mood, wagged an admonishing finger at Drake and confiscated the dollars. He ignored the kit bag. Sheepskin coats, it seemed, were respectable contraband; dollars were not.
The alley was empty, save for Mishkin and Lazareff walking down from one end and Drake walking up from the other. Mishkin gazed beyond Drake to the seaward end of the alley; when they were abreast he said, “Go,” and Drake hefted the kit bag onto the shoulder of Lazareff. “Good luck,” he said as he walked on, “see you in Israel.”
Sir Nigel Irvine retained membership in three clubs in the west of London, but selected Brooks’s for his dinner with Barry Ferndale and Adam Munro. By custom the serious business of the evening was left until they had quit the dining room and retired to the subscription room, where the coffee, port, and cigars were served.
Sir Nigel had asked the chief steward, called the dispense waiter, to reserve his favorite corner, near the windows looking down into St. James’s Street, and four deep leather club chairs were waiting for them when they arrived. Munro selected brandy and water; Ferndale and Sir Nigel took a decanter of the club’s vintage port and had it set on the table between them. Silence reigned while the cigars were lit, the coffee sipped. From the walls the Dilettantes, the eighteenth-century group of men-about-town, gazed down at them.
“Now, my dear Adam, what seems to be the problem?” asked Sir Nigel at last. Munro glanced to a nearby table where two senior civil servants conversed. For keen ears, they were within eavesdropping distance. Sir Nigel noticed the look.
“Unless we shout,” he observed equably, “no one is going to hear us. Gentlemen do not listen to other gentlemen’s conversations.”
Munro thought this over.
“We do,” he said simply.
“That’s different,” said Ferndale. “It’s our job.”
“All right,” said Munro. “I want to bring the Nightingale out.”
Sir Nigel studied the tip of his cigar.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Any particular reason?”
“Partly strain,” said Munro. “The original tape recording in July had to be stolen, and a blank substituted in its place. That could be discovered, and it’s preying on the Nightingale’s mind. Secondly, the chances of discovery. Every abstraction of Politburo minutes heightens this. We now know Maxim Rudin is fighting for his political life, and the succession when he goes. If the Nightingale gets careless, or is even unlucky, he could get caught.”
“Adam, that’s one of the risks of defecting,” said Ferndale. “It goes with the job. Penkovsky was caught.”
“That’s the point,” pursued Munro. “Penkovsky had provided just about all he could. The Cuban missile crisis was over. There was nothing the Russians could do to undo the damage that Penkovsky had done to them.”
“I would have thought that was a good reason for keeping the Nightingale in place,” observed Sir Nigel. “There is still an awful lot more he can do for us.”
“Or the reverse,” said Munro. “If the Nightingale comes out, the Kremlin can never know what has been passed. If he is caught, they’ll make him talk. What he can reveal now will be enough to bring Rudin down. This would seem to be the moment the West precisely would not wish Rudin to fall.”
“Indeed it is,” said Sir Nigel. “Your point is taken. It’s a question of a balance of chances. If we bring the Nightingale out, the KGB will check back for months. The missing tape will presumably be discovered, and the supposition will be that even more was passed over before he left. If he is caught, it’s even worse; a complete record of what he has passed over will be extracted from him. Rudin could well fall as a result. Even though Vishnayev would probably be disgraced also, the Castletown talks would abort. Thirdly, we keep the Nightingale in place until the Castletown talks are over and the arms-limitation agreement is signed. By then there will be nothing the war faction in the Politburo can do. It’s a teasing choice.”
“I’d like to bring him out,” said Munro. “Failing that, let him lie low, cease transmitting.”
“I’d like him to go on,” said Ferndale, “at least until the end of Castletown.”
Sir Nigel reflected on the alternative arguments.
“I spent the afternoon with the Prime Minister,” he said at length. “The P.M. made a request, a very strong request, on behalf of herself and the President of the U.S.A. I cannot at this moment turn that request down unless it could be shown the Nightingale was on the very threshold of exposure. The Americans regard it as vital to their chances of securing an all-embracing treaty at Castletown that the Nightingale keep them abreast of the Soviet negotiating position. At least until the New Year.
“So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Barry, prepare a plan to bring the Nightingale out. Something that can be activated at short notice. Adam, if the fuse begins to burn under the Nightingale’s tail, we’ll bring him out. Fast. But for the moment the Castletown talks and the frustration of the Vishnayev clique have to take first priority. Three or four more transmissions should see the Castletown talks in their final stages. The Soviets cannot delay some sort of a wheat agreement beyond February or March at the latest. After that, Adam, the Nightingale can come to the West, and I’m sure the Americans will show their gratitude in the habitual manner.”
The dinner in Maxim Rudin’s private suite in the Kremlin’s inner sanctum was far more private than that at Brooks’s in London. No confidence concerning the integrity of gentlemen where other gentlemen’s conversations are concerned has ever marred the acute caution of the men of the Kremlin. There was no one within earshot but the silent Misha when Rudin took his place in his favorite chair of the study and gestured Ivanenko and Petrov to other seats.
“What did you make of today’s meeting?” Rudin asked Petrov without preamble. The controller of the Party Organizations of the Soviet Union shrugged.
“We got away with it,” he said. “Rykov’s report was masterly. But we still have to make some pretty sweeping concessions if we want that wheat And Vishnayev is still after his war.”
Rudin grunted.
“Vishnayev is after my job,” he said bluntly. “That’s his ambition. It’s Kerensky who wants the war. He wants to use his armed forces before he’s too old.”
“Surely it amounts to the same thing,” said Ivanenko. “If Vishnayev can topple you, he will be so beholden to Kerensky he will neither be able, nor particularly wish, to oppose Kerensky’s recipe for a solution to all the Soviet Union’s problems. He will let Kerensky have his war next spring or early summer. Between them they’ll devastate everything it has taken two generations to achieve.”
“What is the news from your debriefing yesterday?” asked Rudin. He knew Ivanenko had recalled two of his most senior men from the Third World for consultations face-to-face. One was the controller of all subversive operations throughout Africa, the other his counterpart for the Middle East.
“Optimistic,” said Ivanenko. “The capitalists have screwed up their African policies for so long now, their position is virtually irrecoverable. The liberals rule still in Washington and London, at least in foreign affairs. They are so totally absorbed with South Africa, they don’t seem to notice Nigeria and Kenya at all. Both are on the verge of falling to us. The French in Senegal are proving more difficult. In the Middle East, I think we can count on Saudi Arabia’s falling within three years. They’re almost encircled.”
“Time scale?” asked Rudin.
“Within a few years—say, by 1990 at the outside—we shall effectively control the oil and the sea routes. The euphoria campaign in Washington and London is being steadily increased, and it is working.”
Rudin exhaled his smoke and stubbed the tube of his cigarette into an ashtray proffered by Misha.
“I won’t see it,” he said, “but you two will. Inside a decade the West will die of malnutrition, and we won’t have to fire a shot. All the more reason why Vishnayev must be stopped while there is still time.”
Four kilometers southwest of the Kremlin, inside a tight loop in the Moscow River and not far from the Lenin Stadium, stands the ancient monastery of Novodevichi. Its main entrance is right across the street from the principal Beriozka shop, where the rich and privileged, or foreigners, may buy for hard currency luxuries unobtainable by the common people.
The monastery grounds contain three lakes and a cemetery, and access to the cemetery is available to pedestrians. The gatekeeper will seldom bother to stop those bearing bunches of flowers.
Adam Munro parked his car In the Beriozka parking lot, among others whose number plates revealed them to belong to the privileged.
