by Craig Thomas
It was a remarkable coincidence that had brought them to the central computer at the same time. Such discussion was the privilege of young officers, safe from their superiors, each alive to the possibilities of their separate cases. The senior echelons of the KGB, like its predecessors, have always discouraged the professional gossip associated with police forces in other countries, other societies, in a further attempt to enforce the absolute security seemingly demanded by a secret police force. However, the present generation of KGB officers, among whom were Tortyev and Priabin, both highly intelligent graduates of the Lenin University of Moscow, possessed, in the eyes of many of their seniors, a remarkable degree of scepticism towards some of the cherished aims of the service — notably in the matter of gossip. They realised, unlike their hidebound seniors, that the cross-fertilisation of such gossip more than outweighs its detraction from absolute security. Priabin, seated in one of the armchairs in the waiting-room next to the metallic, sterile room with its banks of lights and spools and controls, was saying as much to Tortyev.
'They don't realise, Alexei, how much they lose by being so rigidly compartmentalised. One hand never knows what the other in doing.'
Tortyev, who had shoved his file of photographs into the hands of one of the white-coated operators, and was merely waiting for an estimate of how long the computer-run would take after the features of the man Orton had been broken down into computer-language, nodded his head sagely, a smile of complicity playing around his mouth.
'Quite true,' he replied. 'Take us, for instance.'
'True — we are, after all, both looking for foreign agents, are we not?'
There was a silence. Priabin lit a long cigarette, of British manufacture, while Tortyev was content to pick at his finger-nails. Priabin had revisited the computer room throughout the afternoon and evening, almost as a kind of obsessive, childhood habit, as if he could, by appearing before the officers with irritation plainly written on his features, prompt the operators into jogging the computer into more rapid activity. Thus far, the computer had failed to answer his question — who was the man in the truck with Upenskoy. This was despite the fact that it had at its disposal the files, descriptions, possible disguises — a whole identifit library of each face in every file, and suggestions as to how those faces might be disguised successfully — and present whereabouts, if known, of thousands of known or suspected agents — American, European, Israeli; even Warsaw Pact countries and developing African nations had their places in the computer-banks as possible enemies of the KGB.
Priabin was angry with the computer — he had presented the machine with a simple problem, the sort of problem it would take a large team of men a week to complete, and he wondered what machines were for if they couldn't come up with the answers he required. He puffed angrily at his cigarette now that the conversation had idled, and wished that, indeed, Tortyev could help with his problem — what was it he was worrying about, some body in the Moskva, with its face beaten in?
'Who is this man you're after?' he asked, as much for the sake of distracting himself as for the sake of conversation, or interest in what Tortyev was doing. Kontarsky would already be at Bilyarsk, strutting like a turkey-cock, attempting to drive doubt from his mind by an over-zealous inspection of security there. While he left his assistant holding the damned baby! Priabin concluded. What was it Kontarsky had said to him, just before leaving, and for perhaps the twentieth time since he had seen that bloody photograph of the man who called himself Glazunov, and who had popped up out of nowhere like the devil himself. What was it? Find out, Dmitri — for your sake, and for mine. Find out tonight. Yes — that was it.
Priabin grimaced at his thoughts. Dmitri Priabin was doing it for Dmitri Priabin's sake — he would find out, if that damned computer didn't break down — for his own sake.
'Ah,' said Tortyev meditatively in reply. 'That is what I want our noble machine to discover — I know him as Orton…'
Priabin creased his brow in thought, and said: 'What's he supposed to have done?'
Tortyev looked slighted for a moment, and then replied: 'He came to my attention as a drug-smuggler.' Priabin nodded, and appeared to lose interest. Tortyev continued, nettled that a man with whom he was at training school should regard his problems as unimportant: 'But, the strange thing is — this Orton, who died by the hand of one of his associates — or so we believed — is not the man who arrived at Cheremetievo two days ago.'
'Two days ago…'
Priabin sat bolt upright in the comfortable armchair. 'When?' he snapped.
'Two days ago…'
'When did he — die?' Priabin asked, his voice shaky with excitement. Even as the surface of his thoughts leapt at the impossible proximity, he was telling himself that he was being merely foolish.
'The same night.'
'You — caught the men?'
'We rounded up all of Orton's known associates — and found nothing to connect his death with them,' Tortyev explained, gratified that he seemed to have stung Priabin into interest, though he was puzzled at the man's upright, attentive posture.
'Who killed him, Alexei?'
'We — don't know, in fact, we don't know who died.'
'What?'
'As I said — the man who died was not the Orton who arrived at the airport, complete with passport and papers from the London Embassy…'
'Then who the hell was he — who were they both?'
Tortyev spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. 'I have enlisted the aid of our glorious revolutionary computer to discover that very fact.'
Priabin nodded, then said, a tone of suppressed excitement in his voice: 'All right — you think there was a substitution — yes?'
Tortyev nodded. 'Why?' asked Priabin.
'One reason only — the one who arrived two days ago — is an agent, covering his tracks with this dead body.'
Priabin slapped his forehead. His face was flushed with excitement — then paled, momentarily with doubt, then he smiled at Tortyev.
'What — happened to the men who — left the body?'
'They ran off.'
'Where?'
'To the nearest metro' station — the Pavolets.'
'And then?'
'Nowhere. They were lost — by the people from here, and the police — they weren't looking out for Orton then.'
Priabin said, 'We're looking for a man — an agent, we are sure — who appeared suddenly driving out of Moscow in a truck early yesterday morning…' His face drained of all colour. 'Stop…' he breathed, as if realising for the first time with the whole of his mind what he had stumbled upon. 'Stop…'
Tortyev leapt in the same direction as Priabin, a fact which pleased, and comforted, Kontarsky's lieutenant.
'You think—?'
'There's no record of a man of his appearance arriving in the Soviet Union during the past two weeks. He could have been here longer but, even then, how did he get in? I'm having the computer run down all known or suspected American or British agents, trying to match the photograph.'
'And I'm looking for Orton…' Tortyev added. 'Where is this agent of yours now?'
'In Bilyarsk.'
'God! You mean he's…'
'Probably he's inside the complex by now — in another disguise.'
'To do what?'
'Who knows? Anything — blow up the bloody plane, perhaps?'
Tortyev stared at Priabin, seeing the fear, the recurrent fear, that had replaced the earlier fiery enthusiasm.
There was a knock at the door. 'Come in,' Priabin said abstractedly.
A young, crumpled individual in a dirty white coat entered, a sheaf of photographs in his hands. He stood before Priabin, evidently pleased with his work, but nervous of its reception by the KGB lieutenant.
'We haven't run down your man…' he began.
'You haven't?'
'No. Nothing in the files on him, under American or British.'
'Then start with the…' Priabin began.
'What we've done meanwhile,' the young man pressed on, keeping his eyes behind their horn-rimmed spectacles on the sheaf of photographs, 'is to draw up for you a series of identikit pictures of what he might look like in various disguises — without detectable make-up or surgery. We're running these through the computer, to see whether he appears in any guise. It'll be a long job, I'm afraid.'
Priabin looked up at the young man, scowled, and said: 'You'd better bloody get on with it, then — hadn't you?'
The young man, considering himself let off lightly, turned on his heel and scuttled from the room, leaving the sheaf of papers in Priabin's lap. Priabin glanced down at them, shuffled them disconsolately.
'Well?' Tortyev asked, on the edge of his chair.
'Well what?'
'Look at the bloody pictures, man!' Tortyev said angrily.
'What's the point?'
Tortyev crossed the space of dark carpet that separated them, snatched up the sheaf and flipped through them. Once or twice, he stopped, or looked back at a previous identifit mock-up, then he threw the sheaf away from him. Priabin smiled at his irritation, until he saw his face and the fact that he retained one picture still in his hand.
'It's him — Orton,' he said softly, turning the picture of a seedy, tired, moustached individual with spectacles in Priabin's direction. 'It's him…'
Priabin stared at him. The knock on the door caused him to leap to his feet, as if guiltily surprised. The door opened to reveal Holokov, out of breath, his overcoat badly tugged on, collar up, his face red with exertion. Tortyev had left him in the restaurant at the Centre, upstairs, where the food was as good as any of Moscow's principal hotels, and cheaper. Holokov had spilled tea on his tie, which was askew, Tortyev noticed.
'What is it?' he said sharply, rising to his feet.
'Stechko…' Holokov said wheezingly. 'Phone call from headquarters — that bloody little Jew, Filipov, has been in contact with the British Embassy.'
'What?'
'True. They were monitoring the phones in the rest-room, and he placed a call from there. Stechko's got him in your office now.'
Tortyev continued staring at Holokov for a moment, digesting his information. Then he turned to Priabin, and said: 'All our problems solved in one fell swoop, Dmitri — eh? This bloody little traitor must know who Orton is, and why he's gone to Bilyarsk! He's warned the British that we're close to finding out who he is — we have the answer in the palm of our hands.'
Priabin's face broke into a slow smile. 'Come on,' he said. 'Your car still waiting for you?'
Tortyev nodded. 'Then I'll come, too — with your permission?'
Tortyev smiled. 'Naturally, Dmitri.'
As they passed through the door, and fat Holokov closed it behind them, Priabin said: 'The value of gossip, eh, Alexei — the value of gossip!' He slapped Tortyev on the shoulder, and he and the detective laughed loudly in unison.
* * *
Priabin stood at Tortyev's desk, the telephone receiver in his hand, waiting for the Centre's code-room to answer him. He looked across the room, to where the unconscious, bloody form of Filipov was collapsed into a chair, held there only by the straps on his wrists. The man's dark, ascetic features were bruised and swollen. Blood had run over his chin from broken teeth and a damaged lip, and the skin was split and discoloured around his closed eyes. His nose had bled freely when Holokov's huge fist had broken it. Stechko and Holokov hovered in that same corner of the room, silenced machines awaiting fresh commands, while Tortyev paced the room. The time was after one in the morning.
Priabin was indifferent to the damage done by Tortyev's apes. They had had to work swiftly — too crudely for his taste but, surprisingly, not for Tortyev. Perhaps Alexei Tortyev was angry with Filipov, especially angry because he had trusted him — or merely because he was a Jew. Such anti-Semitism was by no means unusual in the KGB.
Priabin had communicated with Kontarsky, as his first priority, reporting that the man in the truck was obviously an agent, and that he expected swift results from the interrogation of the traitor, Filipov. At twelve-fifty, he had to call his chief again, to report that Filipov had not talked, even though he had confessed himself an agent of the British, had spilled the whole story of his recruitment by the Cultural Attache, Lansing. Filipov had talked, but he had not told them what he ought to have been able to tell them.
Kontarsky was thus left suddenly in the dark as to the present appearance of the man known to Filipov as Orton, despite the fact that Priabin had wire-printed the pictures of Orton. Kontarsky already had with him the photograph's of Upenskoy's companion from the security checks at Moscow, Gorky and Kazan, wire-printed to him from the local KGB offices as a matter of urgency.
Kontarsky, Priabin now had to admit to himself, was panicky. He knew that a human bomb was in Bilyarsk, somewhere, but he had no idea of the time-mechanism, the extent, the force… He was hamstrung. He had requested all the identifit pictures of Orton supplied by the computer to be wire-printed, a task which had just been completed.
What concerned him now, as the code-room answered Priabin's call, was sending coded instructions to the Russian Embassies in London and Washington, in order to request the senior KGB Resident at each of them to supply information, descriptions, and whereabouts of all recent arrivals at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or at the Ministry of Defence in London, or any of the various SIS offices in the city. It might be, he knew, a forlorn gamble, but it was one he had to take. At best, such records of arrivals and departures at the security headquarters of the two organisations were patchy and incomplete; nevertheless, unlike Tortyev, who seemed unable to ignore, or leave alone, the beaten, bloody policeman in the-chair, he had doubts that Filipov even knew the real identity of the man who had been Orton, and then had posed as Glazunov. His only real hope was to obtain a lead which would enable them to discover just what kind of agent the man was, and thereby to forestall his purpose at Bilyarsk.
'Hello — Priabin, Department 'M', 2nd Directorate here,' he said into the mouthpiece. Tortyev looked up at him for a moment, and then looked away. 'I want the following coded messages transmitted, on the authority of Colonel Kontarsky, to the Washington and London Residents, as soon as possible…'
The call took only a couple of minutes.When he had finished, he put down the telephone thoughtfully. He looked in the direction of Filipov, and saw Tortyev attempting to revive the man for further questioning.
'Not for the moment, Alexei,' he said. 'I've an idea — I may want to make another call.'
Tortyev turned away from Filipov, as if with reluctance, and said: 'What is it?'
'Let's review what's been done thus far,' he said. 'We've checked on known or suspected agents of most of the Western intelligence services, who might be interested in the Bilyarsk project, and capable of mounting this sort of operation.' Tortyev nodded. 'Because the man's been clever, we've assumed that he's a very good agent, one of their top men — which means we ought to have found him by now — eh?'
'Agreed. He's obviously new, or been kept back for this one job — it's big enough to warrant that.'
'Too bloody true,' Priabin commented gruffly.
'Exactly. So — why haven't we found him — and where do we look?'
'Just my own thought. As I was saying — he's either a top agent or, he's not an agent at all.'
'He has to be — with this kind of cover-operation going on.' Tortyev nodded over his shoulder at the slumped form of the Jew. 'They've used Filipov knowing they might be expending him. They expended another top man, the truck-driver. That's two down. The British are always careful of their operatives, Dmitri, they don't throw them away! '
'No — I don't mean he's not working for the British, or the Americans… just that he's been recruited from some other field. Look at it this way. What if he's not there to damage the project? After all, what would be the point? As far as we know, the Americans are so far behind, they'd need ten years to catch up with the Mig-31 de
spite being handed a Mig-25 by Belenko four years ago.' Priabin's voice had sunk to a confidential whisper, and he glanced sideways at Stechko and Holokov who, politically, seemed to be occupied with the limp form of Filipov, minutely inspecting him in a grotesque form of damage-report.
'I agree — from what you've told me.'
'So — our security has been able to intercept most of what has been passed to London and Washington by the underground at Bilyarsk, via the Embassy here. Therefore, the Americans and British want to know more. They want a first-hand report of what's going on, perhaps even photographs, and an eye-witness account.'
'You mean — an expert?'
'Yes!' Priabin's voice was suddenly louder. 'What if they've sent an aeronautics expert, who knows what to look for, what questions to ask?'
'God — it could be anyone — someone we don't even know!'
There was a silence.
'I don't think he knows,' Priabin said, nodding towards Filipov, who groaned with returning consciousness as he did so.
'He could do,' Tortyev replied. 'Besides,' he added in a menacing tone, 'I haven't finished with him yet, the little Jewish shit!'
Priabin shrugged. 'Suit yourself,' he said. 'But don't start on him again until I've made another call. I want a check run through the computer on the entire American and British aerospace industries.'
'It'll take hours…!' Tortyev protested.
'No longer than it will take your gorillas to beat it out of Filipov. There won't be many names — not capable of making the most of this elaborate subterfuge to smuggle him into Bilyarsk. Let me make the call — then you can resort to the physical stuff!'
Tortyev hesitated for a moment, shrugged in his turn, and Priabin picked up the receiver.
* * *
The searchlight picked him up early, with fifty yards still to go, fixed on him, and he walked into the tunnel of its white, blinding light. He tried to appear casual, yet irritated, and shaded his eyes studiously. Each footstep threatened to become reluctant, to stutter to a halt, his frame and motive power running down, like a machine dying. He forced his legs to work. The cramp was coming back to his stomach. He knew the sweat was standing out on his forehead, and his hands were shaking. Gant was suddenly threatened. It was as if his ego had been stripped and he knew he could not carry it through. This was worse than the flying — this was the struggle of the stranded fish. 'Identify yourself,' the voice said and he realised, with a shock, that he was close to the gate. A guard was pointing a rifle in his direction. 'Identify yourself.'