Three of them lived near Ka-lugin along this road. After the car passed the small knoll where Ilin stood, it went by a truck with a high-lift basket and another truck carrying a power pole, then went around the next curve. In the fully extended lift, a man was working on a transformer mounted near the top of a pole. A flagman stood on the road near the lift truck. “Here they come. Three cars.”
Ilin crushed out his new cigarette on a tree as the second truck, the one with the power pole on it, pulled completely across the road, blocking it. The man in the cab jumped down. He had an assault rifle in his hands. Janos Ilin knelt. He picked up the rocket-propelled grenade launcher and flicked the safety off. The first car came around the curve and braked as the flagman waved his red flag. The second and third cars were right behind. Ka- lugin was in the second car. The first and third cars were full of loyal ones. Ilin leveled the grenade launcher at the first car, which was now almost stopped, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. The whoosh of the rocket was loud. The grenade impacted the first car at the passenger’s side door. The car jumped forward, a dead foot on the accelerator, the engine roaring. It crashed into the side of the truck blocking the road. Although the car was dammed firmly against the truck, the engine revved higher and higher as the tires squalled and smoked against the pavement. As Ilin worked feverishly to reload the launcher, the driver of the second car slewed the rear end of his car around in a power slide. Smoke poured from the tires. Over the screeching of the tires, Ilin could hear a machine gun hammering. Ilin got his grenade loaded as the third car slid to a complete stop. The doors of the car were opening as he pulled the trigger. The rocket struck the engine compartment and the shaped charge exploded inward. Men leaping from the car were cut down by machine-gun bullets, which were being fired from the lift basket above. Meanwhile, Kalugin’s car had completed its turn. At least one of Ilin’s men was pouring bullets at it. The bullets made tiny sparks, flashes, where they struck the armor and were deflected. Kalugin’s car shot by the third car on the far side with its tires squalling madly as Ilin slammed another grenade into the launcher. He pointed the weapon at the rapidly accelerating car and pulled the trigger. The grenade smacked into a tree trunk thirty feet in front of Ilin. The charge severed the trunk and the tree began to topple. Ilin grabbed his radio. “He’s coming back north.”
“I can’t get the goddamn engine started.” The man there was supposed to drive another power-line repair truck across the road. “Shoot at the tires! Shoot at the tires! Don’t let him get away.”
With the grenade launcher in one hand and the radio in the other, Ilin ran down the hill and sprinted for the curve. He heard three short bursts of automatic-weapon fire, then silence. As he rounded the curve, he saw Kalugin’s car rounding the far curve, three hundred meters on. Ilin turned and walked back to the ambush site. One of the men lying on the road by the closest car, the trailer, was still moaning. Ilin drew a pistol and shot him in the head as he went by. The other four men who had been in the car were lying on the pavement in various positions, perforated by machine-gun bullets. The engine in the car against the truck had stalled. The five men inside were apparently dead. The flagman was taking no chances. He fired a shot into every head. “Do the ones in the other car, too,” Ilin told him. The man who had driven the truck across the road came over to Ilin. As the single shots sounded, he said apologetically, “We almost pulled it off.”
Ilin shouted at the man in the lift basket, who was on his way down. He had an air-cooled light machine gun cradled in his arms. “Did you shoot at Kalugin?”
“I got off just one burst. I saw sparks where the bullets were striking the armor. I’m sorry.”
“We blew it,” Ilin said with a grimace. “Maybe we should get the hell out of here.”
“That is probably a good idea.”
As the limo shot along the two-lane road, Aleksandr Kalugin hung on to the strap in the backseat and shouted at the driver. Still shaken from the assassination attempt, he had already concluded that there was a good chance that his bodyguards, or one of them — perhaps his driver? — had betrayed him. Now he was telling the driver which way to go as they approached each intersection.
It was too dangerous to return to the dacha, so he gave the driver directions for an alternate route into Moscow.
Kalugin pulled the telephone from its storage bracket and dialed an operator. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. He removed his pistol from a pocket and laid it in his lap.
If the driver took a wrong turn, he, Kalugin, would personally put a bullet in the man’s brain. He fingered the automatic as if it were a set of worry beads.
An aide in his office answered. Kalugin told him about the ambush in as few words as possible, keeping strictly to the facts. The aide would know what to do with the information.
In odd moments Kalugin made lists of his enemies. The A list included political opponents and rivals in the Congress, bureaucrats who had publicly opposed him in the past, and candidates who had run against him in past elections. The B list included critics, newspaper editors who had printed damaging editorials or news stories, bureaucrats who didn’t jump when he growled, businessmen who refused to go along with his suggestions — basically carpers and footdraggers. The C list, the longest, contained everybody else that Kalugin thought less than enthusiastic about his leadership of the nation. Some persons had managed to get on this list by avoiding a handshake at parties or receptions. Several were husbands of women Kalugin thought attractive; some were there simply because he had seen their name in a report or in print and thought that person might someday be dangerous.
He had discussed threats to his power with his top aides on several occasions in the past, developed contingency plans, delegated power to men he trusted, men who owed him for their status, their place, the bread they ate.
Even now, as his car raced along, the aides would be ordering everyone on the A list arrested and interrogated. Perhaps the police would discover the culprits before Kalugin’s internal security apparatus did, and if so, fine. Kalugin would proceed on both fronts regardless.
Perhaps something good would come out of this crime against his person. Maybe he could use this event as an excuse to crush some of his most vocal enemies. Their downfall would be a lesson for all the rest.
Three of Kalugin’s men were waiting in his office when right-brace anos Ilin arrived for work that morning. The secretary in the outer office gave him the news.
“What do they want?”
“They didn’t say, sir. They had a presidential pass, so I put them in your anteroom. They went into the office without my permission.”
When you screw up an assassination, this is what happens, he thought. You walk into rooms wondering if you are about to be arrested and tortured or if they want your help chasing assassins.
Janos Ilin didn’t turn a hair. He walked across the anteroom to his office door and opened it. He walked in and stopped. One of them was sitting in his chair, trying to jimmy the locks on the desk drawers.
Another was using a pick on the file cabinet’s locks.
“What the hell is this?”
“Ah, the man with the keys. Sit down, Comrade Ilin. Sit down. And I’ll trouble you for your keys.”
Ilin remained standing.
“Someone tried to assassinate President Kalugin a short time ago. We are investigating.”
“Did they harm the president?”
“Why are you investigating here?”
“Sit, Ilin. Sit. The keys, please.”
They worked for over an hour, flipping through files, reading notebooks, looking at every sheet of paper they could find. All the while, Ilin sat and watched, apparently unconcerned. The only things that he didn’t want these thugs to see were the files on agents in place in foreign countries. Fortunately, those files were in the agency’s central records depository, under continuous armed guard.
“When did this assassination attempt take place?”
“This morning. The president was on his way to the Kremlin.”
“Have you made any arrests?”
“We are trying to decide if we should arrest you.”
Ilin snorted.
“Your sangfroid is quite commendable.”
“I have nothing to hide. I have not lifted a finger against anyone. You can read those files until doomsday and that fact won’t change.”
When the leader was finished, he seated himself again behind the desk, in Ilin’s chair. From his pocket he
