The Cardinal of the Kremlin jrao-5

by Tom Clancy

  What's happening with Misha? he asked himself. When the man had disappeared from the Ministry, he'd naturally assumed that the older man was ill. When the absence had lasted several days, he took it to be serious and asked the Minister if Colonel Filitov had been hospitalized. The reply at the time had been reassuring-but now he wondered. Minister Yazov had been a little too glib-then Bondarenko had gotten orders to return to Bright Star for an extended evaluation of the site. The Colonel felt that he was being shuffled out of the way-but why? Something about the way Yazov had reacted to his innocent inquiry? Then there was the matter of the surveillance he'd spotted. Could the two things be connected? The connection was so obvious that Bondarenko ignored it without conscious consideration. It was simply impossible that Misha could have been the target of a security investigation, and even less possible that the investigation should develop substantive evidence of misdeeds. The most likely thing, he concluded, was that Misha was off on a top-secret job for Yazov. Surely he did a lot of that. Bondarenko looked down at the massive earthwork of the Nurek power dam. The second string of power lines was almost done, he noted, as the airliner dropped flaps and wheels for a landing at Dushanbe-East. He was the first man to leave the aircraft after landing.

  "Gennady Iosifovich!"

  "Good morning, Comrade General," Bondarenko said in some surprise.

  "Come with me," Pokryshkin said, after returning the Colonel's salute. "You don't want to ride that damned bus." He waved to his sergeant, who wrested away Bondarenko's bag.

  "You didn't need to come yourself."

  "Rubbish." Pokryshkin led the parade to his personal helicopter, whose rotor was already turning. "One day I must read that report you drafted. I just had three ministers here yesterday. Now everyone understands how important we are. Our funding is being increased twenty-five percent-I wish I could write that kind of report!"

  "But I-"

  "Colonel, I don't want to hear it. You have seen the truth and communicated it to others. You are now part of the Bright Star family. I want you to think about coming to us full time after your Moscow tour is finished. According to your file, you have excellent engineering and administrative credentials, and I need a good second-in-command." He turned with a conspiratorial look. "I don't suppose I could talk you into an air-force uniform?"

  "Comrade General, I-"

  "I know, once a soldier of the Red Army, always a soldier of the Red Army. We will not hold it against you. Besides, you can help me with those KGB boneheads on perimeter guard. They can bluster their expertise at a broken-down fighter pilot, but not against a man with the Red Banner for close combat." The General waved for the pilot to take off. Bondarenko was surprised that the commander wasn't flying the aircraft himself. "I tell you, Gennady, in a few years this will be a whole new service branch. 'Cosmic Defense Troops,' perhaps. There will be room for you to create a whole new career, and plenty of room for advancement. I want you to give that some serious thought. You will probably be a general in three or four years anyway, but I can guarantee you more stars than the Army can."

  "For the moment, however ?" He'd think about that, but not in a helicopter.

  "We're looking at the mirror and computer plans the Americans are using. The chief of our mirror group thinks he can adapt their designs to our hardware. It will take about a year to come up with the plans, he says, but he doesn't know about the actual engineering. Meanwhile we're assembling some reserve lasers and trying to simplify the design to make maintenance easier."

  "That's another two years' work," Bondarenko observed. "At least," General Pokryshkin agreed. "This program will not come to fruition before I leave. That's inevitable. If we have one more major test success, I will be recalled to Moscow to head the Ministry office, and at best the system will not be deployed before I retire." He shook his head sadly. "It's a hard thing to accept, how long these projects take now. That's why I want you here. I need a young man who will carry this project all the way through. I've looked at a score of officers. You're the best of them, Gennady Iosifovich. I want you here to take over from me when the time comes."

  Bondarenko was stunned. Pokryshkin had selected him, doubtless in preference to men from his own service branch. "But you hardly know me-"

  "I did not get to be a general officer by being ignorant of people. You have the qualities that I look for, and you are at just the right part of your career-ready for an independent command. Your uniform is less important than the type of man you are. I've already telexed the Minister to this effect."

  Well. Bondarenko was still too surprised to be pleased. And all because Old Misha decided that I was the best man to make an inspection tour. I hope he's not too ill.

  "He's been going over nine hours now," one of the officers said almost accusingly to Vatutin. The Colonel bent to look in the fiber-optic tube and watched the man for several minutes. He was lying down at first, tossing and turning fitfully as he tried willing himself to sleep, but that effort was doomed to failure. After that came the nausea and diarrhea from the caffeine that denied him sleep. Next he rose and resumed the pacing he'd been doing for hours, trying to tire himself into the sleep that part of his body demanded while the remainder objected.

  "Get him up here in twenty minutes." The KGB Colonel looked at his subordinate with amusement. He'd slept only seven hours and spent the last two making sure that the orders he'd given before turning in had been carried out in full. Then he'd showered and shaved. A messenger had fetched a fresh uniform from his apartment while an orderly had polished his boots to a mirrorlike luster. Vatutin finished off his own breakfast and treated himself to an extra cup of coffee brought down from the senior-officers' mess. He ignored the looks he was getting from the other members of his interrogation team, not even giving them a cryptic smile to indicate that he knew what he was doing. If they didn't know that by now, then the hell with them. Finished, he wiped his mouth with the napkin and walked to the interrogation room.

  Like most such rooms, the bare table it held was more than it appeared to be. Under the lip where the tabletop overlapped the supporting frame were several buttons that he could press without anyone's noticing. Several microphones were set in the apparently blank walls, and the single adornment on them, a mirror, was actually two-way, so that the subject could be observed and photographed from the next room.

  Vatutin sat down and got out the folder that he'd be putting away when Filitov arrived. His mind went over what he'd do. He already had it fully planned, of course, including the wording of his verbal report to Chairman Gerasimov. He checked his watch, nodded to the mirror, and spent the next several minutes composing himself for what was to come. Filitov arrived right on time.

  He looked strong, Vatutin saw. Strong but haggard. That was the caffeine with which his last meal had been laced. The facade he projected was hard, but brittle and thin. Filitov showed irritation now. Before, he'd shown only resolve.

  "Good morning, Filitov," Vatutin said, hardly looking up.

  "Colonel Filitov to you. Tell me, when will this charade be over?"

  He probably believes that, too, Vatutin told himself. The subject had so often repeated the story of how Vatutin had placed the film cassette in his hand that he might have halfway believed it now. That was not unusual. He took his chair without asking permission, and Vatutin waved the turnkey out of the room. "When did you decide to betray the Motherland?" Vatutin asked. "When did you decide to stop buggering little boys?" the old man replied angrily.

  "Filitov-excuse me, Colonel Filitov-you know that you were arrested with a microfilm cassette in your hand, only two meters from an American intelligence officer. On that microfilm cassette was information about a highly secret State defense-research installation, which information you have been giving for years to the Americans. There is no question of this, in case you have forgotten," Vatutin explained patiently. "What I am asking is, how long you have been doing this?"

  "Go bugger yourself," Misha suggested. Vatuti
n noticed a slight tremor in his hands. "I am three times Hero of the Soviet Union. I was killing the enemies of this country while you were an ache in your father's crotch, and you have the balls to call me traitor?"

  "You know, when I was in grammar school, I read books about you. Misha, driving the fascisti back from the gates of Moscow. Misha, the demon tankist. Misha, the Hero of Stalingrad. Misha, killer of Germans. Misha, leading the counterattack at the Kursk Bulge. Misha," Vatutin said finally, "traitor to the Motherland."

  Misha waved his hand, looking in annoyance at the way it shook. "I have never had much respect for the chekisti. When I was leading my men, they were there-behind us. They were very efficient at shooting prisoners-prisoners that real soldiers had taken. They were also rather good at murdering people who'd been forced to retreat. I even remember one case where a chekist lieutenant took command of a tank troop and led it into a fucking swamp. At least the Germans I killed were men, fighting men. I hated them, but I could respect them for the soldiers they were. Your kind, on the other hand perhaps we simple soldiers never really understood who the enemy was. Sometimes I wonder who has killed more Russians, the Germans-or people like you?"

  Vatutin was unmoved. "The traitor Penkovskiy recruited you, didn't he?"

  "Rubbish! I reported Penkovskiy myself." Filitov shrugged. He was surprised at the way he felt, but was unable to control it. "I suppose your kind does have its use. Oleg Penkovskiy was a sad, confused man who paid the price that such men have to pay."

  "As will you," Vatutin said.

  "I cannot prevent you from killing me, but I have seen death too many times. Death has taken my wife and my sons. Death has taken so many of my comrades-and death has tried to take me often enough. Sooner or later death will win, whether from you or someone else. I have forgotten how to fear that."

  "Tell me, what do you fear?"

  "Not you." This was delivered not with a smile, but with a cold, challenging glare.

  "But all men fear something," Vatutin observed. "Did you fear combat?" Ah, Misha, you're talking too much now. Do you even know that?

  "Yes, at first. The first time a shell hit my T-34, I wet my pants. But only that first time. After that I knew that the armor would stop most hits. A man can get accustomed to physical danger, and as an officer you are often too busy to realize that you're supposed to be afraid. You fear for the men under your command. You fear failure in a combat assignment, because others depend on you. You always fear pain-not death, but pain." Filitov surprised himself by talking this much, but he'd had enough of this KGB slug. It was almost like the frenetic excitement of combat, sitting here and dueling with this man.

  "I have read that all men fear combat, but that what sustains them is their self-image. They know that they cannot let their comrades perceive them to be less than what they are supposed to be. Men, therefore, fear cowardice more than danger. They fear betraying their manhood, and their fellow soldiers." Misha nodded slightly. Vatutin pressed one of the buttons under the table. "Filitov, you have betrayed your men. Can't you see that? Don't you understand that in giving defense secrets to the enemy, you have betrayed all the men who served with you?"

  "It will take more than your words to-" The door opened quietly. The young man who entered wore dirty, greasy coveralls, and wore the ribbed helmet of a tank crewman. All the details were right: there was a trailing wire for the tank's interphones, and the powerful smell of powder came into the room with the young man. The coverall was torn and singed. His face and hands were bandaged. Blood dripped down from the covered eye, clearing a trail through the grime. And he was the living image of Aleksey Ilych Romanov, Corporal of the Red Army, or as close to it as the KGB could manage in one frantic night's effort.

  Filitov didn't hear him enter, but turned as soon as he noticed the smell. His mouth dropped open in shock.

  "Tell me, Filitov," Vatutin said. "How do you think your men would react if they learned what you have done?"

  The young man-he was in fact a corporal who worked for a minor functionary in the Third Directorate-did not say a word. The chemical irritant in his right eye was making it water, and while the youngster struggled not to grimace at the pain it caused him, the tears ran down his cheeks. Filitov didn't know that his meal had been drugged-so disoriented was he by his stay in Lefortovo that he no longer had the ability to register the things that were being done to him. The caffeine had induced the exact opposite of a drunken state.

  His mind was as wide awake as it had been in combat, all his senses sought input, noticed everything that was happening around him-but all through the night there had been nothing to report. Without data to pass on, his senses had begun making things up, and Filitov had been hallucinating when the guards had come to fetch him. In Vatutin he had a target on which to fix his psyche. But Misha was also tired, exhausted by the routine to which he had been subjected, and the combination of wakefulness and bone-crushing fatigue had placed him in a dreamlike state where he no longer had the ability to distinguish the real from the imaginary.

  "Turn around, Filitov!" Vatutin boomed. "Look at me when I address you! I asked you a question: What of all the men who served you?"

  "Who-"

  "Who? The men you led, you old fool!"

  "But-" He turned again, and the figure was gone.

  "I've been looking through your file, all those citations you wrote for your men-more than most commanders. Ivanenko here, and Pukhov, and this Corporal Romanov. All the men who died for you, what would they think now?"

  "They would understand!" Misha insisted as the anger took over completely.

  "What would they understand? Tell me now, what is it that they would understand?"

  "Men like you killed them-not I, not the Germans, but men like you!"

  "And your sons, too, eh?"

  "Yes! My two handsome sons, my two strong, brave boys, they went to follow in my footsteps and-"

  "Your wife, too?"

  "That above all!" Filitov snarled back. He leaned forward across the table. "You have taken everything from me, you chekist bastard-and you wonder that I needed to fight back at you? No man has served the State better than I, and look at my reward, look at the gratitude of the Party. All that was my world you have taken away, and you say that I have betrayed the Rodina, do you? You have betrayed her, and you have betrayed me!"

  "And because of that, Penkovskiy approached you, and because of that you have been feeding information to the West-you've fooled us all these years!"

  "It is no great thing to fool the likes of you!" He pounded his fist on the table. "Thirty years, Vatutin, thirty years I have-I have-" He stopped, a curious look on his face, wondering what he had just said.

  Vatutin took his time before speaking, and when he did so, his voice was gentle. "Thank you. Comrade Colonel. That is quite enough for now. Later we will talk about exactly what you have given the West. I despise you for what you have done, Misha. I cannot forgive or understand treason, but you're the bravest man I have ever met. I hope that you can face what remains of your life with equal bravery. It is important now that you face yourself and your crimes as courageously as you faced the fascisti, so that your life can end as honorably as you lived it." Vatutin pressed a button and the door opened. The guards took Filitov away, still looking back at the interrogator, more surprised than anything else. Surprised that he'd been tricked. He'd never understand how it had been done, but then they rarely did, the Colonel of the Second Chief Directorate told himself. He rose, too, after a minute, collecting his files in a businesslike way before he walked out of the room and upstairs.

  "You would have been a fine psychiatrist," the doctor observed first of all.

  "I hope the tape machines got all of that," Vatutin said to his technicians.

  "All three, plus the television record."

  "That was the hardest one I've ever come across," a major said.

  "Yes, he was a hard one. A brave one. Not an adventurer, not a dissident. That one wa
s a patriot-or that's what the poor bastard thought he was. He wanted to save the country from the Party." Vatutin shook his head in wonderment. "Where do they get such ideas?"

  Your Chairman, he reminded himself, wants to do much the same thing-or more accurately to save the country for the Party. Vatutin leaned against the wall for a moment while he tried to decide how similar or how different the motivation was. He concluded quickly that this was not a proper thought for a simple counterintelligence officer. At least not yet. Filitov got his ideas from the clumsy way the Party treated his family. Well, even though the Party says it never makes mistakes, we all know differently. What a pity that Misha couldn't make that allowance. After all, the Party is all we have.

  "Doctor, make sure he gets some rest," he said on the way out. There was a car waiting for him.

  Vatutin was surprised to see that it was morning. He'd allowed himself to focus too fully these last two days, and he'd thought that it would be nighttime. So much the better, though: he could see the Chairman right now. The really amazing part was that he was actually on a fairly normal schedule. He could go home tonight and get a normal night's sleep, reacquaint himself with wife and family, watch some television. Vatutin smiled to himself. He could also look forward to a promotion, he told himself. After all, he'd broken the man earlier than promised. That ought to make the Chairman happy.

  Vatutin caught him between meetings. He found Gerasimov in a pensive mood, staring out his window at the traffic on Dzerzhinskiy Square.

  "Comrade Chairman, I have the confession," Vatutin announced. Gerasimov turned.

  "Filitov?"

  "Why, yes, Comrade Chairman." Vatutin allowed his surprise to show.

  Gerasimov smiled after a moment. "Excuse me, Colonel. There is an operational matter on my mind at the moment. You do have his confession?"

  "Nothing detailed yet, of course, but he did admit that he was sending secrets to the West, and that he has been doing so for thirty years."

  "Thirty years-and all that time we didn't detect it " Gerasimov noted quietly.