Military Records had suddenly seemed like a different world. Anya’s final rating had been ‘E Sensual’, which she knew meant that she made love well and enjoyed it. Despite every laboratory test that the scientists could devise her emotional stability had remained an unknown quantity. The private report which she did not see said that she had exceptional potential but with an element of risk attached to it.
And in the middle of all this she had fallen in love. It must have been that to which Colonel General Nikitin had been referring with his talk of taking the fullest advantage. Suddenly she felt a rush of anger. What right did they have to tell her if she could love or not? Was she to be punished because amongst all the guile and artifice, the antiseptic passion and the throbbing wires she had found something that could never be contained in any tawdry manual of eroticism? She stared back into Nikitin’s soulless eyes with a new determination.
The Colonel-General nodded as if in agreement with some sentiment that needed no expression. ‘He was a fine young man. One of our best operatives.’ He studied her wondering face. ‘Your’ - a slight pause - ‘relationship could not escape notice.
Anya felt alarmed. What did he mean - ‘was’?
‘And up to now, conspicuously efficient. It just shows how these affairs of the heart can affect people.’
‘What do you mean?’ Anya saw the pinpoint of red behind the eyes and corrected herself. ‘What do you mean, Comrade General?’
Nikitin rcached into a drawer and produced a small, rectangular scrap of paper. A light was extinguished before he opened his mouth.
‘I very much regret to inform you that Comrade Sergei Borzov was killed on active service behind enemy lines. I have just heard the news.’ He listened to the girl’s short intake of breath, then dropped his hand to switch off the tape-recorder below the desk.
With unusual haste, the general levered himself from his chair and circumvented the desk. ‘You must not blame yourself too much, my dear. Others might read more into the whole business than it warrants but you can rely upon me to keep an open mind. If Sergei’s judgment was at fault it was not because of you - because of your, your affair.’ The General seemed pleased at having found the word. ‘You are young and very beautiful, and you have need of guidance - of protection. You need a friend who is well placed. Especially at the moment.’ The rough hand dropped to her knee like a paw.
‘Where did he die?’
‘In the French Alps. He was on a mission to eliminate a British agent. He failed.’ With the recorder turned off, Nikitin was letting the words tumble out. His eyes had found life from somewhere and they glistened as he watched his hand push up her skirt like a burrowing animal.
