The Blind Spy

true. There’ll never be another Burt Miller.”

It was an honest assessment, she saw, rather than simply smug self-satisfaction.

He looked at her seriously for a moment. “Anna, I’ve offered Logan the Russian and East European Desk. What do you think?”

Anna felt a chill of bewilderment, then astonishment. Logan wasn’t management material at all, in her opinion, let alone the right person to be put in charge of Cougar’s second-largest division. Over and over again, he’d shown himself to be unreliable, not even completely loyal. Burt knew this and she didn’t understand. Burt continued to give Logan chances which he always saw that Logan wasted. She found she couldn’t reply.

“It’s okay. He turned it down,” Burt said.

“Why?”

“No reason. What do you think, Anna? What do you really think?” Burt asked again.

It was unusual for Burt to ask for advice about something outside another person’s area of expertise. It was out of character and Anna’s interest was always piqued when someone—particularly someone in Burt’s all-powerful position—behaved out of character. She wondered whether to tell him what she thought, but knew that Burt only and always wanted honesty, no matter how difficult it was to hear.

“If someone rejects a part of something, it often means they want the whole,” she said. “Logan fits that model. To me anyway, Burt.”

He didn’t reply, but grinned at her, just to show he didn’t take offence. But she saw he’d filed away her remark and that it conflicted with something in him outside the logic of his usually clear thoughts.

On a wide circular table in the centre of the plane, Burt unfolded an old copy of the Wall Street Journal at the page which detailed the results of the final round of the Ukrainian elections. There was the Russian-backed candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, with his arms raised in victory. He had beaten Yulia Timoshenko by three percentage points for the presidency. There were pictures of him with a grim face even in victory—just like the politburo used to look, Anna thought. And underneath were pictures of Timoshenko with her corn-braided hair wrapped tightly, like an ornamental towel, around her head. Her face was set in defeat but she said she would contest the results. Yanukovich had received a warm welcome from the Kremlin, however, and was already forming a cabinet, with an economics minister who spoke only Russian and had no Ukrainian.

“Theo says we can take our eyes off Ukraine now,” Burt said. “It’s almost a relief to the CIA that the Kremlin stooge has won. They’d rather have a Russian proxy president than a democrat who might raise Russia’s ire.”

She didn’t reply, but read the article and saw that most of eastern Ukraine nearest Russia had voted for Yanukovich, while most of the western part of the country had voted for Timoshenko.

“Theo reckons that this result will lower tensions between Ukraine and Russia,” Burt said. “Their man got in, so that’s it, Theo says. And—wonder of wonders—they were declared free and fair elections, according to international electoral monitors. Timoshenko protests but doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” He looked across at her. “What do you think, Anna?”

She looked away and out of the window at the endless, intense blue of a sky that seemed to share nothing with events in Eastern Europe. Then she turned to him. “Why does the CIA think that?” she asked.

“Theo reckons the Russians have gotten what they want in Ukraine now. The Kremlin can relax. And therefore so can we.”

“For now, maybe. But it’s just the beginning,” she said. “A temporary respite at most, in my opinion. But what then? When the dust settles, Yanukovich may prove to be not just their ally in the Kremlin but also their Trojan horse in Kiev.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“I don’t agree with Lish and the CIA,” she said simply.

“Neither do I,” Burt replied. “I agree with you, Anna. A Trojan horse—I like it. But we’ll discuss it—the three of us—when we see Mikhail,” he said.

They were flying southwest and Anna slept for the rest of the journey. She was used to sleeping when there was any window of opportunity. In just over three hours after they’d set out they landed on the long runway at the edge of Burt’s vast ranch in northern New Mexico.

Cougar emblems decorated the watchtower—a mountain lion rampant, like some medieval jousting symbol —and they drove away from the strip towards tall Spanish-style gates that announced an intensely guarded area at the centre of the ranch. Security guards were everywhere in evidence, a small private army in the semidesert.

There were discreet, concentric circles of defence around the hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and the circular defensive lines shrank in size eventually to a sort of fortress climax at the centre, though even this was still discreet. Another Cougar emblem reared its raised paws in bas-relief on a giant bronze tableau at the inner ranch gates. And Burt’s private army, increased in size for the purpose of guarding his most prized asset—Mikhail—wore embroidered cougars on their shoulders, but were otherwise armed more effectively with MP5N machine guns. Any further Russian attempt to wrestle Mikhail from his chosen exile at Burt’s ranch was not anticipated, but, nevertheless, planned for. Burt liked to “futurise for all the eventualities,” as he put it, like a seasoned general before a battle.

They walked across the high desert gardens that separated the parking area from the house. There was snow on the distant mountains and there was a scattering down here on the mesa. A frost gripped the land and it was two degrees below zero. The desert plants and cacti, like bristling steel gun emplacements, were dug in, biding their time for the short and almost invisible burst of growth that would begin in June.

Burt withdrew an envelope from the inside of his blue, silver-buttoned blazer and held it casually in the hand that also clutched his cigar. The sun was bright in the sky, but made little difference to the temperature in the depth of winter.

He hadn’t shown Anna the message from the man who called himself “Rafael” and which he had received from the American embassy in Kiev two months before, but he had it in the envelope he was holding now and the way he held the envelope showed off its wax seal of a bird, bright red and firmly imprinted in the dried wax that had flowed outwards at its edges before it had solidified. Something told him that Mikhail—as well as providing insights into the developing situation in Ukraine—might have something to say about it.

They found Mikhail sitting on a verandah at the rear of the sprawling ranch house. The verandah was heated by a line of gas heaters, like an outdoor restaurant.

Burt’s staff were everywhere in evidence; wheeled trolleys with coffee and cold drinks stood within Mikhail’s reach; uniformed maids appeared to be polishing windows inside a drawing room behind them; and gardeners were covering the roots of shrubs with further mesh and straw against frost that lasted as late as June up here in the mountains.

Anna looked at the two gardeners who were working in her sight and saw the bulges beneath their arms. Burt didn’t just have armed guards, he had armed gardeners, too.

Mikhail was sitting in the wheelchair he’d been confined to for a year and a half now, ever since the KGB’s assassination attempt against him in a Virginia park, across the river from Washington, D.C. Anna, too, had been wounded in the firefight, the attempted abduction of Mikhail and of herself by the KGB. She’d taken a bullet in the shoulder, but, unlike Mikhail, she had made a full recovery. Despite the attention of the best doctors Burt’s bottomless fortune could provide, however, it was by now conceded—not least by Mikhail himself—that the effect of the Russian bullet that had entered his spine on that day in 2008 would not now be reversed. Only Burt’s faith in the ever-developing and banned medical technology of stem cells allowed the question to remain open. Burt never gave up his endless optimism for the prospect of Mikhail’s improvement and full recovery. Mikhail never gave up hope regardless of any situation he found himself in—whether he was to remain permanently crippled or cured—and his injury seemed to concern him less than it did Burt. It was a mere detail for Mikhail. It didn’t interfere with his brain, and that was all that seemed important to him.

They pulled up cushioned leather seats next to Mikhail. Anna kissed him on both cheeks, three times in the Russian way, and Burt raised his hand casually as if in some Hollywood Indian greeting.

“What news from the front?” Mikhail said. “Where is the front these days, anyway?”

He was a tall man; even in a wheelchair it was possible to see that. His once thick black hair had turned to grey in the eighteen months since he’d been shot. But his face was finely cut, like soft and weathered stone, and his eyes were piercing and dark. He had several newspapers opened on tables surrounding him, including the Journal.

“I believe the front is still Ukraine,” Burt said. “Never mind that Yanukovich won. But I’m apparently in a