THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD; I SHALL NOT WANT. HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES: HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.
HE RESTORETH MY SOUL: HE LEADETH ME IN THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HIS NAME’S SAKE.
YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL; FOR THOU ART WITH ME; THY ROD ANDTHY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.
The message left for him at all ten trigger points was the same. Found the novel by B. that you are looking for. 703-482-5555. It was ten at night, and the weather had turned bitterly cold. Standing on the street corner making his calls to Paris he’d become thoroughly chilled.
Hurrying back to his room at the Hotel Le Rivage on the Loiret River, he didn’t know if he’d ever be warm again.
He’d cocked the hammer and the gun had been fired. Not just once, but at every one of his markers. And so soon the speed took his breath away.
But the response was nothing more than he’d asked for. It was a U.S. number, and the area code was for Langley, Virginia. Presumably the CIA.
Alone, as he had been for several years, Nikolayev tried to sort out his mixed emotions. With no one to go to for advice, making up his mind seemed more difficult than it used to be. He was a Libra. The scales of justice. Sympathetic to both sides of every issue.
Indecisive, his wife would have said.
The fact of the matter was that he had worked for General Baranov. He had been a Department Viktor boy. Mokrie dela. Wet affairs. The spilling of blood. But even though they’d all mouthed the patriotic slogans: Long Live the Worker; Down with the Bourgeoisie; The Workers’
Paradise Is at Hand, no one believed such nonsense in their heart of hearts. Look around at the dull, gray, drab cities, if you wanted the proof. Look at the cheerless kollectivs. Think about their dreary existence. But Baranov had offered them a chance to escape. A chance to make a difference in the world. A Russian difference.
Thirty years later they were still picking up the pieces of BaranoVs obsessions. Once started down any path the general could never be turned away.
Over too many vodkas one night he’d told a few friends that he was like the American writer Steinbeck’s motivational donkey. The jackass with the carrot dangling in front of his nose. No matter how hard the donkey tries to reach the carrot he will never succeed. But in the trying the donkey will move the cart forward.
All the names on the Martyrs list were Baranov’s carrots; his obsessions. Now, even after his death, the carrots still dangled, and the donkeys still moved forward.
In this case it was a deadly insanity.
Collectively, Department Viktor had been guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity. But individually each First Chief Directorate employee was guilty of nothing more than doing his or her job to the best of his or her ability. Come to work at seven to have a good breakfast for kopecks on the ruble in the Lubyanka cafeteria; work at a desk until noon when it was time for the second meal of the day downstairs; then back to work until five, when it was home to vodka.
Nikolayev stopped in the deeper shadows across the rue de la Reine Blanche from his hotel and studied the front entrance. The few cars that passed did not linger, nor did the two couples walking arm in arm entering the small hotel seem suspicious. His messages had been found and responded to. But no one had come here. Yet. Up in his small, but pleasantly furnished room he retrieved the first of the three CDs that he had prepared during the several months of his exile from Moscow. They, along with his laptop, a few items of clothing and his heart medicine, which was almost all gone, were all he’d taken from the farmhouse outside Montoire. After Paris it was too dangerous for him to stay there. The concierge was off duty at this hour, but the night clerk phoned for a cab to take him to the nightclub L’Empereur, a few kilometers away down in Orleans. On the ground floor was the bar, one dining room and the dance floor. Upstairs was another, smaller, more intimate dining room, and in front overlooking the street were eight or ten tables, each with its own computer and Internet connection. The charm of the place, for Nikolayev's purposes, was that L’Empereur’s Internet connections went through an anonymous re mailer in the Czech Republic. You could chat to anyone about anything on-line and no one could tell where you were actually located. It was very private, very discreet. He paid the deposit for the computer time, which amounted to the cost of the two-drink minimum, and within a couple of minutes was seated at one of the machines waiting for it to boot up while he stared down at the busy street. France was truly one of the last egalitarian nations. You could be anybody, hold any belief religious or political be of any sexual persuasion and still be welcome in France providing you broke no French laws and paid French taxes if you had an income.
The international reverse directory listed the telephone number as an “Information Blocked,” entry. It was about what Nikolayev expected if the number was a CIA listing. He had the computer place the call. It was answered on the first ring by a machine-generated man’s voice.
“You got my message and now you want to talk. First you need to verify your identity. You are in possession of data that is of interest to us. Send it now. You may follow up in twenty-four hours. If the information is not valid, this number will no longer be answered.” The logo of the Central Intelligence Agency came up on the screen briefly, followed by Nikolayev’s old KGB identification number.
The screen went blank, and a computer connection tone warbled from the speakers.
The fact of the matter was that they were all guilty of Baranov’s crimes. They were all willing participants in his grand schemes. Now, after all these years, he wasn’t going to be allowed his peaceful retirement. His wife was gone, and soon so would his own life be forfeit unless he did something. He was just a frightened old man, but he didn’t want to leave this kind of legacy.
There’d been enough killing in his lifetime. Rivers of blood had been spilled. Enough was finally enough.
Nikolayev brought up the CD drive and pressed the enter key. The computers connected, and within thirty seconds the contents of his disk had been transferred.
He broke the connection, retrieved his disk and headed back to his hotel to wait, not at all sure where he was headed or what the outcome would be.
Hurrying down the aisle between the machines to his office, Otto felt like the French mime Marcel Marceau. He was caught in an invisible box. He could feel the walls and ceiling with his hands, even though he couldn’t see them. And then the box began to shrink. At first he had room to move, but inexorably the collapsing walls began to restrict his movements, making it nearly impossible to do anything, even breathe. In the end he was pressed into a tight little ball of arms and legs, his wide eyes looking out at the world from a cage that was killing him. Someone was in his office looking at the displays on his monitors. He was wearing a gray suit. His broad back was to the door.
“Now who the hell are you?” Otto demanded. “And what the fuck are you doing here?” The man turned around. He wasn’t anyone Otto knew. He was big, like a football player, but he was smiling pleasantly. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, Mr. Rencke. But we need just a few minutes of your time downstairs. If you don’t mind.” “I do mind,”
Otto shot back. “Downstairs where? Who are you?” “Roger Hartley, sir. Internal Affairs. It’s about the air force. They’re usually slow on the uptake, but they’ve sent us a bill. For the Aurora flight.”
Hartley shook his head in amazement. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“You authorized the flight, sir,” Hartley said sternly.
“Have Finance pay it.”
“How shall we log it? The flight has to be tagged to a current operation. And there was supposed to be a second signature “
“Special Operation Spotlight,” Otto practically shouted. These kinds of things were never handled this way. They went through channels. He wanted to turn and run away. His ability to control someone was inversely proportional to that person’s IQ. He was frightened of the goons.
