Red Rabbit

finding a good Turk to do the shooting. For that they had to depend on the Bulgars. Just how good were their clandestine services? Rozhdestvenskiy had never worked directly with them, and knew them only by reputation. That reputation was not entirely good. They reflected their government, which was cruder and more thuggish than Moscow, not very kulturniy, but he supposed that was partly Russian chauvinism on the KGB’s part. Bulgaria was Moscow’s little brother, politically and culturally, and big brother-little brother thinking was inescapable. They just had to be good enough to have decent contacts in Turkey, and that meant just one good intelligence officer, preferably one trained in Moscow. There would be a lot of those, and KGB’s own academy would have the necessary records. The Sofia rezident might even know him personally.

This theoretical exercise was shaping up, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy thought to himself, with some degree of pride. So he still knew how to set up a good field operation, despite having become a headquarters drone. He smiled as he stubbed out his smoke. Then he lifted his white phone and dialed 111 for the Chairman’s office.

Chapter 8. The Dish

“Thank you, Aleksey Nikolay’ch.That is a most interesting concept. So, how do we move forward, then?”

“Comrade Chairman, we have Rome keep us updated on the Pope’s schedule—as far in advance as possible. We do not let them know of the existence of any operation. They are merely a source of information. When the time comes, we might wish for one of their officers to be in the area merely to observe, but it is better for all concerned that Goderenko knows as little as possible.”

“You do not trust him?”

“No, Comrade Chairman. Excuse me; I did not mean to give that impression. But the less he knows, the less he might ask questions or inadvertently ask things of his personnel that might tip matters off, even innocently. We choose our Chiefs of Station for their intelligence, for their ability to see things where others do not. Should he sense that something is happening, his professional expertise might compel him at least to keep watch—and that might impede the operation.”

“Freethinkers,” Andropov snorted.

“Can it be any other way?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked reasonably. “There is always that price when you hire men of intelligence.”

Andropov nodded. He was not so much a fool as to ignore the lesson.

“Good work, Colonel. What else?”

“Timing is crucial, Comrade Chairman.”

“How long to set something like this up?” Andropov asked.

“Certainly a month, likely more. Unless you have people already in place, these things always take longer than you hope or expect,” Rozhdestvenskiy explained.

“I shall need that much time to get approval for this. But we will go forward with operational planning, so that when approval comes, we can execute as rapidly as possible.”

Execute, Rozhdestvenskiy thought, was the right choice of words, but even he found it cold. And he had said when approval comes, not if, the colonel noted. Well, Yuriy Vladimirovich was supposed to be the most powerful man on the Politburo now, and that suited Aleksey Nikolay’ch. What was good for his agency was also good for him, especially in his new job. There might be general’s stars at the end of this professional rainbow, and that possibility suited him as well.

“How would you proceed?” the Chairman asked.

“I should cable Rome to assuage Goderenko’s fears and tell him that his tasking for the moment is to ascertain the Pope’s schedule for traveling, appearances, and so forth. Next, I will cable Ilya Bubovoy. He’s our rezident in Sofia. Have you met him, Comrade Chairman?”

Andropov searched his memory. “Yes, at a reception. He’s overweight, isn’t he?”

Rozhdestvenskiy smiled. “Yes, Ilya Fedorovich has always fought that, but he’s a good officer. He’s been there for four years, and he enjoys good relations with the Dirzhavna Sugurnost.”

“Grown a mustache, has he?” Andropov asked, with a rare hint of humor. Russians often chided their neighbors for facial hair, which seemed to be a national characteristic of Bulgarians.

“That I do not know,” the colonel admitted. He was not yet so obsequious as to promise to find out.

“What will your cable to Sofia say?”

“That we have an operational requirement for—”

The Chairman cut him off: “Not in a cable. Fly him here. I want security very tight on this, and flying him back and forth from Sofia will raise few eyebrows.”

“By your order. Immediately?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked.

“Da. Yes, at once.”

The colonel came to his feet. “Right away, Comrade Chairman. I will go to communications directly.”

Chairman Andropov watched him leave. One nice thing about KGB, Yuriy Vladimirovich thought, when you gave orders here, things actually happened. Unlike the Party Secretariat.

* * *

Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy took the elevator back down to the basement and headed for communications. Captain Zaitzev was back at his desk, doing his paperwork as usual—that’s all he had, really—and the colonel went right up to him.

“I have two more dispatches for you.”

“Very well, Comrade Colonel.” Oleg Ivan’ch held out his hand.

“I have to write them out,” Rozhdestvenskiy clarified.

“You can use that desk right there, comrade.” The communicator pointed. “Same security as before?”

“Yes, one-time pad for both. One more for Rome, and the other for Station Sofia. Immediate priority,” he added.

“That is fine.” Zaitzev handed him the message form blanks and turned back to his work, hoping the dispatches wouldn’t be too lengthy. They had to be pretty important for the colonel to come down here even before they were drafted. Andropov must have a real bug up his rectum. Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy was the Chairman’s personal gofer. It had to be kind of demeaning for someone with the skills to be a rezident somewhere interesting. Travel, after all, was the one real perk KGB offered its employees.

Not that Zaitzev got to travel. Oleg Ivanovich knew too much to be allowed in a Western country. After all, he might not come back—KGB always worried about that. And for the first time, he wondered why. That was the kind of day it had been. Why did KGB worry so much about possible defections? He’d seen dispatches openly discussing the troublesome possibility, and he’d seen officers who had been brought home to “talk” about it here in The Centre and often never returned to the field. He’d always known about it, but he’d never actually thought about it for as much as thirty seconds.

They left because—because they thought their state was wrong? Could they actually think it was so bad they would do something so drastic as betray their Motherland? That, Zaitzev belatedly realized, was a very big thought.

And yet, what was KGB but an agency that lived on betrayal? How many hundreds—thousands—of dispatches had he read about just that? Those were Westerners—Americans, Britons, Germans, Frenchmen—all used by KGB to find out things that his country wanted to know—and they were all traitors to their mother countries, weren’t they? They did it mainly for money. He’d seen a lot of those messages, too, discussions between The Centre and the rezidenturas discussing the amounts of payment. He knew that The Centre was always niggardly with the money it paid out, which was to be expected. The agents wanted American dollars, British pounds sterling, Swiss francs. And cash, real paper money—they always wanted to be paid in cash. Never rubles or even certificate rubles. It was the only money they trusted, clearly enough. They betrayed their country for money, but only for their own money. Some of them even demanded millions of dollars, not that they ever got it. The most he’d ever seen authorized was ?50,000, paid out for information about British