Waste Not, Want Not td-130

by Warren Murphy

  A dumpy old woman in a tattered babushka was crossing the street. Petrovina had finished checking her makeup. She frowned as the woman grew larger. Laying on the horn, Petrovina raced straight up to the horrified crone, zooming neatly around her at the last possible moment.

  She watched in the mirror. When the woman twirled and fell, it was from shock. Petrovina knew she hadn't hit her. The car handled like a dream.

  The Thunderbird was a gift from a French government official. Petrovina had gotten it for a weekend of passion in his family villa outside Paris. The deal was a simple one. The Frenchman got the lovely Petrovina Bulganin, warm and without reservation. She got her new Thunderbird, along with the latest detailed intelligence on the whens, wheres and hows of NATO's integration with the former Soviet republics of Western Europe. The latter included up-to-date espionage and government contacts-payrolls, codes and time schedules-within four countries. The former included fully independent suspension and an overhead-cam V8.

  Petrovina loved her little Thunderbird. She was so glad that Ford had decided to make them again. It was a beautiful little joy, sleek and dangerous at the same time. Much like Petrovina Bulganin.

  Petrovina was part of the new wave of Russian espionage agents. Brash, young, good at their game-none of whom had ever set foot inside KGB headquarters. Not that they had not been in the actual building. But by the time this generation came around, the KGB was the SVR. Many in their field had never even known life in the old KGB.

  There was a time not too long before when that would have been unthinkable. But ten years was an eternity in the espionage business. The old KGB men were retiring out of the service or moving up to desk jobs. The void was now being filled by young agents for whom the old Soviet system was something that had been dismantled while they were still laughing as children on playgrounds. Those same children-now grown-had known adulthood only in the new Russia.

  Petrovina had not been groomed for the espionage business from early childhood or plucked out of school by a keen-eyed KGB scout. When she completed her studies, she entered the job market like anyone else. Her language skills and intelligence quickly landed her a dull desk job with the SVR. She might have stayed for years in that dreary little out-of-the-way position if her personnel file hadn't found its way into a special set of hands.

  It had all started nineteen months before.

  The events unfolded so quickly Petrovina was fuzzy on all the details. She was working at her desk one Friday morning translating English-language intercepts from Kosovo when her supervisor came to collect her.

  Petrovina wasn't sure what was going on. The man brought her to the back of the building, to a corridor and elevator that she hadn't known existed. Two minutes later she was stunned when she found herself being ushered into the office of Pavel Zatsyrko, the head of the SVR.

  As a lowly language clerk toiling away in the basement, she had never had cause to catch the eye of someone so important. Briefly she wondered if she was being fired.

  Zatsyrko did not offer her a chair. He sat behind his desk, the slats of the blinds closed on the morning sun.

  "You have been reassigned," the SVR head announced dully. He didn't look her in the eye. He was looking down at the file on his desk.

  "Sir?" Petrovina questioned.

  "Here."

  He slid her the file. Hesitantly-for she still did not know what was going on-she picked it up. She was surprised to see the file was her own. All of her employment records, all of the data that had been collected on her when she joined the SVR, her entire life-everything was in the file.

  "Bring this with you to your new assignment. Your desk has already been emptied. Collect the box with your personal belongings on your way out. If you are asked, you never worked here. The rest will be explained when you get there."

  Confused, Petrovina asked where "there" was. Pavel Zatsyrko offered her a withering look and pointed to the file before turning his attention to his desktop and other, more important matters of his workday.

  Petrovina found a small scrap of paper in the back of her personnel file. A pink Post-it note with an address.

  She took the bus-back then she could only afford public transportation-as far as it would go, then walked the rest of the way. She found the building in an out-of-the-way corner of a bustling Moscow district. It was an impossibly huge slab of concrete that occupied an entire city block.

  As she drove her Thunderbird up to the building this day, she thought of herself nineteen months ago. This day she had the top down on her car. Her tousled mane of glorious hair blew wild in the cold, its raven hue matching the twinkling cunning of her coal black eyes.

  Back then she was a timid mouse, hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail. When she was ushered through the gate back then, she didn't know what to think. It felt as if she were walking inside a prison.

  But that was ages ago. Another lifetime. A different Petrovina Bulganin.

  She stopped the Thunderbird at the gate. Her pass card got her through. She waved to the woman at the security window as she drove into the first-floor garage.

  There were a few other cars inside. Not very many for a building this size.

  The size of the building did strike Petrovina as odd. There never seemed to be very many people there. On that first day more than a year and a half earlier, she had not asked why so large a building was needed for so small a staff. She was too busy absorbing new information.

  On that day she had been ushered into a basement office. A honey-blond-haired woman of about forty sat waiting patiently behind a small desk. The woman's name, Petrovina learned, was Anna Chutesov. She was director of an agency so secret that few outside a tight circle knew of its existence.

  "We are called the Institute," Director Chutesov had explained. "I act as an adviser to our president. But I am understaffed." She seemed puzzled at the admission. As if she had worked there for many years, never having noticed that she was, alone in the drafty concrete building. "There have been a few instances during my tenure here where simple advising has not been sufficient. But I have no field agents. That has changed. I have recently gotten permission and funding to increase Institute staff."

  "So I am to be transferred from the SVR?" Petrovina asked, confused. She was a nervous little thing back then. So timid, so fearful. The big building was cold. She hugged herself for warmth.

  "You have already been transferred," Director Chutesov had said blandly. "You work for the Institute now. For me. Give me your personnel file."

  Petrovina still held the manila folder she had been given back at Pavel Zatsyrko's office. Her clenching hand had made a wet imprint on the light cardboard. She gave the file to Director Anna Chutesov.

  The Institute head opened the file and began feeding it piece by piece through the shredder beside her desk. The confetti curls of Petrovina Bulganin's life whirred out the far end.

  "You are dead to the SVR," Director Chutesov said. "They have expunged your files. You never worked for them. Nor do you work for me. At least as far as the world knows." She offered a mirthless smile. "Welcome to the world of espionage, Agent Dvah."

  In Russian, dvah was two; adeen was one. Bewildered, Petrovina asked if Director Chutesov was Agent Adeen.

  "No," Director Chutesov had replied. "And never ask that question again."

  Petrovina thought there was some sort of dreadful mistake. She was not a spy. Even when she began her training, she expressed doubts to all her instructors.

  No one listened to her protests. Eventually, as the months wore on, she stopped protesting, due mainly to the fact that the training began to draw out elements of her personality that she had not even known existed.

  Marksmanship and limited martial-arts training weren't a problem. Petrovina had taken several self-defense courses while at the SVR. A single girl in Moscow couldn't be too careful. She had a good eye with weapons and had always had an athletic bent. So said her SVR file.

  But as her skills incr
eased, so, too, did her coldness. A veneer of icy confidence slowly emerged from the shell of the timid little language expert. By the end, Petrovina was the ugly duckling that became the beautiful, deadly swan.

  In under a year's time Agent Dvah was on assignment, becoming the Institute's first official field agent, answerable only to Director Chutesov herself. It was a life Petrovina Bulganin had been born to live and that, but for the intervention of the Institute's director, she would never have discovered.

  Now, months since that first assignment and already in her mind a seasoned pro, Petrovina danced through the labyrinthine hallways of the Institute building.

  The scattered workers she passed were all women. There was not a single male face among them.

  She found her way downstairs to the special room in the private corridor. There was no secretary. She knocked on the door. Petrovina heard the sound of a bolt clicking back. She pushed the door open.

  Director Chutesov sat behind her desk. There was a computer monitor sitting on the corner near the shredder. Her vacant ice-blue eyes watched the pulses of the screen without really seeing them. She said not a word as her finger retreated from the switch that had unlocked the door.

  After an awkward moment, Agent Bulganin cleared her throat. "I came as quickly as I could." Director Chutesov didn't stir from her trance. She continued to stare at the monitor. One hand rose above desk level, waving Petrovina to a chair. Petrovina watched the director of the Institute, unsure if she should speak again.

  "This building is an odd thing, Petrovina," Director Chutesov said after another long moment. "You thought so yourself many months ago. It is large, isn't it? Too large, it seems, for the needs of the Institute."

  Director Chutesov looked up from her monitor. There was a glint of deep intelligence in her blue eyes.

  "There are rumors that ghosts once lived here," she continued. "The people in the area swear this building was haunted. Do you believe in ghosts, Agent Bulganin?"

  Petrovina admitted that she did not. "I believe in what I can see, Director," she said.

  "As you are, I once was. And yet there are things that neither you nor I can see. For instance, why would an individual empty a building of furniture-give every last scrap of it away-and then forget they had done so?"

  It was an odd question. Director Chutesov seemed very serious asking it. As if she desperately wanted an answer.

  "Madness?" Petrovina suggested. "Drugs or alcohol?"

  "I do not take drugs. I drink alcohol rarely, and then only lightly. And I am not mad."

  Petrovina blinked. She hadn't realized they were discussing Director Chutesov herself.

  "There are outdoor markets near here," Director Chutesov explained. "Perhaps you've been to them. No? Well, I have. A few months ago I went one afternoon looking for antiques." She dropped her voice knowingly. "Some of these sellers are idiots. They would not know good furniture if it fell on their heads. The parents or grandparents die, and the children immediately race off to sell hundred-year-old antiques for kopecks at market. As I was looking for bargains at a particular stall, I caught the eye of the seller. Before I knew what was happening, he began to argue with me. He told me that I had given everything to him fair and square and that I could not have it back."

  Petrovina frowned. "Did you know this man?"

  "No. He was a complete stranger to me."

  "Then I do not understand."

  "Nor did I. Nor do I still. But he was adamant that the items for sale at his stand were from me. He claimed that I had allowed him and others like him into this very building. They are the ones who emptied it of furnishings."

  "He mistook you for someone else," Petrovina said. "That is, assuming you did not give away Institute furniture." She laughed a tinkling little laugh. Director Chutesov's face was deadly serious.

  "I did not. Not that I can remember. But there were a few others at the market who made the same claim. I could not believe that they were all insane. When I pressed them, they were able to give a fairly detailed description of the interior of this supposedly secret building."

  Petrovina was intrigued. "Thieves," she said. "They somehow got in here and stole whatever they were selling. What is it they had for sale, by the way?"

  "Blankets, cots, storage bins. The Institute was apparently home to some secret garrison. And, no, Petrovina, they were not simple thieves. If there was a break-in, I would have known of it. Or should have. No, the likeliest, if most disturbing conclusion to be reached is that I did indeed open the doors of the Institute and allowed strangers inside to empty it out."

  Petrovina was at a loss. "Forgive me, Director Chutesov, but what does it mean?"

  Anna Chutesov tapped a slender finger to her own forehead. There were care lines in the perfect porcelain skin. They had appeared only recently.

  "I think, Agent Bulganin, that there is a piece of something missing," Director Chutesov said. "Up here. One day I will find out what was taken and how. And when that day comes, woe to the man who took it from me."

  Petrovina understood. Director Chutesov believed that some invisible someone had stolen parts of her memory. That it was a man was a given. Agent Bulganin had learned early on that her superior at the Institute was a staunch feminist. This was why no men worked in the big concrete building.

  "That is why you called me here," Petrovina said confidently. "To look into this matter."

  Director Chutesov shook her head. "There is not enough information at the moment. I will continue to investigate this myself. We will address it when the time comes. You are here for another reason. The usual reason, in my experience. To clean up a mess the men have left for us."

  The Institute director reached inside her top drawer. She tossed a file across her desk.

  Petrovina noted that there were old Red Army codes on the flap. Inside was data on a shipyard in Latvia, as well as detailed personnel information on several former Russian navy men. Agent Dvah scanned the old photograph of a Captain Gennady Zhilnikov. The picture was ten years out of date.

  "The Institute is a clearinghouse for information," Director Chutesov explained. "From that raw data I have identified something that might be a problem, if it is true." She pointed to the file. "That will be your primary assignment. Have you seen the news today?"

  Before becoming a spy, Petrovina had watched the news faithfully. She watched less these days. The only story she had seen that morning was about three kittens trapped in a storm drain in California. Russia had pledged equipment and manpower to help rescue the trapped animals.

  "No, I have not," Petrovina admitted.

  "There is also a device in Mayana that the SVR has been assigned to look into. A machine that destroys trash. There is a team of SVR agents that, like you, will officially be part of our Globe Summit delegation. As long as you are there, you will handle that task, as well. It is only simple reconnaissance. It will not take you long away from your main mission. That was my excuse for getting you in the country. And as simple as it is, I would not trust the men of the SVR to not bungle the assignment. You may sign for the equipment downstairs. For now, read that file. Save your questions until you are through."

  Petrovina Bulganin nodded, pulling open the file.

  Director Chutesov exhaled, turning attention back to her computer. The Institute head muttered as she poked lifelessly at the keys.

  "And if we are very lucky, Agent Bulganin, perhaps I am wrong for the first time in my life and the idiots who run this country have not given the world yet another reason to think us a dangerous laughing-stock." Disgusted, she pulled up her solitaire program. "Men," Anna Chutesov swore.

  Chapter 8

  Traditionally a Master of Sinanju departed the village to much fanfare. Remo didn't like fanfare. Preferring not to make a big scene, he suggested that he and Chiun slip out of town quietly.

  Chiun wouldn't have it. A newly invested Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju could not sneak out of his village like a common thie
f. What would the villagers think?

  Remo pointed out that they'd probably be pretty okay with it, since they spent their entire lives from cradle to grave with their hands stuffed in someone else's back pocket.

  "I'll toss my Visa card in the mud on the way out the door," Remo said. "They'll be so busy massaging the cramps from forging my name they won't even know I've left."

  "Do you want to break with five thousand years of tradition? Is that what you want?" Chiun demanded.

  "I'm down with that," Remo replied.

  Chiun tried a different approach. "Do you want to spend the entire trip to South America listening to why you have shamed me yet again in front of my ancestors?"

  The entire population of Sinanju was gathered in the main square of the village to bid farewell to the new Reigning Master. General Kye Pun was allowed to witness the Rite of Departure. He was swept along behind Remo and Chiun by the mass of humanity.

  Remo was ushered uncomfortably through the multitude to the edge of the village. Men and women who had spent the past four months bad-mouthing him wore phony smiles as they sang him on his way.

  "Hail, Master of Sinanju, who sustains the village and keeps the code faithfully," they shouted, their voices raised as one. "Our hearts cry with joy and pain at your departure. Joy that you undertake this journey for the sake of we, the unworthy beneficiaries of your generosity. And pain that your toils take your beauteous aspect from our midst. May the spirits of your ancestors journey safe with you who graciously throttles the universe."

  Remo was tapping his toe impatiently on the wellworn path as they recited. When they were finished, he pointed at several random villagers.

  "Up yours, yours, yours and yours," he said in English. He said it with a smile, as if conferring a blessing.