Nor would all the derelicts who threw their ID away because it revealed where they came from and they did not want the militia to shunt them back there, but who still died of cold or alcohol on the streets, come his way. Volsky only dealt with certain homicides, by a person unknown of a person unknown. It was, he mused, an exclusive but pretty futile occupation.
The file that landed in front of him on August 4 was different. Robbery could hardly be the motive. A glance at the Scene of Discovery report from the Western Division told him the cadaver had been discovered by a mushroom picker in the woods off the Minsk Highway just inside the city limits. A hundred yards off the highway—discount hit-and-run.
The Personal Effects list was gloomy. Victim was wearing (from the bottom up) shoes plastic, cheap, cracked, down-at-heel; socks cheap, store-bought, ingrained with grime; undershorts ditto; trousers, thin, black, greasy; belt, plastic, worn. That was it. No shirt, tie, or jacket. Just a greatcoat found nearby, described as ex-army, fifties vintage, very threadbare.
There was a brief paragraph at the bottom. Contents of pockets nil, repeat nil. No watch, ring, or any item of personal possession.
Volsky glanced at the photo taken at the scene. Someone had kindly closed the eyelids. A thin, unshaven face, mid-sixties perhaps, looking a decade older. Haggard, that was the word, and that would be before he died.
Poor old sod, thought Volsky, I’ll bet no one did you in for your Swiss bank account. He turned to the postmortem report. After several paragraphs he stubbed out his cigarette and swore.
“Why can’t these characters write in simple Russian?” he asked the wall, not for the first time. It was all talk of lacerations and contusions; if you mean cuts and bruises, say so, he thought.
A number of aspects puzzled him once he had worked his way through the jargon. He checked the official stamp of the mortuary at Second Medical and rang the number. He was lucky. Professor Kuzmin was at his desk.
“Is that Professor Kuzmin?” he asked.
“It is. Who speaks?”
“Inspector Volsky. Homicide. I have your report in front of me.”
“Lucky you.”
“May I be frank with you, Professor?”
“In our day and age it would be a privilege.”
“It’s just that some of the language is a bit complex. You mention severe bruising on each upper arm. Can you say what caused that?”
“As a pathologist, no, it’s just severe contusion. But between us, those marks were made by human fingers.”
“Someone grabbed him?”
“Meaning he was held up, my dear Inspector. Held up, supported, by two strong men while he was being beaten.”
“This was all done by humans then? No machinery involved?”
“If his head and legs were in the same condition, I’d say he’d been dropped from a helicopter onto concrete. And not a low-flying helicopter. But no, any form of impact with the ground or a truck would have damaged the head and legs as well. No, he was struck repeatedly between the neck and the hips, front and back, with hard blunt objects.”
“Cause of death ... asphyxia?”
“That’s what I said, Inspector.”
“Forgive me, he was beaten to pulp but died of asphyxia.”
Kuzmin sighed.
“All his ribs were broken, bar one. Some in several places. Two were driven back into his lungs. Pulmonary blood then entered the trachea causing asphyxiation.”
“You mean he choked on the blood in his throat?”
“That’s what I have been trying to tell you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m new here.”
“And I’m hungry here,” said the professor. “It is the lunch hour. Good day to you, Inspector.”
Volsky rechecked the report. So the old boy had been beaten. It all said “gangland.” But gangsters were usually younger than that. He must really have offended someone in the mafia. If he hadn’t died of asphyxia, he would have croaked from the trauma.
So what did they want, the killers? Information? Surely he’d have given them what they wanted without all this? Punishment? Example? Sadism? A bit of all three perhaps. But what on earth could an old man who looked like a tramp have in his possession that a gang boss would want so badly, or what could he have done to a gang boss to deserve what he got?
Volsky noticed one more thing under “Identifying marks.” The professor had written: “None upon the body, but in the mouth two frontal incisors and one canine, all of stainless steel, apparently the inheritance of some crude military dentistry.” Meaning the man had three steel teeth at the front.
The forensic pathologist’s last remark reminded Volsky of something. It was the lunch break and he had agreed to meet a friend, also in Homicide. He got up, locked his shabby office behind him, and left.
Langley, July 1986
THE letter from Colonel Solomin caused quite a problem. He had made three deliveries by dead drop in Moscow but now wanted a remeet with his controller Jason Monk. As he had no opportunity to leave the USSR, it would have to be on Soviet territory.
The first reaction of any agency receiving such a suggestion would be to suspect their man had been caught and was writing under duress.
But Monk was convinced Solomin was neither a fool nor a coward. There was a single word that, if he were writing under duress, he should avoid using at all costs, and another he should try to insert into the message. Even under duress he would probably be able to comply with one or other condition. His letter from Moscow contained the word that should be there and did not contain the one that should not. In other words, it seemed to be genuine.
Harry Gaunt had long agreed with Monk that Moscow, infested with KGB agents and watchers, was too risky. With a short-term diplomatic posting the Soviet Foreign Ministry would still want full details, which they would pass on to the Second Chief Directorate. Even disguised, Monk would be under surveillance throughout his stay and meeting the aide-de-camp of the Deputy Defense Minister in safety would be just about impossible. In any case, Solomin did not propose that.
He said he had a leave break due in late September and had been awarded a prize—a vacation apartment in the Black Sea resort of Gurzuf.
Monk checked it out. A small village on the coast of the Crimean peninsula, a renowned resort for the military and home to a major Defense Ministry hospital where injured or recuperating officers could convalesce in the sun.
Two former Soviet officers residing in the United States were consulted. Both agreed they had not been there but knew of Gurzuf—a beautiful former fishing village where Chekhov had lived in his villa by the sea fifty minutes by bus or twenty-five by taxi up the coast from Yalta.
Monk switched his research to Yalta. The USSR was still virtually a sealed country in many respects, and to fly into the area on a scheduled route was out of the question. The air route would be to Moscow, change for Kiev, change again for Odessa, and then to Yalta. There was no way a foreign tourist was going to make that route, and there was no particular reason why a foreign tourist would want to head for Yalta. It might be a Soviet resort, but a single foreigner would stand out like a sore thumb. He looked at the sea routes and got a break.
Ever hungry for foreign hard currency, the Moscow government allowed the Black Sea Shipping Company to run sea cruises of the Mediterranean. Although all the crews were Soviet, with a sprinkling of KGB agents among them (that went without saying), the passengers were mainly from the West.
Because of the cheapness of such cruises for Westerners, the passenger groups tended to be students, academics, senior citizens. There were three liners doing these cruises in the summer of 1986: the Litva, the Latvia, and the Armenia. The one that fitted September was the Armenia.
According to the London agent for the Black Sea Company, the liner would leave Odessa for the Greek port of Piraeus, mainly empty. From Greece she would head due west for Barcelona, then turn back via Marseilles, Naples, Malta, and Istanbul before heading into the Black Se
a for Varna on the coast of Bulgaria, then Yalta, and finally back to Odessa. The bulk of her Western passengers would join at Barcelona, Marseilles, or Naples.
At the end of July, with the cooperation of the British Security Service, a very skillful break-in was effected at the offices of the London-based agency of the shipping company. No trace of entry or exit was ever left. The bookings for the Armenia that had been made in London were photographed.
A study of these revealed a block booking for six members of the American-Soviet Friendship Society. Back in the States they were checked out. All appeared to be middle-aged, sincere, naïve, and dedicated to the improvement of American-Soviet relations. They also lived in or near the northeastern United States.
In early August Professor Norman Kelson of San Antonio joined the society and applied for its literature. From this he learned of the forthcoming expedition on the Armenia, boarding at Marseilles, and applied to join as the seventh member of the group. The Soviet organization Intourist saw no objection and the extra booking was made.
The real Norman Kelson was a former CIA archivist who had retired to San Antonio and bore a passing resemblance to Jason Monk although fifteen years older, a difference that would be made up with gray hair tint and smoked eyeglasses.
In mid-August Monk replied to Solomin that his friend would wait for him at the turnstile to the Yalta Botanical Gardens. The gardens are a famous landmark in Yalta, situated out of town, one-third of the way up the coast to Gurzuf. The friend would be there at noon on September 27 and 28.
¯
INSPECTOR Volsky was late for his lunch date so he strode rapidly through the corridors of the big gray edifice Petrovka that houses the headquarters of the Moscow militia. His friend was not in his office so he tried the squad room and found him talking to a bunch of colleagues.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
“No sweat, let’s go.”
There was no question of two men on their salaries eating out, but the militia provided a very low-budget canteen with a lunch voucher system and the food was adequate. Both men turned toward the door. Just inside it was a bulletin board. Volsky cast a glance at it and stopped dead.
“Come on,” said his friend. “There’ll be no tables left.”
“Tell me,” said Volsky when they were seated, each with a plate of stew and half a liter of beer. “The squad room …”
“What about it?”
“The bulletin board. Inside the door. There’s a picture. Sort of copy of a crayon drawing. Old guy with funny teeth. What’s the story?”
“Oh, that,” said Inspector Novikov, “our mystery man. Apparently some woman at the British Embassy had a break-in. Two guys. They didn’t steal anything but they trashed the place. She disturbed them so they knocked her out. But she caught a look at one of them.”
“When was this?”
“About two weeks ago, maybe three. Anyway, the embassy complained to the Foreign Ministry. They hit the roof and complained to Interior. They went ballistic and told Burglary Division to find the man. Someone made up a drawing. You know Chernov? No? Well, he’s the big investigator in Burglary; so he’s running around with his butt on fire because his career’s on the line, and getting nowhere. Even came down to us and stuck up one of his pictures.”
“Any leads?” asked Volsky.
“Nope. Chernov doesn’t know who he is or where he is. This stew has more fat and less meat every time I come here.”
“I don’t know who he is, but I know where he is,” said Volsky. Novikov paused with his beer glass halfway to his lips.
“Shit, where?”
“He’s on a slab in the morgue down at Second Medical. His file came in this morning. He’s a John Doe. Found in the woods out in the west about a week ago. Beaten to death. No ID.”
“Well, you’d better get on to Chernov. He’ll be all over you.”
As he chomped on the remainder of his stew, Inspector Novikov was a very thoughtful man.
Rome, August 1986
ALDRICH Ames had arrived with his wife in the Eternal City to take up his new posting on July 22. Even after eight months at language school, his Italian was workaday and passable but not good. Unlike Monk he had no ear for foreign tongues.
With his newfound wealth he was able to live in a far better style than ever before, but no one in the Rome Station spotted the difference because no one had seen his lifestyle before April of the previous year.
Before long it became clear that Ames was a habitual drunk and underachiever. This seemed not to worry his colleagues, and even less the Russians. As at Langley, he began to sweep masses of classified material off his desk and into shopping bags with which he strolled out of the embassy to deliver to the KGB.
In August his new KGB controller came down from Moscow to meet him. Unlike Androsov in Washington, he did not live locally but flew in from Moscow whenever a meet was necessary. In Rome there were far fewer problems than in the States. The new controller, “Vlad,” was in fact Colonel Vladimir Mechulayev of Directorate K of the First Chief Directorate.
At their first meeting Ames was going to protest at the inordinate speed with which the KGB had picked up the men he had betrayed, thus putting him in danger. But Vlad got in first, apologizing for the crudity and explaining that Mikhail Gorbachev had personally overruled them all. Then he came down to the business that brought him to Rome.
“We have a problem, my dear Rick,” he said. “The volume of material you have brought us is quite enormous and of inestimable value. High among these documents are the brief pen portraits and photos you supplied of the top control officers for spies being run inside the USSR.”
Ames was puzzled, trying to register through a fuzz of alcohol.
“Yes, anything wrong?” he asked.
“Not wrong, just a puzzle,” Mechulayev said, and produced a photograph that he laid on the coffee table.
“This one. A certain Jason Monk. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“In your reports you describe his reputation in the SE Division as ‘a rising star.’ Meaning, we presume, that he controls one, maybe two assets inside the Soviet Union.”
“That’s the view around the office, or it was when I last looked in. But you must have them.”
“Ah, my dear Rick, that is the problem. All the traitors you kindly revealed to us have now been identified, arrested, and ... talked to. And each has been, how shall I put it ...” The Russian recalled the shuddering men he had faced in the interrogation room after Grishin had introduced the prisoners to his own personal brand of pressure to cooperate.
“They have all been very frank, very candid, most cooperative. Each has told us who his control officers were, in some cases several of them. But no Jason Monk. Not one. Of course, false names can be used, usually are. But the picture, Rick. Not one recognized the picture. Now, you see my problem? Who does Monk run, and where are they?”
“I don’t know. I can’t understand it. They must have been on the 301 files.”
“My dear Rick, neither can we because they weren’t.”
Before the meeting ended Ames had been given a vast amount of money and a list of tasks. He stayed in Rome for three years and betrayed everything he could, an enormous haul of secret and top-secret documents. Among these were four more agents, but all non-Russians, nationals of the East European Bloc countries. But task number one was clear and simple: On your return to Washington or hopefully before, find out who Monk runs in the USSR.
¯
WHILE Detective Inspectors Novikov and Volsky had been indulging in their informative lunch in the canteen at militia headquarters, the Duma had been in full session.
It had taken time to recall the Russian parliament from summer recess, for so large is the territory that many of the delegates had to travel thousands of miles to attend the constitutional debate. Nevertheless, the debate was calculated to be of extraordinary importance because the issue at stake was a change of the c
onstitution.
After the unforeseen death of President Cherkassov, Article Fifty-nine of the constitution required the prime minister to take over the presidency per interim. The period of interregnum was decreed to be three months.
Prime Minister Ivan Markov had indeed taken over the acting Presidency but, after consulting a number of experts, had been advised that as Russia was due for a fresh presidential election in June 2000, to have set an earlier one for October 1999 could cause serious dislocation, even chaos. The motion before the Duma was therefore in favor of a once-only Amendment Act, extending the acting presidency for three further months and advancing the year 2000 election from June to January.
The word Duma comes from the verb dumat, meaning to think or contemplate; thus the Duma is “a place of thinking.” Many observers felt the Duma more a place of screaming and shouting than of mature contemplation. On that hot summer’s day it certainly justified the latter description.
The debate lasted all day, rising to levels of passion such that the Speaker spent much of his time shouting for order, and at one time threatened to suspend the session until further notice.
Two delegates were so abusive that the Speaker ordered their ejection, accompanied by violent scuffles recorded by the television cameras, until the expelled pair were on the pavement outside. There both, who disagreed violently with each other, held impromptu press conferences that degenerated into a pavement brawl until broken up by the police.
Inside the chamber, as the air-conditioning system broke down under the strain and the sweating delegates of what purported to be the world’s third most populous democracy screamed and swore at each other, the lineup became clear.
The Fascist Union of Patriotic Forces, under orders from Igor Komarov, insisted the presidential elections should be decreed for October, three months after the death of Cherkassov and in accordance with Article Fifty-nine. Their tactic was obvious. The UPF was so far ahead in the polls that it could only see its own access to supreme power being advanced by nine months.