Icon

by Frederick Forsyth

The long black Chaika called for Jefferson at half-past six and he was waiting in the doorway. He was invariably punctual and expected others to be the same. He wore dark gray slacks, a blazer, a crisp white cotton shirt, and a Garrick Club tie. He looked smart, neat, fussy, and every inch an Englishman.

  The Chaika wended its way through the evening traffic north to Kiselny Boulevard, turning off down the side street just before the Garden Ring Road. As he approached the green steel gates, the driver activated an alert button on a communicator he produced from his jacket pocket.

  The cameras atop the wall picked up the approaching car and the gate guard checked the TV monitor, which showed him the car and its license plate. The plate corresponded with the one he was expecting and the gates rolled back.

  Once inside, they closed again and the guard approached the driver’s window. He checked the ID, glanced in the back, nodded, and lowered the steel spikes.

  Mr. Kuznetsov, alerted by the gate, was in the entrance of the dacha to greet his guest. He led the British journalist to a well-appointed reception area on the first floor, a room adjacent to Komarov’s own office and on the other side from that once occupied by the late N. I. Akopov.

  Igor Komarov permitted neither drinking nor smoking in his presence, something Jefferson did not know and never learned, because it was not mentioned. A non-drinking Russian is a rarity in a country where drinking is almost a sign of manhood. Jefferson, who had screened a number of videos of Komarov in his man-of-the-people mode, had seen him with the obligatory glass in his hand, drinking innumerable toasts in the Russian fashion, and showing no damage for it. He did not know Komarov was always supplied with spring water. That evening, only coffee was offered, and Jefferson declined.

  After five minutes Komarov entered, an imposing figure of about fifty, gray-haired, just under six feet, with staring hazel eyes that his fans described as “mesmeric.”

  Kuznetsov shot to his feet and Jefferson followed a mite more slowly. The PR adviser made the introductions and the two men shook hands. Komarov seated himself first, in a button-back leather chair that was slightly higher than those occupied by the other two.

  From his inner breast pocket Jefferson produced a slim tape recorder and asked if there would be no objection. Komarov inclined his head to indicate he understood the inability of most Western journalists to use shorthand. Kuznetsov nodded encouragingly at Jefferson to start.

  “Mr. President, the news of the moment is the recent decision by the Duma to extend the interim presidency by three months but to bring forward next year’s elections to January. How do you view that decision?”

  Kuznetsov translated rapidly and listened while Komarov replied in sonorous Russian. When he had finished, the interpreter turned to Jefferson.

  “Clearly I and the Union of Patriotic Forces were disappointed by the decision but as democrats we accept it. It will be no secret to you, Mr. Jefferson, that things in this country, which I love with a deep passion, are not good. For too long incompetent government has tolerated a high level of economic profligacy, corruption, and crime. Our people suffer. The longer this goes on, the worse it will become. Thus the delay is to be regretted. I believe that we could have won the presidency this October, but if January it must be, then we will win in January.”

  Mark Jefferson was far too experienced an interviewer not to realize that the answer was too pat, too rehearsed, as if delivered by a politician who had been asked the same question many times and could reel off the answer as if by rote. In Britain and America it was customary for politicians to be more relaxed with members of the press, many of whom they knew on first-name terms. Jefferson prided himself on being able to present a portrait in the round, using both the words of the interviewee and his own impressions to create a real newspaper article rather than a litany of political clichés. But this man was like an automaton.

  The reporter’s experience had already taught him that Western European politicians were accustomed to a far greater degree of deference from the press than British or American ones, but this was different. The Russian was as stiff and formal as a tailor’s dummy.

  By his third question Jefferson realized why: Komarov clearly hated the media and the whole process of being interviewed. The Londoner tried a lighthearted approach, but there was not a flicker of amusement from the Russian. A politician taking himself very seriously was nothing new, but this man was a fanatic of self-importance. The answers continued to come out as if on cue.

  He glanced at Kuznetsov with puzzlement. The young interpreter was clearly American-educated, bilingual, worldly, and sophisticated, yet he treated Igor Komarov with spaniel-like devotion. He tried again.

  “You will know, sir, that in Russia most of the real power is vested in the office of the President, far more than in the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of Great Britain. If you were to contemplate the first six months of that power in your own hands, what changes would an objective observer see taking place? In other words, the priorities?”

  Still the answer came as if from a political tract. Routine mention was made of the need to crush organized crime, reform a burdensome bureaucracy, restore agricultural production, and reform the currency. Further questions about precisely how this could be achieved were met with meaningless clichés. No politician in the West could have got away with this sort of thing, but it was clear Kuznetsov expected Jefferson to be completely satisfied.

  Recalling the briefing he had received from his own editor, Jefferson asked Komarov how he intended to bring about the rebirth of the greatness of the Russian nation. For the first time he got a reaction.

  Something he said seemed to jolt Komarov as if he had received an electric shock. The Russian sat staring at him with those unblinking hazel eyes, to the point that Jefferson could no longer meet the gaze and glanced at his tape recorder. Neither he nor Kuznetsov noticed that the president of the UPF had gone deathly pale and two small bright red spots burned high on each cheek. Without a word Komarov suddenly rose and left the room, passing into his own office and closing the door behind him. Jefferson raised an inquiring eyebrow at Kuznetsov. The younger man was clearly also puzzled but his natural urbanity took over.

  “I am sure the president will not be long. Clearly he had just recalled something urgent that must be done without delay. He will be back as soon as he has finished.”

  Jefferson reached forward and switched off his recorder. After three minutes and a brief telephone call Komarov returned, sat down, and answered the question in measured tones. As he began, Jefferson put the machine back on.

  An hour later Komarov indicated the interview was at an end. He rose, nodded stiffly at Jefferson, and withdrew to his office. In the doorway he beckoned Kuznetsov to follow him.

  The adviser emerged two minutes later and was clearly embarrassed.

  “I’m afraid we have a problem with the transport,” he said as he escorted Jefferson down the stairs to the lobby. “The car you came in is urgently required and all the others belong to staff members working late. Could you take a taxi back to the National?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so,” said Jefferson, who now wished he had brought his own transport from the hotel and ordered it to wait for him. “Perhaps you could order one?”

  “I’m afraid they don’t take phone orders anymore,” said Kuznetsov, “but just let me show you how.”

  He led the mystified feature writer from the main door to the steel gate, which rolled aside to let them pass. In the side street Kuznetsov pointed to Kiselny Boulevard a hundred yards away.

  “Right on the boulevard you’ll pick up a cruising cab in seconds, and at this hour you’ll be back at the hotel in fifteen minutes. I do hope you understand. It’s been a pleasure, a real pleasure, to meet you, sir.”

  With that he was gone. An extremely put-out Mark Jefferson walked up the narrow street to the main road. He was fiddling with his tape recorder as he walked. Finally he slipped the machine back into the in
side breast pocket of his blazer as he reached Kiselny Boulevard. He glanced up and down for a cab. Predictably there were none. With an irritable scowl he turned left, toward central Moscow, and began to walk, glancing over his shoulder every now and then for a taxi.

  The two men in black leather jackets saw him come out of the side street and walk toward them. One of them opened the rear passenger door of their car and they slid out. When the Englishman was ten yards away each man slipped a hand inside his jacket and produced a silenced automatic. No words were spoken and only two bullets fired. Both hit the journalist in the chest.

  The force stopped the walking man, and then he simply sat down as his legs gave way. The torso began to topple but the two killers had covered the ground between them and him. One held him upright and the other flicked a hand inside the jacket, quickly puffing out the tape recorder from one breast pocket and his wallet from the other.

  Their car rolled up beside them and they jumped in. After it roared away a woman passerby looked down at the body, thought it was another drunk, saw the trickling blood, and began to scream. No one took the car’s license number. It was false anyway.

  CHAPTER 8

  SOMEONE IN A RESTAURANT DOWN THE STREET FROM THE killing had heard the screaming woman, looked outside, and dialed 03 on the manager’s phone to summon an ambulance.

  The crew had thought they might have a cardiac arrest until they saw the bullet holes in the front of the double-breasted blue blazer and the mess of blood beneath. They called the police as they raced toward the nearest hospital.

  An hour later Inspector Vassili Lopatin of the Homicide Division stared moodily at the corpse on the gurney in the trauma unit of the Botkin Hospital while the night duty surgeon peeled off his rubber gloves.

  “Not a chance,” said the surgeon. “A single bullet, straight through the heart, close range. It’s still in there somewhere. The postmortem will recover it for you.”

  Lopatin nodded. Big deal. There were enough handguns in Moscow to reequip the army and his chances of finding the gun that fired the bullet, let alone the owner of the hand on the gun, were about zero and he knew it. Out on Kiselny Boulevard he had established that the woman who apparently saw the killing had disappeared. It seemed she had seen two killers and a car. No descriptions.

  On the gurney the ginger beard jutted angrily upward above the pale freckled body. The expression on the face was of mild surprise. An orderly pulled a green sheet across the cadaver to blot out the glare from the overhead lights on to the eyes that could see nothing anyway.

  The body was naked now. On a side table lay the clothes and in a steel kidney dish a few personal effects. The detective walked over and took the jacket, looking at the label inside the collar. His heart sank. It was foreign.

  “Can you read this?” he asked the surgeon.

  The doctor peered at the embroidered tag in the jacket.

  “L-a-n-d-a-u,” he read slowly, then, underneath the outfitter’s name, “Bond Street.”

  “And this?” Lopatin pointed at the shirt.

  “Marks and Spencer,” read the surgeon. “That’s in London,” he added helpfully. “I think Bond Street is, too.”

  There are over twenty words in Russian for human excrement and parts of the male and female genitalia. Mentally Lopatin ran through them all. A British tourist, oh God. A mugging that went wrong, and it had to be a British tourist.

  He went over to the personal effects. There were few of them. No coins of course; Russian coins were long since valueless. A neatly folded white handkerchief, a small clear plastic bag, a signet ring, and a watch. He assumed the screaming woman had prevented the muggers from taking the watch off the left wrist or the ring off the pinkie finger.

  But neither had any identification. Worst of all, no wallet. He went back to the clothes. The shoes had the word Church inside them; plain black lace-ups. The socks, dark gray, had nothing, and the words Marks and Spencer were repeated in the undershorts. The tie, according to the doctor, was from somewhere called Turnbull and Asser in Jermyn Street; London again, no doubt.

  More in desperation than in hope, Lopatin returned to the blazer. The medical orderly had missed something. Something hard in the top pocket where some men kept their spectacles. He withdrew it, a card of hard plastic, perforated.

  It was a hotel room key, not the old-fashioned type but the computer-fashioned kind. For security it bore no room number—that was the point, to prevent room thieves—but it had the logo of the National Hotel.

  “Where is there a phone?” he asked.

  Had it not been August Benny Svenson, the manager of the National, would have been at home. But tourists were many and two of the staff were off with summer colds. He was working late when his own operator came through.

  “It’s the police, Mr. Svenson.”

  He depressed the “connect” switch and Lopatin came on the line.

  “Yes?”

  “Is that the manager?”

  “Yes, Svenson here. Who is this?”

  “Inspector Lopatin, Homicide, Moscow militia.”

  Svenson’s heart sank. The man had said Homicide.

  “Do you have a British tourist staying with you?”

  “Of course. Several. A dozen at least. Why?”

  “Do you recognize this description? One meter seventy tall, short ginger hair, ginger beard, dark blue double-breasted jacket, tie with horrible stripes.”

  Svenson closed his eyes and swallowed. Oh no, it could only be Mr. Jefferson. He had come across him in the lobby that very evening, waiting for a car.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He’s been mugged. He’s at the Botkin. You know it? Up near the Hippodrome?”

  “Yes, of course. But you mentioned homicide.”

  “I’m afraid he’s dead. His wallet and all identification papers seem to have been stolen, but they left a plastic room key with your logo on it.”

  “Stay there, Inspector. I’ll come at once.”

  For several minutes Benny Svenson sat at his desk consumed with horror. In twenty years in the hotel business he had never known a guest to be murdered.

  His sole off-duty passion was playing bridge, and he recalled that one of his regular partners was on the staff at the British Embassy. Consulting his private address book he found the diplomat’s home number and called him. It was ten to midnight and the man had been asleep, but he came awake fast when told the news.

  “Good Lord, Benny, the journalist fellow? Writes for the Telegraph? Didn’t know he was in town. But thanks anyway.”

  This will cause a hell of a flap, thought the diplomat when he put down the phone. Alive or dead, British citizens in trouble in foreign parts were a matter for the Consular Section of course, but he felt he should tell someone before the morning. He rang Jock Macdonald.

  Moscow, June 1988

  VALERI Kruglov had been back home for ten months. There was always a risk with an asset recruited abroad that he would change his mind on his return home and make no contact, destroying the codes, inks, and papers he had been given.

  There was nothing the recruiting agency could do about it, short of denouncing the man, but that would be pointless and cruel, serving no advantage. It took cool nerve to work against a tyranny from the inside, and some men did not have it.

  Like everyone at Langley, Monk would never entertain comparisons between those who worked against the Moscow regime and an American traitor. The latter would be betraying the entire American people and their democratically elected government. If caught, he would get humane treatment, a fair trial, and the best lawyer he could procure.

  A Russian was working against a brutal despotism that represented no more than ten percent of the nation and kept the other ninety percent in subjection. If caught he would be beaten and shot without trial, or sent to a slave labor camp.

  But Kruglov had kept his word. He had communicated three times via dead drops with interesting and high-level policy documents from insi
de the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Suitably edited to disguise the source, these enabled the State Department to know the Soviet negotiating position before they even sat at the table. Throughout 1987 and 1988 the East European satellites were moving to open revolt—Poland had already gone, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were on the boil—and it was vital to know how Moscow would seek to handle this. To know just how weak and demoralized Moscow felt itself to be was vitally important. Kruglov revealed it.

  But in May agent Delphi indicated he needed a meeting. He had something important, he wanted to see his friend Jason. Harry Gaunt was distraught.

  “Yalta was bad enough. No one here slept much. You got away with it. It could have been a trap. So could this. Okay, the codes indicate he’s on the level. But he could have been caught. He could have spilled the lot. And you know too much.”

  “Harry, there are a hundred thousand U.S. tourists visiting Moscow these days. It’s not like the old times. The KGB can’t monitor them all. If the cover is perfect, it’s one man among a hundred thousand. You’d have to be taken red-handed.

  “They’re going to torture a U.S. citizen? Nowadays? The cover will be perfect. I’m cautious. I speak Russian but pretend I don’t. I’m just a harmless American goofball with a tourist guide. I don’t move out of role until I know there’s no surveillance. Trust me.”

  America possesses a vast network of foundations interested in art of every kind and description. One of them was preparing a student group to visit Moscow to study various museums, with the high point as a visit to the famous Museum of Oriental Art on Obukha Street. Monk signed on as a mature student.

  All the background and papers of Dr. Philip Peters were not only perfect, they were genuine, when the student group touched down at Moscow airport in mid-June. Kruglov had been advised.

  The obligatory Intourist guide met them and they stayed at the awful Rossiya Hotel, about as big as Alcatraz but without the comforts. On the third day they visited the Oriental Art Museum. Monk had studied the details back home. Between the showcases it had big open spaces where he was confident he could spot it if they were there following Kruglov.