“I am sometimes unable to provide immediate evidence for my suspicions,” Ushakov replied with some heat, “but that doesn’t make them incorrect.” The charge that he had blown his one chance to extract the truth wounded his pride, more so since he accused himself of it almost every night. You failed. Kalyugin knows it too.
“Pasha,” Kalyugin soothed, “don’t take it so hard. Personally, I do not believe this man is smart enough to fool you, so there you have it. As far as your theory, have you traced it out? Do you have any idea of the ramifications to what you suggest?”
“I believe I have.”
“No, my friend, I don’t believe you have. If Yaroslav Ivanovitch was running Nikolai, then who was running Yaroslav? Someone must be. Who was his handler? Someone in the village? Have you ever been there? They’re the worst collection of farting old men and toothless babushkas that ever walked the earth. Shall we interrogate them, perhaps kill a couple in the process? That would make us look good. ‘A comrade drank himself to death, so they went and beat the hell out of some idiotic babushkas down in the village.’ TASS might even report that one! No? The handler was someone here?” He craned his neck over the desk. “Who then? The Comrade Chief Designer, maybe? Yaroslav Ivanovitch would have to have a handler himself, otherwise how does he get any information out of this god-forsaken hole? The whole matter becomes speculation. And if there is a third man, how in the wide world do three spies slip past us?”
He sighed and waggled a finger at Ushakov, who contained his anger with an effort. “You may be willing to entertain such thoughts, comrade, but I am a little more prudent. Or rather, I’ll entertain them all day but I certainly won’t send them off to visit headquarters. Look, Pasha. You know our boss, comrade General Serov? He’d swallow this whole incredible story. He would have more chekists crawling around here than you could say boo at and then half this place would be off to the gulag. Well and good. But the comrade General is not in very good odor with the Central Committee these days, and from what I have heard it is doubtful that he will last the year. And remember that fat fart Korolev has the ear of comrade Khrushchev himself! So what kind of choice have you given me, Pasha? If there are spies here as you believe and we take action, or even if we don’t take action, we will go to the Lubyanka, or Lefortovo, for letting this project become compromised while we yanked our wieners. If you are wrong and we take action anyway, then we will go there even faster for trying to exert KGB control over this important project. Either way we end up in a cell!”
“Piotr Vasilevich, I know it seems ludicrous. But I know I’m right. I would bet a month’s salary on it.” Don’t sit on this, you lazy bastard! Get yourself sent to the Lubyanka but don’t take me with you!
“No,” the director murmured, rising, “you’d bet our lives on it. I’m not willing to take that bet.”
Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan
The city of Kyzylorda was a striking change from the sleepy village of Tyuratam. It was a real city, although a small one, an oasis of civilization rising from the sand and solitary canyons of the surrounding steppe. Located by the Syr DaryaRiver, Kyzylorda had enjoyed a brief boom in prestige when the capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic was transferred there in the mid-1920’s. The population swelled, a fine drama theater was built, office buildings were erected. But prosperity was not to last, and in 1929 the capital was transferred again to Alma-Ata, where it remained. But Kazakhstan was a sleepy place of farms, barren steppe and roaming herdsmen, and this did not fit with the State’s new policy of industrialization at all cost. Collectivization followed and the State took forcible control over all farms, creating the kollektivnoe khoziaistvo or ‘kolkhozes.’ The process had been a hideous botch. Wealthy peasants, or kulaks, vanished into the machinery of the State; resistance to collectivization by the remaining Kazakh peasants resulted in countless deaths and devastating famine. During those dreadful years the population of Kyzylorda plummeted.
However, as Ilia’s truck chugged down a wide street and Katia took in the sights, the city seemed to be making a comeback. Premier Khrushchev had seen the American’s prosperity and had come up with the revolutionary—and largely idiotic—idea that corn was the cause. He had ordered millions of acres of arid land in central Russia plowed up and sown with corn, and thousands of people were sent off to do the job. Although most of the growing area was in the north oblast, the population of Kyzylorda was slowly starting to grow again.
Ilia steered his truck over to the curb in front of a deserted warehouse. The street was dirty and largely empty of vehicle traffic, but there were a few pedestrians coming and going along the sidewalks. In the distance stood a large building that might once have provided offices for the government, but was mostly empty now. Incongruously, a cow was meandering across the street a few hundred meters away. But there were some shops nearby and a seedy-looking pub or two, and an afternoon’s shopping could be spent quite enjoyably in Kyzylorda. Ilia had friends here and announced his intention of stopping by the nearest pub, from which drifted the familiar music of the dombra. “You have your papers on you, Katia?” he whispered. “Good. Keep them close by. They’ve got KGB around here somewhere, I’m sure. I’m off to have a drink, so enjoy yourself and come get me whenever you’ve finished!”
“I will,” she promised, drawing her shawl over her head and waving as the old man headed off towards the tavern, stopping almost immediately to greet someone he knew. Ilia wasn’t yet so absent-minded that she needed to worry about him leaving without her.
Unhurriedly, she crossed the street and paused in front of the small post office. She fished in her purse for a cigarette and applied her small lighter to the end, by force of will keeping her hand from shaking. She had not used this device often and doing so made her nervous. She flipped it three times, and inside the device power was supplied to a tiny crystal oscillator. Through some highly advanced and exceedingly small devices called transistors, the lighter modulated a carrier wave exactly three times. Three spikes of static on a frequency in the AM band. It was her signal to her handler that she was in town. The lighter’s range was very short and she did not know where her handler was located, but she knew where to stand and light her cigarette, and she knew his receiver was always on. If she flicked her lighter three times in front of the post office, her handler would receive the signal and a meeting would be arranged.
Close by there was a small department store. This was the second step. She was to wander about the store browsing until a brush-pass was made. She would not be aware the contact was coming and she would not look for it, but she would recognize when the pass had been made. A note would be passed to her detailing her instructions. Smoking her cigarette, she entered the store, smiling to the clerk as she began her browsing.
This was the most dangerous moment. In cities such as Moscow where espionage was more common, KGB agents were trained to recognize these techniques—the brush pass, the dead drop, brosovyy signals. Brosovyy signals—the placing of an innocuous item in a specific place, an empty bottle, a piece of fruit, a rock, a bit of colored glass—were especially risky as the KGB had gotten very good at spotting them. Risk of KGB detection here was low, but she had been given the tiny transmitter to further minimize that risk. Human intelligence in the Soviet Union had always been better than technical intelligence, and chances were remote that the frequency she transmitted on would be detected. And she could recognize KGB agents. The entire Ministry of Internal Affairs was undergoing review, and these days KGB officers did not swagger around as they once had. They kept a lower profile, tried harder to fit in. Sometimes it was laughably easy to spot them, but here in Kyzylorda one did not commonly see the KGB. Kyzylorda was simply not a priority. That made this store as safe as any.
She browsed through an issue of Pravda, selected an item or two of feminine hygiene, flipped through a small assortment of dresses hanging on a rack. Close by a few babushkas were gossiping, and she listened to their voices for a few moments. They
were talking about men. The selection of goods available at the Kyzylorda store would have been grim to a Muscovite accustomed to shopping at the big government-run department stores, but was wonderful by Kazakh standards. The only drawback was that such items tended to be expensive and her supply of rubles was limited.
Contact. A drunk passed her as she stood in the aisle examining the dresses. He stank of vodka and wore a shapeless overcoat bunched up around his shoulders. He weaved his way boozily out of the store without paying any attention to her or his surroundings, but she had felt him slip something into the pocket of her dark overcoat with a skill that belied his appearance. A good pass. Leaving her items on the counter with the clerk so she would not be suspected of shoplifting, she murmured that she needed to use the restroom. The clerk, a shy pretty girl, pointed to the back of the store where, hidden behind some empty crates, there was a single dirty restroom.
She pulled the door closed behind her and locked it with the latch. From her overcoat pocket she pulled a scrap of paper and unfolded it. It was blank. She retrieved the lighter from her purse and flicked it, this time for its more common purpose. She held the flame under the paper and letters appeared in simple invisible ink: quiet here, window opens on 11/6. Bring some things. She studied the message for only a moment before turning on the faucet and splashing some water onto the paper. Instantly the paper dissolved and vanished down the drain. For a moment she stood staring into the broken mirror, lost in thought.
The sixth of November was two weeks away. Two weeks to wait. The message Genrikh had unwittingly brought from her contact inside ScientificResearchTestRange #5 was the one she was to have received when the data they were after was ready. It was not the code she should have received if her contact there was in immediate danger. Now her contact would be waiting for word of when the delivery was to be made. She would send the message in with Genrikh, as usual, disguised as an innocent flirtation. Then on the day she selected for delivery, her contact would be watching for her to accompany Ilia onto the facility to deliver goods. Katia would ensure Ilia made a delivery that day. When her contact saw her, a brush-pass would complete the transfer and he would be once again a sleeper, waiting for his next activation. By the sixth of November she needed to have the data and be back in Kyzylorda, prepared to wait. She did not know what she would be waiting for, but her handler would tell her when the time came. For now she only had to worry about getting the data from her contact.
U.S.S Bennington, CV 20
Hardin stood at the mouth of a large hangar at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, by himself, waiting for the transport from the Bennington to arrive. Probably a converted Grumman Avenger, he thought the Navy used those for transport these days. There was a large haze-gray C-47 Gooney Bird in the hangar behind him, a broad stretch of open ramp before him. The night was overcast but calm, and warm breezes from the ocean brought the mingled scents of salt, Bougainvillea and jungle. Lights from the hangar behind him cast his shadow long on the quiet ramp. He had a small bag filled with toiletries, changes of underwear, and a lot of cigarettes. Everything would be left behind on the ship when he left.
How to transport the MiG had never been in question. It had been disassembled and crated, then shipped to the Bennington in San Diego. How to transport Hardin had taken some discussion. He hadn’t been looking forward to an extended sea voyage aboard a Navy tub and suggested boarding the Bennington from Guam or the Philippines. Weiss had considered that and agreed to Guam, sparing Hardin days of boredom while the carrier made the transit. For that he was grateful.
He heard footsteps behind him, echoing in the quiet hangar. He turned to see an older man approaching, silver hair, loud Hawaiian shirt and a stomach that hadn’t seen a size 40 waistband since Eisenhower was a corporal. The gentleman hove up and dropped his valise close to Hardin’s. “Evening,” he said with a pronounced Cockney accent. “You John Hardin?”
“That’s me.” He took the hand proffered, finding it surprisingly hard and firm. “You must be…” he searched but could find no memory of being told the name of his handler. “Uh…who the hell are you?”
The other laughed profoundly. “God, you do sound like a hoodlum. Let’s hope you can hide that when you speak Russian, eh? My name’s Graham Smith.”
“Smith?” Hardin cocked an eyebrow. “Really, Smith? I guess that’s a nice touch! Might have picked Jones, but Smith will do.” He fished out a cigarette and put his lighter to it.
“Quite, but in this case it’s really my name,” Smith replied, and to Hardin’s surprise he reached up and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. “Oh no, not those. Get rid of your Yank brand and smoke these instead. They’re not good, but they’re better than the stuff the kolkhozniks smoke. Those chaps will light any old weed they can get their hands on.”
From a different pack, marked in Cyrillic characters with the Troika brand, Smith produced an unfiltered cigarette. Hardin accepted the smoke, struck a light to it, inhaled—he immediately felt a harsh sensation burning all the way down to his lungs. “These are awful, Smith,” he winced. “They taste like ass!”
“I’ll sympathize with you while I’m smoking yours,” the older man grinned, trading packs with him. “Better get used to those so you can smoke ‘em like a native if you have to!”
There was no need since they were alone in the hangar bay, but Hardin dropped his voice anyway. “So you’re my handler? You’re a field agent?”
“Handler yes, field agent not so much. No, I’m pretty much a Luddite these days. I’m not allowed out too much!”
Hardin suspected that wasn’t quite true but Smith seemed content to leave things there. He’d play along. “Well, I’ll smoke these but I won’t like ‘em.”
“You’ll love them if you’re smart,” Smith chided him. “And you should probably smoke a lot. If you find yourself on the ground for whatever reason and in anything like a public place, you should almost chain smoke. If a Russian pilot has cigarettes, he smokes ‘em. He doesn’t trade ‘em or barter ‘em for anything.”
There came the distinctive sound of a piston engine from the dark sky. Some prop job was on final approach. “That’s probably them,” he said, putting out his cigarette in the nearby butt kit. Smith did likewise, grunting noncommittally.
Presently a wartime Grumman Avenger, converted to carry passengers, taxied to the ramp. The prop spun with increasing laziness as the large engine coughed and died. Hardin was surprised: he hadn’t realized the Navy was using those to ferry passengers around. A familiar figure wearing an olive-green flight suit clambered out of the cockpit onto the wing, then hopped the short distance to the concrete. No maintenance crew appeared with a ladder or to help with the aircraft. Apparently there were to be as few extraneous strap-hangars observing this rendezvous as possible.
Captain Holveck trotted up. “Hi, Hardin. Graham, good to see you again.”
They knew each other? Holveck must be pretty connected. Hardin had thought he’d been pressed into service at the last minute.
“Likewise, Bill,” Smith smiled.
Holveck turned to Hardin. “Let me bum a smoke before we take off.”
“Not those,” Smith interrupted, shaking a cigarette out of Hardin’s old pack. “He’s smoking specials. Have one of these.”
“Right.” Holveck fished in a pocket of his flight suit for a lighter. “I should have realized you’d start him on those PDQ.”
Hardin lit another of the evil-tasting Troikas. “I might have reconsidered if I’d known these were going to be part of the deal!”
They all chuckled. “It gets worse,” Smith grinned. “You’ll be snockered on Vodka quite often in the next week or so, until you’ve learned to put it away like a pro.”
“Let me guess,” Hardin grumbled. “It’s not the good stuff.”
“Oh no,” Smith laughed. “It’s the rotgut the kolkhozniks drink.”
“And I’ve got cases of it,” Holveck added unhelpfully. “Came aboard with the you-
know-what.”
“You see, John,” Smith went on in a low voice, “the goal is for you to spend as little time on the ground as physically possible—God forbid interacting with anyone. But we must be prepared for the worst.”
“We’ve got you a cabin in officer’s country,” Holveck said. “Unfortunately you’ll be restricted to it for most of the trip, we can’t have a lot of talk going on. We’ll get meals delivered. After dark you can have the signal bridge.” He dropped his cigarette into the butt kit. “Come on, let’s get going.”
Tyuratam, Kazakhstan
The journey from Kyzylorda to Tyuratam was typically something of an adventure. The highway meandered north and then almost due west, circumnavigating several tiny Kazakh villages. The quality of the pavement varied enormously; some sections were laid in poor-quality asphalt, others in cracked concrete, but most were missing pavement entirely. Those stretches meandered across the steppe, hard cart tracks that twisted and turned in seeming aimless fashion. Unless the driver knew where they were going it was all too easy to take a wrong turn and find the track petering out somewhere in the desert. And it was not unusual in this part of Kazakhstan to pass herds of wild camels grazing on the steppe, sometimes crossing the road unhurriedly on their ways elsewhere. Clusters of yurts, traditional Kazakh dome-shaped tents, on the horizon meant nomads were nearby, grazing their cattle and horses on the local fescue and bunchgrass as they had for hundreds of years. Occasionally Katia and Ilia might stop for a bit of barter if the nomad’s tents were close by, but today the return to Tyuratam was uneventful.
The road from Kyzylorda was quiet and empty and she dozed as the ancient truck bounced and smoked and shuddered along. And as Ilia turned south off the main road onto the rough dirt track that led to Tyuratam, she realized how much this lonely little village had come to seem like home to her. It was a warm and familiar feeling that seemed to wash over her as she saw the dozen or so dingy huts placed haphazardly here and there, the villagers talking, working their plots of vegetables, turning their backs as a gust of wind blew a tiny dust-devil through town. There were a few soldiers walking away towards the rail junction, and an army truck sat parked outside Vadim’s repair shop. Only the mechanic’s legs were visible, jutting out from underneath the bumper while a soldier squatted nearby, handing him a crescent wrench. There was her hut, to the right; to the left up the road a little ways was Genrikh’s small slaughterhouse and by the most fortunate of circumstances, the butcher was hauling the carcass of one of his rangy cows through the dust and onto a bonfire he had going. Today was apparently slaughtering day and when his grisly work was finished he would have a delivery to make up to the facility. She could not have planned it any better, and as Ilia crept along the dirt road, threading his way along the deep ruts, she waved gaily out her window. “Privyet, Genrikh! What a stink you’re making!”
A Cold Flight To Nowhereville Page 9