prisoners that real soldiers had taken. They were also rather good at murdering people who'd been forced to retreat. I even remember one case where a chekist lieutenant took command of a tank troop and led it into a fucking swamp. At least the Germans I killed were men, fighting men. I hated them, but I could respect them for the soldiers they were. Your kind, on the other hand? perhaps we simple soldiers never really understood who the enemy was. Sometimes I wonder who has killed more Russians, the Germans-or people like you?'
Vatutin was unmoved. 'The traitor Penkovskiy recruited you, didn't he?'
'Rubbish! I reported Penkovskiy myself.' Filitov shrugged. He was surprised at the way he felt, but was unable to control it. 'I suppose your kind does have its use. Oleg Penkovskiy was a sad, confused man who paid the price that such men have to pay.'
'As will you,' Vatutin said.
'I cannot prevent you from killing me, but I have seen death too many times. Death has taken my wife and my sons. Death has taken so many of my comrades-and death has tried to take me often enough. Sooner or later death will win, whether from you or someone else. I have forgotten how to fear that.'
'Tell me, what do you fear?'
'Not you.' This was delivered not with a smile, but with a cold, challenging glare.
'But all men fear something,' Vatutin observed. 'Did you fear combat?' Ah, Misha, you're talking too much now. Do you even know that?
'Yes, at first. The first time a shell hit my T-34, I wet my pants. But only that first time. After that I knew that the armor would stop most hits. A man can get accustomed to physical danger, and as an officer you are often too busy to realize that you're supposed to be afraid. You fear for the men under your command. You fear failure in a combat assignment, because others depend on you. You always fear pain-not death, but pain.' Filitov surprised himself by talking this much, but he'd had enough of this KGB slug. It was almost like the frenetic excitement of combat, sitting here and dueling with this man.
'I have read that all men fear combat, but that what sustains them is their self-image. They know that they cannot let their comrades perceive them to be less than what they are supposed to be. Men, therefore, fear cowardice more than danger. They fear betraying their manhood, and their fellow soldiers.' Misha nodded slightly. Vatutin pressed one of the buttons under the table. 'Filitov, you have betrayed your men. Can't you see that? Don't you understand that in giving defense secrets to the enemy, you have betrayed all the men who served with you?'
'It will take more than your words to-' The door opened quietly. The young man who entered wore dirty, greasy coveralls, and wore the ribbed helmet of a tank crewman. All the details were right: there was a trailing wire for the tank's interphones, and the powerful smell of powder came into the room with the young man. The coverall was torn and singed. His face and hands were bandaged. Blood dripped down from the covered eye, clearing a trail through the grime. And he was the living image of Aleksey Ilych Romanov, Corporal of the Red Army, or as close to it as the KGB could manage in one frantic night's effort.
Filitov didn't hear him enter, but turned as soon as he noticed the smell. His mouth dropped open in shock.
'Tell me, Filitov,' Vatutin said. 'How do you think your men would react if they learned what you have done?'
The young man-he was in fact a corporal who worked for a minor functionary in the Third Directorate-did not say a word. The chemical irritant in his right eye was making it water, and while the youngster struggled not to grimace at the pain it caused him, the tears ran down his cheeks. Filitov didn't know that his meal had been drugged-so disoriented was he by his stay in Lefortovo that he no longer had the ability to register the things that were being done to him. The caffeine had induced the exact opposite of a drunken state.
His mind was as wide awake as it had been in combat, all his senses sought input, noticed everything that was happening around him-but all through the night there had been nothing to report. Without data to pass on, his senses had begun making things up, and Filitov had been hallucinating when the guards had come to fetch him. In Vatutin he had a target on which to fix his psyche. But Misha was also tired, exhausted by the routine to which he had been subjected, and the combination of wakefulness and bone-crushing fatigue had placed him in a dreamlike state where he no longer had the ability to distinguish the real from the imaginary.
'Turn around, Filitov!' Vatutin boomed. 'Look at me when I address you! I asked you a question: What of all the men who served you?'
'Who-'
'Who? The men you led, you old fool!'
'But-' He turned again, and the figure was gone.
'I've been looking through your file, all those citations you wrote for your men-more than most commanders. Ivanenko here, and Pukhov, and this Corporal Romanov. All the men who died for you, what would they think now?'
'They would understand!' Misha insisted as the anger took over completely.
'What would they understand? Tell me now, what is it that they would understand?'
'Men like you killed them-not I, not the Germans, but men like you!'
'And your sons, too, eh?'
'Yes! My two handsome sons, my two strong, brave boys, they went to follow in my footsteps and-'
'Your wife, too?'
'That above all!' Filitov snarled back. He leaned forward across the table. 'You have taken everything from me, you chekist bastard-and you wonder that I needed to fight back at you? No man has served the State better than I, and look at my reward, look at the gratitude of the Party. All that was my world you have taken away, and you say that I have betrayed the Rodina, do you? You have betrayed her, and you have betrayed me!'
'And because of that, Penkovskiy approached you, and because of that you have been feeding information to the West-you've fooled us all these years!'
'It is no great thing to fool the likes of you!' He pounded his fist on the table. 'Thirty years, Vatutin, thirty years I have-I have-' He stopped, a curious look on his face, wondering what he had just said.
Vatutin took his time before speaking, and when he did so, his voice was gentle. 'Thank you. Comrade Colonel. That is quite enough for now. Later we will talk about exactly what you have given the West. I despise you for what you have done, Misha. I cannot forgive or understand treason, but you're the bravest man I have ever met. I hope that you can face what remains of your life with equal bravery. It is important now that you face yourself and your crimes as courageously as you faced the fascisti, so that your life can end as honorably as you lived it.' Vatutin pressed a button and the door opened. The guards took Filitov away, still looking back at the interrogator, more surprised than anything else. Surprised that he'd been tricked. He'd never understand how it had been done, but then they rarely did, the Colonel of the Second Chief Directorate told himself. He rose, too, after a minute, collecting his files in a businesslike way before he walked out of the room and upstairs.
'You would have been a fine psychiatrist,' the doctor observed first of all.
'I hope the tape machines got all of that,' Vatutin said to his technicians.
'All three, plus the television record.'
'That was the hardest one I've ever come across,' a major said.
'Yes, he was a hard one. A brave one. Not an adventurer, not a dissident. That one was a patriot-or that's what the poor bastard thought he was. He wanted to save the country from the Party.' Vatutin shook his head in wonderment. 'Where do they get such ideas?'
Your Chairman, he reminded himself, wants to do much the same thing-or more accurately to save the country for the Party. Vatutin leaned against the wall for a moment while he tried to decide how similar or how different the motivation was. He concluded quickly that this was not a proper thought for a simple counterintelligence officer. At least not yet. Filitov got his ideas from the clumsy way the Party treated his family. Well, even though the Party says it never makes mistakes, we all know differently. What a pity that Misha couldn't make that allowance. After all, the Party is all we have.
'Doctor, make sure he gets some rest,' he said on the way out. There was a car waiting for him.
Vatutin was surprised to see that it was morning. He'd allowed himself to focus too fully these last two days, and he'd thought that it would be nighttime. So much the better, though: he could see the Chairman right now. The really amazing part was that he was actually on a fairly normal schedule. He could go home tonight and get a normal night's sleep, reacquaint himself with wife and family, watch some television. Vatutin smiled to himself. He
