by Tom Clancy
Right in the middle of a power play between the KGB Chairman and the General Secretary himself.
It was actually quite funny, he told himself. He knew it would be less so if Gerasimov miscalculated—but the crowning irony of all was that if the KGB Chairman fell, then the liberal influences already put in place by Narmonov would protect Vatutin, who was, after all, merely doing the job assigned him by his duly appointed superiors. He didn’t think that he’d be imprisoned, much less shot, as had once been the case. His advancement would be at an end. He’d find himself demoted, running the KGB regional office at Omsk, or the least pleasant opening they could find, never again to return to Moscow Center.
That wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. On the other hand, if Gerasimov succeeded ... head of “Two” perhaps? And that wouldn’t be very bad at all.
And you actually believed that you could advance your career without becoming “political.” But that was no longer an option. If he tried to get out, he’d be disgraced. Vatutin was trapped, and knew it. The only way out was to do his job to the best of his ability.
The revery ended as he turned back to his reports. Colonel Bondarenko was totally clean, he thought. His record had been examined and reexamined, and there was nothing to indicate that he was anything less than a patriot and an above-average officer. Filitov is the one, Vatutin thought. As insane as it seemed on the surface, this decorated hero was a traitor.
But how the hell do we prove that? How do we even investigate it properly without the cooperation of the Defense Minister? That was the other rub. If he failed in his investigation, then Gerasimov would not look kindly upon his career ; but the investigation was hindered by political constraints imposed by the Chairman. Vatutin remembered the time he’d almost been passed over for promotion to major and realized how unlucky he’d been when the promotion board had changed its mind.
Oddly, it did not occur to him that all his problems resulted from having a KGB Chairman with political ambition. Vatutin summoned his senior officers. They arrived in a few minutes.
“Progress on Filitov?” he asked.
“Our best people are shadowing him,” a middle-level officer answered. “Six of them round the clock. We’re rotating schedules so that he doesn’t see the same faces very often, if at all. We now have continuous television surveillance all around his apartment block, and half a dozen people check the tapes every night. We’ve stepped up coverage of suspected American and British spies, and of their diplomatic communities in general. We’re straining our manpower and risking counterdetection, but there’s no avoiding that. About the only new thing I have to report is that Filitov talks in his sleep occasionally—he’s talking to somebody named Romanov, it sounds like. The words are too distorted to understand, but I have a speech pathologist working on it, and we may get something. In any case, Filitov can’t fart without our knowing it. The only thing we can’t do is maintain continuous visual contact without getting our people in too close. Every day, turning a corner or entering a shop, he’s out of sight for five to fifteen seconds—long enough to make a brush-pass or a dead-drop. Nothing I can do about that unless you want us to risk alerting him.”
Vatutin nodded. Even the best surveillance had its limitations.
“Oh, there is one odd thing,” the Major said. “Just learned about it yesterday. About once a week or so, Filitov takes the burn-bag down to the incinerator chute himself. It’s so routine there that the man in the destruct room forgot to tell us until last evening. He’s a youngster, and came in himself to report it—after hours, and in civilian clothes. Bright boy. It turns out that Filitov looked after the installation of the system, years back. I checked the plans myself, nothing out of the way. Completely normal installation, just like what we have here. And that’s all. For all practical purposes the only unusual thing about the subject is that he ought to be retired by now.”
“What of the Altunin investigation?” Vatutin asked next.
Another officer opened his notebook. “We’ve no idea where he was before being killed. Perhaps he was hiding out alone somewhere, perhaps he was protected by friends whom we have been unable to identify. We’ve established no correlation between his death and the movement of foreigners. He was carrying nothing incriminating except some false papers that looked amateurishly done, but probably good enough for the outlying republics. If he was murdered by CIA, it was a remarkably complete job. No loose ends. None.”
“Your opinions?”
“The Altunin case is a dead end,” the Major answered. “There are still a half-dozen things that we have to check out, but none has the least promise of an important break.” He paused for a moment. “Comrade ...”
“Go on.”
“I believe this was a coincidence. I think Altunin was the victim of a simple murder, that he tried to get aboard the wrong railcar at the wrong time. I have no evidence to point to, but that is how it feels to me.”
Vatutin considered that. It took no small amount of moral courage for an officer of the Second Chief Directorate to say that he was not on a counterespionage case.
“How sure are you?”
“We’ll never be sure, Comrade Colonel, but if CIA had done the murder, would they not have disposed of the body—or, if they were trying to use his death to protect a highly placed spy, why not leave evidence to implicate him as a totally separate case? There were no false flags left behind, even though this would seem the place to do so.”
“Yes, we would have done that. A good point. Run down all your leads anyway.”
“Of course, Comrade Colonel. Four to six days, I think.”
“Anything else?” Vatutin asked. Heads shook negatively. “Very well, return to your sections, Comrades.”
She’d do it at the hockey game, Mary Pat Foley thought. CARDINAL would be there, alerted by a wrong-number telephone call from a pay phone. She’d make the pass herself. She had three film cassettes in her purse, and a simple handshake would do it. Her son played on this junior-league team, as did Filitov’s grand-nephew, and she went to every game. It would be unusual if she didn’t go, and the Russians depended on people to stick to their routines. She was being followed. She knew it. Evidently the Russians had stepped up surveillance, but the shadow she rated wasn’t all that good—or at least they were using the same one on her, and Mary Pat knew when she saw a face more than once in a day.
Mary Patricia Kaminskiy Foley had typically muddled American ancestry, though some aspects of it had been left off her passport documents. Her grandfather had been an equerry to the House of Romanov, had taught the Crown Prince Aleksey to ride—no small feat since the youngster was tragically stricken with hemophilia, and the utmost caution had needed to be exercised. That had been the crowning achievement of an otherwise undistinguished life. He’d been a failure as an Army officer, though friends at court had ensured his advancement to colonel. All that had accomplished was the utter destruction of his regiment in the Tannenberg Forests, and his capture by the Germans—and his survival past 1920. Upon learning that his wife had died in the revolutionary turmoil that followed the First World War, he’d never returned to Russia—he always called it Russia—and eventually drifted to the United States, where he’d settled in the suburbs of New York and remarried after establishing a small business. He’d lived to the ripe old age of ninety-seven, outliving even a second wife twenty years his junior, and Mary Pat never forgot his rambling stories. On entering college and majoring in history, she learned better, of course. She learned that the Romanovs were hopelessly inept, their court irredeemably corrupt. But one thing she’d never forget was the way her grandfather wept when he got to the part about how Aleksey, a brave, determined young man, and his entire family had been shot like dogs by the Bolsheviks. That one story, repeated to her a hundred times, gave Mary Pat a view of the Soviet Union which no amount of time or academic instruction or political realism could ever erase. Her feelings for the government which ruled her grandfather’s land were com
pletely framed by the murder of Nicholas II, his wife, and his five children. Intellect, she told herself in reflective moments, had very little to do with the way people feel.
Working in Moscow, working against that same government, was the greatest thrill of her life. She liked it even more than her husband, whom she’d met while a student at Columbia. Ed had joined CIA because she had decided very early in life to join CIA. Her husband was good at it, Mary Pat knew, with brilliant instincts and administrative skills—but he lacked the passion she gave to the job. He also lacked the genes. She had learned the Russian language at her grandfather’s knee—the richer, more elegant Russian that the Soviets had debased into the current patois—but more importantly she understood the people in a way that no number of books could relate. She understood the racial sadness that permeates the Russian character, and the oxymoronic private openness, the total exposure of self and soul displayed only to the closest friends and denied by a Moscovite’s public demeanor. As a result of this talent, Mary Pat had recruited five well-placed agents, only one shy of the all-time record. In the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, she was occasionally known as Supergirl, a term she didn’t care for. After all, Mary Pat was the mother of two, with the stretchmarks to prove it. She smiled at herself in the mirror. You’ve done it all, kid. Her grandfather would be proud.
And the best part of all: nobody had the least suspicion of what she really was. She made a final adjustment in her clothing. Western women in Moscow were supposed to be more conscious of their dress than Western men. Hers were always just a touch overdone. The image she projected to the public was carefully conceived and exquisitely executed. Educated but shallow, pretty but superficial, a good mother but little more, quick with her Western display of emotions but not to be taken very seriously. Scurrying about as she did, substitute-teaching occasionally at the kids’ school, attending various social functions, and endlessly wandering about like a perpetual tourist, she fitted perfectly the preconceived Soviet notion of an American female bubblehead. One more smile in the mirror: If the bastards only knew.
Eddie was already waiting impatiently, his hockey stick jerking up and down at the drab carpet in the living room. Ed had the TV on. He kissed his wife goodbye, and told Eddie to kick ass—the senior Foley had been a Rangers fan before he learned to read.
It was a little sad, Mary Pat thought on the elevator. Eddie had made some real friends here, but it was a mistake to get too friendly with people in Moscow. You might forget that they were the enemy. She worried that Eddie was getting the same sort of indoctrination that she’d gotten, but from the wrong direction. Well, that was easily remedied, she told herself. In storage at home she had a photograph of the Czarevich Aleksey, autographed to his favorite teacher. All she really had to do was explain how he’d died.
The drive to the arena was the routine one, with Eddie getting ever more hyper as game time approached. He was tied as the league’s third leading scorer, only six points behind the lead center for the team they were playing tonight, and Eddie wanted to show Ivan Whoeverhewas that Americans could beat Russians at their own game.
It was surprising how crowded the parking lot was, but then it wasn’t a very large parking lot and ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted in the Soviet Union. This game would decide the playoff standings for the league championship, and quite a few people had come to see it. That was fine with Mary Pat. She’d barely set the parking brake when Eddie tore open the door, lifted his dufflebag, and waited impatiently for his mother to lock the car. He managed to walk slowly enough for his mother to keep up, then raced into the locker room as she went up to the rink.
Her place was predetermined, of course. Though reluctant to be overly close to foreigners in public, at a hockey game the rules were different. A few parents greeted her, and she waved back, her smile just a little too broad. She checked her watch.
“I haven’t seen a junior-league game in two years,” Yazov said as they got out of the staff car.
“I don’t go much either, but my sister-in-law said that this one is important, and little Misha demanded my presence.” Filitov grinned. “They think I am good luck—perhaps you will be too, Comrade Marshal.”
“It is good to do something a little different,” Yazov conceded with mock gravity. “The damned office will still be there tomorrow. I played this game as a boy, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. Were you any good?”
“I was a defenseman, and the other children complained that I checked too hard.” The Defense Minister chuckled, then waved for his security people to go ahead.
“We never had a rink out where I grew up—and the truth is I was too clumsy as a child. Tanks were perfect for me—you’re expected to destroy things with them.” Misha laughed.
“So how good is this team?”
“I like the junior league better than the real ones,” Colonel Filitov answered. “More—more exuberant. I suppose I just like to see children having a good time.”
“Indeed.”
There weren’t many seats around the rink—and besides, what real hockey fan wanted to sit? Colonel Filitov and Marshal Yazov found a convenient place near some of the parents. Their Soviet Army greatcoats and glistening shoulder boards guaranteed them both a good view and breathing space. The four security people hovered about, trying not to look too obviously at the game. They were not terribly concerned, since the trip to the game had been a spur-of-the-moment decision on the Minister’s part.
The game was an exciting one from the first moment. The center for the other team’s first line moved like a weasel, handling the puck with skillful passes and adroit skating. The home team—the one with the American and Misha’s grand-nephew—was pressed back into its own zone for most of the first period, but little Misha was an aggressive defenseman, and the American boy stole a pass, taking it the length of the rink only to be foiled by a dazzling save that evoked cheers of admiration from supporters of both sides. Though as contentious a people as any on earth, the Russians have always been imbued with generous sportsmanship. The first period ended zero-zero.
“Too bad,” Misha observed while people hustled off to the rest rooms.
“That was a beautiful breakaway, but the save was marvelous,” Yazov said. “I’ll have to get them this child’s name for Central Army. Misha, thanks for inviting me to this. I’d forgotten how exciting a school game could be.”
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” the senior KGB officer asked. He and two other men were up in the rafters, hidden by the lights that illuminated the rink.
“Maybe they’re just hockey fans,” the man with the camera replied. “Shit, it sounds like quite a game we’re missing. Look at those security guards—fucking idiots are watching the ice. If I wanted to kill Yazov ...”
“Not a terribly bad idea, I hear,” observed the third man. “The Chairman—”
“That is not our concern,” the senior man snapped, ending the conversation.
“Come on, Eddieeee!” Mary Pat screamed as the second period began. Her son looked up in embarrassment. His mom always got too excited at these things, he thought.
“Who was that?” Misha asked, five meters away.
“Over there, the skinny one—we met her, remember?” Yazov said.
“Well, she’s a fan,” Filitov noted as he watched the action swing to the other end. Please, Comrade Minister, you do it ... He got his wish.
“Let’s go over and say hello.” The crowd parted before them, and Yazov sidled up on her left.
“Mrs. Foley, I believe?”
He got a quick turn and a quicker smile before she turned back to the action. “Hello, General—”
“Actually, my rank is Marshal. Your son is number twelve?”
“Yes, and did you see how the goalie robbed him!”
“It was a fine save,” Yazov said.
“Then let him do it to somebody else!” she said as the other team started moving into Eddi
e’s end.
“Are all American fans like you?” Misha asked.
She turned again, and her voice showed a little embarrassment. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? Parents are supposed to act—”
“Like parents?” Yazov laughed.
“I’m turning into a little-league mom,” Mary Pat admitted. Then she had to explain what that was.
“It is enough that we’ve taught your son to be a proper hockey wingman.”
“Yes, perhaps he’ll be on the Olympic team in a few years,” she replied with a wicked, though playful smile. Yazov laughed. That surprised her. Yazov was supposed to be a tight, serious son of a bitch.
“Who’s the woman?”
“American. Her husband’s the press attaché. Her son’s on this team. We have a file on both of them. Nothing special.”
“Pretty enough. I didn’t know Yazov was a lady’s man.”
“Do you suppose he wants to recruit her?” the photographer suggested, snapping away.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
The game had unexpectedly settled down into a defense struggle that hovered around center ice. The children lacked the finesse necessary for the precise passing that marked Soviet hockey, and both teams were coached not to play an overly physical game. Even with their protective equipment, they were still children whose growing bones didn’t need abuse. That was a lesson the Russians could teach Americans, Mary Pat thought. Russians had always been highly protective of their young. Life for adults was difficult enough that they always tried to shield their children from it.