by Robert Moss
‘It’s a new scenario,’ Zaytsev told him. ‘The enemy is presumed to have seized the capital. Our mission is to spearhead a counter-attack to retake Moscow.’
‘There must be some real optimists in the General Staff,’ Artamonov remarked.
Zaytsev watched the young captain closely as he strolled away. It was still hard to accept that the man was a traitor. Spetsnaz officers were required to be Party members, of course, and were given the most thorough security screening. It was possible that Artamonov imagined that he was fulfilling his duty to the Party by ratting on his comrades to the KGB. But it was more likely that he did it for money, or through naked ambition.
He called over his chief of operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Orlov. He had briefed Orlov on Nikolsky’s revelation as soon as he returned to the base.
‘It’s all arranged,’ Orlov said. ‘Artamonov is going on the next parachute drop.’
Orlov went with the team himself. They were dressed in standard Airborne uniforms, minus the Guard badges. The men were carrying D-5 parachutes with their rifles lashed to the sides.
As they were boarding the plane, Captain Artamonov fell back.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Orlov demanded.
‘I’ve got cramps. Must be something I ate.’
‘Get on the plane.’ Orlov gave him a rough push. ‘You’re an essential part of this exercise. Nobody’s going to give a shit about your belly when the real shooting starts.’
They dropped from five thousand meters. As the men baled out, the first stage of their parachutes, the stabilization canopies, opened. Orlov held Artamonov back until everyone else had jumped. ‘Now you,’ he said softly.
As Artamonov jumped, Orlov hurled himself after him. The colonel’s boots slammed into Artamonov’s back, but the force of the blow was softened by the equipment he was carrying. Then they were locked together, spinning round and round in midair, the stabilization canopies snagged and useless. Artamonov was flailing out with his arms, trying to get beyond Orlov’s reach. Then the colonel was on him again. He got one arm under Artamonov’s chin, and seized hold of a leg with the other. He looked as if he was trying to break the man in two. They were spinning faster and faster, and the ground seemed to be flying up to meet them; the tips of the pine trees loomed up like stakes in a bear pit.
Orlov knew he was falling too fast, 120 miles per hour, maybe faster. He summoned all his strength, and jerked Artamonov’s head upwards and back until he heard the bones crack. Then he spread his arms like a swimmer doing the butterfly stroke, trying to move clear of the body.
He had removed the automatic opening device from his main chute. Now he pulled out the pin. The parachute failed to open. The lines must have got snarled up during his struggle with Artamonov.
With the ground rushing toward him, he clawed at the pin on the reserve chute strapped across his stomach. It fluttered open.
He braced himself for the shock. It came almost at once, all along the left side of his body. But he went on falling until there was a sudden wrench and he was left dangling like a hanged man, twenty feet above the ground. His reserve parachute had snagged in the branches of a giant fir.
Some of the men came running toward him. ‘Are you all right, Colonel?’ one of them shouted up.
Orlov swore at them to cut him down.
He felt a shooting pain as he hit the ground, but nothing seemed to be broken. He looked around for Artamonov. The dead man’s chute had opened automatically. His body lay where it had fallen, limbs spread out in a ragged cross.
When Orlov made his formal report to Zaytsev, he said, ‘Captain Artamonov was unfit for Spetsnaz assignments. He failed to maintain his physical condition, and broke his neck in the fall.’
*
‘You’ll have to tell her yourself,’ Harrison said to Luke Gladden. ‘I’d still bet London to a brick she’ll never do it.’
And she’d be right, the CIA man thought.
It’s time we stopped pussyfooting around,’ the head of Soviet Division had told him at Langley. Gladden’s boss, Joel Carson, favored the coinages of Teddy Roosevelt. Carson had been studying the files, and had reached the conclusion that the Agency was missing the best opportunity it had had to penetrate the Soviet General Staff since the days of Penkovsky. Carson wasn’t a fisherman, like Luke Gladden. He liked shooting clay pigeon, an affluent sport that required hair-trigger reflexes rather than a patient affinity with the elements. ‘We’ve got him by the balls, haven’t we?’ Carson had asked rhetorically, referring to Preobrazhensky. ‘If he won’t cooperate, we can break him.’
Luke Gladden had never believed much in blackmail, not when it came to recruiting good agents. The best were the ones who came to you because of their private agenda, men with a mission. He might have argued more vigorously with his boss had he not been fully aware of the pressure that Carson was under. The White House had asked for an assessment of what was going to happen in Moscow when the new General-Secretary gasped his last, and some bright spark on the NSC had come up with the idea that Marshal Zotov was the man to watch. The President himself had asked for a full personality profile, and had been deeply alarmed by what he got. Zotov was viewed in Washington as a super-hawk, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to use the military might of his nation where its interests were threatened, in the Middle East, in Africa, or in Western Europe. Zotov was said to be the moving force behind the Soviet arms build-up in India, and behind a Soviet plan to invade Iran and choke off the oil supply routes to the West. The Pentagon experts regarded him with respect, as one of the most able men in the Soviet military establishment. So the CIA’s Soviet Division had been tasked, as a matter of urgent priority, to gather every available scrap of information on the Marshal and the policies he was likely to promote if his power increased.
Gladden had arrived with a diplomatic passport in an assumed name, supposedly attached to a delegation that had been sent to discuss the renewal of cultural exchanges between the Soviets and the Americans. He had decided that he wasn’t going to risk a clandestine meeting in Moscow, where his every movement would be watched. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that Elaine was now under KGB observation too, given her mad expedition to Togliatti. So he arranged for Harrison to bring Elaine along to the Embassy for a reception.
Guy didn’t warn her. As they circulated among the guests, she with her white wine, he with a large whisky, he just took her arm and whispered, ‘Awfully stuffy in here. Why don’t I show you the pictures next door?’
Luke Gladden was waiting for them in the library, next to an open fire.
Elaine stopped short in the doorway when she saw him. Gladden looked plausible and elegant, as always, in his muted pinstripe. The setting reminded her powerfully of the evening they had spent at his New York club, when he had talked her into letting the CIA arrange her meeting with Sasha. You never feel the hook at first, Sasha had warned.
Gladden took his pipe out of his mouth as he advanced toward her, evidently bent on planting a kiss on her cheek. She moved crabwise into the room, avoiding him, and stationed herself behind a wing chair.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
Gladden glanced at Harrison, who merely folded his hands over his expansive belly, disclaiming responsibility.
‘I think you’d better sit down and tell me what happened,’ Gladden said to her mildly.
‘I told Guy already.’
‘I’d like to hear it for myself.’
‘I don’t think I have anything more to say to you.’
‘That’s not going to help him, you know.’ Gladden paused, hoping that she’d ask for an explanation. She didn’t. Mustn’t push, he reminded himself. We could lose both of them. Harrison had shuffled off into a far corner of the library, where he was ostentatiously inspecting a copy of the Federalist Papers.
‘I brought you a copy of your article,’ he said, and held out a clipping from the London paper that Guy described as ‘the rag.’ She came out from
behind her chair to take it from him. The piece was signed ‘By Our Special Correspondent.’ She noticed that the cuts had been minimal, although the London editors had added a photo that certainly hadn’t been shot in Togliatti.
‘You were very brave,’ Gladden told her. ‘But you could have got yourself into a lot of trouble running off like that.’
‘I wanted to do something that could make a difference.’
‘To his people?’
She nodded. ‘In a way, they’re my people too.’
‘You really feel that strongly about them?’
‘I do now.’
‘Will Togliatti make a difference?’ he pursued. ‘Does writing about it help?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It helped me. I have the sense that everything is picking up speed. I guess I want to be a part of what’s happening here.’
‘You’re very much a part of it, Elaine. That’s why I’ve come. For Pete’s sake, sit down and have a drink.’
He waited until she was seated with a glass in her hand before he added, ‘We think that Sasha could make a difference.’
‘How can you know that?’ She left her drink untouched, as if anything from this man’s hands might be tainted.
‘You know him, Elaine. Is he the kind of man who could accept what the army was ordered to do at Togliatti?’
‘No.’
‘That may be why he’s in danger.’
This time, she gave him his opening. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We received information from a highly — uh — sensitive source. Another purge is being prepared. Sasha’s name is pretty high on the list. Certain people have got hold of some extremely compromising dossiers.’
Luke Gladden didn’t particularly enjoy having to lie, but he usually managed it with panache. He told himself that this was the playwright manqué coming to the fore.
‘Sasha has to be warned,’ he pursued. ‘I want you to see him again.’
‘He’ll never agree,’ she protested.
‘He needs our help,’ Gladden continued. ‘Just tell him what I said. Tell him that we need to meet him as soon as possible. He can choose the time and place. That’s all there is to it.’
She turned her face away to the fire, and the light gave her face the flush of ripened apricots.
She said, ‘Sasha thinks it’s suicide for us to meet in Moscow.’
‘It’s suicide if you don’t warn him.’
She faced him. Everything about him was so damn plausible, so reassuring. Even the mild aroma of his Virginia pipe tobacco. She said, ‘How can I trust you?’
He played it as a soft lob. ‘Have I ever lied to you?’
‘I don’t know.’
*
In his time at Kavrov, Suchko — whom Sasha correctly remembered as the Komsomol bully at Moscow University — had realized his full potential. He had degenerated into a swaggering, drunken lout, incoherent after lunch, and sometimes before, sloppy and running to fat. Recruited by the KGB upon graduation, in acknowledgment of his gifts as an informer, he had first been assigned to the Fifth Directorate to spy on dissidents and Jews. He set about his work with gusto, but he was too crude even for his superiors. After he beat senseless a professor of biology — a man who had received several international awards and been nominated for a Nobel Prize — Suchko was shunted sideways, into the Third Directorate. He felt at home with the Topchys, and they with him.
But Suchko was bored with life at Kavrov, where those stuck-up bitches in Spetsnaz wouldn’t give him the time of day. The officers clammed up whenever he entered the room, and Suchko guessed that it was their commander who was giving the lead. He loathed Zaytsev, that caricature of a man’s man, with a passion. Often he had tried to catch him out, by suggesting, for example, that the Togliatti business was a disgrace. But Zaytsev always eluded him, volunteering nothing of his own thoughts.
It was the stukach, Artamonov, who gave him the first clue that something wasn’t quite right at the base. The way Artamonov told it, Zaytsev and some of his officers had formed what amounted to a political society. They sat around at night discussing Afghanistan, the East-West conflict, the Togliatti strike, even the country’s economic problems and the leadership itself. All outside Party auspices. Suchko wondered why he’d received nothing from headquarters except a routine acknowledgment since he’d sent in that report. Now Artamonov had got his neck broken in a bloody parachute jump. There was something wrong about that too, but Suchko couldn’t get anything solid to go on.
He was diverting himself in his flat with a stupid little shopgirl from the town who had the hots for the Airborne and thought he was an army officer. When the phone rang, he had just succeeded in unhooking her bra.
‘Yes?’ he snarled. The girl seized the chance to move away from him and rearrange her clothes.
‘This is Malenov,’ said a guarded voice at the end of the line. ‘I’ve got something interesting for you. We ought to talk it over straight away.’
‘Come round and have a drink.’ Suchko’s voice was thick and slurred, but his mind was suddenly alert. He had marked down this Captain Malenov as someone he might be able to use. He understood Malenov’s type well enough. The man was a coward-bully, someone who had tried, all his life, to hide his basic weaknesses behind a mask of arrogance and physical toughness.
‘I’m duty officer tonight,’ Malenov explained. Through his mental fog, Suchko could see the picture clear enough. There was Malenov sitting all alone, feeling sorry for himself, stewing with envy of comrades who’d been promoted faster than him. Comrades like Zaytsev. After all, they were both veterans of Afghanistan.
‘I’m coming over,’ Suchko announced. ‘I’ll bring a bottle with me.
He let the shopgirl escape, fastened his zipper, and headed out toward the duty room. He greeted the sentry at the checkpoint with a floppy salute.
*
It was nearly midnight, but Fyodor Zaytsev found it impossible to sleep. Sasha had called during the day to say, in circuitous language, that they might have to move faster than anticipated. He wondered if the rumors that the new General Secretary had been rushed off to the clinic for an emergency operation were true.
Zaytsev got out of bed and dressed, padding around the room with his shoes in his hand so as not to wake his wife. He glanced at the phone in the living room, the direct line to Gogol Boulevard that Sasha had had installed by military technicians to bypass the KGB monitors. If that phone rang, it would be to tell him to start the engine of the coup.
He threw his greatcoat over his shoulders and went outside. There was the tang of pine resin in the air. He wandered along the sandy road, past the tall antennas of the communications building and a long line of single-story barracks, toward the airstrip. Nearing the checkpoint, he saw the light in the duty room, and decided to drop in and have a smoke with Malenov.
He remembered Sasha’s story about Malenov’s behaviour in Afghanistan, the way he had taken fright crossing a log bridge over a mountain gorge. You had to admire a man like that, who faced up to his fear, Zaytsev thought. Malenov might be scared of heights, but despite that — or because of it — he had the best record in the brigade as a parachutist.
He was nearly up to the window when he realized that Malenov wasn’t alone.
Who was that with him? Orlov? The blocky silhouette came between the light and the window.
In the instant that Zaytsev recognized Suchko, the KGB man bent down to pick up the phone on the duty officer’s desk. This single motion convinced Zaytsev that Malenov had betrayed them. Why else would Suchko be using his phone in the middle of the night?
The general didn’t hesitate. He burst into the duty room, tugging at his pistol. Malenov glanced up, and his jaw dropped open.
Suchko was breathing noisily, through his nostrils, but otherwise seemed perfectly at ease. He gave Zaytsev a cursory look and went on dialing. Without looking up again, he said, ‘Don’t try anything adolescent, General. The g
ame is over for you.’
Malenov, who knew Zaytsev better, was more realistic. He sprang from his chair and hurled himself at the Spetsnaz commander. But Zaytsev’s reflexes were as quick as ever. He stepped aside nimbly, dodging the blow, and delivered a karate kick to Malenov’s chest. The younger man was dead before he hit the floor.
Suchko was fumbling for his own weapon, but his holster was empty. Fuzzily, he blamed this on the shopgirl who had teased him and wrestled with him. Maybe he had dropped the gun when he rolled off the sofa. Then he remembered. He had let her play with it. He saw her caressing the barrel with her fingers while he groped under her skirt; that seemed to excite the little whore. It was fortunate for Suchko that he had lost his pistol, because Zaytsev was already on top of him, ramming his head back against the wall. He slid off his chair and was left lying on the floor like a beached whale.
Zaytsev put his foot on Suchko’s belly while he picked up the phone, broke the connection, and then dialed Orlov’s private number.
When Orlov arrived, he didn’t ask any questions. They hauled Malenov’s body into the bathroom. The colonel arranged to replace both the duty officer and the guard at the checkpoint who had seen Suchko arrive.
All this time, Suchko lay on the floor, shaking a little.
Zaytsev grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up to his full height.
‘We’ll take you home,’ he said.
‘I’ll forget everything, I swear it,’ Suchko stammered.
‘Of course you will.’
Something about Zaytsev’s tone made Suchko tremble more violently. When they got back to his quarters, he looked longingly at the liquor cabinet.
‘Go ahead,’ Zaytsev said obligingly. ‘Here, I’ll pour.’
Suchko gulped it down gratefully, and Zaytsev refilled his glass. ‘What about you, General?’ he asked, beginning to regain some confidence now he was back on his own turf.
‘Well, just a small one,’ Zaytsev responded.
Suchko had never seen the man smile before. The liquor created a warm glow in his stomach. He accepted a third glass, and began to feel positively euphoric. ‘You were quite right, of course, General,’ he said. ‘Malenov was a fool. Not a patch on a man like you. You did the right thing. It will look fine in the report, just fine. I’ll say he was drunk and fell under a truck.’