The sergeant was only twenty or so, but wore a heavy greatcoat and carried a rifle and ammo belt. Within two hundred meters, Gennady heard him puffing.
'Here, Comrade Colonel,' the young man gasped a minute later.
'You should not smoke so much, Sergeant,' Bondarenko observed. 'What the hell is going on here?' a KGB lieutenant asked from behind his desk.
'Your sergeant challenged me. I am Colonel G. I. Bondarenko, and I am doing my morning run.'
'In Western clothing?'
'What the hell do you care what clothes I wear when I exercise?' Idiot, do you think spies jog?
'Colonel, I am the security watch officer. I do not recognize you, and my superiors have not made me aware of your presence.'
Gennady reached into another pocket and handed over his special visitors pass, along with his personal identification papers. 'I am a special representative of the Ministry of Defense. The purpose of my visit is not your concern. I am here on the personal authority of Marshal of the Soviet Union D. T. Yazov. If you have any further questions, you may call him directly at that number!'
The KGB Lieutenant scrupulously read the identification documents to make sure they said what he'd been told.
'Please excuse me, Comrade Colonel, but we have orders to take our security provisions seriously. Also, it is out of the ordinary to see a man in Western clothes running at dawn.'
'I gather that it is out of the ordinary for your troops to run at all,' Bondarenko noted dryly.
'There is hardly room on this mountaintop for a proper regime of physical training, Comrade Colonel.'
'Is that so?' Bondarenko smiled as he took out a notebook and pencil. 'You claim to take your security duties seriously, but you do not meet norms for physical training of your troops. Thank you for that piece of information, Comrade Lieutenant. I will discuss that matter with your commanding officer. May I go?'
'Technically, I have orders to provide escort for all official visitors.'
'Excellent. I like to have company when I run. Will you be so kind as to join me, Comrade Lieutenant?'
The KGB officer was trapped, and knew it. Five minuted later, he was puffing like a landed fish.
'What is your main security threat?' Bondarenko asked him-maliciously, since he did not slow down.
'The Afghan border is one hundred eleven kilometers that way,' the Lieutenant said between wheezes. 'They have occasionally sent some of their bandit raiders into Soviet territory, as you may have heard.'
'Do they make contact with local citizens?'
'Not that we have established, but that is a concern. The local population is largely Muslim.' The Lieutenant started coughing. Gennady stopped.
'In air this cold, I have found that wearing a mask helps,' he said. 'It warms the air somewhat before you breathe it. Straighten up and breathe deeply, Comrade Lieutenant. If you take your security provisions so seriously, you and your men should be in proper physical shape. I promise you that the Afghans are. Two winters ago I spent time with a Spetznaz team that chased them over a half dozen miserable mountains. We never did catch them.' But they caught us, he didn't say. Bondarenko would never forget that ambush
'Helicopters?'
'They cannot always fly in bad weather, my young Comrade, and in my case we were trying to establish that we, too, could fight in the mountains.'
'Well, we have patrols out every day, of course.'
It was the way he said it that bothered Bondarenko, and the Colonel made a mental note to check that out. 'How far have we run?'
'Two kilometers.'
'The altitude does make things difficult. Come, we will walk back.'
The sunrise was spectacular. The blazing sphere edged above a nameless mountain to the east, and its light marched down the nearer slopes, chasing the shadows into the deep, glacial valleys. This installation was no easy objective, even for the inhuman barbarians of the Mudjaheddin. The guard towers were well sited, with clear fields of fire that extended for several kilometers. They didn't use searchlights out of consideration for the civilians who lived here, but night-vision devices were a better choice in any case, and he was sure that the KGB troops used those. And-he shrugged-site security wasn't the reason he'd been sent down, though it was a fine excuse to needle the KGB security detail.
'May I ask how you obtained your exercise clothing?' the KGB officer asked when he was able to breathe properly.
'Are you a married man, Comrade Lieutenant?'
'Yes, I am, Comrade Colonel.'
'Personally, I do not question my wife on where she buys her birthday presents for me. Of course, I am not a chekist.' Bondarenko did a few deep knee-bends to show that he was, however, a better man.
'Colonel, while our duties are not quite the same, we both serve the Soviet Union. I am a young, inexperienced officer, as you have already made quite clear. One of the things that disturbs me is the unnecessary rivalry between the Army and the KGB.'
Bondarenko turned to look at the Lieutenant. 'That was well said, my young Comrade. Perhaps when you wear general's stars, you will remember the sentiment.'
He dropped the KGB Lieutenant back at the guard post and walked briskly back to the apartment block, the morning breeze threatening to freeze the sweat on his neck. He went inside and took the elevator up. Not surprisingly, there was no hot water for his shower this early in the morning. The Colonel endured it cold, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep, shaved and dressed before walking over to the canteen for breakfast.
He didn't have to be at the Ministry until nine, and on the way was a steam bath. One of the things Filitov had learned over the years was that nothing could chase away a hangover and clear your head like steam. He'd had enough practice. His sergeant drove him to the Sandunovski Baths on Kuznetskiy Most, six blocks from the Kremlin. It was his usual Wednesday morning stop in any case. He was not alone, even this early. A handful of other probably important people trudged up the wide marble steps to the second floor's first-class (not called that now, of course) facilities, since thousands of Moscovites shared with the Colonel both his disease and its cure. Some of them were women, and Misha wondered if the female facilities were very different from those he was about to use. It was strange. He'd been coming here since he joined the Ministry in 1943, and yet he'd never gotten a peek into the women's section. Well, I am too old for that now.
His eyes were bloodshot and heavy as he undressed. Naked, he took a heavy bath towel from the pile at the end of the room, and a handful of birch branches. Filitov breathed the cool, dry air of the dressing room before opening the door that led to the steam rooms. The once-marble floor was largely replaced now with orange tiles. He could remember when the original floor had been nearly intact.
Two men in their fifties were arguing about something, probably politics. He could hear their rasping voices above the hiss of steam coming off the hotbox that occupied the center of the room. Misha counted five other men, their heads stooped over, each of them enduring a hangover in grumpy solitude. He selected a seat in the front row, and sat.
'Good morning, Comrade Colonel,' a voice said from five meters away.
'And to you, Comrade Academician,' Misha greeted his fellow regular. His hands were wrapped tightly around his bundle of branches while he waited for the sweat to begin. It didn't take long-the room temperature was nearly one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit. He breathed carefully, as the experienced ones did. The aspirins he'd taken with his morning tea were beginning to work, though his head was still heavy and the sinuses around his eyes swollen. He swatted the branches across his back, as though to exorcize the poisons from his body.
'And how is the Hero of Stalingrad this morning?' the academic persisted.
'About as well as the genius of the Ministry of Education.' This drew a painful laugh. Misha never could remember his name? Ilya Vladimirovich Somethingorother. What sort of fool could laugh during a hangover? The man drank because of his wife, he said. You drink to be free of her, do you? You boast of the times you've fucked your secretary, when I would trade my soul for one more look at Elena's face. And my sons' faces, he told himself. My two handsome sons. It was well to remember these things on such mornings.
'Yesterday's Pravda spoke of the arms negotiations,' the man persisted. 'Is there hope for progress?'
'I have no idea,' Misha replied.
An attendant came in. A young man, perhaps twenty-five or so and short. He counted heads in the
