didn’t seem enough.
The embassy mess was in the basement, the ceiling-level windows taped against bomb blasts and with defensive sandbags beyond after the repeated guerilla mortar attacks. The air conditioning was broken, as it always was, and the stale air was thick with tobacco smoke and body odour. There was the obligatory portrait of Gorbachov on the inner wall, as far away as possible from any attack damage, and posters of Black Sea holiday resorts and of Red Square during the May Day parade of two years before, showing the pass-by of SS-22 missiles.
Solov was holding court at his accustomed table, close to the serving hatch, with the other three senior officers in the rezidentura – Gusev, Bunin and Anishenko – in obedient attendance. They all had their jackets off and their collars loosened, because of the heat, but they were all sweating, adding to the smell of the room. Yuri, who was still considered junior from the newness of his posting, did not intend to join them but as he went to the hatch Solov thrust a chair away from the table with his foot and said: ‘Sit down.’
It was more an order than an invitation and Yuri guessed the men were drunk: because of his father’s changed position within the KGB the attitude had for the past few weeks been more cautious. Yuri sat but brought his own beer to the table, shaking his head against their offer to share the diminishing bottle of vodka. Another stupid celebration to imagined triumphs to come, he decided.
‘The GRU rezidentura is being scaled down,’ announced Solov. ‘They’re only replacing with ten embassy officers, not fifteen like before. Less than half the field agents, too.’
The controller spoke proudly, as if he were personally responsible for the continued demotion. Taunting, Yuri said: ‘It’s a recognized algebraic equation: one KGB man equals two GRU.’
‘Bloody right,’ slurred Gusev. ‘Right every time.’
Fool, thought Yuri. The alcohol heightened Gusev’s blood pressure, so that he appeared almost cosmetically made up. Yuri said: ‘When are they arriving?’
‘Beginning tomorrow,’ said Anishenko.
‘Officer in charge is named Nikandrov, Anatoli Nikandrov,’ further disclosed Solov. ‘Being transferred from Vienna.’
Poor bastard, thought Yuri: coming from Austria to Afghanistan would be like arriving from another planet. The amount of information his superior officers appeared to possess could only mean that during the withdrawal of the military intelligence personnel the KGB had managed to get a tie-line into the restricted GRU telex and cable channels normally precluded to them. He wondered how long it would take for the GRU to discover and remove it. Not too long, he guessed: they were stupid, each of these men sitting and sweating and smelling around him, to boast so openly. He said: ‘They will be cautious after what happened.’
‘Just as long as they don’t get in our way,’ said Bunin.
‘We’ll walk all over them!’ goaded Yuri.
‘Bloody right,’ said Gusev, his mind jammed on replay.
‘Prove to everyone why we’ve been given the responsibility!’ said Yuri, cheerleading like the muezzin in the mosques outside.
‘Prove it like no one will believe!’ endorsed Solov.
Yuri hesitated, curiously, unsure if the remark were anything more than braggadocio buoyed up on a sea of alcohol. He’d been idly amusing himself, prodding their stupid reaction. More intently now, Yuri said: ‘Hararajat showed the mujahideen aren’t to be underestimated: it’s important not to forget that.’
‘It’s important for the mujahideen to be shown that the KGB is not to be underestimated, either. Or forget it,’ said Solov, and Bunin laughed.
Eyes-Only traffic, remembered Yuri. He said: ‘I have things to do here in the compound. But I would consider it an honour to buy you another bottle of vodka: this one is exhausted.’
‘And we would consider it a pleasure to accept,’ sniggered Anishenko.
Russian tradition dictated that Yuri, although a departing host, should accept the initial toast.
‘Socialism!’ proposed Solov.
‘Socialism,’ echoed everyone, including Yuri, who said it dutifully. The vodka was cheap and harsh to his throat: Russian style, each man emptied his glass in one gulp.
Yuri made to rise but Solov waved him down, refilling the glasses. ‘To the Cheka,’ toasted the rezident, calling the KGB by the name by which it has traditionally been known from the time of Feliks Dzerzhinsky’s inception, and by which they still privately referred to themselves, boasting their membership of a special club.
‘The Cheka,’ intoned everyone around the table.
Yuri used the internal telephone in the main lobby of the compound and Ilena answered after the second ring, as if she had been expecting the call.
‘I wanted it to be you,’ she said.
‘I’m lonely,’ said Yuri. And inquisitive, he thought.
‘So am I.’
‘The Bolshoi, the State Circus or just a quiet dinner at the Aragvi?’ said Yuri. The Aragvi, on the Ulitza Gor’kovo, served the best Georgian food in Moscow. It had been one of Yuri’s favourite restaurants, with a table always available because of whose son he was.
She giggled, responding to the irony, and said: ‘Why don’t we eat in, just to be different for once?’
‘Maybe some lamb?’
‘And I’ve got lamb! What a coincidence!’
What were the Muslems going to do when they’d eaten all the sheep in the world, wondered Yuri. Camel maybe? He said: ‘Looks like lamb for a change then.’
‘What about afterwards?’ said the woman coquettishly.
‘We can talk about this and that,’ said Yuri, another remark for his own benefit. The woman misunderstood, of course, and laughed.
Victor Kazin savoured the intrigue he was initiating and was sure of winning. He felt like one of the jugglers at the State Circus, keeping more and more coloured balls in the air until it was difficult to see how many there were aloft at any one time. No, he corrected, at once. Not a juggler. Not a clever enough analogy. A chess player. Grand master class, all the pieces set out, a classic game already formulated in his mind and Malik without any defence. Agayans, he decided, was definitely a pawn. Fittingly the first move then. The Directorate security man, Major Panchenko, had soon to be introduced defensively into the game. A rook perhaps. What about the brat of a son? Another pawn. And Yevgennie Levin? A knight, maybe: possibly a king, eventually. Certainly the piece to be moved next.
Kazin snorted contemptuously at Vladislav Belov’s recommendation that the operation be delayed because Levin’s daughter was here in Moscow undergoing medical treatment. It had been one of Stalin’s most basic principles that people performed better under the pressure of retribution if they failed. Old styles – old practices – were still the best.
He signed the authorization, because it was essential this operation was one with which he should be provably linked, and marked it for immediate transmission to America.
The Central Intelligence Agency weren’t just going to be thrown into turmoil, reflected Kazin, remembering further his conversation with Belov. They were going to be wrecked.
4
Moscow’s signal, activating the mission for which most of his operational life had been spent in preparation, bewildered Yevgennie Levin. Galina had always been part of it and was prepared but the children, Natalia and Petr, were always going to be confused, unknowing. Which the planning had allowed for with the positive agreement that they would remain together, as a family, never divided. So the signal coming when Natalia was in Moscow was nonsense!
Levin’s was a cell-like room, a small box within a bigger box at the United Nations headquarters, but his seniority at least gave him a view of the East River. A linked line of barges, flat in the water, made a disjointed, arthritic line downstream in the direction of the unseen Statue of Liberty and the sea beyond, pushed officiously by a
